UK Daily Mail: Obama Doesn’t Heart the Brits

“For decades, Britain and the U.S. have been the closest of allies, enjoying a transatlantic alliance forged on the 'special relationship' that sprang up between those great wartime leaders, Winston Churchill and President Franklin Roosevelt.

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Over 70 years, the special relationship has certainly had its ups and downs. The cast has changed - Thatcher and Reagan, Blair and Bush - as have the problems and crises that it has had to address, but it has always endured. Until now. “ The Daily Mail’s Nile Gardiner chafes at Barack Obama’s execrable treatment of our European ally. One wonders what took so long. Phase One of Operation Ally Alienation was the belligerent act of rejecting Downing Street’s offer to allow the new president to keep the bust of Winston Churchill that had been given to former president Bush after 9/11 in a gesture of solidarity and support. Prime Minister Brown presented the new Oval Office occupant with gifts reflecting considerable forethought. Brown gave Obama a pen holder made of oak timber from the HMS Gannet, a Royal Navy ship that served on anti-slavery missions off Africa. The Prime Minister also gave ingrate Obama the framed commissioning paper for the HMS Resolute, another Royal Navy ship. The ship had been rescued from icebergs by the US and was offered as a symbol of the goodwill between our two nations. Rounding out the collection of treasures was the 1st edition of Martin Gilbert’s seven volume biography of Winston Churchill; another symbolic gift representing the alliance of the United States and Britain during WWII. Not to be outdone, our president presented the Prime Minister of our most important ally with a collection of his top twenty five favorite DVDs. In attestation to Gordon Brown’s graciousness, the Prime Minister did, actually sit down to view the DVDs, only to discover they are unusable in the UK due to the format. The Brits are understandably outraged at Obama’s palpable lack of appreciation for the sacrifices made by British troops in the War on Terror:

“Last week, when President Obama got to his feet at the U.S. West Point military academy to outline his administration's plans for America's future in Afghanistan, one subject was conspicuous by its total absence from his 40-minute speech. Never mind that we have 10,000 troops on active service there - far more than any other of America's so-called allies - and never mind that 237 of our brave soldiers have already lost their lives there, Great Britain wasn't even a footnote. “

And let’s never mind our president’s literal bowing and scraping to barbaric dictators worldwide, in his plethora of speeches, never once has he mentioned Britain or our special relationship. Obama has a long standing grudge against the Brits; and as in all things Obama, he chooses to act out his inner demons rather than deal with them as a mature and healthy adult would. Obama’s paternal grandfather, Hussein Onyango Obama worked as a cook for a British army officer when he became involved with the Kenyan independence movement. Grandpa Obama was arrested in 1949 as a supporter of the Kikuyu Central Association, the organization that ultimately spawned the Mau Mau. There is no question that the Kenyan penal system of that era was a violent place; mere imprisonment was not considered sufficiently punitive; torture was ubiquitous. Grandpa Hussein’s wife tells of horrific torture of her husband at the hands of the Brits. Some of her recollections are questionable however: one scene of hell on earth she describes is actually a pretty good description of the process of delousing. There is also no dispute that if Hussein was arrested for subversive activities, he was up to something more than just community organizing. He certainly would have been subject to some Enhanced Interrogation Techniques using more than a caterpillar or Neti pot. The left wants to paint the Mau Mau as yet another misunderstood group of oppressed victims. The truth is; the Mau Maus were vicious guerilla fighters. Contrary to popular folklore, the Mau Mau slaughtered far more Kikuyu citizens than the whites they were supposedly rebelling against. Mau Mau membership required taking an oath which was not exactly frat boy material. The colonial secretary, Oliver Lyttleton wrote:

“The Mau Mau oath is the most bestial, filthy and nauseating incantation which perverted minds can ever have brewed. I have never felt the forces of evil to be so near and as strong as in Mau Mau. As I wrote memoranda or instruction, I would suddenly see a shadow fall across the page-the horned shadow of the Devil himself.”

Little information is available as to the specific language of individual oaths, but we know that the process was taken seriously and had more elements of magic than politics. Kikuyu were under tremendous pressure to take the oath and join the movement. Counter insurgency expert, Major Frank Kitson describes a Mau Mau body snatching raid:

“The gang, frenzied by the thought of blood, slashed around with their simis (a Kikuyu sword) and fired their guns. One old man, slower than the rest, was caught and hamstrung. He fell at the feet of his pursuers, covering his face with his arms to protect it from the slicing swords, but a mouse in a mechanical mincing machine would have had a better chance of survival. One terrorist hacked off a foot, and another sliced off his testicles to use later in an Oathing ceremony. A third gouged out his eyes with a staple and put them in his pocket for the same purpose. When they had finished, most of the gang came by to cut and stab the twitching corpse. They then licked the blood off their simis and moved off into the night; having first set fire to all the huts they could see.”

Other writers claim the oath was far more innocuous. However, a 322 page report by Career Colonial Administrator, Frank D. Cornfield supports the seamier version:

“By compelling Mau Mau members to violate not only Christian ethics but every tribal one as well, Mau Mau leaders deliberately reduced their victims to a state where a man who took the Mau Mau oath was cut off ‘from all hope, outside Mau Mau, in this world or the next. Cornfield found that to achieve this absolute loyalty to the movement, ‘ . . . leadership forced its recruits, voluntary or involuntary, to seal their oaths by digging up corpses and eating their putrefied flesh, copulating with sheep, dogs or adolescent girls, and by drinking the famed ‘Kaberichia cocktail’-a mixture of semen and menstrual blood.”

They sound like earnest freedom fighters, right? Again substantiating that Barack Obama has never known a normal person, his grandfather’s support for the Mau Mau was manifest enough to get Hussein arrested. The struggle for independence from the Brits may have been a noble one, but not justification for the kind of depravity indulged by the Mau Mau. Longtime nationalist leader and Mau Mau manager Jomo Kenyatta studied economics in Moscow in 1932. We are not supposed to make too much of that. Obama has a grudge against the Brits for their abuse of his grandfather, a subversive who supported a bunch of ferocious guerillas. “Obama must be made to realise what a dangerous diplomatic game he is playing. Time and again, history has shown - most recently, of course, in Iraq and Afghanistan - that when it comes to taking decisive military action, the only country the U.S. has ever been able to rely on is Britain. When the U.S. marches in, it's only ever the British who can be depended on to march alongside them. And yet all that proud history, all that noble sacrifice, seems to count for nothing in Obama's eyes. He seems oblivious to the debt of gratitude he, and the American people, owe this country. Well, he must be made to open his eyes and see it. Assuming it is David Cameron who forms the next government, one of the first priorities for the new Conservative government must be to challenge Obama to show that the special relationship does matter and to take steps to ensure its urgent renewal. Britain needs America - of that there is no doubt. But recent history shows that America needs Britain, too. Barack Obama needs to wake up to that; before it's too late. “