The US presidential election lasts years, if one considers the primaries and the accompanying campaigning. It's awesome. The elections for the House of Representatives and the Senate also display democracy in constant motion. The US president may be the world's most powerful person. But during elections he has to revert to the people, justify his actions and project future ideas in the hope that they'll renew his lease on political life. If they refuse he's hurled into the dustbins of history. This is how government of the people, by the people and for the people works. This system propelled a black man, with humble beginnings, a Muslim name and relatively modest means, to the country's top post - astounding considering that blacks were slaves in the US not too long ago and suffered segregation, the Ku Klux Klan's wrath and racism until relatively recently – racism still survives, though a shadow of its pernicious past. America is known as a land of opportunity. Not everyone gets to be president - but immigrants have achieved wonders. The country attracts ambitious people and they reach for the top. Even more than its natural resources, this makes the US – to quote another cliché – a land of milk and honey. The country's creativity is legendary. With 311 million people, it's a world leader in creativity, prosperity, raw strength and progress. The US helped defeat the Axis in the two world wars, rebuilt Europe, protected weaker countries from Soviet expansion and fought poverty with economic aid. But democracy has been described as the worst form of government – except for others. It does give the people political power but its glittering surface is sometimes a mirage. In the real world big money, powerful lobbies, unscrupulous politicians, manipulative media and a messianic belief in America's greatness reduce the political process to a farce. This year's presidential election offered an opportunity for a national debate on the country's domestic and international challenges with the two candidates offering competing visions for the future. But mud-slinging, wholesale lying and manipulation for power dominated the Republican primary and the election. Barack Obama achieved what US presidents since World War Two could not – providing all Americans access to medical care and controlling the soaring cost of healthcare. This blessing for millions of poor Americans was lambasted and Obamacare became a dirty word. When Obama became president, the US economy was in a free fall – jobs disappearing, the gross domestic product shrinking, the housing and stock markets collapsing, banks foundering and the auto industry facing bankruptcy. Obama stopped the slide and initiated a modest recovery despite Republican stonewalling. But he was dubbed a bumbler. The two parties spent an incredible $6 billion on hateful, false advertising. Republican candidate Mitt Romney flip-flopped on major issues and changed colors like a chameleon. Both candidates lied but Romney was more brazen. It's in foreign policy that US hypocrisy is most glaring. Though it possesses thousands of nuclear, thermonuclear, chemical and biological weapons and dropped atomic bombs on civilians in Nagasaki and Hiroshima and chemical weapons on Vietnam, Obama and Romney pledged to attack Iran to prevent it from developing nuclear capability if crippling sanctions didn't produce submission. Never mind that Israel has hundreds of such weapons and enjoys unlimited US economic, military and diplomatic support. Both candidates reaffirmed that the US will always support Israel no matter what it does. They didn't mention Israel's flouting of UN resolutions, building illegal settlements on occupied territory, blocking a peaceful solution, jailing Palestinians without charge, annexing Palestinian land, building a wall on Palestinian land that compounds the misery of the oppressed, continuing the illegal and inhumane blockade of Gaza, and violating the fundamental human rights of the Palestinian people. Obama boasted that the US and Israel have the closest possible military and intelligence cooperation and that the US is providing Israel with the capacity to refuel aircraft in the air and with bombs that can destroy bunkers deep in the ground. These weapons are not designed to ensure Israel's survival but to assist it in attacking neighboring countries. The two candidates agreed that they'd continue to use drones to kill people in other lands. Such drone attacks violate the sovereignty of the victim country and would normally be seen as an invasion. The drones also kill people whom the US describes as having extremist views. There is no impartial or reliable evidence that the drone victims had any connection with 9/11 or that they had harmed the US or were a threat. The drones also kill numerous innocent bystanders. If the leader of any country except Israel did that, the US would call him a war criminal who had committed crimes against humanity and who must be removed. But this doesn't apply to US presidents. They've been getting away with murder and crimes against humanity.
– Mohammed Azhar Ali Khan is a retired Canadian journalist, civil servant and refugee judge. He has received the Order of Canada, the Order of Ontario and the Queen's Diamond and Golden Jubilee medals
