Obama Administration Seeks Warm Relations with Islamists

The Wall Street Journal reports, "U.S. Reaches Out to Islamist Parties":

The Obama administration is reaching out to Islamist movements whose political power is on the rise in the wake of Arab Spring uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa.

The tentative outreach effort to key religious political groups—the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Ennahdha in Tunisia—reflects the administration's realization that the spread of democracy in the region requires it to deal more directly with Islamist movements the U.S. had long kept at arm's length.

Speaking to reporters during a visit Thursday to Budapest, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the Obama administration is now seeking "limited contacts" with Muslim Brotherhood members ahead of parliamentary and presidential elections slated for later this year.

"It is in the interests of the United States to engage with all parties that are peaceful and committed to nonviolence," Mrs. Clinton said. "We welcome, therefore, dialogue with those Muslim Brotherhood members who wish to talk with us."

Seems to me some folks were rejecting the Muslim Brotherhood as a governing party in Egypt just a few months ago. I'll check for a link. Meanwhile, here's this from Frank Gaffney, "The Tipping Point: Embracing the Muslim Brotherhood":

The Obama administration chose the eve of the holiday marking our Nation's birth to acknowledge publicly behavior in which it has long been stealthily engaged to the United States' extreme detriment: Its officials now admit that they are embracing the Muslim Brotherhood (MB or Ikhwan in Arabic). That would be the same international Islamist organization that has the destruction of the United States, Israel and all other parts of the Free World as its explicit objective.

On Thursday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tried to downplay the momentousness of this major policy shift by portraying it during a stopover in Budapest as follows:

"The Obama administration is continuing the approach of limited contacts with the Muslim Brotherhood that have existed on and off for about five or six years." In fact, as former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy points out in a characteristically brilliant, and scathing, dissection of this announcement, Team Obama's official, open legitimation of the Brotherhood marks a dramatic break from the U.S. government's historical refusal to deal formally with the Ikhwan.

Read it all at the link above. And see also, Andrew McCarthy, "The Obama Administration Opens Formal Contacts With the Muslim Brotherhood." And Big Peace, "No Evidence Muslim Brotherhood Is Committed To Democracy."