Tag Archives: Syria

The Obama Doctrine?

If President Barack Obama was serious last week when he addressed the United Nations, then he just quietly declared war on the First Amendment.  If he was not serious, then he is pandering to murderous mobs who demanded that he denounce an obscure YouTube video critical of their faith.

The New York Times portrayed [1] Obama’s remarks as a strong defense of free speech and a challenge to Arab leaders to reform. If only that were true.

Looking at the actual words Obama used reveals what could be called the “Obama Doctrine”– where the U.S. constitution does not permit the president to restrict speech before it is spoken, the president will punish speech, after the fact, by marginalizing the speaker.

“[I]t is the obligation of all leaders, in all countries, to speak out forcefully against violence and extremism. It is time to marginalize those who — even when not directly resorting to violence — use hatred … as a central organizing principle of politics,” Obama said.

Later in his speech, Obama offered an example of those whose opinions should be marginalized:   “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam. Yet to be credible, those who condemn that slander must also condemn the hate we see in the images of Jesus Christ that are desecrated…”

“Slander” is speech.  “Hate” usually takes the form of speech, too.  Is Obama calling on world leaders to join him in ridiculing non-violent people whose speech he does not like?  Or by “marginalization” does he mean something worse than tough words from the bully pulpit?

Obama’s new doctrine is frightening in two senses.  His call to “marginalize” those who “slander” or “hate” encourages the autocrats of Iran, Syria, and other regimes to punish dissidents while also threatening to shrink the free speech rights of Americans.

Continue reading…

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 Importance of the War of Ideas

As anti-American feelings are being cultivated in large parts of Latin America, not much attention is being paid to the potential consequences that this may eventually have.

Propaganda is easy to dismiss as non-sense. But propaganda can unfortunately work. It is sometimes easy for those who are better informed to disregard propaganda as being the work of fanatics whose discourse is so ridiculous that nobody in his right mind would take it seriously.  Yet, the effects of propaganda are manifold. Often information that distorts reality can have harmful repercussions.

This is because when something is repeated so many times, there is always the risk that such lies might perpetuate themselves. Since many governments in the region are left-wing regardless of whether they are extreme or moderate, anti-American prejudice is omnipresent. Many on the left believe in the theory of dependency, a notion that views economic development among advanced countries as being made possible by the exploitation of raw materials in the Third World. As the theory goes it is a zero sum game where Third World countries, including those in Latin America, have always been the losers.

There is also resentment over past American actions, particularly during the Cold War, where the U.S. supported right wing anti-communist dictatorships that often ended up violating human rights.

These widespread anti-American feelings have real consequences.  For example, Chavez’s love for Iran has not been limited to him and his allies in the ALBA group. Former Brazilian President Luis Inazio “Lula” Da Silva, considered to be a moderate, took the lead in trying to reach a compromise on Iran’s nuclear program that would have released the latter from any commitment to stop the program. Lula also received Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Brazil. Another so-called moderate leader, Uruguayan president Jose Mujica spoke about the special relations with Iran because Iran purchases Uruguayan rice. However, it was not merely a relation of convenience. A delegation from the Uruguayan Congress visited Iran with its president leading the visit.

Indeed, Iran has turned into a symbol of expressing anti-American feelings and repudiation of historical American influence throughout the continent. Mujica, himself, echoing Chavez called the current period a “second independence”. The government of Argentina, the third largest country in the region, has also an anti-imperialist discourse that even if it is not as blunt as the one conveyed by the Venezuelan leader, is still there. Argentinean president, Cristina Kirchner in the last conference of the Latin American and Caribbean Community of States (CELAC), referred to the problem of drug trafficking as follows: “the cause of the world’s problems has to do with those countries that have veto power in the international community and impose the rules by force”. With regard to drug trafficking she said that the “dead people are Latin Americans but the money is collected by somebody else”. President Kirchner suggested that money is being laundered in first World banks and thus she concluded that even drug trafficking benefits the First world.

This is a clear display of a political war or a war of ideas. What is worse, these ideas also influence those who are more moderate in their thinking.

In the case of anti-American propaganda there are also a set of circumstances that make the situation worse. There is a general perception of American decline as new powers emerge in the world competition. China is a case in point. China, as a relatively new player in the region, is seen by many in Latin America as a rising power with an economy that may soon overtake that of the United States. For those on the extreme left, China is a much more desirable trading partner because it is seen as being in competition with the U.S.  In spite of one’s political leanings, China is viewed favorably as a major purchaser of Latin American goods and as such having significantly contributed to the region’s growth.

The prospect of an “American defeat” has raised the euphoria of those like Chavez who want to see “the empire” collapse. But this has also been the source of rejoicing for less radical elements  in Latin America, including Lula whose tenure ended in 2010 and who with a smile on his face pointed out that the “recession is affecting the White American and European people”.

The influence that Chavez and his allies are having in regional forums such as the Organization of American States General Assembly (OAS), the Summit of the Americas, CELAC, and the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), has had the effect of increasing tolerance towards anti-American and anti-democratic ideas.

The reaction of the U.S. Government is to keep a low profile in regional forums and downplay the expansion of negative forces in the region. We are seeing American diplomats praising Latin American leaders in hyperbole, generals downplaying security threats and the presence of Iran and the president of the United States, himself, declaring that there is no security challenge coming from the South. The U.S. has been successfully forced to take a back seat in order not to aggravate this menace and even denying that there is such a menace.

But the United States does not get any reward for taking a back seat. The American attitude is perceived as a sign of weakness and therefore, anti-American hostility grows worse.

Weakness generates a morbid pleasure on the other side. It is always weakness that invites more violence because it makes it easier for the perpetrator to carry it out.

To make up for this weakness no military action is needed. It is a matter of communication and projecting a resolute attitude.

We have not properly countered this misinformation coming from Latin America.

The U.S. government has this capacity to communicate to an international audience but is not using it very effectively. Currently, the Voice of America is used to broadcast news not to try to influence hearts and minds. This situation is different than the one that existed prior to 1999 before the United States Information Agency (USIA) was disbanded. (Since then the Voice of America was made part of the State Department).

This is why those who understand the power of ideas need to speak out.

It should not only be up to the U.S. Government to engage in this war of ideas but the work of thinkers, think-tanks , scholars and journalists who understand the negative message that is incubating in Latin America.

It is important to spread the idea that tyrannies will inevitably lead to enslavement of people even if they are now showing some largesse and claim to speak for the poor. A tyranny will end up hurting the poor and the hungry as it has come to pass in Cuba where the initial emigration of the rich was quickly followed by the emigration of the poor due to the oppressive conditions that existed and continue to exist.

It is important to point out that the militias and para-military groups being created by regimes such as the Venezuelan regime are aimed at establishing full political and existential control of the population and not for the purpose of defending the poor. It is necessary to say that this revolution, as in most revolutionary socialist countries, will end up being a Satanic, patrimonial sort of regime where a few people will have the monopoly over economic and state resources and govern at the expense of civil society.  Some observers are already comparing the Ortega regime in Nicaragua with the decades long rule of the Somoza family.

It is also absolutely imperative to remind people that attacks against the judiciary are going to harm justice, in general. Likewise, attacks against the press will undermine the freedom of everyone, rich and poor alike.

It is also crucial to explain why the United States is a force for good.

Average Latin Americans including some non-leftists are not aware of the role the United States has played as an armed and economically powerful democracy. China may be a major buyer of Latin American goods but are we willing to live in societies dominated by oppressive elites as people live in China?

It must be made clear that if the power of America declines in the world, the alternative is not going to be another big democracy. When Great Britain ceased to be an empire and its power declined, the United States emerged as the new power. However, the United States was the continuation of Great Britain in so far as it was a mighty democracy.

Now there is no democratic alternative to the United States.  No big power will speak for freedom, with the exception of the European Union. If China or Russia gains strong international power, the status of freedom and human rights will diminish as well. Who will carry out a moral policy as the U.S. and its European allies did during the Bosnian and the Libyan crisis?

China and Russia have been staunch supporters of the tyranny of Bashar Al Assad in Syria. China is suspicious of democracy and democratic movements because its leadership fears the rise of a democratic movement in its territory. Therefore, it will tend to support tyranny.   It is no wonder that Hugo Chavez feels close and has encouraged relations with both China and Russia

We at the Menges Hemispheric Security Project have spoken in Spanish media outlets, including those in Venezuela, explaining the tyrannical nature of the Chavez regime, the role of the United States as a force for good and why it is important for the United States to participate in the war of ideas.

Left-wing governments and some people in Latin America are drunk with a sense of economic success. However, the continuation of future economic growth is as uncertain as the continuation of democracy.

In Latin America, the war of ideas is no less intense than the war within the Arab and Muslim world between the radicals and the moderates. We are taking the latter seriously, as it should be. However, we are taking the former lightly as it should not be.

The original article can be read here.

Shariah Law and American State Courts: An Assessment of State Appellate Court Cases

Introduction

Purview

This study evaluates published appellate legal cases that involved “conflict of law” issues between Shariah (Islamic law) and American state law. For every case in this sample drawn from published appellate legal cases, there are innumerable cases at the trial level that remain unnoticed except by the participants. Thus, this report is a only a sample of possible cases—a “tip of the iceberg”—of legal cases involving Shariah in local, state and federal courts.

Our findings suggest that Shariah law has entered into state court decisions, in conflict with the Constitution and state public policy. Some commentators have said there are no more than one or two cases of Shariah law in U.S. state court cases; yet we found 50 significant cases just from the small sample of appellate published cases. Others state with certainty that state court judges will always reject any foreign law, including Shariah law, when it conflicts with the Constitution or state public policy; yet we found 15 Trial Court cases, and 12 Appellate Court cases, where Shariah was found to be applicable in the case at bar. The facts are the facts: some judges are making decisions deferring to Shariah law even when those decisions conflict with Constitutional protections. This is a serious issue and should be a subject of public debate and engagement by policymakers.

Purpose

With the publication of this study and subsequent studies now in preparation, our objective is to encourage an informed, serious and civil public debate and policymakers’ engagement with the issue of Shariah law in the United States of America. This public debate is more urgent than ever before, as organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood and their
salafist coalition partners state openly their intent to impose the Shariah State and Shariah law as dominant across all Muslim majority countries. Institutionalized, authoritative Shariah doctrine is comprehensive and by definition without limit in its ambitions and scope. It includes legally mandated, recommended, permitted, discouraged and prohibited practices that are explicitly biased against women, homosexuals, non-Muslims, former Muslims and those designated as blasphemers.

United States universities and colleges are increasingly offering courses and specializations In Shariah law, including business schools, law schools and general courses. The academic study of all kinds of comparative law including Shariah is worthwhile; but in many cases, these courses may not provide full information on the conflicts between Shariah and Western legal traditions and values.

In addition, there are organizations and individuals within the United States actively and openly advocating for the establishment of Shariah law in America, especially for personal status and family law. A prominent one is the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America1 with more than 100 members including local Imams and Shariah authorities across America, as well as Shariah authorities from other countries. AMJA promotes the adherence to Shariah law when possible in all legal and civic activities by Muslim Americans, and in some cases, by non-Muslims.

Given these stated goals of AMJA and similar organizations, this study was conducted to discover the extent to which Shariah law had in fact entered U.S. state courts. News reports have identified individual cases of plaintiffs, defendants or judges citing Shariah or Islamic law. Many groups and individuals have raised concerns about state courts citing foreign and transnationalist laws and precedents, including Shariah law. The American Public Policy Alliance, a non-partisan organization that advocates for the Constitutionality of U.S. and state laws and public policies, has drafted the American Laws for American Courts Act (ALAC) to prevent enforcement of foreign legal decisions that violate Constitutional protections and liberties. That ALAC Act, which has passed in Tennessee, Louisiana and Arizona and to date has not been legally challenged on any grounds, was used as a methodological tool to define which Shariah-related cases in state courts were in conflict with the Constitution or state public policies.

1 Andrew Bostom and Al-Mutarjim, “Chairman King: Subpoena the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America,” Pajamas Media, March 1, 2011. http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/congressman-king-subpoena-the-assembly-of-muslim-jurists-of-america-amja/

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Israel faces the cynical world

This week a German doctor in Bavaria filed a criminal complaint against Rabbi David Goldberg.

Rabbi Goldberg’s “crime”? He performs ritual circumcisions on Jewish male infants in accordance with Jewish law.

The doctor’s complaint came shortly after a ruling by a court in Cologne outlawing the practice of male circumcision.

The Austrians and the Swiss also took the ruling to heart and have banned infant male circumcision in several hospitals in Switzerland as well as in the Austrian state of Vorarlberg. Denmark and Scandinavian governments are also considering limiting the practice of circumcision which has constituted one of the foundational rituals of Judaism for four thousand years.

Meanwhile, in Norway Dr. Anne Lindboe has come up with the perfect way out of the artificial crisis. Lindboe serves a Norway’s ombudsman for children’s rights. And she proposes that we Jews just change our religion to satisfy anti-Jewish sensitivities. She suggests we replace circumcision with “a symbolic, nonsurgical ritual.”

It’s worth mentioning that circumcision isn’t the only Jewish ritual these enlightened Europeans find objectionable. Sweden, Norway and Switzerland have already banned kosher slaughter.

Attacking circumcision isn’t just a European fetish. The urge to curb Jewish religious freedom has reached the US as well. Last year San Francisco’s Jewish Community Relations Council had to sue the city to strike a measure from last November’s ballot that would have banned circumcision if passed. The measure’s sponsor gathered the requisite 12,000 signatures to enter the proposition on the ballot. Circumcising males under the age of 18 would have been classified as a misdemeanor punishable by a $1,000 fine and up to a year in prison. Sponsors of the measure distributed anti-Semitic materials depicting rabbis performing circumcisions as villains.

The people involved in banning or attempting to ban circumcision are not on the political fringe of their societies. They are part of a leftist establishment. They are doctors and lawyers, judges and politicians. This doesn’t mean that all their fellow leftists are anti-Semites. But it does mean the political Left in the Western world feels comfortable keeping company with anti-Semites.

This state of affairs is even more striking in international affairs than in domestic politics. On the international level the Left’s readiness to rub elbows with anti-Semites has reached critical levels.

While the Europeans have long been happy to cater to the anti-Semitic whims of the Islamic world, the escalation of the West’s willingness to accept anti-Semitism as a governing axiom in international affairs is nowhere more apparent than in the Obama administration’s foreign policy.

And the American Left’s willingness – particularly the American Jewish Left’s willingness – to cover up the administration’s collusion with anti- Semitic regimes at Israel’s expense is higher today than ever before.

A clear-cut example of both the Obama administration’s willingness to adhere to anti- Semitic policies of anti-Semitic governments and the Left’s willingness to defend this bigoted behavior is the Obama administration’s decision not to invite Israel to participate in its new Global Counterterrorism Forum.

The GCTF was founded with the stated aim of fostering international cooperation in fighting terrorism. But for the Obama administration, it was more important to make Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan, who supports the Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist groups, feel comfortable, than it was to invite Israel to participate.

Not only did the US exclude Israel, at the GCTF’s meeting last month in Spain, Maria Otero, the State Department’s under secretary for civilian security, democracy and human rights, seemed to embrace the Muslim world’s obscene claim that Israelis are not victims of terrorism because terrorism against Israel isn’t terrorism.

In her speech, titled “Victims of Terrorism,” Otero spoke of terror victims in Jordan, Turkey, Pakistan, Uganda, Colombia, Northern Ireland, Indonesia, India and the US. But she made no mention of Israeli terror victims.

Rather than criticize the administration for its decision to appease bigots at the expense of their victim, American Jewish leftists have defended the administration. Writing in The Atlantic, Zvika Kreiger, senior vice president of the far-left S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace, wrote that allowing the Jewish state entry to the GCTF parley would have “undermined the whole endeavor.”

Kreiger sympathetically quoted a State Department official who explained that actually, by ostracizing Israel the administration was helping Israel.

The source “reasoned the progress made by the organization would ultimately better serve Israel’s interests (not to mention those of the United States) than would the symbolic benefits of including it in a group that likely wouldn’t accomplish anything. [Moreover]… once the organization was up and running, and its agenda was established, they could find ways to include Israel that would not be disruptive.”

So despite the fact that Israel is a major target of terrorism, and despite the fact that many of the states the US invited to its forum condone terrorism against Israel and support terrorist groups that murder Israeli Jews, Israel is better off being excluded, because the anti-Jewish governments invited by the Obama administration will somehow totally change their perspective on anti-Jewish terrorism as long as they don’t have to suffer the irritation of sitting in the same room as real-live representatives of the Jewish state.

THE CYNICISM of the State Department official’s statement to Kreiger is only outpaced by Kreiger’s stubborn refusal to acknowledge that cynicism.

Kreiger’s behavior makes sense. If he acknowledges the bigoted nature of the Obama administration’s policies he will have to stop defending them.

To a degree, Kreiger’s willingness to defend and justify the Obama administration’s anti-Israel behavior parallels the behavior of Israelis who argue against Israel unilaterally striking Iran’s nuclear facilities in order to delay the Iranian regime’s acquisition of nuclear weapons.

Since 2003, when Iran’s nuclear weapons program was first revealed to the world community, Iran’s leaders have succeeded in convincing world leaders that Israel is No. 1 on their target list. And so, the international debate about what a nuclear-armed Iran will mean for the world has always followed the Iranians’ lead and centered on the dangers it would pose to Israel.

Israel’s leaders from then-prime minister Ariel Sharon down to the last governmental spokesman have maintained that Iran’s nuclear program threatens the entire Free World. Sharon – like his leftist disciples today – claimed that given the threat Iran’s nuclear program constitutes for global security, Israel has no reason to lead the global fight to destroy Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Indeed, Israeli leadership of the campaign against Iran’s nuclear program would cause some countries to do nothing because they hate Israel even more than they fear Iran.

Like his followers today, Sharon insisted that the US, as the leader of the Free World, is responsible for preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. And they are right. Iran’s nuclear program does threaten global security and Iran’s nuclear program does threaten the US specifically. Iranian dictator Ali Khamenei just ordered his troops to carry out terror attacks against the US in retaliation for US moves to overthrow Iran’s Syrian puppet Bashar Assad. Iran was the principle sponsor of the insurgency in Iraq and remains the principle supporter of the Taliban in Afghanistan.

It’s not that Israel’s leaders belittle the threat Iran’s nuclear weapons program constitutes for Israel. Across the spectrum on the Iran debate in Israel – from former Mossad director Meir Dagan and President Shimon Peres on the Left to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak on the Right – everyone agrees that in light of the Iranian regime’s religious fanaticism and its millenarian belief that Armageddon will hearken the coming of the Shi’ite messiah, Iran cannot be trusted not to use nuclear weapons against Israel.

Everyone admits that given Iran’s open sponsorship of terrorism, it is a certainty that terror groups would use the Iranian nuclear umbrella to massively expand their terrorist war against Israel.

Just as Dagan, Peres and their associates share Netanyahu’s assessment of the threat Iran’s nuclear program poses for Israel, Netanyahu agrees with their assessment that Israel’s options for contending militarily with Iran’s nuclear program are limited and imperfect. No one argues that Israel has a magic bullet to destroy Iran’s nuclear project.

Netanyahu and Barak have repeatedly warned that Israel has no perfect strike option. They have also warned that a response from Iran and its proxies in Syria and Lebanon to an Israeli strike will likely be harsh and deadly. All they say is that it is better than the alternative of Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons.

The doves agree with Netanyahu that a limited Israeli strike is better than the alternative of a nuclear-armed Iran. They differ with Netanyahu on only one issue: their assessment of the US’s willingness to use military force to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power.

Voicing the doves’ assessment of the Obama administration and Europe, this week former commander of Military Intelligence Maj.-Gen. (res.) Aharon Zeevi Farkash told NBC news, “I think Western leaders realize a nuclear Iran is the No. 1 challenge facing the world.”

Unfortunately, Farkash is wrong. Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, made this point earlier this week in an interview from Afghanistan. There Dempsey said frankly, “Israel sees the Iranian threat more seriously than the US sees it, because a nuclear Iran poses a threat to Israel’s very existence.”

In other words, Dempsey told us that Iran’s cynical packaging of its nuclear program as an anti-Israel initiative has worked. The Americans – and the Europeans – believe that Iran’s nuclear program is Israel’s problem to deal with. The Israelis are right that as the leader of the Free World it is the US’s responsibility to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. But as Dempsey’s statement shows, the US is not interested in fulfilling its responsibility.

Like the Europeans, the Americans will only act when Iran forces them to do so. And that means they will do nothing to prevent Iran from developing the bomb. They will only move when Tehran has already crossed Israel off the top of its target list.

Israeli opponents of an Israeli strike against Iran don’t want to believe that Americans are capable of such cynicism. They would like to believe that the only government capable of behaving cynically is their own. They want to believe that the US – with its vastly superior military capabilities to destroy Iran’s nuclear program – will do the right thing and not leave it to Israel – with its limited means – to take care of the problem for a cynical world.

But just as Kreiger’s defense of the Obama administration’s courtship of anti-Semites at Israel’s expense crosses the line separating naivete from willful, bigotry-enabling blindness, so Peres, Dagan and their colleagues cross the line. And it is not mere bigotry they are enabling.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post. 

Who ‘Lost’ Egypt?

In 1949, the Communist takeover of China rattled the US foreign policy establishment to its core. China’s fall to Communism was correctly perceived as a massive strategic defeat for the US. The triumphant Mao Zedong placed China firmly in the Soviet camp and implemented foreign policies antithetical to US interests.

For the American foreign policy establishment, China’s fall forced a reconsideration of basic axioms of US foreign policy. Until China went Red, the view resonant among foreign policy specialists was that it was possible for the US to peacefully coexist and even be strategic allies with Communists.

With Mao’s embrace of Stalin this position was discredited. The US’s subsequent recognition that it was impossible for America to reach an accommodation with Communists served as the intellectual architecture of many of the strategies the US adopted for fighting the Cold War in the years that followed.

Today the main aspect of America’s response to China’s Communist revolution that is remembered is the vindictive political hunt for scapegoats. Foreign Service officers and journalists who had advised the US government to support Mao and the Communists against Chiang Kai Shek and the Nationalists were attacked as traitors.

But while the “Red Scare” is what is most remembered about that period, the most significant consequence of the rise of Communist China was the impact it had on the US’s understanding of the nature of Communist forces. Even Theodore White, perhaps the most prominent journalist who championed Mao and the Communists, later acknowledged that he had been duped by their propaganda machine into believing that Mao and his comrades were interested in an alliance with the US.

As Joyce Hoffmann exposed in her book Theodore White and Journalism as Illusion, White acknowledged that his wartime report from Mao’s headquarters in Yenan praising the Communists as willing allies of the US who sought friendship, “not as a beggar seeks charity, but seeks aid in furthering a joint cause,” was completely false.

As he wrote, the report was “winged with hope and passion that were entirely unreal.”

What he had been shown in Yenan, Hoffmann quotes White as having written, was “the showcase of democratic art pieces they (the Communists) staged for us American correspondents [and] was literally, only showcase stuff.”

Contrast the US’s acceptance of failure in China in 1949, and its willingness to learn the lessons of its loss of China, with the US’s denial of its failure and loss of Egypt today.

On Sunday, new President Mohamed Morsy completed Egypt’s transformation into an Islamist state. In the space of one week, Morsy sacked the commanders of the Egyptian military and replaced them with Muslim Brotherhood loyalists, and fired all the editors of the state-owned media and replaced them with Muslim Brotherhood loyalists.

He also implemented a policy of intimidation, censorship and closure of independently owned media organizations that dare to publish criticism of him.

Morsy revoked the military’s constitutional role in setting the foreign and military policies of Egypt. But he maintained the junta’s court-backed decision to disband the parliament. In so doing, Morsy gave himself full control over the writing of Egypt’s new constitution.

As former ambassador to Egypt Zvi Mazel wrote Tuesday in The Jerusalem Post, Morsy’s moves mean that he “now holds dictatorial powers surpassing by far those of erstwhile president Hosni Mubarak.”

In other words, Morsy’s actions have transformed Egypt from a military dictatorship into an Islamist dictatorship.

The impact on Egypt’s foreign policy of Morsy’s seizure of power is already becoming clear. On Monday, Al-Masri al-Youm quoted Mohamed Gadallah, Morsy’s legal adviser, saying that Morsy is considering revising the peace accord with Israel. Gadallah explained that Morsy intends to “ensure Egypt’s full sovereignty and control over every inch of Sinai.”

In other words, Morsy intends to remilitarize Sinai and so render the Egyptian military a clear and present threat to Israel’s security. Indeed, according to Haaretz, Egypt has already breached the peace accord and deployed forces and heavy weaponry to Sinai without Israeli permission.

The rapidity of Morsy’s moves has surprised most observers. But more surprising than his moves is the US response to his moves.

For instance, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, one administration official dismissed the significance of Morsy’s purge of the military brass, saying, “What I think this is, frankly, is Morsy looking for a generational change in military leadership.”

The Journal reported that Egypt’s new defense minister, Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sissi, is known as a Muslim Brotherhood sympathizer. But the Obama administration quickly dismissed the reports as mere rumors with no significance. Sissi, administration sources told the Journal, ate dinner with US President Barack Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser John Brennan during Brennan’s visit to Cairo last October. Aside from that, they say, people are always claiming that Morsy’s appointments have ties to Morsy’s Muslim Brotherhood.

A slightly less rose-colored assessment came from Steven Cook in Foreign Affairs. According to Cook, at worst, Morsy’s move was probably nothing more than a present-day reenactment of Gamal Abel Nasser’s decision to move Egypt away from the West and into the Soviet camp in 1954.

Most likely, Cook argued, Morsy was simply doing what Sadat did when in 1971 he fired other generals with whom he had been forced to share power when he first succeeded Nasser in 1969.

Certainly the Nasser and Sadat analogies are pertinent. But while properly citing them, Cook failed to explain what those analogies tell us about the significance of Morsy’s actions. He drew the dots but failed to see the shape they make.

Morsy’s Islamism, like Mao’s Communism, is inherently hostile to the US and its allies and interests in the Middle East. Consequently, Morsy’s strategic repositioning of Egypt as an Islamist country means that Egypt – which has served as the anchor of the US alliance system in the Arab world for 30 years – is setting aside its alliance with the US and looking toward reassuming the role of regional bully.

Egypt is on the fast track to reinstating its war against Israel and threatening international shipping in the Suez Canal. And as an Islamist state, Egypt will certainly seek to export its Islamic revolution to other countries. No doubt fear of this prospect is what prompted Saudi Arabia to begin showering Egypt with billions of dollars in aid.

It should be recalled that the Saudis so feared the rise of a Muslim Brotherhood-ruled Egypt that in February 2011, when US President Barack Obama was publicly ordering then-president Hosni Mubarak to abdicate power immediately, Saudi leaders were beseeching him to defy Obama. They promised Mubarak unlimited financial support for Egypt if he agreed to cling to power.

The US’s astounding sanguinity in the face of Morsy’s completion of the Islamization of Egypt is an illustration of everything that is wrong and dangerous about US Middle East policy today.

Take US policy toward Syria.

Syria is in possession of one of the largest arsenals of chemical and biological weapons in the world. The barbarism with which the regime is murdering its opponents is a daily reminder – indeed a flashing neon warning sign – that Syria’s nonconventional arsenal constitutes a clear and present danger to international security. And yet, the Obama administration insists on viewing Syrian President Bashar Assad’s murderous behavior as if it were a garden variety human rights crisis.

During her visit with Turkey’s Islamist Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu last Saturday, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton didn’t even mention the issue of Syria’s chemical and biological weapons. Instead she continued to back Turkey’s sponsorship of the Islamist-dominated opposition and said that the US would be working with Turkey to put together new ways to help the Islamist opposition overthrow Assad’s regime.

Among other things, she did not rule out the imposition of a no-fly zone over Syria.

The party most likely to be harmed from such a move would be Israel, which would lose its ability to bomb Syrian weapons of mass destruction sites from the air.

Then of course, there is Iran and its openly genocidal nuclear weapons program. This weekThe New York Times reported a new twist in the Obama administration’s strategy for managing this threat. It is trying to convince the Persian Gulf states to accept advanced missile defense systems from the US.

This new policy makes clear that the Obama administration has no intention of preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power. Its actions on the ground are aimed instead at accomplishing two goals: convincing Iran’s Arab neighbors to accept Iran as a nuclear power and preventing Israel from acting militarily to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. The missile shields are aspects of a policy of containment, not prevention. And the US’s attempts to sabotage Israel’s ability to strike Iran’s nuclear sites through leaks, political pressure and efforts to weaken the Netanyahu government make clear that as far as the US is concerned, Iran acquiring nuclear weapons is not the problem.

The prospect of Israel preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons is the problem.

Several American commentators argue that the Obama administration’s policies are the rational consequence of the divergence of US and Israeli assessments of the threats posed by regional developments. For instance, writing in the Tablet online magazine this week, Lee Smith argued that the US does not view the developments in Egypt, Iran and Syria as threatening US interests. From Washington’s perspective, the prospect of an Israeli strike on Iran is more threatening than a nuclear-armed Iran, because an Israeli strike would immediately destabilize the region.

The problem with this assessment is that it is nonsense. It is true that Israel is first on Iran’s target list, and that Egypt is placing Israel, not the US in its crosshairs. So, too, Syria and its rogue allies will use their chemical weapons against Israel first.

But that doesn’t mean the US will be safe. The likely beneficiaries of Syrian chemical weapons – Sunni and Shi’ite terrorist organizations – have attacked the US in the past. Iran has a history of attacking US shipping without a nuclear umbrella. Surely it would be more aggressive in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz after defying Washington in illegally developing a nuclear arsenal. The US is far more vulnerable to interruptions in the shipping lanes in the Suez Canal than Israel is.

The reason Israel and the US are allies is that Israel is the US’s first line of defense in the region.

If regional events weren’t moving so quickly, the question of who lost Egypt would probably have had its moment in the spotlight in Washington.

But as is clear from the US’s denial of the significance of Morsy’s rapid completion of Egypt’s Islamic transformation; its blindness to the dangers of Syrian chemical and biological weapons; and its complacency toward Iran’s nuclear weapons program, by the time the US foreign policy establishment realizes it lost Egypt, the question it will be asking is not who lost Egypt. It will be asking who lost the Middle East.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

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.

Forcing our all-volunteer force to fail

Concerns raised by Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota and four of her colleagues on the proper vetting of Huma Abedin, the deputy chief of staff to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, provoke larger questions about Muslim Brotherhood penetration and influence in our government agencies, particularly the Department of Defense (DOD). Recently, we witnessedPentagon Islamic adviser Louay Safi’s reappearance as the political head of the Syrian National Council, a Muslim Brotherhood-dominated group. Among his many other activities, he is also the director of leadership development for the Islamic Society of North America(ISNA), which is the largest Muslim Brotherhood group in the United States.

The president of ISNA, Imam Mohamed Magid serves as a member of the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Countering Violent Extremism Working Group. He is a close adviser to the National Security Council as well as to President Obama. He continues to have access to not only the State and Treasury departments but has been used frequently by DOD to formulate responses to incidents that Islamists consider offensive. How comforting. Let’s not forget that the ISNA is an unindicated co-conspirator in theHoly Land Foundation trial in 2008 for providing funding to the terrorist group Hamas.

An open question is what role Imam Magid played in influencing DHS to cancel a conference on homegrown radical extremism at CIA headquarters in August 2011. We know that the Council on Islamic Relations (CAIR) demanded that the training conference featuring a presentation by Stephen Coughlin, among others, be canceled. It should be recalled that CAIR is also an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial.CAIR was also successful in getting West Point’s chaplain to cancel a prayer breakfast in early February by Lt. Gen. William “Jerry” Boykin, a West Point graduate and former deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence, because of his views on Islam. So much for the First Amendment.

Based on his position at the ISNA, Mr. Safi has been designated as only one of two “ecclesiastical agents” to act as unpaid consultants to DOD for selecting Muslim chaplains. It should be remembered that Abdurahman Alamoudi, as a result of his close connections to the Clinton White House, had the lead role in establishing the Muslim chaplain programs. He not only nominated but approved which Muslims could serve as chaplains in the U.S. military. For the record, Mr. Alamoudi currently is serving a 23-year sentence in federal prison for his conviction on terrorism-related charges and was proved to be a senior al Qaeda financier as well as a strong supporter of the terrorist groups Hezbollah and Hamas.

Mr. Safi has cast a wide net in DOD. He was also responsible for teaching Islam to U.S. Army military personnel at various bases, including Fort Hood, so that they would be more sensitive to Islamic customs and traditions. This sensitivity training is all done under the guise of our counter-insurgency (COIN) strategy to win the hearts and minds of Muslims first in Iraq and now in Afghanistan. Actually, what’s important in the Middle East is “street respect.” Once it is established, hearts and minds will follow.

As part of his credentials, Mr. Safi was also named “unindicated co-conspirator No. 4” in the trial of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) leader Sami Al-Arian. Nonetheless, he continues to have access to both DOD and the FBI.

On Oct. 19, 2011, a letter signed by an array of Muslim groups, including CAIR and ISNA, both Muslim Brotherhood organizations, was sent to Deputy National Security Adviser John Brennan complaining about the government’s use of biased, false and highly offensive training materials about Muslims and Islam. Much of the material utilized by U.S. trainers that the groups complained about was extracted from the Koran and Shariah law.

They demanded that all training material be purged of “biased materials.” Furthermore, they demanded that personnel reviews be conducted on all trainers and government employees who promoted biased training and materials and that they be “properly disciplined.” Their audacity has no limits.

Yes, our trainers are biased. They took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic. This is their bias, one that every American should be proud to support. Instead of vetting our trainers and training materials used for countering violent extremism, the Muslim Brotherhood front organizations that signed the Oct. 19 letter as well as a Wired magazine article used as a primary reference to justify the complaints, should be vetted and their agenda exposed. Their objectives are clear: To silence those Americans who understand the threat posed by the Muslim Brotherhood and its strategy to impose Shariah in place of our Constitution using our “own miserable hands.”

Another important question: How much influence have these Muslim outreach advisers had in the development of the restricted rules of engagement under which our military is required to fight? In Afghanistan, they must observe rules of engagement that betray their intentions to the locals and then are restricted on use of their weapons, putting their lives in jeopardy.

Our troops are well aware that many Afghan army units, trained with our tax dollars, are negotiating unofficial truces with the Taliban. Complicating this unacceptable situation is the endemic corruption throughout the country.

Our military knows that Afghanistan, with a 90 percent illiteracy rate, will always be a failed state. After 10 years, we should recognize that our COIN strategy has not worked. A few more construction projects and Afghan army units will not turn the tide. We should stop sacrificing American military lives and money, particularly with the draconian budget cuts being forced on our military. If we are to keep faith with our all-volunteer force, a change in direction must be taken now.

Retired Adm. James A. Lyons was commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet and seniorU.S. military representative to the United Nations.

This article originally appeared in the Washington Times:http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/aug/8/forcing-our-all-volunteer-force-to-fail/.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s American Defenders

On Wednesday, John Brennan, US President Barack Obama’s assistant for homeland security and counterterrorism, made a quick trip to Israel to discuss Hezbollah’s massacre of Israeli tourists in Burgas, Bulgaria last week.
Hopefully it was an instructive meeting for the senior US official, although his Israeli interlocutors were undoubtedly dumbstruck by how difficult it was to communicate with him. Unlike previous US counterterror officials, Brennan does not share Israel’s understanding of Middle Eastern terrorism.
Brennan’s outlook on this subject was revealed in a speech he gave two years ago in Washington. In that talk, Brennan spoke dreamily about Hezbollah. As he put it, "Hezbollah is a very interesting organization."
He claimed it had evolved from a "purely terrorist organization" to a militia and then into an organization with members in Lebanon’s parliament and serving in Lebanon’s cabinet.
Brennan continued, "There are certainly elements of Hezbollah that are truly a concern for us what they’re doing. And what we need to do is find ways to diminish their influence within the organization and to try to build up the more moderate elements."
Perhaps in a bid to build up those "moderate elements," in the same address, Brennan referred to Israel’s capital city Jerusalem as "al Quds," the name preferred by Hezbollah and its Iranian overlords.
Brennan’s amazing characterization of Hezbollah’s hostile takeover of the Lebanese government as proof that the terrorist group was moderating was of a piece with the Obama administration’s view of Islamic jihadists generally.
If there are "moderate elements," in Hezbollah, from the perspective of the Obama administration, Hezbollah’s Sunni jihadist counterpart – the Muslim Brotherhood – is downright friendly.
On February 10, 2011, Obama’s Director of National Intelligence James Clapper made this position clear in testimony before the House Select Committee on Intelligence. Clapper’s testimony was given the day before then Egyptian president and longtime US ally Hosni Mubarak was forced to resign from office. Mubarak’s coerced resignation owed largely to the Obama administration’s decision to end US support for his regime and openly demand his immediate abdication of power. As Israel warned, Mubarak’s ouster paved the way for the Muslim Brotherhood’s ascendance to power in Egypt.
In his testimony Clapper said, "The term ‘Muslim Brotherhood’ is an umbrella term for a variety of movements. In the case of Egypt, a very heterogeneous group, largely secular which has eschewed violence and has decried al-Qaida as a perversion of Islam. They have pursued social ends, betterment of the political order in Egypt, etc."
Watching Clapper’s testimony in Israel, the sense across the political spectrum, shared by experts and casual observers alike was that the US had taken leave of its senses.
The slogan of the Muslim Brotherhood is "Allah is our objective; the Prophet is our leader; the Koran is our law; Jihad is our way; dying in the path of Allah is our highest hope." 
How could such a high-level US official claim that such an organization is "largely secular"? 
Every day Muslim Brotherhood leaders call for the violent annihilation of Israel. And those calls are often combined with calls for jihad against the US. For instance, in a sermon from October 2010, Muslim Brotherhood head Mohammed Badie called for jihad against the US. 
As he put it "Resistance [i.e. terrorism] is the only solution against the Zio-American arrogance and tyranny, and all we need is for the Arab and Muslim peoples to stand behind it and support it."
Badie then promised his congregants that the death of America was nigh. In his words, "A nation that does not champion moral and human values cannot lead humanity, and its wealth will not avail it once Allah has had His say, as happened with [powerful] nations in the past. The US is now experiencing the beginning of its end, and is heading towards its demise."
The obliviousness of Brennan and Clapper to the essential nature of Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood are symptoms of the overarching ignorance informing the Obama administration’s approach to Middle Eastern realities.
Take, for instance, the Obama administration’s policy confusion over Syria. This week The Washington Post reported that the Obama administration lacks any real knowledge of the nature of the opposition forces fighting to overthrow the Syrian regime. Whereas one senior official told the paper, "We’re identifying the key leaders, and there are a lot of them. We are in touch with them and we stay in touch," another official said that is not the case.
As the latter official put it, "The folks that have been identified have been identified through Turkey and Jordan. It is not because of who we know. It’s all through liaison."
The fact that the US government is flying blind as Syria spins out of control is rendered all the more egregious when you recognize that this was not inevitable. America’s ignorance is self-inflicted.
In the 16 months that have passed since the Syrian civil war broke out, the administration passed up several opportunities to develop its own ties to the opposition and even to shape its agenda. Two examples suffice to make this clear.
First, in October 2011, according to the Beirut-based Arabic news portal al Nashra, Dalia Mogahed, Obama’s adviser on Muslim affairs, blocked a delegation of Middle Eastern Christians led by Lebanon’s Maronite Patriarch Bechara Rai from meeting with Obama and members of his national security team at the White House. According to al Nashra, Mogahed canceled the meeting at the request of the Muslim Brotherhood in her native Egypt.
The White House canceled the meeting days after Rai visited with then French president Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris. During that meeting Rai angered the French Foreign Ministry when he warned that it would be a disaster for Syria’s Christian minority, and for Christians throughout the region, if the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad is overthrown. Rai based this claim on his assessment that Assad would be replaced by a Muslim Brotherhood- dominated Islamist regime.
And nine months later it is obvious that he was right. With Syria’s civil war still raging throughout the country, the world media is rife with reports about Syria’s Christians fleeing their towns and villages en masse as Islamists from the Syrian opposition target them with death, extortion and kidnapping.
Then there are the US’s peculiar choices regarding the opposition figures it favors. Last August, in a bid to gain familiarity with the Syrian opposition, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with opposition representatives at the State Department. Herb London from the Hudson Institute reported at the time that the group Clinton met with was dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood. Members of the non-Islamist, pro-Western Syrian Democracy Council composed of Syrian Kurds, Alawites, Christians, Druse, Assyrians and non-Islamist Sunnis were not invited to the meeting.
Clinton did reportedly agree to meet with representatives of the council separately. But unlike the press carnival at her meeting with the Muslim Brotherhood members, Clinton refused to publicize her meeting with the non-Islamist opposition leaders. In so acting, she denied these would-be US allies the ability to claim that they enjoyed the support of the US government.
The question is why? Why is the Obama administration shunning potential allies and empowering enemies? Why has the administration gotten it wrong everywhere? 
In an attempt to get to the bottom of this, and perhaps to cause the administration to rethink its policies, a group of US lawmakers, members of the House Intelligence and Judiciary Committees led by Rep. Michele Bachmann sent letters to the inspectors-general of the State, Homeland Security, Defense, and Justice departments as well as to the inspector-general of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. In those letters, Bachmann and her colleagues asked the Inspectors General to investigate possible penetration of the US government by Muslim Brotherhood operatives.
In their letters, and in a subsequent explanatory letter to US Rep. Keith Ellison from Rep. Bachmann, the lawmakers made clear that when they spoke of governmental penetration, they were referring to the central role that Muslim groups, identified by the US government in Federal Court as Muslim Brotherhood front organizations, play in shaping the Obama administration’s perception of and policies towards the Muslim Brotherhood and its allied movements in the US and throughout the world.
That these front groups, including the unindicted terror funding co-conspirators, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), play a key role in shaping the Obama administration’s agenda is beyond dispute. Senior administration officials including Mogahed have close ties to these groups. There is an ample body of evidence that suggests that the administration’s decision to side with the hostile Muslim Brotherhood against its allies owes to a significant degree to the influence these Muslim Brotherhood front groups and their operatives wield in the Obama administration.
To take just one example, last October the Obama administration agreed to purge training materials used by US intelligence and law enforcement agencies and eliminate all materials that contained references to Islam that US Muslim groups associated with the Muslim Brotherhood had claimed were offensive. The administration has also fired counterterrorism trainers and lecturers employed by US security agencies and defense academies that taught their pupils about the doctrines of jihadist Islam. The administration also appointed representatives of Muslim Brotherhood-aligned US Muslim groups to oversee the approval of training materials about Islam for US federal agencies.
For their efforts to warn about, and perhaps cause the administration to abandon its reliance on Muslim Brotherhood front groups, Bachmann and her colleagues have been denounced as racists and McCarthyites. 
These attacks have not been carried out only by administration supporters. Republican Senator John McCain denounced Bachmann from the floor of the Senate. Republican Senator Marco Rubio later piled on attacking her for her attempt to convince the administration to reconsider its policies. Those policies again place the most radical members of the US Muslim community in charge of the US government’s policies toward the Muslim Brotherhood and other jihadist movements.
It is clear that the insidious notion that the Muslim Brotherhood is a moderate and friendly force has taken hold in US policy circles. And it is apparent that US policymaking in the Middle East is increasingly rooted in this false and dangerous assessment.
In spearheading an initiative to investigate and change this state of affairs, Bachmann and her colleagues should be congratulated, not condemned. And their courageous efforts to ask the relevant questions about the nature of Muslim Brotherhood influence over US policymakers should be joined, not spurned by their colleagues in Washington, by the media and by all concerned citizens in America and throughout the free world.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.