The United States President Barack Obama is gung-ho on visiting Malaysia. His reported  intention to visit comes in the wake of a series of national tragedies here in Malaysia that have very serious global implications.

But the fact that the leader of what is touted as the world’s superpower is coming to speak with a government on trade matters gives an impression that bread-and-butter issues for Americans is far more superior than the time-honoured justice that has to be upheld by democratic nations the world over.

Has the president forsaken the need to recognise that the Malaysian government has been helmed for over five decades  by a political party which is known for its race-based policies and religious discrimination?

Has the US leader failed to respect the voluminous notes fed by his own citizens on the job including its FBI, about the many ills in Malaysia that have made leaders around the world to sit up, take notice and question?

Al Gore has spoken. So has a former American ambassador to Malaysia who we know has spilled many beans.

Today, in the wake of this tragic missing aircraft from Malaysia, the world is taking serious note and offence to the way the Malaysian leaders and its government have been handling this crisis that has unprecedented implications for the world.

It raises one crucial question amongst many others, namely, what is the degree of responsibility that should fall on the lap of governments and be shouldered by leaders of such governments that have certainly, by decent expectations, failed to perform?

The US president needs to be told that he is visiting to negotiate bread-and-butter needs with a nation and its government that is still unable if not unwilling to dispense justice for the heinous murder of a foreign national in its own backyard. The Altantuya Shaariibuu murder and its subsequent trail certainly could not have escaped the White House.

And the ‘Allah’ issue is now globally reported with scholars from the Muslim and Christians worlds condemning the government of Malaysia for dangerously setting a precedent that could drive a perilous divide within humanity given the increasing flashes of extremism.

The sodomy trail that continues to persecute Anwar Ibrahim is seen by world leaders as a gross and crass insult to the very tenets of democracy.

Is President Barrack Obama nonchalant to how democracy is suffering in Malaysia?

Is the US president taking commensurate account of all these sins against all of humanity?

The United States of America has been into many nations determined and wanting to keep the flag of democracy, principle-centred governance and freedom and justice to humanity, flying high. It did so through diplomacy as much as it did so with blazing state-of-the-art weapons of war.

Flagships of the ‘American Dream’

The Vietnam war; the American-led attack on Iraq; the Iran crusade; the stage-managed liberation of Aung San Suu Kyi in Myanmar; the dreadful Khmer Rouge - all of these together with the dismantling of the territories of the Soviet Union, to name a few, were the proud flagships of the ‘American Dream’ to liberate the world from regimes, tyranny and injustices.

The uncanny truth could also be that the US got involved in all of these nations also for that same reason, i.e. its own self-interest.

But today the leader of an America that seemingly gave hope to billions is all set to visit and negotiate bread-and-butter issues for his people with a nation and government broiled, buried and armed to the hilt through its institutions of governance which the world recognises with grave concern.

Perhaps is not too much to ask American citizens in the US and the world over what then is justice? What then is freedom? What then is democracy and human rights?

Or is politics of power, popularity and control taking precedence over the very foundations of freedom, human rights and democracy upon which civilisation thrives?

Must your president play second fiddle to the very hopes and aspirations that were sacredly mooted by President Abraham Lincoln?

And wonder, too, how many American newspapers will publish these concerns in their dailies?