Inside Politics

Dream candidate

“Osama bin Laden must be chuckling in his safe house,” wrote Shireen Burki in the Christian Science Monitor yesterday.

“The 2008 campaign could very well give Al Qaeda the ultimate propaganda tool: President Barack Hussein Obama, Muslim apostate. The fact that Sen. Obama — son of a Muslim father — insists he was never a Muslim before becoming Christian is irrelevant to bin Laden. In bin Laden’s eyes, Obama is a murtad fitri, the worst type of apostate, because he was blessed by Allah to be born into the true faith of Islam.

“Should Obama become U.S. commander-in-chief, there is a strong likelihood that Al Qaeda’s media arm, As-Sahab, will exploit his background to argue that an apostate is leading the global war on terror (read: attacks against fellow Muslims). This perception would be leveraged to galvanize sympathizers into action.

“Al Qaeda, though, has struggled recently to recruit volunteers for this jihad. While bin Laden retains significant support as someone willing to stand up for Muslim concerns, most Muslims abhor Al Qaeda’s terrorist methods, whose primary targets are innocent noncombatants.

“But an apostate as head of the United States could change this equation. It would be a propaganda boost for Al Qaeda’s mission. All one has to do is read Al Qaeda’s public statements to recognize how frequently it makes baseless apostasy accusations against fellow Muslims who challenge its message or actions.

“That’s why Obama is bin Laden’s dream candidate.”

Ms. Burki, incidentally, is a political scientist at the University of Mary Washington and the daughter of a Muslim father and a Christian mother. She spent her childhood in Pakistan.

Naive and dangerous

Bring on the foreign-policy debates between Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama, urges former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John R. Bolton in the Wall Street Journal yesterday.

“The Obama view of negotiations as the alpha and the omega of U.S. foreign policy highlights a fundamental conceptual divide between the major parties and their putative presidential nominees. This divide also opened in 2004, when John Kerry insisted that our foreign policy pass a ’global test’ to be considered legitimate.

“At first glance, the idea of sitting down with adversaries seems hard to quarrel with. In our daily lives, we meet with competitors, opponents and unpleasant people all the time. Mr. Obama hopes to characterize the debate about international negotiations as one between his reasonableness and the hard-line attitude of a group of unilateralist GOP cowboys.

“The real debate is radically different. On one side are those who believe that negotiations should be used to resolve international disputes 99 percent of the time. That is where I am, and where I think Mr. McCain is. On the other side are those like Mr. Obama, who apparently want to use negotiations 100 percent of the time. It is the 100 percent-ers who suffer from an obsession that is naive and dangerous.”

Who’d win?

If Sen. John McCain is elected president, 49 percent of us say he could win the Iraq war, compared with 20 percent who place their confidence in Sen. Barack Obama — this according to a survey of 1,200 voters by Rasmussen Reports conducted May 16-18 and released yesterday. It has a margin of error of three percentage points.

Lift that Barr

The Libertarians are just going to get the whole thing over with on Sunday. Will it be Bob Barr, Mike Gravel — or a dozen other contenders? The Libertarian Party will hold its national convention in Denver this weekend, where delegates will select the 2008 presidential nominee.

“This is going to be a watershed year,” says spokesman Andrew Davis. “Voter dissatisfaction with the major two parties is at an all-time high, and people are looking to the Libertarian Party to provide a third choice on the ballot in 2008. Voters are tired of the ’business-as-usual’ politics that they are hearing from John McCain and Barack Obama. Voters want another choice, and that choice will be the Libertarian Party.”

Mr. Barr, a former Republican representative from Georgia, and Mr. Gravel, a former Democratic senator from Alaska, are two of the 14 Libertarian contenders.

So that’s it

Newsbusters has boiled down the top 10 reasons for “the Republican Party’s collapse.”

They are (in no particular order): “George W. Bush’s ’compassionate conservatism,’ expanding Medicare with prescription drugs for seniors, overspending while in control of Congress and White House, failure to reform Social Security, not capturing bin Laden, length of the war in Iraq, failure to stop illegal immigration, the resignation of Tom DeLay, horrible leadership by Hastert and Frist, and Bush Derangement Syndrome in the media.”

Almost 5,000 visitors saw fit to vote on the biggest contributor to the party’s woes. The winner? It was overspending, with about 42 percent of the votes.

See the rest at www.news busters.org

Stormy weather

Some are hot under the collar about global warming. In an open letter to “the presidential candidates” yesterday, AccuWeather.com’s senior meteorologist Joe Bastardi told White House hopefuls:

“Mr. Obama, can Al Gore as an advisor on the environment. Mr. McCain, quit succumbing to pressure because you want to look nice or moderate. Both of you, get the people that can give this debate its true merit in front of you. Hillary, if you are elected, the same thing.”

“Within the first 100 days of office, get the top five scientists on both sides of the issue in front of you in the Oval Office and let them argue it out. No cameras, no press, just you, your closest advisors, and the people that are qualified to do this. Have trusted members of both sides of the aisles, but get the politics out of it.”

He continued, “It is not a matter of feelings. It is a matter of science and facts and educated men squaring off and displaying their knowledge. A non-conclusive answer in this matter is no answer at all, and no mandate to perhaps send us on path that could affect the chance for the very people we should have the most compassion for, to improve their lot.”

His letter was published at Accuweather’s Web site.

• Contact Jennifer Harper at jharper@washingtontimes .com or 202/636-3085.