Sheikh of the Burning Sands
The Investigative Project on Terrorism has written a depressing report that claims that the US is actually negotiating with Yusuf Al Qaradawi, the hate-filled spiritual mentor to the Muslim Brotherhood.
http://www.investigativeproject.org/3359/report-radical-sheikh-a-key-mediator-in-us
As the IPT article states, there are videos galore out there in which Qaradawi screams epithets at Jews and talks about dying in battle against the "infidel', blah, blah, blah. This guy is the Egyptian version of the Ayatollah Khomeini.
That reminds me. Let's see here. I just happen to have something on Qaradawi in my desk drawer. Yes, here it is:
http://garyfouse.blogspot.com/2010/05/words-of-yusuf-al-qaradawi.html
As for Afghanistan, sounds like a great deal in the offing. Are we supposed to throw in the Sudentenland too?
The late Sen. S.I. Hayakawa once said that we should never negotiate from a position of weakness. The late William F. Buckley, Jr. responded, of course you do. It is the only time to negotiate. If one is in a position of strength, there is no necessity to negotiate at all. So, if some U.S. diplomat is negotiating with Yusef As Qaradawi, I presume he has something the U.S. would find useful to obtain or redirect, that we can't simply take away from him.
ReplyDeleteSweden negotiated with Hitler, at a time when neither the U.S. nor the U.S.S.R. were in a position to save it. Hitler found an unoccupied Sweden sufficiently convenient not to invade. Sweden has taken flak for that ever since, but as a result, a fair number of Jews were able to flee to Sweden.
Neither the Afrikaner Nationalist Party nor the African National Congress wanted to negotiate the future of the Republic of South Africa. Both desired a decisive victory over the other. However, realizing neither was in a position do obtain such a victory, they negotiated. The fears of both have by and large come true, but South Africa is still better off than it was in an endless state of low-intensity civil war.
The reason the U.S. negotiates, sort of, sometimes, with the Taliban and the Haqqani network (the latter the creation of the CIA originally), is that we haven't been able to liquidate either one, but we can keep them from winning, so there might be some mutual advantage to a deal. Then we could drop the "nation building" experiment, which Gary has no more use for than I do.
If we can negotiate with Haqqani, any reason we can't negotiate with Qaradawi? It doesn't mean he's our good buddy.