By Bob Taylor
CHARLOTTE, NC, July 8, 2014 – While the West treads water in a sea of diplomatic incompetence and abstract debate, Islamists are gaining in strength by the hour. A recent report in “Gulf News” provides valuable insights into the manner in which the United States has given the Muslim Brotherhood and its jihadist allies increased power in the Middle East.
Barack Obama makes no secret about the half dozen or so Muslim Brotherhood advisers who are among his closest colleagues in the White House. Nor has the media expressed any concern that giving the rat access to the cheese does not raise the potential for major infestations in the future.
With so many players and alliances involved, a complete review of the “Gulf News” report might take three or four readings. Even then it might not clear the haze of confusion. In the Middle East everyone sleeps with anyone else on any given day just as a matter of self-preservation. Alliances and treaties are about as lasting as three inches of snow followed by 80 degree weather the next day.
“Gulf News” writes, “For the past decade, two successive US administrations have maintained close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Tunisia, Syria and Libya, to name just the most prominent cases. “The Obama administration conducted an assessment of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2010 and 2011, beginning even before the events known as the ‘Arab Spring’ erupted in Tunisia and in Egypt. The President personally issued Presidential Study Directive 11 (PSD-11) in 2010, ordering an assessment of the Muslim Brotherhood and other ‘political Islamist’ movements, including the ruling AKP in Turkey, ultimately concluding that the United States should shift from its longstanding policy of supporting ‘stability’ in the Middle East and North Africa (that is, support for ‘stable regimes’ even if they were authoritarian), to a policy of backing ‘moderate’ Islamic political movements.”
The key element of the “Gulf News” report following those initial paragraphs is that “To this day, PSD-11 remains classified, in part because it reveals an embarrassingly naïve and uninformed view of trends in the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region.” It began when Obama threw U.S. support to the Islamists in Egypt in an effort to depose Hosni Mubarak, who had been a Western ally for three decades. Egypt is where the MB was founded in the 1920s and they have been morphing in various aspects of evil ever since. The entire world witnessed how Egypt erupted into the largest revolution in the history of the world with Egyptians calling Obama a supporter of terrorism.
What the West seems incapable of grasping is that whoever a dictator is at any given time, be he Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, Nouri al-Maliki, Bashar Assad or anyone else, “bad guys” all but with one important thing in common; they know how the game is played, both in the Middle East and, more importantly, in the West. Islam creates these people, not the other way around. So why do we continue to insist that we can alter 14 centuries of hatred, tribal incest and in-fighting to make accept democracy as we know it?
Middle East analyst Raymond Ibrahim gets it when he writes, “Mideast academics have long spearheaded the idea that there are ‘moderate’ Islamists and ‘radical’ Islamists, and that the U.S. should work with the former (in reality they are all radical—to be an Islamist is to be radical—the only difference is that the ‘moderate’ Islamists don’t wear their radicalism on their sleeves, even as they work toward the same goals that the more open ‘radicals’ work for, namely, a Sharia-enforcing caliphate).”
One State Department paper uncovered by “Gulf Press” was heavily redacted but contained enough information through talking points for Deputy Secretary of State William Burns who was scheduled to meet July 14, 2012 with Mohammad Sawan, head of the Brotherhood’s Justice and Construction Party.
The document clearly indicated Washington’s desire for the MB to be a major political force in post-Gaddafi Libya. It also recommended that Burns should express to Sawan that the U.S. share “your party’s concerns in ensuring that a comprehensive transitional justice process is undertaken to address past violations so that they do not spark new discontent.” As Ibrahim so deftly translates, “’To address past violations so that they do not spark new discontent’ is another way of stating another popular position among Mideast professors, namely that whenever Islamists engage in violence or terrorism, that is proof positive that they have a legitimate grievance, hence the US must ‘appease’ lest it ‘spark new discontent’ (perhaps the true backdrop of Benghazi).”
But here is the dirty little secret pointed out by “Gulf News” and Raymond Ibrahim, “In light of all the chaos the Islamists have been responsible for in Libya, Iraq, Egypt, Syria, et al—is it now obvious why Arab autocrats like Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, Hosni Mubarak, and currently Bashar Assad have always ‘banned’ and ‘fiercely pursued’ the Brotherhood and its affiliates?”
The Muslim Brotherhood was banned for more than 30 years from Libya and was “fiercely pursued by the Gaddafi regime.” In 2012, the LMB returned to Libya with plans to take an active role in the country’s political future. The evidence turned up by “Gulf Press”, though complicated and difficult to unravel, clearly shows the Obama administration’s desire for the Muslim Brotherhood to play a major political role in Libya following the death of Gaddafi. It’s not the sort of thing Obama wants to publicize, despite his proclivity to justify it and cover it up.
For now, the YouTube video still seems to be working. At least until the next round of congressional hearings.
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