The Muslim Brotherhood and Ansar al-Sharia (the group that claimed responsibility for the Benghazi attack) share one thing in common. Both seek the implementation of Sharia law wherever it does not exist. The most important difference between the two groups is how to get there.

Groups like Ansar al-Sharia and al-Qaeda believe in doing it through overt terrorism while the Brotherhood – to include all Muslim Brotherhood groups in America – believe in incrementally doing it via political means while wearing the mask of tolerance. The Brotherhood is actually more dangerous because without vigilance against it, gains will be made until its members acquire the majority of power (Senator John McCain and Speaker John Boehner are the poster children for such dupes because of their blind defense of the likes of Huma Abedin despite her extensive and irrefutable familial ties to the Brotherhood).

Now that Michele Bachmann has pointed to the Benghazi attacks as evidence that her concerns about Muslim Brotherhood infiltration are valid, three so-called ‘experts’ have attempted to debunk her claim.

Via SC Times:

U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann says recent events in the Middle East have validated her controversial remarks earlier this year about the Muslim Brotherhood.

But the link Bachmann suggests between the Muslim Brotherhood and recent attacks on U.S. diplomatic installations in Egypt and Libya is nonexistent or tenuous, according to a trio of Middle East experts.

Bachmann’s Muslim Brotherhood controversy started this summer, when she and four of her House colleagues called for an investigation of a potential Muslim Brotherhood infiltration of the U.S. government. A top aide to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Huma Abedin, who is Muslim, was singled out. Bachmann’s remarks were widely denounced, including by several top Republicans.

Now Bachmann, R-Stillwater, says she has been proven right by the attack on Sept. 11 of this year on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four people, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens. Another attack was mounted that day against the U.S. embassy in Cairo, Egypt.

The issue of the Brotherhood’s direct involvement in the attack notwithstanding, one thing should be inexorably clear. The Brotherhood supported the removal of Gadhafi as well as the rebels, which eventually gave rise to forces that attacked the consulate. That there was significant influence on the Obama administration to adopt such a policy is a self-evident truth. If Brotherhood elements are inside the administration, they would certainly do so as well.

If Huma Abedin’s allegiances are in any way to the Brotherhood, she would most certainly have approved of Gadhafi’s removal. Her boss, Hillary Clinton, certainly did.

Last year, while in Jamaica, Hillary said the following as members of Congress debated the issue of whether the U.S. should be involved in removing Gadhafi:

…the bottom line is, whose side are you on? Are you on Qadhafi’s side or are you on the side of the aspirations of the Libyan people and the international coalition that has been created to support them? For the Obama Administration, the answer to that question is very easy.

Pitting Qadhafi against “the aspirations of the Libyan people” is far different from pitting him against the Muslim Brotherhood. It’s a dynamic similar to using the terms “Arab Spring” or “Democratic uprising” instead of “the rise of Islamic theocracy” or “Sharia”.

Now, as for the three ‘experts’ who attempt to debunk Bachmann’s claims, they could be right in a technical sense but conceding this point and moving on necessitates wearing blinders. Let’s start with Aaron David Miller, a longtime State Department employee who bills himself as a non-partisan who has worked under Republican and Democrat administrations. Miller once worked under Bill Clinton and is currently a “distinguished scholar” at the Woodrow Wilson Center (WWC). Uh, yeah, that Woodrow Wilson. None other than far left-wing Democrat Jane Harman serves as the President and CEO of the organization.

The SC Times had the following to say about Miller’s take:

Miller, vice president of the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C., said Bachmann may be trying to suggest Obama’s policies toward the Arab Spring that resulted in the overthrow of governments in Libya, Egypt and elsewhere, allowed last month’s attacks to occur. But Miller said he believes Bachmann is wrong on that count as well.

The website provides no argument put forth by Miller explaining that view.

‘Expert’ number two is Eric Trager, of the Washington Institute. Perhaps the most reasonable of the three, Trager is critical of the Muslim Brotherhood but still prefers to view the Brotherhood and groups like al-Qaeda as being mutually exclusive:

Trager is no apologist for the Muslim Brotherhood or the Obama administration’s foreign policy, calling the latter’s engagement with the Egyptian Brotherhood “naive.”

But Trager said Bachmann’s call for an investigation of whether the Brotherhood has infiltrated the U.S. government is counterproductive, undermining legitimate concerns with the Brotherhood.

It is Trager who is either naive or making a dangerous politically correct calculation (possibly like McCain and Boehner are doing when it comes to Abedin and Bachmann). It’s thinking like this that has allowed the incremental encroachment and gains of groups like CAIR, ISNA, MSA, and potential Brotherhood spies in our government.

The third ‘expert’ cited by the SC Times is quite the curious choice. His name is Ragui Assaad, a professor at the University of Minnesota, who compared terrorists to those who bomb abortion clinics and the Muslim Brotherhood to groups that oppose abortion but don’t commit violent acts:

“It is the sort of sweeping statement as if you’re talking about people who bomb abortion clinics and you blame all evangelical Christians in the U.S.,” Assaad said. “There’s a very small extreme fringe which can do things like this. And you use that to blame an entire class of people.”

Interestingly, this is precisely the kind of argument that Muslim Brotherhood groups in the U.S. would use. A problem with it is that Assaad avoids the agenda of Muslim Brotherhood groups altogether; it is to impose sharia law gradually, over time until it is the law of the land. His avoidance of this issue should raise red flags. In fact, in 2009, he seemed to express support for one such Muslim Brotherhood group – the Muslim Student Association (MSA). The MSA took part in a counter-protest against Israeli students who were celebrating their nation’s 61st birthday.

Via Minnesota Daily:

“The celebration of the birthday for Israel, the independence, is considered to be a bad event within the perspective of many Arabs,” said Ragui Assaad, a professor in the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs. “However, that doesn’t mean they don’t want Israel to exist, it just means that this has had very negative consequences on the Palestinians and their expulsion from that land.”

Aside from the fact that protesting the birth of something tends to mean you object to its birth, what Assaad didn’t appear to mention is that as a Brotherhood group, the MSA necessarily wants Israel not to exist.

In short, once again, attempts to assail Michele Bachmann on this issue fall woefully short of cogency.

Ben Barrack is a talk show host and author of the book, Unsung Davids, which features a chapter on Walid Shoebat