FRANK J. GAFFNEY, JR.
Diana West's
splendid new book, "American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our
Nation's Character," is an expose of a practice that she persuasively
argues has cost us dearly in the past and endangers our future. Former
federal prosecutor-turned-pundit
Andrew C. McCarthy calls it "willful blindness," and we indulge in it at our extreme peril.
Ms. West painstakingly documents how
America's government, media, academia, political and policy elites actively helped obscure the true nature of the
Soviet Union. She persuasively argues that such blinding began literally from the moment in November 1933 when
Franklin Roosevelt normalized relations with the USSR in exchange for the Kremlin's fraudulent promise to forgo subversion against this country.
Ms. West
came to this exhaustive research project by dint of her curiosity about
the failure of such elites in our own time to recognize and counter
today's present danger: the Islamists and their Shariah doctrine, which
some have described as "communism with a god." Several examples
illustrate willful blindness in our time:
Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, whose trial for
the Fort Hood massacre finally begins this week,
repeatedly signaled his intention to engage in such an act of jihad
prior to gunning down his comrades. Testimony is expected to show that
officers in his chain of command refused to entertain such a possibility
- and actually threatened the careers of those who had the temerity to
warn of the violent mayhem this Islamist believed he must inflict,
pursuant to Shariah.
Such dereliction of duty was compounded by a serious error by the
nation's first line of defense against such internal threats - the
FBI. Thanks to communications intercepts by the lately much-maligned
National Security Agency, the
FBI was aware that
Maj. Hasan was being mentored about his duty under Shariah by an
al Qaeda-associated cleric then based in
Yemen,
Anwar al-Awlaki. Yet, rather than move in on
Maj. Hasan, the
FBI dismissed such counseling as nothing more than research for the major's thesis at a U.S. military medical school.
The
FBI's performance against such jihadists has been further hampered by the influence operations of
Muslim Brotherhood-linked individuals and organizations who are now "inside the wire" of the
U.S. government
- in a manner all too reminiscent of the penetration of our governing
and other institutions by Soviet agents during the 20th century,
chronicled so brilliantly by
Ms. West. The training materials of not only the
FBI,
but the military, the intelligence community and homeland security
agencies, have been purged of information that would help connect the
dots between the supremacist Islamic doctrine of Shariah and
terrorism.
Such self-imposed blinding about the enemy's threat doctrine is
dressed up as multicultural sensitivity and political correctness, aimed
at not gratuitously giving offense to Muslims. In fact, it amounts to
submission to our enemy's bid for what the U.S. military calls
"information dominance." There seems little doubt that these sorts of
imperatives contributed to the
FBI's
inability, despite some 14 hours of interviews with Tamerlan Tsarnaev,
to discern the jihadist proclivities of a man who subsequently acted on
them to perpetrate the Boston Marathon attack in April.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration has throughout its tenure
submissively aided the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, by legitimating,
empowering, funding and even arming it. While this public embrace has
diminished somewhat since the Egyptian military responded affirmatively
to popular demands for the overthrow of the
Muslim Brotherhood
regime of Mohammed Morsi, Team Obama insists that the avowedly
anti-democratic organization nonetheless be allowed to participate in
any future electoral process.
This has required a determined effort to ignore the true agenda of the
Muslim Brotherhood,
both there and here. Particularly alarming are the findings of a
detailed analysis by counterterrorism expert Patrick Poole, recently
documented in the Middle East Review of International Affairs. Mr. Poole
documents how, time and again, one element of the
U.S. government, under both this and previous presidents, "reached out" to
Muslim Brotherhood
figures and organizations, even as they or their associates were being
investigated by other agencies for material support for designated
terrorist groups, subversion or preparations for jihadist attacks.
A particularly glaring example of willful blindness involves the
almost complete suppression of information about Huma Abedin's extensive
Muslim Brotherhood
ties. Despite the incessant coverage of Anthony D. Weiner's wife on
many other scores, there has, for example, been scarcely any discussion
of her role as the State Department's deputy chief of staff in the
Benghazigate scandal. Hopefully, the report last week by CNN that 35
witnesses to the jihadist attack on the CIA annex are being actively
suppressed, intimidated and pressured not to tell the Congress or the
American people what happened on Sept. 11, 2012, will lead to a proper
investigation. It must illuminate, among other things, the Abedin
connection and Hillary Rodham Clinton's serious misjudgment in giving a
woman with such associations a succession of positions of trust over the
past 16 years.
Neither the American people nor those they entrust with their
security can afford to engage in delusional fantasies about the enemies
we face at home as well as abroad.
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is President of the Center for Security Policy and a columnist for the Washington Times.
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