"Have any of you ever seen a picture of Mr Obama, a heavy smoker, with a cigarette in his mouth? No, nor have I. Why is that?"
asks my friend Peter Hitchens in his weekly column.
Well, Peter, just for you, there's a picture of Obama smoking above, but it's true that he hasn't been pictured smoking for a long while. Is he intimidated by the anti-smoking fanatics who will denounce him as a man not fit to be President if he is seen to light up in public? (thank goodness they weren't around in the days of FDR and Winston Churchill, otherwise the Allies would never have won the Second World War).
There's been a lot of talk recently about whether Obama has courage, and he can show that he does by following the example of Maggie Gyllenhaal, this blog's choice for President in 2012 and light up live on prime-time tv.
But there's a second even more important thing he can do to show us all that he's courageous. And that's to resist the growing pressure- being asserted by certain powerful interest groups- to appoint the neocon's favourite Democrat Hillary the Hawk as Secretary of State. People voted for Obama because they wanted a clean break with the aggressive, pro-war policies of the past. Appointing a woman who played such a key role in the illegal NATO aggression against Yugoslavia in 1999, who supported the equally unlawful Iraq war, and who has threatened to "obliterate" Iran, would be a betrayal of all those ordinary Americans who wanted something different.
Don't do it, Barack.
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