Free The Brotherhood: America's Next Great Enemy by Erick Stakelbeck Page A

American soldier dead and another seriously injured. 39
    How much of the FBI’s inaction in these two cases can be traced back to a culture of rampant political correctness enforced at the very top of the bureau? And worse still, to the ideology of the man who currently sits in the Oval Office?

    President Obama is not a Muslim, but he is quite fond of Islam. This is clearly due in large part to his family lineage (for starters, his father and stepfather were both Muslims) and to the fact that he spent four formative years as a boy in Indonesia, a Muslim nation where he attended an Islamic madrassah for a time. Obama believes that he understands “the real Islam” based on his personal experiences, which include close friendships with a Pakistani roommate and other Pakistani Muslims during his stint at Occidental College in the late 1970s and early 80s. Obama traveled to Pakistan with one of those friends and spent three weeks there in 1981. During the 2008 presidential campaign, he even said the trip bolstered his credibility on foreign policy. 40 Maybe he could see Karachi from his window.
    Obama thinks he “gets” Islam and, by extension, understands the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists and what makes them tick, including their many grievances—some of which he shares. At the top of that list is Western “imperialism” against oppressed, Third World (often Muslim) peoples, with the chief violators being the United States, Great Britain, and Israel. The fact that most of the so-called oppressed are not white and the “oppressors” are only adds fuel to Obama’s progressive fire. To him, the Muslim Brotherhood is not a dangerous Islamist organization but a revolutionary liberation movement that opposes corrupt, U.S.-supported dictatorships (like Mubarak’s) and Western imperialism and stands for authentic, true Islam. To President Obama, the “Muslim” in the Muslim Brotherhood is secondary, even insignificant. It’s the MB’s struggle against the existing and inherently unfair global order—one set up by greedy, imperialistic, capitalistic Western powers—that really matters and must be supported.
    And support it the president has, time and time again—whether it’s publicly castigating and isolating Israel, assisting Ikhwan-centric regimes throughout the Muslim world, or working with Brotherhood-linked Islamists in the United States. As far back as 2007, then-candidate Obama was dropping hints that he would embark on this Islamist-friendly course as president—that he, the worldly, charismatic “great healer,” the veteran of an Indonesian madrassah and a few weeks in Pakistan—would bridge the gap between the Muslim world and the West. Believing himself the right man, with the right name and the right background to placate the seething Muslim masses, he has never missed a chance to showcase his supposed brilliance in Muslim relations. The results have been disastrous for U.S. national security and an Allah-send for the Muslim Brotherhood. A few examples:
    ■ In 2007, then-Senator Barack Obama, never lacking confidence in his own transcendent brilliance and magnetism, told New Hampshire Public Radio:
    I truly believe that the day I’m inaugurated [as president], not only does the country look at itself differently, but the world looks at America differently.... If I’m reaching out to the Muslim world they understand that I’ve lived in a Muslim country and I may be a Christian, but I also understand their point of view.... My sister is half-Indonesian. I traveled there all the way through my college years. And so I’m intimately concerned with what happens in these countries and the cultures and perspective these folks have. And those are powerful tools for us to be able to reach out to the world... then I think the world will have confidence that I am listening to them and that our future and our security is tied up with our ability to work with other countries in the world that will