BOY, IS THIS SCARY – AT 9:30 A.M. ET:  According to the Washington Post, the Obamans are now preparing to accept regimes in the Mideast that are more Islamic.  Given the president's appeasement of radical Islam, and his refusal even to speak about it as an enemy, the stoic view of Islam is not surprising, but it should scare the daylights out of anyone who lives in the real world:

The Obama administration is preparing for the prospect that Islamist governments will take hold in North Africa and the Middle East, acknowledging that the popular revolutions there will bring a more religious cast to the region's politics.

The administration is already taking steps to distinguish between various movements in the region that promote Islamic law in government. An internal assessment, ordered by the White House last month, identified large ideological differences between such movements as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and al-Qaeda that will guide the U.S. approach to the region.

"We shouldn't be afraid of Islam in the politics of these countries," said a senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe internal policy deliberations. "It's the behavior of political parties and governments that we will judge them on, not their relationship with Islam."

Islamist governments span a range of ideologies and ambitions, from the primitive brutality of the Taliban in Afghanistan to Turkey's Justice and Development Party, a movement with Islamist roots that heads a largely secular political system.

This is complete madness, utter, complete madness.  No, of course not, the situation in Turkey is not comparable to Afghanistan, but Turkey is becoming increasingly Islamic, increasingly hostile to the West, and increasingly friendly to Iran.  And Turkey this week came out against sanctions, even sanctions, against the Libyan regime.  To say that this is some kind of "acceptable" Islamism is delusional.

Some within the U.S. intelligence community, foreign diplomatic circles and the Republican Party say Obama's readiness to accept Islamist movements, even ones that meet certain conditions, fails to take into consideration the methodical approach many such parties adopt toward gradually transforming secular nations into Islamic states at odds with U.S. policy goals.

Hoorah.  Someone said it.  Nazism had different stages, as did Soviet Communism.  Genocide didn't occur every day, only on some days. 

There is a distinct possibility that the force that will gain the greatest power on Obama's watch will be Islamism.  Those who raise questions will be labeled Islamophobic, just as those who raise any questions about leftist influence in America's universities are labeled McCarthyites. 

I've never believed that Obama is a secret Muslim.  I don't think he has any religion.  I think his joining of that church in Chicago was merely a matter of political necessity.  But, culturally, he has Muslim roots and leftist roots, and that is not a winning combination.  Compound that with Obama's remarkable indifference to democracy, which he apparently regards as a Bushian concept, and we can be in the soup pretty quickly.

Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian territories have prospered in democratic elections and exert huge influence. Neither party, each with an armed wing, supports Israel's right to exist, nor have they renounced violence as a political tool.

And their attitude toward the United States, and our system of freedom, is not overflowing with admiration.

If Obama gets a second term, and thus unrestrained by any need to seek further election, we can only anticipate with dread where he might take this nation's foreign policy.

March 4, 2011