Divided Loyalties 

  

U. S. Constitution

Article II

Section 1

 


 

 

event

description
Disrespects
Allies
Senior aides to Barack Obama accompanied four Uighur prisoners as they were flown from Guantanamo Bay to the British colony of Bermuda, without the United Kingdom (UK) being informed, it was revealed yesterday, angering the UK.

In an escalating diplomatic row over the transfer of the former terrorist suspects, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton discussed the transfer with British Foreign Secretary David Miliband in what was said to be an uneasy conversation.  Privately Whitehall officials accused America of treating Britain, with whom it is supposed to have a "special relationship," with barely disguised contempt.

Remember, in February, in one of his first exchanges with the UK, Obama sent a bust of Winston Churchill back to Britain.  Then, in March, Prime Minister Gordon Brown faced humiliation after he was snubbed by Obama.  During Brown's visit, the Prime Minister brought several meaningful and valued items to give to Obama.  What he got in return was 25 CD's of classic movies, that were incompatible with the UK format.  Then, in April, Obama gifted Queen Elizabeth II with an iPod, a gift that was criticized by etiquette experts.

Just this month, Queen Elizabeth -- the only living head of state that participated in WW II -- was snubbed and not invited to the D-Day ceremonies, described as a "Franco-American" event.  And now the Uighur incident.  Obama has not missed a single opportunity to insult the Brits.

Accidents?  I hardly think so.  The US State Department, Office of the Chief of Protocol, under the direction of Acting Chief of Protocol Laura B. Wills, is responsible for avoiding these gaffes.  Career bureaucrats, working out of the White House are in place to ensure insults such as these, don't occur.  So, they must be purposeful -- but why?

It's my opinion that Obama's divided loyalties are at the bottom of his treatment of the UK and he harbors a deep and abiding hostility towards the Brits because of the treatment he believes his grandfather and father received during British colonial rule.

During Obama's first visit to Kenya in 1988, his grandmother Sarah told him about the resentment against white colonial rule in Kenya, with rallies and mounting violence that would explode into full-scale rebellion in 1952.  "Most of this activity centered on Kikuyuland," she told him.  "But the Luo, too, were oppressed. Men in our area began to join the Kikuyu"

"Granny Sarah" told Obama that Hussein Onyango Obama, Obama's paternal grandfather, became involved in the Kenyan independence movement while working as a cook for a British army officer after World War II.  He was arrested in 1949 and jailed for two years in a high-security prison where, according to his family, he was subjected to horrific violence to extract information about the growing insurgency.  Sarah, said that her husband had supplied information to the insurgents.  "His job as cook to a British army officer made him a useful informer for the secret oathing movement which would later form the Mau Mau rebellion," she said.  "At the time the insurgents were secretly taking oaths which included promises to kill white settlers and colonialists," Mrs. Onyango said.

"To arrest a Luo, WW II veteran, who was a senior figure in the community, is pretty serious.  They must have had some damn good evidence," said Professor David Anderson, director of the African Studies Centre at the University of Oxford, and an authority on the Mau Mau rebellion.

Obama refers briefly to his grandfather's imprisonment in his best-selling memoir, "Dreams...," but states that his grandfather was held only for "more than six months."  Obama described his grandfather's physical state: "When he returned to Alego he was very thin and dirty.  He had difficulty walking, and his head was full of lice."  For some time, he was too traumatized to speak about his experiences.

Barack Obama Sr., Onyango's son and Obama's father, seems to have inherited his father's attitudes towards the colonial power.  He was also arrested, for attending a meeting in Nairobi of the Kenya African National Union (KANU), the organization spearheading the independence movement.  Sarah told Obama that his father, unlike her husband, had been held only for a short time in the white man's prison: "Because he was not a leader in KANU, Barack [Sr.] was released after a few days."

Onyango may have been a victim of the fight for Kenyan independence, but his son became a direct beneficiary of that movement.  In 1959, Barack Obama Sr. was sent, on a scholarship, to the University of Hawaii.  Obama Sr. was selected by a former Kenyan cabinet minister, the late Tom Mboya, who was earmarked as the successor to Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya's first prime minister and  leader of the terrorist Mau Mau.

It is clear that the Obama's were close to the leadership of the independence movement.  It is also clear that Obama's "divided loyalty" -- his anger at the white British colonists' treatment of his grandfather and father -- is behind all of these insults to America's greatest ally.

"Divided loyalties" was an issue during the Constitutional Convention because of the Founders fear of foreign influence and the possibility of incidents, such as the ones mentioned above.

In fact, Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts wanted to take the issue so far as to stop foreigners from becoming citizens at all, claiming that the naturalized citizens would always have divided loyalties both to their home land and to America.  John Jay, Superintendent of Foreign Affairs (the predecessor of today's office of Secretary of State), claimed that it would be "wise and seasonable to provide a strong check to the admission of Foreigners into the administration of our national Government; and to declare expressly that the Command in chief of the American army shall not be given to, nor devolve on, any but a natural born Citizen."

Pierce Butler, an Irish-born delegate from South Carolina, developed an intense plan that would defeat all objections arising against earlier proposals for electing the president.  However, given the doubts concerning divided loyalties that Elbridge Gerry, John Jay, and others expressed, Butler's proposal also included what became Article II, Section I of the Constitution. 

It is evident that the Founders had a clear reason to fear conspiracy and divided loyalties, and it is evident that Obama, a native-born Kenyan, has allowed his divided loyalties influence his judgment and behavior in regards to the UK.

This is personal and purposeful.

And don't even get me started on Obama's divided loyalties and Islam.
   
   
   

©  Copyright  Beckwith  2009
All right reserved