IS O’REILLY LOSING HIS TOUCH OR IS HE IRRESPONSIBLE?: ARNOLD AHLERT
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0211/ahlert.php3
Is O’Reilly losing his touch or is he just irresponsible?
By Arnold Ahlert
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Does access breed obsequiousness? One would be hard-pressed to come to another conclusion with regard to Sunday night’s chat-fest between Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly and president Barack Obama. If that was an example of Mr. O’Reilly’s contention that his TV domain is a “no spin zone,” one might consider such a contention to be utterly laughable. Yet the exchange revealed something immensely troubling about the president which, once again, was ignored by the same mainstream media which has largely ignored the troubling revelation that this president sold out Britain to Russia to get the START treaty ratified. Who got sold out this time? Israel, and by extension, Jewish Americans as well.
This is the critical exchange from that interview:
O’REILLY: The Muslim Brotherhood, a great concern to a lot of people. Are they a threat to the USA?
OBAMA: I think that the Muslim Brotherhood is one faction in Egypt. They don’t have majority support in Egypt. They are —
O’REILLY: Are they a threat?
OBAMA: But they are well-organized and there are strains of their ideology that are anti-U.S. There’s no doubt about it. But here’s the thing that we have to understand, there are a whole bunch of secular folks in Egypt, there are a whole bunch of educators and civil society in Egypt that wants to come to the fore as well. And it’s important for us not to say that our only two options are either the Muslim Brotherhood or a suppressed Egyptian people.
O’REILLY: But you don’t want the Muslim Brotherhood…
OBAMA: What I want is a representative government in Egypt. And I have confidence that if Egypt moves in an orderly transition process, that we will have a government in Egypt that we can work with together as a partner.
Hey Bill, you know what any responsible interviewer does with that exchange? He follows it up with the bottom-line question: Mr. President, will you unconditionally condemn the Muslim Brotherhood for the historically virulent terrorist organization it is, or not?
Why is this critical? Because the progressive movement would like Americans to believe that the Muslim Brotherhood, aka the Ikhwan–the same one which spawned Hamas, the one which, in conjunction with Saudi Arabian Wahhabism, laid the foundation for the modern Islamist movement that inspires most of the Muslim terrorist organizations in the world today, and the one whose founder, an Egyptian Shaykh Hassan al Bana, collaborated with the Nazis during WWll–is nothing to be particularly worried about because they claim they’ve “renounced violence.”
Apparently one of their leaders in Egypt didn’t get the memo. Muhammad Ghannem told Iranian news network Al-Alam that “the people should be prepared for war against Israel.” He also thought the Suez Canal should be closed and that all Egyptian gas pipelines to Israel should be shut down. Yet even as the chaos in Egypt demonstrated that no clear leaders were emerging to replace Hosni Mubarak, the Obama administration demonstrated that the same moral relativity that allowed it to condemn the oppressive nature of the Mubarak regime allows it to support one of the most oppressive elements in Egyptian society to replace it. On Monday January 31st, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs insisted that reform “has to include a whole host of important non-secular actors that give Egypt a strong chance to continue to be [a] stable and reliable partner.” The largest, most well-organized “non-secular actor” in Egypt?
The Muslim Brotherhood.
Undoubtedly, this is what Mr. Obama and his Greek chorus in the media see, as some have already characterized it, as “walking a fine line” with respect to the eventual outcome in Egypt. If that walking fine line bit has a familiar ring, perhaps it’s because it bears a remarkable resemblance to the fine line walked by Neville Chamberlain, whose “peace” with Hitler was another seminal moment in time when such abject naivete coupled with arrogance strutted itself on the world stage. How ironic if this stab at appeasement turns out to be the “bookend moment” to that historical exercise: WWll created Israel. Perhaps the rise of an Islamist state in Egypt could engender its annihilation.
Israel certainly understands the stakes, and pundits in that country have made it clear that they consider the Obama administration’s determination to move the process along as quickly as possible–which accrues to no one’s interest more than the Muslim Brotherhood—as a “bullet in the back from Uncle Sam.” The bum’s rush this president is giving Mubarak is not only ill-advised, but historically ignorant as well. American democracy took thirteen years to establish (1776-1789), and a Civil War with a half million deaths to secure. This administration apparently wants an “orderly transition” in Egypt, which has never known anything remotely resembling Jeffersonian democracy, to occur in a few weeks.
Jewish Americans? One can only wonder if there is a tipping point with regard to this administration in particular, and/or progressivism in general. Does the thought of Israel being potentially surrounded by those who yearn for its annihilation, and knowing that such potential is being facilitated by this president, raise cause for concern? If not, what does? It is really possible to ignore the historical parallels between the inexorable rise of Nazism and the current path of Islamic jihad? Do you still stand behind a progressive movement willing to “split the difference” between Israel and her mortal enemies?
The Holocaust happened for many reasons, but one of the principle ones was that very few people could comprehend the Nazis were as monstrous as they truly were. Then, as now, people were willing to believe in a scenario which “split the difference” between good and evil. That embrace of moral relativism led directly to the extermination of six million Jews. The difference between then and now? Perhaps nothing more than a level of technology allowing people like me and others to sound the alarm to far more people than was possible in the 1930s.
Whether such a warning will fall on deaf ears remains to be seen. Bill O’Reilly may have dropped the ball. Will anyone else pin this president down?
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