Ban ki-Moon, Secretary General of the UN, having to withdraw the name of Saudi Arabia as one of the nations guilty of atrocities against children in Yemen is not surprising, for his organisation stood to lose almost $700 billion in aid if it maintained its stance against that country.
Equally not surprising is Obama's refusal to write into law the 28-page 9/11 report implicating Saudi Arabia in 9/11 because the US stood to lose over $700 billion in Saudi assets which the latter threatened to sell if Obama so did.
For me, Ban ki-Moon is a tragic figure for he was obliged to back down seemingly for a greater good which was to preserve Saudi aid intended for the depressed in the world when, ironically, that aid comes from that same insidious source responsible for the human suffering it is supposed to relieve.
As for Obama, as the first black President he was the hope of many in the US and elsewhere, but the politics of establishment will have tainted him, as much as it destroyed Bernie Sanders, for the Saudi investment could not be sacrificed, no matter what their crime, for corporate and big business just won't let him, let alone jeopardising the most important alliance for the US in the Middle East.
And the same politics, tied into the US sense of exceptionalism in the world would see Obama bent on getting rid of Assad, the duly elected leader of Syria, as much as he would have got rid of Saddam and Gadaffi, leaders who, albeit with a heavy hand, maintained order and stability in their countries, but who did not fit the presumed US policing role in the world, and had to be got rid of.
So the politics of money and power often makes cowards of us all, even the best of us. But Bernie Sanders is still standing up and even though he lost against Hillary the nominee for the Democrats, presumed and manipulated from the start, his will be a true victory for the future of American politics pointing to the kind that is for the people and by the people, instead of being the tool of self-interest for a chosen few.
As for Ban ki-Moon, maybe he should have held his ground and not countenance the evil that he did. Maybe history will understand. But in the final analysis, must this evil as above continue to prevail? Is there no moral sense of that would make princes and presidents remorseful about the evil they practise?
Even in our own country we watch criminals of yester-year in the politics continuing to flaunt themselves in the public eye with no sense of the criminality which hangs over their heads. As if to account here and now has no place in the psychology of power and control of those who wield it, but they must know that there is an even-handed justice which commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice to our own lips (Macbeth), that whatsoever a man soweth that shall he reap (the Bible), and that the law of Karma making you pay, rolls on inexorably (Gita).
Dr Errol Benjamin