ormer Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) blasted Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) for failing to take a hard-line against Muslims or embrace the Islamophobia currently sweeping across the GOP.

Tancredo, who has suggested that bombing the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina would serve as a [...]]]> Reposted by arrangement with Think Progress

ormer Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) blasted Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) for failing to take a hard-line against Muslims or embrace the Islamophobia currently sweeping across the GOP.

Tancredo, who has suggested that bombing the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina would serve as a good “deterrent” against Islamic terrorism, opines in the Daily Caller:

What is not yet as widely known about Perry is that he extends his taxpayer-funded compassion not only to illegal aliens but also to Muslim groups seeking to whitewash the violent history of that religion. Perry endorsed and facilitated the adoption in Texas public schools of a pro-Muslim curriculum unit developed by Muslim clerics in Pakistan.

Tancredo cites “Islam scholar” Robert Spencer — Spencer plays the role of a “misinformation expert” in the Islamophobia network examined in the Center for American Progress’ new report Fear, Inc. — who examined the program and concluded:

The curriculum is a complete whitewash and it’s got the endorsement of Perry. It’s not going to give you any idea why people are waging jihad against the West — it’s only going to make you think that the real problem is ‘Islamophobia.’

Indeed Perry did develop a relationship with Pakistani religious leader and philanthropist Aga Khan and helped facilitate a 2009 agreement between Texas and Aga Khan organizations in the “fields of education, health sciences, natural disaster preparedness and recovery, culture and the environment.” At the signing ceremony, Perry said:

[T]raditional Western education speaks little of the influence of Muslim scientists, scholars, throughout history, and for that matter the cultural treasures that stand today in testament to their wisdom.

Not all conservative pundits have bought into the anti-Muslim hysteria. The Center for Security Policy’s David Reaboi and conservative blogger Ace of Spades have written lengthy rebuttals and characterized the attacks on Perry and his Aga Khan connections as inaccurate. But Perry’s involvement in the development of curriculum to teach Texas high school students about Islam has served as a rallying cry for anti-Muslim advocates who see the curriculum as a threat to their portrayal of Islam as an inherently violent religion.

Tancredo concludes his anti-Muslim editorial by suggesting that Perry’s affiliation with Grover Norquist, a Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) board member and president of Americans for Tax Reform, is yet another sign of “Perry’s Muslim blind spot.” Tancredo asks:

Why does [Perry] think he can claim to be the “tea party candidate” while endorsing a whitewash of Islamic extremism in Texas schools?

Tancredo’s reliance on discredited “scholars” like Robert Spencer and his assertions that radical Islam, via Grover Norquist and Aga Khan, have coopted Perry into spreading a “pro-Muslim curriculum unit” in Texas public schools offers an insight into the hateful and paranoid mindsets of those who embrace an anti-Muslim political agenda. (HT: Little Green Footballs)

Speaking on MSNBC this morning, former President Bill Clinton said GOP presidential candidate Gov. Rick Perry (TX) may well believe that Israel in entitled to keep the occupied Palestinian West Bank because of a “biblical mandate.”

Clinton, citing his own background as a Southern Baptist, said that [...]]]> Posted by arrangement with Think Progress

Speaking on MSNBC this morning, former President Bill Clinton said GOP presidential candidate Gov. Rick Perry (TX) may well believe that Israel in entitled to keep the occupied Palestinian West Bank because of a “biblical mandate.”

Clinton, citing his own background as a Southern Baptist, said that American evangelical Christians like Perry often believe that the West Bank belongs to the Jewish state of Israel.

Clinton, who referred to the West Bank several times by its bibilical name Judea and Samaria (the name also used by Israel’s settler movement), noted that Christian evangelicals are often more hardline on these issues than are most Israelis:

I also believe that Rick Perry — look, that’s my culture. I’m from next door. There is an enormous resevoir of support for Israel in the Christian evangelical community. And a lot of them believe, as some of the more militant settler groups do, that God meant for all of Judea and Samaria to be in the hands of Israel, and that Yitzhak Rabin and Ehud Barak, when he was prime minister, and all the — and Shimon Peres and everybody that’s signed all these peace agreements have violated the biblical mandate by wanting to give the West Bank to the Palestinian State. [...]

That’s what they believe: that Judea and Samaria is a what God intended to be Israel. So, those Congressmen that were over there working on Netanyahu during the break, they’re more militant than the Israelis are — or than a lot of them. So, I wouldn’t be surprised if Rick Perry really believes that. I’m sure there are hundreds of thousands of people that never miss church on Sunday in Texas who believe that.

Earlier in the interview, Clinton expanded on his view of the congressional delegations that traveled to Israel last month sponsored by a group with close links to the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the flagship of the Israel lobby in Washington. A week after a Democratic delegation, a Republican delegation followed. The 55-member GOP trip was the largest ever to go to the Jewish state. Clinton said their message was that Israel could continue to occupy the West Bank indefinitely if a Republican was able to take the White House:

[Perry's statement] was good politics and it was sort of like the trip that 70 — I think there were 70 [sic] Republican House members that went to Israel during the break and basically said, “You guys do whatever you want. Keep the West Bank. We’re comin’ back. We’ll have the White House and the Congress and then we’ll let you do whatever you want.” I believe that’s essentially what was going on.

Watch the video of the Clinton interview:

Conservative Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin asserted in a blog post that Texas governor and Republican presidential hopeful Rick Perry did not write a Friday pro-Israel op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal and Israel’s Jerusalem Post. The op-ed, in which Perry [...]]]> Reposted by arrangement with Think Progress

Conservative Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin asserted in a blog post that Texas governor and Republican presidential hopeful Rick Perry did not write a Friday pro-Israel op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal and Israel’s Jerusalem Post. The op-ed, in which Perry cherry-picked a quote from a historian to link Texas and Israel, criticized President Obama’s pro-Israel record. “Perry almost certainly didn’t write it,” said Rubin. “We know that because his own foreign policy views are rudimentary. [...] A ghostwritten piece so far above his current abilities highlights the concern.” Rubin acknowledged that “most pols have these things written for them,” but said that “until he personally could articulate his thoughts in detail, [advisers] should forgo the pretense of sophistication.” Among Perry’s top reported foreign policy contacts are former Bush officials Donald Rumsfeld and Douglas Feith. So who wrote Perry’s Op-Ed?

There’s a joke that’s been developing over the past several years that you know someone is running for president when they start regularly bringing up the U.S.-Israel alliance. Republican presidential hopeful and Texas governor Rick Perry embodies the joke. Way back in 2009, Perry, during a campaign [...]]]> Reposted by arrangement with Think Progress

There’s a joke that’s been developing over the past several years that you know someone is running for president when they start regularly bringing up the U.S.-Israel alliance. Republican presidential hopeful and Texas governor Rick Perry embodies the joke. Way back in 2009, Perry, during a campaign to hold his governor’s seat but amid early hints of a presidential run, took a trip to Washington and talked Israel with the Weekly Standard‘s Michael Goldfarb. His fealty to the Jewish state was nothing short of religious devotion: “My faith requires me to support Israel,” he said.

On Friday, Perry dropped two op-eds — well, actually, he dropped the same op-ed twice, in the Wall Street Journal and Israel’s Jerusalem Post — attacking President Obama’s robust support for the Jewish state as insufficiently pro-Israel. That the piece’s themes are picked straight from neoconservative talking points and appear in neocon op-ed pages and that neocons love it is no surprise: Perry’s reportedly been getting foreign policy advice from the “stupidest guy on the face of the earth” and arch-neocon Doug Feith, whose book featured a Mideast map that did not distinguish between Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

But Perry, unlike some of the evangelical Christian figures he appeared beside at the Response rally, seemed to be open, in a Time magazine interview this week at least, to the idea of negotiations toward a two-state solution.

Perry’s Israel op-ed, though, hit a note that’s become a neocon calling card: cherry-picking information to make a case. In its opening paragraph, and perhaps most head-scratch-inducing moment, Perry wrote:

Historian T.R. Fehrenbach once observed that my home state of Texas and Israel share the experience of “civilized men and women thrown into new and harsh conditions, beset by enemies.”

Journalist Max Blumenthal picked up on the Fehrenbach reference, and noted its strangeness because of the historian’s work, including writing “an authoritative book on the ethnic cleansing of the Comanche Indians by the Anglo settlers of Texas.” Blumenthal pulled Fehrenbach’s “Lone Star: A History of Texas and the Texans” from his shelf and checked out Perry’s reference. The full quote, which Perry cherry-picked, reads:

The Texan’s attitudes, his inherent chauvinism and the seeds of his belligerence, sprouted from his conscious effort to take and hold his land. It was the reaction of essentially civilized men and women thrown into new and harsh conditions, beset by enemies they despised. The closest 20th-century counterpart is the State of Israel, born in blood in another primordial land.

Blumenthal thinks the Texas-Israel comparison is still valid, but with almost the opposite meaning that Perry’s cherry-picked quote conveyed:

Fehrenbach would have agreed with Perry that Texas shared values with Israel. But unlike Perry, he thought that those values were all the wrong ones: hatred of the other, a reliance on violence to seize land, and a legacy of ethnic cleansing. According to Fehrenbach, what Israel did to the Palestinians in 1947 and ‘48 — and continues to do — is analogous to the Texans’ treatment of the Comanches and Mexicans during the 19th century.

With neoconservatives making apologia for evicting Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem, perhaps Perry was keenly aware of the full Fehrenbach quote and changed it for a wider audience while trying to establish closeness to the neoconservative movement.

Texas Governor and GOP presidential hopeful Rick Perry finally laid out his foreign policy platform and, in doing so, attempted to set himself apart from both the neoconservative foreign policy of George W. Bush and the progressive realism (and corresponding embrace of multilateral institutions) employed by [...]]]> Reposted by arrangement with Think Progress

Texas Governor and GOP presidential hopeful Rick Perry finally laid out his foreign policy platform and, in doing so, attempted to set himself apart from both the neoconservative foreign policy of George W. Bush and the progressive realism (and corresponding embrace of multilateral institutions) employed by the Barack Obama administration.

Perry rejected the aggressive unilateralism of the Bush foreign policy, saying:

I do not believe that America should fall subject to a foreign policy of military adventurism. We should only risk shedding American blood and spending American treasure when our vital interests are threatened and we should always look to build coalitions among the nations to protect the mutual interests of freedom loving people.

But he shied away from the mulilateral coalition building proven effective by Obama in toppling Muammar al-Qaddafi in Libya and gaining U.N. Security Council support for Iran sanctions. Perry said, “We cannot concede the moral authority of our nation to multi-lateral debating societies.”

Perry is eager to distance himself from Bush’s foreign policy doctrine, which left the U.S. overextended in two wars. And he needs to steer his campaign clear of endorsing Obama’s foreign policy since a large swath of the GOP criticized the White House’s Libya strategy and predicted Obama’s “leading from behind” would lead to defeat for Libyan rebels.

But distancing himself from the Bush administration or the “military adventurism” exhibited in the invasion of Iraq might be difficult with Douglas Feith — a Bush administration official well known for leading the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans which was reponsible for cooking up faulty intel on Iraq’s WMD program — and Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld serving to advise Perry on foreign policy.

Indeed, advice from Feith might have been what led Perry to already contradict his position against military adventurism when asked about about preemptive military strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities. He said there are “a lot of different ways to deal with Iran,” and added:

I’m never going to take off the table our ability to have a military solution to a country like Iran.

Perry, much like George W. Bush in 2000, appears to be making campaign promises of a modest foreign policy and cautious use of military force all while surrounding himself with foreign policy hawks who will do all they can to keep the U.S. on a war footing.