re: "The Muslim Brotherhood's American Defenders"

Caroline Glick re-posted her Jerusalem Post article at CarolineGlick.Com ("the most prominent woman in Israel"), regarding America's current mis-comprehension of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Money quote(s):

"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."

&

"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."

This is what comes of having a "war on terrorism" and "violent extremism" rather than responding directly to the organizations and movements which have employed those tactics against us.

Namely the MB and her sister- and daughter-organizations like Hezbollah.

"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."

DNI Clapper is not a working-level intelligence analyst. He has to function in the political realm and that can be expected to color his public remarks.

One does have to wonder what the non-public recommendations and assessments look like.

(CAA has no direct experience regarding the DNI but there are people CAA respects who have, and they respect him.)

"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."

One can always blame bad policy decisions on bad advice, but you then have to shoulder the blame for choosing bad advisors.

"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."

&

"(I)n 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."

See my comment above about choosing bad advisors.

"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."

Silly idea, right? Because of course none of America's enemies has ever tried to infiltrate our government for purposes of influence and espionage before.

(Well, not if you don't consider World War I, World War II, the Cold War..... )

"(T)he 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."

Do I really have to link to the Holy Land Foundation trial documents again?

I guess so.

"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."

She concluded:

"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."

7/27

re: "Writing off Afghanistan, too"

Kori Schake at Shadow Government ("Notes from the Loyal Opposition") saw the writing on the wall.

Money quote(s):

"The evident confusion among senior policy makers in the administration prefigures the administration's cratering commitment to win the war in Afghanistan. The White House has narrowed its war aims from defeating all threats to only defeating al Qaeda. The Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, testified to Congress this week that the deaths of senior al Qaeda leadership have brought us to a "critical transitional phase for the terrorist threat," in which the organization has a better than 50 percent probability of fragmenting and becoming incapable of mass-casualty attacks.

The White House appears set to use progress against al Qaeda as justification for accelerating an end to the war in Afghanistan. Since the president has concluded that we aren't fighting the Taliban, just al Qaeda, no need to stick around Afghanistan until the government of that country can provide security and prevent recidivism to Taliban control. The president will declare victory for having taken from al Qaeda the ability to organize large scale attacks, and piously intone that nation building in Afghanistan is Afghanistan's responsibility.

This policy will not win the war in Afghanistan. It will not even end the war in Afghanistan. It will only end our involvement in that ongoing war. Because arbitrary timelines do not translate into having achieved the objectives that cause enemies to throw down their weapons. And it is the enemy ceasing to contest our objectives that constitutes winning. Interrogations with prisoners in Afghanistan have caused the American military to conclude that "Once ISAF is no longer a factor, Taliban consider their victory inevitable."" (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

2/2

re: "Occupying Wall Street And The Leftist National Security Threat"

Paul Hair at Big Peace drew some lessons from intelligence failures of at least three sorts.

Money quote(s):

"One sentence in that paragraph leaves open the possibility that the intelligence community (IC) did its job in the lead-up to the Russian-Georgian conflict, but the rest of the paragraph indicates that the IC failed. And while the War College paper does not reflect the official position of the Army, Department of Defense, or U.S. government, its conclusion that the IC failed in issuing an adequate warning sounds similar to other accusations of the IC failing (September 11, Iran, the Egyptian Revolution, etc.)."

Calling something an "intelligence failure" is a pretty broad-brush statement. Among the various definitions of "intelligence" is that of the intelligence process or cycle. Intelligence can be both both a thing, a product, or more generally the process and function by which such products are, er, produced.

So it's important to consider which parts of the intelligence process, or which agencies within the IC may have failed.

Was it a failure of collection? Did we just not look in the right places, talk to the right people, or notice the right trends?

Was it a failure of analysis? Did we have the raw information or reports and just not recognize their significance? Did we downplay what turned out to be predictive or "big-up" what was deceptive or irrelevent?

Was it a failure of dissemination? Did the right intelligence just not get into the right hands? Were vital intelligence products "stove-piped" or "fire-walled" from getting to the analysts, commanders, policy-makers, or elected officials who needed them?

"So let’s accept the premise that the IC has repeatedly failed in recent years. Let’s forget that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence—the head of the IC—states in its “National Intelligence: A Consumer’s Guide,” that intelligence cannot predict the future (Adobe page 11; actual page 19). Let’s also forget that we here at home cannot accurately predict who will or will not run for president, even as we have firsthand, easy, non-life-threatening access on a scale that invades the personal lives of the people whose minds we are trying to predict. Instead, let’s just accept the criticism that the IC should have predicted or warned of the threats and revolutions that have occurred in recent years. And in doing so, let us also apply this same standard of responsibility to our domestic watchdogs (law enforcement agencies, politicians, news media, talk show hosts, and political pundits) that should be monitoring homeland safety and security."

Too true. Real-life intelligence analysis is not predictive. It can, carefully, do a certain amount of forecasting, such as by analysis of alternative futures or outcomes. But that's not quite the same thing.

"(W)e have a growing group of people who overtly say that they want a revolution that overthrows our government. And as more powerful and wealthy figures and organizations back them, they now have the finances, resources, and means to act on their overtly stated desires. (See also what Daniel W. Drezner writes at Foreign Policy.)

So if the IC has been wrong during the past few years for not issuing sufficient predictions or warnings of the disasters and revolutions in other countries of the world, then surely the watchdogs of our nation must be held accountable for their continuing failure to issue adequate warning of just how dangerous the left is, and for their failure to take necessary investigative actions."

There's an old saying in Liberal/Progressive circles, to the effect that "there are no enemies on the Left." And to this day, many elected officials from the Democratic Party, as well as the unelected officials of our mainstream media, continue to act as if this were true.

It's not.

"We say that those who are violent and a threat are peaceful protestors or those with legitimate grievances because we cannot bring ourselves to acknowledge them as the barbarians that they truly are. Meanwhile, we demonize and persecute those who follow the law because we know we can get away with it—we know they won’t actually act like we accuse them of acting"

If there are certain "protected classes" based upon ethnicity, politics, or lifestyle, then the converse of there being certain groups upon whom it is always "open season" is also true.

After all, it's not the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops that gets their followers to strap themselves into suicide vests, beheads those who disagree, or promotes honor killings of teenagers or estranged wives.

"Or we deem Islam the Religion of Peace even as we demonize those opposed to the worldwide jihad as “Islamophobic” and “dangerous extremists.” And, of course, we deem those occupying Wall Street and other cities as people who are justifiably angry and thirsting for democracy even as we continue vilifying Tea Partiers and conservatives as violent and a threat to society."

10/11

re: "Gaffes and Guns (Or, What To Do About Libya?)"

TSB at The Skeptical Bureaucrat ("Giving my fellow Americans the view from my cubicle") notes a Washington "glamour don't."

Money quote(s):

"our two most important intelligence officials committed an official gaffe - meaning, they blurted out the truth - while testifying before a Senate committee"

Politicians and the media (but I repeat myself) hate being told something that's so if it contradicts what they wish were so. They didn't tell the committee what they wanted to have happen, they told the committee the conclusion that the facts as they were known, and analysis thereupon, led them to reach.

"Naturally, this led to calls for Clapper to resign. But it might, more productively, have led people to wonder how we can change the dynamics in Libya so as to favor the Libyan rebels."

_____

Update (2/24/2011): Clearly TSB was onto something here, as the U.S. and several allies are now changing the dynamics.

re: "Apocalyptic Mental Midgetry...."

Deebow at Blackfive ("the paratrooper of love") is underimpressed with the current foreign policy leadership.

Money quote(s):

"The apocalyptic lack of actual experience in the area of foreign affairs, foreign policy, and knowledge of what actually works is becoming stunningly clear to those Americans who are willing to do the barest amount of news-watching. I wonder where we can find more of these people to hire?

And with men like Leon Panetta (whose foresight on intelligence matters is limited to his playing "Risk" in college, and evidently, watching the news), and DNI James Clapper (who evidently didn't see the word "muslim" in the title "Muslim Brotherhood"), and SOS Hillary Pantsuits (well, ummm... Never Mind..) advising the community organizer in chief on how best to not show weakness, send a consistent message and try not to alienate the .02 percent of the population that attended UC Berkeley who would vote for him 2012; we end up with a situation that, unfortunately, our enemies are watching very closely, because they get a vote in what happens as well."

Ouch. More than a little bit of partisan anger is clouding the criticism here, which should be examined cooly and with some professional detachment, thank-you-very-much.

"This is not leadership. Vacilation is not a leadership trait. Good leaders make consistent decisions from consistent thinking with intelligence guided by experience and training. This President seems to be flipping a coin or taking a poll in the Situation Room by a show of hands.

I know what real leadership looks like, the writers and viewers of this blog know what leadership looks like, and this ain't it. Fire Panetta now. Fire Clapper now. Fire Clinton now."

One of the things that's so frustrating sometimes is knowing just how little the U.S. can actually do, sometimes, to influence events in faraway places. For instance, when unorganized protesters occupy a major public square for a week or more, who has their leader (hint: there isn't one) in their Rolodex file? Lack of understanding of just how limited our options sometimes are makes it easy to direct the anger this frustration produces on simplistic targets.

re: "Mubarak was wrong, and so were we"

Peter Feaver at Shadow Government ("Notes From The Loyal Opposition") dissects in the aftermath.

Money quote(s):

"(A)lmost everyone, including bloggers like me, managed to get it wrong:

The Intelligence community. The beleaguered IC was already reeling from White House criticism about failing to predict events unfolding in Tunisia and Egypt. (This criticism is a bit unfair since I bet there were some warnings -- given the volume of intelligence products and the way they are written, virtually everything has been predicted as "possible." Moreover, it is clear that those with vastly better intelligence and sources on Egypt than anything the IC ever could hope to amass, the Mubarak regime itself, were also surprised by the flow of events.) Then came the gaffe by Director of National Intelligence Clapper about the "largely secular" Muslim Brotherhood, a statement his staff was obliged to walk back later in the day. And the topper was CIA Director Panetta's admission that his forward-leaning prediction yesterday about Mubarak's departure was based not on intelligence analysis but on television reports. This is an almost textbook case of the CNN effect."

re: "Glad the adults are in charge- National Security FAIL!"

Uncle Jimbo at Blackfive ("the paratrooper of love") is none too pleased and doesn't mince words about it.

Money quote(s):

"So far as regards the Egyptian revolution, our President has voted present, our Vice President denied that a dictator of 30 years was a dictator of 30 years, our Secretary of State stated two completely contradictory positions in the course of 4 days, our Director of National Intelligence wasn't even joking when he called the MUSLIM Brotherhood a secular group that has eschewed violence, and now the Director of the CIA testifies to Congress (incorrectly) based on the information his agency gleaned by watching f***ing CNN!

Boy I'm tickled pink that we have this impressive group of professionals to reestablish America's position in the world. The most significant event in the Middle East in decades and we have a clown car full of pint-sized personalities running around saying things so dumb that Saturday Night Live has fired its writers and now will just run clips from C-Span. What a great idea to hire a completely unexperienced, perpetual grad student as President & Commander in Chief. His amazing blend of bong hit diplomacy & a failed cult of personality have made him almost transparent on the international stage."

&

"(N)ow Europe and the Anglosphere seem to be waking up and smelling the tea and croissants as well. Australia, England, Canada, Germany & France have all noted the bleedingly, freaking obvious, that multi-culturalism creates multiple cultures and that some of those cultures are reprehensibly barbaric.

A Bush admin aide caught a lot of crap about saying that they created their own reality. What he was talking about was getting inside our enemies decision loop and not allowing them to dictate the situation. If you move swiftly enough you can create a reality your enemies couldn't plan for. That requires the courage of your convictions (or convictions period) and the stones to act. It is all well and good to call inaction pragmatism, or Realpolitik and there are times when caution is obviously the proper course."

re: "Failure of Analysis "

George Smiley at In From the Cold ("Musings on Life, Love, Politics, Military Affairs, the Media, the Intelligence Community and Just About Anything Else that Captures Our Interest") gives, as always, an educated assessment.

Money quote(s):

"The United States maintains close ties with both the Egyptian military and its intelligence services. In fact, the nation's recently-appointed vice-president, Omar Sulieman, has been described as "the CIA's man in Cairo," a reference to his lengthy tenure as head of Egyptian intelligence and close ties to his American counterparts.

In other words, Egypt is not a country where the U.S. intelligence community is without sources."

"(I)f that weren't bad enough, our Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, had his own howler on the same day. In his own testimony before Congress, General Clapper said the Muslim Brotherhood "is largely secular;" has "eschewed violence," and is "pursuing social ends."

By days end, Mr. Clapper was walking back those remarks. True, the Brotherhood operates hospitals and social programs in Egypt, but there is ample evidence that many of its factions are active participants in terrorism and still want to wipe Israel off the map. Needless to say, Clapper's comments raised a lot of eyebrows in Washington--and beyond.

But this goes beyond two senior spooks making laughably bad calls on a critical subject. Most individuals in the positions held by Mr. Panetta and Mr. Clapper are very guarded in their comments, knowing the potential impact of their words. And, in virtually all cases, there public remarks reflects the intelligence community's assessment of a particular situation.

So, in that sense, the observations of the CIA Director and the DNI (likely) reflected the consensus of our intelligence community."

&

"(R)emember: the former Air Force General isn't paid to study terror groups in depth; his assignment is to run the nation's intel bureaucracy. His remarks on the Muslim Brotherhood reflect the "consensus" of the intelligence community, i.e., all those well-educated analysts whose sole job is to attain expertise on the Brotherhood, Al Qaida, or other other Muslim terror groups.

If the "smart guys" in the spook world believe the Muslim Brotherhood is morphing into a mainstream political group, we are in trouble."

re: "Dumbest thing said yet about Muslim Brotherhood"

Uncle Jimbo at Blackfive ("the paratrooper of love") doesn't mince words.

Money quote(s):

"That is so incandescently stupid that he and everyone who vetted or helped prepare his remarks should be fired, preferably out of cannons and not the circus kind. How the Hell are we supposed to make any coherent policy when our DNI is so monumnetally ill-informed that he makes Biden look wise. Every single statement he has made about the Mo Bros is not just wrong, but completely ass-backwards. I weep for our complete lack of anything even vaguely resembling a competent intelligence apparatus."

(I would invite the reader to read something I wrote about this here.)

When discussing Egypt's MB, what it is, what it does, remember this:

"(T)he MB (like Hamas, like Hezbollah) uses the disfunction or disinterest of the legal government and authorities wherever they are to buy legitimacy by providing social services. In other words, they go secular and they do so in a very deliberate, very public way. It's not fake, the medical or social safety net they erect is quite real, and in an environment (such as Egypt) where the overtly political and violent aims of the MB are quite ruthlessly quashed, this sort of thing is much less likely to get one a date with the security ministries interrogators."

re: "There's Willful Blindness, and Then There's Willful Stupidity"

Andrew C. McCarthy at The Corner ("a web-leading source of real-time conservative opinion") puts a smackdown on the DNI.

Quote(s):

"James Clapper, the head of intelligence for the United States of America, has explained to Congress that the Muslim Brotherhood is “largely secular.” It further has “eschewed violence,” decries al-Qaeda as a “perversion of Islam,” and really just wants “social ends” and “a betterment of the political order in Egypt.”"

&

"If this is what $40 billion–plus buys you, maybe Representative Ryan can make up the rest of that $100 billion by eliminating the intelligence community."

I don't happen to know the DNI personally, but a lot folks in the IC whom I do know speak of him with respect.

I haven't read the whole testimony, but one thing I can tell you is that what someone from the IC briefs an open meeting with the media present is not what he or she briefs behind closed doors where everyone inside has the appropriate security clearance. Unclassified briefings are, necessarily, somewhat dumbed-down, and they are so for very good reasons. Such reasons as not exposing the crown jewels of your best sources or means of collection, &tc., so as to make your source's lives shorter and riskier or to make it easier for an adversary to fool or evade your intelligence capabilities.

(The reader may recall, or is invited to discover, why it is that Osama Bin Ladin no longer uses a cellular or satellite telephone.)

That being said, the MB (like Hamas, like Hezbollah) uses the disfunction or disinterest of the legal government and authorities wherever they are to buy legitimacy by providing social services. In other words, they go secular and they do so in a very deliberate, very public way. It's not fake, the medical or social safety net they erect is quite real, and in an environment (such as Egypt) where the overtly political and violent aims of the MB are quite ruthlessly quashed, this sort of thing is much less likely to get one a date with the security ministries interrogators.

With that in mind, it may be that reporting on the DNI's testimony is a little slanted, a little incomplete, and that maybe all that shocked reaction on the part of committee members was just the slightest, teensiest bit stage-managed.

(Not that there's ever any stagecraft and drama practiced in the public eye on Capitol Hill. Perish the thought.)

re: "ODNI inspector general reviewing Chas Freeman"

Laura Rozen at ForeignPolicy.Com's The Cable ("Reporting inside the foreign policy machine") has this update.

Money quote(s):

"In a letter today responding to 10 congressmen led by Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL) who have raised concerns about the appointment of Chas Freeman to chair the National Intelligence Council, Edward Maguire, the inspector general of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, has written that he is reviewing the matters they have raised."

re: "Where was due diligence?"

Melanie Phillips at The Spectator ("Champagne for the brain") defines the problem.

Money quote(s):

"Concern about the appointment of Chas W Freeman as chairman of the National Intelligence Council has now reached such a pitch that Congress has launched an investigation into his foreign financial links. As I reported here and here Freeman, whose designated role will give him access to and make him gate-keeper over intelligence about countries posing a threat to America such as Saudi Arabia, China and Iran, has financial ties to Saudi Arabia, China and Iran."

"Topping the list of concerns is Freeman’s position on the international advisory board of the China National Offshore Oil Corp. The Chinese government and other state-owned companies own a majority stake in CNOOC -- which has invested in Sudan and Iran. Then there is Freeman’s chairmanship of the Middle East Policy Council which is funded by the Saudis.

It is astounding that such a man is to be entrusted with the most sensitive intelligence regarding America’s security."

&

"(T)he White House is saying the Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, did not get Obama’s approval before he announced Freeman’s appointment. Is this really likely? And if it is so, then one has to wonder at Obama’s pick of Dennis Blair who can make such an appalling appointment as Chas W Freeman and without even doing due diligence on his choice."