Tag Archives: Al Qaeda

A Question Not Asked

Last night’s presidential debate rightfully put the spotlight on President Obama’s performance over the last four years as commander-in-chief. As informative as the debate was in certain respects, it regrettably did not include discussion of the President’s views on what to do with the remaining terrorist detainees currently being held at Guantanamo Bay. Like his administration’s spectacular mishandling of the Benghazi attack with which last night’s debate opened, recent maneuvering by President Obama and his allies to possibly take another run at transferring terrorist detainees from Gitmo to the United States underscores a troubling reality of a President unable at best, and unwilling at worst, to acknowledge that we are a nation at war with Islamic terrorism.

As has been pointed out, transferring Gitmo detainees to U.S. soil could create an opening for their lawyers and sympathetic judges to give them criminal trials in federal court, complete with the range of defendant-friendly legal protections they provide. That Obama would attempt this highly unpopular transfer yet again is further symptomatic of his failure as a wartime Commander-in-Chief, shown this time through his unwillingness to use military detention — a tool fundamental to the prosecution of a war — despite clear authority from Congress to do so.

Though no one acknowledges that any such transfer is underway, there are several indications pointing in that direction.

Earlier this month, the Department of Justice initiated the purchase of the Thomson Correctional Center, a now-empty state prison facility located in Thomson, Illinois. The reason for the purchase was ostensibly to address overcrowding in the federal prison system, with Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) also asserting that the purchase would bring over a thousand jobs to his state. This is the same facility that was on the table as a Gitmo transfer destination back in 2009, and at the time was one of several transfer attempts that collectively sparked fierce backlash throughout the American public and in Congress. The result: several pieces of legislation barring the use of federal funds for the transfer of Gitmo detainees to the United States or for constructing/upgrading U.S. facilities for that purpose. Given this history, the announcement of the purchase has understandably elicited strong reaction from Capitol Hill, notably from Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), Chairman of the Commerce-Justice-Science Appropriations Subcommittee (which funds the Justice Department), and Rep. Pete King (R-NY), Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, among others. The Obama administration denies it is going to use the Thomson facility for a Gitmo transfer, but as Debra Burlingame’s 9/11 Families for a Safe and Strong America observes, the Justice Department has cracked the door open for such a transfer by citing as part of its purpose for the acquisition: “…as well as to provide humane and secure confinement of individuals held under authority of any Act of Congress, and such other persons as in the opinion of the Attorney General of the United States are proper subjects for confinement in such institutions…” Attorney General Holder, however, is not opening that door all by himself.

It appears that the Chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) — a leading proponent of closing Gitmo and bringing its detainees to the United States — is laying some of her own groundwork on this as well. Chairman Wolf has previously indicated that Sen. Feinstein has requested that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) produce an assessment of the extent to which there are facilities in the United States that are suitable for housing Gitmo detainees. The GAO apparently is undertaking such an assessment — which it expects to have completed by November 14, 2012 — and describes it as follows:

MILITARY CAPABILITIES & READINESS

Title: GUANTANAMO BAY DETAINEES: FACILITIES AND FACTORS FOR CONSIDERATION IF THE DETAINEES WERE BROUGH TO THE UNITED STATES (351696)

Type: Congressional

Anticipated Completion: November 14, 2012

Background/Key Questions: In the event that the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are closed, facilities in the United States that are suitable to house Guantanamo detainees might need to be identified. Key Questions: 1) What are the characteristics of the Guantanamo detention facilities, and what legal provisions and operational standards are they required to meet? 2) What are the characteristics of DOD correctional facilities, and do existing facilities have the capacity to hold the current Guantanamo population? 3) How does the Dept. of Justice manage individuals in their custody who engage in terrorist-related activities, and do their facilities have the capacity to hold the Guantanamo population? 4) What potential challenges, if any, may affect the ability to house Guantanamo detainees in the U.S.?

Then there is President Obama’s own continued, recently-re-affirmed preference for trying terrorists in criminal courts, despite public outcry objecting to such a course. According to an interview in November’s Vanity Fair, President Obama apparently would have sought to put Osama bin Laden on trial in federal court, had he been captured alive:

…”in the unlikely event that bin Laden surrendered, Obama saw an opportunity to resurrect the idea of a criminal trial, which Attorney General Eric Holder had planned for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. This time, the president tells Bowden, he was prepared to bring bin Laden back and put him on trial in a federal court. ‘We worked through the legal and political issues that would have been involved, and Congress and the desire to send him to Guantánamo, and to not try him, and Article III.’ Obama continues: ‘I mean, we had worked through a whole bunch of those scenarios. But, frankly, my belief was if we had captured him, that I would be in a pretty strong position, politically, here, to argue that displaying due process and rule of law would be our best weapon against al-Qaeda, in preventing him from appearing as a martyr.'”

If President Obama would have fought to put the founding father and leader of al Qaeda in the criminal court system, rather than place him in military detention and possibly try him by military commission, it would not be difficult for the President to conclude that the current Gitmo detainees — by definition lower on the chain of command than bin Laden but no less avowed enemies of the United States — also should be tried in criminal court. That this statement would be made against the backdrop of a recent purchase of a U.S. facility once on the table for Gitmo transfers, and the GAO’s ongoing work to assess the suitability of U.S. facilities for such transfers, strongly suggests that a transfer may be in the works, the administration’s assurances notwithstanding. And if that’s the case, it underscores this president’s discomfort with framing the war against Islamic terrorism as a war, in which military detention is a basic and indispensable tool.

Defenders of this President’s approach to terrorism will point to his use of drones to eliminate terrorists as proof of his strength as a Commander-in-Chief taking the fight to the enemy. But while individual drone strikes are a justified and often desirable tactic, they cannot fully substitute for a coherent military detention policy that provides for detaining and gathering intelligence from enemy combatants during hostilities and then trying them in a venue suitable to the wartime circumstances of their capture. Former judge and Attorney General Michael Mukasey, when commenting on the drone strike that killed al Qaeda operative Anwar al-Awlaki last year, framed it well:

Why fret about the difficulty of eliciting information from captured detainees, or of detaining them at all, when we have drones available to kill rather than capture? Well, drones are aptly named, in the sense that they do not guide themselves — they need human beings, who need intelligence. If we are to win this war against an enemy that occupies no particular territory, we need intelligence. That can be gathered electronically but electronic wizardry has its limits.

Moreover, there is something amiss about a President who sees his options as either drone strikes or criminal trials when it comes to going after terrorists. At every turn, President Obama has sought to avoid the sensible and militarily valuable middle-ground of military detention, which would maximize intelligence-gathering opportunities while minimizing the legal and security risks that go with criminal trials. The mastermind of 9/11 and his associates are only on trial by military commission at Gitmo after administration delays to the commission proceedings and the failure of the administration to transfer Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and company to New York in 2009. The President’s profound — and profoundly misguided — discomfort with military detention is clear, making it all the more likely that he and his allies are maneuvering to bring Gitmo detainees to the United States, most likely for eventual criminal prosecution in federal court.

Ironically, the Obama administration is sending troubling signals that on his watch, not even conviction and incarceration in the civilian criminal system will guarantee that justice will be served. Several reports have indicated that the administration is contemplating releasing “The Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel Rahman, the spiritual advisor to the 1993 World Trade Center terrorists, from federal prison, transferring him to Egyptian custody.

If left unchecked now, President Obama and his allies may move in the near future to bring Gitmo detainees to American shores. If that happens, we will be one step closer to losing a war that President Obama does not care to admit we are in, whether we like it or not.

The Real Reason Behind Benghazigate?

President Obama’s once-seemingly-unstoppable march towards reelection hit what he might call “bumps in the road” in Benghazi, Libya late on September 11, 2012.  It might be more accurate to describe the effect of the well-planned and -executed, military-style attack on a diplomatic facility there as the political equivalent of a devastating improvised explosive device on the myth of the unassailability of the Obama record as Commander-in-Chief.

Thanks to intrepid investigative reporting – notably by Bret Baier and Catherine Herridge at Fox News, Aaron Klein at WND.com and Claire Lopez at RadicalIslam.org – and information developed by congressional investigators, the mystery is beginning to unravel with regard to what happened that night and the reason for the subsequent, clumsy official cover-up now known as “Benghazigate.”

The evidence suggests that the Obama administration has not simply been engaging, legitimating, enriching and emboldening Islamists who have now taken over or are ascendant in much of the Middle East. Starting in March 2011, when American diplomat Christopher Stevens was designated the liaison to the “opposition” in Libya, the Obama administration has been arming them, including jihadists like Abdelhakim Belhadj, the leader of the al Qaeda franchise known as the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group.

Once Qaddafi was overthrown, Chris Stevens was appointed as the ambassador to the new Libya run by Belhadj and his friends.  Not surprisingly, one of the most important priorities for someone in that position would be to try to find and secure the immense amounts of armaments that had been cached by the dictator around the country and systematically looted during and after the revolution.

One of the places in Libya most awash with such weapons in the most dangerous of hands is Benghazi.  It now appears that Amb. Stevens was there – on a particularly risky day, with no security to speak of and despite now-copiously-documented concerns about his own safety and that of his subordinates – for another priority mission: sending arms recovered from the former regime’s stocks to the “opposition” in Syria.  As in Libya, the insurgents are known to include al Qaeda and other shariah-supremacist groups, including none other than Abdelhakim Belhadj.

Fox News has chronicled (http://video.foxnews.com/v/1913235018001/) how the Al Entisar, a Libyan-flagged vessel carrying 400 tons of cargo, docked on September 6th in the Turkish port of Iskenderun.  It reportedly supplied both humanitarian assistance and arms – including deadly SA-7 man-portable surface-to-air missiles – apparently destined for Islamists, again including al Qaeda elements, in Syria.

What cries out for further investigation – and debate in the remaining days of this presidential election – is whether this shipment was part of a larger covert Obama effort to transfer weapons to our enemies that could make the Iran-Contra scandal, to say nothing of Operation Fast and Furious, pale by comparison?

Investigative journalist Aaron Klein has reported (http://www.wnd.com/2012/10/this-is-what-benghazi-consulate-really-was/) that the “consulate in Benghazi” actually was no such thing.  He observes that, while administration officials have done nothing to correct that oft-repeated characterization of the facility where the murderous attack on Amb. Stevens and his colleagues was launched, instead they call it a “mission.”  And what Klein describes as a “shabby, nondescript building” which lacked any “major public security presence” was, according to an unnamed Middle Eastern security official, “routinely used by Stevens and others to coordinate with the Turkish, Saudi and Qatari governments on supporting the insurgencies in the Middle East, most prominently the rebels opposing Assad’s regime in Syria.”

We know that Stevens’ last official act was to hold such a meeting with an unidentified “Turkish diplomat.”  Presumably, the conversation involved additional arms shipments to al Qaeda and its allies in Syria.  But it may also have involved getting more jihadi fighters there.  After all, Klein reported last month (http://www.wnd.com/2012/09/sources-slain-u-s-ambassador-recruited-jihadists/) that, according to sources in Egyptian security, our ambassador was playing a “central role in recruiting jihadists to fight Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria.”

It gets worse.  Last week, Center for Security Policy Senior Fellow and former career CIA officer Clare Lopez observed (http://www.radicalislam.org/analysis/arms-flow-syria-may-be-behind-beghazi-cover) that there were two large warehouse-type buildings associated with the so-called “consulate” whose purpose has yet to be disclosed.  As their contents were raided in the course of the attack, we may never know for sure whether they housed – and were known by the local jihadis to house – arms, perhaps administered by the two former SEALS killed along with Amb. Stevens.

What we do know is that the New York Times – one of the most slavishly pro-Obama publications in the country – reported on October 14, 2012 article that, “Most of the arms shipped at the behest of Saudi Arabia and Qatar to supply Syrian rebel groups fighting the government of Bashar al-Assad are going to hard-line Islamic jihadists, and not the more secular opposition groups that the West wants to bolster.”

In short, it seems President Obama has been engaged in gun-walking on a massive scale.  The effect has been to equip America’s enemies to wage jihad not only against regimes it once claimed were our friends, but inevitably against us and our allies, as well.  That would explain his administration’s desperate, and now-failing, bid to mislead the voters through the serial deflections of Benghazigate.

Winning Issue

Tuesday’s rematch of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney is likely to be their first of two in which the incumbent’s record as Commander-in-Chief is going to be a matter of direct debate.  If last week’s set-to between their running mates is any guide, there will be opportunities and perils for the challenger.  It behooves Gov. Romney to maximize the former and minimize the latter if he wants decisively to defeat the President in these mass-audience settings, and in November.

Here’s how he can do that:

One obvious way is to pick up on the success his partner, Rep. Paul Ryan, had in exploring the run-up to, the events of and the Obama administration’s serial lies after the murderous attack last month on our consulate in Benghazi.  Mr. Romney can rebut the contention that he is “politicizing” this incident by showing that it is a teachable moment about the whirlwind we are going to reap from the seeds sown in the Mideast and elsewhere by President Obama.

But it will not be enough to castigate the administration for failing to protect our diplomatic personnel and facilities in a very dangerous part of the world.  The point is that, as a practical matter, attacks on such targets must be deterred, not simply defended against.  And Mr. Obama not only is not deterring our enemies, he is legitimating, enriching and emboldening them.

A case in point is the Muslim Brotherhood – the font of modern jihadism and the wellspring of groups like al Qaeda, the Taliban, Gema’at Islamiyya and others who engage in violence or “terrorism” as a companion to the stealthy, pre-violent “civilization jihad” in which the Brotherhood specializes.  Where the Brothers are in charge, terrorists are finding safe-havens and organizing for their holy war against non-Islamist Muslims and the West.  The attacks in Libya, Egypt and elsewhere are but symptoms of the rising confidence of our Islamist foes that America will submit to, not resist, their gathering power.

By taking on President Obama squarely over his support for the Muslim Brotherhood, Gov. Romney can make clear that he is not simply quibbling about how many U.S. troops are left in places like Iraq and Afghanistan and for how long, or a case of Monday morning quarterbacking about the Libya debacle.  Rather, they have a profound policy difference rooted in Mr. Romney’s recognition that the threat we face emanates not just from al Qaeda, but from all those who, whatever their tactical or sectarian disagreements, fundamentally share that group’s commitment to the triumph of the totalitarian, supremacist Islamic doctrine of shariah. The Republican candidate must communicate a determination to defeat, not accommodate, them.

The poster child for such accommodation could be Omar Abdul Rahman, the jihadist cleric serving a life-sentence for fomenting multiple terrorist plots in this country, including the first conspiracy to destroy the World Trade Center in 1993.  The Muslim Brotherhood’s Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi has demanded the release of the so-called “Blind Sheikh” and Mr. Romney could usefully announce that if he’s president, Abdul Rahman will die in American prison, period – and call on Mr. Obama to say the same.

The American people need to have President Obama clarify his stance on another front, as well.  In March 2012, he was overheard conveying a promise to Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin that he would have “more flexibility after my last election.”  Mr. Romney can helpfully establish whether, as seems likely, that would translate into: an even more aggressive effort to pursue U.S. nuclear disarmament (unilaterally, if necessary); concessions constraining missile defenses; and acquiescence to Kremlin efforts to assert Russia’s authority worldwide, at America’s expense.  He can show that, while we have engaged in such restraint in the name of “resetting” relations, Putin is comprehensively modernizing the Russian nuclear arsenal, conducting exercises simulating its use against us and undermining U.S. interests around the globe.

Governor Romney must also show how President Obama has failed to warn of, let alone effectively counter, the rising power of Communist China.  This is not simply a question of currency manipulation.  The PRC is also investing in: a massive military build-up of highly threatening nuclear forces – including, for example, four new long-range missiles and 3,000 miles of tunnels known as the Underground Great Wall in which to hide them; anti-space capabilities; and advanced conventional weaponry (notably, two new stealth aircraft).  At the same time, it is threatening war with our ally, Japan, and claiming sovereignty over virtually the entire South China Sea.

Mr. Obama’s response is a so-called “pivot” to Asia. The Republican challenger can point out that this is seen by Beijing for what it is: the unresourced – and, therefore, meaningless – machinations of a paper tiger.  No matter how many times Obama-Biden say it, America’s military leaders are not in favor of the sorts of budget cuts that are validating such perceptions by eviscerating our defenses and especially our power-projection capabilities.

Governor Romney has already taken President Obama to task for declaring that he does not regard Venezuela’s rabidly anti-American dictator as a threat.  Now that Chavez has engineered his reelection, we are likely to see even more evidence of how wrong Team Obama is in discounting the danger posed by a regime that has: turned Venezuela into a despotically misruled and dangerous armed camp; forged alliances with Iran, China, Russia, Cuba, Hamas, Hezbollah and other foes of the United States and brought to power like-minded proxies throughout the region; and agreed to place in Venezuela Iranian missiles capable of reaching the United States.

In the course of the 2008 election, Barack Obama famously declared that he was going to “fundamentally transform the United States” by, among other things, redistributing wealth.  He has, since gaining the presidency, pursued another, less-recognized transformational agenda:  Call it redistributing American power.  A recent poll sponsored by the Foreign Policy Initiative suggests the voters overwhelmingly reject such a practice. By focusing on the foregoing, winning issues in the remaining days of this campaign, Governor Romney can enlist – and deserve – their support.

The Post-Constitutional President

Team Obama insists that next month’s presidential election is “a choice, not a referendum.”  It sure seems to be with respect to the two candidates very different views on the Constitution.  Mitt Romney makes plain at every turn his commitment to that document, while Barack Obama’s conduct in office has marked him as the post-constitutional president.

Consider just a few examples of Mr. Obama’s systematic disregard of, contempt for and/or deviation from a national charter he swore an oath to preserve, protect and defend:

  • President Obama has simply refused to uphold federal laws with which he disagrees, including the Defense of Marriage Act and immigration statutes.
  • After confirming that, in the absence of congressional authorization, he lacked the authority to give what amounts to an amnesty to young illegal aliens, President Obama went ahead and declared it by executive fiat.
  • Despite repeated congressional objections to federal purchase of a state prison in Thomson, Illinois to which the Obama administration has sought to relocate jhadists currently held as detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Mr. Obama last week authorized its acquisition for $165 million.
  • Ever since it came to office, the Obama administration has sought to accommodate Islamist demands that freedom of expression be curbed, lest it offend Muslims and stoke violence.  For example, in 2009, it co-sponsored a UN Human Rights Council resolution along those lines.  In 2011, it launched the so-called “Istanbul Process” to find common ground with proponents of shariah blasphemy laws who seek to strip us of our First Amendment freedoms.
  • And in September 2012, President Obama announced at the United Nations: “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam” – a stance indistinguishable from that of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Taliban and al Qaeda.
  • A particularly ominous example of Mr. Obama’s post-constitutional presidency involves his abdication of his first duty as Commander-in-Chief: to secure the common defense.  Having successfully engineered two rounds of deep defense budget reductions totaling some $800 billion over the next ten years, the President is intent on inflicting a further, devastating half-a-trillion dollar, across-the-board cut pursuant to a process known on Capitol Hill as sequestration.

There is no getting around it:  Cuts of this magnitude are going to result in tremendous disruptions of defense programs and attendant job losses in the associated industries.  A federal law known as the WARN Act requires companies with more than 100 employees to give them notice of potential lay-offs sixty days in advance.  With sequestration due to kick in on January 2, 2013, that means the mandatory warning of potential pink slips to come would arrive just before the November 6th election.

To avoid such a particularly untimely reminder of the president’s dismal stewardship of his economic as well as national security portfolios, in July the Obama Labor Department issued guidance to defense contractors saying that the WARN Act’s requirements would not be enforced.  The pretext given was that, since sequestration’s potential effects on particular contracts had not been specified, there was insufficient basis to know the extent of the impact on employment and, therefore, the statute would not apply.

Of course, one reason the potential effects of sequestration are not known with precision less than three months before they are statutorily required to go into effect is that the Obama administration has ordered the Pentagon not to make any plans for implementing that next round of cuts.  This directive was reaffirmed on September 27th.

Then, Team Obama advised contractors the next day that, as The Hill reported: “They would be compensated for legal costs if layoffs occur due to contract cancellations under sequestration – but only if the contractors follow the Labor [Department] guidance.”  In other words, the administration now wants the taxpayer to pick up the tab for violations of the law by those it has induced to engage in them.

Republican Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Kelly Ayotte, respectively of Arizona, South Carolina and New Hampshire, have been among those tirelessly warning for months of the catastrophe sequestration will inflict on the U.S. military.  They issued a joint statement in response to the president’s latest post-constitutional action which said, in part, “The Obama Administration is cynically trying to skirt the WARN Act to keep the American people in the dark about this looming national security and fiscal crisis.  The president should insist that companies act in accordance with the clearly stated law and move forward with the layoff notices.”  (Detailed estimates of the magnitude of that crisis as it is likely to manifest itself in states, counties, cities and congressional districts across the country can be obtained at www.FortheCommonDefense.org/reports.)

In an important essay published on September 24th in the Wall Street Journal, former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey called on legislators to put Mr. Obama on notice: If, as widely expected, he proceeds after the election to yield to Islamist demands that he transfer (presumably to Egypt) or release the lead conspirator in the first World Trade Center attack, Omar Abdul Rahman, it “could be considered the kind of gross betrayal of public trust that would justify removal from high office.”  The same should apply to Mr. Obama’s palpable contempt for the Constitution – something sure to be even more in evidence if he secures reelection and, as he says, “more flexibility” in a second term.

Anti-Israel Advocate Reps U.S. at Rights Conference

UPDATE: STATE STANDS BY ITS MAN

A Muslim leader who said that Israel should have been added to the”suspect list” for the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks was recently selected to represent the United States government at a human rights conference sponsored by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).

Salam al-Marayati, founder of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), was chosen by the Obama administration to deliver remarks in Warsaw, Poland-home to one of the largest Jewish ghettos during the Holocaust-during the OSCE’s Human Dimension Implementation Meetings (HDIM), a 10-day gathering meant to foster the “promotion of tolerance,” according to the group’s website.

Al-Marayati was selected to participate in the confab by the U.S. delegation, which was ledby Ambassador Avis Bohlen, a Georgetown University professor and former Clinton administration official, according to MPAC’s website.

The selection of al-Marayati, who has drawn criticism for defending terrorist acts and blaming Israel for 9/11, raised concerns among some observers, who deemed his presence at the human rights meetings offensive.

“It is inexplicable that a person who blamed Israel for the 9/11 attacks and advocated for terrorist organizations, including Hamas and Hezbollah-which has killed more Americans than any terrorist group in the world except al Qaeda-was chosen to represent the United States,” said Josh Block, a former Clinton administration official who now serves as CEO of The Israel Project, a pro-Israel educational group.

Al-Marayati drew widespread criticism from Jewish leaders and others when he said that the U.S. “should put the state of Israel on the suspect list,” according to the New York Times.

“If we’re going to look at suspects, we should look to the groups that benefit the most from these kinds of incidents, and I think we should put the state of Israel on the suspect list because I think this diverts attention from what’s happening in the Palestinian territories so that they can go on with their aggression and occupation and apartheid policies,” al-Marayati told a radio host, according to the Times.

Al-Marayati has also defined attacks by the terrorist group Hezbollah as “legitimate resistance,” according to a report by the Investigate Project on Terrorism.

He was invited to participate in the conference as a “public member of the U.S. delegation,” according to MPAC.

“Al-Marayati was invited as a public member of the U.S. delegation to HDIM along with Professor Ethel Brooks of Rutgers University and Nida Gelazis of the Woodrow Wilson Institute,” MPAC said in a statement.

During his remarks before OSCE participants, al-Marayati said that “hate speech that intends to degrade, intimidate, or incite violence against someone based on religion is harmful,” according to a portion of his speech posted on MPAC’s website.

MPAC, the pro-Muslim advocacy group that al-Marayati helped found, has urged that the militant groups Hezbollah and Hamas be removed from the list of U.S.-designated terrorist organizations, according to the Investigative Project’s report.

Among other topics, participants in the Warsaw conference discussed “freedom of religion and belief,” according to MPAC’s website.

“Al-Marayati, who has a long history of civic engagement and service to the U.S. and the Muslim community, was the only American Muslim invited to speak at the HDIM,” the statement said. “This honor and privilege of addressing the OSCE could not have been bestowed upon a better person who epitomizes working toward religious freedom and human rights protection.”

The U.S. Embassy in Poland also praised al-Marayati’s presence.

“The United States is proud to have Mr. Salam al-Marayati of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, Professor Ethel Brooks of Rutgers University, and Ms. Nida Gelazis of the Woodrow Wilson Institute serving as public members in the USG delegation to HDIM,” the embassy said in a statement. “Their expertise will be invaluable in addressing these topics at the meeting.”

One official with a Jewish organization said the embassy’s statement was tone deaf, and demanded the Obama administration explain itself to the Jewish community.

“That he was chosen to address human rights and religious tolerance, and that our embassy in Poland said in a statement that it is ‘proud’ to have him provide his ‘expertise,’ compounds the concern,” said the official, who requested anonymity. “Whoever made this decision owes the American people and the Jewish community an explanation for this error in judgment.”

Also in attendance at the meetings was Ambassador Ian Kelly, the U.S. Representative to the OSCE, as well as Ambassador Michael Kozak, a senior adviser on human rights who is serving as the acting special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism.

Stacy Bernard Davis, a senior adviser to the special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism Hannah Rosenthal, told the Free Beacon that “while Amb. Kozak is indeed in Warsaw on the delegation, I do not know anything about the individual you named.”

Ambassador Bohlen, the U.S. delegation’s leader, served in the government for nearly 30 years, including in the State Department. She also served as the ambassador to Bulgaria during the Clinton administration.

Bohlen currently serves as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s Center for Security Studies.

She did not respond to a request for comment about al-Marayati’s presence on the trip.

 

Adam Kredo
Washington Free Beacon

2012 Keeper of the Flame Award: Peter King

KOF2012-PeteKingWashington, D.C.: Amidst a continuing lack of clarity about the nature of the enemy we face in the “War on Terror” and the character of the attacks against us, Representative Peter King of New York provided a characteristically frank, coherent and accurate depiction upon receiving the Center for Security Policy’s 2012 “Keeper of the Flame” award.  During a black tie dinner at Washington’s historic Union Station, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee said of the murderous assault on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya on September 11, 2012:

For the [executive branch] not to know this was a terrorist attack shows they have no idea what’s going on in the world – or they’re willing to sacrifice American security for the sake of getting through this election so the president can say that he defeated al-Qaeda: ‘There is no al-Qaeda. It was just some pornographic film that set off a massive riot-demonstration-attack which killed four Americans.’ In either event, it’s inexcusable. It’s disgraceful. And the American people should reject it out of hand. And the ambassador to the United Nations should resign for going on television shows spreading those lies and misrepresentations about what happened in Libya.

On the eve of a visit to New York by the Muslim Brotherhood president of Egypt, Mohamed Morsi, Rep. King took him to task for his role in the sacking of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo:

What we saw in the last week – when we saw the president of Egypt, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, who receives $1.6 billion in aid from the United States of America, refuse to defend the American embassy against mobs; when we saw mobs in Egypt overtake the American embassy, burn our flag, take the flag down, and fly an al Qaeda flag over the American embassy – and that Muslim Brotherhood president continues to get 1.6 billion dollars. And the next day, when the president of the United States goes out to talk about what happened the day before and never even mentions what happened in Egypt, never even mentions that the person he has authorized to receive this aid, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and also the president of Egypt has refused to carry out the most basic obligations of a head of state and a head of government – and that’s to protect foreign embassies in his country.  It’s an absolute disgrace what president Morsi did.  It’s also a disgrace the president of the United States refused to publicly call him on it. That is wrong. It should not be tolerated by the American people.

Chairman King concluded his forceful remarks with an urgent appeal to his countrymen:

We have to stay focused. We have to stay focused on who the enemy is. The enemy is not an amorphous group called ‘terrorists’ or ‘extremists’ or ‘violent extremists.’ The enemy is Islamic terrorism. Islamic terrorism which is dedicated to destroying our way of life and our civilization. If we don’t identify the enemy, if we don’t know who the enemy is, that enemy is going to end up defeating us. You cannot defeat an enemy unless you know who the enemy is and the enemy is Islamic terrorism.

 

The Center’s Keeper of the Flame Award recognizes those who have, like Congressman King, exhibited an outstanding commitment to freedom for their unstinting efforts to ensure that the instruments of national power are effectively brought to bear to safeguard it.  Past recipients include: President Ronald Reagan, Secretaries of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, James Schlesinger, and Caspar Weinberger, Senators Jim Inhofe and Joe Lieberman and Generals Richard Myers, Peter Pace, James Jones and James Conway.  (For more on the Keeper of the Flame, see the Center for Security Policy’s events page at www.SecureFreedom.org.)

Rep. King was introduced on this occasion by his colleague, Rep. Gus Bilirakis, chairman of the Homeland Security Committee’s Emergency Preparedness Subcommittee.  All present were welcomed by Dr. J.P. “Jack” London, Executive Chairman of CACI International and a member of the Center’s Board of Directors. And a “benediction” was provided by one of the Americans most heroically engaged in the counter-terrorism and homeland security challenges of our time: Debra Burlingame, the sister of Captain “Chic” Burlingame, whose plane was hijacked and flown into the Pentagon on 9/11.

Other highlights of the evening were tributes to and remarks by Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona.  The approaching end of his extraordinary service on Capitol Hill was marked by two of those to whom he will be passing the torch – Senators Jeff Session of Alabama and Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire – and by the presentation of a second-degree Keeper of the Flame (which he received originally in 1994), dubbed the Oak Leaf Cluster decoration, after the military practice.  The three Senators spoke of the urgent need to address today’s and tomorrow’s national security shortfalls and threats by, among other things, staving off the devastating “sequestration” round of cuts to Pentagon budgets now in the offing.  Sen. Kyl charged his colleagues and the rest of us to make a redoubled effort to assure “peace through strength” in such areas as assuring our nuclear arsenal in the face of the increasing challenge to its deterrent effectiveness posed by Communist China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.

Center for Security Policy President Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. said of the evening:

It was an extraordinary moment of celebration of and with several of America’s most consequential national security-minded public servants.  We are honored to recognize the innumerable contributions Rep. King and Sen. Kyl have made to the common defense and look forward to working with them in that connection in the future.

 

Remarks by Rep. King

Remarks by Sen. Kyl

Bill Clinton to Host Egypt President Morsi in NYC

The Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi, the recently elected president of Egypt, will be a featured participant at the eighth annual meeting of Bill Clinton’s Clinton Global Initiative in New York next week.

Morsi is a prominent figure in the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, the most important of the world’s Islamist organizations and ideological progenitor of al Qaeda and nearly every jihadist terrorist group in the world. Its slogan reads, “Allah is our objective; the Quran is our law, the Prophet is our leader; Jihad is our way; and death for the sake of Allah is the highest of our aspirations.”

Clinton’s welcoming of Morsi to his high-profile event in New York City is surprising and may undermine the tough-on-terror image the Democratic Party is trying to cultivate ahead of the November elections.

Clinton recently praised the Obama administration’s foreign policy in his address to the Democratic National Convention: “I am grateful that they have worked together to make us safer and stronger, to build a world with more partners and fewer enemies.” However, it is clear–even, apparently, to Obama–that the Muslim Brotherhood is moving Egypt toward the enemy side.

Upon winning his election for the presidency, Morsi pledged to work for the release of terror mastermind Omar Abdel Rahman (the Blind Sheik), now serving a life sentence for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and other attempted attacks in New York City.

This is also not the first high-profile Muslim Brotherhood figure embraced publicly by the Clintons. During the 1990s, Abdurahman Alamoudi—later convicted of laundering money for an al Qaeda assassination scheme—was the Clintons’ chief liaison to the Islamic community. Alamoudi’s brother has been a large donor to the Clinton Foundation.

This summer, Rep. Michele Bachmann and four other Members of Congress drew fire for writing letters to inspectors general in five executive branch departments calling for investigations of pro-Muslim Brotherhood influence within the US government. One letter described the Muslim Brotherhood connections of Huma Abedin, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Deputy Chief of Staff and a longtime associate of both Hillary and Bill Clinton.

For his part, Morsi is no stranger to the American branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and the constellation of organizations the 2008 Holy Land Foundation Trial found to be associated with it. Morsi and his wife joined the Muslim Brotherhood—probably through its many American front groups—while living in southern California in the late 1970s.

According to a Clinton Global Initiative press release, other participants will include Libyan president Mohamed Megarif, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and over fifty current and former heads of state.

2012 Tipping Point?

History is replete with examples of strategic miscalculations in which an over-reach – usually born of contemptuous disdain for a foe – led to disaster for the aggressor.  Think Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812.  Or Hitler’s of the Soviet Union 131 years later. We may look back at September 11, 2012 as the kick-off date for such a tipping point in our time.

To be sure, the Muslim Brotherhood and its fellow Islamists – notably, al Qaeda franchises throughout the Middle East and beyond, other so-called “Salafists,” Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia and the mullahs of Iran – were becoming increasingly aggressive towards us even before last week’s mayhem in Libya, Egypt, Yemen, etc.  Team Obama (notably in the person of its hapless and overexposed UN Ambassador, Susan Rice) and its running dogs in the elite media would nonetheless have us believe that the upset is the by-product of an amateurish short video that disparages Mohamed.

In fact, as most sentient beings have realized by now, that film is but the latest pretext for Islamists to demand our adherence to what they call shariah blasphemy laws.  [Such laws are but a part of the larger, brutally repressive Islamic political, military and legal doctrine that prohibits any expression that offends, or otherwise is unhelpful to, their faith.]

Unfortunately, the Obama administration has repeatedly conveyed a willingness to accommodate – or at least tolerate – this threat to one of our most fundamental constitutional liberties: freedom of speech.  That willingness is part of a pattern of submissive behavior that has encouraged the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies to believe that America is in retreat and that shariah’s inevitable, divinely-directed and global triumph is at hand.  Their response, predictably, is to redouble efforts to make us, in the Quran’s words, “feel subdued.”

Examples of such behavior abound.  Consider just a few of the more telling cases-in-point (for more, visit www.MuslimBrotherhoodinAmerica.com):

  • In May 2009, President Obama insisted that Muslim Brotherhood representatives be in the audience for his first speech directed at the Islamic world.  It was delivered at Cairo University and freighted with apologies for past U.S. policies and efforts to associate himself with the beliefs and priorities of his audience.
  • Interestingly, Mr. Obama had already operationalized that policy approach two months before, by having the U.S. delegation to the UN Human Rights Council co-sponsor with Egypt a resolution drafted by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).  The object of the exercise was to further the OIC’s longstanding objective of forcing UN member nations to prohibit and criminalize expression that offends Islam.
  • In July 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton launched a formal effort with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation dubbed the “Istanbul Process” to explore ways in which our First Amendment rights could accommodate shariah blasphemy laws.  (Some of those playing an influential role in this exercise are discussed in a booklet about “The Muslim Brotherhood in the Obama Administration” I just published with the David Horowitz Freedom Center:http://frontpagemag.com/2012/frontpagemag-com/the-muslim-brotherhood-in-the-obama-administration/.)
  • In December 2011, the Istanbul Process achieved an ominous milestone:  The odious UN Human Rights Council adopted, with strong U.S. support, Resolution 16/18 committing member nations to adopt “measures to criminalize incitement to imminent violence based on religion or belief.”  Lest anyone think this a clever finesse, more or less in alignment with current U.S. law, the OIC’s secretary general made clear that his organization did not view it as “the end of the road.”  And, indeed, developments of the past week – both here and abroad, official and non-governmental – suggest that Team Obama is prepared to go farther, too.

Given such encouragement, it is not surprising that the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies would respond by demanding further accommodations to them and their shariah agenda.  What is a surprise, though, is that they are acting out their ambitions at this juncture – not after November 6th, when President Obama will, in his words, “have more flexibility.”  It suggests that the Islamists have reached their tipping point, propelled to seek decisive domination by President Obama’s perceived weakness, irresolution and submissiveness.

In the face of our enemies’ overreaching aggressiveness, however, the American people now face a tipping point of their own.  If they arrive at the only sensible conclusion – namely, that four more years of the Obama administration’s malfeasance with respect to jihadism of both the violent and the stealthy, pre-violent kind – they may just respond by refusing to re-up a presidency that enables and emboldens our foes and undermines our liberties and friends.  And should such a tipping point be realized, it will be one of truly epic historic proportions and prized by freedom-loving peoples forever.

The world’s not better off

Eleven years after 9/11, President Obama would have us believe that, at least with respect to our national security, we are better off than we were when he came to office. Specifically, he now claims that al Qaeda – the terrorist organization that killed nearly 3,000 Americans on that terrible day – is “on the path to defeat.”

That contention is, of course, predicated in part on the laudable fact that al Qaeda’s founder, Osama bin Laden, is dead, as are a number of the organization’s other senior leaders. The President deserves credit for achieving such successes.

But they do not mean even that the group that perpetrated the 9/11 attacks are nearly defeated. In fact, its franchises are going – and growing – concerns in places like Libya, Yemen, Syria, Nigeria, Somalia, Mali and Pakistan, to say nothing of the theaters We have abandoned (Iraq), or are in the process of abandoning (Afghanistan).

More importantly, even if it were true that al Qaeda is being defeated, a net assessment would clearly show that, on Mr. Obama’s watch, the world has become much more hospitable to its ideology and goals, and much less safe for America and our interests.

That is the case in no small measure because of the help Team Obama has given to the Muslim Brotherhood, a group that fully shares al Qaeda’s ambitions to impose its totalitarian, supremacist Islamic doctrine known as shariah on the rest of the world under the rule of a Caliph. As the Center for Security Policy has documented in a free online video-based curriculum entitled The Muslim Brotherhood in America: the Enemy Within, that help has taken myriad forms including: recognizing and engaging the Brotherhood in Egypt; helping it come to power there; and providing $1.5 billion in aid after the Brotherhood’s political party dominated Egyptian parliamentary elections and on the eve of the election of its candidate, Mohamed Morsi, to the presidency.

The Obama administration is preparing to do still more for the Brothers in Egypt now that they have established effectively complete control in one of the Middle East’s most strategic nations. It is engineering another $1 billion in debt relief at U.S. taxpayer expense and over $4 billion in assistance from international financial organizations (a substantial chunk of which will come out of our hides, too).

It is also warning Israel not to object to Egypt’s remilitarization of the Sinai, in blatant violation of the peace treaty between the two nations signed at Camp David in 1979. And it is preparing to roll out the red carpet for Brother Morsi in New York and the White House later this month.

Are such steps a problem – especially collectively? After all, the Muslim Brothers are, according to Mr. Obama’s administration, the sort of benign Islamists with whom we can safely deal since they have, in the words of the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, “eschewed violence.”

In point of fact, the Brothers have no more eschewed violence towards infidels and even Muslims who stand in the way of their geopolitical ambitions than they are, in another unforgettable example of Gen. Clapper’s cluelessness, “a largely secular organization.” These rabid and avowed Islamists are perfectly prepared to use violence – think Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestinian franchise – when they believe it will conduce to success.

Until that time, shariah requires its adherents to pursue the same goals through means that are best described as pre-violent, rather than non-violent. And it is the steady progress that the prime practitioners of this approach – which the Brotherhood calls “civilization jihad” – have made unnoticed, or at least un-countered, by President Obama and his subordinates that has actually made the world vastly more dangerous than it was when they came to office.

Just how dangerous may be on display when President Obama hosts Mohamed Morsi. It will be interesting to see whether he emboldens that Islamist, as he has others, by bowing to him. But what will be far more important than such symbolic gestures is what further concessions Mr. Obama offer, concessions that – according to the doctrine of shariah – are interpreted as tangible signs of our submission?

One that will be at the top of Mr. Morsi’s agenda is his demand that the United States release one of the most world’s most dangerous jihadists, Omar Abdul Rahman. Better known as the “Blind Sheikh,” this terrorist was convicted of leading, among other conspiracies, the first, lethal attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. Presumably, President Obama would not dare pardon or transfer Abdul Rahman to Egypt before his “last election,” but he may feel free to do so afterwards – when he has, in his words, “more flexibility.”

Either way, the Morsi visit will be a “teachable moment” for every American. All other things being equal, it will demonstrate tangibly that eleven years after 9/11 – notwithstanding the tactical successes achieved by our courageous servicemen and women, lethal drones and intelligence and homeland security professionals, we are losing, not winning, the war against those who are driven by shariah to wage jihad, of either the violent or stealthy kind, against us. We better pray it will prompt the American
people to insist on a fundamental course correction two months from now.

The Grand Deflection

A magician typically succeeds when the attention of the audience is diverted from his main activity onto some distraction.  President Obama has raised this sort of deflection into a political art form.

Take, for example, the matter of revelations by five Members of Congress and the Center for Security Policy that there appear to be a number individuals working for or with the Obama administration with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.   The possibility that their influence may be helping to shape U.S. policy in ways that increasingly align it with the demands, ambitions and goals of the Brotherhood and other Islamists is a national security problem of the first order.  That is especially true at a moment when Muslim Brothers are consolidating their hold on power in Egypt with the cashiering of two top generals at the hands of the Brotherhood’s newly elected president, Mohamed Morsi.

Yet, Team Obama and its allies in the elite media have aggressively worked to deflect the focus away from these realities.  At first, they did so by viciously attacking Congresswoman Michele Bachmann – even though she was just one of five legislators who asked for investigations into these seeming influence operations by inspectors general of five federal agencies.

Then, they sought to portray as a victim of racism and bigotry just one of those about whom the Members of Congress raised legitimate questions: Huma Abedin, the Deputy Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.  Journalists like CNN’s Anderson Cooper repeated uncritically – and unprofessionally –  assurances that there was no factual basis for linking Ms. Abedin to the Muslim Brotherhood.  Where compelled to acknowledge that members of her family do have ties to Brotherhood-connected organizations, the administration and its allies denounced such concerns as “guilt by association” and “McCarthyism.”

Then, former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, former Muslim Brother Walid Shoebat and other researchers established a direct tie between Huma Abedin and a Muslim Brotherhood front, the Institute for Muslim Minority Affairs (IMMA).  IMMA was established essentially as an Abedin family business by Abdullah Omar Naseef, an officially designated al Qaeda financier.

Shortly after IMMA was founded under his chairmanship, Naseef became the secretary general of the Muslim World League (MWL) which Mr. McCarthy described in an August 8thspeech in Washington sponsored by the Center for Security Policy as: “the Saudi-financed global propagation enterprise by which the Muslim Brotherhood’s virulently anti-Western brand of Islamist ideology is seeded throughout the world, very much including in the United States.”

It happens that Huma Abedin was listed for twelve years on the masthead of the IMMA’s journal as an associate editor.  For at least seven of those years, Omar Naseef was also listed as a member of the editorial advisory board.

In his remarks last week, former Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney McCarthy directly spoke to charges that Huma Abedin was being unfairly challenged by virtue of these various ties to the Muslim Brotherhood: “‘Guilt by association’ has nothing to do with fitness for high public office. High public office is a privilege, not a right. Access to classified information is a privilege, not a right. You need not have done anything wrong to be deemed unfit for these privileges.”

Andrew McCarthy added pointedly:  “It is not a question of your patriotism or your trustworthiness. It is about whether you would be burdened by such obvious conflicts of interest that you would be tempted to act on those interests, rather than in the best interests of the United States.”

Nonetheless, two days later, the Deflector-in-Chief used the occasion of remarks at his fourth annual White House Iftar dinner – a ceremony marking the breaking of the Ramadan fast – to provide a shout-out to one of his guests, Huma Abedin.  Mr. Obama pronounced: “Huma is an American patriot, and an example of what we need in this country – more public servants with her sense of decency, her grace and her generosity of spirit. So, on behalf of all Americans, we thank you so much.”  Nothing to see here folks, move along.

Not only does Ms. Abedin’s relationship to the Muslim Brotherhood and involvement in policies favorable to its interests warrant close official scrutiny. There are at least six other individuals with Brotherhood ties whose involvement in Obama administration “Muslim outreach” and/or related policy-making also deserve investigation by the IGs and the Congress:

  • Rashad Hussain, Special Envoy to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation;
  • Dalia Mogahed, an advisor to President Obama;
  • Mohamed Elibiary, a member of Homeland Security Department’s Advisory Council;
  • Mohamed Magid, a member of the Homeland Security Department’s Countering-Violent Extremism Working Group;
  • Louay Safi, until recently the credentialing authority for Muslim chaplains in the U.S. military and now a leader of the Brotherhood-dominated Syrian National Council; and
  • Kifah Mustapha, a Hamas-fundraiser and graduate of the FBI’s ‘Citizens Academy’

The American people are entitled to know who is shaping the policies that are increasingly empowering, enriching and emboldening the Muslim Brotherhood – an organization sworn to our destruction.  Under no circumstances should legitimate and well-grounded congressional requests for formal investigations be deflected, let alone suppressed.

And the results of those investigations must be available to inform the critical choice American voters have to make this November.  It just might make all the difference in the outcome – which is presumably why the grand deflection is being pursued with such determination.