The weight of the Bush legacy on his shoulders

One of Barack Obama’s first official acts as President was to shut down Guantanamo Bay. This has been seen as a symbolic gesture in rebuilding the trust of an international community, and a stepping stone to the path of redemption.

German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel once expressed, “What experience and history teach is this - that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it”.

With a tendency for human beings to have short memories, it is essential that future generations of human civilisation be continuously reminded of particular events of our past, to ensure lessons of the past are not forgotten, that mistakes are not repeated, and hopeful that humanity is enhanced because of those events - the Nazi persecution of the Jews, the ethnic cleansing atrocities in Bosnia, Kosovo, Rwanda, and Cambodia, and East Timor as examples. We can now add Iraq to this list.

The time has also arrived for humankind to liberate itself from its arrogance and disrespectful behaviour towards our Earth. As custodians, we need to revere Earth, all its life’s inhabitants, and leave it stronger and healthier than when we first graced our planet.

The 44th President carries the weighty hopes of not only a nation but also the world. The expectations are unreasonably high for one individual to fulfil.

However, throughout history, great leaders have come to the fore in times of great crisis, including the likes of Winston Churchill, Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, and Martin Luther King, who each altered the course of history and offered hope where darkness once prevailed.

Let’s hope President Obama can learn from history, and lead and restore humankind to its rightful place - as a protector of rights not just for all the citizens of the world, but also for all of the planet’s inhabitants of today’s and tomorrow’s world.