Obama Visits Senegal

He always visits the slave houses. Why that's a priority, well, that's only explicable from the Obama-leftist self-demonology of perpetual apology for America's alleged past sins.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Obama begins Africa tour, visits Senegal slave house":

DAKAR, Senegal — President Obama arrived in this corner of West Africa to deliver messages about civil society and good governance, democracy and development. Senegal's message to him was simpler: Welcome home.

The greeting was plastered on signs and T-shirts wherever Obama went Thursday during his first full day of a weeklong, three-country trip to Africa. Although Obama was born and largely raised in Hawaii, his father was born and is buried in Kenya, and on this day Senegal treated the president as one of its own. Lampposts were covered with signs reading, "Welcome home, Mr. President." The greeting, and Obama's likeness, appeared everywhere. Crowds of people danced and waved.

Obama seemed to claim Senegal too, shaking hands and posing for pictures, but also acknowledging the dark history of slavery the country shares with the United States.

The president and his family visited a small slave house on Goree Island off the coast of Dakar, the nation's capital, where it is said men, women and children were traded, sorted, shackled and weighed before being sent across the Atlantic to the Americas.

The president stared pensively out the "door of no return," described as the exit for those boarding slave ships, while spending about half an hour in the two-story salmon-colored house filled with dark holding cells.

"Obviously, for an African American — and an African American president — to be able to visit this site, I think, gives me even greater motivation in terms of the defense of human rights around the world," Obama said afterward.

The president doesn't care about human rights. He cares about power. If touting his so called commitment to human rights helps him push his apology agenda (and statist agenda), then he'll say he cares about human rights. Frankly, America's standing in the world right now is as low as it's been --- if not lower --- than any time since President Carter was in office. Watching interviews on the news yesterday people said that because Obama's black they were excited to see him. It's not that he represents America, or that America has been at the forefront of freedom promotion since the mid-20th century, it's that the president is black. That's a sad, sad commentary on where things stand in the world. It's basically affirmative action in public diplomacy. And it's not good, for the world community nor for American foreign policy.