My articles (here and here) on Rick Perry have generated a lot of heat. The right loves him and has newly anointed him "the one."And I, too, love his tough talk on the Fed, his talk-back to the boulevardier in the White House, etc. I want a tough guy, and the country needs a tough guy.
But here's the thing. Perry is so tough. Cock of the walk, cowboy strut and all that jazz, right? So where is he on jihad, foreign and domestic? He panders to Muslims and the Islamic narrative, which is fine if you are going to shoot straight and call out the stealth jihadists and the ideology that inspires jihad. We need tough talk on the greatest national security threat this country faces.
The Holy Land trial, the largest terrorist funding trial in our nation's history, was prosecuted in his state. Hundreds of Muslim Broterhood proxies were named un-indicted co-conspirators (i.e. CAIR, MAS, ICNA, ISNA, et al) in that trial. Their prosecutions were scuttled by Obama's Department of Justice. What has Perry said of such sedition? Where is the tough talk and no-nonsense stance on the supremacists' narrative? Where does he stand on sharia legislation and the DoJ's challenge to anti-sharia laws?
Michele Bachmann signed the no sharia pledge. Rick Santorum is brilliant and brave on Islam. John Bolton, should he get into the race, understands the threat. Even Palin spoke against the Ground Zero mosque. Newt Gingrich (whom I dislike intensely) gets it on Islam. And they don't pal around with Grover.
We must have a candidate who is brave, unafraid to speak truthfully of the stealth jihad. We suffered under Bush after he caved leftist/Islamic pressure and abandoned the Bush doctrine. We tolerated way too much Bush appeasement. And then four years of a Muslim Brotherhood stooge in the White House has left us badly damaged. The Brotherhood is on the march, emboldened by our weaknesss. The idea that Hamas front group CAIR would demand a sitting Congressman cut ties with counter jihadists and voices of freedom indicates how bad things are. Accroding to an interanl captured document entered into evidence in the Holy Land trial, their stated goal is "eliminate and destroy Western civilization from within." A they are barking orders to a decorated vet? Nuts, indeed.
Am I buying his hard-core conservative bonafides? He was a Democrat for six years and a hard-core Gore supporter. Perry served as Gore's Texas campaign chairman. So color me skeptical.
Rick Perry: Pushing Toward the Front of the Line?
Glenn Reynolds: “They’ve played right into Perry’s hands.”
He’s reacting to this, by Chris Stirewalt:
Did you hear? Rick Perry threatened to execute Ben Bernanke and suggested that the reason the economy was in such bad shape is because President Obama is black.
Wednesday saw a full-blown media hyperventilation—stoked by the president and [the] White House press secretary—over Perry’s comments that it would be “almost treasonous” if the Federal Reserve chairman were to print more money in a bid to boost the wilting economy in advance of the 2012 election.
The Obama campaign and its liberal backers have begun to build the narrative that Perry is a reckless and radical figure, including one cable and radio host who cut a Perry sound bite to make it seem that Perry had said Obama was “a dark cloud” hanging over the American economy instead of what he did say, which was that uncertainty and debt were dark clouds hanging over the economy. This led to a long discussion about Perry’s secret racism and the racist tendencies of the Tea Party movement.
Meanwhile, other reporters have been digging through the trove of piquant Perry statements from his decade governing Texas, including the hot microphone moment when he left the set of a querulous TV interview saying “adios mofo.”
Thus, Reynolds:
None of this is going to hurt Perry. In fact — do I really have to spell this out to our lame punditry? I guess so — they’ve played right into Perry’s hands. First, he’s building a narrative that consumer inflation, currently accelerating, is the fault of reckless Obama spending and the Bernanke money-printing that supported it. The attacks on him over the Bernanke comments just draw attention to it. Right now inflation, especially in food and other necessaries, is an irritant, but it’s likely to be a much bigger issue by election day.
Second, when former Bush people attack him for dissing Wall Street and the Fed, it’s helping him put distance between himself and Bush. That’s not as important as it used to be, since the Bush era is starting to look like an economic golden age compared to what came later — those $180 billion deficits and sub-5% unemployment rates don’t look so bad now, do they? — but it’s still essential to Perry building the necessary separation. And watch him attack Obama for being too close to Wall Street and the Fed before this is all over.
As for the “Adios, mofo,” line, well, it calls up another Perry resemblance. That’s not going to hurt him either. If you’re living through a seventies rerun, why not look like a seventies clean-up hero? And I can think of worse advice for Obama than A man’s got to know his limitations . . .
Well, yes. Though we shouldn’t get, um, cocky . . . and that lined, tanned quality in Perry’s face—combined with the fact that he looks good in a ten-gallon hat—puts me in mind of another association ......
Yes, yes, the right loves his testosterone levels. And they all but disappear when it comes to the most critical national security issue of our time.
His partnership with the Aga Kahn Foundation troubles me as does the Aga Khan's close ties to Syria and the al qaeda connection. I question their involvement in the school curriculum. Apologists for Islam should not be whitewashing the syllabus. Real scholars like Ibn Warraq should be determining what should be talk about Islamic history in the public schools.
The Aga Khan connection is deeply concerning. The Sheik opines here:
According to this SPIEGEL interview, the Aga Khan, Head Honcho of the historical assassins is your typical Muslim apologist who rails against freedom of speech, cartoons, the west, and on top of all he blames us for being 'ignorant'. On top of all he tell us that his way of thinking is based on the profit of Islam 1400 years ago: "My democratic beliefs do not go back to the Greek or French (thinkers) but to an era 1,400 years ago. These are the principles underlying my religion. "
What does that tell you?
Here are some telling quotes from a Spiegel interview with the Aga Khan:
SPIEGEL: „The West (will stand) against the Rest“ wrote Professor Samuel Huntington in his famous book „Clash of Civilizations." Is such a conflict, such a clash inevitable?
Aga Khan: I prefer to talk about a clash of ignorance. There is so much horrible, damaging, dangerous ignorance.
SPIEGEL: Which side is responsible?
Aga Khan: Both. But essentially the Western world.
[...]
SPIEGEL: President Karzai is a personal friend of yours. Many people see him as a weak leader, and some call him "Mayor of Kabul" because he is unable to control large parts of the country.
Aga Khan: We should do everything to help him. He has an enomously complex agenda to deal with. He is our best hope. And besides, he is the elected leader and we have to work with the parliament.
SPIEGEL: Even if warlords and a former members of the Taliban are represented in Afghanistan's parliament?
Aga Khan: You either accept the results of democracy or you don’t. Otherwise you talk about qualifying democracy.
SPIEGEL: That means the West should deal with the radical Islamist Hamas as well?
Aga Khan: You have to work with whoever the population has elected as long as they are willing to respect what I call cosmopolitan ethics. Now, it’s true that Hamas has a record of conflict ...
SPIEGEL: ... of outright terror ...
Aga Khan: ... but it would not be the only time that movements that have such a record make it into parliament, and even end up in charge of government later on. Can I remind you of Jomo Kenyatta and his Mau Mau movement in Kenya, for example, or the ANC in South Africa? Take away the causes of extremism and extremists can come back to a more reasonable political agenda. That change to me is one of the wonderful things about the human race.
SPIEGEL: You know Syria’s president, Bashar Assad, very well. You recently visited him again in Damascus. In contrast to the American administration, the German government is trying to get him involved in the Middle East peace process.
Aga Khan: I would like to compliment the German government and others in Europe who have taken the decision to invite President Assad to be a party to the peace process. The process of change from decades of political directionalism is something that needs time, as you saw in East Germany. I think there are many reasons to go out of our way to assist Syria in making the transition from the past to the future.
SPIEGEL: If you look back at the years that have passed since World War II -- the Cold War between the East and the West, the ideological conflict with communism -- would you ever have thought that this conflict could be replaced by one between the West and radical Islamists?
Aga Khan: I beg you, please get away from the concept of a conflict of religion. It is not such a conflict. Nobody will ever convince me that the faith of Islam, that Christianity, that Judaism will fight each other in our times -- they have too much in common.
[...]
Re: The Danish cartoons
SPIEGEL: Again, this whole affair was misused by radical Islamists. They added caricatures much more offensive than the original ones to incite the masses.
Aga Khan: But I am told that there was an internal debate between the editors of that publication and they actually knew what they were doing. They took a risk and somebody should have said to them, Why get into that situation? Now we are talking about civility, which is a completely different concept. If we are talking about civility in a pluralist society, then how do you develop that notion of civility, particularly where there is ignorance. And that’s the thing that’s worrying. And that’s why I get frustrated when I see these situations that go on and on and on. Because I’m not willing to believe that they are all inspired by evil intent.
SPIEGEL: Provocative, sad and distasteful. But the freedom of the press is one of the highest values in our democracy. We have to balance one thing against the other and we will allow non-believers to express even outrageous opinions.
Aga Khan: I think that you are now referring to one of the most difficult problems that we have and I don’t know the answer. The industrialized West is highly secularized; the Muslim world is much less secularized and that stems largely from the nature of the faith of Islam, which you know and I know has an intrinsic meshing with everyday life.
And Robert Spencer wants to know, why shouldn’t Rick Perry’s Islamic ties be vetted?
The rush to anoint him our next President is overlooking a great deal.
Imagine a candidate for President of the United States who says all the right things: he will cut taxes, he will roll back the disastrous and defeatist policies of his despised and discredited predecessor, he will restore America’s pride and renew America’s hope.
This candidate is handsome, telegenic, articulate, and apparently unafraid to joust verbally with his failed predecessor, as well as with an adversarial press.
Imagine also that this candidate had raised funds for and had a longtime association with a power player in party politics, a man who was owed favors by virtually everyone who had ever won an election for his party, but a man with ties to some extremely shady characters – say, for example, that this power broker had received, for an organization of his founding, a loan of $10,000 and a gift of another $10,000 from a man who was now in prison for raising money for a terrorist murder plot.
Imagine further that the candidate had partnered in educational initiatives with a billionaire who owned, among many other things, to be sure, a bank that had been accused – and never cleared -- of funding a terrorist group, and of complicity in the murder of an American reporter. That billionaire also owned a development organization that bore his name, and that partnered in various initiatives with the government of a country listed by the State Department as a state sponsor of terrorism, and that was now essentially at war with its own citizens.
Do you think that such a candidate would be questioned about these associations, and that he would deserve the questioning, and would be expected to produce honest, full, and serious answers to concerns about whether he was turning a blind eye or would, as president, turn a blind eye to certain kinds of activity that aided and abetted terrorism?
There is such a candidate: his name is Rick Perry. He has occasioned tremendous excitement among Republicans and conservatives, to the extent that those who dare to ask legitimate questions about his associations and beliefs are being attacked and vilified by people who are ostensibly on their own side. I already know of friendships being broken over this candidacy.
Nonetheless, these questions must be asked. I criticized Bush for his ties to the Saudis, and Obama for his fatuous fawning over the Islamic world. I don't see why Rick Perry should be sacrosanct. The next President of the United States will inherit a responsibility made even more awesome than it usually is by the catastrophic policies of his predecessor, which he will have to move quickly to reverse or else see the nation continue on the path of a prolonged and severe decline from which it may never recover. That is all the more reason not to leap onto the bandwagon of just anyone who looks this week as if he has a chance to defeat Barack Obama, and to rush to demonize those who dare to ask if the emperor’s clothes are really of that good a quality. Now is the time, of all times, to ask of Perry and of every other candidate probing, searching questions, and to investigate their ideas and associations with a critical eye – an operation which, if it had been performed on Barack Obama in 2008, we might not be in this fix.
And so we see first of all that Perry and Grover Norquist held a joint press conference in March 2011. Perry appeared at a fund-raiser for Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform group. Also, Norquist actively campaigned for Perry back in 2009. Their association is longstanding: Perry was investigated by the Texas Ethics Commission in 2004 for allegations that the Governor illegally used campaign money to finance a trip to Bahamas; the point here is not the allegations, but the fact that along on the Bahamas trip at his own expense was Grover Norquist. Perry and Norquist are clearly not just casual acquaintances.
As David Horowitz pointed out several years ago, Norquist has worked with “prominent Islamic radicals who have ties to the Saudis and to Libya and to Palestine Islamic Jihad, and who are now under indictment by U.S. authorities.” Among them was Abdurahman Alamoudi, who was once the most prominent and powerful “moderate Muslim” in Washington, and is now in prison for helping to finance an al-Qaeda plot to assassinate the Saudi king, whom jihadis consider to be inexcusably lax in his Islamic observance (primarily in allowing infidel American troops onto the sacred soil of Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War). Alamoudi gave Norquist’s Islamic Institute, a gambit to try to garner Muslim votes for the Republican party, a $10,000 loan and a $10,000 gift.
Norquist is unrepentant; he continues to partner with Islamic supremacists. Is this the sort of man our next president should be associating with? Does Perry really need Norquist to carry over his tax-cutting message? Does he know about Norquist’s unsavory ties? Does he care? Do Republican candidates need Norquist so much that they have to put up with his taint?
Why can’t such questions even be asked? And why can’t Perry’s ties to the Aga Khan likewise be investigated? The Ismailis are a peaceful sect; however, what Pamela Geller uncovered in her article on Perry Wednesday ought to raise at least a few eyebrows even during the current Perry pep rally. Geller reveals in her article that in 2008, the Aga Khan Development Network signed three agreements with the Syrian Government, and that “between 2003 and 2008,” the Aga Khan’s group “spent $40 million to develop business in Syria.”
Syria has been listed by the State Department as among the State Sponsors of Terrorism since December 29, 1979, and, as Geller notes, “for years has allowed the jihad terror groups Hamas and Hezbollah to operate with impunity out of Damascus.”
Nor is that all. Another Aga Khan organization, the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development, is one of the owners of the Bank al-Habib in Pakistan. In 2007, Daniel Pearl’s widow Mariane sued that bank, charging that it had funded al-Qaeda and was involved in killing Daniel Pearl. Those charges have never been answered
Spencer has a lot more.
Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance. Get it.
