Militant Islam Monitor > Articles > Does "Citizen Politician" Delegation To Middle East Terrorists Outposts Prefigure Obama's Diplomacy?
Does "Citizen Politician" Delegation To Middle East Terrorists Outposts Prefigure Obama's Diplomacy?
November 16, 2008
Does "Citizen Politician" Delegation To Middle East Terrorist Outposts Prefigure Obama's Diplomacy? Are They Violating The Logan Act?
Does "Citizen Politician" Delegation To Middle East Terrorist Outposts Prefigure Obama's Diplomacy? Are They Violating The Logan Act?
By WILLIAM MAYER and BEILA RABINOWITZ
November 17, 2008 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews.org - A motley delegation of former Carter administration hacks [Edward Peck], ivory tower Jew-hating Muslim apologists [John Mearsheimer, co-author of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy], Hamas/Hezbollah supporters [ex-Senator (Dearbornistan) James Abourezk], pro-PLO Jewish Quislings [Uri Avnery] and others, is currently working - kneepads fully in place - through the Middle East, meeting with every jihadist group that can be crammed into their schedule.
This effort has been underwritten by a group called the Council for the National Interest [see, http://cnionline.org/] co-founded by anti-Semitic former Congressman Paul Findley and the above noted Hamasophile, Abourezk.
As the CNI website states:
"Only one week following the election of President-elect Barack Obama, a delegation of US citizens led by former Chief of Mission in Baghdad, Edward Peck, set out from Washington, DC to Beirut, Lebanon, with one question: "What do the people of the Middle East want from the new administration in Washington."
The delegation has already met - absent preconditions, one must assume - with Hamas, Hezbollah and Hezbollah's "spiritual leader," Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah.
The lunatic high point of the trip so far was Hamas leader Khalid Meshaal's "advice" to Barack Obama.
"My first advice is that the president's administration has to have honest counselors who understand the people of the region; Arabs and Islamic people and Palestinian people. The key for cooperation is to respect, not to acquiesce them [sic]. The men in this region - if you want to own them, you have to respect them, pressurizing him will lead him to explode. It is right for the US to care about its own interests and we in the region are not against the American interest. But the USA has to respect the interests of the region. Can President Obama create a new, balanced policy that will care at parallel levels for the new American interests and the regional interests"?
Meshaal's avoidance of any mention of Israel as a regional player in his statement reverberates louder than anything he actually said.
While one might hope that the hat-in-hand prostrations of this band of terror apologists might appear surreal at best to anyone attempting to formulate a serious U.S. foreign policy - even the now assembling Obama diplomatic team - their presence does serve to again lay bare the raw nerve regarding the president elect's stated negotiating strategy.
QUESTION - "Would you be willing to meet separately, without precondition, during the first year of your administration, in Washington or anywhere else, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea, in order to bridge the gap that divides our countries?"... OBAMA: "I would. And the reason is this, that the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them -- which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration - is ridiculous."
[source, CNN/YouTube Democrat Presidential Candidate Debate, Charleston, SC, 7/23/07, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3Oj7Jn9rv4]
Final question, did the CNI led visit violate the Logan Act, which bars unauthorized U.S. citizens from dabbling in diplomacy?
"Any citizen of the United States wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both."
[source, http://law.jrank.org/pages/8357/Logan-Act.html]
It's very hard to see any material difference in approach between what Findley's feckless freebooters are attempting to do in the Middle East and the incoming president's feelings on the same matter. How would Obama's presence across the table from Meshaal produce a different outcome than his arrogantly unstated stipulation that Israel doesn't exist?
That this type of undisciplined high-level meddling will always produce similar results should be axiomatic when dealing with the radical Muslim world. Note to Obama's newbies - those in the thrall of Muslim fanaticism are not only unreachable by traditional models of diplomacy but, perhaps more to the point, are undeserving thereof. http://www.pipelinenews.org/index.cfm?page=loganid=11.16.08%2Ehtm
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