The appointment of Daniel Pipes to a Washington-based think tank begs a great many questions, writes Mohamed Hakki In the greater scheme of things the appointment of a professor at an institute in Washington DC, even an institute that is federally funded, should not be a major concern. That is unless the professor in question is a notorious bigot, propagandist and proponent of the McCarthyist thought policing of US universities and academic institutions. There is more: the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) is a federally funded organisation the members of which are proposed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. On 23 July the Senate committee charged with this met and decided to "indefinitely" postpone the confirmation. Four Democratic members questioned what signals the appointment of Daniel Pipes would send. Pipes' appointment, said Edward Kennedy, did not "reflect a commitment to bridging differences and preventing conflict". Pipes appointment, Senator TomHarkin said, could easily overshadow the institute's work. Senator Harkin also quoted a report carried by the London Free Press in Canada in which Pipes is quoted as saying that he worries "very much from the Jewish point of view that the presence and increased stature, and affluence, and enfranchisement of American Muslims will present true dangers to American Jews". The Senator added: "Increased stature, affluence and enfranchisement. He is talking about the right to vote. The right to vote!" No surprise, then, that Muslim American organisations were shocked by the news of Pipes's appointment to this think tank. They have been joined by many Jewish and mainstream Christian organisations. In a joint press conference at the National Press Building they outlined the reasons for their opposition. Pipes, they pointed out, supports the unrestricted profiling of Muslims and Arabs; he refuses to condemn the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II; he has suggested that Israel raze Palestinian villages; he claims that 10 to 15 per cent of all Muslims are "potential killers"; he has publicly opposed President Bush's repeated statements that Islam is a religion of peace; he opposes the roadmap; he denounces any positive portrayal of Islamic history and beliefs in public schools; he launched Campus Waters, a Web site that includes "dossiers" on professors and academic institutions thought to be too critical of Israel or too sympathetic to Islam and Muslims; he advocates that the activities of mosques require scrutiny beyond that applied to churches and synagogues. The list goes on and on. In an article entitled "Pipes the propagandist" Christopher Hitchens describes Pipes as someone who stands "to the right of Ariel Sharon". In an attack on the roadmap Pipes included the phrase "so-called Palestinian refugees", insinuating that there had been no Palestinian dispossession in the first place, as if denying history makes problems go away. One can go on enumerating Pipes's shortcomings. The important question, though, is why President Bush should be so adamant about his appointment in the face of Congressional disapproval. Why was it that the White House sought to sneak through the appointment, announcing it at 11.19pm on 22 August in an attempt to minimise any coverage by a media that is in any case compliant, so embedded is it in the neo-con cabal? Is it possible that President Bush is unaware of his appointee's sordid history? Is it possible that he could be unaware of the myriad objections raised by senators, religious leaders and Muslim organisations? "Why Mr President? What is the rush? What compels you to bypass Congress and name a man whose rhetoric related to Islam has consistently fomented controversy and conflict?" asked the Reverand Dr Welton Gaddy, president of the Interfaith Alliance, a non-partisan clergy- led alliance grass-roots organisation which has brought together diverse religious leaders from the Jewish, Christian, Muslim and Sikh communities. There is a scene in a novel by Aidan Hartley of which the whole sorry affair reminds me. When Somali militias overthrew Mohamed Siad Barre one character rushes to the presidential palace. He pushes against one of the palace doors only to find something blocking it on the other side. He continues, and the door finally gives way, whereupon he finds himself standing beneath an avalanche of unopened envelopes. He begins to tear them open and read. All the letters, carefully stored unread, are from members of Amnesty International protesting Barre's atrocities. Is someone, I wondered, hiding mail from the president? The icing on the cake: in 1987 Pipes published an article in the New Republic arguing for increased weapons sales to Saddam Hussein's Iraq, claiming that President Reagan had not lent Saddam's regime enough support. In the same week President Bush attempted to push through Pipes's appointment he made another decision that leads one to question his freedom of action. Following a suicide bombing by Hamas in Jerusalem President Bush ordered the Treasury Department to freeze the assets of six Hamas leaders, and of five charities based outside the US that the administration claims help finance Hamas. The decision is senseless on two counts: first it ignores Israel's targeted assassinations which provoke Hamas's retaliation in the only way left to them. Second, none of the people named have any monies in the US. Even Martin Indyk, former ambassador to Israel and a man who has spent his entire adult life serving Israeli interests said "the publication of the list of Palestinian leaders will be interpreted as sending a clear green light to Israel to continue its policy of targeted assassinations." The administration action, Indyk said, could destroy the roadmap: "If the green light is not combined with an American initiative to salvage the roadmap, the potential for all hell to break loose is quite high." All these precipitous actions lead one to wonder to what extent the president has become a hostage of the neo-cons and the cabal of hawks surrounding him. Does he not care about the consequences? Senator Robert Byrd, in an op-ed article in the Washington Post, wrote: "Instead of giving the young people of Iraq (one can add Palestine) a reason to turn away from the violence of terrorism, we have through failures and unkept promises fed the seeds of discontent. The inability of the United States to secure the peace in Iraq (and Palestine) virtually guarantees Al-Qaeda a fertile field of new recruits." What is becoming clearer every day is that those who are advising the president -- on matters as seemingly unimportant as the appointment of a professor to an institute, and as momentous as signing up lock, stock and barrel to Israeli policy objectives -- are doing Bush and the United States a great disservice. One day soon the American people will wake up. But one wonders how much damage will already have been done.
