Why Michele Bachmann Touched a Nerve
In recent weeks, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R- MN) and four other members of Congress caused a firestorm by issuing a series of letters to the State Department, the Pentagon, and other government agencies calling for an investigation into efforts by the Muslim Brotherhood to influence policymaking in Washington. Whatever the merits of their specific charges, they are quite correct that the Obama administration’s reluctance to assign nefarious intent to Islamists in general, and the rising political arm of the Brotherhood in particular, is a terrible triumph of political correctness over national security.
You wouldn’t know it from the anti-Bachmann backlash these letters generated, but it’s hardly unusual to raise concerns about suspected affiliations with enemies abroad, particularly in wartime. Indeed, the federal government has an array of laws and regulations designed to prevent foreign influence operations. For example, the State Department says that it conducts background checks on high-level employees to determine whether their “personal and professional history indicates loyalty to the United States, strength of character, trustworthiness, honesty, reliability, discretion, and sound judgment, as well as freedom from conflicting allegiances and potential for coercion.”
What ruffled feathers was their suggestion that the Obama administration has been remiss in applying these standards and Bachmann’s reference to Huma Abedin, deputy chief of staff to Secretary of State Clinton, whose mother, brother, and late father have well-documented connections to Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated organizations. To what extent these connections are germane to approving security clearance is unclear. Radical Islamists are so thoroughly represented in mainstream Islamic institutions that some associational affiliations may not always be a smoking gun. Sorting through these questions is not easy – that is what the investigation is for.
According to Bachmann and many others, the way policymakers in Washington frame the Islamist threat raises serious questions about whether Abedin and other Muslims in positions of influence have been properly vetted. Her claim is not that Abedin is an operative or even supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood – a movement affiliated with anti-American terrorist groups – but that we wouldn’t know it if she was.
Though the United States is fighting hostile entities operating with a declaratively Muslim identity, there is a clear trend in the executive branch, law enforcement, and even the judiciary to deny that Islamism has an impact on national security, for fear of appearing discriminatory. Attorney General Eric Holder’s acrobatic refusal to concede during a May 2010 congressional hearing that radical Islam might be a factor fueling homegrown terrorism is a disturbing display of this trend.
This administration has been particularly reluctant to acknowledge the darker side of the Muslim Brotherhood. Though most chapters of the Brotherhood have ostensibly renounced violence and embraced democratic politics, the movement remains a terror organization in its ideology and incitement activities. Moreover, the Palestinian branch, Hamas, commits horrific acts of violence and raises funds under its auspices. The United States should not accept the legitimacy of the Brotherhood simply because it has succeeded in achieving unconscionable goals through peaceful means. “Had the Nazis denounced violence, would Hitler have become an acceptable chancellor for Germany?” notes Daniel Pipes. “Not likely.”
The consequences for U.S. national security of the Obama administration’s failure to name the enemy are quite serious. Most notable is the FBI’s failure to follow up on evidence that Maj. Nidal Hasan was corresponding via email with the late Anwar al-Awlaki in the months leading up to the 2009 Fort Hood massacre. Investigating American Muslims who communicate with radical jihadist clerics about the permissibility of killing American GIs was unfortunately considered too politically sensitive. Thirteen American soldiers died as a result.
Bachmann is being accused of racism because of her insinuation that Muslim applicants with questionable affiliations appointed to sensitive federal posts should be subjected to extra scrutiny. After decades of building a strong foundation of civil rights, social equality, and cultural tolerance in this country, many Americans are loathe to accept that these ideals must now be compromised in order to prevail against radical Islamism. However, while ethnic profiling may be objectionable as a method of combating car thefts, it is unfortunately essential to the robust defense of American national security. Whether we should go so far as to establish a House Committee on Internal Security, as some have suggested, is debatable. Whether Islamic radicalism constitutes a special danger requiring special means is not.
The intellectual focus of present-day “Progressivism” goes back to J-J Rousseau — a single-minded emotional dedication to flipping the finger at “The Establishment”.
The Obama Administration’s infatuation with the MB is most simply put as: the enemy of mine enemy is my friend — in other words, finger-flipping, though not harmless because of the juvenile origin.
It’s probably what we’d see Obama spouting on the LA Times’ videotape.
It’s why Islamist taqqiya works so well on the Western cognoscenti.
IMHO, the odds are that Hillary is being used.
Sometimes the Truth hurts.
http://ericsprott.blogspot.ca/
Spam alert! Fellow PJM readers, this link is about the price of silver and has nothing whatever to do with the topic at hand.
This is an interesting read: “The Moderate Paradox”
http://www.sultanknish.blogspot.com.au/
Too theoretical/philosophical for my taste anymore. I think the move to the center is more due to the onset of finer feelings — “can’t we all just get along”, empowered by rampant affluence and submergence in hedonism.
Then there is the last sentence: “Change does not come from moderates, it comes from extremists whose eagerness to push the bubble is what brings change.”
In the annals of history, that has been so true, but the changes so brought about often turn one’s stomach.
I offer much supportive information, regarding this issue at my blog – http://www.adinakutnicki.com
First, read – ‘Huma Abedin’s Supporters Will Have Nowhere To Hide…Creeping Closer & Closer To (Figuratively)Crucifying Their Positions As They ‘Stand By’ Their (Islamic) Woman’, Aug 5, 2012.
There are several other supportive commentaries in the July archives at my site. Just scroll down. It will blow your socks off. Do not miss ‘Six Degrees of Separation’. It started the ball rolling.
Just posted this too – http://adinakutnicki.com/2012/08/15/the-muslim-student-association-msa-islamic-student-arm-of-muslim-brotherhoodmuslim-mafia-huma-abedin-board-member-too-what-does-this-meancommentary-by-adina-kutnicki/
Not sure consideration of a person’s affiliations constitutes “ethnic profiling.”
In what world is the MB ethnic? Were Nazis an ethnic group? Is the KKK?
As for the darker side of the MB, their lighter side is the darkest side of most others. They are on board with their prime jurist and spiritual leader Qaradawi who believes gays should be killed and don’t believe women or Christians should be President in Egypt. Plus they’d destroy Israel tomorrow if they could and what’s happening in Sinai today is proof of how they intend to go about it either without and army or with an army that is American equipped.
Arabs usually run Mohammedan organizations, whether or not they’re the majority. In the same way that Arabic is considered the real language of the Koran. The Nazis obviously were an ethnic group — being dedicated to pan-German (including the various Germanic peoples outside of Germany) dominance over the other peoples of Europe. The KKK was, I believe, pretty much all white Americans, so (at that time, before the mass immigration from other parts of Europe than Americans came from) it would also be an ethnic group, although less narrowly defined (i.e., Celtic and Germanic NW European peoples) than others. Most human social groups are composed of related individuals, except the Balkans, of course. And how’d that work out? Now that the Attorney General of the US has acknowledged that he’s looking out for “his people” maybe the PC BS can be forgotten and we can get down to the race war which is now going on here.
and Holder’s race war (which he operates in pretty blatant fashion, if anyone cares to pay a bit of attention) is only ONE such war being pressed by the current administration. Seems they’ve read the Marxist playbook well. Consider: atheist/christian; one percent/ninety nine percent; union/right to work; Dem.Rep; liberal/conservative; homosexual/heterosexual; big gov’t/small gov’t; womens rights/normal folks. One of Marx’ key stragegies for taking over the workd with his socialism, clearly spelled out in his writings, is to divide a given population into factions and set them against each other. When they are all busy with their private “wars” against each other, chaos will ensue, giving “government” (read: marxist handlers) perfect opportunity to step in and “fix” everything with THEIR plan… just let US run things, you have demonstrated you are incapable of diong so.
Note well how much of Europe, indeed, the whole planet, has been divided up by outside groups after various wars…. giving us things like the whole Balkan mess, several different ethnic groups divided between countries, each comprising a minority in any given nation, in direct competition with at least two other ethnic groups. That is why Iraq, as presently eemarcated, will never work… sunni, kurd, wahabi (do I have the three right?). Kurds are divided between Iraq, Turkey, Syria. Sunni between Iraq, Iran, and somehwere else close by. This sort of factioning, setting against each other, etc, is deliberately done to destabilise each “nation” all of which are artificial constructs, none of which will ever know peace as demarcated, to provide the “need” for one world government… the UN has “stepped in” as a “peace-keeping” force in nearly every one of these places, and is trying mightily to do so here in the USA with their many “treaties”, gun control rights of the child, law of the sea, climate change…… Marx’ playbook has been turned into a modern screenplay, and is being acted out.. and will be, until enough men, wise and strong enough, rise up and say “we’ve played this game long enough, we’re done”. Not Egypt, Syria, Israel, Iraq, England, France, or any other nation so deliberately divided will ever know peace until this sort of divide and conquer plan is dismantled. And the USA is at the top of the lists of most of the world organisers. As long as we remain even close to what we have left now, they will not succeed. Enter operatives like Obama, Soros, Clinton, and the “progress” will continue until WE THE PEOPLE say NO MORE.
And I, for one anyway, will never forget that John McCain and Marco Rubio stood with the Muslim Brotherhood against Michele Bachmann.
No surprise about Marco Rubio , he stood with Muslims on Kosovo and Macedonia for years.
“Confronting Establishment Liberalism’s PC denial that Islamism has an impact on national security.”
On the matter of PC denial, what the hector’s pups is “Islamism”? I will tell you what it is. It is PC denial itself. It is used instead of Islam to try and pretend that it is something other than Islam, and it’s adherents, that is the monstrous “problem”. Well it is not something other than Islam, and it’s adherents, that is the monstrous “problem”, it is Islam, and it’s adherents, itself.
I avoid using the word, “Islamist” or “Islamism”.
“Moslem” or “Muslims” seems more accurate…..that overarching commonality in all of these variant usages is their vile instruction manual, their Koran…..isn’t it?
This nauseous wordplay is getting us nowhere except approval in the liberal press, and why should that should have any value at all?
Elsewhere I’ve posted my disgust/dismay/shock at the stark contrast of what I see now and in what I so clearly remember of our America in 1942. Two sneak air attacks upon American soil…..two polar opposite reactions.
I’m Rip vanWinkle constantly waking up in our misty OZ of political correctness and blinkingly joining a wide eyed Dorothy and her slack-jawed entourage. KoKo….mute.
Ten years of war against our Muslim enemy has us still spinning our wheels.
The trouble is that you have on the one hand, people who believe the Muslim Brotherhood is moderate and liberals who are so sensitive to PC that they do
not recognize the threat of Islamism (not Islam, Islamism) and the other some people who are indeed prejudiced and tar all Muslims with the same brush.
All this may be leading to a war between the Dominion Christians of Bachmann’s ilk and the Islamists, whose power is rising in the Middle East. So much hate,
so much blind following of religion
If Muslims follow the teachings of Mohammad, and all good Muslims do, then they have tared themselves.
If you morally equate Christianity with Islam you might as well be in a coma. BTW, I am an atheist.
religion has everything to do with this stuff. ALL law is based on some moral standard. The question comes as to WHICH moral standard. Islam is a system of politica, social, economic standards, and its people adhere to those standards in al of life. Jews are the same, but their standards derive from a different moral standard. Christians, in theory, are the same as well, but as we know, in practice often deviate from the moral principles laid out in our “standard”, the bible. And yes, all three mentioned consider that their moral standards apply to every aspect of life… political, social, economic, spiritual. Trouble is, and has been for about 1400 years, islam’s standards are antithetical to the other two on many points, and islam has taken as one of its standards that they must, and will, dominate all others until their standard is the ONLY remaining one. Jews anc christians do not have such a value, mainly because we understand it is God who is supreme, and will “set things aright” at some future point. Moslems hold that it is THEIR job to subjugate all others, either by the sword (death, or threat thereof)or the purse (dhimmitude).
This fear of saying Islam and Muslims is something for young children and the occasional small dog.
The Fort Hood massacre was a prime example of divided loyalties. Can one take the oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States and be a devout Muslim simultaneously? What if Maj. Hassan had been piloting a bomber armed with nukes? Even with the current fail safes he could’ve done some serious damage. All it takes is a few like minded individuals and there could be real trouble.
Even more disturbing than the Hassan terrorist attack is this administration refusing to call it that. Instead they brand it with the innocuous “workplace violence” like that would fool anybody.
Worse still, they call blue-haired old ladies from the tea party terrorists. Add to that the fact that they have not only practiced war manuevers on American soil to learn how to kill ordinary American citizens, they are also indoctrinating our young soldiers to believe the biggest danger to the United States is conservatives.
“All it takes is a few like minded individuals and there could be real trouble.”
Or just one at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
You are of course, correct! That is the perfect example of political correctness negatively impacting national security.
Touche’, Homeless Feline; well said
So what’s to be done (other than the obvious of getting this adminstration out)? Have we all contacted our representatives and the ones who went against Bachmann?
Fortunately, for these brave and true Republicans like Ms. Bachman and her true American PATRIOTS here here, America might still be able to be saved from that Dictator/Islamic Nazi Muslim Brotherhood-loving/Saudi-king bowing/War Criminal Obama and his evil REGIME (but the naive Paul Ryan better stop loving the Saudis too – see Daily Caller at : http://dailycaller.com/2012/08/11/ryan-on-foreign…)! The Arabic Saudi/Qatar’s most vicious and murderous footsoldier Islamic Nazis, the Muslim Brotherhood, are conquering all over (including through their local political agents especially in the Opposition parties, usually through Islamic-based parties), the non-Arab but OIL/MINERAL/LAND-RICH Islamic-ruled regions/countries, from Asia (such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Southern Thailand/Mindanao of Philippines, Afghanistan, Central Asia), Africa (Mali, Yemen, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Somalia, Sudan, Kenya etc & North Africa that include Libya, Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria), the whole Mid-East (Iraq, Egypt, and now, Syria – next will be Lebanon), and all the way to the West (starting with the much hijacked White House & Europe that include Bosnia, Macedonia and Albania). They are on the way into achieving three fundamental goals (just like the Arabic founder of Islam, the Pedophile rapist, mass murderer, robber and slave owner of the Jews, Mohammed, did) – the robbery of massive oil/mineral/land/personal wealth, the absolute Arabicizing of the conquered and the sexual slavery/rape of the women/girls including normalizing Pedophilia rape in child-marriages and caging women/girls forever as sex-slaves in the Saudi-Arabic veils (I was forced to wear one myself as a very confused non-Arab Muslim teenager, who lost so much of my youth and freedom, and then went on to become self-destructively rebellious for a long time until I was saved by my Lord Christ – Amen to that)! But the hypocrite Western REGIMES who support them like the Obama/Sarkozy/Cameron’s REGIMES, are much worst evil. Because they’re supposed to be civilized and enlightened! I cannot wait for the day, no matter how long it takes, when these traitor Western leaders will be convicted like the German Nazis in the Hague for War Crimes/Crimes against Humanity! Amen to real justice and truths!
Touched a nerve? I don’t know about that. This regime has always been about sympathy for the devil: leftism and islam. Obama has wrapped himself with leftist radicals. The voter made a choice in 2008 that political correctness and stupidity would reign. Whether it was ignorance, laziness, stupidity, apathy or indoctrination, the voter ultimately chose that we would see patriots like Bachmann pay the price for questioning the narrative. This regime is all about payback, and, unless we get behind her and the others who are bucking the sick narrative of appeasement to the likes of the muslim brotherhood, we’re part of the problem. I sent her some money. I’m going to write to Jeff Flake and John McCain that they can kiss my back side for their having excoriated her for doing her job.
Right on Feralcat!
Islam”ISM” my ass! Call the enemy by its real name!
Not “Islamism”
ISLAM!
I’d like to bring up something which nobody mentions here in the USA, it’s so terribly, insufferably, politically incorrect; but I personally think that we’ve got a Fifth Column in our Muslim enclaves such as Northern Virginia-istan and Dearborn-istan, in Michigan, in the quiet, low profile stance of our resident Muslims, I don’t care if they are technically citizens, holding United States passports for travel convenience or not, We simply are scattering ostrich feathers all about us in our public denial of this risk.
Remember how few Muslims brought about that horrible morning in September of 2001.
Those of us of a certain age retain vivid memories of the Japanese residents here in 1942 when Franklin Roosevelt, not exactly a shrinking violet, issued his Executive Order quarantining all Japanese residents, confining them within Internment Camps….[our 21st century truncated attention spans exclude anything 25 hours in the past]…..I know….I know….the A.C.L.U. has my number, and I’m not in any event advocating Internment of all of our resident Muslims, “moderates”, or not…the practicalities are insuperable in any event. They’ve penetrated everywhere.
However, what needs to be emphasized is our domestic Muslim threat which we’re belittling. Obama has just had his “Iftar” moment. I cringe when I think of Bush at the mosque here on Massachusetts Avenue right after the Muslim attacks on New York and Washington….. saying in effect, that “We’re not at war with Islam.” I say we are very much at war with Muslims/Islam. Muslims themselves say repeatedly that they are at war with us infidel Americans. We’re ignoring that at our peril. That’s why there’s such a hue and cry here over “profiling”, it actually works.
I have no answers for this hideously complex, albeit lethal problem. I have no “sources” or “contacts”. But I do have a memory and, had the Japanese exercised such as an A.C.L.U or such as a C.A.I.R., 1942 in American could perhaps have been a hideously different story. That’s the clout we’ve permitted our resident Muslims to exercise via “lawfare”. They’re very good at using our cherished freedoms against us.
Lastly, what I find personally shocking now is the stark contrast between the angered, united America of 1942 and the head-in-the-sand-don’t-bother-me escapist attitude so obvious at present.
Islam does not teach the same sort of compassion for the other that virtually every other religion including today’s “secular humanism” teaches. Muslims murder and torture each other without compunction and their own ummah, “brotherhood” has no condemnation to offer. That’s because they don’t value individual human life the way Christian westerners do. It’s not a concept in Islam, which means it’s not a concept in Muslims “hearts and minds”. Their hearts and minds instead understand what Allah teaches them in the Koran, namely, the Collective Will to Power.
When will our leaders understand this? And moreover understand that it is necessary in the end to treat Muslims in the way they themselves understand moral principles? Which ultimately means that they must be beaten back and vanquished and humiliated by a greater strength. That is clearly what they understand. Every move to win their hearts and minds only strengthens them, emboldens them to advance their own peculiar ethics of the world, which couldn’t give a damn about “hearts and minds”, as we understand the term. They will accept the shehada from anyone they can swindle and connive to recite it while at the same time are willing to kill anyone who leaves Islam. Whatever it takes to build the army of Islamic soldiers is what their ethics is about.
There is no way of avoiding the reality that the adults in this world are going to have to act like adults and step up and slap, and in a big way, Muslims who have made of their own societies the equivalent of “Lord of the Flies” and who now threaten to overrun every more advanced society with their mayhem. We’re going to have to come to terms this reality. Either that or it’s simply going to be cruel for all of us, with no kindness in sight, and possibly no one left to come and rescue us off an Island from Hell that in our passivity and cowardice we allowed to be taken over by moral pygmies.
“I have become victorious through terror.” – Mohammed
They cry racism when they want to shut us up.
Cold War liberals were anti-(anti-communist).
Likewise today’s left opposes those who speak out against Islamic Totalitarians.
The left loves totalitarians and hates those who love freedom.
Ethnic profiling my ass. Had Huma Abedin joined the military and been in an occupation that required a Top Secret security clearance, she would be denied based on her parents affiliations, but apparently she can still be chief advisor to the Secretary of State. I understand that being voted into political office allows you to overstep the national security vetting process, but it shouldn’t apply to your staff, sorry.
I think there are a lot of Islamist skeletons in the Establishments closets.
I have yet to see this issue on any MSM, including FOX. I have seen it on GBTV. Did I miss it?
The author fails to mention that she is an irresponsible bigoted blo-hard. This fact is better documented than Huma’s MB connections. Any clear thinking person knows that’s why she touched a nerve.
Look who’s talking!
And you’re full of it, too.
Where are those documents?
First off I’m not on the Intelligence Committee (I’m not even a congressperson). Secondly the very accusations that this article is about are proof of her irresponsible bigoted blo-hardness. We don’t even have to talk about: her calling for a media expose on the ‘unAmericaness’ of members of Congress (Democrats only, of course), the ‘pray away the gay’ rehab center run by her ‘husband’, her needing to renounce her Swiss citizenship, or the other ‘America is a Christian nation founded on Christian values’ bullspit she spews.
Obama has done so much damage to this country I can’t understand anyone voting for another 4 years of this destruction. Obama has put Muslim Brother Hood people in government positions. Why would he do such a thing? Does anyone but a few Republicans care?
The MSM sure doesn’t. All you have to do is watch some of the interviews of conservatives on places such as MSNBE, NBC, CBS, etc. and you will see the bias in the questions and smugness of the, so called, reporters.
All questions are against conservative policies. They are “gotcha questions”.
To save this country we must get Osama, sorry, Obama, out of office. As fast as possible.
I agree fully with Bachmann’s worries. With all the brilliant people available to H. Clinton as an aid, why oh WHY did she pick one with Abedin’s background? Perhaps, of the brilliant people of unquestionable affiliations, none were interested in working with Clinton?
Attorney General Eric Holder’s acrobatic refusal to concede… that radical Islam might be a factor fueling homegrown terrorism is a disturbing display of this trend.”
Eric Dropper is disturbing.