Barack Obama, the son of a white American mother and a black Kenyan father, is the cynosure of all eyes and his photographs are splashed across the newspapers the world over at this time as he has a sporting chance of chalking up success in the forthcoming US elections. The international media is wrapped up in relating Obama's meteoric rise from Hawaii high schooler to exemplary Harvard Law School student to well-groomed politico to history " making presidential candidate. Since his headline " grabbing and keynote speech at the Democratic National convention in 2004, Obama has come to signify the promise of unity among groups of all types of Americans " blacks and whites; Democrats, Republicans, and moderates; the young and the old; the upper, middle and lower classes. Needless to say, as the next US election is, in no small measure, going to be a well-nigh referendum on Iraq crisis, it will come in handy to delve that how Obama will enact a paradigm shift from the existing arrangement as he has promised on this issue. He spells out that on his first day in Office, he would deliver the military a new mission: ending this war. Obama has said time and again that his goal is to pull out US troops from Iraq. He has reaffirmed this stance during his recent visit to Iraq. The presidential candidate laments that upwards of 4000 Americans have been taken out, 30,000 or more fatally wounded and money in the region of $ 1 trillion has been expended on this war. At the time of invasion, the apostles of war had claimed that it would set the US back approximately $ 90 billion and would not last for more than 90 days. But in point of fact, the situation is other way round well and truly. There is no end to the war in sight, which has already the blood of more than 1.2 million Iraqis on its hands. This is the reason that Obama wants to make US cut its losses and is making much play of the need to hammer out a political solution for the Iraqi situation. But if we dissect the issue dispassionately and have mature reflection, we have every reason to believe that Obama will be up against a brick wall and badly fail to translate his promise of pulling out troops from Iraq into reality. The fact of the matter is that the US foreign policy does not hinge on one person but rather on lobbies inside the US which are the bulk large of the American establishment. And what will throw Obama for a loop is that the US establishment is not in favour of pulling out troops from Iraq as it equates this with downright surrender and something that will bring down the curtains on America's global dominance. The US establishment wants to have permanent military bases in Iraq for perpetuating its whip hand over Iraqi oil. Iraq, according to many estimates, has 115 million barrels of known oil reserves. Other estimates put the figure at 300 billion. If these estimates are anywhere close to the mark, US forces are now sitting on one quarter of the world's oil resources. The frosting on the cake is that Iraqi oil is very cheap to extract. For US planners, it is imperative that Iraq remain under its tutelage to the extent possible as an obedient client state that will also have major US military bases, right at the heart of the world's major energy reserves. Five self-sufficient "super-bases" are in various stage of completion and each can accommodate between 10,000 and 20,000 troops. Dismantling Iraqi army and dealing a blow to the institutions of the state was meant to prevent the country from becoming self-contained. The nub of the matter is that Obama will have to weasel out of the pledges he has made with the public about pulling out US forces. Any president who will try to bring down the US establishment will find himself under a sophisticated public assault from members of Congress. Not least there is the military itself, an old hand at outmanoeuvring secretaries of defence who want to change old ways of doing things. Public opinion judging from recent history " the reasons given for going into Vietnam and Iraq is easily brainwashed. So nothing out of the ordinary and miraculous should be expected from Obama. Should anyone expect new revelations from the popular American politician, he or she is bound to be disappointed. The writer is a freelance columnist E-mail: irfanasghar99@yahoo.com