In PJ Media this morning I discuss how both Obama and Jimmy Carter helped enemies of America come to power:
No sooner was Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohamed Morsi elected president of Egypt than he announced his determination to work for the freedom of an enemy of the United States: blind sheikh
Omar Abdel Rahman, who is serving a life term for his role in planning
the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Not since Jimmy Carter helped usher
in the Iranian Revolution has an American president done so much to aid
those who are determined to destroy the United States.In fact, the parallels are numerous. Carter betrayed the shah of
Iran, a longtime U.S. ally who had a dismal human rights record but was
generally loyal, and paved the way for the ascent to power of the
Ayatollah Khomeini and the Iranian mullahcracy that quickly showed its
gratitude to Carter by taking U.S. Embassy personnel hostage, and has
maintained a war footing against the United States ever since.Obama, for his part, betrayed Hosni Mubarak, another longtime U.S.
ally with a record of repressive rule, paving the way for the Muslim
Brotherhood’s rise to power. And now President Morsi has shown his
gratitude to Obama by announcing his determination to free from prison a
man who plotted to murder hundreds of thousands of Americans.It is said that history repeats itself, but it doesn’t do so by means
of some automatic, inexorable, deterministic process. History repeats
itself because people refuse to study and learn its lessons, and to face
the unpleasant facts it presents. Thus, they make the same mistakes
their predecessors did. The Obama administration didn’t have to be
Carter’s second term, but both Carter and Obama are the products of a
political culture that consistently discounts the importance of
religious motivations. Informed sources have noted that at the time of
the Iranian Revolution, only one book by the Ayatollah Khomeini could be
found in the State Department, and no one had read it: no one thought
the rantings of an obscure fanatic exiled to far-off France were
important. That was the manifestation of a willful blindness to rival
that of James Clapper, Obama’s director of national intelligence, who
famously labeled the Muslim Brotherhood “largely secular.” In fact, it
is the same willful blindness, and it has characterized the Washington
establishment’s views on Islam and jihad from Carter’s day until now.So secular is the Brotherhood that Morsi recently repeated its
guiding motto to an enthusiastic crowd: “The Koran is our constitution,
the Prophet is our leader, jihad is our path and death in the name of
Allah is our goal.” Last week, Yasser Borhamy, a Salafi leader, declared
that the Muslim Brotherhood was planning to implement Sharia as the
main source for Egyptian law. Noting opposition to Sharia in Egypt,
Borhamy said: “What is disturbing in the Islamic Sharia law, is Sharia
bothering anyone? We do not say “˜our views on Sharia,” but we say that
we want the Sharia law revealed by God. Would anyone be afraid of the
Sharia that establishes justice, [public] interest and wisdom? This is
very strange. How is it said that people are afraid of Sharia?”By “Sharia law revealed by God,” Borhamy meant the Sharia that stones
adulterers, amputates thieves” hands, mandates death for apostates from
Islam, and institutionalizes subjugation of women and non-Muslims. If
the Brotherhood does succeed in implementing this in Egypt, it will have
Barack Obama to thank: his applause for the “Arab Spring” uprisings,
coupled with the universal misrepresentation of them in the Western
media as outpourings of a longing for democracy and pluralism, has
brought us to the inception of an Egyptian regime that is almost certain
to go to war with Israel and pursue a path of unrelenting hostility
toward its erstwhile patrons in Washington.