by Frank 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 forego 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 that some have described as “communism with a god.” Several examples illustrate willful blindness in our time:
O Army Major Nidal Hassan, 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.
O Such dereliction of duty was compounded
by a serious error by the nation’s first line of defense against such
internal threats – the Federal Bureau of Investigations. Thanks to
communications intercepts by the lately much-maligned National Security
Agency (NSA), the FBI was aware that Hassan 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 Hassan, the Bureau
dismissed such counseling as nothing more than research for the major’s
thesis at a U.S. military medical school.
O The FBI’s performance against such
jihadists has been further hampered by the influence operations of
Muslim Brotherhood-tied 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 Diana West. The training materials of not
only the Bureau, 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.
O 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 Bureau’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 last April.
O 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
Brotherhood regime of Mohammed Morsi, Team Obama insists that the
avowedly anti-democratic Muslim Brotherhood nonetheless be allowed to
participate in any future electoral process.
O 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 Mrs. Anthony Weiner 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 September 11, 2012 will lead, at last, to a
proper investigation. It must illuminate, among other things, the
Abedin connection and Hillary Clinton’s serious misjudgment in giving a
woman with such associations a succession of positions of trust over the
past 16 years.
O Finally, the U.S. government has
reportedly classified the thesis written by the new military leader and
possible future president of Egypt, General Abdel Fatah Al-Sisi, during
his time at the Army War College. While Al-Sisi has, for the moment,
routed the Muslim Brotherhood, according to an expert on the Egyptian
armed forces, the Naval Postgraduate School’s Professor Robert
Springborg: “[His] thesis goes beyond simply rejecting the idea of a
secular state; it embraces a more radical view of the proper place of
religion in an Islamic democracy.” It won’t do to replace willful
blindness about the tendencies of the past Egyptian leadership with
self-imposed ignorance about those of its replacement.
Frank Gaffney, Jr.
Source: http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/2013/08/05/willful-blindness-mortal-peril/
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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