Washington,
Jan 22 (IANS) Saying “a decade of war is now ending,” President Barack
Obama began his second term in office by exhorting Americans to seize
the moment & “answer the call of history” as he laid out a
progressive agenda to tackle challenging issues such as gun control
& immigration reform.
“Progress does not compel us to settle
centuries-long debates approximately the role of government for all time
– yet it does require us to act in our time,” Obama said in his second
inaugural address Monday making a forceful plea to “answer the call of
history”.
“My fellow Americans, We\'re made for this moment, &
we will seize it – so long as we seize it together,” said Obama
outlining the vision for his second term in an 18 minute address running
into a little more than 2,100 words.
Extolling the importance of
democracy across the world, Obama said: “America will remain the anchor
of strong alliances in every corner of the globe.”
“For no one has
a greater stake in a peaceful world than its most powerful nation,” he
added, suggesting “a decade of war is now ending” without making a
direct reference to the impending drawdown of American troops from
Afghanistan next year.
Stressing the need to “respond to the
threat of climate change” he said, “Some may still deny the overwhelming
judgment of science, yet none can avoid the devastating impact of
raging fires, & crippling drought, & more powerful storms.”
In
embracing the liberal agenda, Obama listed three turning points: Seneca
Falls, Selma & Stonewall saying the “notion that all of us are
created equal is the idea that has powered men & women for
generations.”
But the journey for equality “is not complete until
our gay brothers & sisters are treated like anyone else under the
law – for if We\'re truly created equal, then surely the love we commit
to one another must be equal as well.”
“This has stretched through
Seneca Falls, Selma & Stonewall,” he said making the first ever
reference to gays in an inaugural address. “It\'s now our generation’s
task to carry on what those pioneers began.”
Seneca Falls is the
town in New York where a convention in 1848 helped launch the women’s
rights movement. Selma refers to a civil rights march in Alabama in 1965
& Stonewall Inn in New York City is where modern gay-rights
movement was born in 1969 after a police raid.
In addition, this
work will be unfinished until the country figures out how to tackle
immigration & deals with the difficulties of voting, Obama said.
The media reaction to the President’s speech was on expected lines.
“With
this speech, he has made a forceful argument for a progressive agenda
that meets the nation’s needs,” said the influential New York Times in
an editorial hoping “he has the political will & tactical instincts
to carry it out”.
In the Washington Post’s view Obama had offered “concrete goals at home, wishful thinking abroad”.
“America’s
adversaries are not in retreat; they will be watching Mr. Obama in his
second term to see if the same can be said of the United States,” it
suggested.
But in the conservative Washington Times, columnist
Robert Knight suggested in an opinion piece Obama was “shooting holes in
the Constitution”.
“Leave it to Barack Obama to come into his
inaugural weekend with a bang, & not just on guns. He’s made it
clear that he intends more spending, more regulation, more radical
appointees & less national defence in his second term,” he wrote.
(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)
