Inviting Losses on Two Fronts

(Washington, D.C.): In the months that have followed the murderous attacks launched on
September 11^th, President Bush has repeatedly, and correctly, emphasized that the
war on terror
must be fought both at home and abroad. He has recently underscored his determination to make
advances on these two fronts by creating a real capability for homeland defense and by adopting,
where necessary, preemptive measures against our enemies overseas.

Unfortunately, Mr. Bush’s efforts on the home front and abroad are in danger of being
significantly undermined by actions expected to occur this week.

Self-Inflicted Wound on the Home Front

Damage may be done here at home on June 28^th, when FBI Director Robert
Mueller is scheduled
to address the annual convention of the American Muslim Council (AMC). He is evidently
doing so because — as Mr. Mueller’s spokesman put it last week — the FBI believes the AMC to
be “the most mainstream Muslim group in the United States.”

Talk about intelligence failures! As Steven Emerson, one of the Nation’s foremost
authorities on
Islamist organizations and their activities in the United States, has noted in his new book
“American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us,”: “The AMC is a founder, corporate parent
and supporter of several militant Islamic groups….” In particular, Mr. Mueller should be aware
that, in Emerson’s words, “The AMC has routinely featured or honored Islamic militants or
supporters of terrorism at its annual conferences.”

Mr. Emerson quotes a former AMC president and Board of Directors chairman, Nazir Khaja,
as
saying: “No one in the organization really knows ‘where the funds for AMC are coming from,
how are they being raised and spent, and who is controlling the whole process.” Khaja suggests
the man in control is the AMC’s Secretary, Abdulrahman al-Amoudi, an individual who
publically declared in October 2000 that he is a supporter of both Hamas and Hizbullah.

Arguably worst of all, confusing organizations like the AMC with “mainstream” Muslims —
let
alone dignifying the former by affording them repeated access not only to the FBI Director but to
the President and his Cabinet — serves to legitimate the radicals while disenfranchising those
who genuinely adhere to moderate Islamic teachings. Why would the FBI want in this way to
advance the AMC agenda, which Emerson says includes “aggressively attack[ing] Sheikh
Muhammed Hisham Kabbani, a leading moderate voice in the American Muslim community”?

Self-Inflicted Wound Overseas

With respect to the war on terror overseas, President Bush himself is being encouraged to
unveil
this week an initiative that will likely prove even more problematic than the Mueller outreach to
the AMC. Some expect Mr. Bush to endorse a new U.S. Mideast peace plan built around the
idea of a “provisional” Palestinian state. While it is unclear exactly what the term “provisional”
would mean in this context, its implications are unmistakeable:

1) Despite well-deserved castigation of Yasser Arafat’s kleptocracy by the President and,
most
recently, by his National Security Advisor, Condaleezza Rice, under present circumstances any
interim state would, as a practical matter, have to be built on the foundation of Arafat’s
Palestinian Authority (PA). The growing chorus of calls for real “reform” in the PA would be
undermined. Arafat would be rewarded yet again for his misconduct. And terrorist violence
against Israel would continue to be seen as producing results — an inducement for more
terrorism.

2) To the extent any geographic dimensions of this “provisional state” are recognized (and
that
would appear the bare minimum such recognition would require), Israel’s efforts to defend itself
against terror emanating from Palestinian-controlled areas — a right President Bush has
repeatedly affirmed — would inevitably be, to put it mildly, complicated: Should Israel have to
traverse internationally recognized borders to root out terrorist infrastructures, it would risk not
only virulent foreign condemnation but the creation of a casus belli with the Arab
world.

3) The danger of such a war will only grow insofar as there is seen to be significant daylight
between the United States and Israel. Since Prime Minister Sharon has already rejected the
“provisional state” idea (as have Palestinian spokesmen), a Bush initiative along these lines will
appear, at best a non-starter; at worst, it will reignite hopes among the Arabs that their ambition
to destroy Israel may yet be achievable if the Jewish State becomes estranged from the U.S.

In this regard it is instructive to recall what Arafat told Jordanian television on September
13^th,
the same day he signed the Oslo accord on the lawn of White House: “Since we cannot defeat
Israel in war, we do this in stages. We take any and every territory that we can of Palestine, and
establish a sovereignty there, and we use it as a springboard to take more. When the time comes,
we can get the Arab nations to join us for the final blow against Israel.”

The Bottom Line

The Bush Administration need not inflict such reverses upon its own war efforts at home and
abroad. After all, Director Mueller can simply cancel his ill-advised appearance at the American
Muslim Council convention. He should nonetheless ensure that there is an FBI presence there —
albeit for the purpose of putting under surveillance what promises largely to be yet another AMC
event sympathetic to those who are our Islamist enemies in the war on terror.

For his part, Mr. Bush should eschew seductive appeals to reward terrorists in the Middle
East
by embracing even more of a proto-Palestinian state than Arafat has ruled since 1993. He can,
instead insist — as Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle suggested on Sunday — on “regime
change” in the Palestinian Authority as well as Iraq, establishing such a step along with
democratic institution-building and other reforms as preconditions to further progress towards
the creation of a Palestinian state with whom Israel, and the rest of us, can safely live.