Posted on 12/09/2003 1:37:45 AM PST by kattracks
Why We Are Publishing This Article by David Horowitz
The article you are about to read is the most disturbing that we at frontpagemag.com have ever published. As an Internet magazine, with a wide circulation, we have been in the forefront of the effort to expose the radical Fifth Column in this country, whose agendas are at odds with the nation’s security, and whose purposes are hostile to its own. In his first address to Congress after 9/11, the President noted that we are facing the same totalitarian enemies we faced in the preceding century. It is not surprising that their domestic supporters in the American Left should have continued their efforts to weaken this nation and tarnish its image. Just as there was a prominent internal Fifth Column during the Cold War, so there has been a prominent Fifth Column during the war on terror.
By no means do all the opponents of America’s war policies (or even a majority) fit this category. Disagreement among citizens is a core feature of any democracy and respect for that disagreement is a foundational value of our political system. The self-declared enemies of the nation are distinguished by the intemperate nature of their attacks on America and its President – referring to the one as Adolf Hitler, for example, or the other as the world’s “greatest terrorist state.” They are known as well by their political choices and associations. Many leaders of the movement opposing the war in Iraq have worked for half a century with the agents of America’s communist enemies and with totalitarian states like Cuba and the former USSR.
We have had no compunction about identifying these individuals and groups. America is no longer protected by geographical barriers or by its unsurpassed military technologies. Today terrorists who can penetrate our borders with the help of Fifth Column networks will have access to weapons of mass destruction that can cause hundreds of thousands of American deaths. One slip in our security defenses can result in a catastrophe undreamed of before.
What is particularly disturbing, about the information in this article by former Reagan Defense official, Frank Gaffney, is that it concerns an individual who loves this country and would be the last person to wish it harm, and the first one would expect to defend it. I have known Grover Norquist for almost twenty years as a political ally. Long before I myself was cognizant of the Communist threat – indeed when I was part of one of those Fifth Column networks – Grover Norquist was mobilizing his countrymen to combat it. In the early 1980s, Grover was in the forefront of conservative efforts to get the Reagan Administration to support the liberation struggles of anti-Communists in Central America, Africa and Afghanistan.
It is with a heavy heart therefore, that I am posting this article, which is the most complete documentation extant of Grover Norquist’s activities in behalf of the Islamist Fifth Column. I have confronted Grover about these issues and have talked to others who have done likewise. But it has been left to Frank Gaffney and a few others, including Daniel Pipes and Steven Emerson, to make the case and to suffer the inevitable recriminations that have followed earlier disclosures of some aspects of this story.
Up to now, the controversy over these charges has been dismissed or swept under the rug, as a clash of personalities or the product of one of those intra-bureaucratic feuds so familiar to the Washington scene. Unfortunately, this is wishful thinking. The reality is much more serious. No one reading this document to its bitter end will confuse its claims and confirming evidence with those of a political cat fight. On the basis of the evidence assembled here, it seems beyond dispute that Grover Norquist has formed alliances 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. Equally troubling is that the arrests of these individuals and their exposure as agents of terrorism have not resulted in noticeable second thoughts on Grover’s part or any meaningful effort to dissociate himself from his unsavory friends.
As Frank Gaffney’s article recounts, Grover’s own Islamic Institute was initially financed by one of the most notorious of these operatives, Abdurahman Alamoudi, a supporter of Hamas and Hezbollah who told the Annual Convention of the Islamic Association of Palestine in 1996, “If we are outside this country we can say ‘Oh, Allah destroy America.’ But once we are here, our mission in this country is to change it.” Grover appointed Alamoudi’s deputy, Khaled Saffuri to head his own organization. Together they gained access to the White House for Alamoudi and Sami al-Arian and others with similar agendas who used their cachet to spread Islamist influence to the American military and the prison system and the universities and the political arena with untold consequences for the nation.
Parts of this story have been published before, but never in such detail and never with the full picture of Islamist influence in view. No doubt, that is partly because of Grover Norquist’s large (and therefore intimidating) presence in the Washington community. Many have been quite simply afraid to raise these issues and thus have allowed Grover to make them seem a matter of individual personality differences. This suits his agendas well, as it does those of his Islamist allies. If matters in dispute reflect personal animosity or “racial” prejudice, as Grover insists, then the true gravity of these charges is obscured. The fact remains that while Grover has denied the charges or sought to dismiss them with such arguments on many occasions, he has never answered them. If he wishes to do so now, the pages of frontpagemag.com are open to him.
Many have been reluctant to support these charges or to make them public because they involve a prominent conservative. I am familiar with these attitudes from my years on the Left. Loyalty is an important political value, but there comes a point where loyalty to friends or to parties comes into conflict with loyalty to fundamental principles and ultimately to one’s country. Grover’s activities have reached that point. E.M. Forster, a weak-spirited liberal, once said that if he had to choose between betraying his country and his friends, he “hoped [he] would have the guts” to betray his country.
No such sentiment motivates this journal. In our war with the Islamo-fascists we are all engaged in a battle with evil on a scale that affects the lives and freedoms of hundreds of millions people outside this nation as well as within it. America is on the front line of this battle and there is no replacement waiting in the wings if it fails, or if its will to fight is sapped from within. This makes our individual battles to keep our country vigilant and strong the most important responsibilities we have. That is why we could not in good conscience do otherwise, than to bring this story to light.
(Excerpt) Read more at frontpagemag.com ...
The times require that sort of thing to be checked at the door where national security is involved, and he of all people, should understand that, but he can't grasp that Gaffney's objections are strictly "business". if he is at all supect on continuing Islamist connections, well, screw him.Send him over the gangplank.
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All the same, I think orthodox mormons are "theocratic" according to their beliefs and would never say that "no one can have his religious beliefs dictated to him" (even by G-d A-mighty, I suppose). This guy sounds more like Voltaire than Smith.
Then again, it's possible--just possible, mind you--that some of the "social liberals" who are defending Norquist and his moslem allies are anti-Israel "palaeocons."
At least we agree about one thing.
I am far more inclined to believe at this point that Mr. Norquist's ties are being used as a weapon against him by people from three camps that I can identify.The first camp consists of those who are envious of Mr. Norquist's success and influence and seek to bring him down.
The second camp comes from those who seem to think that some religions are more equal than others, to paraphrase George Orwell.
The third camp are those who view Norquist's brand of conservatism (particularly his "Leave Us Alone" coalition) as a form of heresy. They also do not seem to like the fact that he seems to have put forth an effort to create a political coalition that can win elections, which entails some compromises. In short, their sense of ideological purity is affected.
Great dissection, Sir.
I read it. I do not see any proof of harm to the war effort. I also think you are also being intellectually dishonest. You theorize about POSSIBLE harm due to what happened at Guanatanmo Bay. What did Grover Norquist have to do with selecting the translators and chaplains?
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That would explain why the BigGov neocons are trying to purge anti-tax warrior Norquest.
According to Lind, "The modern conservative brain trust originated in a scheme hatched in the 1970s by William E. Simon, Irving Kristol, and others." The plan was to make conservative intellectuals, hitherto an independent-minded, quirky, and diverse community, a controlled monolith that would function as the reliable tool of the Republican Party. "By the early 1990s, thanks to the success of the Simon-Kristol initiative, almost all major conservative magazines, think tanks, and even individual scholars had become dependent on money from a small number of conservative foundations."
Maybe if Grover *denounced* the paleos it would help him survive the purge?
I'm too cynical to see the "irony."
I just see the same slimeball methods continuing uninterrupted.
Now they're hopping mad that W. is letting the Perles destroy themselves, and has no intention of cutting off Norquist.
I'm in full agreement with David Frum's "Unpatriotic Conservatives" article. I also agree with the foreign-policy agenda espoused by the Project for a New American Century and I subscribe to the Weekly Standard. That said, Grover Norquist's approach to tax issues and his libertarian stance (for the most part) on social issues is where I also feel comfortable. I think the latter is what is motivating a good portion ofthe atatcks from some of his detractors, and others seek to use this current mess to try to take him down a few pegs.
Again, I fail to see how those White House meetings or any of Norquist's outreach efforts had anything to do with those arrests at Guantanamo Bay. Nothing at all, except for stretches of the imgaination that I have not seen since Hillary complained about a "vast right-wing conspiracy" or when Gary Sick claimed George H. W. Bush flew an SR-71 to Paris to meet with Iranian officials.
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| this finally explains how extreme terrorist supporters keep getting invited to the White House.
And people believe this crap?? Where is common sense? Where is critical thinking? This is the White House we're talking about here. Secret Service? CIA? NSA? Do these names ring a bell? You think they didn't know who these people were? That's nuts. Sho' nuf, all these outfits that gave money to Norquist's Institute were raided by the FBI. So tell us, Frank, was that before or after they were fingered by someone -- who could it have been? -- as possible terrorist funding sources? Did the FBI even know they were there before they, um, err, donated money to, umm, er, you know, Grover Norquist? Post hoc, ergo propter hoc. Nope, no sale. Shady Muslims approached Norquist's Institute. Shady Muslims got arrested. In what order was that happening, Mr. Gaffney? You're quick to tell people that so-and-so who knew Grover Norquist was raided and arrested, but what you don't tell people is that that was at a time when the FBI was floundering around trying to guess who the bad guys even were. Was Norquist being duped, or was Norquist smoking them out? Nobody from the Secret Service or the FBI is ever gonna say boo about that, and you know it. Which makes what you are doing just sh*tty. I can't believe how quick people around here are to believe what is (a) an obvious hatchet-job using every sleazy trick of propaganda in the book, and (b) requires for acceptance the belief that the White House lets just anybody in to see the President... even after 9/11. We used to be better than this. We used to be able to read things with some critical eye. Now we got people here who swallow crap by the bucket and call it wine. Think, people! What do you know about the Bush Administration? What singular characteristics mark the Bush Administration? How helpful to terrorists has the Bush Administration been? How competent is the Bush Administration? Does anything you know about the way this White House operates, or what it stands for, support one word of what Frank Gaffney is selling? Things were done here. We may never know why. For sure Frank Gaffney does not know why. |
What evidence is there that Grover Norquist knew about those ties or the attempt to infiltrate the chaplain corps? The only person accusing Norquist of anything close to impropriety is Frank Gaffney.
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What I would like explained is why people on this thread are so frigging gullible. Here comes Frank Gaffney to tell us that the White House is incompetent, that they don't do background checks on people who want to have private audiences with the President, and that Grover Norquist just grabs terrorists off the street and waltzes them right into the Oval Office unobstructed.