Ahmed Mohamed, the 14-year-old fake clock-maker who caused such a stir at his Texas high school, is expected to meet President Obama at the White House this weekend. Obama holds the lad out as a victim of anti-Muslim prejudice even though, as John has argued, his “invention,” which resembled the timing device of a bomb and was placed in a suitcase dummied up to look like a bomb, reasonably triggered concern.
In advance of his meeting with Obama, Mohamed met with another president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan. Bashir is quite a guy. In the 1990s, he harbored Osama bin Laden for five years. He has an outstanding arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court for orchestrating genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in Darfur. His country is under a variety of U.S. sanctions, and there is evidence that he may have secretly stolen $9 billion in oil money.
Mohamed has a connection to Sudan; his father is from there. But when his father tried to run against Bashir in 2010, he was not allowed on the ballot. The elder Mohamed complained that Bashir personally blocked him from running.
These days, though, the Mohameds are decidedly from the “any publicity is good publicity” school. After the meeting, the boy told reporters that he was “extremely delighted” to meet Bashir and hoped to return to visit the Sudanese president again “with a new invention and success.”
What new invention, I wonder. The pet rock?
You might think that Obama would be embarrassed to honor a boy who claimed to have invented or built a clock, when in fact he had merely dismantled and disguised one. You might think he would be even more embarrassed now that the kid has spent quality time with a war criminal whose actions have caused the U.S. to place his country under sanctions.
You would be wrong. Any person of color who promotes the narrative of American racism is Obama’s friend, regardless of whether the facts of the case reasonably support this narrative. Obama seems bent on slandering America. Any prop will do.
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