The recent secret military documents posted by the website Wikileaks revealed to the ordinary American a disturbing, but unsuprising, reality regarding the Pakistani government: Pakistani intelligence has a cozy relationship with the Taliban and other terror-supporting groups. To the ordinary Muslim or former Muslim like myself, that is not a revelation, but an expected reality. It is really not a secret that Muslim governments such as Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and almost all of them must deal with and get on the good side of underground Islamist groups if they are to survive.
So why did the U.S. keep Pakistan’s connections to the Taliban a secret, while publicly attacking the Afghani president, Hamid Karzai, for having links to the Taliban? The Obama administration, with the help of the mainstream media, viciously attacked Karzai, calling him corrupt, linking him to the poppy drug trade, and connecting him to the Taliban. They reported what Karzai said privately: “I would join the Taliban.” Karzai denied such a statement. However, at the time of the reporting of this statement there was intense pressure on Karzai from the U.S. and the media accused him of all sorts of corruption and weakness in bringing the country together and in dealing with the Taliban. I can well imagine Karzai making such a statement privately to the effect of: What do you want me to do, join the Taliban?
If we look at all Muslim governments, even the Saudi variety to whom President Obama bowed, they are all corrupt and many are much more corrupt than Karzai. But we do not hear any public criticism from Obama of other Muslim regimes. Most Muslim countries are political basket cases and every Muslim leader must deal with underground terror groups who are often popular among the masses. Such groups take it upon themselves to enforce Sharia law and monitor and intimidate Muslim leaders who do not comply with it. Muslim leaders met in Cairo in 1991 to sign the Cairo Declaration stating that “Sharia supercedes any other law.” The reason they did that was partially to placate Islamist groups and the Organization of Islamic Conference whose priority is to make Sharia law supreme. Even Obama assigned a U.S. Muslim representative to the OIC. That is why, personally, I believe that when Obama said “we are a Muslim country” he really meant it.
Now that we have a US representative to the radical OIC, we are further involving ourselves in its radical agenda. As a matter of fact, it is only a matter of time, if we are not careful, that full-blown underground Islamist groups will start popping up in Europe and America doing to us what the Taliban is doing to Karzai and the Muslim Brotherhood is doing to Mubarak and other Muslim leaders.
Why is it that the Obama administration only picks on Karzai? Is it a strategy to find someone to blame if Obama loses the war? Is Obama trying to appease the Muslim media and the Arab Street? Obama may very well be joining Arab leaders in trying to win the affection of the Arab media. Karzai, keep in mind, was appointed during the Bush administration and the Arab media hates Karzai and calls him a traitor and puppet of the United States. Obama may very well be reluctant to appear as the keeper of Bush’s man – who is branded as a pariah by the powerful Al Jazeerah, etc. A Muslim leader may be called a puppet of the U.S. just for befriending the West or for rejecting the constant jihad against Israel. It is a serious threat, which is enough to bring about assassination attempts against him (i.e. Sadat). When America joined the Arab media in calling Karzai corrupt, it was doing nothing less than fanning the flames.
I am by no means an apologist for Karzai, but the truth is that he is no more corrupt than any other Muslim leader and he is ruling over a country that has never been ruled successfully by a central government. He was well received in D.C. in May after the administration realized they were going to cause a disaster by attacking him.
America needs to be told the truth: our choices in the Muslim world are not between good and bad; they are between bad and worse. Pakistan or Afghanistan, Egypt or Turkey, they all have to deal with Islamic groups who promote Sharia and jihad –that are founded, undeniably, on basic principles of Islam. We can live in denial and insist that there is moderate Islam separate from radical Islam, and we can say Islam is a religion of peace. But the truth keeps forcing itself on us. We have to deal with all kinds of less-than-perfect people in order to defend our own national interests, and we don’t need Wikileaks to determine that.
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