Is President Obama Sabotaging America By Fighting Al Qaeda?
Over at True/Slant, I wrote recently about the manifold inaccuracies in Andrew McCarthy’s new book, The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America. They’re sufficiently egregious that the editor at The Washington Examiner who ran the relevant excerpts should offer a lengthy note to readers that corrects the record.
I’ve since purchased the whole book. A review will be forthcoming somewhere if I can find the time to get to it amid my other projects. In the meantime, I want to note a back-and-forth between Mr. McCarthy and Kathryn Jean Lopez, who interviewed him about the book at National Review. Do check it out for yourself. The most astonishing portion comes in a discussion about President Obama, who is said by Mr. McCarthy to be a member of the hard left who is allied with Islam in an effort to sabotage America.
As you can imagine, this is a tricky argument to make, seeing as how President Obama is presiding over ongoing wars against Islamist radicals in Afghanistan and Iraq, even as he expands the conflict into neighboring Pakistan, where he orders that other Islamic radicals be killed by American drones. It is, you might say, an unorthodox alliance between President Obama and the Islamists! This is the kind of inconvenient fact that I’d expect the author of a book like Mr. McCarthy’s to elide. Actually, however, he addresses it directly in the interview with Ms. Lopez — and here is his answer:
LOPEZ: Has the Obama administration done anything right? Has anything pleasantly surprised you?
McCARTHY: Yes. The military attacks on al-Qaeda havens overseas have been very good. There are things with which to quibble. For example, it doesn’t make sense to ramp up troop levels while simultaneously announcing that you’re going to leave. I still disagree fundamentally with the nation-building exercise for the reasons laid out in the book (and often on NRO), but in that regard the administration is essentially continuing the Bush policy. And the administration, particularly by the irresponsible campaign rhetoric of Obama and Eric Holder and other spokesmen, has made it unduly difficult to detain war prisoners.
Marc Theissen and others are right to worry that we are killing people we could be capturing and interrogating — denying ourselves the intel that would improve the effectiveness of our combat operations. But those are quibbles. I said during the campaign that I thought Obama’s position — namely, his promise to attack al-Qaeda safe havens even in Pakistan — was considerably superior to that of McCain (who foolishly regarded Pakistan as a great ally and tried to paint Obama as reckless). My only hesitation was that I believed Obama wasn’t serious — I thought he was just engaging in campaign rhetoric to make himself look stronger and that he’d never actually follow through. He’s proven me wrong on that one, and I’m glad of it.
Of course, the “Why is he doing it?” is the intriguing part. Some of the explanation is domestic politics. But the interesting part goes to the heart of what I’m talking about in the book.
These days, the vibrant debate in Islamist circles — the circles Obama has courted assiduously — is over whether al-Qaeda has outlived its usefulness, at least when it comes to attacking our homeland. Many Islamist thinkers believe the Islamist movement is making such progress marching through our institutions (and Europe’s) that terrorist attacks at this point are a tactical blunder. They cause a blowback effect that retards the progress of what Robert Spencer aptly calls the “stealth jihad.”
Don’t get me wrong: The Islamists are still supportive of terrorist aims, and they still applaud al-Qaeda’s attacks on American troops operating in Muslim countries. (We don’t seem to get this, but even if we think we are doing humanitarian service, Islamist ideology construes sharia to condemn as acts of war attempts to plant Western ideas and institutions in Islamic countries, and to call for violent jihad in response.) But the Brotherhood and the Saudis will sing no sad songs if the U.S. kills bin Laden or crushes al-Qaeda. In Muslim countries, they’ll use it as propaganda against us; in the West, they’ll pretend that they always condemned terrorism (they do that now — even as they urge the destruction of Israel and attacks against American troops). So Obama knows the Islamists he wants to engage have decided al-Qaeda is expendable. He won’t lose any ground with them by smashing al-Qaeda.
I’d love to know what Mr. McCarthy’s colleagues who edit National Review think about this argument, especially since the magazine is doing its utmost to support the book and its author.
A historical analogy might be that of Gen. George McClellan during the U.S. Civil War, who was not wholeheartedly in favor of winning the war he was trying to win.
— The Reticulator · Jun 17, 08:51 AM · #
“A review will be forthcoming somewhere if I can find the time to get to it amid my other projects.”
You need to get married, or at least find a way to attract a full girlfriend who you can count on to look out for you.
— Tony Comstock · Jun 17, 10:52 AM · #
McCarthy’s colleagues probably feel about this the way that bloggers at The American Scene, The Atlantic, and elsewhere feel about Andrew Sullivan’s bizarre idea that Sarah Palin faked her pregnancy and isn’t really Trig’s mother, i.e., privately, they don’t really endorse it, but they’re not going to jeopardize relations with an ally and colleague by openly and publicly denouncing it as absolute lunacy and stating that anyone who propounds an idea so nonsensical is generally not worth listening to. You know, get along to go along, don’t make waves, etc.: the usual rules of journalism.
— y81 · Jun 17, 05:02 PM · #
“Andrew Sullivan’s bizarre idea that Sarah Palin faked her pregnancy and isn’t really Trig’s mother”
I always figured it was some sort of Tourette syndrome thing and it was impolite to say anything about it.
— Tony Comstock · Jun 17, 06:57 PM · #
Y81,
Andrew’s assistant blogged about disagreeing with him on Sarah Palin ON THE DAILY DISH. Publicly disagreeing with him on that subject, as so many of us has done, DOESN’T “jeopardize relations with an ally.
— Conor Friedersdorf · Jun 17, 07:43 PM · #
“Publicly disagreeing with him on that subject, as so many of us ha[ve] done . . . .”
Can you link to some of those posts? (Not the ones at the Daily Dish, which I don’t read.)
— y81 · Jun 17, 10:45 PM · #
Muslim opinion overseas regarding Obama is pretty awful I hear. If he’s really on there side I don’t think they know it.
— Dain · Jun 18, 07:54 AM · #
I meant “their” of course.
— Dain · Jun 18, 07:55 AM · #
Y81,
I don’t read the comments of people who refuse to read posts from Web sites with which they disagree. Can you ask me again in a comment that you don’t write?
— Conor Friedersdorf · Jun 18, 11:56 AM · #
I’ll take that as a concession that the number of posts on The American Scene pointing out that Andrew Sullivan is crazy equals the number of posts at National Review pointing out that Andrew McCarthy is crazy. And maybe I’ll wander elsewhere, looking for sanity.
— y81 · Jun 18, 12:37 PM · #
The truth is a paltry thing, a dingy, snot-crusted handkerchief in the the pocket of an old jew, when weighed against the the brilliant silken banner that is the Party. Which should the wind of our words raise?
— Jonah Ponuru · Jun 18, 01:19 PM · #
The American rightwing peddles such embarrassing nonsense. They constantly leave the rest of us wondering whether they’re terribly dishonest and cynical or if they’re just functionally stupid. I’m beginning to suspect it’s both.
— Conservatard · Jun 18, 06:02 PM · #
The problem with Islam and the influx of Islam into western countries is that Islamists have never accepted the princple of separation of chuch and state — http://www.islaam.com/Article.aspx?id=559 — this creates a conflict that so far hasn’t been resolved and promises to become a very big problem as Islamists become a larger part of the European population. Fundamentalist Christians have fought the principle, but for the most part, since Calvin and Luther, Christians have compromised and allowed the existence of the two kingdoms. In modernity, especially in western culture, the principle of separation is vital, so I don’t see an easy resolution.
— Mike Farmer · Jun 18, 07:26 PM · #
I can understand thinking that Andrew is wrong, but I don’t get that it’s “lunacy”. Put like that, you’d get the mistaken impression that there’s a mountain of evidence that the birth of Trig Palin occurred exactly as the story is told in Going Rogue, as opposed to, say, absolutely no evidence at all.
“Lunacy” strikes me as believing a physically and legally impossible story as absolutely true, all on the basis of the word of a known liar.
— Chet · Jun 18, 08:10 PM · #
Y81,
I think Andrew Sullivan is wrong to wonder about the maternity of Trig (look, I said it again at The American Scene!), but I don’t think he is crazy, so no, I’ve never written that here.
Nor do I expect folks at NR to call Andy McCarthy “crazy,” just to point out that he is wrong.
— Conor Friedersdorf · Jun 18, 10:29 PM · #
Obamaya sükastmı yapıldı bilmem ama.Türkiye ‘Siz yanlış yapıldı!
— sohbet · Jun 19, 10:22 AM · #
Eğer Obama, Türkiye’nin kötü muamele söylüyorsun?
— Mike Farmer · Jun 19, 06:43 PM · #
I think it’s overreading McCarthy to say that he thinks that fighting Al Quada is sabotaging this USA or that “sabotaging America” is Obama’s actual goal (as opposed to a side-effect of Obama’s goals).
McCarthy seems pretty clear in the quoted material as saying that fighting Al Quada is good in his opinion, but that he believes that Obama is doing it because in this case, fighting Al Quada doesn’t conflict with what McCarthy sees as Obama’s larger goal of achieving rapproachment with “the Islamists.” Presumably, it’s that second goal that is “sabotaging America” in McCarthy’s analysis.
I doubt McCarthy’s ultimately that close to correct, but IMHO it’s overreading him to say that he thinks that fighting Al Quada itself is sabotaging America.
— J Mann · Jun 21, 07:03 PM · #