Tag Archives: Susan Rice

Rise of the ‘Iran Lobby’

Tehran’s front groups move on—and into— the Obama Administration

Clare M. Lopez

25 February 2009

A complex network of individuals and organizations with ties to the clerical regime in Tehran is pressing forward in seeming synchrony to influence the new U.S. administration’s policy towards the Islamic Republic of Iran. Spearheaded by a de facto partnership between the National Iranian-American Council (NIAC), the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and other organizations serving as mouthpieces for the mullahs’ party line, the network includes well-known American diplomats, congressional representatives, figures from academia and the think tank world.

This report documenting the rise of what can accurately be described as the “Iran Lobby” in Washington, D.C. is derived entirely from unclassified open sources and describes in detail the activities, linkages, and objectives of this alarming alliance between NIAC, CAIR and others that is aimed at co-opting America’s foreign policy in the Middle East and specifically with Iran. Understanding the involvement of the Tehran regime in the foundation and continuing activities of organizations like these and their allies will become increasingly important to understanding the extent of the regime’s influence on American foreign policy decisions regarding Iran.

As these organizations expand, multiply and, in the process, intensify their efforts to promote a shared and ominous agenda, it is imperative to recognize the role being played by what amount to their interlocking (or at least overlapping) boards of directors, donations from the same foundations and growing access to some key members of Congress and top levels of US policymaking circles.  Of special concern is the growing penetration of the Obama administration by a number of individuals with such associations.

To be sure, efforts at influencing U.S. decision-making are common among a host of legitimate interest groups, including many foreign countries. But in this context, where the guiding force behind such influence operations emanate from the senior-most levels of a regime like Iran’s – which holds the top spot on the State Department list of state-sponsors of terror, makes no secret of its hatred and enmity for the United States and its ally, Israel, and acts in myriad ways to support those who have assassinated, held hostage, kidnapped, killed and tortured American civilians and military personnel over a 30-year period – such operations must be viewed with serious concern.

Specifically, the de facto alliance between CAIR, one of the Muslim Brotherhood affiliates named by the U.S. Department of Justice as an unindicted co- conspirator in the 2007 and 2008 Holy Land Foundation trials, and groups such as NIAC and its predecessor, the American-Iranian Council (AIC), which long have functioned openly as apologists for the Iranian regime, must arouse deep concern that U.S. national security policy is being successfully targeted by Jihadist entities hostile to American interests.

Background

This paper is meant to provide a Who’s Who-style catalogue of the organizations and individuals associated with the Iran Lobby in America.  Some of the most influential figures involved are surely witting that their actions serve to support the objectives of the mullahs in Tehran, while others may not realize that their actions inevitably result in such consequences. Either way, the group as a whole is openly portrayed in the Iranian media as the regime’s “Iranian lobby” in the United States.1

Some of these entities also share another connection – to Iranian and international business interests, especially in the oil industry. Whatever their differences, the members of the Iran lobby have one thing in common: They insist that the United States must adopt a new policy towards Iran of conciliatory negotiations without preconditions. 

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Honest Obama & Iran

In his first week and a half in office, US President Barack Obama has proven that he is a man of his word. For instance, he was not bluffing when he said during his campaign that he would make reconstituting America’s relations with the Islamic world one of his first priorities in office.

Obama’s first phone call to a foreign leader was to PLO chieftain Mahmoud Abbas last Wednesday morning. And this past Tuesday, Obama gave his first television interview as president to the Al-Arabiya pan-Arabic television network.

In that interview Obama explained the rationale of his approach to the Muslim world.

"We are looking at the region as a whole and communicating a message to the Arab world and the Muslim world, that we are ready to initiate a new partnership based on mutual respect and mutual interest," the new president said.

Obama distanced his administration from its predecessor by asserting that rather than dictate how Muslims should behave, his administration plans "to listen, set aside some of the preconceptions that have existed and have built up over the last several years. And I think if we do that, then there’s a possibility at least of achieving some breakthroughs."

In short, Obama argues that the root of the Islamic world’s opposition to the US is its shattered confidence in America’s intentions. By following a policy of contrition for Bush’s "cowboy diplomacy," and acting with deference in its dealing with the Muslim world, in his view, a new era of US-Islamic relations will ensue.

Obama’s honesty was a hot subject during the presidential campaign. Many analysts claimed that he was a closet moderate who only made far-left pronouncements about "spreading the wealth around," and about meeting with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "without preconditions," to mollify his far-left partisan base.

Others argued that Obama was a man of his word. From his voting records in the Illinois Senate and the US Senate, and in light of his long associations with domestic and foreign policy radicals, these commentators predicted that if elected, Obama’s policies would be far to the left of center.

Judging by his actions since entering office last week, it appears that the latter group of analysts was correct. Obama is not a panderer.

Between his $819 billion economic "stimulus" package, which involves a massive intrusion by federal government on the free market; his decision to close the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay; his dispatch of former senator George Mitchell to the Middle East to begin pushing for a Palestinian state two weeks before Israel’s general elections; his announcement that he will begin withdrawing American forces from Iraq; his repeated signaling that the US will no longer treat the fight against Islamic terrorism as a war; and his attempts to engineer a diplomatic rapprochement with Iran, Obama has shown that his policy pronouncements on the campaign trail were serious. The policies he outlined are the policies with which he intends to govern.

ON A strategic level, the most significant campaign promise that Obama is wasting no time in keeping is his attempt to diplomatically engage with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Teheran is the central sponsor of the global jihad. Hizbullah, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are all Iranian proxies. And, as is becoming increasingly undeniable, al-Qaida too enjoys a close relationship with the mullahs.

The 9/11 Commission’s final report noted that several of the September 11 hijackers transited Iran en route to the US. And in recent weeks we learned that after spending the past six years in Iran, where he played a major role in directing the insurgency in Iraq, Osama bin Laden’s eldest son Sa’ad has moved to Pakistan.

Beyond its sponsorship of terrorism, due to its nuclear weapons program Iran is the largest emerging threat to global security. Together with its genocidal rhetoric against Israel, its calls for the destruction of the US, and its incitement for the overthrow of the governments of Egypt and Jordan, among others, Iran is the single largest source of instability in the region. Moreover, as US Defense Secretary Robert Gates made clear in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday, Iran is working actively in South and Central America to destabilize the western hemisphere.

Obama caused an uproar when during a Democratic primary debate last spring he said that he would meet with Ahmadinejad without preconditions. In subsequent months, he sought to soften his declaration. It is now apparent that his statement was not a slip of the tongue. It was a pledge.

The Iranians, for their part, have reacted to the new president with a mixture of relief and contempt. On November 6, two days after the US election, Ahmadinejad sent a congratulatory letter to Obama. Ahmadinejad’s letter was considered a triumph for Obama’s conciliatory posture by the American and European media. But actually, it was no such thing. Ahmadinejad’s letter was nothing more than a set of demands, much like those he had set out in a letter to then-president George W. Bush in 2006.

In his missive to Obama, Ahmadinejad laid out Iranian preconditions for a diplomatic engagement with America. Among other things, Ahmadinejad demanded that the US send all its military forces back to America. As he put it, the US should "keep its interventions within its own country’s borders."

Ahmadinejad further hinted that the US should end its support for Israel and withdraw its forces from Iraq and Afghanistan. In his words, "In the sensitive Middle East region… the expectation is that the unjust [US] actions of the past 60 years [since Israel was established] will give way to a policy encouraging the full rights of all nations, especially the oppressed nations of Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan."

The Western media made much of the fact that some conservative press organs in Iran condemned Ahmadinejad for sending the letter. They claimed that this meant that Ahmadinejad himself was tempering his animosity toward the US in the wake of Obama’s election. But in fact, most of the conservative media in Iran viewed the letter as an attack on Obama, whom they attacked with racial slurs.

The Sobh-e Sadegh weekly, published by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and controlled by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, wrote in an editorial on November 10 that negotiations with Obama would only be worthwhile if "coexistence with a nuclear Iran and acceptance of its regional role are part of the US negotiating position."

On November 11, the Borna News Agency, which is aligned with Ahmadinejad, called Obama "a house slave."

In general, Iran’s government-controlled media outlets reported that Ahmadinejad’s letter was an ultimatum and that if Obama did not submit to his demands, the US would be destroyed.

This week Ahmadinejad made Teheran’s preconditions for negotiations even more explicit. In statements at a political rally on Tuesday, and in a television interview given by his adviser on Wednesday, Ahmadinejad said that Iran has two conditions for engaging Washington. First, the US must abandon its alliance with Israel. In his words, to have relations with Iran, the US must first "stop supporting the Zionists, outlaws and criminals."

The second condition was communicated Wednesday by Ahmadinejad’s adviser Ali Akbar Javanfekr. Echoing Sobh-e Sadegh’s editorial, Javanfekr said Iran refuses to stop its nuclear activities.

Notably, also on Wednesday, the US-based International Institute for Strategic Studies released a report concluding that Iran will have a sufficient quantity of highly enriched uranium to make an atomic bomb in a matter of months.

To summarize, Iran’s conditions for meeting with the Obama administration are that the US abandon Israel (which as Ahmadinejad reiterated at his annual Holocaust denial conference on Tuesday, must be annihilated), and that Obama take no action whatsoever against Iran’s nuclear program.

FOR ITS part, the Obama administration is signaling that Iran’s conditions haven’t swayed it from its path toward a diplomatic engagement of the mullahs. In her first statement as US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice said Tuesday, "We look forward to engaging in vigorous diplomacy that includes direct diplomacy with Iran."

And in his Al-Arabiya interview, Obama implied that the US may be willing to overlook Teheran’s support for terrorism when he referred to Iran’s "past" support for terrorist organizations. Obama placed a past tense modifier on Iranian sponsorship of terrorism even through just last week a US Navy ship intercepted an Iranian vessel smuggling arms to Hamas in Gaza in the Red Sea. Due to an absence of political authorization to seize the Iranian ship, the US Navy was compelled to permit it to sail on to Syria.

The most sympathetic interpretation of Obama’s desire to move ahead with diplomatic engagement in spite of the mullocracy’s preconditions is that he has simply failed to countenance the significance of Iran’s demands. This means that Obama remains convinced that the US is indeed to blame for the supposed crisis of confidence that the Islamic world suffers from in its dealings with America. By this reasoning, it is for the US, not for Teheran, to show its sincerity, because the US, rather than Teheran, is to blame for the dismal state of relations prevailing between the two countries.

If in fact Obama truly intends to move ahead with his plan to engage the mullahs, then he will effectively legitimize – if not adopt – Teheran’s preconditions that the US end its alliance with Israel, which Iran seeks to destroy, and accept a nuclear-armed Iran. And under these circumstances, Israel’s next government – which all opinion polls conclude will be led by Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu – will have to adopt certain policies.

First, in keeping with his campaign rhetoric, Netanyahu will have to make preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons his most urgent priority upon entering office.

And second, to withstand US pressure to allow the Obama administration time to develop its ties with Teheran, (time that Iran will use to build its first nuclear bomb), Netanyahu will need to form as large and wide a governing coalition as possible. All issues that divide the Israeli electorate between Right and Left must be temporarily set aside.

In the age of Honest Obama, Israel is alone in recognizing the necessity of preventing Iran from acquiring the means to destroy the Jewish state. Consequently, Netanyahu’s government will need to proceed with all deliberate speed to take whatever actions are necessary to prevent Israel’s destruction.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

A more inconvenient truth

By Jonathan Altman

On July 21st, the United States military formally handed over the province of Qadasiyah to the Iraqi government, marking the 10th of Iraq’s 18 provinces given over to the Maliki government. In fact, over the past year several such turnovers have occurred, with 6 more scheduled by January. At the same time, violence across the country has dropped to its lowest levels ever; prompting General Petraeus to remark that in some areas of the country violence seemed to be "latent". Even Al-Anbar, once the Iraqi equivalent of the American "Wild West", has been pacified enough to be given over to the Iraqi government. What then has happened to the "war without end" so eloquently described by Barack Obama and other doves? Surely we can all remember that even as recently as one year ago, Iraq was a "quagmire" with no end in site. In fact, Obama and other liberal members of Congress opposed the very plan, extensively supported by the experts at the Department of Defense, General Petraeus, and Senator McCain which has led to this resounding success: the surge.

Currently, U.S. and Iraqi Ground Forces are involved in one of the major last offensives they may have to make, wiping out the remnants of the once mighty Al Qaeda organization in Iraq in Diyala province (scheduled to be turned over in a few months.) This area has increasing been referred to in the press as one of the last strongholds of the insurgency in the country; clearly it is on its last legs. Yet even now, as the tremendous wisdom of the surge of 2007 (whose members are already largely stateside) and the implementation of true counterinsurgency warfare rings true, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama continues to refuse to acknowledge the obvious. As his voting record shows, Mr. Obama vociferously opposed all troop increases in Iraq, against the better judgment of those actually brave enough to put on the uniform, rather than writing about international law from the plush offices of Harvard Law Review. Senator Obama’s recent whirlwind tour of the world is a convenient attempt to distort the facts: Mr. Obama’s foreign policy experience is not only sorely lacking (which one cannot say about Senator McCain,) but clearly is misguided, pushing the love-all policies of Carter that led to the botched Iranian hostage crisis rescue as opposed to rooting himself in any kind of reality. Furthermore, Senator Obama deserves no credit for his withdrawal timetable as it essentially mirrors what the military was going to follow anyway; as a direct of the surge he thoroughly opposed. If Mr. Obama’s misunderstanding of the surge is not enough to discredit his foreign policy in and of itself, one need only look to his views on Afghanistan for further evidence of incompetence.

Senator Obama, along with some of his chief foreign policy advisors, have begun pushing for an "Afghanistan First" strategy, suggesting that they would redeploy two brigades from Iraq to Afghanistan in a sort of "mini-surge" (oh the irony!). However, as Victor Davis Hansson correctly points out in a recent Washington Times op-ed, the problems we’re seeing in Afghanistan don’t originate there. Instead, the problems stem from a Pakistani intelligence service playing both sides of the fence, which even the United States government has acknowledged, while an incompetent Pakistani government fails to shut down Al Qaeda’s bases in the FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas) region of Pakistan. What we need to pacify Afghanistan is to clean out the lawless tribal regions of Pakistan, not a meaningless increase in troops at a level too low to actually take the fight to the Taliban. Moreover, despite the naïve message of the Obama campaign that diplomacy trumps all, every diplomatic effort to eradicate the FATA problem has thus far failed. As Afghanistani President Hamid Karzai has suggested, the time has come for a military option, something that feel-good Barack Obama surely has no stomach for.

We must be fair in our assessment however; no candidate decides his own foreign policy, at least not for the most part. Like Senator McCain, Senator Obama too has a dedicated team (some report as many as 300 strong) that directs his foreign policy stances. Out of considerations of length, an in depth study of a just the key players shall have to suffice. Broadly, Mr. Obama’s team can be divided into three groups. The first of these are the dinosaurs of the team; former Carter appointees Zbigniew Brzezinski, Susan Rice and Anthony Lake. Aside from downgrading our military production to dangerous levels while in office, these three people were also part of the staff that oversaw the lowest retention rates in military history, as well as dozens of diplomatic failures. Brzezinski, Rice and Lake are long past their expiration dates; we’ve all seen where Carter’s naivety got us and would be foolish to welcome another disastrous crack at it. The second Obama foreign policy group consists of a younger crowd, notably Joseph Cirincione and Lawrence Korb of the Center for American Progress. This group can be characterized as nothing more than idealists, or peaceniks as they’ve been formerly called. They’d like to see environmental programs funded with defense money, and redirect our soldiers to countless humanitarian interventions rather than defending the United States and its interests. Finally, Senator Obama employs a third group of foreign policy advisors, typified by lawyer Samantha Power, a noted U.N. activist. This group completes the trifecta of destruction that is the Obama foreign policy team, encouraging the loss of our sovereignty and unwavering support of the U.N.

In sum then, judging by his advisors and positions on Iraq and Afghanistan, we should know exactly what to expect from an Obama presidency; drastic defense cuts, a large drop in American military prestige, failure to wipe out Al Qaeda, humanitarian efforts above security, and the Carteresque foolishness of the late 1970s reiterated. The only bright spot in all this is that the huge foreign policy mistakes Obama would make as president would likely preclude any chance of his reelection, at least among a sane voting bloc.

 

 

Carter 2.0

It isn’t too early to project what an Obama Administration might look like, at least in terms of its foreign/national security policy. He has a track record in the Senate, and now statements on the campaign trail, but most important is a constellation of advisers who — even as it is in flux in anticipation of the general election and beyond that, the possible formation of a new Administration — point to an identifiable philosophy that reveals a bit more than his thin record, or his antiseptic speeches and position papers.

Obama’s group of foreign policy staff and advisers may, like Gaul, be divided into three parts: the young and inexperienced, retreads from the Carter and Clinton Administrations, and the, shall we say, usual suspects — the floating, independent gray matter from liberal universities and think tanks. [More]

There are necessarily differences in their views, but with appropriate caveats about generalizations, all of them are behind a collective vision that may be the most left-wing since the craven days of George McGovern. They are refugees: most of them from a well-trod path of disappointment and failure; a path, no doubt, paved with good intentions but especially dangerous– as the 60s generation may finally have the executive power of the presidency powerfully sustained by control of both Houses of Congress.

This is not your father’s Democratic Party of optimistic, pro-American, gimlet-eyed Cold War liberals.

Despite his uplifting and optimistic rhetoric, many of Obama’s national security policies are crabbed, cringing or backward looking– the new face of the New Left.

Woulda’, shoulda’ and coulda’ is the mantra of Team Obama: if only the Bush Administration had been the Gore or Kerry Administration; or better, perhaps, the Carter Administration: Kumbaya, y’all.

Just a taster of those who have advised Obama on foreign policy should supply an adequate flavor. . . .

Among the gray eminences are Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s National Security Adviser and veteran of multiple failures in Iran; Lt. General Merrill McPeak (ret.), architect of premature Air Force retrenchment and unsuccessful change during the Clinton Administration; Lawrence Korb of the left wing, John Podesta-directed, George Soros-funded Center for American Progress; and Gregory Craig, aide to Ted Kennedy and yeasty Clinton partisan who defended the President following impeachment and worked to return Elian Gonzalez to Cuba.

Other senior advisers have included Anthony Lake, a Professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, and Dennis Ross, currently with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Their thinking isn’t necessarily to the conservative taste, but in all fairness it is within the pale of the loyal opposition, and they could just as easily serve some Republicans– as in fact both did: Ross with George H.W. Bush and Anthony Lake with Henry Kissinger.

Former Assistant Secretary of State Susan Rice, as well as the now-departed-but-likely-to-return Samantha Power– both apprentice members of the great and the good– are fondly known on the left for their emphasis on human rights, multilateralism and international institutions– the black hole of talk and inaction.

Among the lesser-known lights are Zbig’s son, Mark Brzezinski, a lawyer/lobbyist who blindly insists on negotiations with Iran; Richard Clarke, former terrorism czar who claimed the Bush Administration was indifferent to the threat of al Qaeda leading up to 9/11; and, Major General J. Scott Gration (ret.), CEO of African anti-poverty organization Millennium Villages, who has compared Obama to Nelson Mandela.

Also among those who have advised the tyro Illinois Senator are James Ludes, former national security policy adviser to Sen. John Kerry; Denis McDonough, of the Center for American Progress and former adviser to Sen. Tom Daschle; and Sarah Sewell, currently with Harvard’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy and former aide to Sandy Berger. Enough said.

Obama, then, has stocked up on advisers with what might be termed a ‘metrosexual’ foreign policy: an instinctive aversion to muscular use of American power, a forward foreign policy and the unilateral use of force. They lament the alleged deterioration of our reputation abroad, and generally favor humanitarian interventions over those that advance American political and economic interests.

As The Nation put it, Obama’s foreign policy advisors are “more likely to stress ‘soft power’ issues like human rights, global development and the dangers of failed states.”

It’s a group that has elevated wishful thinking to a policy. They generally believe that Saddam could have been contained; offer no coherent strategy for dealing with terrorism; maintain an almost mystical belief in the value of negotiations with tyrannies; favor the power of positive propaganda and “engagement”; and, are overly enthusiastic about disarmament, and international institutions and agreements.

Obama’s team tends to downplay the threat of Islamofascism, while overemphasizing the compromises on civil liberties that has come with war. They believe the Iraq War is a failure and are ready to scuttle away without regard for the future in the Arab Middle East. And they are distinctly chilly toward Israel, urging more concessions from the Jewish state and failing to see the true nature of her– and our– adversaries.

Obama’s advisers are prone to the superficial “solutions” offered by Jimmy Carter, either in the name of “realism” or naïve idealism. With a lack of intellectual and moral clarity about global threats and how the U.S. must respond, they are unable or unwilling to play the crucial deeper game. Their theories are largely untested, and too many of their failures– often the genesis of today’s challenges– have been obscured by a sympathetic press.

Obama needs to be judged by the company he keeps, whether it’s Pastor Jeremiah Wright, American terrorist Bill Ayres, or the flakes and failures among his national security policy advisers with disturbing track records who shelter behind his bright and shiny position papers, website and speeches.

Winston Churchill once said that the Americans always do the right thing– after they try every other alternative. In the days when Churchill was Britain’s Prime Minister, there was enough of a margin for error so that we almost always had another chance. But with 24 hour news cycles, a culture of opposition to authority and tradition in the West, and weapons of mass destruction in the hands of terrorists or apocalyptic fanatics, Obama and his advisors may not have that precious gift of more than one chance to get it right.

Right now, they look set to test Churchill’s proposition. Let’s hope they don’t test it to destruction.

Originally published in Human Events.

Douglas Stone is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Security Policy. He has a background in American and British 20th century political history, as well as Middle Eastern affairs.

 

The audacity of truth

It is hard to believe, but in just two weeks, American voters will all but determine the identities of the Democratic and Republican nominees for this year’s presidential elections. It is hard to believe because today, after a handful of early primaries, neither side has even identified a frontrunner.

The open race, unprecedented in recent history, is a consequence of the fragmentation of America’s political center. Ten years after Bill Clinton’s impeachment; seven years after President George W. Bush’s contested victory in 2000; and five years into the Iraq campaign, the cleavages both between the two major parties and within them have given purchase to candidates and policies that would have previously never made it out of the starting gate.

[On the Republican side, this phenomenon is being played out in the campaigns of Congressman Ron Paul and Governor Mike Huckabee. On the Democratic side of the aisle, it is manifested in Senator Barack Obama’s campaign.

Last Saturday Congressman Paul placed second in the Nevada primaries with 14 percent of the vote. Paul, who has raised some $20 million in three months, owes much of his mainstream support on both the Left and the Right to his pointed opposition to the war in Iraq. At the same time, his campaign’s quest for mainstream respectability has been stymied repeatedly by the fact that neo-Nazi Web sites have embraced Paul’s candidacy.

Paul’s showing in Nevada was particularly impressive because a week before the Nevada primaries, James Kirchick of the New Republic published an in-depth investigative report on Paul’s ideological background which showed that the neo-Nazis’ support for him is not unjustified. Kirchick’s report was based on a study of some three decades worth of mass-mailing political reports that have been published under Paul’s name.

Kirchick’s report, "Angry White Man" showed that between Paul’s newsletters – whose articles are generally unsigned – and his public statements, there are strong indications that Paul shares the white supremacists’ hatred of blacks, Jews and homosexuals. Moreover, Paul has spoken in warm support for the slave-owning Confederacy and the militia men who believe they must defend themselves against the Federal government and a web of global governance conspirators. He has also praised former Ku Klux Klan Imperial Wizard David Duke.

Before Kirchick’s report, Paul outpolled Giuliani threefold in the early primary states. And after the report, he had his best showing to date in Nevada.

Less shocking, but still depressing is the candidacy of former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee. Huckabee, a former Baptist preacher is running an almost purely sectoral campaign for the evangelical vote.

Huckabee targets evangelicals by calling for the strengthening of America’s Christian identity. Interestingly, in his bid for Christian support, Huckabee has not embraced evangelical advocacy of hawkish foreign policies and defense of Christian communities in the Muslim world. To the contrary, like former president Jimmy Carter, Huckabee advocates an emasculated foreign policy based on being nice to other countries. He likens disputes with foreign countries to family squabbles that can be solved by better communications. Following from this, Huckabee claims that America’s problems with Iran are the result of America’s lack of diplomatic relations with Iran.

To date, Huckabee won the Iowa caucuses, and has achieved strong second and third places in the other primary states. He lost South Carolina to Senator John McCain by a mere three points. But he doesn’t appear to be made to last. His appeal to non-evangelical voters is almost nonexistent and without non-evangelical supporters, he has no chance of winning the Republican nomination.

In contrast to Paul and Huckabee, Barack Obama has a good chance of securing his party’s nomination for president and winning the general election. And this is disturbing because like Paul, he enjoys the support of hateful bigots. And like Paul and Huckabee, he holds foreign policy positions which are based on the notion that the global jihad is not a serious threat.

Although the rumors that Obama – whose father and step-father were Muslims and who was educated in Muslim schools in Indonesia – is a Muslim are demonstrably false, his Christian affiliations are a cause for alarm in and of themselves.

Obama belongs to the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. Its minister and Obama’s spiritual adviser is Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr.

In an investigative report on Obama published last week by the American Thinker Web site, Ed Lasky documented multiple examples of Wright’s anti-Jewish and anti-white animus. Wright has called for divestment from Israel and refers to Israel as a "racist" state. Theologically, he believes that the true "Chosen People" are the blacks. Indeed, he is a black supremacist. He believes that black values are superior to middle class American values and that blacks should isolate themselves from the wider American society.

Wright is a long-time friend of the virulently anti-Semitic head of the Nation of Islam – fellow Chicagoan Louis Farrakhan. The two traveled together to Libya some years ago to pay homage to Muammar Gaddafi. Last year Wright presented Farrakhan with a "Lifetime Achievement" award.

Although last week Obama issued a statement condemning Farrakhan for his anti-Semitism, he did not disavow Wright – who married him and baptized his daughters. Obama has taken no steps to moderate his church’s anti-Israel invective.

Obama’s affiliation with Wright aligns with his choice of financial backers and foreign policy advisors. To varying degrees, all of them exhibit hostility towards Israel and support for appeasing jihadists.

As Lasky notes, Obama has received generous support from billionaire George Soros. In recent years, Soros has devoted himself to replacing politicians who support fighting the forces of global terror and supporting Israel with politicians who support appeasing jihadists and dumping Israel.

As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Obama opposed defining Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist group. He calls for the US to withdraw from Iraq – only to return if genocide is being carried out and then, only as part of an international force. He also supports opening negotiations with Iran even if the Iranians continue to enrich uranium. In forming these views, he is assisted by his foreign policy team which includes Zbigniew Brzezinski, Mark Brzezinski, Anthony Lake, Susan Rice and Robert Malley.

All of these people are known either for their anti-Israel views or their pro-Arab views – or both. Malley, a Palestinian apologist invented and propagated the false claim that the 2000 Camp David summit between the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and then prime minister Ehud Barak failed because Israel wasn’t serious about giving the Palestinians a state. This view is disputed by Barak and Clinton.

For her part, as chief foreign policy advisor to Senator John Kerry during the 2004 presidential elections, Susan Rice reportedly convinced Kerry to announce that if elected he would appoint Jimmy Carter and James Baker to serve as his envoys for Middle East peace.

Mark Brzezinski has openly called for unconditional negotiations with Iran. For more than 30 years, Zbigniew Brzezinski has distinguished himself as one of Israel’s greatest foes in Washington.

Unfortunately, in the anti-war frenzy now gripping much of the Democratic Party, one could say that there is nothing notable about the fact that Obama has hired anti-Israel foreign policy advisors, attends an anti-Israel church, and receives financial backing from anti-Israel billionaires. But even in this atmosphere Obama stands out – for not only does he theoretically support appeasement, he is actively advancing the interests of Islamists seeking to take control over a state allied with the US.

Kenya currently teeters at the edge of political chaos and civil war in the wake of the disputed Dec. 27 presidential elections. Those elections pitted incumbent President Mwai Kibaki against Raila Odinga who leads the Orange Democratic Movement. While the polls showed the public favoring Odinga, Kibaki was declared the winner. Odinga rejected the results and his supporters have gone on rampages throughout the country that have killed some 700 people so far. Fifty people were murdered when a pro-Odinga mob set ablaze a church in which they were hiding.

Kibaki is close ally of the US in the war against Islamic terror. In stark contrast, Odinga is an ally of Islamic extremists. On August 29 Odinga wrote a letter to Kenya’s pro-jihadist National Muslim Leaders Forum. There he pledged that if elected he would establish Sharia courts throughout the country; enact Islamic dress codes for women; ban alcohol and pork; indoctrinate schoolchildren in the tenets of Islam; ban Christian missionary activities, and dismiss the police commissioner, "Who has allowed himself to be used by heathens and Zionists."

Although Odinga is an Anglican, he referred to Islam as the "one true religion" and scorned Christians as "worshipers of the cross." Obama strongly supports Odinga who claims to be his cousin. As Daniel Johnson reported recently in the New York Sun, during his 2006 visit to Kenya, Obama was so outspoken in his support for Odinga that the Kenyan government complained to the State Department that Obama was interfering with the internal politics of the country. After the Dec. 27 elections Obama interrupted a campaign appearance in New Hampshire to take a call from Odinga.

The past 10 years have not been good ones for the American political landscape. And in times of acrimony and fragmentation, people tend to vote their prejudices. The candidacies of Paul, Huckabee and Obama are testimonies to this fact.

It can only be hoped that in the coming weeks and months ahead of the presidential election, the political center of American politics will reassert itself and that the final race will be between leaders who abjure bigotry and understand that foreign policy is neither about minding your business nor being polite. It is about opposing enemies, supporting allies and knowing the difference between them.