Rule Number 1 for American Foreign Policy
I'm reading and watching a very great volume of (appropriately) anguished commentary on the Middle East that seems to converge on these questions: Are we now looking at the prospect of the entire region from the Nile to the Indus falling into the hands of committed Islamists, and if so, is there anything we can do to prevent this?
My answer to the first question is "Goodness, I hope not," and to the second, "I don't know." But I do have a modest suggestion for my government: Before trying to answer these questions, try to figure out who the dangerous Islamists are. You can't formulate any kind of intelligible policy if you have no idea. Here's a hint: No one says, "Hi Obama, my name is Ralph, and I'm a dangerous Islamist."
No, you have to look them up on Google.
What disturbed me so much about that article by Bruce Riedel is that he's a former intelligence officer. I try to reassure myself that no matter how oblivious people are in general and Obama in particular seem to be about the Muslim Brotherhood, there must be a cadre of dedicated professional analysts sitting there in Washington actually reading the stuff these guys say and thinking about the history of this region and saying to themselves, "You know, they might really mean this. We should be worried." And maybe there is--maybe Riedel is really out there, in terms of mainstream intelligence community views. But I worry very much that really and truly, such views could now be informing policy, in which case, we have no hope of getting it right. (We may have no hope no matter what, but if we don't grasp anything about what's going on, getting it wrong is assured.)
Take this business with Gannouchi in Tunisia. I just don't know if my government is any better-informed than Reuters and MSNBC, who two days ago came up in all seriousness with this sentence: "Ghannouchi is a respected Muslim scholar who went into exile in London in 1989. Now 69, Ghannouchi is widely considered to be a moderate who believes that Islam and democracy are compatible." Nothing else in that article suggests that Reuters understands anything about Ghannouchi or his affiliations. That alone worries me; the idea that it might also be true of the entire American policy-making apparatus terrifies me. I know that at one point we were well aware that Ghannouchi is bad news (we refused to give him a visa to enter the US), but do the people in power now grasp that this guy is a major Islamist headache?
So, Ghannouchi gets off the plane, and the predictable happens. Anyone paying attention to this?
A group of people who showed up yesterday at the airport in Tunis to peacefully protest the return of the leader of the Islamist movement Ennahda, Rached Ghannouchi, chanting slogans such as "yes to Islam, no to Islamism," were attacked by his supporters, thousands of which had gathered in the arrivals area at the airport. A young Tunisian, Mehda Barsaoui, wrote to the newspapers about the incident today, saying that "we were treated like unbelievers, Zionists, young irresponsible people and that one day Allah will judge our mistakes". Ennahda supporters started with insults and switched to physical attacks, said the young man, not only ripping the signs held by their rivals away from them, but also "slapping a woman and attacking another two friends". "This is the freedom of expression of the Islamists," wrote Barsaoui, "beating demonstrators and slapping women who were not in their place, since they should be at home taking care of the household chores."
If you knew that Ghannouchi is not, actually, "widely considered a moderate," that news at least wouldn't come as a complete surprise. I don't know what we can do, but Rule Number 1 says "Don't be surprised by things that really should not come as a surprise."
So how did I know from word one that Cootchie-Cootchie-Ghannouchi was bad news? It's not because I've got some kind of crystal ball. It's because I looked him up on the Internet and saw a few names and acronyms that mean bad news and they pretty much always mean bad news. Everyone in policy-making should know these names and think bad news when they see them. But I'm just not sure they do.
The names and acronyms are related to the Muslim Brotherhood and Saudi finance. Ghannouchi and Qaradawi are tied through the European Council for Fatwa and Research, and more to the point, Ghannouchi is one of the founding members of WAMY, the World Assembly of Muslim Youth. The acronym WAMY means bad news.
Here's what Reuters should have grasped about WAMY: A youthful history of involvement in WAMY is not like a youthful history of involvement in competitive chess. When you see "was a member of WAMY, was a founder of WAMY, was a trustee of WAMY," just translate that as massive future headache.
WAMY was one of the major organizations founded by the Saudis in the 1960s to spread Wahhabism; Stephen Schwartz has described it not entirely hyperbolically as the Saudi equivalent of the Hitler Youth. In the 1960s and 70s, the Saudis gave refuge to Muslim Brotherhood elements from Egypt, Sudan, Jordan, and Syria. Many were given prominent positions in large Wahhabi proselytization organizations, like the Muslim World League, al-Haramain, and WAMY. (All of those names should be well-known. We should never, ever be taken aback when someone connected to those organizations turns out to be not-so-moderate after all. That's predictable.)
These groups have been repeatedly implicated in financing terrorism around the globe, from Bosnia to Somalia to India. Osama bin Laden's brother, Abdullah bin Laden, used to be WAMY's treasurer. The direct link between WAMY and Al Qaeda is al-Haramain. One step.
The Saudi Minister of Islamic Affairs chairs the secretariat of WAMY; the group has received huge amounts of Saudi money. It still has offices around the globe, and even the most cursory examination of its output will show you what it is--it publishes incendiary anti-Semitic and anti-Western propaganda, and openly supports violence. Its offices in Virginia have been a major target of the FBI's post-9/11 investigation into Islamist groups suspected of funding terrorism, so I know someone in our government does appreciate this, but are they communicating with the people making foreign policy? I just don't know.
None of this stuff is secret, but none of it will be the first thing you learn about WAMY if you do a Google search--you'll come to this. You just need to look maybe four, five entries down on Google to figure out the rest of the story. It's not so hard.
So Ghannouchi is one of the founders of WAMY, and that is a really important clue about what he believes and how he'll behave. By the way, Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, another one of our great moderate hopes--Google his name and see how often he's described this way--was a trustee of WAMY, and WAMY is, not coincidentally, closely linked in America to the IIIT, the Muslim Brotherhood front group co-founded by Anwar in Virginia.
Know who else was involved in WAMY as a youth? Turkish prime minister Tayyip Erdoğan. The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs recently published a very detailed report on Turkey, the global Muslim Brotherhood, and the Gaza Flotilla. I'm sure it will be completely overlooked. But the discussion of WAMY is quite comprehensive. Some highlights:
The recently disclosed U.S. diplomatic material provides a context for understanding Erdogan’s ideological ties to the Global Muslim Brotherhood network, ties which this report has documented date back to Erdoğan's affiliation in the 1970s with the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY) ...
Since its inception, WAMY has always had a close relationship with the Global Muslim Brotherhood, and it was at WAMY where El-Helbawy said he met former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani, Anwar Ibrahim, and Tayyip Erdoğan, the current Turkish Prime Minister. Al-Helbawy told the reporter that all “got their start at WAMY. ... "
Prime Minister Erdoğan appears to have maintained his ties with the Global Muslim Brotherhood that date back to his time at WAMY. Former Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammed Madi Akef told an Egyptian magazine in 2005 that he knew both Erdogan and Erbakan well from when he had lived in Turkey and described both as “good friends.”
In June 2008, the Associated Press reported that Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, a former WAMY colleague with many ties to the global Brotherhood, took refuge in the Turkish Embassy following a police investigation into sodomy allegations. The AP report cited a senior AKP member as explaining that several embassies offered to shelter Mr. Ibrahim, but Anwar chose the Turkish mission “because of his close ties with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.” In addition, a 2006 Lebanese media article reported that Prime Minister Erdoğan was “an acquaintance and business partner” of Sheikh Yassin Abdullah Qadi, a Saudi businessman blacklisted by the United Nations for funding terrorism. ... Mr. Qadi had close ties to the US Muslim Brotherhood through his ownership of a large block of the shares of Ptech, a Texas software company whose employees had further ties to terror organizations.
Ptech had an interlocking board membership and other ties to the SAAR Foundation, a now-defunct network of Islamic organizations located in Northern Virginia, which was raided by the Federal government in March 2002 in connection with the financing of terrorism. The leadership of the SAAR foundation, in turn, was largely the same as that of the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), an important part of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood.
It's not really a "conspiracy," because that suggests that someone is trying hard to hide these connections. No one is. It's all pretty much right out there. It's just that we can't be bothered to think about them.
Should we conclude from this that anyone involved with WAMY in his youth is necessarily someone with whom the West can never do business? Of course not. For all my reservations about Erdoğan, I do of course recognize that there's a very big difference between Turkey under the AKP and Iran. Erdoğan is in fact an extremely pragmatic politician who responds very much to domestic sentiment and international pressure. But a failure to appreciate that Erdoğan does indeed come from a particular ideological background and that this may be relevant to understanding, for example, why the AKP lent its support to the Gaza Flotilla, is just foreign-policy suicide.
Likewise, the failure to appreciate that Anwar comes from the same background--indeed, was even more heavily invested in it than Erdoğan--represents some kind of "I want the West to die" willful blindness. Ghannouchi is only "widely considered a moderate" by people who don't think this kind of background means anything. Yet all the evidence is that it is an extremely good predictor of future political attitudes and behavior. And why wouldn't it be?
Anyway, if anyone in our government needs some help learning how to use Google, I'm standing by and happy to explain it. (Diane Ellis is also really good at explaining how to do complicated things with a computer.)
Call anytime; it's the least I can do for my country.
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Comments :
Jan '11
Re: Rule Number 1 for American Foreign Policy
Thanks for pointing out the fecklessness of our government and major news sources. I have been astonished many times to read endorsements of X as "a prominent member of the moderate Muslim community," when it takes me less than 5 minutes on Google to uncover X's unsavory associations. How do they keep coming up with these creeps - lauding them as statesmen, inviting them to lecture on Muslim-American relations, praising their sensible and moderate policies? Our local paper recently carried a guest editorial by a writer identified only as "a law student." A few minutes' research told me that he was also a member of several Muslim Brotherhood-linked groups.
Apparently our leaders' definition of a "moderate Muslim" is "any smooth talker whose background we have not checked out."
And their definition of "dangerous Islamist?" Shut up, go away, using those words means you're Islamophobic, la la la I can't hear you!
Sep '10
Re: Rule Number 1 for American Foreign Policy
When I read you or Ms Levy’s posts I am aware that both of you, like all people, have biases and that what you write may be affected by these biases. I do not however consider that you are writing to intentionally misinform people. I do not have this attitude with many. Riedel if he was a reasonably competent intelligence officer knows what is going on, that does not mean he is writing what he knows. I would suggest that if the MB is portrayed as a moderate organization it makes it more politically expedient for State to carry on a dialog with them. Being ex-intelligence, this may be who Riedel is carrying water for or there may be many other possibilities.
Sep '10
Re: Rule Number 1 for American Foreign Policy
I listened to a segment featuring Frank Gafney on Mark Levin radio show last night, and while not as detailed as your analysis here, he was saying essentially the same thing.
It seems to me there is some knowledge in mid-level of most of our agencies, but it is politically inconvienient to those at the top to act, or make declarations, so there is willful blindness on their part.
It is the macrocosm of denial that most Americans have about Islam.
It took me a while to wrap my head around what the dominant form of Islam (that is, radical Islam) is about. Americans brought up in the Judeo-Christian tradition literally cannot comprehend the mentality. There is no place in their minds that will hold that these people fundamentally reject their worldview, fundamentally reject their right to life and happiness and are simply bent on their destruction.
Our leaders desperately want to believe there are many who are moderates, and also believe this would be the route to solving these complicated problems - but that is precisely what a Judeo-Christian would think! And of course the radicals have provided roleplayers to take advantage of these hopes and delusions.
Dec '10
Re: Rule Number 1 for American Foreign Policy
The diabolic duet of petrodollars and marxism has propelled these moderates into the military, law enforcement, academia, and the press. Too many fool themselves that the emperor is a sharp dressed man.
Andy McCarthy also took this on, yesterday.
Re: Rule Number 1 for American Foreign Policy
Never underestimate our capacity for engaging in wishful thinking. That is what we did with regard to Khomeini. That is what we will do with regard to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Oct '10
Re: Rule Number 1 for American Foreign Policy
Claire, if mubarak is deposed, do you think it's a good idea to ban the Muslim Brotherhood from running in elections for at least 2 years?
Or will it only force them to use fake moderates sympathetic to their side to bypass this.
Jul '10
Re: Rule Number 1 for American Foreign Policy
It's alright, folks, Jimmy Carter has weighed in with a demand that Mubarak step down.
Case closed. Nothing to see here. Go about your business....
May '10
Re: Rule Number 1 for American Foreign Policy
Riedel's piece sounds like a "let's hedge our bets." He's clearly running interference for the Obama administration. His wiki bio suggests his political persuasion. But he's been out of the CIA since 2006. He's out of the loop and has been for a few years. So, I wouldn't assume his point of view is representative of current officers. The CIA does occasionally put out misinformation intentionally, while sometimes they just call things wrong.
However, I do think the powers that be in D.C. have been anticipating the possibility of Egypt's fall to the MB and have planned accordingly. In 2008, the Norfolk based carrier USS Roosevelt made an unprecedented port call to Cape Town, South Africa. You can read it many ways, but I think the Navy is planning Middle East deployment scenarios that don't include the Med/Suez Canal.