DIANA WEST: JOHN KERRY, SYRIA AND THAT OLD FEELING
http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/2466/John-Kerry-Syria-and-that-Old-Feeling.aspx
I read this report and got that old feeling.
No, not that one — I got that old, Libya-Redux feeling that the air was going out of the room. That’s what happens whenever I see Uncle Sam stepping in to assist, support or enable the same forces of jihad that hit us right between the eyes on September 11, 2001. Only now we call it “Arab Spring.” When SecState John Kerry and British Foreign Minister Wm Hague meet with Ghassan Hitto, an American-citizen Muslim Brother and Hamas supporter now fronting the Syrian “opposition,” we should call it what it is: submission as the new normal, submission to the forces spreading Islamic law. If you don’t want to beat ’em, join ’em — or at least send them big guns. Maybe they’ll point them at Iran (could that possibly be the misbegotten “strategy“?).
So here we go again. Where we once fawned over Tunisia, Tahrir Square, and the Libya opposition, now we fawn over the Syria opposition, currently headed by Hitto. Why worry? After all, as a recent NBC headline described him, Hitto’s “a Texas straight-shooter.”
In fact, Hitto comes straight out of the US wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, as the Global Muslim Brotherhood Report makes clear.
The NBC story does finally mention the Muslim Brotherhood in relation to Hitto (barely), but let’s see how many paragraphs it takes.
The top of the story is pure happy talk, starting with the preposterous headline:
“From Dallas to Damascus: The Texas straight-shooter who could replace Assad”
By Ayman Mohyeldin and Alastair Jamieson, NBC News
1) He is a “straight shooter” from Texas who worked as a telecoms executive until November. But Ghassan Hitto now finds himself the presumptive caretaker-leader of Syria as world powers plot the end of Bashar Assad’s crumbling regime.
2) The American citizen, born in Syria, is the new prime minister of the opposition’s interim government – the apparatus that the international community hopes will seal the end of Assad’s rule.
All content-free taqiyya (deception). Now into the next layer of the story:
3) Friends describe Hitto, 50, as “sincere” and “practical,” but the charismatic technocrat will need all the charm he can muster to unify Syria’s fragmented opposition.
4) His rapid rise has prompted questions about how the deadly conflict should end and has cast a light on infighting, fueled by regional countries purportedly supporting certain opposition figures.
5) The Free Syrian Army, one of the key rebel groups fighting Assad’s forces on the ground inside Syria, responded to Hitto’s appointment in Istanbul on March 18 by refusing to recognize his authority.
MB jihad too slow for AQ jihad? Strife among sponsor-nations?
Now, aparently, we hear from a “friend.”
6) “The situation there is so dire, I’m afraid for him,” said Mustafa Carroll, who worked alongside Hitto in Texas as a volunteer at Muslim advocacy groups. “It’s a big responsibility and it’s very complicated.”
“Muslim advocacy groups”? CAIR can’t be far behind.
7) “He’s a straight shooter, very sincere, very well-regarded and a very active community person,” said Carroll, who is director of the Houston chapter of the Council for American-Islamic Relations.
Aha! The “straight-shooter” label comes from the director of a chapter of CAIR, a Muslim Brotherhood front group and unidicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial over terrorism financing for Hamas, a wing of the Muslim Brotherhood — not that NBC points any of this out. Indeed, Hitto himself has served as vice president of the Dallas-Ft Worth chapter of CAIR, as GMBDR (not NBC) reports, also noting his involvement in other MB front organizations, including the Muslim American Society (MAS).
Mustafa Carroll, not incidentally, is a Hamas supporter who, as WND.com (not NBC) reported, recently declared at a Muslim rally in Austin, TX: “If we are practicing Muslims, we are above the law of the land.”
Back to NBC, which notes a perception that Hitto is favored at least by the MB in a lonely subhead:
Seen as Muslim Brotherhood’s pick
Then it’s back to happy talk:
8) Hitto, a father of four, lived in the U.S. for three decades, most recently on the outskirts of Dallas working as director of operations for telecoms supplier Inovar, where co-worker Arshad Syed remembers him as “honest” and “personable.”
9)He left Syria in the early 1980s and received an MBA at Indiana Wesleyan University on top of a degree in computer science and mathematics from Purdue University in Indianapolis.
10) Strongly active in community groups, he was a member of the board of directors at the private Islamic school Bright Horizons Academy, in Garland, Texas, where his wife Suzanne still teaches English.
“Bright Horizons,” “English teacher” … what could sound more anodyne that that? As New English Review first noticed, however, Bright Horizons Academy, which calls itself the largest Islamic school in Texas, is an “entity” of the Islamic Services Foundation, an organization dedicated to building in the Dallas area a “strong Islamic foundation that would benefit the Ummah in years to come” — and that doesn’t include Texas, at least not yet.
ISF also includes another “entity”: “Texas Islamic Courts.” I.e., Islamic law for the Lone Star State.
11) In November, he made the decision to get involved in the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces — the international grouping that seeks to end Syria’s civil war on the condition that Assad is removed from power.
12) “Like a lot of people living away, he just wanted to help his homeland,” said Carroll.
13) Hitto’s wife did not return calls, but the academy issued a statement describing him as “a practical man with great management experience.”
14) It said: “He was always open minded and open to debate. He conducted himself with the highest honesty and integrity. His talent for bringing people together for the common good will be missed in our community.”
What a Texas straight-shooter!
15) Hitto, a respected technocrat but an inexperienced politician, won the overwhelming number of votes from those who cast a ballot — other possible candidates that included a former Syrian regime official — but some members of the Coalition boycotted the vote in protest at the process.
16) Not everyone was convinced the opposition needed an interim government, seeing it as yet another organization that could compete for control of a post-Assad Syria.
17) Official spokesman Walid al-Bunni walked out of the vote in protest and Moaz al-Khatib, president of the Coalition, resigned and had to be persuaded back on board just in time for the Arab Summit in Doha, which began Tuesday.
18) “Hitto’s whole role has been undermined from the start,” said Christopher Phillips, associate fellow of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at U.K. think tank, Chatham House.
19) “He’s very much the Muslim Brotherhood’s man, and is seen as such. There was a lot of pressure to get an interim opposition leader in place ahead of the Doha talks, but the way in which it was done, and the choice of very much the man that Qatar and Turkey wanted, has infuriated and alienated just about every key player in the process.”
Nineteen paragraphs and finally the signal identifier of Ghassan Hitto appears. Like Mohammed Morsi of Egypt, Hitto is an MB man. Several more pointless paragraphs later:
Two key stumbling blocks remain: whether the Coalition should enter into any form of negotiations with the regime while Assad is still in power, and whether Hitto, an ethnic Kurd viewed as the Muslim Brotherhood’s favored candidate, can unite the ideological differences between its liberal and Islamist members.
In his task, Hitto at least has the backing of the U.S.
“This is an individual who, out of concern for the Syrian people, left a very successful life in Texas to go and work on humanitarian relief for the people of his home country,” said State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland after Hitto’s election.
“We’re very hopeful that his election will foster unity and cohesion among the opposition.”
The US-Qatar-Turkey-Bandar-MB-jihad party continues. To what end?
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