Author: Adina Kutnicki
GENERALLY, the company one keeps reflects an individual’s worldview, whatever it may be. Like-minded. Yes, think of the people you associate with and a self-reflective mirror will emerge. And not to veer too far off tangent, as a matter of fact, yours truly keeps company with equally strong-minded and no-nonsense types – males and females alike – resultant, pussy-footers stand afar. Even so, that doesn’t mitigate the fact that a certain “SO” possesses a heart of gold, atop a protective streak a mile long. Wouldn’t have it any other way. Yin and yang.
SO when placed alongside this perspective and under this lens, it is quite jarring, highly worrisome too, to realize that straight shooter President Trump appointed General Mattis to lead the DOD, yes, a warrior known for his “take no prisoners” attitude. Say whaaat?
SO far, so good, right? Not so fast.
LO and behold, akin to a sneak attack (a tactic which is applauded at this site, when confronting the enemy), he flipped around and nominated Anne Patterson – a former ambassador to Egypt – as his top underling. One may inquire: okay, what’s wrong with that? Everything.
NOW, the very fact that he appointed her to begin with, even though forced to rescind her appointment due to massive push-back by Trump’s surrogates, does not obviate the core issues cited below. They stand on their own merits and must be taken very seriously. Besides, despite his tough guy persona, sugarcoating is never tolerated at this site. Let the chips fall where they may.
SIMPLY put, she has a proven track record of “in-bed” activities via her supportive actions re the Muslim Brotherhood Mafia! W T F is going on?? Mind you, even anti-Islamist Egyptians recognized her Islamist-sympathizing/leaning proclivities. Indeed, as (repeatedly) documented by this Muslim Brotherhood expert, they are part and parcel of the same jihadists he is mandated to fight to the death!
Secretary of Defense James Mattis’ pick for Undersecretary of Defense for policy, Anne Patterson, is disastrous for her strong support of Islamofascist dictator Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood while she was Ambassador to Egypt under Obama. Because of this, Egyptians took to the streets demanding Patterson be kicked out.
Patterson would hold the fourth most powerful position at the Pentagon — and would effectively be the top civilian in the Defense Department, since both Mattis and his deputy, Robert Work, were military officers. As ambassador to Egypt between 2011 and 2013, Patterson worked closely with former Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood Islamo-fascist government. She came under fire by the Egyptian people for cultivating too close a relationship with the regime and for discouraging protests against it — and White House officials are voicing concerns about those decisions now.
Raymond Ibrahim: This is putting it mildly. Back during the months leading to the June 30, 2013 revolution, Patterson — the “Brotherhood’s Stooge” as she was called by all, from news analysts to the Egyptian street — was arguably one of the most hated individuals by the millions of Egyptians who took to the streets against Morsi and the Brotherhood.
Not only did her face regularly appear next to Obama’s in placards; it sometimes appeared alone, indicating just how closely she was seen as supporting the Brotherhood. It should be noted that these were not isolated sightings, as shown by the number of different placards and signs.
In the days leading to the revolution, Patterson called on Egyptians not to protest. She even met with the Coptic pope and asked him specifically to urge the nation’s Christian minority not to oppose the Brotherhood — even though Christians were naturally going to suffer the most under Morsi, especially in the context of accusations of “blasphemy.”
In a live interview on Tahrir TV, political insider and former Egyptian Member of Parliament Mustafa Bakari exposed the relationship between Patterson and Khairat al-Shater, the deputy leader of the Muslim Brotherhood.
He said she was regularly seen going to and from the Brotherhood leader’s private residence, as opposed to meeting at the party’s headquarters. He said she told al-Shater “we [the U.S.] will stand with you [regarding the June 30 protests],” and that she treated the Brotherhood leader as the “true ruler of the nation.” Bakari concluded by saying:
In fact, in my opinion, she is a member of the sleeper cells of the Brotherhood, likely recruited by Essam al-Erian or Muhammad al-Baltagi.
Soon after the revolution, she repeatedly tried to reinstate the Brotherhood to power. Even Muhammad Heikal — “the Arab world’s most respected political commentator,” and for over 50 years an Egyptian political insider — said during a live interview that Patterson had assured the Muslim Brotherhood’s Hisham Qandil, who under Morsi was Egypt’s prime minister, that “there are many forms of pressure, and America holds the keys to the Gulf.”
Later, Patterson demanded that Egypt’s recently appointed supreme commander of the Egyptian Armed Forces, General Abdul Fatah al-Sisi, release all Muslim Brotherhood members currently being held for questioning:
And when Sisi rejected this order, the American ambassador began threatening him that Egypt will turn into another Syria and live through a civil war.
Another report said Patterson was “trying to communicate with General Sisi, demanding dialogue with the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, and concessions to them,” to which Sisi reportedly retorted:
Stop meddling in our affairs … the Egyptian people are capable of looking after their own welfare.
Because of all this, several of Egypt’s revolutionary forces, including Tamarod, which played a pivotal role in the June 30 Revolution, staged protests in front of the U.S. embassy in Cairo “calling for the ejection of ambassador Anne Patterson.”
In connection, Egyptian journalist Abdullah al-Sanawi said this on live TV:
Anne Patterson’s presence in Egypt has become a great burden for America, and Patterson should be admitted into a mental hospital for her deeds are full of bloodshed and the Obama administration is in a very awkward position in front of the whole world, the [U.S.] Congress and the Pentagon.
Soon thereafter, Youm 7, a popular newspaper in Egypt (then the sixth-most visited website in the nation according to Alexa.com), conducted a survey asking its readers:
Do you support the call to kick U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson out because she interfered in Egyptian affairs?
A whopping 87.93% said yes, 10.54% said no, and 1.53% was indifferent. Youm 7’s audience is almost exclusively moderate, secular-leaning or Christian. It was the non-Islamists of Egypt that disliked the U.S. ambassador — not the Muslim Brotherhood, which benefited from her.
In 2013, even Foreign Policy, a publication notorious for always siding with establishment D.C., noted that Patterson was widely seen among Republicans “as the key implementer for a policy that at least offers tacit support to the Muslim Brotherhood.”
From Nightwatch: Ambassador Anne Patterson, the US Ambassador to Egypt, experienced her ‘April Glaspie’ moment yesterday when she blamed Americans instead of Egyptians for attacking, storming and desecrating the US Embassy in Cairo and the US Flag.
She did not permit US Marine guards to carry live ammunition, according to USMC blogs. Thus she neutralized any US military capability that was dedicated to preserve her life and protect the US Embassy. In this respect, she did not defend US sovereign territory and betrayed her oath of office. She neutered the Marines posted to defend the embassy, trusting the Egyptians over the Marines.
She apparently judges that Egyptian President Morsi spearheads a democracy and a new civil order, despite the mounting evidence that Morsi disregards US interests, cavorts with US enemies, is a budding authoritarian ruler who disdains parliament and does not honor the basic obligations of diplomatic agreements and the Geneva conventions.
Such is the person that General Mattis wants to place in a top Pentagon position.
CASE closed – against Mattis and his anti-western pick, Patterson!
BUT we are not done yet. As to the inexplicable appointment of McMaster, the top dog adviser for the NSC: know that this site has proven – six ways to Sunday – that it is incontestably impossible to decouple Islam (to wit, its underlying basis, Shariah law) from terrorism, so much so that it would be easier to pry apart pigs from their shit. No offense to pigs! Sheesh.
There is going to have to be clarification of this from the Trump administration. Is it going to continue the denial and willful ignorance of the Bush and Obama administrations, which under Obama in particular hamstrung the ability of intelligence and law enforcement officials to deal adequately with the jihad threat, as it was wrong diagnosed, and the wrong prescriptions were applied. Speaking about “radical Islamic terrorism,” or more precisely, “Islamic jihad,” doesn’t stigmatize all Muslims, as the Left and Islamic supremacists insist; it merely allows us to study and understand the motivating ideology of the jihadis, and thereby counter them effectively.
“H.R. McMaster Breaks With Administration on Views of Islam,” by Mark Landler and Eric Schmitt, New York Times, February 24, 2017:
WASHINGTON — President Trump’s newly appointed national security adviser has told his staff that Muslims who commit terrorist acts are perverting their religion, rejecting a key ideological view of other senior Trump advisers and signaling a potentially more moderate approach to the Islamic world.
The adviser, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, told the staff of the National Security Council on Thursday, in his first “all hands” staff meeting, that the label “radical Islamic terrorism” was not helpful because terrorists are “un-Islamic,” according to people who were in the meeting.
That is a repudiation of the language regularly used by both the president and General McMaster’s predecessor, Michael T. Flynn, who resigned last week after admitting that he had misled Vice President Mike Pence and other officials about a phone call with a Russian diplomat.
It is also a sign that General McMaster, a veteran of the Iraq war known for his sense of history and independent streak, might move the council away from the ideologically charged views of Mr. Flynn, who was also a three-star Army general before retiring.
Wearing his Army uniform, General McMaster spoke to a group that has been rattled and deeply demoralized after weeks of upheaval, following a haphazard transition from the Obama administration and amid the questions about links to Russia, which swiftly engulfed Mr. Flynn.
General McMaster, several officials said, has been vocal about his views on dealing with Islamic militancy, including with Mr. Trump, who on Monday described him as “a man of tremendous talent, tremendous experience.” General McMaster got the job after Mr. Trump’s first choice, Robert S. Harward, a retired Navy vice admiral, turned it down.
Within a day of his appointment on Monday, General McMaster was popping into offices to introduce himself to the council’s professional staff members. The staff members, many of them holdovers from the Obama administration, felt viewed with suspicion by Mr. Trump’s team and shut out of the policy-making process, according to current and former officials.
In his language, General McMaster is closer to the positions of former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush. Both took pains to separate acts of terrorism from Islamic teaching, in part because they argued that the United States needed the help of Muslim allies to hunt down terrorists.
“This is very much a repudiation of his new boss’s lexicon and worldview,” said William McCants, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the author of “The ISIS Apocalypse.”
“McMaster, like Obama, is someone who was in positions of leadership and thought the United States should not play into the jihadist propaganda that this is a religious war,” Mr. McCants said.
“There is a deep hunger for McMaster’s view in the interagency,” he added, referring to the process by which the State Department, Pentagon and other agencies funnel recommendations through the National Security Council. “The fact that he has made himself the champion of this view makes people realize they have an advocate to express dissenting opinions.”
ALAS, is it any wonder that an Islamic ambush is awaiting America, that is, if President Trump isn’t more prudent re whom he appoints to security posts from the get-go?
STILL yet, the core questions remain: how can it be that President Trump’s team (seemingly, understanding what’s what in relation to the dangers at hand by Allah’s Muslim terrorists) didn’t execute their due diligence, regarding tippy-top security picks, Mattis and McMaster, respectively?
INHERENTLY, it is inordinately clear that once Patterson’s nomination emerged, it was only then that Trump’s team recognized that they dropped the ball, so to speak. Trenchantly, shouldn’t they have questioned Mattis during the vetting process, as to his intended nominations re very important and delicate arenas, regardless of stepping on any toes vis-à-vis picking ones own staff? Ya think?
ALL of which wends back to the opening: “generally, the company one keeps reflects an individual’s worldview, whatever it may be. Like-minded.”
AND in relation to McMaster, well, the proof is in his own PC words!!
MORE than worrisome….
