The Kenyan connection
People of a sensitive disposition have been reacting with appropriate expressions of horror and disgust at the appearance of a picture on the Drudge website of Barack Obama dressed as a Somali elder — while on a visit to Somali-dominated north-eastern Kenya in 2006 — on the grounds that this is a distasteful dirty trick by the Clintonistas. Whether or not they are responsible, we do not know. Either way it rebounds on Hillary since it is widely assumed to be so, and thus reinforces the belief that she is an example of a discredited kind of dirty politics of which Obama is the repudiation incarnate.
The Obama camp claims that he was simply wearing local dress on this visit as a matter of courtesy. But the real significance of the picture is surely that it renews concern about Obama’s involvement in Kenyan politics — in particular, his apparent support for the Kenyan opposition leader Raila Odinga, who signed a memorandum of understanding with Kenyan Muslims to turn Kenya into an Islamic state governed by sharia law. I raised these concerns here when, after the Kenyan election last December whose result he refused to accept, Odinga’s supporters ran riot and torched a number of Christian churches.
Obama was reportedly so concerned about the violence in Kenya last December that he was in constant touch about it. The question therefore that has been prompted once again by this picture is just what is the connection between Obama and Kenya — and why is he apparently on the wrong side?