The Muslim Brotherhood Visits The White House

Representatives of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood were formally received at the Obama White House yesterday.

"We believe that it is in the interest of the United States to engage with all parties that are committed to democratic principles, especially nonviolence," said National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor.

"In all our conversations with these groups, we emphasize the importance of respect for minority rights, the full inclusion of women, and our regional security concerns."

I'm sure the Muslim Brotherhood representatives got a huge chuckle out of that one in private. They're as likely to respect the rights of gays, Coptic Christians and women once they actually take power as the Taliban, Hamas or the Saudis.

Originally, the Brotherhood had repeatedly announced that they weren't going to seek the presidency so they wouldn't appear to be completely taking over, but after the parliamentary elections and the huge majority they and the salafist al-Nour party got, the Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party announced that Khairat al-Shater would be their presidential candidate.

The first thing al-Shater announced was that his primary goal was the introduction of strict sharia to Egypt, which should take care of any nagging questions anyone has about how Christians, women and homosexuals are going to fare under Egypt's New Order. Remember this is a country where Christians are persecuted, between 70 and 80% of women endure female genital mutilation and gays remain deep in the closet unless they want to be victimized. You can imagine what things will be like after the Brotherhood takes over and this is the official law of the land.

As for the nonviolence part, perhaps Mr. Vietor forgot that it was the Brotherhood that assassinated Anwar Sadat, that the Brotherhood was the inspiration for al-Qaeda, and that the genocidal Hamas is the Brotherhood's arm in Gaza. Almost the first thing the new Islamist Parliament did after convening was to vote overwhelmingly to declare Israel it's 'enemy number one', expel Israel's ambassador, and endorse terrorism against Israeli civilians.

Apparently the Obama Administration has no quarrel with any of these goals. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was quick to give a formal national security waiver for Egypt to override legislation by Congress and deliver Egypt's $1.5 billion in military aid. Rest assured that some of those arms will find their way to Hamas, which has officially been declared a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department.

The official line of the Obama White House is that by engaging with groups like the Muslim Brotherhood we're going to 'encourage democracy'. Since this president is sympathetic to Islamists and the administration has quite a few Muslim Brotherhood moles with th epresident's ear inside, there's no mystery as to why this has become policy.

It will turn out to be a far more dangerous and costly fallacy then President Bush 'Arab Democracy' fetish in Iraq. Watch what happens.