Two Visitors Who Should Not be Let In

By Douglas Farah

There is disturbing news on several fronts regarding how the administration is handling the competing pressures as it seeks to promote democracy and fight Islamist extemism at the same time. The first is a state visit by the president of Kazakhstan. The second is the possible visit of the new leading light of the Muslim Brotherhood, Tariq Ramadan, something of a rock star in European Muslim communities but still a radical Islamist who poses as a moderate.

President Bush's decision, as outlined in the Washington Post is to not only invite Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev for a state visit but to have him to Camp David. Here we have one of the most corrupt agents of the former Soviet Union, accused of stealing tens of millions of dollars while jailing opponents and stifling all manner of civil liberties, now a treated as a great friend.

It is important that Nazabayev helped secure an atomic arsenal, no doubt. But is he really the type of leader one wants to legitimize as a "good friend" when he represents nothing the U.S. should stand for? Like Obiang of Equatorial Guinea, without his oil Nazarbayev would be just one more odious dictator that one would ignore, or at least certainly not fete at the president's private residence. The fact that Kazakhstan is now a base of operations for Viktor Bout, who is arming radical the radical Islamist regime in Somalia, also seems to be forgotten. My full blog is here.

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