Observations:
Obama's Mideast Vision - Michael Young (Daily Star-Lebanon)
Obama feels that an America forever signaling its desire to go home will make things better by making America more likable. That's not how the Middle East works. Politics abhor a vacuum, and as everyone sees how eager the U.S. is to leave, the more they will try to fill the ensuing vacuum to their advantage, and the more intransigent they will be when Washington seeks political solutions to prepare its getaway. That explains the upsurge of bombings in Iraq lately, and it explains why the Taliban feel no need to surrender anything in Afghanistan.
Engagement of Iran and Syria has also come up short. However, there was always something counterintuitive in lowering the pressure on Iran in the hope that this would generate progress in finding a solution to its nuclear program. Where the Obama administration erred was in not seeing how dialogue would buy Iran more time to advance its nuclear projects, precisely what the Iranians wanted, while breaking the momentum of international efforts to force Tehran to concede something - for example, temporary suspension of uranium enrichment. For Obama to rebuild such momentum today seems virtually impossible, when the U.S. itself has made it abundantly clear that it believes war is a bad idea.
In Syria, the Assad regime has shown no signs of breaking away from Iran, even as it has facilitated suicide attacks in Iraq and encouraged Hamas' intransigence in inter-Palestinian negotiations in Cairo. The Obama administration can, of course, take the passive view that Syria is entitled to destabilize its neighbors in order to enhance its leverage; or it can behave like a superpower and make the undermining of vital U.S. interests very costly for Bashar Assad. But it certainly cannot defend its vital interests by adopting a passive approach.
With respect to the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations, Obama has taken Israel on over its settlements. However, there is more to Palestinian-Israeli peace than settlements. Obama is exerting considerable political capital to confront Israel, but it may be capital wasted at a moment when Hamas can still veto any breakthrough from the Palestinian side and render the whole enterprise meaningless. But how can the U.S. weaken Hamas when improving relations with its main regional sponsors, Iran and Syria, remains a centerpiece of American efforts?
Friday, August 28, 2009
Friday, August 21, 2009
posters
I'm thinking about going to a rally to protest Obama's health care initiative instead. I'm considering the text for a few posters with some pithy messages. I'll post them for your consideration. If any of you can think of more effective signage, I'm open to suggestions
1. Obamacare: Cash for Corpses
2. Change: The only thing we'll have left in our pockets
3. Obamacare: The Funeral Home Stimulus Package
4. Take this bill and attach it to your doc's colonoscope
5. Obamacare payback: Unions exempt
6. Obamacare: Guaranteed privacy - Nobody will EVER see your birth certif=icate
7. Save Social Security: Die Young
8. Pull the Plug on Socialized Medicine
9. Want and M.R.I.? You're S.O.L.
10. Bankrupt America? Yes we can
1. Obamacare: Cash for Corpses
2. Change: The only thing we'll have left in our pockets
3. Obamacare: The Funeral Home Stimulus Package
4. Take this bill and attach it to your doc's colonoscope
5. Obamacare payback: Unions exempt
6. Obamacare: Guaranteed privacy - Nobody will EVER see your birth certif=icate
7. Save Social Security: Die Young
8. Pull the Plug on Socialized Medicine
9. Want and M.R.I.? You're S.O.L.
10. Bankrupt America? Yes we can
Losing faith
WASHINGTON – A new poll says that Americans, concerned over the future of health care reform and anxious about the growing federal budget deficit, are losing faith in President Barack Obama.
The Washington Post-ABC News survey found that less that half of Americans — 49 percent — say they believe the president will make the right decisions for the country. That's down from 60 percent at the 100-day mark of the Obama presidency.
The poll published Friday says Obama's overall approval is 57 percent, 12 points lower than it was at its peak in April. Fifty-three percent disapprove of the way he's handling the budget deficit and his approval on health care continues to deteriorate.
The national survey was conducted Aug. 13-17 and has a sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.
The Washington Post-ABC News survey found that less that half of Americans — 49 percent — say they believe the president will make the right decisions for the country. That's down from 60 percent at the 100-day mark of the Obama presidency.
The poll published Friday says Obama's overall approval is 57 percent, 12 points lower than it was at its peak in April. Fifty-three percent disapprove of the way he's handling the budget deficit and his approval on health care continues to deteriorate.
The national survey was conducted Aug. 13-17 and has a sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.
Friday, August 14, 2009
His people in bed with jihadists
Obama administration with Islamists
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A.P. photo/ Ron Edward
President Obama’s aide made the keynote address at the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) national convention. “…Senior Adviser for Public Engagement and International Affairs Valerie Jarrett noted she was the first White House official to address ISNA. She spoke in general terms about interfaith dialog and cooperation. She praised her hosts for ‘the diversity of American organizations, and ideas that are represented and will be debated’ at the convention.”
“And she openly invited ISNA President Ingrid Mattson to work on the White House Council on Women and Girls that Jarrett leads.”
What kind of an organization is ISNA, that drew Jarrett? “ISNA is an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas-support conspiracy.” It was founded by members of the Muslim Brotherhood in America, with home it retains close ties.
In a highlighted “’meet the author’ program, Imam Warith Deen Umar, former head N.Y. state prison chaplain managed to:
• Argue that key Obama aides are ‘Israeli,’ proving Jews ‘have control of the world.’
• Malign the motives of Jews active in the Civil Rights movement.
• Portray the Holocaust as punishment of Jews for being ‘serially disobedient to Allah.’
• Insinuate that Hurricane Katrina was a result of tolerance for homosexuality”
The imam was dismissed for having praised 9/11, which he claims most Muslims secretly admire. In 2004, he urged violent jihad. His full quotes are ravings.
Cathy Sultan, author of a book on the 2006 war in Lebanon, blamed Israel for Lebanon’s troubles, but not: recent Syrian occupation of Lebanon, Iranian arming of Hizbullah, and Hizbullah initiating the war by firing rockets and raiding and killing at an Israeli base. The U.S. declared Hizbullah a terrorist organization.
Compare what those authors said in the presence of a White House official, with what Obama said in Cairo: “’Threatening Israel with destruction - or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews - is deeply wrong’ and a hindrance to peace.” (Steven Emerson in Israel Resource Review, 7/30).
Apparently, the Obama administration is no wiser than the Bush administration, which also met with and invited in Radical Muslims.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Foolish on Iran
To:
edlasky@att.net
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204908604574336690663256038.html?mod=djemEditorialPage
Why U.S. Diplomacy Will Fail With Iran
The Ayatollah Khameini needs anti-Americanism. He won't let Obama take it away.
By EDWARD N. LUTTWAK
Long before his inauguration, Barack Obama lucidly explained how he would deal with Iran. During the campaign he said he would "engage" its leaders by offering talks without preconditions—without even asking them to stop chanting "death to America" when concluding their speeches.
His premise was that President George W. Bush's policy had been incoherent and unsuccessful in stopping Tehran's drive to acquire nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. Both charges are true. It was certainly illogical of Mr. Bush to denounce the Iranian regime as part of the "axis of evil" and then to seek its support in Afghanistan when forming the first, provisional Karzai government, and then again in Iraq to calm down the truculent preacher Moqtada al-Sadr and his violent Mahdi militia.
But Mr. Obama's critique failed to acknowledge that Bush's incoherence paid off. Iran helped consolidate the post-invasion governments created by the U.S. in Afghanistan and Iraq, even while supplying weapons to whoever would attack Americans. (For example, it lobbied for U.S. candidate Hamid Karzai to become chairman of the governing committee when Afghan leaders gathered in Germany in Dec. 2001.)
Still, the Bush administration's failure to stop Iran's nuclear and missile programs stands out. Nothing worked—not the occasional muted threats of bombing the nuclear installations, nor the diplomacy delegated to the British, French and Germans. The "E-3" talks started very well with the Tehran Agreed Statement of Oct. 21, 2003—under which Iran temporarily promised to stop enriching uranium. They ended in ridicule in 2006 when chief negotiator Hassan Rowhani boasted that they'd kept the Europeans talking while building up their nuclear plants.
In retrospect, it is obvious why the E-3 negotiators seemed so successful in 2003. Iran's leaders had just witnessed the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the swift, almost effortless destruction of Saddam Hussein's regime. Fearing they might be next, they stopped the nuclear weapons program they have always denied and the nuclear enrichment program they finally acknowledged in 2002—after its disclosure by dissidents.
Later, when Iran's leaders saw the U.S. bogged down in Iraq and no longer feared a march on Tehran, they publicly resumed uranium enrichment, and also, no doubt, the secret weapons program as well. So Mr. Bush had failed, just as Mr. Obama said.
There was only one more step before "engagement" could begin: Mr. Obama's June 4 Cairo speech in which he apologized for the August 1953 overthrow of Iran's Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddeq. "In the middle of the Cold War," he said, "the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government." The CIA was certainly involved, but the cringing was quite unnecessary. By August 1953 Mosaddeq had dismissed Iran's parliament and was ruling undemocratically by personal decree. When angry mobs converged on his residence, he fled to a U.S. aid office next door trusting that the Americans would save his life. They did.
As it happened, Mr. Obama's apology and his offer of unconditional talks backfired.
With Iran's presidential selection of June 12 coming up, the all-powerful Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had his opportunity to replace the thoroughly unpresentable, loudly extremist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with a more plausible negotiating partner for Mr. Obama. This strategy had been used before. In 1997, when the regime needed to calm unrest at home and mollify opinion abroad, it gave the presidency to the soft-spoken, elegantly robed, and supposedly liberalizing Mohammad Khatami. He was just the man to provide a moderate front for the clerical dictatorship. To be sure, by the time Mr. Khatami ended his presidency in 2005, everyone knew that he had not even tried to liberalize anything of substance. But by then he had served his purpose.
Evidently, Mr. Khamenei rejected the option of choosing a moderate. Instead he awarded Ahmadinejad a "divine" win with wildly improbable majorities—even in the home towns of his rivals.
Mr. Obama's problem is that Mr. Khamenei could only have chosen Ahmadinejad because he does not want friendly talks with the U.S. He evidently calculates that without the ideology of "anti-Americanism" the regime would collapse. He is right.
Certainly religious support cannot be enough anymore. Too many high-ranking clerics, including Grand Ayatollahs Hosssein Ali Montazeri and Yusef Saanei, now publicly oppose the regime. Nor can Persian nationalism serve as the prop: Its chief target is the despised Arabs, which is problematic, as the regime keeps trying to be more Arab than the Arabs in its hostility to Israel. Yet this hostility is itself a problem internally because the regime's generous funding of Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad is extremely unpopular in Iran. Only anti-Americanism is left, and Mr. Khamenei will not let Mr. Obama take it away.
Unless Iran's politics change, Mr. Obama's policy will fail. At that point, he will need a new, new policy of increasingly severe sanctions under the looming threat of bombardment—exactly Mr. Bush's old policy. But as Iran's nuclear program advances, time is running out for this policy to work.
Mr. Luttwak, a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, is the author of the forthcoming "The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire" (Harvard).
edlasky@att.net
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204908604574336690663256038.html?mod=djemEditorialPage
Why U.S. Diplomacy Will Fail With Iran
The Ayatollah Khameini needs anti-Americanism. He won't let Obama take it away.
By EDWARD N. LUTTWAK
Long before his inauguration, Barack Obama lucidly explained how he would deal with Iran. During the campaign he said he would "engage" its leaders by offering talks without preconditions—without even asking them to stop chanting "death to America" when concluding their speeches.
His premise was that President George W. Bush's policy had been incoherent and unsuccessful in stopping Tehran's drive to acquire nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. Both charges are true. It was certainly illogical of Mr. Bush to denounce the Iranian regime as part of the "axis of evil" and then to seek its support in Afghanistan when forming the first, provisional Karzai government, and then again in Iraq to calm down the truculent preacher Moqtada al-Sadr and his violent Mahdi militia.
But Mr. Obama's critique failed to acknowledge that Bush's incoherence paid off. Iran helped consolidate the post-invasion governments created by the U.S. in Afghanistan and Iraq, even while supplying weapons to whoever would attack Americans. (For example, it lobbied for U.S. candidate Hamid Karzai to become chairman of the governing committee when Afghan leaders gathered in Germany in Dec. 2001.)
Still, the Bush administration's failure to stop Iran's nuclear and missile programs stands out. Nothing worked—not the occasional muted threats of bombing the nuclear installations, nor the diplomacy delegated to the British, French and Germans. The "E-3" talks started very well with the Tehran Agreed Statement of Oct. 21, 2003—under which Iran temporarily promised to stop enriching uranium. They ended in ridicule in 2006 when chief negotiator Hassan Rowhani boasted that they'd kept the Europeans talking while building up their nuclear plants.
In retrospect, it is obvious why the E-3 negotiators seemed so successful in 2003. Iran's leaders had just witnessed the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the swift, almost effortless destruction of Saddam Hussein's regime. Fearing they might be next, they stopped the nuclear weapons program they have always denied and the nuclear enrichment program they finally acknowledged in 2002—after its disclosure by dissidents.
Later, when Iran's leaders saw the U.S. bogged down in Iraq and no longer feared a march on Tehran, they publicly resumed uranium enrichment, and also, no doubt, the secret weapons program as well. So Mr. Bush had failed, just as Mr. Obama said.
There was only one more step before "engagement" could begin: Mr. Obama's June 4 Cairo speech in which he apologized for the August 1953 overthrow of Iran's Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddeq. "In the middle of the Cold War," he said, "the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government." The CIA was certainly involved, but the cringing was quite unnecessary. By August 1953 Mosaddeq had dismissed Iran's parliament and was ruling undemocratically by personal decree. When angry mobs converged on his residence, he fled to a U.S. aid office next door trusting that the Americans would save his life. They did.
As it happened, Mr. Obama's apology and his offer of unconditional talks backfired.
With Iran's presidential selection of June 12 coming up, the all-powerful Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had his opportunity to replace the thoroughly unpresentable, loudly extremist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with a more plausible negotiating partner for Mr. Obama. This strategy had been used before. In 1997, when the regime needed to calm unrest at home and mollify opinion abroad, it gave the presidency to the soft-spoken, elegantly robed, and supposedly liberalizing Mohammad Khatami. He was just the man to provide a moderate front for the clerical dictatorship. To be sure, by the time Mr. Khatami ended his presidency in 2005, everyone knew that he had not even tried to liberalize anything of substance. But by then he had served his purpose.
Evidently, Mr. Khamenei rejected the option of choosing a moderate. Instead he awarded Ahmadinejad a "divine" win with wildly improbable majorities—even in the home towns of his rivals.
Mr. Obama's problem is that Mr. Khamenei could only have chosen Ahmadinejad because he does not want friendly talks with the U.S. He evidently calculates that without the ideology of "anti-Americanism" the regime would collapse. He is right.
Certainly religious support cannot be enough anymore. Too many high-ranking clerics, including Grand Ayatollahs Hosssein Ali Montazeri and Yusef Saanei, now publicly oppose the regime. Nor can Persian nationalism serve as the prop: Its chief target is the despised Arabs, which is problematic, as the regime keeps trying to be more Arab than the Arabs in its hostility to Israel. Yet this hostility is itself a problem internally because the regime's generous funding of Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad is extremely unpopular in Iran. Only anti-Americanism is left, and Mr. Khamenei will not let Mr. Obama take it away.
Unless Iran's politics change, Mr. Obama's policy will fail. At that point, he will need a new, new policy of increasingly severe sanctions under the looming threat of bombardment—exactly Mr. Bush's old policy. But as Iran's nuclear program advances, time is running out for this policy to work.
Mr. Luttwak, a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, is the author of the forthcoming "The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire" (Harvard).
Obama's A.G. picks pro terrorist to honor for civil rights
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Zogby's Free Pass
August 12, 2009
http://www.investigativeproject.org/1375/zogbys-free-pass
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Attorney General Eric Holder made a curious selection for the closing speaker at a July 20 Justice Department conference marking the 45th anniversary of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Rather than turning to a lion of the movement, or a figure whose success in life was made possible by the bill, Holder turned to Arab American Institute (AAI) President James Zogby. It's a curious move because - despite his generally favorable public image – an examination of Zogby's record shows he is an apologist for Muslim Brotherhood-linked groups like the Muslim Students Association (MSA) and terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hizballah. On top of that, he is a strident foe of the federal government's efforts to cut off funding for terrorist organizations, including efforts by Holder's department.
Zogby's address barely touched on the significance of the Civil Rights Act. Instead, Zogby used his speech to settle some partisan political scores and depict himself and other Arab-Americans as victims -- of murder; death threats; "blacklisting" and "harassment;" "stereotypes;" "defamation;" and even harsh U.S. immigration laws that turned his father into an illegal alien.
Zogby attacked the Bush Administration for detaining Arab and Muslim immigrants and visitors right after the September 11 attacks (neglecting to mention the fact that the detainees were in the United States illegally.) He denounced former Attorneys General John Ashcroft and Michael Mukasey for attempting to delineate how ethnic/racial profiling might be used to prevent terrorist attacks.
Zogby's speech included not a word about the sacrifices of Dr. Martin Luther King or other civil-rights workers who responded with non-violence in the face of jailings, vicious beatings and murder to make the 1964 legislation a reality. But it did include a note of self-praise for Zogby and others like him who worked in the Rev. Jesse Jackson's failed 1984 and 1988 presidential campaigns – which Zogby in turn used to promote his own organization, AAI. "It was out of that experience that our AAI was born as an empowerment project to continue our progress into the mainstream of American politics," he boasted.
There is no evidence (at least on the public record) of anyone in government or the mainstream media questioning Zogby's Justice Department speech, and that is par for the course. Despite a long history of radical comments, Zogby has cultivated the image of being a moderate and a scholar. As a result, he is treated with kid gloves in the media and is often cited as an authority on policy issues. (See recent examples here and here and here and here.)
But the substance of Zogby's worldview - particularly when it comes to terrorism and other Middle East-related issues – is anything but moderate.
Although he is an Arab Christian, Zogby's positions over the years often echoes those of radical Islamist groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Muslim American Society, both rooted in the Muslim Brotherhood. On September 16, 2000, AAI joined CAIR in cosponsoring a rally in front of the White House in support of the Palestinian "right of return." In October 2003, AAI and CAIR co-sponsored a "Civil Rights Conference" in Dallas to mobilize opposition to the Patriot Act. Like CAIR, Zogby sought to whitewash an Obama campaign official's ties with the Muslim Brotherhood-linked MSA. Like CAIR and MAS, Zogby demands that Israel withdraw from the West Bank, but refuses to condemn anti-Israel terrorism and violence from Gaza, from which Israel unilaterally withdrew in 2005.
Since September 11, Zogby has repeatedly tried to discredit federal investigations of U.S.-based Muslim groups for supporting terror. One of his targets was Operation Green Quest (a multi-agency task force including the FBI, U.S. Customs, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the IRS, and the Treasury Department.)
In March 2002, Green Quest launched a series of raids against Northern Virginia-based organizations that were determined to be financiers of terrorism. The raids targeted sites affiliated with the SAAR Network, described by federal investigators as a network of up to 100 nonprofit and for-profit organizations that "are interrelated through corporate officers and holding companies – subsidiary relationships, to facilitate the funding of terrorist operations." Most of the funding went to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) – terror groups responsible for hundreds of deaths during the past two decades.
Within days of the raids, Zogby's AAI moved to discredit law enforcement's efforts to cut off the flow of money to terrorists. AAI issued an "Action Alert" entitled "Treasury Department Must Address Overzealous Raids," which stated:
"Fear and confusion now prevail in our communities and many believe the government has plans to punish all Muslim organizations without clearly establishing a credible link to an ongoing criminal investigation. This is not acceptable."
One of the groups raided was the International Institute for Islamic Thought (IIIT), described in an FBI affidavit as a front to support Hamas and the PIJ. When Zogby appeared on "Hardball with Chris Matthews" less than a week after the raids, Matthews asked him if IIIT is "a dangerous group or not."
"No, not at all," Zogby replied dismissively. But federal investigators long have suspected that the IIIT housed some of the top Muslim Brotherhood members in the United States. IIIT was included on a "list of our organizations and the organizations of our friends" in an internal Muslim Brotherhood memorandum about the group's future in the United States:
"The Ikhwan [Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad In eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and 'sabotaging' its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions."
Ramadan Abdullah Shallah, the current secretary-general of the PIJ, served as a director at the World and Islam Studies Enterprise (WISE), a think tank and academic research center funded by IIIT.
Shallah, who headed WISE from 1991-1995 before emerging in Damascus as the head of the PIJ, wrote "that IIIT was the largest contributor to WISE." In November 2001, the Justice Department stated that WISE was among "front organizations that raised funds for militant Islamic-Palestinian groups such as the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and Hamas." During the early 1990s, WISE was home to four members of the PIJ's governing board, including senior operative Sami Al-Arian. Despite clear evidence of PIJ leaders at WISE, and public videos showing Al-Arian's extremism, Zogby's AAI denounced Al-Arian's 2003 arrest on conspiracy charges as an example of "profiling" and "specious charges."
Likewise, Zogby defends the Saudi Arabian government despite its longstanding role in funding radical Islamist groups and terrorism. In a 2005 article, he asserted that "anti-Saudi propaganda has become a tool to smear critics and target efforts to build ties between Saudis and Americans."
Furthermore, in 2004, when Palestinian organizations refused to sign a pledge stating that U.S. foreign aid would not be used to support terrorism, Zogby questioned the very concept of barring material support for terrorism. Requiring groups to do so "compromises the ability of the humanitarian organizations to function," he claimed.
Additionally, Zogby has opposed efforts to prevent Americans from financially supporting the terrorist organization Hizballah. Interviewed by the Washington Post for a May 8, 2003 article, Zogby said: "By criminalizing attempts to send money to Hezbollah or to support it, the FBI is confusing and alienating people here who could be allies in the war on terrorism."
Likewise, Zogby has defended other US-based supporters of Middle East terror groups. In October 2000, the Investigative Project on Terrorism videotaped Abdurrahman Alamoudi of the American Muslim Council at a rally across the street from the White House announcing his support for Hamas and Hizballah. When then-New York U.S. Senate candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign announced it would return Alamoudi's contribution, Zogby claimed Alamoudi was a victim of a "shameful hysteria campaign of McCarthyism." Four years later, Alamoudi was sentenced to 23 years in prison for terror-related crimes which included participation in a Libyan plot to assassinate the then- Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia.
In August 2008, Mazen Asbahi, Sen. Barack Obama's Muslim outreach coordinator, resigned from the Democrat's presidential campaign following reports that he had been affiliated with various Muslim Brotherhood-linked organizations, including the Muslim Students Association. In a blog posting on the Huffington Post website, Zogby claimed Asbahi had been a victim of "bigoted websites" and "fear and ignorance about all things Arab and Muslim."
Zogby has also defended people who raise funds for Hamas. During a 1995 appearance on the PBS Television show "Firing Line," Zogby criticized the idea of placing limits on "humanitarian activity" of groups with links to Hamas: "That is going to be hell to implement. It's going to prove, I think, very detrimental to the civil liberties of people in this country." Zogby also supported Mousa Abu Marzook, a senior Hamas leader, during his detention in the United States and called plans to extradite him to Israel "destructive."
Zogby has objected to suicide bombings on grounds that they benefit Israel politically. Writing in the Muslim World Monitor in February 1995, Zogby complained that, "The bombing of New York's World Trade Center in 1993 played right into the hands of Israel" by illustrating its concerns about Palestinian terrorism.
In a December 1995 article in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Zogby suggested that Arabs have suffered their own "holocaust" at the hands of the United States, Israel and European colonial powers. "Arabs may not have experienced the same holocaust [as the Jews in Europe], but if one adds up the Arab lives lost in digging the Suez Canal, the Libyans slaughtered by the Italians, the Algerians killed by the French, the Sudanese murdered by the British, and all the Palestinians butchered in this century – we've had our own holocaust, but it stretches over 100 years."
For years, Zogby has staked out positions in line with Islamist groups which reflexively criticize U.S. anti-terror polices. Yet his personal charisma enables him to receive favorable coverage from the mainstream media and administration officials. Attorney General Holder did the Obama Administration no favors by selecting a terrorism apologist like Zogby instead of a genuine civil-rights hero to commemorate one of the seminal moments in our nation's history.
Zogby's Free Pass
August 12, 2009
http://www.investigativeproject.org/1375/zogbys-free-pass
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Attorney General Eric Holder made a curious selection for the closing speaker at a July 20 Justice Department conference marking the 45th anniversary of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Rather than turning to a lion of the movement, or a figure whose success in life was made possible by the bill, Holder turned to Arab American Institute (AAI) President James Zogby. It's a curious move because - despite his generally favorable public image – an examination of Zogby's record shows he is an apologist for Muslim Brotherhood-linked groups like the Muslim Students Association (MSA) and terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hizballah. On top of that, he is a strident foe of the federal government's efforts to cut off funding for terrorist organizations, including efforts by Holder's department.
Zogby's address barely touched on the significance of the Civil Rights Act. Instead, Zogby used his speech to settle some partisan political scores and depict himself and other Arab-Americans as victims -- of murder; death threats; "blacklisting" and "harassment;" "stereotypes;" "defamation;" and even harsh U.S. immigration laws that turned his father into an illegal alien.
Zogby attacked the Bush Administration for detaining Arab and Muslim immigrants and visitors right after the September 11 attacks (neglecting to mention the fact that the detainees were in the United States illegally.) He denounced former Attorneys General John Ashcroft and Michael Mukasey for attempting to delineate how ethnic/racial profiling might be used to prevent terrorist attacks.
Zogby's speech included not a word about the sacrifices of Dr. Martin Luther King or other civil-rights workers who responded with non-violence in the face of jailings, vicious beatings and murder to make the 1964 legislation a reality. But it did include a note of self-praise for Zogby and others like him who worked in the Rev. Jesse Jackson's failed 1984 and 1988 presidential campaigns – which Zogby in turn used to promote his own organization, AAI. "It was out of that experience that our AAI was born as an empowerment project to continue our progress into the mainstream of American politics," he boasted.
There is no evidence (at least on the public record) of anyone in government or the mainstream media questioning Zogby's Justice Department speech, and that is par for the course. Despite a long history of radical comments, Zogby has cultivated the image of being a moderate and a scholar. As a result, he is treated with kid gloves in the media and is often cited as an authority on policy issues. (See recent examples here and here and here and here.)
But the substance of Zogby's worldview - particularly when it comes to terrorism and other Middle East-related issues – is anything but moderate.
Although he is an Arab Christian, Zogby's positions over the years often echoes those of radical Islamist groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Muslim American Society, both rooted in the Muslim Brotherhood. On September 16, 2000, AAI joined CAIR in cosponsoring a rally in front of the White House in support of the Palestinian "right of return." In October 2003, AAI and CAIR co-sponsored a "Civil Rights Conference" in Dallas to mobilize opposition to the Patriot Act. Like CAIR, Zogby sought to whitewash an Obama campaign official's ties with the Muslim Brotherhood-linked MSA. Like CAIR and MAS, Zogby demands that Israel withdraw from the West Bank, but refuses to condemn anti-Israel terrorism and violence from Gaza, from which Israel unilaterally withdrew in 2005.
Since September 11, Zogby has repeatedly tried to discredit federal investigations of U.S.-based Muslim groups for supporting terror. One of his targets was Operation Green Quest (a multi-agency task force including the FBI, U.S. Customs, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the IRS, and the Treasury Department.)
In March 2002, Green Quest launched a series of raids against Northern Virginia-based organizations that were determined to be financiers of terrorism. The raids targeted sites affiliated with the SAAR Network, described by federal investigators as a network of up to 100 nonprofit and for-profit organizations that "are interrelated through corporate officers and holding companies – subsidiary relationships, to facilitate the funding of terrorist operations." Most of the funding went to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) – terror groups responsible for hundreds of deaths during the past two decades.
Within days of the raids, Zogby's AAI moved to discredit law enforcement's efforts to cut off the flow of money to terrorists. AAI issued an "Action Alert" entitled "Treasury Department Must Address Overzealous Raids," which stated:
"Fear and confusion now prevail in our communities and many believe the government has plans to punish all Muslim organizations without clearly establishing a credible link to an ongoing criminal investigation. This is not acceptable."
One of the groups raided was the International Institute for Islamic Thought (IIIT), described in an FBI affidavit as a front to support Hamas and the PIJ. When Zogby appeared on "Hardball with Chris Matthews" less than a week after the raids, Matthews asked him if IIIT is "a dangerous group or not."
"No, not at all," Zogby replied dismissively. But federal investigators long have suspected that the IIIT housed some of the top Muslim Brotherhood members in the United States. IIIT was included on a "list of our organizations and the organizations of our friends" in an internal Muslim Brotherhood memorandum about the group's future in the United States:
"The Ikhwan [Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad In eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and 'sabotaging' its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions."
Ramadan Abdullah Shallah, the current secretary-general of the PIJ, served as a director at the World and Islam Studies Enterprise (WISE), a think tank and academic research center funded by IIIT.
Shallah, who headed WISE from 1991-1995 before emerging in Damascus as the head of the PIJ, wrote "that IIIT was the largest contributor to WISE." In November 2001, the Justice Department stated that WISE was among "front organizations that raised funds for militant Islamic-Palestinian groups such as the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and Hamas." During the early 1990s, WISE was home to four members of the PIJ's governing board, including senior operative Sami Al-Arian. Despite clear evidence of PIJ leaders at WISE, and public videos showing Al-Arian's extremism, Zogby's AAI denounced Al-Arian's 2003 arrest on conspiracy charges as an example of "profiling" and "specious charges."
Likewise, Zogby defends the Saudi Arabian government despite its longstanding role in funding radical Islamist groups and terrorism. In a 2005 article, he asserted that "anti-Saudi propaganda has become a tool to smear critics and target efforts to build ties between Saudis and Americans."
Furthermore, in 2004, when Palestinian organizations refused to sign a pledge stating that U.S. foreign aid would not be used to support terrorism, Zogby questioned the very concept of barring material support for terrorism. Requiring groups to do so "compromises the ability of the humanitarian organizations to function," he claimed.
Additionally, Zogby has opposed efforts to prevent Americans from financially supporting the terrorist organization Hizballah. Interviewed by the Washington Post for a May 8, 2003 article, Zogby said: "By criminalizing attempts to send money to Hezbollah or to support it, the FBI is confusing and alienating people here who could be allies in the war on terrorism."
Likewise, Zogby has defended other US-based supporters of Middle East terror groups. In October 2000, the Investigative Project on Terrorism videotaped Abdurrahman Alamoudi of the American Muslim Council at a rally across the street from the White House announcing his support for Hamas and Hizballah. When then-New York U.S. Senate candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign announced it would return Alamoudi's contribution, Zogby claimed Alamoudi was a victim of a "shameful hysteria campaign of McCarthyism." Four years later, Alamoudi was sentenced to 23 years in prison for terror-related crimes which included participation in a Libyan plot to assassinate the then- Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia.
In August 2008, Mazen Asbahi, Sen. Barack Obama's Muslim outreach coordinator, resigned from the Democrat's presidential campaign following reports that he had been affiliated with various Muslim Brotherhood-linked organizations, including the Muslim Students Association. In a blog posting on the Huffington Post website, Zogby claimed Asbahi had been a victim of "bigoted websites" and "fear and ignorance about all things Arab and Muslim."
Zogby has also defended people who raise funds for Hamas. During a 1995 appearance on the PBS Television show "Firing Line," Zogby criticized the idea of placing limits on "humanitarian activity" of groups with links to Hamas: "That is going to be hell to implement. It's going to prove, I think, very detrimental to the civil liberties of people in this country." Zogby also supported Mousa Abu Marzook, a senior Hamas leader, during his detention in the United States and called plans to extradite him to Israel "destructive."
Zogby has objected to suicide bombings on grounds that they benefit Israel politically. Writing in the Muslim World Monitor in February 1995, Zogby complained that, "The bombing of New York's World Trade Center in 1993 played right into the hands of Israel" by illustrating its concerns about Palestinian terrorism.
In a December 1995 article in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Zogby suggested that Arabs have suffered their own "holocaust" at the hands of the United States, Israel and European colonial powers. "Arabs may not have experienced the same holocaust [as the Jews in Europe], but if one adds up the Arab lives lost in digging the Suez Canal, the Libyans slaughtered by the Italians, the Algerians killed by the French, the Sudanese murdered by the British, and all the Palestinians butchered in this century – we've had our own holocaust, but it stretches over 100 years."
For years, Zogby has staked out positions in line with Islamist groups which reflexively criticize U.S. anti-terror polices. Yet his personal charisma enables him to receive favorable coverage from the mainstream media and administration officials. Attorney General Holder did the Obama Administration no favors by selecting a terrorism apologist like Zogby instead of a genuine civil-rights hero to commemorate one of the seminal moments in our nation's history.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
His counter terrorism expert loves Hizballah
Brennan on Hizballah: They Can’t Be Terrorists! After All, Some of Them Are Lawyers!
By Barry RubinIt wasn’t enough that President Obama’s counterterrorism advisor, John Brennan gave a speech which—possibly for the first time in U.S. history—gave a government definition of a religious practice, endorsing Jihad as a noble pursuit. No, he also gave a basic endorsement to a terrorist group which has murdered several hundred Americans.
Please understand, Brennan is not engaging in appeasement. It's much worse. He thinks he's a brilliant strategist who is going to manipulate Hizballah into being pro-American without knowing very much about the Middle East, Lebanon, Iran, Islamism, or even his supposed subject of expertise, terrorism.
Sound like an exaggeration? Keep reading.
Brennan made clear his views on Hizballah before being appointed by the president, which means he shouldn’t have been appointed. The problem isn't just that his view is politically unpalatable and strategically disastrous, it is also enormously ignorant.
Here’s what Brennan wrote in an article for ANNALS, AAPSS, 618, July 2008. What it says on Iran is equally bad. But let’s focus today on Hizballah:
“It would not be foolhardy, however, for the United States to tolerate, and even to encourage, greater assimilation of Hezbollah into Lebanon's political system, a process that is subject to Iranian influence. Hezbollah is already represented in the Lebanese parliament and its members have previously served in the
Lebanese cabinet, reflections of Hezbollah's interest in shaping Lebanon's political future from within government institutions. This political involvement is a far cry from Hezbollah's genesis as solely a terrorist organization dedicated to murder, kidnapping, and violence. Not coincidentally, the evolution of Hezballah into a fully vested player in the Lebanese political system has been accompanied by a marked reduction in terrorist attacks carried out by the organization. The best hope for maintaining this trend and for reducing the influence of violent extremists within the organization—as well as the influence of extremist Iranian officials who view Hezbollah primarily as a pawn of Tehran—is to increase Hezbollah’s stake in Lebanon’s struggling democratic processes”
This kind of thinking would do far more than bury Lebanon. It would bury U.S. interests and influence in the Middle East. And so it is only appropriate to quote William Shakespeare’s lines for another funeral oration: “If you have tears, prepare to shed them now!”
Yes, it would be foolhardy for the United States to encourage growing influence and power for a radical Islamist terrorist group that is a client of Syria and reasonably close to being an agent of Iran. Brennan seems to give no evidence of any serious knowledge about the Middle East.
Hizballah isn't being "assimilated" into Lebanon's political system, it is trying to take over Lebanon to the greatest extent possible. Just like when the Bolsheviks and Nazis ran candidates that wasn't proof that they were being "assimilated" into the Russian and German systems. (Imagine if a British minister had proposed back then a policy of encouraging Communist or Nazi participation in government on the grounds that this would moderate them.)
But why can’t a terrorist or Islamist revolutionary group engage in normal politics? Yes, it might not kill people for a bit, mainly because it plans to do so when that's necessary to advance its cause or--even better---when it takes power.
Hizballah’s maximum goal is to seize state power in Lebanon and to drive out all Western influence, while wiping Israel off the map and extending Islamist rule over the entire region. But that doesn’t mean it can’t have interim goals. It’s minimum goal (already accomplished) is to become the strongest single force in the country, to build up a powerful, highly trained militia, to attack Israel whenever it desires, and to gain full control of all Shi’a areas in the country especially in south Lebanon.
How does involvement in electoral politics prove—and the same applies to Hamas—that it doesn’t remain a revolutionary Islamist group promoting Iranian and Syrian influence which will indulge in terrorism when it feels that tactic to be useful?
And how could anyone be so dumb not to understand this?
By the way, he knows nothing about how Hizballah has behaved in politics. What have been its efforts? To gain control of the government or at least veto power, to prevent any attempt to disarm its militia or limit its arms’ smuggling (Syrian arms paid for with Iranian money).
And why did Hizballah walk out of the government the first time? Over its demand to kill the international investigation of the murder of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri and a dozen other terrorist acts.
In other words, the “moderate parliamentary” Hizballah left the government in order to protect previous terrorist attacks from being punished. Doesn’t this show their continued involvement in…terrorism?
Yet even this nonsense is dimmed by what Brennan says next. It just so happens that Hizballah stopped doing terrorism because it was entering politics? Has Brennan forgotten the attacks on Israel which triggered a massive war, so destructive for Lebanon, just two years earlier? Hizballah claimed victory but suffered material defeat.
Note the inability of administration officials—this isn’t the first time—to discount totally the fact that force sometimes has a deterrent effect. Contemplate the meaning of that for America’s future foreign policy.
But that’s what he said before taking office. After his Jihad-endorsing speech, Brennan answered questions. Only one newspaper in the world published the transcript, as far as I can discover, the Seoul Times in South Korea. But Brennan’s statement can be found online in a sound recording.
Let me point out that he was answering a question from Bob Dreyfuss of the far-left The Nation magazine, who is not exactly a flaming American patriot. Dreyfuss mentioned that he has had personal discussions with Brennan in which the latter, “suggested that it might be possible to have a dialogue with Hamas and Hezbollah.”
[Dreyfuss is determined to "out" Brennan as he tries to pull him further to the left. On his blog, Dreyfuss writes: "In fact, as I alluded to in my question, Brennan had told me (before taking a job in the Obama administration, but while serving as Obama's top adviser on intelligence issues) that talking to Hamas and Hezbollah is the right thing to do."]
Brennan didn’t deny it but did say he thought Hamas was still a terrorist group. [This might just be for public consumption. Privately, if what he says about Hizballah is true--once a movement runs candidates that must mean to him that it is a candidate for being an American ally.]
But here’s what he said about Hizballah:
“Hezbollah started out as purely a terrorist organization back in the early 1980s and has evolved significantly over time. And now it has members of parliament, in the cabinet; there are lawyers, doctors, others who are part of the Hezbollah organization.
“However, within Hezbollah, there’s still a terrorist core. And hopefully those elements within the Shia community in Lebanon and within Hezbollah at large – they’re going to continue to look at that extremist terrorist core as being something that is anathema to what, in fact, they’re trying to accomplish in terms of their aspirations about being part of the political process in Lebanon. And so, quite frankly, I’m pleased to see that a lot of Hezbollah individuals are in fact renouncing that type of terrorism and violence and are trying to participate in the political process in a very legitimate fashion.”
So in other words it cannot be terrorist because it has parliamentarians, doctors, and even lawyers. Sticking with doctors for the moment, I can think of terrorist doctors who led some of the most terrorist PLO and Palestinian groups, the number-two leader of al-Qaida, and several of Hamas’s top leaders. And by the way, doesn’t Hamas have parliamentarians and cabinet members?
You see, friends, that’s why I use the word “stupid” here even though, forgive me, it isn’t a proper academic or analytical term. The following is my satire, not an actual quote:
Brennan: Hizballah can’t be terrorist because they have cabinet members, lawyers, and doctors but Hamas is terrorist.
Reporter: But doesn’t Hamas have cabinet members, lawyers, and doctors, too?
Brennan: Um, er, uh....
You don’t make a statement so easily reduced to rubble if you really understand your topic.
As for “terrorist core,” what are we talking about, some small marginal group? In Arabic, Hizballah leaders are constantly explaining there is no such thing as a “military” and a “civilian” wing. They speak freely of their devotion to Iran’s regime and the parliamentarians talk about their devout loyalty to the same leaders who give orders to the militia and for terrorist operations.
And who are “a lot of Hezbollah individuals” renouncing terrorism and violence? Don’t you get it, Brennan, that Hezbollah never ever had to renounce terrorism and violence to enter politics? (Neither did Hamas for that matter.)
Here are just two examples among many regarding things the president's terrorism advisor is unaware.
Nawaf Musawi, head of Hizballah's "political wing" says:
"Fundamentally, our role in the party is Jihad work. Without it, there's no value or role for Lebanon. If I had the opportunity to go back, I would have chosen the path of military jihad, because the position of a true warrior (muhajid) is more important than that of a member of parliament."
And here is Hizballah second-in-command Naim Qassem:
"All political, social and jihad work is tied to the decisions of this leadership. The same leadership that directs the parliamentary and government work also leads jihad actions in the struggle against Israel."
Moreover, is Brennan unaware of the fact that:
--Hizballah's arms are paid for by Iran and supplied by Syria, Is the United States going to compete with their influence when Hizballah leaders admit the organization was formed and ran for parliament only with approval from Tehran?
--Does Brennan know the name of Hizballah's political party?
--Has he any clue that Hizballah buys influence with Iranian money?
--Is he aware that Hizballah has been repeatedly threatening to wage terror attacks on UNIFIL if it tries to fulfill its UN mandate of keeping the group out of the south?
--Does he recall that Hizballah launched an invasion of the Christian and Druze areas, being stopped only because of ferocious fighting by the Druze militia?
--Has he ever read any of the antisemitic, anti-American speeches made by Hizballah leaders?
--Is he aware at all of Hizballah involvement in terrorist acts against Americans, including kidnappings, murders, and the assault on the Marine barracks to name a few examples? (Leaving aside a long list of attacks on Israel and the terrorist bombing of the Jewish center in Argentina with great loss of life?)
--Incidentally, shouldn't someone in his position be talking about punishing, not rewarding, terrorists with so much American blood on their hands? Shouldn't he be setting some tough preconditions--turn over those responsible, apologize and formally reject terrorism--before talking about U.S. support for Hizballah?
--Extra credit question: How do you think Lebanese opponents of Hizballah--which include the majority of Christians, Sunni Muslims, and Druze, along with a Shia minority--feel about having the world's leading democracy endorse those who want to turn their country into a nightmare dictatorship? How do you think Hizballah leaders and Iran's regime feels in reading stuff like Brennan's speech? Compare and contrast.
I’ll stop here but there’s a lot more one can say. This man is dangerously ignorant and holds very scary policy views. There is something seriously wrong with an administration who would have such a man as its counterterrorist advisor.
Frankly, Brennan should be pressed into resigning or at least subjected to some serious and detailed questioning about his views, statements, and alleged knowledge. "It seems," as one Syrian dissident put it, "that instead of peeling Syria away from Iran, Obama administration's strategy is peeling America away from the West."
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