With Friends Like Qatar, Who Needs Enemies?

I interviewed former Deputy National Security Advisor Elliot Abrams on my show, Secure Freedom Radio, this morning. He observed that Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, the Emir of Qatar, will shortly be visiting the White House. 

Instead of the red carpet treatment, this Persian Gulf potentate should get the sort of rebuff that President Obama has reserved (at least until recently) for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

After all, the Emir is arguably the world’s single most aggressive state sponsor of expansionist Islam and its prime-mover, the Muslim Brotherhood. Of course, it could be argue that Obama is also a contender for that dubious distinction. The following are among the other reasons for dissing, rather than coddling, the Qatari royal: 

• The Emir unabashedly underwrites the arming and training of al Qaeda and other Islamist elements in the hope of establishing a shariah state in Syria. By some accounts, the same is happening in Mali.
• He owns Al Jazeera – what might more accurately be called “Terror TV” for its active support for and lionizing of the West’s jihadist enemies. Thanks to his purchase of Al Gore’s Current TV, the Emir hopes to bring this enemy propaganda instrument into some 40 million homes in America this summer, thanks to an enormous infrastructure projected to involve 12 bureaus and 700 staffers. Making matters worse is the fact that cable subscribers will be obliged to pay for the privilege of being propagandized by having Al Jazeera America bundled into their programming packages.
• Qatar is the host of the world’s only Taliban overseas political office. This office facilitates diplomatic initiatives being made by the jihadis we previously routed from Afghanistan to be restored to power there.
• The Emir recently pledged $400 million to Hamas in Gaza.
• Qatar has guest worker practices that the International Trade Union Confederation General Secretary Sharan Burrow has said makes it a “21st Century slave state.”

Mr. Abrams observed that Qatar is out of step with the rest of the Gulf states, who are increasingly frantic and opposed to the Obama administration’s empowering of the Muslim Brotherhood. He did acknowledge, though, that at least some Saudi princes (notably, Alwaleed bin Talal, who owns the second-largest block of shares of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, is big into Citibank, has given $20 million in gifts to Georgetown and Harvard, etc.) are in bed with the Muslim Brotherhood.

In short, the Emir is the poster-child for the Arab/Muslim double-game that has brought us, among much else, a Muslim Brotherhood-associated mosque in Cambridge that appears to have contributed to fostering the shariah/jihadist fervor of two Chechen brothers. The President should be holding him accountable, not feting him as a key U.S. ally.