Yes, al-Quds. That would be Jerusalem — or, rather, what Islamists call Jerusalem.
Fresh from announcing his quest for moderate Hezbos, President Obama’s deputy national security adviser for homeland security, John Brennan, has given a speech in which — after the usual pandering to, among other things, Islam’s purported dedication to the “aspiration” that we should all be able to “practice our faith freely” — he referred to his favorite city as “al-Quds, Jerusalem, where three great faiths come together.” Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit has the clip, here. As explained by the link Hoft provides, “al-Quds Day,” which is now cause for anti-Israeli demonstrations throughout the world, was actually started by Ayatollah Khomeini 27 years ago — as the “Day of the Oppressed.” (The real nasties in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps are called the “al-Quds” forces.)
This administration certainly does go out of its way to give our Israeli allies that warm feeling, doesn’t it?
I can’t help but note that Brennan’s insufferable remarks included the following: “In Saudi Arabia, I saw how our Saudi partners fulfilled their duty as custodians of the two holy mosques at Mecca and Medina.” As I discuss in The Grand Jihad (officially released next Tuesday), the main way they fulfill it is by banning non-Muslims from entering — so I’m wondering how Brennan managed to see how they do it.
Meantime, at his Pajamas blog, Faster Please, our friend Michael Ledeen has thoughts on Brennan’s search for all those Hezbollah moderates:
Brennan is a long-time CIA officer who was briefly in the running for director of national intelligence, but got blown up by allegations he supported the Bush Administration’s interrogation policies. He landed vertically in the national security council staff. Like most CIA “experts” he doesn’t know much about Hezbollah:
“Hezbollah [2] is a very interesting organization,” Brennan told a Washington conference, citing its evolution from “purely a terrorist organization” to a militia to an organization that now has members within the parliament and the cabinet.
But Hezbollah was never “purely a terrorist organization.” From day minus-one it was designed to create a radical Shi’ite community that would eventually rule Lebanon, and that model has been replicated all over the world, most recently in South America and East Africa. You might want to remember that, as Hezbollah (that is, Iran) extends the range of its murderous activities.
Twenty-five years ago, when I was a purported expert on terrorism, Hezbollah was of considerable interest to our intelligence community, and there was a vigorous debate between those who believed it was a Lebanese phenomenon–the product of local conditions–and those who thought it was a Syrian creation. I posed this question to the infamous Manucher Ghorbanifar–who has been portrayed as a totally unreliable source by CIA–and he just laughed. “Why are you laughing?” say I. “Because Hezbollah is a creation of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” says he. “It’s run out of the prime minister’s office.”
Back in Washington nobody believed it. But he was right. However, our guys are still looking for ways to deny it, or to find ways to wiggle out of its consequences. Obama is always keen to find admirable qualities among the practitioners of the Religion of Peace, and brother Brennan is singing from the official White House hymnal when he talks about those kinder and gentler Hezbos….