re: "ThinkProgress Flips Out, Unaware of Links to US Muslim Brotherhood Group"

Dave Reaboi at Big Peace reports on old news made new again.

Money quote(s):

"ThinkProgress sent a few of their precocious ‘reporters’ to cover the Western Conservative Summit in Denver, and tried to ambush Frank Gaffney on Herman Cain’s recent and ill-considered meeting with Islamic Society of America (ISNA) President Mohamed Magid.

The breathlessness with which ThinkProgress reports on Gaffney’s comment is unintentionally quite funny. ThinkProgress’ Scott Keyes is so out of his depth on this issue, he runs an entire story on something pretty unremarkable: that ISNA is affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood" (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)

This "news" is news only to those who either haven't been paying attention or who believe that the "A" in CAIR signifies anything other than geography.

"It’s always fun to trip up ThinkProgress on the logic train; Mother Jones, DailyKos, and the others who’re running with this story and have never heard of the Holy Land Foundation Trial and the Muslim Brotherhood in America will continue to spin their wheels and work themselves into a lather."

The alphabet soup of interlocking MB front organizations amount to little more than the modern day Bund; in other words, in a saner time they would have withered away in shame after 9/11.

"What’s more troubling than ThinkProgress, of course, is why Herman Cain felt the need to meet with the president of the Islamic Society of North America, a group, “among those organizations created by the U.S.-Muslim Brotherhood.”"

That's a little troubling, I'll admit, but hardly unprecedented among U.S. politicians. ISNA (and CAIR, &tc.) will continue to present a problem of continuing education until such time as they, and their adherents, are either outlawed, interned, exiled, or treated as hostile combatants.

re: "Obama’s Next War"

Frank Gaffney at Big Peace outlines the prospects for peace (and for war).

Money quote(s):

"(A)n extraordinary intelligence-special forces team liquidated Osama bin Laden and drones have dispatched a number of other “high value targets” in what the President calls our “war on al Qaeda.” These are morale-boosting tactical achievements, but in the great scheme of things are more like whack-a-mole than strategic victories. Much more important is the fact that Mr. Obama is in the process of losing the two wars he inherited, and making a hash-up of the one he initiated in Libya."

Nonconcur in part. Taking UBL off the board was a strategic victory just as shooting down Adm. Yamamoto was

That being said, there's a vacuum, apparently, where the grand strategy ought to be.

"Mr. Obama’s earlier insistence on withdrawing U.S. combat forces from Iraq and his abiding determination to pull out virtually all others by year’s end has, as a practical matter, made it impossible for the government in Baghdad to ask us to stay on. Even if the Iranian puppet, Muqtada al-Sadr, were not threatening if Americans are invited to stay to relaunch his Madi army’s sectarian warfare and bring down the coalition government (in which his party is a prominent part), the Iraqis can hardly be more in favor of maintaining an American presence than we are.

The predictable result in Iraq next year (if not before) will be a vacuum of power that Iran will surely fill. State Department and other Americans left behind, in the hope that the immense investment we have made in lives and treasure in Iraq’s democratic and pro-Western future will not be squandered, stand to become endangered species. The ironic symbol of our defeat may be the takeover in due course of the immense new U.S. embassy in Baghdad by Iranians – this time by invited diplomats, not the hostage-taking “students” of 1979."

Why is Mookie still breathing? Surely this is an oversight on someone's part.

I worry about my colleagues starting assignments in Iraq these days; I don't want to find myself glued to a television screen someday in the not-to-distant future, hoping (and dreading) to see someone I know running for the last helicopter out or being paraded around as A-Jad's latest hostage. He's done it before, after all.

" In his speech last week to what he calls “the Muslim world,” the President made it U.S. policy to support whoever manages to get elected in the various nations of North Africa and the Middle East currently undergoing political upheavals. As a practical matter, that will mean legitimating, working with and underwriting the Muslim Brotherhood, since they are far and away the most organized, disciplined and ruthless of the contenders for power in country after country. History tells us that such people – from Hitler in Weimar Germany to Hamas in the Gaza Strip – win even “free and fair” elections, which then amount to one-man, one-vote, one-time. (For more on the deadly nature and agenda of the MB or Ikhwan, see last week’s column in this space.)

President Obama’s openness (to put it mildly) to bringing the Brotherhood to power was manifested not only by his pledge to forgive $1 billion in Egyptian debt and to provide it another billion in additional foreign aid. Just as he did in his last much-ballyhooed “outreach” to Muslims in Cairo two years ago, Team Obama had one of the top Muslim Brothers – Imam Mohamed Magid, president of the Ikhwan’s largest front group in this country, the Islamic Society of North America – prominently seated in the audience at the State Department."

I've mentioned ISNA's Muslim Brotherhood pedigree before.

During the course of a diplomatic career, it's not that unusual to find yourself, our your side, treating with very unpleasant and sometimes quite evil folk, as you're about your country's business of state and in the pursuit of peace. That sort of thing goes with the territory, I'm afraid. Examples including treating with Yasser Arafat even though we knew he was personally responsible for the murder of (at least) one of our ambassador. (For a transcription of the document itself, see here.)

It's still troubling and bothersome. I suppose I ought to be really worried when this sort of thing doesn't bother me.

WT - GAFFNEY: Death of 1,000 cuts. Transnationalists imperil our liberties on multiple fronts

From my archive of press clippings:

Washington Times

GAFFNEY: Death of 1,000 cuts


Transnationalists imperil our liberties on multiple fronts


By Frank J. Gaffney Jr.


Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Seasoned observers understand that, in official Washington, the so-called "death of a thousand cuts" technique is the preferred means of stealthily undermining, and ultimately defeating, initiatives and institutions too strong to be taken on via a frontal assault. The Obama administration appears intent on applying this approach of inflicting myriad attacks on the essential ingredient of American exceptionalism - our sovereignty - in ways that seem individually innocuous but that will, over time, surely prove lethal to our Constitution and country.

Read the whole article here.

Snippet(s):

"Mr. Obama's recent Executive Order 12425 is a case in point. Issued with no fanfare on Dec. 17 in the run-up to the Christmas holidays, this document amends an earlier order promulgated by President Ronald Reagan in 1983. The Reagan directive granted the International Criminal Police Organization (popularly known as Interpol) limited immunity with respect to its operations inside the United States. Mr. Reagan, however, ensured that Interpol was subject to constitutional protections (notably, the Fourth Amendment's prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures) and U.S. laws (including the Freedom of Information Act).

By contrast, the Obama executive order strips away those limitations, granting the international law enforcement agency blanket immunity from official and private efforts to assess its activities in the United States."

_____
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is president of the Center for Security Policy, a columnist for The Washington Times and host of the nationally syndicated program, "Secure Freedom Radio."