The National Conservatism Conference was held last week, September 2-4, in Washington, D.C. MEF Chief Strategist Jim Hanson delivered a speech that highlighted the problems with an ally like Qatar. He specifically called them out for funding Hamas and harboring its leaders in Doha.
It was a timely preface to the Israeli strike today that hit the Hamas headquarters in Doha killing several of their key leaders.
The text of the speech follows:
The Islamist threat to the world at large and to this country is real and we ignore at our own peril. It is incompatible with the liberties that make America exceptional and we should not hesitate to judge and reject it.
We need to state unequivocally that Islamism is unacceptable as a practice in the United States, as a belief system for visitors, and certainly as a red line for potential immigrants. We should oppose it as an element of our foreign policy wherever it interferes with the security and prosperity of our country.
Failure to do so will continue our path to the submission we have seen in the U.K. and Europe. And we ABSOLUTELY MUST NOT allow that.
I believe the best way to do this is to isolate the Islamists from the mellower Muslims and limit the reach of the worst offenders.
I hear criticism when I advocate this from those who say that’s just not possible, and those people have a valid point. But ask yourself a question: In a choice between two fully Muslim nations, would you rather live in Afghanistan or the United Arab Emirates?
Any sane person would choose Dubai over Kabul.
This is not some sweetness and light infused with the milk of human kindness play where we ask “Why can’t we all just get along?” I am talking using the full force of U.S. power against the perpetrators of Islamism to break their ability to push an agenda that endangers us all.
Not in ill-conceived foreign wars or even as Team America World Police, but with economic, diplomatic, and cultural measures to reward those with whom we can coexist and punish those with whom we can’t.
I also wholeheartedly support the motto about Jihadi terrorists Seb Gorka puts that on coins for the Counterterrorism Directorate of the NSC: “We Will Find You and We Will Kill You.”
Incidentally, what a perfect match of man and mission. Seb is joyfully helping return terrorists to ambient temperature all around the globe. But he would still tell you that is just part of the puzzle. We also have to combat the ideology.
For clarification on that, I will posit that Islamism means a supremacist effort to gain control of all elements of society, including politics, culture, and religion extending from people to nation states and, ultimately, the world.
I don’t want to start a theological argument about this—too late I know—but I will note I am only using this in the context of the political policies and cultural responses of the West to this growing danger.
There is an argument that because Islam as defined by some of its own highest authorities is inherently supremacist that Islam and therefore all Muslims are incompatible with free Western society. But that is challenged by many other religious leaders, and I just don’t find it helpful for this exercise in devising strategies to confront the threat.
And I am well aware of the elements of deception and other reasons to doubt the sincerity of those who profess to be accommodationist. As in any dealings like this, trust but verify.
Even if we were to grant that premise, I don’t believe you can find a governing majority in the United States willing to outlaw Islam. There are far too many relatively benign sects to make a claim that Islam is wholly a totalitarian ideology working to undermine and overthrow our government.
But there are certainly significant elements of it with exactly that goal, and we must deal with them in the United States and also in the countries that fund and promulgate this.
We could advocate a Tenth Crusade to counter this by donning armor and sharpening our swords, especially since the Flag of St. George is undergoing its own resurgence. But rather than open warfare we should look at this as a clash of cultures and oppose it vehemently to preserve our way of life.
The National Conservatism Statement of Principles recognizes the importance of America’s founding by Christians, but it also says: “religious minorities are to be protected in the observance of their own traditions,” but only as long as those traditions are not fundamentally antithetical to our founding principles. And ISLAMISM most certainly is.
One of the biggest exporters of this ideology in all its forms is Qatar. With Iran in decline, Qatar may be the largest state sponsor of terrorism and equally the largest funder of non-violent Islamist groups. In a painful bit of irony, they are also one of our most-valued allies for counter-terrorism.
This is a double game they play very successfully based on a fundamental failure in our response to the 9/11 attacks. President Bush famously declared a war on terror as if that was something we could defeat rather than a tactic used by our enemies.
This would be akin to calling WWII a war on tanks or battleships rather than a war on Nazism, Italian fascism, and Japanese imperialism. We emphasized the ideology we were fighting, and we should do the same with the Islamists.
The Qataris fund dozens of terrorist groups, including massive support for Hamas, the al Qaeda offshoot al-Nusrah in Syria, and funding for many Muslim Brotherhood groups.
Because of our misguided war on terror we have constantly been looking for one high value target after another to liquidate and validate this strategy. The most reliable provider of actionable intel has been Qatar. But why?
They haven’t given us terrorist tips because they disagree with violent jihad. They have been serving up the bad guys who are causing trouble for their chosen terror groups.
They act as a jihadist mafia family and have coopted us to act as their enforcers, whacking any terrorists who have the temerity to operate on their turf.
Instead of being just a bad actor we deal with out of necessity, this has allowed them to receive major Non-NATO ally status, a huge boon. They are a preferred negotiator for us with terror groups mostly because they have direct access to them.
They were the bagmen when the Obama Admin paid a $5-10 million ransom to the Haqqani Network for the return of Bowe Bergdahl. They helped the Biden Admin make the disastrous deal where they paid the Taliban to provide “security” for the disgraceful cut & run from Afghanistan.
This let that same Haqqani network kill 13 of our troops at Abbey Gate. They negotiate with Hamas whose leaders they have helpfully housed in Doha, and who they have advised to refuse numerous deals to end the war.
The Trump Administration has decided to engage with them in the hope that closer relations will allow us to push them in the right direction. In that case the recognition and increased stature they receive should come with some requirements.
The simplest one being: STOP FUNDING TERRORISM.
There are plenty more, but if we can’t even push that one through, we have no business being allies with them.
They spend hundreds of billions buying influence to cover for their bad actions and again have been quite successful. But until they change their evil ways, it should be no more acceptable to take Qatari blood money than cash from the Russians or Chinese.
The Muslim Brotherhood is still a powerful force for Islamist badness, but they were broken as a coherent organization by the Egyptian government in 2013.
The blown-up and burnt-out husk of their headquarters in Cairo was still there in 2018 when my wife Samantha Nerove and I were monitoring their election, and we dodged some gun-toting guards to get a picture in front of it.
But many of its previously associated groups are still active in pushing the Ikhwan agenda, and dealing with them is more complicated because they are now dispersed elements.
Senator Ted Cruz put forth a good bill to designate the MB a Foreign Terrorist Organization, and Secretary of State Rubio has said this will be forthcoming. Excellent. This is worth doing even just as recognition that the ideology propagated by the MB is evil.
The details will take some work, as not all the groups previously affiliated meet the criteria for this status, and we don’t want to water that down. But many do. We are working with the Middle East Forum and multiple executive agencies to help identify the worst offenders who deserve this designation.
The Muslim Brotherhood brand should be destroyed.
This brings us to the possibility of a Global Caliphate, and honestly I just don’t see that happening. We are blessed in having enemies who hate each other nearly as much as they hate us. They could never agree on who gets to be the Caliph. But we do face the possibility of mini Caliphates around the globe.
The whole purpose of the Iranian nuclear program was to advance their Ayatollah-run version of one.
ISIS had a large chunk of Caliphate for a while and created a hellish existence for all those inside it. And Turkey’s President Erdoğan has always styled himself as head of a neo-Ottoman Empire as a Caliph, Sultan, or Padishah.
But rather than a Caliphate by Conquest, we are more threatened by the civilizational infiltration we have seen in many Western countries. The U.K. is really the canary in the coal mine, having essentially submitted to its Muslim migrant population.
Their liberal guilt over their colonial excesses has made them, if not an example of Islamic supremacy, at least one where Muslims are supreme in a two-tiered cultural and justice system.
It’s as if the Brits are saying, “So sorry about the whole imperial exploitation thing; would it make you feel better if you could molest our young girls?”
And as truly egregious as that is, too much of the West is sadly heading down that path. Well. We were. I feel the resolve returning and the steel being reinserted into spines.
We need to proudly say “Hell No!” to the Islamists and conserve our Unapologetically American Way of Life.
Thank you.
