Four Decades Of Exile, And Also Basic Human Mortality

From this Times op-ed, where the author takes Barack Obama to task for not listing every individual wrong perpetrated by Muslims in the course of human history during his recent speech in Cairo:

Mr. Obama never mentioned the belongings I still own in Egypt and will never recover. My mother’s house, my father’s factory, our life in Egypt, our friends, our books, our cars, my bicycle. We are, each one of us, not just defined by the arrangement of protein molecules in our cells, but also by the things we call our own. Take away our things and something in us dies. Losing his wealth, his home, the life he had built, killed my father. He didn’t die right away; it took four decades of exile to finish him off.

Four decades?!? That's a long time! Isn't that kind of a superseding cause here?

Barack Obama's stimulus plan killed my grandfather, but he didn't die right away. No, it took a ten thousand foot free fall into a tank full of sharks to finish him off.