Editor’s Note – As the former Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates’ book ‘Duty’ reveals to us, as well as the leaders of all other nations, the Obama administration’s policies are driven purely by politics. It is now obvious, and despite their excuses and rationalizations, it is indeed true that politics trumps policy in the Obama White House, often to the detriment of our troops and our world reputation.
So too can it then be said that their policy towards Islam is politically entrenched and that certain groups within Islam carry great influence in our leadership’s policy decisions regarding Islam and terrorism. In the article posted below regarding what Lt. Gen. Tom McInerney talked about in a recent interview conducted by WMAL in Washington, D.C., Bob Unruh of WND talks of the assertion the General makes about the Islamic infiltration of our government by the Muslim Brotherhood and how it has helped mold their political stance regarding Islam and terrorism in a most demonstrable manner.
Lt. General Thomas McInerney
Early in the first term of the Obama administration, it became apparent to those of us who follow things Islam and terrorism closely, that Obama made a decision regarding his policy stance on Islam by changing the very definition of the “War On Terror” calling it an “Overseas Contingency Operation” and expunging all reference and training materials of anything that shed a negative light on Islam in any manner. Why?, we asked. Was it his Islamic upbringing? Was it his financial ties and support to and by many Muslims? Or was it ineptitude, naivete, and ignorance?
When the leader of the most powerful nation on Earth cannot, or will not define the threat and will not define the enemies, or even name our enemies, how are we as a nation ever to succeed against terrorists and other enemies? Barry Rubin wrote an article this week entitled ‘You still don’t understand Islamism, do you you?‘ where he shows in stark clarity that a political decision was made and policy would follow it regarding terrorism and Islam.
In that article, Rubin shows the depth to which they have confused the subject so much that many supposed ‘experts’ and ‘mavens’ in the media consistently get things wrong. The mere fact that a known loyalist and trainee of Osama bin Laden, Sufyan Bin Qumu, was the leader of Ansar al Sharia, the terrorist group who perpetrated the attack in Benghazi, but that it was not an al Qaeda group is mere semantics and is ludicrous.
In fact, early on, Cheryl Mills in the State Department reported internally that it was an al Qaeda group called Ansar al Sharia, then later it was changed to a movie trailer that ignited the attack and not al Qaeda. Then the NY Times tried to make that point in its now infamous report on Benghazi and was roundly criticized as fluff and greatly refuted by testimony and the facts.
Rubin expounds further:
There was a secret debate happening in the Defense Department and the CIA in which some people thought that all Muslims were a problem, some believed that only al-Qa’ida was a problem, and still others thought the Muslim Brotherhood was a problem.
The main problem, however, was that all Islamism was a political threat, but it was the second position that eventually won over the Obama administration. Take note of this, since 2009, if you wanted to build your career and win policy debates, only al-Qa’ida was a problem. The Muslim Brotherhood was not a threat; after all, it did not participate in September 11. This view was well known in policy circles, but it was easy to mistake this growing hegemony as temporary. (Read the rest here, it is a must read.)
Now this confusion, rooted in the political underpinnings of the Obama Administration’s “policies set by politics” standards that most in the West are confused about who is who in Syria. Is Obama backing the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, or is it al Qaeda, or is it the so-called “moderates,” or is it the secular nationalistic FSA? We know it is not that last group.
In another recent article, Hannah Allam writes for the McCLatchy Washington Bureau that there is “No winner for the West in Syria” because its a “good” al Qaeda versus a “bad” al Qaeda condition from which we must chose. It is hard to identify the players without a scorecard thanks to all the confusion of cultures and influences, along with external policies set by politics. Politics emanating from the USA, Russia, Iran, France, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, and beyond.
However she leaves out a lot of historical facts along with the understanding of why the Syrian civilian population changes loyalties almost daily due to the humanitarian crises. She also leaves out the western influences prior to the dictatorial and tyrannical regime where Jews and Christians made up a large portion of the historical context. Also missing is any reference to the largest number among the rebels, those who are secular and nationalist, the many who wish to join the West rather than any Islamist state.
Also recently, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) said this of the politics and semantics:
“Whether it was al Qaeda or a subsidiary or a holding company or a limited partnership, to quote Hillary Clinton, ‘What difference does it make?’ Who cares whether it was al Qaeda proper or a subsidiary? Four Americans are dead, and it wasn’t a spontaneous reaction to a video. It was planned,” Gowdy said.
Now we have to ask, what is the message to those who defend us in uniform? What are foreign leaders and our allies supposed to think? The strategy is clouded in uncertainty and is rudderless. Please read the following article by Bob Unruh on Lt. Gen. McInerney’s interview:
GENERAL: Muslim Brotherhood Inside Obama Administration
‘There are a whole host of people in this government’
By Bob Unruh – WND
Retired U.S. Air Force Gen. Tom McInerney, who served as both assistant vice chief of staff and commander in chief of U.S. Air Forces Europe, has surprised interviewers on a radio program by confirming the presence of the Muslim Brotherhood inside the U.S. government.
The Islamic supremacist movement’s influence on Washington was reported in “Impeachable Offenses: The Case to Remove Barack Obama from Office” by New York Times bestselling authors Aaron Klein and Brenda J. Elliott.
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The book documents that Obama aided the rise to power of Islamic extremist groups in the Middle East as members served on important national security advisory boards.
The book confirms the Obama administration may have exposed national security information through Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, who has deep personal and family associations with the Muslim Brotherhood.
Another key figure with Muslim Brotherhood ties is Mohamed Elibiary, a member of the Department of Homeland Security’s Advisory Council.
McInerney was being interviewed Thursday by WMAL in Washington about a tell-all book by former Defense Secretary Robert Gates that strongly criticizes President Obama and Vice President Biden for making politically motivated decisions regarding national security.
McInerney said Gates was doing the nation a service by exposing decision-making in the Oval Office but said he should have done it sooner. He also noted that the Muslim Brotherhood influences have been causing major problems throughout the Middle East.
Then he added, “We’ve got Muslim Brotherhood in the U.S. government today.”
Asked by the talk-show hosts for their names, he said, “I haven’t got their names exactly but there’s a list of them, at least 10 or 15 of them in the U.S. government.”
He cited the organization’s influence in Homeland Security and the secretary of state’s office under Clinton, where Abedin has worked.
“Her parents are Muslim Brotherhood. And her intuitions are in that direction,” he said.
“There are a whole host of people in this government.”
He said Islam experts Frank Gaffney or Claire Lopez would have the details.
Gaffney, president of the Center for Security Policy, has created a publication called “The Muslim Brotherhood in the Obama Administration,” which addresses the issue that was brought to the attention of Congress in July 2012 by Republican Reps. Michele Bachmann, Trent Franks, Louie Gohmert, Tom Rooney and Lynn Westmoreland.
The lawmakers asked the inspector generals at the departments of Homeland Security, Justice and State to investigate, prompting Democrats and Republicans to rush to Abedin’s defense.
However, as WND reported, Abedin worked for an organization founded by her family that is effectively at the forefront of a grand Saudi plan to mobilize U.S. Muslim minorities to transform America into a strict Wahhabi-style Islamic state, according to an Arabic-language manifesto issued by the Saudi monarchy. Abedin also was a member of the executive board of the Muslim Student Association, which was identified as a Muslim Brotherhood front group in a 1991 document introduced into evidence during the terror-financing trial of the Texas-based Holy Land Foundation trial.
The internal memo said Muslim Brotherhood members “must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and by the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and Allah’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”
Lopez, a CSP senior fellow, wrote at The Gatestone Institute: “The careful insinuation of Muslim Brothers into positions from which they can exercise influence on U.S. policy began long before the attacks of 9/11, although their success has accelerated dramatically under the administration of President Barack Obama.”
She said the “massive Muslim Brotherhood organization network in the U.S., so patiently built up over the decades since that first Oval Office meeting in 1953 [with President Dwight D. Eisenhower], eventually gave it a prominence and (false) reputation of credibility that was unmatched by any other Islamic groups, moderate or otherwise.”
She said the Brotherhood achieved “information dominance” during the George W. Bush administration that only intensified in the following years.
“Not only did figures associated and identified with the Muslim Brotherhood achieve broad penetration at senior levels of U.S. policy making, but voices that warned of their true agenda (such as Stephen Coughlin’s) were actively excluded,” she said.
That information dominance has contributed to startling consequences, most evident in the U.S. policy toward the al-Qaida and Muslim Brotherhood-dominated revolutions that many call the ‘Arab Spring,’ but which in fact are more accurately termed an ‘Islamic Awakening,’” she said.
Under the Muslim Brotherhood-influenced Obama administration, U.S. policy has undergone such a drastic shift in the direction of outright support for these jihadist movements – from al-Qaida militias in Libya, to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and both al-Qaida and Muslim Brotherhood-linked rebels in Syria — that it is scarcely recognizable as American anymore.”
See Gaffney discussing the issue with Glenn Beck:
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In the WMAL interview, McInerney said Gates’ book should alert Americans about what should be done to protect national security.
“The Middle East is coming apart with this administration’s policies. Look at Libya. We should never have gone into Libya. … We’ve got Muslim Brotherhood in the U.S. government.”
WND columnist Diana West wrote it likely wasn’t by chance that Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, “reading from prepared notes, absurdly described the Muslim Brotherhood to the House Intelligence Committee last year as a ‘largely secular’ organization.”
“Is it an accident that in June the State Department issued a visa to Hani Nour Eldin of Egypt to meet with senior White House officials? Eldin is a member of Gama’a al-Islamiyya, a terrorist organization once led by Omar Abdel Rahman, ‘the blind sheikh’ convicted of the first attack on the World Trade Center. In the person of Rahman’s successor, Refai Ahmed Taha, the group is one of the five signatories of Osama bin Laden’s February 1998 ‘World Islamic Front Statement Urging Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders.’ Isn’t it imperative to review the policy mechanism that permitted a member of bin Laden’s jihad front into the White House?”
“Impeachable Offenses” also reported that then-CIA director John Brennan announced the Obama administration was calibrating policies in the fight against terrorism to ensure Americans are never “profiled.”
His speech was arranged by a Muslim Brotherhood-tied group that has deep relations not only with other Brotherhood fronts but to the White House and national security agencies.
Brennan’s NYU session was organized by the Islamic Society of North America, or ISNA. ISNA, whose members asked Brennan scores of questions during the event, stated the meeting was intended to initiate a “dialogue between government officials and Muslim American leaders to explore issues of national security.”
ISNA was founded in 1981 by the Saudi-funded Muslim Students Association, which itself was founded by the Muslim Brotherhood. The two groups are still partners.
ISNA is known for its promotion of strict Saudi-style Islam in mosques throughout the U.S.
Islam scholar Stephen Schwartz describes ISNA as “one of the chief conduits through which the radical Saudi form of Islam passes into the United States.”
According to terrorism expert Steven Emerson, ISNA “is a radical group hiding under a false veneer of moderation.”
