Time for Republicans to quit pandering to groups that support terrorism

What are we to make of the astonishing silence, the utter lack of accountability and the absence of any apparent shift in electoral strategy that has accompanied the meltdown of one of the Bush political team’s major initiatives?

That meltdown is the political strategists’ effort to do anything to pander to extreme Islamists with the hope of winning the “Muslim vote” for the Republican Party – while smacking down the concerns of national security experts in and out of government. Recent polls suggest that support for President Bush among Arab-Americans has slumped precipitously, while support from Muslims in America sags around the single digits.

Presidential political strategist Karl Rove has pressured the rest of the administration to pander to foreign-funded organizations led by radical leftists and even pro-“Islamists” who support terrorism – despite the fact that those groups don’t represent most Muslims in America.

Individuals and organizations with long records of support for radical Islam and sympathy for those who murder Americans and others in its name were afforded increased access to high-level, Bush administration officials and myriad federal agencies. The access for one of them, Sami Al-Arian, ended only when he was indicted and held without bail on some 40 terrorism counts, including charges that he ran the North American cell of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

The administration continued to grant access, prestige and political cover to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), even though three of its officials have been arrested in recent months on terrorism-related charges, and one already has pled guilty.

While political strategists sought to use the groups to pander for votes, the groups themselves sought to use the access thus afforded to White House officials, Cabinet and sub-Cabinet officers and the FBI to undermine counterterrorist techniques and initiatives on the grounds that they were racially or ethnically motivated. Worse yet, they publicly exploited meetings with the president and his subordinates to shore up their dubious and highly undesirable claim to leadership both within and on behalf of their community.

Just how undesirable this phenomenon is became clear recently during an important hearing held by Sen. Jon Kyl’s (R-Ariz.) Senate Judiciary subcommittee on terrorism and homeland security. After establishing Saudi funding as a source of revenue for and influence over organizations such as CAIR, witnesses and senators on both sides of the aisle condemned CAIR for its “extreme” agenda and its support for terrorist organizations such as Hamas. CAIR declined an invitation to testify.

To be sure, Republicans are not the only ones guilty of the politics of pander. The Clinton Administration first brought the terrorist supporters into the White House, and today Democrats such as presidential candidate Howard Dean are bidding for the sympathies of Bush’s newly declared Muslim-American foes If any pandering is to be done from here on, let it be lavished on those – Muslim and non-Muslim alike – who are committed to strengthening this country against its enemies instead of those who sympathize with them.