OH PLEASE SAVE US FROM THIS – AT 10:26 A.M. ET:  The administration is in high grovel again in its "outreach" to the Muslim world.   This story may require medication, so be careful.  From The Politico:

President Barack Obama's aggressive outreach to the Muslim American community is reducing its sense of isolation, Obama's envoy to the Muslim world told a conference in Washington Wednesday evening.

"We’ve really started to knock down that sense of otherization," said Rashad Hussain, a White House lawyer who also serves as liaison to the Organization of the Islamic Conference. Hussain defined the rather esoteric term, "otherization," as describing a sense that many Muslims had during the Bush years that their value or danger to society was viewed solely through the prism of terrorism.

"Muslims...sometimes feel like they don't have as much of a stake or a role in the future of the country," Hussain told the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy conference. "That's something that all of the engagement that the United States has done on these issues both internationally and domestically has helped to counter."

Are you believing that?  No president did more to reach out to the American Muslim community than did George W. Bush.  He even visited a mosque right after 9/11. 

And I've never seen a country fight a war and show so little prejudice toward co-religionists of the same people being fought. 

And, by the way, where's the "outreach" from the other direction?  The nerve of this White House guy to say that American Muslims "feel like they don't have as much of a stake or a role in the future of the country."  Why not?  What's been done to them?  They've been extended every courtesy, and some college faculties grovel before them. 

The United States has done much for Muslims over the years – in Lebanon and throughout the Middle East, and even in Europe.  I don't recall a single thank-you.  But we're still required to do all the outreaching.

Oh, and get this:

Shortly after his appointment as the OIC envoy earlier this year, Hussain grabbed some headlines for a flap over comments he made in 2004 describing the Bush administration's actions against some terror suspects as "politically-motivated persecutions." He initially said he had no recollection of making the remarks but after POLITICO obtained a recording of the presentation he conceded he'd made the comments and called them "ill-conceived or not well-formulated."

Yeah, just a little mistake.  Let's move on.  Who needs integrity?

Seems to me we might devote a bit more "outreach" to those fighting for freedom in Iran and elsewhere.   But that just isn't very chic these days.

April 29, 2010