|
Bush friendly with terrorist leader
As everyone at VFR has said a thousand times, Bush wages war on Islamists and Islamic terrorists abroad while admitting them into our country. Not only admitting them but, once they’re here, making nice-nice with them. And that goes for Sami Al-Arian, the University of South Florida professor who has just been arrested for organizing and financing over a hundred terrorist murders in the Mideast from his comfy location here in the United States. Al-Arian, now exposed as the leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, was a guest at the White House for a meeting of the president with Muslim leaders, sitting in the front row as the president spoke. Candidate Bush and Mrs. Bush were also photographed with Al-Arian, his son, and several head-covered women in a photo taken during the 2000 campaign. Looking at this photo, one’s natural first thoughts are: what are these people doing in America, and what is a presidential candidate doing smiling in their midst?
After Al-Arian’s son (apparently the young man in dark glasses standing to Bush’s right) was barred from entering the White House on one occasion as a security risk, Bush wrote an abject letter to Al-Arian promising that such a thing would never happen again.
For more on this, see Frank Gaffney’s article at the Jewish World Review. And here is terrorism expert Steven Emerson discussing the Al-Arian arrest. Comments
It’s likeley that President Bush is being advised that he has to make nice with Muslims so as to diffuse the potential for a serious backlash from the Islamic world against America’s war against terrorism and against America itself. There are I believe three problems with this. Firstly, most Muslims already hate America and are not going to change their opinion because of a few photo op’s and nice words they see as false propaganda. Secondly, their already convinced that we are waging war against Islam as a whole and are unlikely to change this view. Thirdly, the fact is, terrorism per se is NOT the problem, ISLAM is, especially Saudi Wahabi Islam, and if we are going to win this war the current administration needs to take the blinkers off and realise this. Unfortunately I suspect that realpolitik will win out for the near future. Posted by: Shawn on February 26, 2003 1:55 AM |