On June 17, U.S. Congresswoman Michele Bachmann launched a direct assault against the federal government when she accused the State Department of harboring Islamic radicals within its ranks. Later, she accused Rep. Keith Ellison as being part of a Muslim group that is attempting to undermine the U.S. government.
Bachmann and the other lawmakers singled out Abedin last month in one of five letters calling for investigations into possible infiltration of the State Department and other agencies by the Muslim Brotherhood. Bachmann's letter says Abedin's family has ties to the Brotherhood, notes that Abedin has routine access to Clinton and says the State Department recently has taken actions that benefit the Brotherhood. It and the other letters were cosigned by GOP Reps. Trent Franks of Arizona, Louie Gohmert of Texas, Thomas Rooney of Florida, and Lynn Westmoreland of Georgia. Read more at USA Today
On June 25, Fox News' Monica Crowley went on CSPAN and accused President Bush and President Obama of bringing Islamic radicals into the FBI, the CIA, and the White House. She went on to accuse the nonprofit group CARE of being "an associated front group for the Muslim Brotherhood." She then praised Mitt Romney as a person with the "right instincts", who, once he gets in office, "will try to root out, root and branch, the Islamists who have infected the federal government in so many ways."
Here's a direct transcript of Crowley's address to the Women's National Republican Club at the Calvin Coolidge Library on June 25, 2012 on CSPAN beginning at 45.03;
Question: Apparently, according to fact, the Muslim Brotherhood is very active and very powerful at the highest levels of our government in the United States. So I wanted to know what you think of this. Do you think that Sharia law will become popular in this country, will have a foothold, and how are we going to warn America about this?
Crowley: Mmhm. There are a lot of people doing extraordinary work on this question. My good friend Frank Gaffney, Steve Emerson, Robert Spencer, Daniel Pipes, these are really people doing heroic work on this subject. Because it is true, that the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists have made very serious inroads into our government and into our society. Remember, there are a couple of different forms of jihad. We often think of the obvious one, the urgent and immediate one, which is the violent jihad, that's al-Qaeda, it's Hezbollah, it's Hamas. But to me, the more serious threat is the longer range threat of what Robert Spencer calls the "stealth jihad", and that's the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist organizations that get in under the radar, and through demographics, they get in and start demanding more and more rights, and before you know it they start altering your constitution, your laws, the very fabric of your society... The threat is here in the United States, the Muslim Brotherhood, you're absolutely right, as I mentioned, two top MB representatives were invited into the White House. It didn't start with Barack Obama, President Bush in his second term began to make this mistake and started doing the outreach to the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups, bringing them in, the FBI, the CIA, the White House. So the infiltration has been going on for quite a while. This is very serious business.
Crowley, of course, is the one who's been infected, infected with paranoia and religious intolerance. She's trying her best to pass her contagion to the rest of us. Unfortunately, these types of vile allegations can have dangerous blowback. Talk of Muslim conspiracies and infiltration by foreigners that threatens our way of life can spur people to action, dangerous and violent action. We can only wonder how much of what Crowley and Bachmann have been saying reached the man responsible for the
shooting in Wisconsin that killed seven Sikh worshipers.
This we do know; after the Soviet Union fell, America turned its attention to a new enemy, Islamic radicals. We've fought two wars in Iraq, another in Afghanistan, and there are many who would like to see us bomb Iran and Syria. From the Cold War, we went to multiple hot wars. From winding down our massive military, we've doubled our military spending and built up a homeland security behemoth. And now, people like Bachmann and Crowley would like to replace their hatred of Communism with hatred towards Islam. They seem to live for the day when a religious war breaks out. Their stoking of anti-Islamic sentiments can only result in more terrorist acts, more lone wolves acting in accordance with the call to "root out" those tearing apart the "fabric of society".
There are a few Republicans willing to stand up to this kind of extremist language, but many, like Rush Limbaugh, Frank Gaffney, Dana Loesch, and John Bolton, applaud Crowley, and see nothing wrong with Bachmann's allegations. When asked directly about Michele Bachmann's attacks, presidential candidate Mitt Romney decided to remain silent;
“I’m not going to tell other people what things to talk about," Romney responded. "Those are not things that are part of my campaign.”
This is not leadership. This is cowardice.
Monica Crowley and Michele Bachmann are very attractive people, but their words and methods are ugly and reprehensible. While they've been busy defining good Americans as the enemy and fanning the flames of religious bigotry, many people have been listening, they've been learning to hate as well as these two photogenic women do, and that's pretty scary.
