Morning Again in America - for Islamophobes

Almost two years and one disastrous election later, we're still waiting for
the other Barack Obama to make an appearance, and from the gab coming out of Washington right now, it
looks like we'll be twiddling our thumbs a bit longer (if not forever).
Once again, the sweet talk of compromise and bipartisanship is on the lips of
the president, but not, of course, on the lips of top Republicans. Talk about consistency!

Right now, all the news chatter is about domestic policy (health care, tax
cuts, etc.), but count on the Republicans -- Rand
Paul aside -- to light out after the president sooner or later at
least as hawkishly on foreign policy as they have domestically. Already,
Senator John McCain and others are preparing the
ground to launch what's likely to become a jihad against
Obama's civilization-busting "mistake" in announcing a vaguely
"conditions-based" drawdown of vague numbers of U.S.
troops in Afghanistan
for July 2011. And that's just a start. On a whole host of issues from the Iraq and Afghan wars to Israel, Iran,
and North Korea,
buckle your seatbelts and hold onto your hats. The critical weather in
Congress, especially in the House, is going to get fiercer, and a president
with a most un-Harry-Truman-ish tendency to placate is unlikely to stake his
fighting future on foreign policy.

So expect war drums and alarums to the horizon (i.e. 2012) from
congressional Republicans. And when it comes to the famous Republican
urge to cut every budget in sight, be assured of one thing: our wars, the
Pentagon budget, and the industrial part of the military-industrial complex --
in other words, our next generation weaponry, however ill-conceived -- will surely be removed from the
"table" where "all options" are always placed.

According to Chris Nelson of the invaluable Washington insider newsletter,
the Nelson Report, "The likely new chair of House Armed Services,
'Buck' McKeon (R-Ca.), is a big supporter of Missile Defense and the Navy,
while the Armed Services appropriations subcommittee will likely be chaired by
Bill Young (R-Fla.), and between his and McKeon's districts, there are very few
'missing' major space and defense contractors." McKeon has already made
it crystal clear that he's in favor of "boosting" the already bloated
Pentagon budget.

Oh, and to complete the trifecta, the likely new head of the House Foreign
Affairs committee is Cuban refugee Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. (She once said: "I welcome the opportunity of having anyone
assassinate Fidel Castro and any leader who is oppressing the
people.") She's guaranteed to push for an ever fiercer policy on Iran, while
offering total support to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing
Israeli government against the Obama administration. She's already called on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to expel
all Palestinian diplomats from the U.S., and to cease sending American Muslim religious leader Feisal
Abdul Rauf, creator of "the mosque at Ground Zero," abroad to represent the
country.

None of this should surprise anyone. Starting in January, it will
evidently be morning in America
again for Islamophobes. As co-director of Foreign
Policy in Focus and TomDispatch regular John Feffer points out in "Crusade
2.0," there's a little bit of history going back a mere thousand years or
so that, when it comes to Islamophobia, we ignore at our peril.