Obama in Germany

After he compared Palestinians to every fashionably oppressed group on earth yesterday in a speech given at a university from which rabidly anti-semitic clerics and Islamic terrorists have graduated, Obama flew on to Germany.

After speaking with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Dresden, they went on a 'personal' tour of Buchenwald concentration camp.

Naturally, Obama seized on the opportunity to pretend that modern animus from the West to those who wish to destroy it is the route not only of all evil, but to another tragedy such as the Holocaust - merely one day after appeasing those who wish to launch the next Holocaust, including the Muslim Brotherhood:

Obama said he wants to "reflect on this difficult history" on his visit because it is a reminder of the "dangers when peoples are in conflict and not acknowledging a common humanity."

But Obama stressed that he also wants to "celebrate how out of tragedy you now have a unified Europe," and he wants to highlight the power of "reconciliation, forgiveness and hope."

We may have a unified Europe for now, but unity is not about stifling conformity - it is about the recognition of differences and also the right to be different.

I'm fairly certain that if Europe's unity was important to Obama, he would not be pressing for the admission of Turkey to the Union.

Difference and hostility are not the same thing. Accepting that some things don't fit or won't work is not xenophobia or hatred.

Anyway, Obama was very keen to play up his personal connection to Buchenwald - his grandmother's brother Charles Payne, now 84, was one of the first U.S. soldiers to come into contact with the wickedness of the Holocaust - his unit liberated Ohrdruf, a sub-camp attached to Buchenwald.

Mr Payne was not present at the tour, but he will attend tomorrow's D-Day landing commemorations in Normandy.

What is interesting is that last week, the Telegraph ran an article in which Mr Payne, pictured below, took the unprecedented step of showing Obama up for the vain, posturing politico that he undoubtedly is.

Barack Obama faced unprecedented public criticism from a member of his own family when his great uncle said he was only visiting a concentration camp next week for 'political reasons'.

Asked if his great nephew was following in his footsteps, which the White House has suggested as a reason for the trip, Mr Payne told the German magazine Der Spiegel: "I don't buy that. This is a trip that he chose, not because of me I'm sure, but for political reasons."

Denting the normally smooth-running presidential public relations machine, he added: "Perhaps his visit also has something to do with improving his standing with Angela Merkel. She gave him a hard time during his campaign and also afterwards."

Exposing the haste with which political biographies can be formed, Mr Payne expressed surprise at how his great-nephew had used his wartime experiences on the campaign trail. As a candidate, Mr Obama used the wartime service of his white mother's parents and family to allay concerns about his heritage.

"I was quite surprised when the whole thing came up and Barack talked about my war experiences in Nazi Germany. We had never talked about that before," he said, adding that he enjoyed a "warm and friendly relationship" with his great nephew, though he was not part of his inner circle.

The first time they discussed his participation in the war was when Mr Obama wrongly said during the campaign that Mr Payne had "liberated" Auschwitz. Opponents swiftly pointed out that had been done by the Red Army.

"He couldn't have gotten it from me since we had never talked about this particular episode in the war," he said. "My sister and her husband were both great storytellers and sometimes made up the details to go along with it. They told him about my deployment with the 89th Infantry Division and apparently they mixed up a few details."

Mr Obama soon called Mr Payne to check the details of his war experience, he said. "He wanted to know where this camp was that I had helped liberate. I told him that it was Ohrdruf and that it was a subcamp of the Buchenwald concentration camp. I described a little bit of what I had seen," he said.

Well, there you have it from the horse's mouth. Not only is Obama not really interested in his own family's history (well, the non-Muslim, non-Marxist parts at least), he is not really interested in Europe's past or future, or the tragedy which befell the Jewish people and millions of others over 60 years ago.

He is slightly more dangerous than 'all talk, no action', however; he wants to take actions, no matter how ill-advised or proven foolish by history, which make him look good today - and sod the consequences tomorrow.

It's not as if he has to live in a defenceless Israel or a Europe in which tens of millions of illiterate Muslim peasants have freedom of movement, after all.

He can sit with his bodyguards behind gates and tell his grandchildren that he is the great peacemaker, the man who united the people of the world into one mind.

By that point, perhaps there won't be anyone left who wishes to contradict him - such are the gifts ego and ideology combined give to formerly free people.