Gentle readers:

I begin this column with an apology. I had not intended to write another opinion column analyzing and criticizing the Obama administration. There were several other subjects that I had contemplated writing about, but the sweep of events overruled my earlier plans. A few of those diverse topics will keep and can be revisited in print on other days.

It is getting difficult to remain focused as a writer. Every hour brings word of some new blunder or outrage that goes largely unreported by the sycophantic American media. One broadcaster described Obama’s recent whirlwind tour as “a triumph.” Of course, that report was filed before election returns indicated that center/right candidates had hammered the socialists in a series of European elections. Some English, French, German and Israeli media outlets might disagree with the description of the Obama apology tour as an unqualified success.

During the 2008 presidential race, the Obama campaign authorized the creation of a rapid response web site  called “Fight the Smears.” The purpose of the web site was to rebut any criticisms or rumors about Obama’s unique background and candidacy. According to the same web site, Obama was and  is a “committed Christian.” The web site went on to assert that any suggestion that he was a Muslim was an unfair attack.

How does one reconcile this unequivocal denial with Obama’s statements in Cairo, including those comments that he made about his own ancestral origins and religious beliefs? It seems clear that he attended a madras while living in Indonesia and that he studied the Koran. Was Obama playing a stealth game while campaigning for the party nomination and the presidency in 2008? His recent remarks suggest that some of the “smears” were fairly accurate. Truth is always an absolute defense to defamation.

Other columnists have likened Obama’s suggested treatment of Israel to Neville Chamberlain’s abandonment of Czechoslovakia during the Munich Conference of 1938. It is worth remembering that the Czechs had a free and democratic government prior to being coerced into ceding territory and agreeing to the disarmament of its border by Britain and France in order to appease Adolf Hitler. Less than a year afterwards, German troops occupied Czechoslovakia. War was finally declared when Nazi Germany attacked Poland. The Nazi Wehrmacht was strengthened by Chamberlain’s expedient betrayal of the Czechs. Will Israel suffer a similar fate if agrees to abandon its settlements? Some of the successors to Hitler’s Middle Eastern political allies were in attendance at the Cairo speech. Israel has already ceded territory without achieving any measurable cessation of terrorist attacks and sectarian violence. Should the Israelis lay down their arms too?

A personal observation: while I was driving from the Dan Ryan expressway exit at 95th Street to Evergreen Park last month, I passed the Trinity United Church of Christ. The former pastor of the church was, of course, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. The Obamas were members of the congregation for nearly twenty years until political expediency dictated that Obama disavow Wright’s controversial and racially charged statements and publicly sever his family’s lengthy ties to the church.

What struck me as I passed the church, which is located at 95th and Eggleston, is that it is many miles away from Obama’s Kenwood residence.  It is almost eight miles by automobile to be exact.

Chicago is a city of neighborhoods. Many Catholics still identify themselves by naming their parishes in conversations. A reasonably intelligent listener would be able to recognize the neighborhoods by the names of the churches. Surely, the Obamas must have passed dozens of other churches and houses of worship before arriving at Trinity United Church of Christ. It was not a simple matter of geographic proximity that caused the Obamas to attend this particular church. Mr. and Mrs. Obama made an active decision to join the congregation.

Political cynics like US Representative Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) can maintain that Obama joined the mega church simply to harvest the votes of its members. My opinion, which has been reinforced by Obama’s public statements and speeches, including his address in Cairo, Egypt, is that he was comfortable with Reverend Wright and he liked what he heard from the pulpit.

It would appear that Obama listened attentively to Wright’s sermons over the years despite his subsequent denials. How else can one explain the bizarre recitation of pseudo-historical facts delivered by Obama before a largely Arabic and Muslim audience last week? Obama’s Afro-centric summary of world history could have been taken directly from a discredited book such as “The Stolen Legacy” by George G. M. James. This book advanced the dubious claim that the ancient Greeks and Romans played no major role in the advancement of civilization. A heretofore unknown advanced race of Africans based in Egypt created modern medicine, science, architecture and philosophy. Plundering European armies raided their libraries and stole their knowledge from them, occupied their lands and transported their collected wisdom across the Mediterranean. In his speech, Obama took matters a step further and attributed the founding of modern civilization to the spread of Islam. True to form, Obama parsed a few phrases and added numerous qualifications to his speech. Had he mentioned the zenith of the Ottoman Empire, I might have given some credence to a few of his comments, but his chronology seemed riddled with errors.

Serious historians and classical scholars have rejected the myth of the stolen legacy as unbridled nonsense.

Nevertheless, such claims have gained wide acceptance among radicals who dismiss European culture and promote an Afro-centric version of revisionist history while arguing for reparation payments. It is a worrisome thing to have a president who may or may not believe in such fallacies which have been propagated by the likes of the Reverends Farrakhan and Wright.

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Daniel J. Kelley is a contributor to “The Chicago Daily Observer.” He also holds a graduate degree in history.