Grover Norquist's Evasions

FrontPageMagazine.com | 12/11/03 | Scott W. Johnson, PowerLineBlog.com

[kattracks]

Hugh Hewitt kindly invited me on his show this afternoon together with Edward Morrissey of Captain's Quarters to discuss the Frank Gaffney/Grover Norquist controversy. The discussion was occasioned by Gaffney's FrontPage essay on America's Islamist fifth column, "A troubling influence." I flagged Gaffney's essay yesterday morning in this post and gave my impressions of Hugh's one-hour interview with Gaffney and Norquist yesterday in this post.

I reread Gaffney's article to prepare for Hugh, and tracked down a couple of other pieces as well: Franklin Foer's New Republic article "Grover Norquist's strange alliance with radical Islam," and Byron York's National Review Online article "Fight on the right."

Gaffney's article is a tremendous piece of work. It may err in some details, but it portrays the operations of America's Islamist fifth column in the Wahhabi lobby with insight and care. Gaffney relies not only on journalistic sources but also provides his own valuable eyewitness testimony. His criticism of Norquist in the article is impersonal and principled.

Norquist's reponse, on the other hand, is personal and evasive. He attacks Gaffney as racist and bigoted; not a trace of evidence in the public record supports these charges. I heard Norquist respond to Gaffney in this manner at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington this past January. He did not deign to respond to Gaffney's remarks in substance.

Hugh replayed his one-hour interview of Gaffney and Norquist on the show tonight and I took the opportunity to listen to it again. Having just reread the materials cited above, I was able to weigh the substance of Norquist's responses to Hugh's questions more carefully than the first time around. One particular exchange struck me as illustrative of Norquist's deceit and evasiveness.

Hugh asked Norquist to respond to the charge that an indicted (indicted as a bagman for Muhammar Khadaffy) Islamist -- Abdurahman Alamoudi -- had contributed $10,000 by personal check to help set up the Islamic Institute under Norquist's auspices. He stated that the check had been returned; he didn't say whether it had been cashed or when it had been returned. (In a footnote, Gaffney cites a source quoting Saffuri to the effect that the check was returned in October 2001.)

Norquist further stated that the institute was founded by Khaled Saffuri, as though that answered Hugh's question regarding Alamoudi's role in funding the institute. The institute is run by Saffuri, who, according to Gaffney, is one of Alamoudi's former deputies; Norquist never responded to Gaffney's charge that Saffuri is Alamoudi's former deputy. In other words, Norquist in effect conceded that Alamoudi in fact contributed substantial funds to Norquist's Islamic Institute and Norquist never disputed Gaffney's point about Saffuri's relationship to Alamoudi.

Norquist's themes are those of the Islamist apologist organizations like CAIR and the American Muslim Council: informed critics of Islamofascism and advocates of American interests like Daniel Pipes and Frank Gaffney are portrayed as bigots, and key law enforcement tools against domestic terrorism are alleged to be nefarious infringments of civil rights. When Norquist attempted to enlist James Woolsey to his cause on the latter score, Gaffney powerfully established that Norquist was all but lying.

Finally, except when attacking Gaffney personally, the tone of Norquist's remarks is insouciant and unserious. Norquist's response to the merits of Gaffney's charges was by turns evasive, deceitful, and flip. In defending himself from Gaffney's chages, Grover Norquist is an advocate with a fool for a client

[Byron_the_Aussie]

...it is deeply troubling, they way Newt's treatment of his wife/ex-wife was deeply troubling...

Why are family matters deeply troubling, LS?

I could say, the way Ronald Reagan raised Patti was deeply troubling, or the way President Bush has let Neil carry on is deeply troubling, both with some justification. Just keep family matters out of it, because you'll never know the real story there.

[witnesstothefall]

What is your tortured metaphor disguising? Why don't you make a real argument? Why do you further assert that "we are going to have to get along with 1 billion Muslims" as though someone here or something in evidence contends otherwise?

It would behoove your credibility to make an open and sincere statement.

[E Rocc]

Um, no Byron, we are going to have to get along with the peaceful Muslims.

A good "first step" is to recognize that our enemy is not Islam, it is those who use Islam to forward an obnoxious agenda or seek to enforce Islamic rules upon nonbelievers. Far too many people try to throw all Muslims in one basket, greatly expanding our pool of enemies. Such actions tend to be self-fulfilling prophecies.

For example, virtually all American Muslims are peaceful. Indeed, many of them live here to escape the fundamentalists, and are as unsympathetic towards their agenda as we are. They also have a tendency to be self supporting and to be socially conservative. This makes them inherently likely to support Republican candidates, which Norquist realizes.

-Eric

[Guillermo]

So because one has a past record in right-wing circles, that makes it OK to be in bed with Jihadist organizations?

Nice logic, fool.

[ovrtaxt]

Yes, then we agree after all. Your suggestion that we 'get along' with Muslims threw me.

[E Rocc]

You Americans have to start using the two greatest weapons you've got. Not B-2s and F-16s, but the New Testament, and the Constitution. The two documents that gave you your preeminence. Think every Muslim doesn't harbour doubt, about those who tell them how to interpret the will of God? They do, and in their hearts they want to deal direct. Of course, to make this work, America has to believe in those documents herself.

Actually, if we try to tie Christianity to our fight against radical Islam, we alienate a hell of a lot more of those billion people than if we embrace the religious liberty protected by the Constitution. Even if those Muslims have doubts about those who tell them how to interpret the word of God, another group telling them to interpret it quite differently may not make much headway.

Our most powerful weapon is the compact that the American people adopted with our Constitution: your religion is your business, mine is mine, and neither of us can use the compulsive power to our advantage. That makes America the safest place in the world to practice any faith....or none at all.

-Eric

[Tribune7]

We are going to have to get along with the Muslims, Meg. You can't keep one billion people at the point of a bayonet. Cheers, By

But they do have to get along with us too. And we do have principles that we have to defend.

Jehova Witnesses personally annoy me but I'd be very much angered if one should be beaten simply for distributing the Watchtower, much less have his property confiscated or hanged.

And I think this would be the expected result of any non-Islamic proseltyzing in the Moslem world.

[Pan_Yans Wife]

ping

[LS]

Sorry, but a guy serving divorce papers on his wife who is in the hospital with CANCER doesn't rate high on my respect screen.

[Valin]

We are going to have to get along with the Muslims, Meg.


True. BUT there are some Muslim org. out there (CAIR comes to mind) who do a disservice to America, Muslims, and conservatives.

[Byron_the_Aussie]

..so because one has a past record in right-wing circles, that makes it OK to be in bed with Jihadist organizations?

..nice logic, fool...

So because you can't address my point directly, you rewrite it to suit yourself, and answer that?

Nice tactic, fool.

[Byron_the_Aussie]

...if we try to tie Christianity to our fight against radical Islam, we alienate a hell of a lot more of those billion people than if we embrace the religious liberty protected by the Constitution....

You're guessing, Eric, and even your guesses are skewed, by your atheism.

You don't know what would work and what wouldn't, with a less sophisticated people, for whom God is as real as a rock. I'm reminded of Cromwell, who'd arrive at the head of his army, before an Irish castle prepared for a six-month siege to the death. Before a shot was fired, he'd reason with the defenders. 'God's on my side' he'd say, and for proof offer an unbroken string of military and political successes. The besieged knew that he'd led countless charges personally, on his white horse, untouched through storms of musket balls. And most of the time the gate would lower and they'd file out, not so frightened of what Cromwell might do; rather, of what God might do. Are there parallels that could be explored, if we had Cromwell's confidence in the rightness of our mission?

[Guillermo]

Your point, which is essentially: "It's OK to be supportive of a Jihadist sympathizer if he has a good prior record" is so foolish, that it doesn't need any furher "addressing" other than to call the poster a fool, for which you are.

Fool

[Nick Danger]

the piranhas bite faster

Help me out with this. There is something really creepy going on here. It is deep and complex, and we are being fed a misdirection play.

I don't think Gaffney's attack on Grover Norquist is about Grover Norquist. I think it's an attempt by the national security apparatus to deflect attention away from some very hard questions concerning their own culpability in allowing a whole lot of things to go on that they have been watching for a long time.

Thanks to court documents that were released Thursday, we just found out that they've had wiretaps on Sami al-Arian since 1993. How did that guy get into the White House? Gaffney wants really badly for us to blame Grover Norquist for that.

Gaffney's all over the radio, howling to the Moon about the evil Norquist. But Grover Norquist hadn't been wiretapping anybody. How the Hell was he supposed to know? The White House didn't even know.

But the FBI knew. A whole bunch of spook agencies probably knew. Frank Gaffney's friends, in other words, knew. Maybe Frank Gaffney himself knew. What the Hell were they doing, laughing at Bush as he entertained this guy that they knew to be some terrorist poobah? What were they gonna do, slip the pictures to Howard Dean unless Bush approved their budget? What really is going on here?

Speaking of Howard Dean, he's getting crap for floating that stupid "Bush knew" rumor. Well, now we can be sure that's not true. Because if our national security apparatus had known, they wouldn't have told Bush, and we know that because they didn't tell him about this guy.

They let Bush have his picture taken with a guy they knew they were going to be arresting for some serious stuff. There is blackmail potential in that. There's all kinds of creepy potential in that. We have some cowboys out there protecting the Constitution from our elected officials, apparently including the President of the United States. That is scarier than hell.

And we're supposed to worry about Grover Norquist? I don't think so.

Here's Gaffney again:

...the lure of such political dividends induced Governor Bush to hold a meeting in his mansion in Austin on May 1, 2000, not only with Alamoudi and Saffuri, but with other, immoderate Muslims, as well.

In the next paragraph Gaffney is going to blame Norquist for that, but that's kind of a shot across the bow of the President, too, isn't it. The obvious question is, are we going to find out next that our Self-Appointed Constitutional Protectors knew about those two as well, and watched with more bemused detachment as the future President of the United States set himself up for... oh, whatever they decided to ask for? Perhaps they didn't get it, and that's why this is coming out now. Dean says, "Bush knew!" and here comes Mr. National Security, Frank Gaffney, to make it real clear that some people around here know about some potentially embarassing meetings that took place... meetings that might have been prevented, except that our Constitutional Protectors don't worry about protecting the President, they worry about protecting themselves... from the President.

I think Grover Norquist might just be standing in the wrong place at the wrong time when some pretty creepy people need to smash somebody to cover their own butts. I'll tell ya this: if I were Bush, and I found out yesterday, in the paper, that the FBI knew about this al-Arian guy and they watched me meet with the SOB, I would not be a happy man. I would think they set me up. And I would be pretty pissed about it.

I would also start to wonder who else they knew about. Did they know about Mohammad Atta? Are we gonna find out that they had him wiretapped too, and they didn't tell anybody? This whole thing about Norquist has struck me from the beginning as being too loud for what it is. Norquist can be flicked away from the White House thatfast, any time they think it makes sense. We do not need this public hanging that's going on. So all this noise must be about something else. I thought maybe it was just Gaffney with a hair up his butt about Norquist, until I saw that article about ten years of wiretaps on Sami al-Arian. Now it starts to make sense.

I think the hard questions are yet to be asked, and they are not about Grover Norquist. They are about "what did the FBI know, and when did they know it?" If they've been tapping Sami al-Arian for ten years, they know plenty.