A rough ride

US Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama, who has made history as the first non-white candidate ever to lead a major US party into a fall campaign for the White House, is riding high end making a splash nowadays. He is the 46-year-old first term Illinois Senator. Obama is crossing swords in November election with Republican Senator John Mc Cain, a Vietnam war hero and former prisoner of war who has been a leading voice in the Senate on national security.

Indubitably, success is almost upon Obama in the elections but after entering the Oval office in January 2009, Obama will have to tread a tightrope as there is little room left for tripping up. As the American elections are going, in no small measure, to pivot around the future of the US troops in Iraq, so the premier challenge for Obama lies on the Iraqi front. Obama declaims that he has not shifted ground in the context of his promise to pronounce an end to the Iraq war and he reaffirms that his original views remain intact. However, by all accounts Obama will be obliged to undertake vacillation on this score and subscribe to the war's political entanglements as the decision he will make in this regard will continue to reverberate for long times to come. Putting an end to the Iraq war will bring unpalatable and rebarbative spin-off in its train in the form of a humiliation of the highest order for the US. The recent "flip flop" by Obama on Iraq war is an indictment of the feature that he may waffle over and get wishy-washy.