Barack 'Che' Obama

As Barack Obama continues to clean Hillary Clinton's clock in primary after primary, maybe it's time to take this guy a little more seriously. He could be the president of the United States.

His appeal, especially when compared with "Shrillary," is understandable. He looks good. He sounds good. He seems like a nice guy.

Shrillary is anything but likable; and her voice sounds like a rusty nail scraping a blackboard. I won't comment on her looks, except to say most people are sick to death of seeing her. Period. End of story.

We knew she had high negatives, but we never realized how high they were among Democrats, too. What we know now is her appeal was 49 percent wide and a millimeter deep. And that, quite probably, leaves us with Barack Obama, who has all the momentum on his side.

Let's remember that Barack Obama is a first-term senator. It's extremely rare in American history, especially recently, that members of the Senate or House of Representatives are elected directly to the presidency. Why? Probably because legislative experience gives us little idea about real leadership, executive ability, decisiveness, the ability to command, and other qualities we look for in a president. The most recent senator elected to the White House was John Kennedy. It can happen, but it's rare.

Now combine that with the fact that Obama is midway through his first term in the Senate. He is, politically speaking, a virtual unknown, without any executive, management or military experience in his portfolio. Does that disqualify him? No. But it does suggest we don't really know much about him or his ability to cope with the pressures and decisions he would have to face as president.

There is also the matter of his opinions on the great issues of the day. He is virtually indistinguishable in that regard from Shrillary. Yes, his style is an improvement. But on substance, he is a political clone — albeit with darker skin and a deeper voice. What does that tell you? It suggests he is, like Hillary, a dyed-in-the-wool socialist, who, in the names of compassion, fairness, Mom and apple pie, would strip America of the freedom that has made it a shining city on a hill for 230 years.

That opinion was solidified with me when I heard about Obama's volunteer offices in Houston displaying a Cuban flag emblazoned with an image of Ernesto "Che" Guevara.

What did Obama have to say about it? He didn't insist it come down. He didn't denounce it as "insensitive" or "sickening" or "an emblem of evil." He simply dismissed it as "inappropriate."

Inappropriate? "Inappropriate" is when somebody tells an off-color joke. "Inappropriate" is when a campaign worker passes gas in the office.

Maybe Obama is just too young and inexperienced to know who Che really was. Let's give him the benefit of the doubt, along with this refresher course:

Guevara was born in Argentina in 1928. In 1952, he took a trip across South America that was dramatized in "The Motorcycle Diaries." He took part in leftist movements in Guatemala and Mexico. He joined Castro's revolutionary Cuban army in 1956 as a top commander and Castro's personal physician. He helped Castro topple the regime in Havana in 1959.

As Castro's right-hand man in the new regime, Guevara ordered the execution of hundreds of people while in charge of the notorious La Caba, a prison in Havana. He was unapologetic about the mass killings of innocent people, explaining, "To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary. These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution! And a revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate."

Pure hate. It wasn't the first time Guevara used the expression nor the last. He explained how it must be a tool in the arsenal of revolutionary terrorists — permitting them to do things they never would be able to accomplish otherwise.

"Hatred as an element of struggle; unbending hatred for the enemy, which pushes a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him into an effective, violent, selective, and cold-blooded killing machine — this is what our soldiers must become," Guevara said.

During the Cuban missile crisis, Guevara wanted to wage a nuclear war with the U.S. He thought it would lead to a better world, regardless of whether millions were killed. He was overruled by cooler heads in the Kremlin and in Cuba. The nuclear missiles headed for Cuba, 90 miles from the U.S., were returned to Russia.

Disgraced by the slight, Guevara went to create new revolutionary movements and wage armed struggle in Africa and Latin America. He was killed in the jungles of Bolivia in 1967. Guevara was proud of the fact that he personally put bullets in the backs of the heads of many he considered to be counterrevolutionary.

Once again, in rallying his guerrillas in Angola, he wrote: "Blind hate against the enemy creates a forceful impulse that cracks the boundaries of natural human limitations, transforming the soldier in an effective, selective and cold killing machine. A people without hate cannot triumph against the adversary."

Would you say displaying this man's picture is "inappropriate"? I'd say that's the biggest understatement since Gen. George Custer said: "Over that hill, I think they're friendly Indians."

Like I said, maybe Obama just doesn't know what a monster Che was. But then again, if he doesn't, he probably shouldn't be running for president of the United States.

To find out more about Joseph Farah and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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