By Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.
It is not exactly news that the Obama presidency is determined to go to unprecedented lengths to mollify, appease and otherwise pander to what it calls the "Muslim world." But the question has begun to occur: At what point do these efforts cross the line from a misbegotten policy to one that is downright anti-American - hostile to our values, incompatible with our vital interests and at odds with our Constitution?
The evidence is rapidly accumulating that we have reached that point. Our representatives in Congress must have the courage to rediscover a lost vocabulary, one that is conscious of the fact that subversion of our counterterror institutions - and indeed, our very understanding of the threat we face - is a goal of our enemy in the War on Terror. The danger entailed cries out for congressional oversight and corrective action.
What is needed is a new select committee modeled after the much-vilified, but ultimately vindicated, House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). This vindication is comprehensively documented in Yale University Press' groundbreaking "Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America," by John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, and expanded in M. Stanton Evans' 2009 "Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America's Enemies." Members of Congress and their staff can only benefit from reading these studies to have a better understanding of the history of their own institution. Such a panel needs a mandate to investigate in particular the extent to which the Obama administration's anti-American activities reflect the success of the toxic Muslim Brotherhood in penetrating and subverting U.S. government agencies and civil institutions.
Consider a few examples of what appear to be such successes:
* On June 30, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton declared that the Obama administration will "welcome … dialogue with those Muslim Brotherhood members who wish to talk with us."
* As former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy has observed, Eric H. Holder Jr.'s Justice Department appears to have basically stopped prosecuting alleged material support for terrorism. That was certainly the practical effect when it blocked prosecutors from bringing charges against Muslim Brotherhood fronts listed as unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation money-laundering case.
Such dereliction of duty would seem to be the practical upshot of President Obama's much-ballyhooed "Muslim outreach" speech in Cairo in the spring of 2009 when he pledged to eliminate impediments to zakat (Islamic tithing). Mr. McCarthy has noted that the only impediment to such tithing is the prohibition against the sort of material support to terror that is commanded by the Islamic political-military-legal doctrine known as Shariah, which requires one-eighth of zakat to underwrite jihad.
* Meanwhile, the Associated Press reported July 8 that prosecutors in the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia have asked a federal judge to reduce the 23-year sentence of convicted terrorist and al Qaeda financier Abdurahman Alamoudi. Before he was arrested for plotting with Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi the assassination of the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Alamoudi was one of America's top Muslim Brotherhood operatives.
In that capacity, this self-professed "supporter of Hamas and Hezbollah" helped found and operate dozens of Brotherhood front organizations. One of these, dubbed the Islamic Free Market Institute, had the mission of influencing and suborning the conservative movement. During the Clinton administration, Alamoudi was responsible for selecting, training and credentialing chaplains for the U.S. military and prison system. (Not to worry about the obvious peril associated with such an arrangement: After his arrest, Alamoudi's responsibilities were transferred to the nation's largest Muslim Brotherhood front, the Islamic Society of North America.)
It is not clear at this writing what the justification for reducing this al Qaeda financier's sentence might be or to what extent his prison time will be reduced. We all should be concerned though that such an individual might be turned loose in our country. Even more worrisome are reports that the Muslim Brotherhood is making a concerted effort to get the rest of its operatives and allies out of U.S. prisons, as well.
• Then, there is Mrs. Clinton's announcement in Istanbul last week that the United States would find common ground with the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) on a resolution that it has been pushing for years aimed at curbing free speech that "offends" Muslims. The United States already has co-sponsored one somewhat watered-down version of this initiative at the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva.
The Islamists who see the 57-member OIC as a kind of new caliphate uniting and advancing the interests of all Muslims will not be satisfied, however, with anything less than the realization of their ultimate objective: an international directive to all United Nations member states to prohibit and criminalize expression that is deemed offensive by the Muslim Brotherhood, OIC or other Shariah- adherent parties.
To "bridge" the gap between the OIC agenda and our constitutional freedoms, the OIC is pressuring Mrs. Clinton to agree to our joining Europe in considering the "test of consequences," not just the content of speech. That way lies censorship and submission.
• The Pentagon recently gave conscientious objector status to a Muslim soldier who claimed that, according to Shariah, it was impermissible for him to kill his fellow Muslims in places like Afghanistan. No one has explained how the Pentagon proposes to square its acquiescence to that stance with the oath every member of the armed forces takes to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic."
For that matter, it is hard to see how Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Holder and, indeed, their boss, Mr. Obama, can deem actions like the foregoing as consistent with their oaths of office. At best, they are acquiescing to far-reaching concessions to the Muslim Brotherhood and its ilk. At worse, they are enabling the group's efforts to destroy the West from within.
So pervasive now is the Brotherhood's "civilization jihad" within the U.S. government and civil institutions that a serious, sustained and rigorous investigation of the phenomenon by the legislative branch is in order.
To that end, we need to establish a new and improved counterpart to the Cold War-era's HUAC and charge it with examining and rooting out anti-American - and anti-constitutional - activities that constitute an even more insidious peril than those pursued by communist Fifth Columnists 50 years ago. Critics of a new select committee with such a mandate have an obligation to propose another approach to address this manifestly growing problem.
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Forces and Arms Control Policy in the Reagan Administration, heads the Center for Security Policy.
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