Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald, in the spirit of the day, offers some reflections on the use of strategic gift-giving in the advancement of the global jihad agenda:
The more we have to do with Muslim mores and manners, Muslim ways and Muslim byways, inevitably there will be more opportunities for Infidels to be fooled, to be inveigled, to be impressed, to be treated with such outward respect, to be subject to people well-versed in using personal charm (those soft voices, those looks of deep sincerity, the whole bit), that the clarity and resolve of many will be weakened.
People like to be treated well. Ready to do so are the gracious host with the limitless resources, who invites you to “see for yourself” what “our problems are,” who invites you (all expenses paid, and a fat honorarium at the end, with promises of future invitations if you play your cards right) to a “Dialogue of Civilizations” in Marrakesh, and the Turkish officials who “have you over to discuss what Turkey is doing now to comply with E.U. requirements and why it makes sense to let Turkey into the tent, in order to encourage the forces of moderate Islam.”
And then there is the surprise gift at the end: the wrapped dishdashas for your kids, that silver dagger you admired, perhaps even a rug or two if you happen to be in the right place (“No, it was nothing, really. When you said you were interested in buying a rug and I couldn’t accompany you to the souk that day, I felt badly, so I thought I’d just get it and have it wrapped and waiting at the plane when you left. Tell your wife I hope it works in her dining room”). Do you know just how easy it is to set up a warm feeling inside people? How they will trade their own futures, their own security, for a dishdasha or a dagger or a rug, or a fat envelope with cash, or promise of a donation to one’s “academic center” or anything else?
The moral of the story is: Radix malorum cupiditas est. And the Muslims and Arabs are past masters at this. The buying up of Western hirelings, or the buying off of intelligent critics, has been going on for decades all over the Western world. For a while it did not seem dangerous, but merely disgusting. Now it is traitorous. And should be investigated, and all recipients of Arab and Muslim money publicly exposed, humiliated, and shunned.
And that goes not only for all those “international business consultants” who “have a special expertise in the Middle East” because they were diplomats or intelligence agents in the Arab countries, but for those who, at such places as Kissinger Associates, think there is nothing wrong with profiting from their government “service” (as they like to primly and self-righteously call it) — i.e., contacts, influence — by preventing the rest of us, those who are not in the game, from understanding the full malevolence of those who pay them so handsomely to “advise” them on how to handle public and other relations.
If only one could force all of these people to disgorge their traitorous take. The Saudis have been extraordinarily successful in buying up the services of a small army of apologists, including ex-ambassadors and C.I.A. agents. Attention was paid to Edwin Wilson and Fran Terpil, who were involved with Khadafy; no attention has been paid to Raymond Close, who “retired” early in 1977 from being Station Chief in Saudi Arabia to go into business with some Saudis, and who has been dutifully involved in all sorts of activities, including BCCI, and has worked as an “international business consultant” ever since — dutifully giving the Saudi take on everything. They have also bought journalists, and of course well-connected political figures and hangers-on (the Kennedy apparatchik Fred Dutton should not be overlooked). These people, like others all over the Western world, took in some tens or perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars.
One would therefore not have expected any alarms about Saudi money (nearly $100 billion worldwide) going to fund mosques, madrasas, and hate literature (with Infidels being the hated) to come from the likes of Close, or James Akins, or the late John C. West, or West’s friend Crawford Cook, or the entire host of Saudi hirelings (direct or indirect). Nor could we have expected it to come from those who have simply been given gigantic honoraria for this or that “speech” to an Arab audience in Kuwait or the U.A.E. or at an Arab-funded lecture series at places such as Tufts. Few can ‘scape whipping — or should.
As part of the 9/11 report, Congress ought to have investigated the role of Saudi money in creating these apologists, in putting so many on the payroll, and in buying up and controlling academic centers for “Islamic Studies” (see Prince Alwaleed’s recent gifts to Harvard and Georgetown).
The Saudis, for more than 3 decades, have been getting their money’s worth.
And they still are.