Not Ready for Late Night Infomercial Time

From Powerline

Repeatedly through the campaign so far, Barack Obama has demonstrated a troubling lack of familiarity with American history, especially diplomatic history. Obama's cluelessness about diplomacy has raised troubling questions about whether he is qualified to be President. This one may have answered the question:

Democrat Barack Obama misused a "code word" in Middle East politics when he said Jerusalem should be Israel's "undivided" capital but that does not mean he is naive on foreign policy, a top adviser said on Tuesday.
Addressing a pro-Israel lobby group this month, the Democratic White House hopeful said: "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided."

Obama backed off almost immediately when Palestinians protested his remarks to AIPAC. The adviser, Daniel Kurtzer, continued:

Daniel Kurtzer, who advises Obama on the Middle East, said Tuesday at the Israel Policy Forum that Obama's comment stemmed from "a picture in his mind of Jerusalem before 1967 with barbed wires and minefields and demilitarized zones."
"So he used a word to represent what he did not want to see again, and then realized afterwards that that word is a code word in the Middle East," Kurtzer said.

I don't believe Kurtzer's explanation for a moment--why would Obama's mental picture of Jerusalem date from a time when he was five years old?--but it seems clear that, as Kurtzer says, Obama did not understand the significance of an "undivided Jerusalem."

Obama has stated with regards to terrorist bomber and close political supporter Bill Ayers that “the notion that … me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values, doesn’t make much sense.” So the terrorist acts that Bill Ayers committed 40 years ago when Barack Hussein Obama was eight years old are to be thrown down the memory hole. But the way that Jerusalem looked when Barack Hussein Obama was five years old have been seared, seared in his brain. And that was the image that drove his speech.

Right ... pull the other one.