Obama Plans Presidential Apology to Islam

Helene Cooper at the New York Times is doing her best to come up with the bestest venue for incoming President Obama to make “a major foreign policy speech from an Islamic capital during his first 100 days in office.” (“Looking for the Ideal Spot to Make a Speech”). According to Obama aides, the purpose of the speech is to “mend rifts between the United States and the broader Muslim world.”

Some local people got excited that Obama might even select the Islamic capital of Dearborn, (“Dearborn cited as possible site for Obama speech”). But the Times says that suggestion only came from “some wise guys,” and Ms. Cooper herself thought Dearborn was unsuitable: “Clearly it would be cheating for Mr. Obama to fly to Detroit, talk to Dearborn’s 30,000 Arab residents and call it a day.”

(Oh, thanks. Have we even got a minority group left in this town that can command any respect?)

After examining all the major Muslim capitals and applying a process of elimination, Ms. Cooper decided that Cairo was the best. She gives some insight into her elimination process:

“I called Ziad Asali, the president of the American Task Force on Palestine, to gauge his thoughts. “Damascus would be cool, except it would look as if he was rewarding the Syrians and it’s too soon for that,” Mr. Asali said.”

(Yeah, cool! Let’s wait and reward Syria later!)

And, continues Ms. Cooper,

“What about Ramallah, I asked Mr. Asali, thinking it would show solidarity with the Palestinians.

‘I would object to that on so many levels,’ he shot back, irate. ‘Are you forgetting that Palestinians seek Jerusalem as their capital?’”

Now, I’m no expert, but I don’t think it’s a good sign when one of the people you’re groveling to becomes irate at your suggestions. In any case, Ms. Cooper dutifully corrected her atlas to reflect that “Jerusalem = Capital of Palestine.”

And then, continues Ms. Cooper, what about: “Baghdad? Definitely out-of-the-box, but it could appear to validate the Iraq war, which Mr. Obama opposed.”

By all means we definitely want to stay off Baghdad. For one thing, they just approved a Status of Forces Agreement requesting that we stay there to guarantee their safety from, well, other Muslims. And we sure don't want to spoil the effect of the intended speech by reminding the planet how President-in-Waiting Obama was against getting Saddam’s boot off 25 million Muslims. Not to mention that liberating all those Muslims clashes with the whole American-sins-against-the-Muslim-world theme we’re going for.

Same problem with the Gulf capitals, especially Kuwait City and Riyadh, because the Apologizer-in-Chief could hardly avoid mentioning the American liberation of (Muslim) Kuwait, the American saving of the (Muslim) Saudis from Saddam, the years of American no-fly missions to save the lives of the Shiite (Muslims) in southern Iraq and the Kurdish (Muslims) in northern Iraq.

Focus, people! This speech isn’t about hitting what we’ve done for Muslims, only what we’ve done to them.

Thus, as Ms. Cooper tersely records, a foreign policy adviser for Mr. Obama said, ‘I don’t think it will be in the Gulf.’” And that’s all she wrote about that. Literally.

But eventually Ms. Cooper arrives at the the obvious:

See? It’s got to be Cairo. Egypt is perfect. It’s certainly Muslim enough, populous enough and relevant enough. It’s an American ally, but here are enough tensions in the relationship that the choice will feel bold. The country has plenty of democracy problems, so Mr. Obama can speak directly to the need for a better democratic model there.

And best of all, bubbles Ms. Cooper, Cairo

has got the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist organization that has been embraced by a wide spectrum of the Islamic world, including the disenfranchised and the disaffected.

Oh, yes! Perfect! What better message to send to the world than to have the President of the United States select Cairo for his notra culpa speech to the Umma: not because of Egypt’s historic alliance with the U.S., but as a sign of esteem for being the birthplace of the Muslim Brotherhood, that noble refuge for the “disenfranchised and disaffected” and “embraced by a wide spectrum of the Islamic world?”

Apparently Ms. Cooper isn’t aware that, along with being an “Islamist organization,” the Muslim Brotherhood is an extremist group long associated with terror and violence, (banned in Egypt, technically), whose “true agenda of the international Muslim Brotherhood and its organizations in the United States – the abolition of the United States government as we know it and support for a designated terrorist organization.” (“Holy Land Foundation defendants guilty on all counts”).

Much of the facts of which were brought to light during the Holy Land Foundation trial in Texas (which even rated mention in the Times). This Muslim Brotherhood mission to overthrow democracy and replace it with Sharia is in keeping with the teaching of its founder, Hassan al Banna, who said, "It is the nature of Islam to dominate, not to be dominated, to impose its law on all nations and to extend its power to the entire planet."

And, as reported in IPT, and well-documented in many places, when it comes to the Muslim Brotherhood,

[T]here is the issue of terrorism. Hamas was founded as the Palestinian chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood Al Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri began his Islamist career as a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Almost every single Sunni terrorist organization can be traced back to the Muslim Brotherhood. And this isn't limited to the Middle East. As former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke told the Senate Banking and Finance Committee in 2003:

“The issue of terrorist financing in the United States is a fundamental example of the shared infrastructure levered by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and al Qaeda, all of which enjoy a significant degree of cooperation and coordination within our borders. The common link here is the extremist Muslim Brotherhood – all of these organizations are descendants of the membership and ideology of the Muslim Brothers.” (“Muslim
Brotherhood: Friend or Foe”).

Terrorism expert Douglas Farah says that the Holy Land "trial provides an invaluable forum for publicly showing the true agenda of the international Muslim Brotherhood and its organizations in the United States – the abolition of the United States government as we know it and support for a designated terrorist organization."

It’s bad enough that Obama, or at least his aides, think it's a great idea--even while the hotels in Bombay are smoldering from what was only the latest of thousands of Islamic atrocities against the civilized world--for the United States to go hat-in-hand to a symbolic seat of Islamic power to apologize for what we’ve been doing wrong.

When is a major Islamic leader who dictates in a major Islamic capital going to give a speech in a major Western capital to help mend rifts between the United States and the broader Muslim world?

This gets my Irish up. Feh!