Gary Ackerman is a 14-term Democratic
Congressman, representing New York’s fifth district, which includes
parts of Queens and Long Island. And as such, Ackerman holds the
panoply of positions one would expect from a New York Democrat. He
strongly supports current legislation that would result in a government
takeover of the nation’s health care system. He has been given a
100 by NARAL Pro Choice America and even voted twice against bans on
partial birth abortion. The NRA gives him an “F” for his votes on
gun control. Immigration reform groups rate him as having an “open
borders” stance. Plus, Ackerman opposes the death penalty,
school prayer, the Patriot Act, and, well, you can pretty much fill in the
rest. Yes, there is no doubt that Congressman Gary Ackerman is an
ideological liberal and an almost certain vote for the Democrats in
Congress.
Ackerman,
however, is also Chairman of the House Subcommittee on the Middle East
and South Asia House Foreign Affairs Committee. While conservatives
might have solid, even passionate, disagreements with Ackerman on many
issues, there is no question that he is one of Congress’s most
knowledgeable members when it comes to that part of the world. His
sentiments in that regard are rather clear, too, as his web site notes
that his subcommittee “has jurisdiction over United States policy
towards all countries in the Middle East and South Asia, including
important U.S. allies Israel and India”[emphasis mine]. That
should not be passed over lightly. Ever since the 1950s when Indian
Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru allied his county with the Soviet Union, the
US-India relationship has been a rocky one. More recently,
President Obama dismissed Indian anti-terror efforts in Kashmir and
increased aid to India’s enemy, Pakistan; even though former Pakistani
Prime Minister Pervez Musharraf and others have admitted that much of
that aid goes to building attacks against India. Nor is there any
doubt that the Obama administration is at best ambiguous about how
important an ally Israel is. In 2008, Ackerman co-sponsored a
resolution with GOP Congressman Mike Pence declaring Iran to
be a threat to “the vital national security interests of the United
States" and demanding a full-scale naval, air and land
blockade. Ackerman is also a fierce critic of the anti-Israel
Goldstone Report.
My
own path crossed with Ackerman’s briefly in 2007 when he was Democratic
floor leader during debate on a resolution that called on Bangladesh to
drop its false charges against Muslim Zionist and anti-Islamist
journalist, Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury. The legislation was
authored by Congressman Mark Kirk, Republican from suburban Chicago and
currently a candidate for the Senate seat once held by Barack
Obama. Kirk and I together have championed Choudhury’s cause and
were able to free him from 17 months of imprisonment and
torture. Ackerman spoke passionately in support of
Choudhury.
Ackerman, however, might have saved his
strongest and most stunning remarks for a March 11 Subcommittee hearing
entitled: “Bad Company: Lashkar e-Tayyiba and the Growing Ambition
of Islamist Militancy in Pakistan”; a title that is at variance with
Obama’s Af-Pak policy, which focuses almost exclusively on al Qaeda and
the Taliban. Beyond that, in his March 2009 speech announcing that
policy, Obama targeted al Qaeda and the Taliban as our enemies but also
made it clear that he considers the rest of Pakistan our friends and
allies. In his opening statement at that hearing, Ackerman
identified a far more general problem, “Islamist Militancy in Pakistan,”
that goes well beyond Obama’s narrow definition:
While
U.S. attention has focused primarily on al-Qaida, and the Afghan and
Pakistani Taliban, the Lashkar e-Tayyiba (LeT) and other violent,
Islamist extremist groups in Pakistan have been growing in both
capability and ambition. As was demonstrated in the horrific Mumbai
attack of November 2008, the al-Qaida model of perpetrating highly
visible, mass-casualty attacks appears to have migrated, with enormous
potential consequences for the United States.
But the New York Democrat was only getting
started.
We
need to take this threat very, very seriously. The LeT is a deadly
serious group of fanatics.They are well financed, ambitious, and most
disturbingly, both tolerated by, and connected to, the Pakistani military [emphasis mine].
While Pakistan’s longstanding support for
Islamists is an open secret, this public statement was a stinging rebuke
and rejection of the Obama administration's entire South Asia
policy. In fact, he said, this terrorist group “was set up with
help from the Pakistani military as a proxy weapon” to use against
India. He also accused the Pakistani military of paying
compensation to families of the terrorists who killed almost 200 people
in the November 26, 2008, attack on Mumbai. “These are our allies
in the war on terror,” he adds contemptuously.
Beyond excoriating Pakistan and the fantasy of considering it an ally,
Ackerman makes it clear that he recognizes Islamist goals as going far
beyond parochial issues tied to any particular piece of real
estate: “The LeT's true goal is not Kashmir, it is India [and] to
establish an Islamic state in all of South Asia. Neither does it hide or
try to play down its declaration of war against all Hindus and
Jews.” Indians and Israelis have been trying without success to get
the Obama administration to understand that the conflicts are not about
Kashmir, Jerusalem, or any other phony issues.
In that March speech, Obama called for “a
regional solution” but otherwise dismissed India as a key ally. In
fact, he could have mentioned that for the ten days proceeding that
speech, Indians were engaged in heated battles with Lashkar and
defeating them quite handily. But he did not, and US
representatives including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, South Asia
Czar Richard Holbrooke, and Senator John Kerry have assiduously avoided
even a perception of supporting India’s anti-terrorist chops or its
right to self-defense from relentless terrorists based in a neighboring
country; which sounds disturbingly like its actions toward Israel.
So, what does Ackerman suggest we do? Plenty!
This
group of savages needs to be crushed. Not in a month. Not in a year.
Not when the situation
stabilizes in Afghanistan. Not when things are under control in
Pakistan. Now. Today and everyday going forward. We’re not doing it, and we’re not
effectively leading a global effort to do it.
Had a conservative Republican made that
statement, the media would be publishing screeds that yelled, “War
monger.” But the fact is that Ackerman is not a conservative
Republican. He is a liberal Democrat and not even a consistent
foreign policy hawk. For instance, in 2007 he voted to start
deploying troops out of Iraq in 90 days; he opposed measures to restrict
funds for the UN; he supports Congressional oversight of CIA
interrogations; and way back when voted against SDI. That is one of
the things that make last week’s strongly-worded statement so
significant.
While chastising Israel, last week Vice
President Joe Biden said, “Sometimes only a friend can deliver the
hardest truth.” Perhaps the Obama administration needs not take its
own advice and listen to what Congressman Ackerman is telling
them. If not, he warned, “we’re going to regret this mistake. We’re
going to regret it bitterly.”
Posted on 03/15/2010 5:18 PM by Richard L.
Benkin
