
Paul R. Hollrah
Well...Is He, or Isn’t He?
March 3,
2009
It is
a popular topic of discussion in political circles these days, and as
the weeks pass more and more people are asking, "Is Barack Obama really
a natural born citizen of the United States? Is he eligible to serve as
President, or isn’t he?” If he is, then so be it. We’ll just have to
grit our teeth until this long dark nightmare comes to an end... one way
or another.
But
what if he is not eligible? What then? Well, in that case we have a
problem... a very large problem, the solution to which could tear
asunder the fabric of American society.
Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution states that, "No person
except a natural born citizen... shall be eligible to the office of
President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall
not have attained to the age of thirty-five years, and been fourteen
years a resident within the United States.”
That’s pretty straightforward, yet, when confronted with the possibility
that the man who sits in the Oval Office may be a usurper, a great many
otherwise patriotic Americans can be heard to say, "What difference does
it make? The election’s over; the people have spoken. Get over it!”
Well,
it’s not quite as simple as all that and the sooner we can all be
satisfied that Obama is or is not a natural born citizen, the better. To
postpone that finding for a year or two and then find, conclusively,
that Obama is not eligible to serve as president would be disastrous.
Every new law and every executive order he had signed, every political
appointment, every judicial appointment, every order he had given to the
military, and every act and every decision of all of his appointees
would immediately become null and void. How could we ever undo all of
that?
The
American people would quickly learn that it is not much easier to undo
two or three years of history than it is to undo a decade or a century.
It is imperative that we get to the bottom of this mystery as quickly as
possible so that all Americans, regardless of party affiliation, can
finally accept that, like it or not, Barack Obama is our president. In
order to do that, and to force Obama to end his stubborn refusal to
produce his birth certificate, his passports, his visas, and his college
records, we must continue to recruit more and more Americans to insist
that he do so.
To do
that, it is not necessary to prove that he was born in Kenya, not in
Hawaii... as his paternal grandmother, a Kenyan half-brother, and a
Kenyan half-sister insist... or who his natural father may have been.
The proof of Obama’s failure to meet the "natural born citizen” standard
is much simpler than that.
To
convert a non-believer... one who insists that the Constitutional
requirements must be met, but who believes that questions about Obama’s
citizenship status are nothing more than sour grapes... it is only
necessary to establish the facts surrounding Obama’s travel to Indonesia
and Pakistan in the summer of 1981.
Although Obama fails to mention that trip in either of his memoirs...
not in Dreams from My Father and not in The Audacity of Hope...
he made a potentially fatal error when he mentioned the Pakistan trip
during an April 6, 2008 speech in San Francisco... the same speech in
which he referred to rural Pennsylvanians as "bitter” people who "cling
to guns or religion...” In that speech, Obama explained in an offhand
manner the value of that trip, vis-à-vis his knowledge of foreign
affairs, saying, "I knew what Sunni and Shia was (sic) before I joined
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.”
When
questioned about that trip, Obama’s campaign press secretary, Bill
Burton, confirmed to the New York Times, and others, that Obama
had visited Pakistan in 1981 on his return from Indonesia, traveling
there with a Pakistani friend from Occidental College, Wahid Hamid.
According to Burton, Obama stayed in Karachi with the family of another
Pakistani friend, Mohammed Hasan Chandoo. Obama has never mentioned the
Pakistan trip again.
So it
is well established that Obama did travel to Indonesia and Pakistan in
1981. What is not established, and what is critically important, is what
passport he used during that trip. There are only three possibilities:
Obama could have traveled under a U.S. passport... a passport first
issued when he and his mother moved from Hawaii to Indonesia in 1967; he
could have traveled under an Indonesian passport, issued following his
adoption by his Indonesian stepfather; and it is conceivable that, if he
was, in fact, born in Kenya in 1961, he could still have been a British
subject, traveling with a British passport. So which is it?
Unfortunately for Obama, in the present circumstance, Pakistan was under
martial law in 1981 and certain undesirables... Christians, Jews, and
Americans... were prohibited from entering the country. Pakistan was on
the U.S. State Department’s "no travel” list, making a U.S. passport no
more valuable than an empty chewing gum wrapper at the Karachi Port of
Entry.
So
how did a young man who arrived in New York in early June 1981, without
the price of a hotel room in his pocket, suddenly come up with the price
of a round-the-world trip just a month later? And once he was on a
plane, shuttling between New York, Jakarta, and Karachi, what passport
was he offering when he passed through Customs and Immigration? The
American people not only deserve to have answers to these questions,
they must have answers.
It
makes the debate over Obama’s citizenship a rather short and simple one.
Q:
Did he travel to Pakistan in 1981, at age 20?
A:
Yes, by his own admission.
Q:
What passport did he travel
under?
A:
There are only three possibilities. 1. He traveled with a U.S. passport,
2) He traveled with a British passport, or 3) He traveled with an
Indonesian passport.
Q: Is
it possible that Obama traveled with a U.S. passport in 1981?
A:
No. It is not possible. Pakistan was on the U.S. State Department’s "no
travel” list in 1981.
Conclusion: When Obama went to Pakistan in 1981 he was traveling either
with a British passport or an Indonesian passport.
If he
was traveling with a British passport that would provide proof that he
was born in Kenya on August 4, 1961, not in Hawaii as he claims. And if
he was traveling with an Indonesian passport that would tend to prove
that he relinquished whatever previous citizenship he held, British or
American, prior to being adopted by his Indonesian step-father in 1967.
Whatever the truth of the matter, the American people need to know how
he managed to become a "natural born” American citizen between 1981 and
2008. Given the destructive nature of his plans for America, as
illustrated by his speech before Congress and the disastrous spending
plan he has presented to Congress, the sooner we learn the truth of all
this, the better.
Is he a "natural born” citizen, or isn’t he? It seems pretty clear from
the available evidence that he is not. If that proves to be the case he
should minimize the damage to the country and follow the Nixon example;
he should simply resign from office so that we can begin to clean up the
mess he leaves behind.