OBAMA IN KENYA

Barrack Hussein Obama Junior will not win or lose the Democrat Party's presidential nomination in Iowa or New Hampshire or elsewhere in the US.  He'll win or lose it in Kenya. 

That he'll lose it there is the fear of his campaign advisors who wear green eye-shades.  That he'll win there is the hope of his campaign advisors who have both brains and cojones.

Last week in The 2008 Carpe Diem Filter, we noted that an ideal presidential candidate would be someone who knows how to carpe diem – who looks at problems as opportunities, who would best be able to recognize and maximize the opportunity in a crisis.

Fate has just given Obama such a make-or-break opportunity.  Will he confidently use it, or will he wimp out, showing the world he's not the hero of his believers' mythology, but the Obambi phony his detractors claim?

For it is the unique nexus of bloody violence between tribes – Kikuyu and Luo – and religions – Christianity and Islam – unraveling Kenya right now that gives Obama his opportunity.  After all, his father, Barrack Hussein Obama Senior, was Luo and a Moslem.

For background on Kenya in general, see A Tusker at the Stanley from June 2006.  Here's the current background.

Kenya's first truly free and fair democratic election was in December 2002, won by Mwai Kibaki and a multi-ethnic coalition party NARC (National Rainbow Coalition).  One of the leaders of that coalition was Raila Odinga. 

Kibaki didn't give him positions in the new government that he felt were important enough, so Odinga formed an opposition party, ODM (Orange Democratic Movement, orange the symbol color of opposition).

When Raila Odinga lost the presidential election last week (12/27) to Mwai Kibaki, he claimed the vote was rigged, whereupon his tribal followers went on murderous rampages such as in the town of Eldoret, where on New Years Day dozens of people were burned to death in a church set on fire.

Throughout Kenya, hundreds of people have been politically murdered in the last few days.

Kenya's 37 million people are divided up into over three dozen tribes and sub-tribes, but the two dominant ones are Kikuyu and Luo.  Kenyan politics since independence in 1963 has essentially been a duke-out between them.

The father of Kenyan independence and president until 1978 was Jomo Kenyatta, a Kikuyu.  His main political opponent was Oginga Odinga, known as "OO," a Luo and Raila's father. 

While Kenyatta was pro-West and sided with America in the Cold War, OO was a Communist who was aided and supported by the Soviet Union.

That's why Raila went to school in East Germany (born in 1945, he graduated from Magdeburg University in 1970), and named his first-born son after Fidel Castro.

Thus it likely won't shock you to learn that Raila has now made a deal for support from the Soviets' successors as world-champion enemies of the West and democratic freedoms:  Moslem fundamentalists.

The Evangelical Alliance of Kenya has posted on its website a photograph copy of a Memorandum of Understanding, dated and signed on August 29, 2007, between Raila Odinga and Shiekh Abdullah Abdi, chairman of the National Muslim Leaders Forum of Kenya.

It pledges the support of Kenyan Moslems for Raila's election.  In return, as President of Kenya, Raila agrees to 14 actions, listed a) through n) on page two.  Read them all, and be sure you're sitting down.  Here's a sample:

b) Within 6 months re-write the Constitution of Kenya to recognize Shariah as the only true law sanctioned by the Holy Quran for Muslim declared regions.

c) With immediate effect dismiss the Commissioner of Police who has allowed himself to be used by heathens and Zionists to oppress the Kenyan Muslim community.

g) Within one year facilitate the establishment of a Shariah court in every Kenyan divisional headquarters. [Note: everywhere in Kenya, not just in "Muslim declared regions."]

Again, read all of them, for others are just as bad or worse.

It may also not surprise you that Raila is not Moslem himself, but claims to be a practicing Anglican.  Only a minority of Luo are Moslem (most are Christian).  Kenya on the whole is Christian, with 80% of Kenyans either Protestant or Roman Catholic, while only 10% are Moslem.

And here is the biggest non-surprise:  Raila Odinga has, in his own words, a "close personal friendship" with Barrack Hussein Obama Junior.

When Obama went to Kenya in August of 2006, he was hosted by Raila and spoke in praise of him at rallies in Nairobi:

Obama's bias for his fellow Luo was so blatant that a Kenya government spokesman denounced Obama during his visit as Raila's "stooge."

As the riots and bloodshed continues, as Raila Odinga continues to pour tribal and religious gasoline of Kenya's fire, his stooge will need to do more than send a recorded plea for calm and conciliation broadcast on Voice of America (12/31).

Imagine instead, Obama canceling his campaign schedule, flying to Nairobi, and mediating direct negotiations between Odinga and Kibaki which triumphantly result in an agreement "for all Kenyans regardless of their tribal or religious affiliation" and end to the violence.

Returning to America, the nomination and quite possibly the presidency, would be his.

Does he have the cojones to fly to Nairobi or will he remain Obambi pleading for votes in New Hampshire?

I think it will be the latter.  He hasn't got it in him.  So rather than being the hero people want him to be, he'll end up pestered by some reporter at some snow-bound campaign stop about his friend Raila wanting to impose Moslem Sharia law on Christians in Kenya.

"And a follow-up, sir – does it bother you that your friend Raila's son is named Fidel?"

Your move, Obama.  Let's see what you're made of.