Obama's Arab Advisor

U.S. Rep. Andre Carson (D-IN) has a new role. He not only represents Indiana's 7th District in Congress, but he is also serving as an advisor to President Barack Hussein Obama on the Arab world. Presumably he takes on this latter role because he is one of only two Muslims elected to Congress. It's not like he learned a lot about the Arab world working as an Indiana excise police officer prior to his election to Congress to fill his grandmother's seat last year. In his new role, Carson got a lot of face time on CNN this past week. Carson had some interesting things to say.

Like President Obama, Carson makes the case that the Islamic religion has contributed greatly to America's heritage. Carson said, "Muslims have made a great contribution." "Since America's inception, America owes a great debt to the Islamic religion." Really? At the time of America's inception, Islamic terrorists, known as the Barbary pirates, were seizing American ships and enslaving their crews, demanding tribute payments in exchange for their return. The young nation established its first navy in response to this threat. Muslims on the African continent sold non-Muslim Africans into slavery in the U.S. prior to the Civil War. Muslims were not among other groups immigrating in great numbers to the U.S. There is no record of any member of the Muslim religion serving in the Civil War or World War I. As of 1960, there were only a handful of mosques with a very small number of members. The Nation of Islam, an off-shoot of the religion, bears little resemblance to traditional Islam. The fact is that most Americans knew little about Islam until extremists in Iran seized the U.S. embassy and took Americans hostage in 1979. That was followed by the bombing of U.S. embassies across the world, the deadly attack on the U.S.S. Cole, the first World Trade Center bombing and, lest we forget, 9/11.

During one of several CNN interviews, Carson was asked about his reaction as a Muslim-American after 9/11. While Carson acknowledged the existence of the threat of terrorism posed by extremists within Islam, he likened al-Qaeda to the violent gangs operating in our major cities in the U.S. in the late 80s and early 90s, noting a drive-by shooting he witnessed as a 16-year-old in Indianapolis while waiting at the school bus stop. Carson complained about some of his law enforcement colleagues using bin Laden and Muslim figures as a target at the shooting range and how he found it offensive as a Muslim American. As for how America has treated the Arab world since 9/11, Carson had his strongest words. "We've seen eight years of disrespect. We've seen eight years of arrogance. And we've seen eight years of our wonderful, great nation shoving our opinions down the throats of other nations and it's unacceptable."

Rep. Carson must have forgotten the speech former President George W. Bush delivered in which he declared that Islam was a "religion of peace." Or his invitation to prominent Muslim-Americans to visit the White House shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. There are many short-comings of the Bush administration, but President Bush cannot be blamed for 9/11, and he certainly cannot be blamed for Muslim hostilties towards the U.S. Muslims don't like Americans because of the special relationship our country has had with the state of Israel since its establishment in the 1950s. The war in Afghanistan was necessitated because of the 9/11 attacks on American soil. Many will argue whether it warranted the war in Iraq. Nonetheless, it is an insult to thousands of American service men and women who have given their lives and the tens of thousands more injuried while fighting to bring freedom to the Arab world to suggest our actions were "disrespectful", "arrogant" or "shoving our opinions down their throats."

It's easy for Carson to embrace a U.S.-imposed peace settlement between Palestinians and Israelis. He doesn't have to live daily in fear of terrorist attacks from Hamas like Israelis. I guess we're only shoving our opinions down the throats of other nations when they're Arab nations and not Israel. To put things in perspective, Carson should consider that Egypt just banned marriages between Israelis and Egyptians because “Egyptians married to Israelis are dangerous to Egypt’s national security, acting in ways that contradict the constitution of their country and Islamic laws.” So much for Obama's speech in Cairo this past week calling for unity between Christians, Jews and Muslims. Carson said Obama's efforts with the speech to reset our relationship with Mulsims was "awesome, A plus." "The speech was phenomenal. The speech was right on time." "And it is what America needs to hear and the world needs to hear in terms of moving forward and healing some of the wounds that were created in the past eight years."

As long as Carson continues to insist upon and embrace Obama's "blame America" approach to resolving our relationship with the Arab-Muslim world, he needs to understand that we are not going to move forward and heal these wounds. In every major Muslim nation in the world, the rights of the individual suffer when Islamic law is imposed in place of the civil law. Until these nations are willing to accept the fundamental right of all humans to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, we cannot move forward. Accepting these nations as part of the mainstream world without demanding human rights reforms in their own countries is a big step backwards.