Is the war of the Western powers against the petty despot of Libya over?

Has the petty despot won?

According to this report at (not always reliable) DebkaFile, it is and he has:

Bar the shouting, the war in Libya virtually ended Thursday morning, July 14, when US President Barack Obama called Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to hand Moscow the lead role in negotiations with Muammar Qaddafi for ending the conflict – provided only that the Libyan ruler steps down in favor of a transitional administration.

The US president thus accepted the Russian-Libyan formula for ending the war over the heads of the NATO chiefs who rejected it when they met Russian leaders at the Black Sea resort of Sochi last week. …

By the time Obama had decided to call Medvedev, individual governments which had spearheaded the anti-Qaddafi campaign were quietly melting away. …

From Saturday, July 9 … NATO discontinued its air strikes against Libyan pro-government targets in Tripoli and other places. The halt though unannounced was nonetheless an admission that 15,000 flight missions and 6,000 bombardments of Qaddafi targets had failed to achieve their object: Col. Qaddafi, without deploying a single fighter jet, firing an anti-air missile or activating terrorist cells in Europe, had waited for NATO to run out of steam and was still in power.

In an overview of the war to British air force commanders Wednesday, July 13, British Defense Secretary Liam Fox remarked that while no one knows when it will end, British ground corps, naval and air forces do not have the means to continue the war. … [He] added that British and European military industries lack the capacity for supporting a war effort that goes beyond a few weeks.

Italy, a key player in NATO’s military effort, last week secretly withdrew its Air Force Garibaldi-551 planes from the campaign – dealing the operation another grave setback. And in the last 10 days, France has also scaled back the military assets it had invested in the fighting after despairing of the anti-Qaddafi rebels based in Benghazi ever making headway against Qaddafi’s forces. First, Paris tried to transfer its backing from Benghazi to the secessionist Berber tribes fighting Qaddafi in Western Libya. On June 30, President Nicolas Sarkozy ordered weapons to be parachuted to the tribal fighters in western Libya, contrary to UN and NATO decisions. But the Berbers preferred to use the French guns for plundering towns and villages instead of fighting government forces.

On Monday, July 11, after that experience, Defense Secretary Gerard Longuet said it was time for talks to begin between Qaddafi and the rebels. Paris, he said, had asked the two sides to begin negotiations.

This was backhanded confirmation of the claim Qaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam made to the French media that his father was engaged in contacts for ending the war through emissaries who met with President Sarkozy.

While Minister Longuet said the Libyan ruler cannot stay in power, he refrained from demanding his ouster by force or his expulsion from the country. This formula therefore came close to Qaddafi’s terms for ending the war. …

It also knocks over the international war crimes tribunal’s demand to extradite Qaddafi and his sons as war criminals.

Instead of sitting in the dock of the world court, they will now take their seats at the negotiating table for a deal one of whose objects will be to rescue NATO from the humiliation of defeat at war.

In an article at Front Page, Stephen Brown confirms that NATO is stopping the air strikes and seeking to negotiate an end to the war :

In a major shift in its position on the war in Libya, France has announced it wants the rebels to begin direct negotiations with representatives of Muammar Gaddafi. NATO has been trying for more than three months to depose the Libyan leader in an air campaign, led by France, which has cost tens of millions of dollars and caused fractures in the alliance.

In a strong indication of mounting frustration over NATO’s lack of success from the air and the rebels’ slow progress on the ground, France’s defence minister, Gerard Longuet, said last Sunday on French television that NATO had “stopped the hand that was striking” against the insurgents and “now was the time to sit down at the negotiating table.

“We have asked them to speak to each other,” said Longuet, whose government was the most ardent supporter of military action three months ago and was the first to launch air strikes.

But the biggest surprise in Longuet’s television appearance came when he said the bombs would stop falling as soon as negotiations begin, indicating NATO will cease all military operations. Which means that Gaddafi, against all expectations, will survive. Forcing Gaddafi to leave had always been a main goal of the military campaign Great Britain and France have been spearheading.

“We will stop the bombing as soon as the Libyans start talking to one another and the military on both sides go back to their bases,” said Longuet. “They can talk to each other because we’ve shown there is no solution through force.”

Which is another way of saying, ‘We’ve lost, he’s won”.

Up until now, the rebels have refused to negotiate with the Libyan government until Gaddafi stepped down. France says it still wants Gaddafi out but obviously now believes NATO’s bombing campaign will not achieve this goal and is too expensive to maintain, so a diplomatic solution is now necessary. …

Gaddafi, Longuet said … could “remain in Libya ‘in another room of the palace, with another title’.”

France’s two main NATO allies, Great Britain and America, were both quick to respond to Longuet’s announcement, indicating their displeasure as well as a possible breach opening up in the alliance.

But this Washington Post report paints a somewhat different picture, of the rebels preparing for the aftermath of their victory, and the US already recognizing their leaders as the legitimate “governing authority” of Libya – though conceding that Gaddafi is still in power:

The United States granted Libyan rebel leaders full diplomatic recognition as the governing authority of Libya on Friday, a move that could give the cash-strapped rebels access to more than $30 billion in frozen assets that once belonged to Moammar Gaddafi. …

The U.S. announcement was accompanied by an agreement among all of the countries taking part in a meeting of 30 Western and Arab nations to similarly recognize the rebel council after five months of fighting that has failed to oust Gaddafi. …

A meeting at which, it seems, Hillary Clinton was thoroughly taken in by the rebels (no surprise):

The rebels’ Transitional National Council “has offered important assurances today, including the promise to pursue a process of democratic reform that is inclusive both geographically and politically,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in an explanation of the decision to other foreign ministers. …

For weeks, U.S. officials have stopped short of official diplomatic recognition because of concerns about whether a post-Gaddafi government set up by rebel leaders would be truly inclusive politically and geographically.

The United States and other foreign powers have worried that the oil-rich country could become embroiled in tribal conflicts or ethnic tensions once Gaddafi is no longer in power.

The United States changed its position after hearing a presentation in Turkey by Mahmoud Jibril, the transitional council’s foreign affairs representative, who described the rebels’ plans for governing a post-Gaddafi Libya.

According to Libyan council members, the plan includes having the rebels, now based in the eastern city of Benghazi, reach out …

to other regions of Libya not currently represented on the council. Together, they would form an interim government to rule in Gaddafi’s place and then guide the country through democratic reforms and, ultimately, the election of a new government.

American children must be taught the values America traditionally stands for, and why they are the highest and the best.

They must be taught that the United States of America was founded as a realization of the idea of liberty.

They must be taught that only in freedom are individuals able to achieve the best they are capable of.

They must be taught that the conditions necessary for a good life  – prosperity, physical and mental well-being, the pursuit of individual aims  – exist reliably only in a free society.

They must be taught that only the rule of law, not rule by a person or group of potentates, assures liberty.

Generations of American children have not been taught any of this. It is no exaggeration to say that for decades now the schools and academies have been teaching Americans to be ashamed of themselves. So millions of Americans believe that they are justly hated by other nations, and their country should change to become more like other countries. (See our post Zinn writes histories, December 11, 2009.)

William Damon, professor of education at Stanford University and a senior fellow of the admirable Hoover Institution, writes in a recent essay:

In our leading intellectual and educational circles, the entire notion of national devotion is now in dispute. For example, in a book about the future of citizenship, a law professor recently wrote: “Longstanding notions of democratic citizenship are becoming obsolete … American identity is unsustainable in the face of globalization.” As a replacement for commitment to a nation-state, the author wrote, “loyalties…are moving to transnational communities defined by many different ways: by race, ethnicity, gender, religion, age, and sexual orientation.” In similar fashion, many influential educators are turning to “cosmopolitanism” and “global citizenship” as the proper aim of civics instruction, de-emphasizing the attachment to any particular country such as the United States. As global citizens, it is argued, our primary identification should be with the humanity of the world, and our primary obligation should be to the universal ideals of human rights and justice. Devotion to one’s own nation state, commonly referred to as patriotism, is suspect because it may turn into a militant chauvinism or a dangerous “my country right or wrong” perspective. …

By “justice” the unnamed law professor probably means “social justice’ – the idea that wealth should be taken away from those who have earned it and given to others who have not. “Social justice” is Orwellian Newspeak for injustice.

William Damon points out:

Discouraging young Americans from identifying with their country — and, indeed, from celebrating the traditional American quest for liberty and equal rights — is a sure way to remove their most powerful source of motivation to learn about U. S. citizenship. Why would a student exert any effort to master the rules of a system that the student has no respect for and no interest in being part of? To acquire civic knowledge as well as civic virtue, students need to care about their country.

It is especially odd to see schools with large immigrant populations neglect teaching students about American identity and the American tradition. Educational critic Diane Ravitch observed this phenomenon when visiting a New York City school whose principal proudly spoke of the school’s efforts to celebrate the cultures of all the immigrant students. Ravitch writes, “I asked him whether the school did anything to encourage students to appreciate American culture, and he admitted with embarrassment that it did not.”

At least he was embarrassed.

These and other American students are being urged to identify with, on the one hand, customs from the native lands they have departed and, on the other hand, with the abstract ideals of an amorphous global culture. Lost in between these romantic affiliations is an identification with the nation where these students actually will practice citizenship. Adding to the dysfunction of this educational choice, as Ravitch writes, is the absurdity of teaching “a student whose family fled to this country from a tyrannical regime or from dire poverty to identify with that nation rather than with the one that gave the family refuge.”

We are not “citizens of the world.” We do not pay taxes to the world; we do not vote for a world president or senator.

Professor Damon wants civics taught in the schools, and taught well.

How can we do better? Of course we need to teach students the Constitution, along with its essential underlying principles such as separation of powers, representative government, and Federalism. Excellent programs for such teaching now exist. But these programs are not widely used amidst today’s single-minded focus on basic skills. Compounding this neglect, the school assessments that drive the priorities of teachers infrequently test for civic knowledge. To preserve the American heritage of liberty and democracy for future generations, citizenship instruction must be placed front and center in U. S. classrooms rather than relegated to the margins. …

And he issues a warning:

There is a looming crisis … the very real possibility that our democracy will be left in the hands of a citizenry unprepared to govern it and unwilling the make the sacrifices needed to preserve it. A free society requires an informed and virtuous citizenry. Failing this, as Ben Franklin long ago warned, despotism lies just around the corner.

The citizenry should also be informed what life is like in other countries. Most people in the world are ruled over by despots or despotic regimes. Most democracies, like the European nations, are welfare states rapidly becoming poorer as a result of their socialist economic systems. A proper understanding of capitalist economics  – “the natural order of liberty” as Adam Smith called it –  should be taught in America as well as civics and truthful history.

Walter Williams writes at Front Page:

A recent Superman comic book has the hero saying, “I am renouncing my U.S. citizenship” because “truth, justice, and the American way — it’s not enough anymore.” …

The ignorance about our country is staggering. According to one survey, only 28 percent of students could identify the Constitution as the supreme law of the land. Only 26 percent of students knew that the first 10 amendments to the Constitution are called the Bill of Rights. Fewer than one-quarter of students knew that George Washington was the first president of the United States. …

Ignorance and possibly contempt for American values, civics and history might help explain how someone like Barack Obama could become president of the United States. At no other time in our history could a person with longtime associations with people who hate our country become president. Obama spent 20 years attending the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s hate-filled sermons, which preached that “white folks’ greed runs a world in need,” called our country the “US of KKK-A” and asked God to “damn America.” Obama’s other America-hating associates include Weather Underground Pentagon bomber William Ayers and Ayers’ wife, Bernardine Dohrn.

The fact that Obama became president and brought openly Marxist people into his administration doesn’t say so much about him as it says about the effects of decades of brainwashing of the American people by the education establishment, media and the intellectual elite.

Actually, though we don’t disagree with the point Walter Williams is making, we think it does say quite as much about  Obama. He epitomizes the sort of America-hating ideologue that the decades of debauched education have bred.

Fun for atheists.

From My Fox:

An Austrian man was Thursday driving around with a new official license that shows him wearing an upturned pasta strainer on his head.

Niko Alm applied for the license three years ago, sending in a picture of himself with the colander on his head and explaining that it was a necessary part of his “Pastafarian” beliefs.

He was apparently furious that officials had allowed Muslim women to wear head scarves when posing for their driving license, the Austrian Independent reported.

The entrepreneur told the Austria Press Agency he had the idea for the colander when he discovered that headgear was allowed in official pictures for “confessional” reasons.

After applying, Alm was asked to visit a doctor to check that he was mentally fit to drive but has now finally got his official license — complete with kitchen utensil headwear.

The atheist belongs to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster … a light-hearted “faith” whose members call themselves Pastafarians and whose “only dogma … is the rejection of dogma,” according to its website.

Alm now wants to apply for Pastafarianism, which was created in the US several years ago, to become an officially recognized faith in Austria.

The religion reportedly believes the world was created by the “Flying Spaghetti Monster,” but, owing to the monster being inebriated at the time of creation, it has a flawed design.

A theology that strains our credulity no more than any other does.

The Telegraph reports:

The spaghetti church was founded in 2005 in opposition to pressure on the Kansas school board in the United States to teach the theory of intelligent design in biology class as an alternative to evolution, and since then it has engaged in a light-hearted campaign against religion.

Light-hearted the campaign may be, but its aim is seriously desirable.

Cal Thomas writes with good sense at Townhall:

The Constitution is specific when it prohibits a “religious test” for “any office or public trust” — Article VI, Paragraph III.

That doesn’t mean that voters are prohibited from taking a person’s faith (or lack thereof) into account when deciding for whom they will vote. No law could stop them.

Past elections have been decided when some Catholics voted for a Catholic politician because of their shared religion and Protestants voted against a Catholic because they did not share that faith.

Now come two Mormons — Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman — and two evangelical Christians — Tim Pawlenty and Michele Bachmann. There is confusion and division within once nearly solid evangelical ranks over what to do. …

Does it really matter what faith a president or presidential candidate has, or should everyone, regardless of their religious background, focus on their competence to do the job?

Shouldn’t the question answer itself?

I would vote for a competent atheist who believed in issues I care about over the most conservative Christian or Orthodox Jew who lacks the experience, knowledge and vision to do a good job as president.

Orthodox Jew? There has never been a Jewish candidate for the presidency, orthodox or anything else. Which means that a fund of ability has gone untapped for the job. It would be interesting to see what would happen if, say, a secular Jew with widely popular political views were to stand. What might operate against him? Anti-semitism – ie the fact that he is a Jew even though not religious – or anti-atheism, or both?

Religion can and has been used as a distraction to dupe voters. Jimmy Carter made “born again” mainstream during the 1976 presidential campaign and many evangelicals voted for him on the basis of his declared faith. Yet Carter later revealed himself to be a standard liberal Democrat in virtually every category that mattered, from abortion and civil unions, to the economy, to weakening America’s defenses and image worldwide.

What about Barack Obama’s self-declared Christian faith? He attended the Chicago church of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose sermons frequently condemned America and contained what some took to be racial slurs [they were racial slurs – JB]. The president’s faith has not distinguished his positions on any issue that matters from that of a standard liberal Democratic secularist. If a candidate says faith is important, shouldn’t that faith take the person on a different path than what someone of little or no faith would propose? If not, what difference does faith make and why should it be of concern to voters? …

It shouldn’t matter whether Mormons believe in baptizing the dead, what undergarments they wear, or that they believe God was once a man like us. Neither should it matter that an evangelical Christian believes in Armageddon, unless, of course, he (or she) wants to advance that day by dropping a nuclear bomb on our enemies, as Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has threatened to do to the West. Now THERE is someone who combines his religion with political power, which should scare us all.

The Bible, the guidebook for evangelicals, teaches that there are two kingdoms. Presidential candidates are running to head up a part of the earthly kingdom known as America. The job as head of the other Kingdom is taken. The duties and responsibilities of each should be kept separate.

The writer doesn’t speculate whether a self-declared atheist might stand a chance of even being nominated. To us, that is a most interesting question.

You have seen them at street corners in towns all over America, men and women with clipboards, always smiling, asking you in a  friendly tone to sign something that promotes the objectives of the environmental movement. They often set out stalls, or wear T-shirts, with signs announcing that they serve Greenpeace. That smile of theirs is the smug smirk of those who believe they have seen the light and feel nothing but pity for the rest of us who haven’t. Christians of all stripes wear it; as does the Dalai Lama and a multitude of others who manage to combine God-bothering with Marxism; and Democratic Party spokesmen on television news; and Al Gore.

We have posted many articles about the harm that the environmental movement does. See, for instance, The evil that Greenpeace does, January16, 2010; The vast left-wing conspiracy, January 18, 2010; The blind cruelty of Greenpeace, January 20, 2010; and Green roots: the origins of ecology, January 22, 2010.

It is a message that needs repeating.

Daniel Greenfield writes, at his website Sultan Knish, on How Environmentalists Cause War and Repression. Here’s part of what he says:

No other group has done as much to keep America dependent on foreign oil as the environmentalists have. After leading successful campaigns against nuclear power and domestic drilling, the green movement may lecture on “oil wars”, but it is responsible for most of them.

The math of it is very simple. Resource shortages are a major cause of conflict. And environmentalists have dedicated themselves to creating resource shortages in prosperous nations. Their campaigns against nuclear, domestic oil and coal production have been big on self-righteousness and short on consequences. And the consequences are that their scaremongering has not only cost millions of American jobs, it has forced us to keep sending money to Muslim oil states who use that money for domestic repression and international terrorism.

The environmentalists have done the same thing in Europe and Asia, turning formerly moribund Communist powers, Russia and China, into energy and manufacturing superpowers. By making it more expensive and in some cases impossible to conduct manufacturing and energy production at home, they exported Western industries to the East, and enabled the transformation of struggling tyrannies into international superpowers. …

When the question arises, who killed the pro-democracy movement in China– it wasn’t the tanks, but their enablers, the liberals whose regulation and exploitation had made America into an uncomfortable place to do business. Those companies went elsewhere and the money they brought, propped up the Chinese Communist party. …

In Germany, the Greens have succeeded in their campaign against the domestic nuclear industry. What is the net result of this? It further degrades Europe’s energy capabilities and moves it into Putin’s orbit. That empowers Russia to begin another campaign of conquest aimed at its former republics. That is what a “Green” victory really looks like. People freezing in their homes while a dictatorship sends its tanks and infantry on a new campaign of terror. …

The environmental movement is not interested in cheap energy. If solar power provided energy cheaply, the greens would be marching against it. Any technology that provides cheap power is their enemy.

The mandate of the environmental movement is artificial scarcity. But artificial scarcity doesn’t exist in a global economy. If you raise the price of energy production, resource mining or manufacturing, it will move abroad to less regulated countries. The price will still go up and there will be other long term consequences, but people will still find a way to get what they need. Like the rest of the left, the green movement has never learned that people will act in their own interests, rather than in thrall to their dogma. That if they can’t get it legally, they will get it illegally. …

The left has created … the slave labor that makes the products which they deplore. It is responsible for all of it and it should take ownership of it. …

The environmental movement’s manifest hypocrisy is that it causes the very things that it deplores. Its campaign against the nuclear industry has sent billions overseas to countries which are developing their own nuclear weapons and intend to use them. By shutting down nuclear plants in America, [the movement]  has made it much more likely that nuclear bombs will be detonated in America.

It destroyed American industry in the name of worker protection and pollution, and sent the factories to countries where workers have no rights and the pollution looks like something out of a post-apocalyptic movie. And reduced those former workers to the point where they have no choice but to buy those same slave labor products at a non-union store with the profits going to China’s war machine. …

These are all victories for the environmental movements and defeats for anyone with any sanity or sense. But the environmental movement refuses to acknowledge the consequences of its actions. Instead it champions further domestic and international repression. Like every tyrannical ideology it knows only one solution to every problem, more laws, more chains, more investigations and prison cells for anyone who disobeys.

Repression and propaganda is the environmental movement’s solution to everything. Its imperative is to destroy, impoverish, oppress and intimidate. It spreads hopeless misery around the world, with a smile. The countless victims of Rachel Carson’s malaria [hers because she got DDT banned – JB] or the prisoners of the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] go unnoticed as the latest children’s propaganda cartoon is rolled out. Its implicit message is always that there is a war on between the environmentalists and the people who just want to live their own lives.

July 11 was International Day Against Stoning.

Will it persuade Iran to give up the practise?

Skeptics that we are, we doubt it.

Iran follows sharia law which prescribes that persons found guilty of committing adultery must be stoned to death.

Executioners carry it out religiously.

Instructions for how it must be done are precise.

Notice that a man is planted in the earth up to his hips, a woman up to her chest.

From Creeping Sharia:

Find information about the song here.

It includes this:

The story of the song’s author – Ibrahim Kashoush –  took a sad turn with news that he may have been killed in a protest last Friday in Hama. Reporting out of Syria is hard to verify these days, but one Lebanese news site said his body was reportedly dumped in a nearby river Wednesday morning.

“The song has rallied people,” said U.S.-based Syrian activist Ammar Abdulhamid. “It hit a nerve because it’s clearly and simply designed to tell Assad to leave. It’s very straightforward. And it uses some profane language.”

Note the anti-Americanism in it.

Now he’s wooing the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

The Muslim Brotherhood is one of the chief Islamic organizations driving the jihad against America and the rest of the non-Muslim world. It is not “moderate” or “secular” as Obama and his henchmen say it is. It’s agenda is to destroy the United States, establish a world-ruling caliphate, impose sharia law, force Christians to pay for being allowed to live, wipe out the Jews, and keep women subservient to men.

Islam is the active enemy of the United States. And the president of the United States is on its side.

His heart is with Islam.

But, you might protest, he allowed the execution of Osama bin Laden. Yes, he did – reluctantly, we believe – because he had to seem to be against the most obvious and violent enemy who had plotted the 9/11 massacre of Americans. The order he gave to the Navy SEALs to kill bin Laden provides Obama with cover for his continuing support of the enemy and undermining of the country he was disastrously elected to lead.

An analogy would be if the British had elected Oswald Mosley, the Nazi-sympathizer and friend of Hitler and Goebbels, to lead them through World War Two.

Here is a timeline, from Investor’s Business Daily, which traces  the steps Obama has taken towards pleasing and finally embracing the Muslim Brotherhood:

2009: The White House invites [the Islamic Society of North America] ISNA’s president to President Obama’s inauguration ceremonies, even though the Justice Department just two years earlier had blacklisted the Brotherhood affiliate as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land trial — the largest terror-finance case in U.S. history.

2009: Obama delivers his Cairo speech to Muslims, infuriating the Mubarak regime by inviting Brotherhood leaders to attend.

2009: The White House dispatches top presidential adviser Valerie Jarrett to give the keynote speech at ISNA’s annual convention.

2009: Obama appoints a Brotherhood-tied Islamist — Rashad Hussain — as U.S. envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, which strongly supports the Brotherhood. [Its name was changed in June this year to The Organization of Islamic Co-operation – JB]

2010: Hussain meets with the Brotherhood’s grand mufti in Egypt.

2010: Obama meets one on one with Egypt’s foreign minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, who later remarks on Nile TV: “The American president told me in confidence that he is a Muslim.”

2011: Riots erupt in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. Crowds organized by the Brotherhood demand Mubarak’s ouster, storm government buildings. The White House fails to back longtime U.S. ally Mubarak, who flees Cairo.

2011: White House sends intelligence czar James Clapper to Capitol Hill to whitewash the Brotherhood’s extremism. Clapper testifies the group is a moderate, “largely secular” organization.

2011: The Brotherhood’s spiritual leader — Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi — is given a hero’s welcome in Tahrir Square, where he raises the banner of jihad. Qaradawi, exiled from Egypt for 30 years, had been calling for “days of rage” before the rioting in Egypt. Before Obama’s Cairo speech, he wrote an open letter to the president arguing terrorism is a direct response to U.S. foreign policy.

2011: The Brotherhood vows to tear up Egypt’s 30-year peace treaty with Israel. Since Mubarak’s fall, it has worked to formally reestablish Cairo’s ties with Hamas and Hezbollah.

2011: Obama gives Mideast speech demanding Israel relinquish land to Palestinians.

2011: White House security adviser gives friendly speech to Washington-area mosque headed by ISNA’s new president. 2011: Justice Department pulls plug on further prosecution of Muslim Brotherhood front groups identified as collaborators in conspiracy to funnel millions to Hamas. …

Frank Gaffney reports and comments at the Center for Security Policy:

Muslim Brotherhood fronts are routinely cultivated by federal, state and local officials. Representatives of homeland security, Pentagon, intelligence and law enforcement agencies frequently meet with and attend functions sponsored by such groups. … Individuals with family and other ties to the Muslim Brotherhood have actually been given senior government positions. The most recent of these to come to light is Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Deputy Chief of Staff, Huma Abedin [wife of the former Congressman Anthony Weiner]. …

The Obama administration’s efforts to “engage” the Muslim Brotherhood are not just reckless. They are wholly incompatible with the President’s oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States” and the similar commitment made by his subordinates.

In Gaffney’s view, it’s a step too far:

These officials’ now-open embrace of the Muslim Brotherhood constitutes a geo-strategic tipping point … Instead of relying upon – let alone hiring – Muslim Brotherhood operatives and associates, the United States government should be shutting down their fronts, shariah-adherent, jihad-incubating “community centers” and insidious influence operations in America. By recognizing these enterprises for what they are, namely vehicles for fulfilling the seditious goals of the MB’s civilization jihad, they can and must be treated as prosecutable subversive enterprises, not protected religious ones under the U.S. Constitution. …

The policy toward the MB in Egypt will, Gaffney explains, strengthen and encourage the organization in America:

By engaging the Ikhwan [Arabic for the Brotherhood] in its native land, the Obama administration is effectively eliminating any lingering impediment to the operations of its myriad front groups in this country. Even before Secretary Clinton’s announcement, many of them have already been accorded unprecedented access to and influence in the U.S. government. …

The EU is following Obama’s lead in embracing the MB.

Robert Spencer writes at Front Page:

Following quickly after the revelation that the Obama administration had resolved to establish contact with the Muslim Brotherhood, the European Union has announced that it, too, is interested in talking with the group. …

So why is the Western world rushing to talk to this malignant group? Why the determination to ignore and deny what it stands for and says it will do?

If the Western world is to survive the Islamic jihad onslaught, it will only manage to do so by decisively rejecting this fantasy-based policymaking. …

Even commentators like Spencer and Gaffney who see clearly what is happening and what must follow, do not confront the most obvious explanation for Obama’s acting as he does towards this powerful spearhead of Islam, setting an example for others to follow, perhaps because it is  “too dreadful to contemplate”  as used to be said of nuclear war breaking out between the West and the Soviet Union.

The too-dreadful-to-contemplate answer is that this is not “fantasy-based policymaking”, but policymaking with a view to achieving the very results that are being achieved: the slow but steady, step-by step conquest of the West by Islam.

We’re saying that Obama wants Islam to succeed.

Melanie Phillips sees Obama’s cozying up to the MB as capitulation. She writes:

The abject capitulation of the Obama administration to the forces waging war on the western world was laid bare a few days ago when US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that the US now wanted to open a dialogue with the Muslim Brotherhood.

And she asks in bewilderment:

Why does supposedly arch-feminist Hillary want to ‘engage’ with a movement that would promote the mutilation of Egyptian women?

Whether Hillary Clinton and the EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton understand what it will mean if Islam achieves its aim of  world domination – the universal imposition of sharia law, dhimmification of Christians, annihilation of the Jews, the subjugation of women, a descent into another age of darkness – we don’t know; but we suspect they simply don’t allow themselves to think that those horrors could, let alone will, ensue. For them they would be too dreadful to contemplate.

As, perhaps, would be – for most Americans – the idea that a victorious Islam is the change Obama hopes for.