President chooses the wrong side -- again

Charles Hurt - Inside Washington

WASHINGTON -- Ultimately, politics is all about priorities.

Whose defense a politician rushes to first tells you whose side he is on. And will always be on.

No amount of backpedaling and obfuscation later by even the most magical of politicians can erase the colors he has chosen.

So, after weeks of his administration's repeatedly dodging the scary issue of whether a mosque should be built within sneering distance of Ground Zero, President Obama decided to pick a side.

In a roomful of Muslim-Americans observing a religious feast at the White House, Obama once again embraced them first over the victims, survivors and rememberers of 9/11.

With our soldiers still fighting wars overseas and atrocities still committed regularly in the name of Islam, Obama did not -- standing there in the White House -- see the opportunity before him to demand that Muslim leaders do more to scrub away the blight in their religion.

Nor did he see the opportunity, given his personal legitimacy among Muslims, to demand that the Islamic world practice the tolerance and love of freedom that is the hallmark of the very civilizations that the terrorists want to obliterate -- again, in the name of Islam.

Instead, in the sea of pain and agony that lingers from that horrible terrorist attack nine years on, Obama determined once again that it is Americans who must do more.

Survivors of 9/11 need to just get over it.

They really need to be more tolerant.

Just as Obama always seems to side against Israel in Middle East matters, Obama has once again sided against a massive group of Americans on this issue.

If we have learned nothing else from the plotters of the Ground Zero mosque, it is that they certainly are not tolerant of those who justifiably feel maligned by their designs.

At the very least, they are provocateurs willing to insult those innocents upon whom hell on earth was unleashed nine years ago -- in the name of Islam.

In a speech to the Muslim world last year in Cairo, Obama made the astonishing assertion that "it is part of my responsibility as president of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear."

You cannot say you were not warned.

churt@nypost.com