OPINION:
H.R. McMaster, President Trump’s choice of national security adviser, has what some say is a shady record of defense of Israel — and what others outright label as subversive to America’s interests.
Now, the Council on American Islamic Relations has jumped to McMaster’s defense. And that alone is a red flag.
CAIR isn’t exactly down the middle on Palestinian-Israel affairs — or kind to those who dare to criticize Islam and point to the religion’s oh-so-frequent tie-in with acts of terror and terrorists.
But worse, CAIR couldn’t just defend McMaster on his record. The group had to outright name-call and blast those who see McMaster as a poor national security adviser choice — and as everybody knows, the left’s most pulled weapon, when logic fails, is the verbal attack.
This is what CAIR tweeted: “#CAIR Islamophobia Watch: Islamophobes, white supremacists launch campaign to oust H.R. McMaster after he fired …” And the sentence is completed in a link to the article CAIR included: “… a number of their allies from the National Security Council.”
Suddenly, a story that’s stayed largely beneath the surface of a media world — one that’s been occupied by Russia collusion investigations, North Korea aggressions and Trump rhetoric — is front and center. The reason?
When CAIR labels someone an Islamophobe, or outs an organization as fueling Islamophobia, one has to wonder: Is this really Islamaphobia? Or is this rather the pro-Muslim-at-all-costs CAIR trying to silence any and all critics and criticisms of Islam?
The Center for Security Policy just this week called for the firing of McMaster for “disloyal and subversive behavior,” accusing the adviser of undermining Trump on “virtually every important and foreign and defense policy issue.”
A few days before that, a columnist with the Jerusalem Post wrote of her worry with McMaster’s penchant for “constantly refer[ring] to Israel as the occupying power and insist[ing] falsely and constantly that a country named Palestine existed where Israel is located until 1948 when it was destroyed by the Jews.”
And in between, the Zionist Organization of America — one of the few Jewish groups to stand strong in the pro-Trump camp — claimed McMaster was undermining the White House on Middle East policy, particularly relations between the United States and Israel. ZOA also accuses McMaster of intentionally firing pro-Israeli voices on the National Security Council and replacing them with individuals with more hostile takes on the Jewish nation.
In a report, ZOA called for Trump to “remove General McMaster from his current position and reassign him to another position where he can do no further harm on these critical national security issues.”
Trump, meanwhile, has doubled down on support for McMaster, saying he still has confidence in his adviser. At the same time, there was this, just in from The Week: “Trump is reportedly ’furious’ that McMaster fired an NSC staffer behind a Trump-under-attack memo.”
That staffer’s name? Rich Higgins, now-fired director of strategic planning and the author of a seven-page memo, “POTUS & Political Warfare,” a reported roadmap of sorts to topple Trump that was being circulated among likeminded members of Trump’s administration.
That was all part and parcel of McMaster’s housecleaning of Mike Flynn holdovers — a determination of friend versus foe and subsequent purge.
But the whispers about McMaster’s anti-Israel bent are growing louder. And now that chatter’s been ratcheted with the entrance of CAIR.
One fact about CAIR: In 2009, a federal judge ruled the government had “ample evidence” linking CAIR to Hamas.
The fact this group has now risen to defend McMaster and slam his critics as white supremacists and Islamophobes is only further fuel — for the fiery calls for Trump to oust him.
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