By Ben Barrack

According to documents obtained in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, not only do we have further evidence that the Barack Obama administration has been quite cozy with the Muslim Brotherhood but to a degree, so was his predecessor, President George W. Bush. In partisan battles, no one wins and no one has the entire truth on his side. Such is the case for those who defend Bush or Obama in debates about the Muslim Brotherhood.

Bush prays next to leader of largest Muslim Brotherhood front in U.S. on 11/11/01

The documents in question provide further proof for what we have long maintained. The Bush administration’s strategy – if you can call it that – after 9/11 essentially primed the pump for a candidate like Obama to get elected in 2008.

Dubai: For the past decade, two successive US administrations have maintained close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Tunisia, Syria and Libya, to name just the most prominent cases.

The Obama administration conducted an assessment of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2010 and 2011, beginning even before the events known as the “Arab Spring” erupted in Tunisia and in Egypt. The President personally issued Presidential Study Directive 11 (PSD-11) in 2010, ordering an assessment of the Muslim Brotherhood and other “political Islamist” movements, including the ruling AKP in Turkey, ultimately concluding that the United States should shift from its longstanding policy of supporting “stability” in the Middle East and North Africa (that is, support for “stable regimes” even if they were authoritarian), to a policy of backing “moderate” Islamic political movements.

To this day, PSD-11 remains classified, in part because it reveals an embarrassingly naïve and uninformed view of trends in the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region.

When it comes to the Middle East, nations are generally ruled by authoritarians or by Sharia law. Anyone who sees the latter as a more preferable option than the former is either uneducated, corrupted, or a proponent of sharia himself.

While PSD-11 appears to be an Obama creation, it was George W. Bush who in 2012, penned an Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal about the ‘Arab Spring’ that appears to have been an endorsement of PSD-11:

Some in both parties in Washington look at the risks inherent in democratic change—particularly in the Middle East and North Africa—and find the dangers too great. America, they argue, should be content with supporting the flawed leaders they know in the name of stability.

But in the long run, this foreign policy approach is not realistic. It is not within the power of America to indefinitely preserve the old order, which is inherently unstable.

A few months earlier, Bush’s former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice took some credit for the Arab Spring in an interview with USA Today:

The demise of repressive governments in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere during this year’s “Arab spring,” she says, stemmed in part from Bush’s “freedom agenda,” which promoted democracy in the Middle East. “The change in the conversation about the Middle East, where people now routinely talk about democratization is something that I’m very grateful for and I think we had a role in that,” Rice says.

Obama’s affinity for the Brotherhood is a self-evident truth. Another such truth should be that had Bush been honest with the American people about who gave us Osama, those same American people would not have elected Obama.

George W. Bush with Saudi Imam in White House ten days after 9/11.

Bush administration officials who defend the decision to go into Iraq at this point are simply in denial. What more proof does one need than the Iraqi Constitution with the U.S. helped write? Since it was the U.S. who liberated Iraq and spent blood and treasure doing so, the Bush administration had the opportunity to set a few caveats, one being no sharia law. Instead, this is what the Constitution says:

Article (2): 1st – Islam is the official religion of the state and is a basic source of legislation:
(a) No law can be passed that contradicts the undisputed rules of Islam.

With that Constitution now part of the world’s history books, former Bush administration officials almost have to defend the Arab Spring and going into Iraq. Doing otherwise would be hard but it would be right. Unfortunately, there are no signs of that happening, despite the attempts of Fox News host Megyn Kelly, who has aggressively challenged Dick Cheney and John Bolton over the decision to go into Iraq.

In this exchange with Cheney, Kelly asserts that the former Vice President was wrong. Note how Cheney and his daughter Liz both rightly highlight the disaster that is the Obama administration. Liz calls Obama “dangerous”. What neither does tell you is how Bush policies laid the groundwork for Obama to be elected:

One night later, while interviewing former UN Ambassador Bolton and Andrew McCarty, Kelly challenged Bolton’s contention that when it comes to the disaster in Iraq today, the past is irrelevant. When Kelly pressed, Bolton became visibly agitated:

The truth is that the Bush foreign policy after 9/11 was wrong-headed and based on covering up the truth of Saudi responsibility for the attacks. If Bolton is right about the past being irrelevant in Iraq when talking about the current situation – in a sense he may be – he’s absolutely wrong when attempting to apply irrelevance domestically. It wasn’t just that 15 of the 19 hijackers coming from Saudi Arabia should have been a big red flag for the Bush administration.

It’s also the issue of the Saudis funding the Muslim Brotherhood in the U.S. This country is rife with stealth jihadist infiltrators largely funded by the Saudis. They have only grown in strength and prominence since 9/11. It’s naivete or blind partisanship to alleged that Bush didn’t know about these infiltrators. Besides, if one is declined to give Bush a pass for not understanding the threat to America immediately after 9/11, what explains him giving a speech at the Islamic Center of Washington as late as 2007. The occasion was the mosque’s 50-year re-dedication:

Former Bush administration officials are willing to talk about the Muslim Brotherhood when discussing foreign lands but you never hear the likes of Karl Rove discussing the group’s infiltration of the U.S. Why? In large part, because Rove was big part of the decision-making process to engage the Muslim Brotherhood front groups after 9/11. For him to discuss or debate that issue is a loser for him that only exposes the fatally flawed strategy employed by the Bush administration.

What if Bush had identified Muslim Brotherhood as the enemy of U.S. after 9/11?

Instead of following the John F. Kennedy philosophy about going to the moon and applying it to the true problem after 9/11 and operating from the premise that we…

“do these things not because they are easy but because they are hard…”

…George W. Bush took the path of least resistance after 9/11. Instead of riding a 90% approval rating to push for energy independence while confronting the Saudis and the stealth Muslim Brotherhood jihadists in the U.S., Bush did neither, choosing instead to embrace our enemies and cover up for them. Is it any wonder his approval ratings cratered?

If we are judged by our fruits, it is the Bush administration that should be judged for the bitter fruit it helped bloom in the Arab Spring.

What the Bush Administration gave us:

• Afghanistan Constitution that has Sharia Law as a fundamental precept.
• Iraqi Constitution that has Sharia Law as a fundamental precept.
• 9/11 Commission white wash that completely let the Saudi financiers of al-Qaeda off the hook.
• Increased Muslim Brotherhood infiltration of U.S. Congress, Military, and political institutions across the country.
• Israel forfeiting Gaza Strip.
• Gaza Strip ruled by Hamas.
• Barack Obama as a result of Bush’s disastrous foreign policy.

It was the Bush Doctrine after 9/11 that set the stage for the Sharia brush fire we’ve seen spread since. After the attack that brought down the World Trade Center towers, New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani demonstrated a better understanding of who was responsible than did President George W. Bush, when he rejected a donation relief check from Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal.

Mayor Giuliani did what Bush did not.