Rudy Giuliani, the Republican presidential candidate, is working hard to claim his place as the Republican’s leading hawk. The former New York City mayor recently announced the latest choice to join his presidential campaign team is neoconservative Daniel Pipes.Pipes is viewed by many as anti-Muslim. Ahmed Rehab, the director general for CAIR, the Council of American Islamic Relations in Chicago, wrote last week in Media Monitors Network: “Daniel Pipes is as much a scholar on Islam and Muslims as David Duke is a scholar on Judaism and Jews. Pipes is wedded to his personal political agenda to such a point that it dominates his worldview invalidating his ability to act as a neutral scholar on Muslim-related topics.”
In his article, entitled: “The Islamophobe Who Cried Islamist,” Rehab writes: “For Pipes, a ‘bad’ Muslim is a Muslim who challenges his views on Israel and a ‘good’ Muslim is one who agrees with them; in his ‘scholarly’ lingo, the code terms are ‘Islamist’ and ‘moderate’ respectively. The fact that Pipes is taken seriously by anyone is an indication of how low the bar of discourse on Islam is today. With fear and suspicion clouding reason and critical thinking, it is not difficult for a Harvard graduate with a grim face and a set of intriguing theories to wrestle some media attention.”
GiulianiÂ’s choices are unusual: Last week he announced that he had hired Mideast hawk Norman Podhoretz as a foreign policy adviser. Podhoretz, one of the founders of the neoconservative movement, an unwavering supporter of the war against Iraq, has been in the headlines in recent months as one of most vocal proponents of American military action against Iran.
Giuliani’s team of foreign policy advisers already has several prominent neoconservatives. His eight-member advisory panel also includes several figures with experience in Israeli affairs. The news of Giuliani’s right-wing team has caused alarm in many circles. Ken Silverstein wrote in Harper’s Magazine, that Pipes is “further out ideologically” than any other of the already ideologues working with the Giuliani campaign.
In an earlier piece, Silverstein quoted Augustus Richard Norton, a Middle East scholar who had been an adviser to the Iraq Study Group, who said: “What I find fascinating, is how skewed this team seems to be in terms of the regional focus. ... There is no real expertise on Africa, Asia, Latin America, or much of Europe.” This seems to beg the question of the criteria used by Giuliani in assembling his foreign policy advisors.
Another of GiulianiÂ’s foreign policy advisers, Charles Hill, served as a top aide to Secretary of State George Shultz in the Reagan administration and once served as political counselor to the American Embassy in Tel Aviv. The team also includes Martin Kramer, an Islamic Affairs professor at Harvard University and a fellow with both the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy and the Jerusalem-based Shalem Center.
