By Frank j. gaffney, jr., Centre for Security Policy
The Obama administration chose the eve of the holiday marking our Nation’s birth to acknowledge publicly behavior in which it has long been stealthily engaged to the United States’ extreme detriment: Its officials now admit that they are embracing the Muslim Brotherhood (MB or Ikhwan in Arabic). That would be the same international Islamist organization that has the destruction of the United States, Israel and all other parts of the Free World as its explicit objective.
On Thursday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tried to downplay the momentousness of this major policy shift by portraying it during a stopover in Budapest as follows: “The Obama administration is continuing the approach of limited contacts with the Muslim Brotherhood that have existed on and off for about five or six years.” In fact, as former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy points out in a characteristically brilliant, and scathing, dissection of this announcement, Team Obama’s official, open legitimation of the Brotherhood marks a dramatic break from the U.S. government’s historical refusal to deal formally with the Ikhwan.
To understand why the Obama administration’s embrace of the Muslim Brotherhood is so ominous, consider three insights into the organization’s nature and ambitions:
For Clinton, Obama and his administration to embrace the Muslim Brotherhood is to APPROVE of, and UNITE in the MB goal of the destruction of civilization and global Muslim conquest. It is TREASON. With a government that legitimizes and empowers the MB and their goals, just how close are Americans to losing their freedom?
Zev, your impertinence is as astounding as your smugly deliberate effort to avoid answering my question, except to unload your pile of irrelevant non-responsive bullshit.
I was not supporting or defending Bush or denouncing Obama in my question of you.
I just wanted to know what you were talking about regarding Bush and how you conclude that his communications with terrorist groups and Muslim Mid East nations made a mess of things and exactly what mess was that?
This exchange in not about trying to score debating points as you seem to think.
I urge you to focus on what I am asking you and to be responsive to the simple question I put to you.
Narvey: I defer to your superior intellect. I now realize that I have misspoken and have libelled the greatest President since Washington.
G.W. bush inherited an America in total shambles. Clinton left the U.S. with an enormous deficit and mounting debt, Bush was somehow able to turn the situation around completely, leaving the U.S. economy with a healthy surplus and a greatly reduced debt.
Bush did great in Iraq and was able to increase the number of America’s allies. He was a very competent diplomat, able to make friends around the globe. When Bush pronounced victory in Iraq, he was right on the mark. Thang G-D for our bush
He handled katrina very competently, with deft and enormous skill.
When he left office, he handed over to Obama an America in the best of shape, and Obama F—-d everything up.
Bill, thanks for enlighterning me. I shall ever be indebted to you.
Gaffney quotes
We already know what Obama should or should not have been doing. He is now the enemy. He is simply trying to mollify the crowd here while skillfully driving a dagger into your back. Perhaps too late but at least we now know. BTW, if you have not reached this point yet in your analysis, there is no point in your making comments here. Also, has this Dr. Michael Rubin been sleeping for the past three years by once again going-in with a patronizing approach to Obama. Stop with this naive, childish behavior as it IS high time to call a spade a spade. Perhaps, like 90% of Jewish academics, Dr. Rubin is waiting for some sort of apocalypse to occur before he will come up with some redundant statement like “I told you so”.
What is wrong with so many of you arguing about silly stuff when the Elephant is staring you in the face?
Read Bruce Bower’s Surrender. Follow Barry Rubin of GLORIA and Mordechai Kedar of Israeli Academia Monitor to get a better handle on what is going on in and around Israel. Follow Hege.storhaug@rights.no (She is based in Norway). Review Annie Jacobson’s “Terror in the Skies” on womenswallstreet.com
Also, how many of you have had the guts to make aliyah. And, please, don’t give any lame excuses like “my wife doesn’t want to go”. You can still keep you Canadian or American citizenship. Make the move, spend five or six years in Israel and clean-out you fogged brains by meeting and talking to non-Westerners. BTW, if you feel that you are going to have a dialogue with Muslims, forget it, as you have already lost if you think that way.
You need to get angry, upset with your own local media and your own local politicos. Make a lot of noise so the man/woman on the street will have a chance to hear what you are saying.
Zev, au contraire. You are the one who vaguely accuses Bush, with Cheney’s guidance of getting America into the mess it is in by Bush’s covert communications with the groups and nations you identify.
I am not disputing what you say, because I don’t know what you are saying other than that you are making a very vague accusation.
My questions of you were to identify which mess(es) you were speaking of, explain what those communications entailed and how that got America into the mess(es) it is in and if you have any linked sources to how those communications were material, to provide them as well.
Since your quick and dirty opinion offers up only a vague accusation, my questions of you were appropriate.
As for my piece, I was addressing a very specific issue laid out in Gaffney’s piece and what I said was crystal clear.
As to the facts to back up my views, same are found in the media reports on the subject which all at Israpundit are well versed in, Obama’s own words in his speeches and facts cited in Gaffney’s article.
So with that Zev, I raise the same question as I did before regarding your vague accusation against Bush.
What Bush caused mess(es) exactly are you talking about and what communications or the nature thereof, did Bush have with the groups and nations you mention which leads you to believe Bush caused the mess(es)?
If you care to respond to inform all of us what you are talking about, great. If not, not.
Responding snarkily as you did however, is nothing but your transparent effort to avoid answering my very appropriate questions put to you.
Narvey: I note that in the long post that you have submitted, you make many assertions. I also note you don’t provide any back up source notes, that the one quotation you provide is inaccurate in fact and in context. You have hardly written a real scholarly article. Don’t ask of me any more or less than you are prepared to do yourself.
And this is that.
Zev, so many messes, so which are you referring to? How do you say the messes you will identify were on Bush’s initiatve at the advice of Cheney? Exactly what communications were had with the Saudis that relate to Hamas, the MB, Iraq and Afghanistan that somehow made things worse for the U.S. as you imply?
If you have source links, that would be helpful to substantiate whatever exact messes you will point to, if you answer my questions.
The Bush administration had covert communications with Hamas, the MB,Iran re Iraq and Afghanistan, and quite overtly communicated with the major funders of 9/11, and international terrorism – The Saudis. They opened up a dialogue with the Russians who are supporting the Iranians .
Let us not fear calling a spade a spade. It was Bush that got us into this mess, ably abeted by Cheney and the rest of the voodoo monsters.
Gaffney references Clinton’s words confirming informal talks with the MB under a cone of silence have been going on for at least 5 or 6 years as the basis for her saying that Obama is simply continuing his predecessor’s policy regarding the MB. We don’t of course know exactly what was being said to the MB by the Bush administration, but Clinton implies it was words in the same vein as Obama’s.
We have been given much reason not to take the Obama administration at its word, so what exactly the Bush administration was saying to the MB is an open question.
If the Bush adminstration was making the same mewing sounds towards the MB, but in secret, that certainly was not a wise course of action, but at least no legitimacy thereby was being accorded the MB.
Now that Obama has lifted the veil of secrecy regarding talks with the MB, legitimacy is per se being accorded it. That alone is a major policy shift, however that shift does not end there.
One of the first indications of the Obama administration’s understanding of the MB, was Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper’s eyebrow raising statement before the House Intelligence Committee hearings when he testified that the Muslim Brotherhood as a “largely secular” organization.
In an ABC interview, the following is worth noting: http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2011/02/director-of-national-intelligence-james-clapper-muslim-brotherhood-largely-secular.html
Clapper tried to subsequently to dial back those statements, but to no avail. Americans, or at least those concerned about Islamic Jihad in all its facets at home and abroad then knew that the Department of National Intelligence as part of Obama’s administration, was anything but intelligent. Not only that, it was pretty clear what course the Obama administration had set on its engagement with the MB. If there was any doubt about Obama’s thinking, position and policy regarding engaging the MB, Clinton’s words made that course crystal clear.
Obama is thus engaging with the MB in the same manner as he has tried to engage with Iran. Obama makes nice appeasing sounds, expecting them to be reciprocated and the MB, like Iran flips him the bird.
OK. So Obama tried what his critics said from the start was a perilous futile endeavor. There was however, always a chance that Obama’s approach would work and he would prove his critics wrong.
The only thing Obama has proved is that his critics have been right all along. His outreach to the Arabs and Muslim world in his first interview with Al Arabiya, his major Cairo address to the Arabs and Muslim world and his pressuring Israel to make suicidal sacrifices for peace that the Palestinians don’t really want all have been utter failures and won him only scorn for demonstrating naivity, incoherence and thus weakness, not only from America’s friends, but from the very enemies of America that Obama has sought to appease.
Still Obama stays his course, which immediately brings to mind the classic definition of insanity which increasingly appears to fit the explanation for Obama’s persistent thinking.
Gaffney makes a very compelling case as to the mortal danger the MB presents to America, Israel and the West. The implication in Gaffney’s words is that the Obama administration should engage with the MB, but not to make nice nice.
Rather, Gaffney’s implication is that the only way to engage with the MB is for Obama to put the fear of God in them that if they so much as harm the hair on the head of any American, Israeli or Westerner, do anything to harm their interests in the Middle East or take any step on American soil to further the MB goals, the MB will suffer mortal consequences.
While Obama and his administration insanely persist in their policy of defining what the MB is to justify the nature of their appeasement engagement with the MB, the Frank Gaffney’s hopefully will band together to mount a campaign to show the American people and politicians just how dangerous Obama is to the welfare, well being and security of Israel and the West, but to America itself.