CAIR doth protest too much (Part 1)
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has, in characteristic high dudgeon, lashed out today against President Bush for his statement yesterday that "We are at war with Islamic fascists." As usual, CAIR is casting itself in the role of defender and spokesman for all Muslims. In so doing, it portrays the latter as a community of victims who are defamed anytime someone points out that there is an ideology – call it Islamofascism – that masquerades as a faith, yet is distinct from Islam. What utter rubbish.
Blowing Smoke
In its press release issued today, CAIR announced that its chairman, Parvez Ahmed, had written President Bush complaining that his comment about Islamic fascists "contributes to a rising level of hostility to Islam and the American-Muslim community." Actually, Mr. Bush is doing just the opposite. By recognizing the totalitarian political movement that is seeking to subject the world’s population – Muslim and non-Muslims, alike – to its ideology, the President is at long last clarifying that we are not fighting "terrorism." Rather, we are fighting identifiable enemies who adhere to an Islamist ideology and use terror as an asymmetric weapon to advance its political objectives.
By making a distinction, on the one hand, between those Muslims in America, and elsewhere, who are peaceable, law-abiding and tolerant, and, on the other, Islamofascists who are killing and intimidating them as a precursor to dominating the rest of us, Mr. Bush is doing the exact opposite of what CAIR’s Ahmed claims: "equat[ing] the religion of peace [Islam] with the ugliness of fascism." He decidedly is not "feed[ing] the perception that the war on terror is actually a war on Islam." To the contrary, he is indicating that those who use Islam to justify and provide political cover for their totalitarian aggression are at odds not only with America . We can – and must – wage war against the former, while helping the majority of Muslims protect their faith from the predations of the Islamofascists. but with Islam, itself
What is Going On Here?
CAIR’s bitter assault on the President seems over the top, even for an organization much given to hyperbolic attacks on those who dare challenge its efforts to defend, excuse or otherwise help Islamists and their causes. (The Islamists preferred technique is to suggest that its critics are "racists" and "bigots.") Quite possibly, that is because Mr. Bush’s declaration about the nature of our enemy suggests that the carefully cultivated and undue influence long exercised over his Administration by CAIR and its fellow-travelers (see, " A Troubling Influence") is at an end.
In fact, as Dr. Daniel Pipes and Sharon Chandra made clear in a scrupulously documented article in the Spring 2006 edition of The Middle East Quarterly (" CAIR: Islamists Fooling the Establishment"), the Council on American-Islamic Relations is not the kind of company the President and his subordinates should have been keeping in the first place:
There is [a] side to CAIR that has alarmed many people in positions to know. The Department of Homeland Security refuses to deal with it. Senator Charles Schumer (Democrat, New York ) describes it as an organization "which we know has ties to terrorism." Senator Dick DurbinSteven Pomerantz, the FBI’s former chief of counterterrorism, notes that "CAIR, its leaders, and its activities effectively give aid to international terrorist groups." The family of John P. O’Neill, Sr., the former FBI counterterrorism chief who perished at the World Trade Center, named CAIR in a lawsuit as having "been part of the criminal conspiracy of radical Islamic terrorism" responsible for the September 11 atrocities. Counterterrorism expert Steven Emerson calls it "a radical fundamentalist front group for Hamas." (Emphasis added.) (Democrat, Illinois ) observes that CAIR is "unusual in its extreme rhetoric and its associations with groups that are suspect."
The Bottom Line
At the very least, President Bush has every reason from now on to do as he should have at least since 9/11: Conduct his outreach to the Muslim community through organizations and individuals not associated with the Council on American-Islamic Relations and its usually Saudi-funded Islamist friends.
Center for Security Policy’s President, Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., made these and similar points in his own letter to President Bush today . Mr. Gaffney commended the President for his forthright and accurate depiction of the enemy we face most immediately today, Islamofascism, and urged him to adopt the steps identified in a book published last year by a number of Center for Security Policy associates and staff entitled War Footing: Ten Steps America Must Take to Prevail in the War for the Free World (Naval Institute Press, www.WarFooting.com).
Mr. Gaffney is the host of Secure Freedom Radio, a nationally-syndicated radio program heard weeknights throughout the country. He is an associate author of highly acclaimed Shariah: The Threat to America and the publisher of over a dozen other books and monographs from the Center for Security Policy Press.
In April 1987, Mr. Gaffney was nominated by President Reagan to become the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy, the senior position in the Defense Department with responsibility for policies involving U.S.-USSR relations, nuclear forces, arms control, missile defense policy and U.S.-European defense ties. He acted in that capacity for seven months during which time, he was the Chairman of the prestigious High Level Group, NATO’s senior politico-military committee. He also represented the Secretary of Defense in key U.S.-Soviet negotiations and ministerial meetings.
From August 1983 until November 1987, Mr. Gaffney was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Forces and Arms Control Policy under Assistant Secretary Richard Perle.
From February 1981 to August 1983, Mr. Gaffney was a Professional Staff Member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, chaired by the late Senator John Tower (R-Texas). And, in the latter 1970’s, Mr. Gaffney served as an aide to the late Senator Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson (D-Washington) in the areas of defense and foreign policy.
Mr. Gaffney holds a Master of Arts degree in International Studies from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and a Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service.
Mr. Gaffney’s leadership has been recognized by numerous organizations including: the Department of Defense Distinguished Public Service Award (1987), the U.S. Business and Industry Council’s Defender of the National Interest Award (1994), the Navy League of the United States’ Alfred Thayer Mahan Literary Achievement Award (1999), and the Zionist Organization of America’s “Louis Brandeis Award” (2003), the Western Conservative Summit’s Stephen H. Long Award (2015), the Council for National Policy’s George Washington Military Leadership Award (2016) and the IMPACT Award from Ginni Thomas and United in Purpose (2017).
Mr. Gaffney was born in 1953 and resides in the Washington, D.C. area.
- The UN transforms itself into a world government - September 22, 2024
- Hezbollah is engaged in terrorism, not Israel - September 22, 2024
- Israel must seize the day - September 20, 2024