The enemy is inside the wire

What would have happened if, during the Cold War, Soviet intelligence had been responsible for training Americans charged with countering communist aggression?  Surely, we would not have defeated the USSR. Perhaps, instead, Kruschev’s boast that his nation would dance on our graves would have been realized.

It should, therefore, be profoundly alarming that, today, the Obama administration is entrusting to agents of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB or Ikhwan in Arabic) the responsibility for approving who and what is used in "countering violent extremism" training for our military, law enforcement, intelligence personnel.

The use of the term "countering violent extremism" (or CVE) is, of course, the first clue that the enemy is inside the wire.  That euphemism is the term Team Obama allows to be employed in lieu of phrases that actually describe the nature of the principal enemy we face at the moment: Muslims who engage in holy war– jihad– to compel the rest of us to submit to the totalitarian, supremacist political-military-legal doctrine they call shariah.

"Countering violent extremism" is problematic for reasons beyond its lack of clarity about the threat.  It also explicitly excludes a facet of the menace posed by shariah that is at least as dangerous to an open, tolerant liberal democracy as the violent sort of jihad: the stealthy insinuation of this doctrine in ways that are non-violent or, more accurately, pre-violent.

The Muslim Brotherhood specializes in this sort of covert warfare, which it has dubbed "civilization jihad." Its skills were honed during decades of operations under a succession of hostile Egyptian governments. Now that the Brothers have achieved– with no little help from President Obama– the overthrow of the last of these under Hosni Mubarak, their true colors are becoming evident.  Ask the Coptic Christians who are now being massacred by the putatively "non-violent" Ikhwan.

Make no mistake: Stealthy civilization jihad is every bit as toxic and has precisely the same goals as the sort of holy war we have come to associate with murderous hijackers and suicide bombers of MB spin-offs like al Qaeda.

We know, for example, from evidence introduced uncontested by federal prosecutors in the 2008 Holy Land Foundation terrorism-funding trial that the Brotherhood’s mission here is "a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying… Western civilization from within… by their hands [read, ours] and the hands of the believers so that God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions."  We also are on notice that the MB has a five-phased plan for achieving this mission in the United States; the first four phases are stealthy and pre-violent.

Which brings us to the alarming guidelines recently promulgated by the Department of Homeland Security for countering violent extremism training. Under the heading "Trainers should be expert and well-regarded," the DHS directs that a "prospective trainer’s resume be "check[ed] with knowledgeable community leaders."  Unfortunately, it appears that, as far as the Obama administration is concerned, such "leaders" are exclusively those associated with organizations that the federal government and the Muslim Brotherhood itself have identified as Ikhwan fronts.

The DHS guidelines also direct that "training should be sensitive to constitutional values."  To that end, it requires that "federal, state and local government and law enforcement officials organizing CVE training…review the training program to ensure that:

• "It uses examples to demonstrate that terrorists and violent extremists vary in ethnicity, race, gender, and religion.
• "Training should focus on behavior, not appearance or membership in particular ethnic or religious communities.
• "Training should support the protection of civil rights and civil liberties as part of national security. Don’t use training that equates religious expression, protests, or other constitutionally protected activity with criminal activity."

In other words, Muslim Brotherhood-associated individuals are being afforded the opportunity to veto the use of trainers who might actually understand the nature of the danger its operatives and organizations pose to our country. And those who are allowed to train are not permitted to focus their students on the actual threat emanating from a subset of the Muslim community.  Rather, they must promote the notion that there are really no indicators in belief or nationality that can help the authorities apply limited security resources in a sensibly prioritized manner.

Some try to excuse this behavior as nothing more than being "sensitive," "tolerant" or "politically correct."  The danger is that shariah-adherent Muslims regard such conduct as submissive— and, according to their doctrine, they are obliged to redouble their efforts to, as the Koran puts it, make us "feel subdued."  That means more violence, not less.

That prospect becomes all the greater when one adds into the mix the presence of government officials who are themselves tied to the Muslim Brotherhood and/or its shariah doctrine – including in senior positions in the White House, the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security.  Such individuals are products of and greatly facilitate the Brothers’ influence operations and contribute greatly to our failure to date to recognize, let alone counteract, them. 

If we would not have won the Cold War had the KGB been able to call the shots here, we surely will not prevail if we allow the Muslim Brotherhood to do the same in the struggle against today’s totalitarian ideology, shariah– a doctrine some have dubbed "communism with a god."  Congressional oversight is urgently needed to prevent that from happening.

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, heard in Washington weeknights at 9:00 p.m. on WRC 1260 AM.