Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Obama as the American Gorbachev?

A few months ago, reviewing Dmitry Orlov's brilliantly provocative book Reinventing Collapse, Small Precautions wondered whether Obama might end in a position of being the American Gorbachev. Well, it turns out that former chief of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Mohsen Rezai, has a similar speculation:

When Mr. Gorbachev came to power in Russia, no one believed that a great transformation was in the making.... When Mr. Bush invaded Afghanistan, and then Iraq and talk of new crusades proliferated in the political discourse, and even the Italian Prime Minister called Muslims a savage and uncivilized people, no one believed that six years later a black man from the bosom of a Muslim family would take leadership of the United States. Despite the fact that the religion of Mr. Obama is in a shroud of ignorance and it is made known that he is not Muslim, the issue is that he has emerged from the bosom of an Islamic family and his uncle is muazzin at a mosque in Africa and that most his family members are Muslim. This alone is a great victory for Muslims...Under any circumstances, the Mr. Obama phenomenon may either be result of calculations of the internal political colonialist structure of the United States in order to reconstruct the image of the United States, or Obama is a phenomenon of the kind of Gorbachev who will conduct fundamental reforms in economics and politics of the United States, or is result of the 'Hidden Hand' [of God].

None of these hypotheses must be refuted totally or accepted one hundred percent and we must await further signs and see what happens...Just to repeat: (A) The fact that a black man from the bosom of a Muslim family has taken up the leadership of the United States is a victory for the world of Islam. (B) Negative talk about this issue and Obama could be a hastily done deed resulting in damage to our country.

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