In his books Barack Obama has told the story of the family into which he was born, about a father from Kenya whom he barely knew, who left when Barack was age 2, and about his white American mother from Kansas who along with his father was a college student at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu. By age 6 young Barack was already living in Jakarta with his mother and his Indonesian step father before moving back to Hawaii at age 10 to be raised by his maternal grandparents when his mother and her second husband divorced. His "birthright," says Barack Obama, was that he was loved and received a good education.
Over the years Barack Obama had bonding experiences with white and black relatives and with Asian family members amidst an understandable struggle to find his own identity. Through it all he developed a keen ability to understand and to resonate with people of various ethnic backgrounds. Barack Obama worked his way through the racial complexities into which he was born to graduate Magna Cum Laude from Harvard Law School and become president of the Harvard Law Review. He worked as a community organizer, a lecturer, and a civil rights attorney prior to serving in the Illinois State Senate from 1997-2004 which ended with his 70% landslide election victory to the US Senate in 2004.
On a personal level Barack Obama has had 46 years of experience in understanding how perceptions of ethnicity and judgments about race can divide people, and he is uniquely qualified and committed to develop a sense of unity and common purpose in America and its people. He has the background, the communication skills and the intelligence necessary to reintroduce the United States of America to the rest of the world. As President of the United States he would appropriately symbolize our great and powerful country with its two simple yet profound ideals of personal freedom and equality of opportunity.
In 1963 when Obama was just 2 years old Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous "I have a dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. that included the familiar phrase of "not being judged by the color of one's skin but by the content of one's character." That speech, of course, helped prompt passage of the 1964 US Civil rights Act and the next year, King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. If the people of America elect Barack Obama their 44th President in November of this year King's dream will have become much more than just a dream.

Some have said that Barack Obama's opposition to America initiating the Iraq war is a "fairytale" and that his position on the war has been "inconsistent." But on October 2, 2002 at the Federal Plaza in Chicago Senator Barack Obama, then an Illinois state senator, delivered these remarks:
"I stand before you as someone who is not opposed to war in all circumstances. The Civil War was one of the bloodiest in history, and yet it was only through the crucible of the sword, the sacrifice of multitudes, that we could begin to perfect this union and drive the scourge of slavery from our soil.
I Don't Oppose All Wars
I don't oppose all wars. My grandfather signed up for a war the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed, fought in Patton's army. He fought in the name of a larger freedom, part of that arsenal of democracy that triumphed over evil. I don't oppose all wars. After September 11, after witnessing the carnage and destruction, the dust and the tears, I supported this administration's pledge to hunt down and root out those who would slaughter innocents in the name of intolerance, and I would willingly take up arms myself to prevent such tragedy from happening again.
Opposed to Dumb, Rash Wars
I don't oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne. What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income, to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression. That's what I'm opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.
On Saddam Hussein
Now let me be clear: I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power.... The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him. But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors...and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history. I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda. I am not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars. So for those of us who seek a more just and secure world for our children, let us send a clear message to the president.
You Want a Fight, President Bush?
You want a fight, President Bush? Let's finish the fight with Bin Laden and al-Qaeda, through effective, coordinated intelligence, and a shutting down of the financial networks that support terrorism, and a homeland security program that involves more than color-coded warnings. You want a fight, President Bush? Let's fight to make sure that...we vigorously enforce a nonproliferation treaty, and that former enemies and current allies like Russia safeguard and ultimately eliminate their stores of nuclear material, and that nations like Pakistan and India never use the terrible weapons already in their possession, and that the arms merchants in our own country stop feeding the countless wars that rage across the globe. You want a fight, President Bush? Let's fight to make sure our so-called allies in the Middle East, the Saudis and the Egyptians, stop oppressing their own people, and suppressing dissent, and tolerating corruption and inequality, and mismanaging their economies so that their youth grow up without education, without prospects, without hope, the ready recruits of terrorist cells. You want a fight, President Bush? Let's fight to wean ourselves off Middle East oil through an energy policy that doesn't simply serve the interests of Exxon and Mobil. Those are the battles that we need to fight. Those are the battles that we willingly join. The battles against ignorance and intolerance. Corruption and greed. Poverty and despair."

Barack Obama delivered his powerful speech at the Federal Plaza in Chicago October 2, 2002 against the US beginning war in Iraq while later that same month Hillary Clinton voted for the authorization to begin US military action in Iraq. Once US troops were actually in Iraq and fighting a war, of course, it would be irresponsible for Obama to be against funding the troops. The key is that Barack Obama had the judgment to see the dumbness of the war in October 2002 and had the courage to clearly say so. Hillary Clinton did not and voted for funds authorizing the start the Iraq War. Judgment and courage are part of Barack Obama's character, and so is a belief in a united America, in its people and in its future.

The tactic of trying to characterize Obama's position against the war as "a fairy tale" is typical of some politicians who will say and do virtually anything to discredit their opponent in attempting to get themselves elected and is a perfect example of why America so deeply yearns for the enormous breath of fresh air Barack Obama brings to politics and can bring to the highest elective office in our great country.
Barack Obama's opponent insist that he is too young and inexperienced to be President of the United States, seemingly unaware of the fact that Theodore Roosevelt became America's President at age 42, JFK at 43, and Bill Clinton at 46. On January 20, 2009 when our next president is sworn in Barack Obama will be 47 years old.
Back in the 1960 Democratic primary election Senator John Kennedy was also told he was too young and inexperienced to become president, then by such notable members of the "old guard" as Eleanor Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Adlai Stevenson, and Lyndon Johnson. Kennedy was told to wait his turn! But, of course JFK won the 1960 Democratic primary and went on to defeat Richard Nixon in the general election despite Nixon's protest that "Kennedy is too young and inexperienced to be President." It wasn't true then about John F. Kennedy and it isn't true now about Barack Obama.
Senator Obama's opponent claims to have had "35 years of experience," but most of that was not as an elected official but rather as the wife of the Governor of Arkansas and as wife of the President of the United States. Actually she has had 7 years experience as a US Senator from her adopted state of New York.
Barack Obama served 8 years in the Illinois State Senate and was elected to the US Senate in 2004 for a total of 11 years experience as an elected official responsible to voters.
Senator Obama has been in Washington D.C. long enough to know what needs to be changed, and unlike his opponent he has already started doing some changing by refusing to accept money from lobbyists and political action committees. He is proving that being beholden to such money peddlers is not necessary. He raises money for his campaign directly from the people to whom he is accountable, people like you and me.

America needs Barack Obama and America needs him now!

The New York Observer