Tel-Chai Nation

Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann has called for investigation of the Muslim Brotherhood's influence in America, and she's won the support of Eric Allan Bell, the former leftist now turned critic of Islam.

She's also had problems with GOP members who've unfortunately had the cowardice by contrast to attack her concerns as "baseless", including House speaker John Boehner and John McCain. As Diana West notes:

And so the muck flies -- at Michele Bachmann. She has the audacity, in their eyes, of asking for information that the American people have every right to know. Her character-assassins in the media, in her own party, committ the very crime they falsely accuse her of: slandering without facts. House Speaker John Boehner actually admitted he hadn't read Bachmann's query letter but saw fit to denounce Bachmann anyway for "throwing around" accusations that were "pretty dangerous." John McCain, the man who last year called AQ-linked Libyan forces his "heroes," erroneously stated on the Senate floor that Bachmann's concerns -- "sinister accusations," he luridly called them -- “rest solely on a few unspecified and unsubstantiated associations of members of Huma’s family.” (Again, as Andy McCarthy lays out here, "the ties of Ms. Abedin’s father, mother, and brother to the Muslim Brotherhood are both specific and substantiated.")

Boehner owes Bachmann an apology for implying that any and all discussions of legitimate concerns like these is forbidden, and so does McCain. This is a sad problem with even so-called conservative leaders that they're apparently not willing to face the serious realities about Islam, and that even included, sadly enough, Ronald Reagan. As Caroline Glick reminded almost 2 weeks ago:

Back in the 1980s, the Reagan administration happily cooperated with the precursors of al-Qaida in America's covert war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. It never occurred to the Americans then that the same people working with them to overthrow the Soviets would one day follow the lead of the blind sheikh and attack America.

And it never occurred to Jimmy Carter, the originator of these cooperations, either, I guess. This sends an important message that conservatives who recognize the dangers of Islamofascism could not have expected Reagan to take a proper approach to dealing with it in his time. After all, he never called upon Egypt's Mubarak to shape up the country for real and abandon Islam, did he?

Bachmann's courage in confronting a serious subject is something to be commended, and the GOP would be advised to thank her for it. Newt Gingrich has already come to her defense, and others should too. The Muslim Brotherhood is a very dangerous movement that cannot be allowed to have influence in democratic countries.

Labels: islam, jihad, United States