Scott McClellan reflects on his new memoir about his time as White House press chief, which has stoked controversy for its pointed criticism of the Bush administration. Then, analysts Mark Shields and David Brooks weigh in on McClellan's book.
Scott McClellan
RAY SUAREZ: Now to our conversation with former White House insider Scott McClellan. Jeffrey Brown talked with him a short time ago.
JEFFREY BROWN: Early in his new book, Scott McClellan writes that he will tell a, quote, "story in which I played a minor role, the story of how the presidency of George W. Bush veered terribly off-course."
McClellan served President Bush in several positions in Texas and Washington, including three years as White House press secretary before he left the administration in 2006.
The book is called "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception." Scott McClellan joins us now from New York.
Scott, I'd like to start with a constant theme in the book, that the Bush administration was in what you call a "permanent campaign mode." What exactly do you mean by this? And how did it help get us into what you now call an unnecessary war in Iraq?
SCOTT MCCLELLAN, Former White House Press Secretary: Sure. I'm glad you asked that question. This is something that I cover in some detail in the book and provide examples of in the book.
I give a little bit of history. Over the course of time, particularly with the advent of polls and public -- you know, the expansion of cable news networks and so forth, the permanent campaign, it goes back years, but it has evolved into some potentially more destructive excesses these days, where the whole focus used to be on more just winning over public opinion to your side.
It has now become more about manipulating those various sources of public approval -- media outlets and so forth, the overall media narrative -- to one side's advantage. And both parties get caught up in this game.
It's more about power and influence than it is about, you know, honest deliberation and compromise and trying to solve things, solve problems for the American people.
Scott McClellan
Scott McClellan
Former White House Press Secretary
There are many good people that come to D.C. for the right reasons, to get things done for the American people [...] but they get caught up in this permanent campaign culture that exists [...] And that's what happened with this administration.
White House's 'permanent campaign'
RAY SUAREZ: But you're writing about it -- but you're writing about it specifically in the Bush administration, where you're suggesting that -- you say, he, the president and his advisers, "confused the propaganda campaign with the high level of candor and honesty that was needed."
SCOTT MCCLELLAN: That's right. Particularly in a time of war, when that permanent campaign mentality transfers over into the war-making decision process, or the war-making process, then it becomes particularly troubling, because the focus on manipulating sources of public approval to your advantage loses sight sometimes of the high level of openness and honesty that are really needed, openness and forthrightness, to bring the American people along, build bipartisan support for the war, and then maintain that bipartisan support.
And I think it was a chief reason why the president's approval rating has dropped so significantly, because he has lost a lot of credibility, because we didn't embrace that high openness and forthrightness that was needed to go along with it.
JEFFREY BROWN: But how far are you pushing this? Are you saying this happened with the president's acquiescence or approval or leadership? You use terms like "shading the truth." Is that a euphemism for lying or for purposely misleading?
SCOTT MCCLELLAN: Well, I think that this is the example that there are many good people that come to D.C. for the right reasons, to get things done for the American people and make a positive difference, but they get caught up in this permanent campaign culture that exists and they lose sight of some of the more important objectives of working across the aisle.
And that's what happened with this administration. We set up this massive political operation, and we didn't have the proper counterweights in place to make sure we minimized as much as possible some of the excesses of that permanent campaign, and focus on this bipartisan outreach and compromise and reaching out to the American people.
And that's where we ran into problems when this transferred -- now, you know, the Clinton administration was noted for political spin and manipulation and so forth. And most of it's incidental and harmless that happens in Washington, D.C.
But it can become particularly problematic, again, when it goes into the war-making decision -- or the war-making campaign, to get the American people's support.
And I can -- you know, from my standpoint, looking back and reflecting on this, the Iraq war was clearly not necessary. There are other ways we could have addressed the potential threat that was there. And the grave and gathering danger that we portrayed it at was overstated, at least.
JEFFREY BROWN: Well, that leads to something...
SCOTT MCCLELLAN: So -- yes.
JEFFREY BROWN: Sorry. But that leads to something that a lot of people are wondering here about why you waited to say it until now. Why not speak up when there was a chance to, if not change things, at least let people know that there was some what you're now calling propaganda or misleading going on?
SCOTT MCCLELLAN: Right. Well, during the buildup to the war, I was the deputy press secretary at the time. And I, like a lot of Americans, was concerned about how quickly we were rushing into this.
But we were in this post-9/11 environment and mindset. And at the same time, the president's foreign policy team was viewed very favorably. It had won widespread accolades for what we had done in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.
And so I gave the benefit of the doubt. I trusted the president. I trusted his national security team that this was the right decision, to go ahead with this.
But after leaving the White House and having time to step back out of that White House bubble that exists, you can go back and reflect on this a little bit.
And that's what I've done. I've set aside that partisan hat, reflected on this, looked back at, how did things get so badly off-course? What was the reason for that?
And I asked a lot of questions. And I challenged the assumptions and interpretations I had in the past and came to some very different conclusions. And I think they're conclusions that are as honest as I can be about my perspective on things. And that's what this is, the truth from my perspective.
JEFFREY BROWN: You use that term "bubble." That's something you use in the books and often in the interviews you've been doing. I want to ask you what you mean by that.
And you say that you want this to be a lesson for people in learning how to play or not play, I guess, what you call the "Washington game." For example, is it possible for an aide to the president, a press secretary, which you were, to be both loyal and serve the president and serve the public at the same time?
And what should happen when there is a conflict between those two? What have you learned? What would you suggest now?
SCOTT MCCLELLAN: Well, I think you have to serve both. Sometimes it can be awfully difficult. But your ultimate responsibility is to the American people when you're serving, and your ultimate loyalty is to the truth.
And that's what this book is about. It's an extension of my public career, in a lot of ways.
You know, I've had a career in public service. And this book is a way to continue to make a positive difference by exploring these often tough, hard realities.
I mean, it wasn't easy writing this book. Some of the -- like I said, the conclusions I drew as I wrote it weren't necessarily the thoughts I had at the beginning or my assumptions at the beginning of this book, but I constantly challenged myself.
It was a tough piece of work to go through this process, but I feel very comfortable about my conclusions that I've drawn. And I hope, I think that, in some small way, it will help us move beyond this destructive partisan warfare that has existed in Washington for 15 years and really slowed us down from solving some of the most pressing priorities that we need to get done together...
Scott McClellan
Scott McClellan
Former White House Press Secretary
I do think that, as a general matter, the media was complicit. The emphasis and focus was too much on the selling of the war or the march to war [...] instead of looking at the necessity of war as much as they should have.
Press as 'complicit enablers'
JEFFREY BROWN: Another issue that you raise is about the press corps. You refer to the White House press corps as, quote, "complicit enablers." You say, "Their primary focus would be on covering the campaign to sell the war rather than aggressively questioning the rationale for war or pursuing the truth behind it."
Now, I've seen several responses from journalists in the last couple of days. Some, Katie Couric, for example, agreed, that, "I do think we were remiss," she said, "in not asking some of the right questions."
Others, Ron Suskind, an author and journalist who was on our show last night, was saying, "How can you say this when you were in the midst of misleading the journalists in the White House press corps at that time?"
SCOTT MCCLELLAN: Well, there certainly is a -- it is a fair statement to say that the White House put up some walls and made it difficult for reporters to get some information or get some of the questions answered. That's very fair to make that point, too.
And there were exceptions to the overall rule that the media was -- and it's the national press corps I'm referring to. And there are a lot of national security correspondents and others that were focused on looking at some of these issues.
And some of it was focused too much on just reporting the intelligence that was being told to them from some of the analysts and some of the policymakers. And that's where it ran into problems.
And I do think that, as a general matter, the media was complicit. The emphasis and focus was too much on the selling of the war or the march to war, whether the president was making the case to the American people or whether he was not, instead of looking at the necessity of war as much as they should have.
And it was a post-9/11 environment. And Katie Couric did point out that, yes, there was this patriotic sentiment going through the news corporations and so forth.
I also believe that this is another example of how the media sometimes gets caught up in these issues of who's winning, and who's losing, and who's up, and who's down, instead of focusing on who's right and who's wrong, and focusing and putting the emphasis on understanding the larger underlying truth.
Scott McClellan
Scott McClellan
Former White House Press Secretary
I expected some of the response that came, but some of it is surprising, in terms of how personal it is.
High hopes, disillusionment
JEFFREY BROWN: You write a lot about your high hopes for the Bush presidency. You had worked with the president in Texas and Washington. And now you talk about being disillusioned.
How did that -- how do you conclude that it happened, that the administration, as you say, went off the tracks, when you talk about falling into the Washington game? These were, after all, very strong men and women who you worked with. How could that have happened?
SCOTT MCCLELLAN: Well, it happens to a lot of people in Washington, D.C., these days, unfortunately. And that's what I look at throughout the course of the book.
The Iraq decision, obviously -- or clearly to, I think, most people -- was one of the primary reasons the president went off-course. But I think there was a more fundamental mistake and that was, yes, we were caught up in this permanent campaign atmosphere and we didn't embrace that openness and candor that was so needed in the buildup to that war.
And what happened was, after things didn't turn out the way the expectations were set, we started running into more problems. And the president couldn't go back and say, you know, "We made mistakes."
Very understandable. That's part of human nature. These are good people, and there's not a deliberate or conscious effort to do this.
But when you get caught up in that Washington game, yes, you do lose sight of stepping back from it and being able to focus on bringing the American people along in a very open and forthright way.
JEFFREY BROWN: And let me ask you, briefly, a lot of these former colleagues have been very harsh since your book has started to come out. Are you surprised by the personal nature of much of the criticism?
SCOTT MCCLELLAN: Yes. I mean, I expected some of the response that came, but some of it is surprising, in terms of how personal it is.
I knew that the White House did not want me to go out there and openly look at my experience and honestly and forthrightly discuss what I learned from it.
This is not a White House that is used to reflecting, unfortunately, because reflection is important. That's how we learn, and that's how we avoid these mistakes in the future.
And that's one of the key objectives, is to make sure we don't repeat these mistakes, but also to get us beyond the permanent campaign culture or the excesses of permanent campaign culture.
It's very interesting that the two leading -- or the two nominees, almost-nominee, in terms of Senator Obama, have been talking about some of these very issues.
Senator McCain went out two weeks ago and said he was going to end the permanent campaign. Senator Barack Obama has talked about change the way Washington works. It's very similar to the message the president advocated or ran on in 2000 when he won the presidency.
Now, I don't think you can end the permanent campaign, but you've got to minimize those destructive excesses. And that's what I talk about in the book, and I offer some ideas for doing that, such as appointing a deputy chief of staff for governing inside the White House that is a statesman or stateswoman who is focused on making sure that they're a counterweight to all the political influence.
There's always going to be a strong -- in this day and age, a strong group of political advisers that are focused on politics.
But we need to make sure we're also focusing on, how are we going about deliberation and compromise with members of Congress and working in a spirit of bipartisanship, so that they restore the trust and not continue the suspicion and warfare that exists in Washington today.
JEFFREY BROWN: All right, Scott McClellan, thank you very much.
SCOTT MCCLELLAN: Jeff, thanks.
David Brooks
David Brooks
New York Times Columnist
The blandness and clichedness of this sort of book exemplifies a lot of the clones that were walking around the White House, who never could challenge the president [...] because, frankly, they didn't know anything about policy.
Reaction to the book
RAY SUAREZ: For some reaction, we're joined once again by Mark Shields and David Brooks.
Mark, does Scott McClellan's book help fill in the story of the last seven years of the Bush White House?
MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated Columnist: I think there's a couple of good points in the book that have kind of been lost in much of the discussion about why he did it and why he did it now and all the rest.
The first, Ray, is that the decision to go to war, according to Scott McClellan, was basically made in the summer of 2002. There was no real consideration given to what the Congress or the allies or anybody else, the United Nations. That decision was made, signed, sealed and delivered long before the marketing plan was rolled out on or about Labor Day.
And the second was that the president was driven, the president for whom he worked, and came to Washington with, and admittedly professes still to be quite fond of, was driven by that desire not to experience what his father experienced and to lose after a first term, to win a second term.
And that had to have been further fueled and re-fueled, Ray, by the results of the 2000 election, where they thought they were going to win easily, ended up losing the popular vote, and only prevailing on a Supreme Court one-vote decision.
RAY SUAREZ: Did you learn anything from reading this?
DAVID BROOKS, Columnist, New York Times: Nothing.
RAY SUAREZ: Really?
DAVID BROOKS: I read most of the book. And I found it -- no original stories, no interesting observations, cliche-ridden, and bland.
And to me, it exemplified what the problem with the Bush administration was. There was spin, and God knows there was a lot of spin. But the real problem was there was no debate.
There were 20 percent of the people in that administration, in this administration, or especially in the first term, who were smart and were capable of having a debate. There were a lot of intellectual mediocrities who would never have a debate, did not have the intellectual chops to have a debate. And McClellan, frankly, is one of them.
And the blandness and clichedness of this sort of book exemplifies a lot of the clones that were walking around the White House, who never could challenge the president, never could challenge anybody, because, frankly, they didn't know anything about policy. They didn't have the intellectual smarts to make that kind of challenge.
And so what you had was a culture without debate. And to me, nothing was ever tested. And you had a few people making the decisions, nobody asking questions.
And McClellan -- he's not expected to. He was the press secretary. He's not expected to. But essentially, you had no culture of testing decisionmaking, and that was the problem.
And then the book exemplifies the mediocrity that pervaded parts of the administration.
RAY SUAREZ: That lack of culture of debate, was it only really a problem because of the times we were living in, the attack against the United States and the preparations for war and such?
DAVID BROOKS: 9/11 shut down the debate even more. There was also an element of worship of the president of people like McClellan. They worshipped him, and they couldn't challenge him.
I told this story recently. I went in for an interview with the president with a couple columnists. This was a couple of years ago. One of my colleagues was a guy named Max Boot, is a guy named Max, a military columnist then at the L.A. Times.
He challenged Bush hard on troop levels, on the conduct of the war, and they had a very tense exchange for 10 or 15 minutes, really going back at each other, Bush getting red and really going back.
But Bush kept saying in the middle of it -- it was a little scary, because Bush was really hot -- but he kept saying, "I want you to know I'm enjoying this. I'm enjoying this."
And it was like a guy who had never had a chance to actually have an argument. And he didn't mind it, but nobody ever came in. I think very few people came in and gave him that argument.
I think he would have welcomed it. I certainly know the presidency would have benefited from that kind of argument.
RAY SUAREZ: One area, Mark, where there seems to have been some revelations, some people who followed the original case closely say that McClellan's narrative about the Scooter Libby trial, the exposure of Valerie Plame, fills in some gaps in what we knew before and also brings us as close to the top as we've ever gotten from an insider.
MARK SHIELDS: Ray, he's been accused of disloyalty by all the loyalists in the Bush campaign and the Bush operation. And Scott McClellan actually -- it's esprit de corps about disloyalty. And he feels that he was disloyally treated and that he was lied to by both Karl Rove and Scooter Libby and quite possibly the vice president of the United States, who then robbed him of his integrity and his own self-respect by sending him out to lie.
They knew he was lying. He did not know, according to him, that he was lying. He also pointed out the president of the United States, upon being questioned by him, admitted that he had released a National Intelligence Estimate, declassified it, so that the vice president could leak it to friendly press people.
I think the story on the press by the press secretary is one that has to be told. The president, this administration took this country to war against a nation that had never attacked us, never threatened us, had no weapons of mass destruction, could not attack us, even if it wanted to, under the bogus B.S. of a mushroom cloud and all of this other fabrication.
And they did it only because they had a supine Congress that did not question, a Republican Party that abdicated its responsibility, a Democratic Party in Congress that cowered, for the most part, and a complicit...
RAY SUAREZ: And a compliant press corps, then?
MARK SHIELDS: And a complicit press corps.
DAVID BROOKS: No, I don't think so. Listen, if you've got the Clinton administration, the CIA, every defense agency, every intelligence agency in France, in Germany, and around the world all saying, "He has WMD," there's no way reporters are going to be able to challenge it. There was an absolute consensus about this.
RAY SUAREZ: Well, I don't think Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei were in the consensus. But let's move on. I've got to go. Have a great weekend, fellows.
MARK SHIELDS: OK. Thank you.
RAY SUAREZ: The Online NewsHour will have live coverage of the Democratic committee meeting throughout the day Saturday. Their reports can be found on our Vote 2008 site at PBS.org. So check in over the weekend for updated reports.
Saturday, May 31, 2008
McClellan Defends Controversial Account of White House Years
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Social inequality leads to gap in US life expectancy
By Jerry White
26 March 2008
A series of recent reports highlights the magnitude of social distress confronting tens of millions of ordinary working people in the United States as the impact of the economic downturn and growing gap between the super-rich and the rest of the population hits home.
Perhaps the sharpest example of the class divide that permeates American society is a report by researchers at the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which found “large and growing” disparities in life expectancy that coincide with the growth of social inequality over the last two decades.
The New York Times cited a report based on earlier findings by an HHS demographer and a professor at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, which found “widening socioeconomic inequalities in life expectancy” at birth and at every age level.
On average, US life expectancy rose by three years (from 73.7 to 76.7) between 1980 and 2000, but the largest gains were made by the most affluent layers of the population, leading to a growing gap in life expectancy between the lower and higher income groups.
Dr. Gopal Singh and Professor Mohammed Siahpush measured social and economic conditions in every US county by examining 2000 census data on education, income, poverty, housing and other factors.
The report said in 1980-1982, people in the most affluent group could expect to live 2.8 years longer than those in the poorest (75.8 versus 73 years). By 1998-2000, the difference in life expectancy had increased to 4.5 years (79.2 versus 74.7), and it continues to grow, Dr. Singh said.
“Life expectancy was higher for the most affluent in 1980 than for the most deprived group in 2000,” he said. “If you look at the extremes in 2000,” Dr. Singh added, “men in the most deprived counties had 10 years’ shorter life expectancy than women in the most affluent counties (71.5 versus 81.3 years).”
The Times said while that while researchers differ over what causes the disparity, many suggest it includes the lack of health insurance among lower-income people, which makes them less likely to receive checkups, screenings, diagnostic tests, prescription drugs and other types of care. It is estimated that some 47 million Americans lack health care coverage.
In addition, higher income and more educated people have greater access to new medical advances to fight cancer and heart disease, while lower-income people continue to smoke at a disproportionately higher level, live in less safe neighborhoods, have less access to healthy foods and are subjected to increased levels of stress. A recent study by the US Department of Veteran Affairs also found that racial discrimination led to “less aggressive medical care” for minorities.
Nancy Krieger, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, has found that trends in life expectancy have paralleled the decrease or increase in social inequality over the last four decades. Kreiger ,who investigated the rate of premature mortality—dying before the age of 65—and infant death from 1960 to 2002, told the Times that inequities shrank between 1966 and 1980, but then widened over the next 20 years.
“The recent trend of growing disparities in health status is not inevitable,” she said. “From 1966 to 1980, socioeconomic disparities declined in tandem with a decline in mortality rates.” She said the creation of Medicaid and Medicare—the two major federal programs for the poor and elderly—along with health centers, the social programs under President Lyndon Johnson’s “war on poverty” and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 had likely contributed to narrowing the earlier inequalities in health.
The dismantling of these programs—by both Republican and Democratic administrations—over the last three decades, and the radical redistribution of wealth to the top that has resulted, has produced a catastrophe for masses of people, including cutting their years of life.
The report on life expectancy coincided with a rash of new data detailing the widespread suffering caused by the loss of jobs, the collapse of the housing market and the combination of inflation and stagnating or declining wages. The reports noted the following:
* By the end of 2007, 36 percent of consumers’ disposable income went to food, energy and medical care, a bigger portion than at any time since records were first kept in 1960, according to Merrill Lynch.
* An analysis of government data by the Washington Post found that prices for basic staples like groceries, gasoline and health care have risen 9.2 percent since 2006. This means a family of four, which made $45,000 a year, is spending an extra $972 annually, assuming it did not cut back on such items because of higher prices. During that same period average earnings for non-managerial workers rose by only 5 percent, translating into a de facto wage cut for tens of millions of Americans.
Middle-income families are being forced to spend $378 more per year on gasoline and an extra $38 on fuel oil. The price for dairy products has risen 15 percent since 2006, fruit and vegetable prices are up 10 percent, and cereals and bakery products are up 8 percent.
* Even though productivity is increasing, inflation-adjusted median family income has fallen 2.6 percent since 2001—chopping nearly $1,000 off a family’s yearly income.
The fall in wages has in part been caused by rising medical costs, which has led employers to offer smaller pay raises. At the same time wages have been eroded by rising medical costs and efforts by corporations to impose greater out-of-pocket expenses on employees. Since 2001, premiums for family health care coverage have increased 78 percent, according to a 2007 report by the Kaiser Family Foundation cited by the Washington Post.
* Food stamp rolls have reached a record high in Ohio, with 1.1 million people—or 10 percent of the state’s population—receiving federal subsidies, according to the state welfare agency. Caseloads have nearly doubled since 2001, when an estimated 628,000 people were in the program, according to the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.
“The economy and loss of manufacturing jobs are at the root of what’s going on,” Jack Frech, director of the welfare agency in Athens County in southeast Ohio, told the Cincinnati Enquirer. “But lately,” he added, it’s “the rising cost of transportation and food—people who were barely getting by, are not getting by. It has pressed folks to the edge to have to rely on food stamps.”
In most cases families are eligible for $100 a month in food stamps if they make up to 130 percent of the federal poverty level—$22,880 for a family of three—and have assets no greater than $2,000. Poverty experts say another 500,000 residents in the state are eligible for the program but are not enrolled.
All of these reports depict an unfolding social calamity in the US. In the face of this, both candidates for the Democratic Party presidential nomination—Illinois Senator Barack Obama and New York Senator Hillary Clinton—have proposed less than half-measures to address the collapse of the housing market, the destruction of decent-paying jobs and the health care crisis.
In an address at the University of Pennsylvania on Monday, Clinton called on President Bush to appoint “an emergency working group on foreclosures” to recommend new ways to confront housing finance troubles. She said the panel should be led by financial experts such as Robert Rubin, treasury secretary in her husband’s administration, former Federal Reserve chairmen Alan Greenspan, and Paul Volcker.
All of these figures are implicated in economic policies over the last three decades that channeled trillions of dollars into the hands of the richest segments of the population through the destruction of some 6 million industrial jobs and the permanent lowering of working class living standards.
Obama is just as opposed as Clinton to any radical redistribution of wealth from the top to bottom. While proposing “middle class” tax breaks, which will hardly make a dent in the disaster facing working families, he has rejected any return to the tax rates on the rich that prevailed in the 1960s—a period when social inequality actually lessened somewhat—saying last year he was opposed to “confiscatory taxes that get in the way of economic growth.”
Article Source: World Socialist Web Site
Many Muslims Turn to Home Schooling
Many Muslims Turn to Home Schooling
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
March 26, 2008
LODI, Calif. — Like dozens of other Pakistani-American girls here, Hajra Bibi stopped attending the local public school when she reached puberty, and began studying at home.
Her family wanted her to clean and cook for her male relatives, and had also worried that other American children would mock both her Muslim religion and her traditional clothes.
“Some men don’t like it when you wear American clothes — they don’t think it is a good thing for girls,” said Miss Bibi, 17, now studying at the 12th-grade level in this agricultural center some 70 miles east of San Francisco. “You have to be respectable.”
Across the United States, Muslims who find that a public school education clashes with their religious or cultural traditions have turned to home schooling. That choice is intended partly as a way to build a solid Muslim identity away from the prejudices that their children, boys and girls alike, can face in schoolyards. But in some cases, as in Ms. Bibi’s, the intent is also to isolate their adolescent and teenage daughters from the corrupting influences that they see in much of American life.
About 40 percent of the Pakistani and other Southeast Asian girls of high school age who are enrolled in the district here are home-schooled, though broader statistics on the number of Muslim children being home-schooled, and how well they do academically, are elusive. Even estimates on the number of all American children being taught at home swing broadly, from one million to two million.
No matter what the faith, parents who make the choice are often inspired by a belief that public schools are havens for social ills like drugs and that they can do better with their children at home.
“I don’t want the behavior,” said Aya Ismael, a Muslim mother home-schooling four children near San Jose. “Little girls are walking around dressing like hoochies, cursing and swearing and showing disrespect toward their elders. In Islam we believe in respect and dignity and honor.”
Still, the subject of home schooling is a contentious one in various Muslim communities, with opponents arguing that Muslim children are better off staying in the system and, if need be, fighting for their rights.
Robina Asghar, a Muslim who does social work in Stockton, Calif., says the fact that her son was repeatedly branded a “terrorist” in school hallways sharpened his interest in civil rights and inspired a dream to become a lawyer. He now attends a Catholic high school.
“My son had a hard time in school, but every time something happened it was a learning moment for him,” Mrs. Asghar said. “He learned how to cope. A lot of people were discriminated against in this country, but the only thing that brings change is education.”
Many parents, however, would rather their children learn in a less difficult environment, and opt to keep them home.
Hina Khan-Mukhtar decided to tutor her three sons at home and to send them to a small Muslim school cooperative established by some 15 Bay Area families for subjects like Arabic, science and carpentry. She made up her mind after visiting her oldest son’s prospective public school kindergarten, where each pupil had assembled a scrapbook titled “Why I Like Pigs.” Mrs. Khan-Mukhtar read with dismay what the children had written about the delicious taste of pork, barred by Islam. “I remembered at that age how important it was to fit in,” she said.
Many Muslim parents contacted for this article were reluctant to talk, saying Muslim home-schoolers were often portrayed as religious extremists. That view is partly fueled by the fact that Adam Gadahn, an American-born spokesman for Al Qaeda, was home-schooled in rural California.
“There is a tendency to make home-schoolers look like antisocial fanatics who don’t want their kids in the system,” said Nabila Hanson, who argues that most home-schoolers, like herself, make an extra effort to find their children opportunities for sports, music or field trips with other people.
Lodi’s Muslims also attracted unwanted national attention when one local man, Hamid Hayat, was sentenced last year to 24 years in prison on a terrorism conviction that his relatives say was largely due to a fabricated confession. (Had he been more Americanized, they say, he would have known to ask for a lawyer as soon as the F.B.I. appeared.)
Parents who home-school tend to be converts, Mrs. Khan-Mukhtar said. Immigrant parents she has encountered generally oppose the idea, seeing educational opportunities in America as a main reason for coming.
If so, then Fawzia Mai Tung is an exception, a Chinese Muslim immigrant who home-schools three daughters in Phoenix. She spent many sleepless nights worried that her children would not excel on standardized tests, until she discovered how low the scores at the local schools were. Her oldest son, also home-schooled, is now applying to medical school.
In some cases, home-schooling is used primarily as a way to isolate girls like Miss Bibi, the Pakistani-American here in Lodi.
Some 80 percent of the city’s 2,500 Muslims are Pakistani, and many are interrelated villagers who try to recreate the conservative social atmosphere back home. A decade ago many girls were simply shipped back to their villages once they reached adolescence.
“Their families want them to retain their culture and not become Americanized,” said Roberta Wall, the principal of the district-run Independent School, which supervises home schooling in Lodi and where home-schooled students attend weekly hourlong tutorials.
Of more than 90 Pakistani or other Southeast Asian girls of high school age who are enrolled in the Lodi district, 38 are being home-schooled. By contrast, just 7 of the 107 boys are being home-schooled, and usually the reason is that they were falling behind academically.
As soon as they finish their schooling, the girls are married off, often to cousins brought in from their families’ old villages.
The parents “want their girls safe at home and away from evil things like boys, drinking and drugs,” said Kristine Leach, a veteran teacher with the Independent School.
The girls follow the regular high school curriculum, squeezing in study time among housework, cooking, praying and reading the Koran. The teachers at the weekly tutorials occasionally crack jokes of the “what, are your brothers’ arms broken?” variety, but in general they tread lightly, sensing that their students obey family and tradition because they have no alternative.
“I do miss my friends,” Miss Bibi said of fellow students with whom she once attended public school. “We would hang out and do fun things, help each other with our homework.”
But being schooled apart does have its benefit, she added. “We don’t want anyone to point a finger at us,” she said, “to say that we are bad.”
Mrs. Asghar, the Stockton woman who argues against home schooling, takes exception to the idea of removing girls from school to preserve family honor, calling it a barrier to assimilation.
“People who think like this are stuck in a time capsule,” she said. “When kids know more than their parents, the parents lose control. I think that is a fear in all of us.”
Aishah Bashir, now an 18-year-old Independent School student, was sent back to Pakistan when she was 12 and stayed till she was 16. She had no education there.
Asked about home schooling, she said it was the best choice. But she admitted that the choice was not hers and, asked if she would home-school her own daughter, stared mutely at the floor. Finally she said quietly: “When I have a daughter, I want her to learn more than me. I want her to be more educated.”
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
*
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
US universities turn schools for spies and more
WASHINGTON (AFP) — That young American exchange student who stayed with you last summer to do a language immersion course could be part of a new program to educate the next generation of US intelligence agents.
But don't worry: even if she does end up working for the CIA, the likelihood of her becoming an undercover operative is slim.
"Intelligence doesn't just mean spying, skulking around in a trench coat," said Jim Robbins, director of the Intelligence Community Center for Academic Excellence (IC CAE) at Trinity University in Washington, one of nine programs aimed at revamping the US intelligence community.
"The CIA is the best known part of it, but the intelligence community writ large involves all the agencies throughout the government that are involved in the collection and analysis of information about threats," he said.
Trinity opened the doors to the pilot course for the Intelligence Community Centers for Academic Excellence three years ago.
The program is funded by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the umbrella agency which oversees the 16 intelligence agencies in the United States, some of which -- such as the Treasury or Department of the Environment -- would not be linked automatically to intelligence activities.
Since 2005, the center has swelled, with eight more universities across the United States signing on to the program that wants to revamp the way young Americans perceive intelligence -- it isn't just spying -- and are trained to work in the very diverse field.
The program aims to "bring in groups to the intelligence community -- women, minorities, what have you -- who were previously under-represented," said Robbins.
Schools which are selected to be part of the program -- and there is not an Ivy League university, the formerly all-male schools which used to be the preferred hunting ground for intelligence recruiters, on the radar screen -- receive a grant from the ODNI, and set up their own, unique curriculum.
"We don't want a cookie cutter approach," said Dr Lenora Peters Gant, the ODNI official who oversees the CAE program.
"We want the curriculum to be interdisciplinary.
"Think about this: wouldn't it be nice to have an engineer who knows something about world religions, world cultures and can speak Farsi or Urdu?" she said.
The ODNI grant is used to send students abroad to study a language and learn about another culture.
Tanjier Belton went to France in 2006 from Trinity to study French. She aims to study law and then go on to work for the CIA.
Jesmeen Khan got a stipend to go to Austria, the Czech Republic and Hungary last year. Her tentative ambition is to work for the State Department.
"Every university that has a grant has to identify students to become IC CAE scholars," Gant explained.
"Those students are required to go abroad and study a language or study culture and they get a stipend to go abroad," she said.
Florida International University (FIU) sent 16 students abroad last year as part of its IC CAE program.
"People want to go to China, to Brazil to study Portuguese, to Spain. They want to study Arabic, which is a critical language need. So far we have had people go to Morocco, Jordan and Egypt," David Twigg, associate director of the Gordon Institute for Public Policy and Citizenship Studies at FIU, told AFP.
"They're not going there as spies; they're going there as people who are trying to understand what's going on."
When the students return to the United States and complete their studies, they are under no obligation to work for one of the agencies under the umbrella of the ODNI.
"We do go out and recruit them, but we don't make them work for us," said Gant.
But many of the more than 400 scholars who have been in the program "want to come and work for us because of the mission," she said, slipping momentarily into the kind of spy-speak you hear in a James Bond film.
The lapse didn't last long.
"They want to do something that's altruistic for the world and America. They want to do something that will make a difference in everyday lives," Gant said.
Saturday, March 8, 2008
US leads world in imprisoning its people
More than one in 100 adults behind bars
By Kate Randall
29 February 2008
In both raw figures and as a percentage of the population, the US is the world leader in the rate at which it puts its people behind bars. A new report using state-by-state data says a record 2,319,258 Americans were in jail or prison at the start of 2008—one out of every 99.1 adults.
The report by the Pew Center on the States also documents record increases in financial outlays for incarceration, with the 50 US states spending more than $49 billion on prisons last year, almost five times more than the $11 billion spent 20 years ago.
The statistics in the report reflect a society that, while exporting violence in aggressive wars abroad, metes out parallel punishment on its population at home.
The rate of increase for prison costs last year was six times higher than the rate of increase for higher education spending. With many US states strapped for cash and facing budget shortfalls, the spending for prisons and jails has resulted in a proportionate decrease in spending on education and other social needs.
The study notes that mandatory sentencing laws and “get tough on crime” measures pushed by state legislatures have contributed to the burgeoning prison population. Even in states where crime rates have decreased, the numbers of imprisoned continue to grow.
A 1986 federal law mandated prison terms for crack cocaine offenses that are up to eight times longer than those involving powdered cocaine. Minorities, workers and the poor are far more likely to be sentenced for crack cocaine offenses.
The rate of incarceration for African Americans is significantly higher than for the overall population. An astonishing one of every nine black men between the ages of 20 and 34 is behind bars. For black women ages 35 to 39, one in 100 is imprisoned, compared with one in 355 white women of the same age.
Between 1990 and 2000, the prison population increased by about 80 percent. One of the biggest contributing factors was the adoption by states of “three-strikes-and-you’re-out” laws mandating draconian sentences, no matter the nature of the third offense. Legislation was also passed curtailing the discretion of state parole boards in deciding when an inmate can be released.
Notably, these increased incarceration figures have had little or negative impact on the rate of repeat offenders.
The incarcerated population increased last year in 36 states as well in as the federal prison system. The largest percentage increase was in Kentucky, which had 12 percent more inmates in state prisons and jails at the beginning of this year than at the beginning of 2007. While the state’s crime rate has increased by only about 3 percent over the last three decades, the state’s prison population has increased by 600 percent.
As in the US South as a whole, the prison population in Florida has surged, close to doubling over the last 15 years. The state’s inmate population increased from 53,000 to more than 97,000 between 1993 and 1997. The Pew study notes that analysts attribute this growth mainly to a host of correctional policies and practices adopted by the state.
In 1995, the Florida legislature abolished “good time” credits and discretionary release by the state’s parole boards. The study notes that now “all prisoners—regardless of their crime, prior record, or risk to recidivate—serve 85 percent of their sentence.”
A new “zero tolerance” policy adopted by Florida also mandated that probation officers report all technical violations by paroled prisoners. This measure alone has resulted in a 12,000 jump in the prison population while the actual crime rate has declined.
Without a change in these policies, the prison population in Florida is expected to reach nearly 125,000 inmates by 2013. The report notes that based on this projection, “the state will run out of prison capacity by early 2009 and will need to add another 16,500 beds to keep pace.”
The amount spent to keep Americans behind bars is as staggering as the numbers incarcerated. Thirteen states now spend more than $1 billion a year out of their general funds on their corrections systems.
California is the leader, spending $8.8 billion last year on the more than 171,000 prisoners in the state, a 216 percent increase over 20 years earlier. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger last year signed a bill authorizing $7.9 billion in additional spending on corrections, to pay for 53,000 more prison and jail beds.
The Pew study shows that state corrections budgets now consume 6.8 percent of state general funds. This means that one in every 15 dollars from states’ discretionary funds goes towards prison costs.
As a percentage, in fiscal year 2006 transportation was the only category of spending by states to increase more than costs for prisons and jails, which increased by 9.2 percent during this period. This increase outpaced spending on education and Medicaid.
A comparison of the funds spent by states on higher education with spending on incarceration provides a revealing glimpse into priorities. In 2007, states collectively spent $72.88 billion on higher education, an increase of 121 percent over the $33 billion spent in 1987. During this same period, prison-related spending rose 315 percent, with states spending a combined $44 billion in 2007, up from $10.6 billion two decades earlier.
As both a percentage of its population and in real numbers, the US prison population outranks the inmate populations of the 26 European countries with the largest numbers of prisoners. The Russian Federation, with a reported prison population of 889,598, is second. Denmark, with 3,626 prisoners, has the lowest rate of these countries.
These 26 countries, with a combined population of 802.4 million, imprison 1.8 million; the US, with a population of about 300 million, imprisons close to 2.3 million. According to the study, China, with an estimated population of 1.3 billion, has the second highest number of prisoners behind bars, 1.5 million.
These extraordinary figures are one reflection of the enormous social contradictions of American society. The United States is the most unequal of any industrialized country and ranks high on every measure of stress, depression, alienation and other social ills. Despite the US’s self-declared status as a beacon of democracy and freedom, American capitalism has no humane, rational or progressive response to social problems. Instead, social problems are treated as police matters.
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
U.S. Intelligence Agencies Militarizing
U.S. Intelligence Agencies Militarizing
Broad Changes Include Placing Military Officers in Leadership Positions
Without much notice, something strange has happened to the intelligence community during the second term of President George W. Bush. The leaders of the 16-agency, $45 billion-a-year spy apparatus have started wearing stars and gold braid on their shoulders.
It’s more than a sartorial change. For the first time in American history, the people holding the most important positions in the civilian U.S. intelligence agencies and offices are now all military or ex-military men. First Gen. Michael Hayden, an active-duty Air Force officer, replaced civilian Porter Goss as the head of the Central Intelligence Agency in 2006. Then retired Vice Adm. Mike McConnell replaced civilian John Negroponte as Director of National Intelligence—the overall leader of the intelligence community—in 2007. Shortly thereafter, retired Air Force Gen. Jim Clapper ascended to chief of Pentagon intelligence, ultimately replacing civilian Steve Cambone. That’s to say nothing of the uniformed leaders of the various defense intelligence agencies, most notably Army Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander at the National Security Agency. Indeed, the most significant non-military head of an intelligence agency is Randall M. Fort, the bureaucrat who helms the State Department’s relatively puny Bureau of Intelligence and Research.
"There needs to be a semi-independent voice that voices the broader strategic perspectives and is not driven by the [intelligence] demands of day," said Robert Hutchings, who chaired the National Intelligence Council from 2003 until 2005. "The worry is not that Mike Hayden and Mike McConnell happen to be military officers; it’s that the system is now skewed to current intelligence, driven by military operations. That’s leaving too little left over for strategic analysis of what’s going on more broadly. And that leads to [an echo chamber effect]: this is what’s presented to policy-makers, and it just reinforces the worldview they began with."
For the first time in American history, the people holding the most important positions in the civilian U.S. intelligence agencies and offices are now all military or ex-military men.
To a some degree, the shift is understandable, Hutchings and others said. In the middle of two ground wars, it would perhaps be more surprising if war-fighter support didn’t eclipse mid-to-long-term analysis. Then there’s the broader structural fact that Pentagon-based intelligence assets account for, by most estimates, nearly 90 percent of the annual intelligence budget.
But as a question of emphasis, the intelligence community risks a certain myopia. "There is a genuine risk of over-investing in military intelligence at the expense of larger strategic concerns," said Steven Aftergood, an intelligence-policy analyst at the Federation of American Scientists. "We could end up doing those things we know how to do well and failing to meet the new and emerging challenges that we don’t quite know how to address. If the war Iraq resolved itself, and terrorism receded as a threat, we would still have serious intelligence challenges to contend with, and those are in danger of being shortchanged."
Even if terrorism doesn’t recede as a threat, Hutchings contends that the over-militarization of intelligence risks short-changing that as well. In December, he excoriated the intelligence community before a House intelligence sub-committee for losing sight of the bigger strategic picture. "The creation of the National Counterterrorism Center may have enhanced inter-agency coordination among terrorist operators," Hutchings said, "which is a good thing, but it has surely weakened coordination between them and the country and regional experts," he said. "The net result is that the intelligence community is probably stronger in tactical counterterrorist coordination but is surely weaker in strategic counterterrorism. While we are looking for the next car bomb, we may be missing the next generation of terrorist threats."
One analyst at the National Counterterrorism Center disputed Hutchings—up to a point. "In terms of warfighting [support], the folks who own all the units on the ground are perhaps two or three agencies, and they’re not [part] of us," said the analyst, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "He’s correct, but this is the wrong example."
As much as the militarization of intelligence owes to the structural pressures of wartime, there is an element of necessity as well, according to intelligence historian Matthew Aid. "When talking with civilian intelligence officials, they say that when [the administration] went looking for a replacement for [former Director of National Intelligence] John Negroponte, the few civilians who were qualified for the job turned them down," said Aid, a visiting fellow at George Washington University’s National Security Archive. "Intrinsic problems currently exist in intelligence today—the politicization, there’s a host of problems. If you’re an intelligence professional and a civilian, it’s almost a career killer to accept a senior position in the U.S. intelligence community now. A lot of people are waiting the nine months or however long for the next administration before accepting a promotion."
Aid observed that militarization is not a recent problem for the intelligence community. "Since the end of World War II, there’s been an inherent tension between military and civilian consumers [of intelligence], who slug it out for the hearts and minds of collectors," he said. "In times of war—and we’re in two and a half of them now—the military has taken control of the collection process. ... You end up having to give short shrift to strategic targets—North Korea, Iran, the former Soviet Union, the former Yugoslavia, China. There are only a finite amount of resources to play with."
In 2006, Thomas Fingar, the chief of analysis for the Director of National Intelligence, defended the intelligence community’s commitment to long-term analysis in a letter to The New Republic."The DNI has established a new ‘Long Range Analysis’ unit within the [National Intelligence Council], in accordance with a recommendation made by the WMD Commission," he wrote. "This new unit is purposely walled off from current demands so that it can focus on producing integrated, in-depth, strategic assessments and serve as a catalyst for such work throughout the [intelligence community]."
But close intelligence watchers don’t see the intelligence community possessing such expertise with long-term analysis. "Support to military operations is certainly the most urgent day-to-day concern at the moment," Aftergood said. "But there are other concerns that may fall by the wayside as result of the focus on those day-to-day concerns." (Full disclosure: Fingar wrote to the magazine to dispute a story I wrote.)
The Office of the Director National Intelligence said Fingar was not available for an interview for this story. Nor did it address a list of questions sent to two public-affairs officers.
Blaming the intelligence community alone for the shift in focus to military matters misses the point somewhat, Hutchings contends. "It’s the president’s call," he said. "There needs to be a better sense at the very top that we need a broader perspective if we’re to cope successfully with the multiple challenges we face."
And the Republican Party has been eager to follow Bush’s lead. When Democratic lawmakers proposed last spring to have the intelligence community study the security implications of global climate change, their GOP counterparts blasted the effort. "Our government should not commit expensive spy satellites and human intelligence sources to target something as undefined as the environment," said Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.). Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), the ranking Republican on the House intelligence committee, derided the idea of "tak[ing] resources from other places" to study the impact of global warming.
The placement of prominent active or retired military officials at the top of the intelligence community may not be the heart of the problem … but their ascendency entrenches it.
The placement of prominent active or retired military officials at the top of the intelligence community may not be the heart of the problem, Aftergood contends, but their ascendency entrenches it. "It means that the leaders of the intelligence community have all arisen out of a military mindset and are habituated to seeing intelligence challenges and responses within a certain framework," Aftergood said. "It means both conceiving of threats and responses in military terms, and being unresponsive to issues and insights that might arise outside that familiar framework."
For Hutchings, now a professor at Princeton University, the militarization of intelligence reveals an apathy to the necessity of strategic forecasting—a critical component of national security. "People don’t really value long-view intelligence," he lamented. "They may understand [the need for it] on some abstract level, or see diminishing resources spent other issues or topics, but they don’t care. They care about what they need right now: intelligence support for warfighters, whether in Afghanistan or Iraq."
He continued, "I think it’s quite acute. I’m not speaking about specific dangers, I’m talking about the broad challenge of international terrorism. We’ve gotten so operational and so over-militarized that we’re only capable of thinking of this challenge in one dimension."
The last time that happened, he did not need to add, three thousand Americans died on a clear September morning.
CIA Monitors YouTube For Intelligence
U.S. spies are looking increasingly online for intelligence and they've become major consumers of social media. By Thomas Claburn
InformationWeek
U.S. spies, now under the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), are looking increasingly online for intelligence; they have become major consumers of social media. "We're looking at YouTube, which carries some unique and honest-to-goodness intelligence," said Doug Naquin, director of the DNI Open Source Center (OSC), in remarks to the Central Intelligence Retirees' Association last October. "We're looking at chat rooms and things that didn't exist five years ago, and trying to stay ahead. We have groups looking at what they call 'Citizens Media': people taking pictures with their cell In November 2005, the OSC subsumed the CIA's Foreign Broadcast Information Service, which housed the agency's foreign media analysts. The OSC is responsible for collecting and analyzing public information, including Internet content. Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists project on government secrey, posted transcript of Naquin's remarks on his blog. "I found the speech interesting and thoughtful," he said in an e-mail. "I would not have thought of YouTube as an obvious source of intelligence, but I think it's a good sign that the Open Not everyone in the intelligence community sees the value in open source intelligence. "[W]e still have an education problem on both ends, both with the folks who are proponents of open source but perhaps don't know exactly why, and folks internally who are still wondering why I am sitting at the same table they are," said Naquin. But further acceptance of open source intelligence, of the Internet and social media, seems inevitable in the intelligence community if only because traditional media is becoming less relevant. "What we're seeing [in] actuality is a decline, a relatively rapid decline, in the impact of the printed press -- traditional media," said Naquin. "A lot more is digital, and a lot more is online. It's also a lot more social. Interaction is a much bigger part of media and news than it used to be." Despite its name the Open Source Center hasn't proven to be particularly open with its findings. "One area where Mr. Naquin's Center falls short, in my opinion, is in public access to its products, which is very limited," said Aftergood. "I know that there are some copyright barriers to open publication of foreign media items. But there shouldn't be any such barriers to release of the Center's own analytical products. And yet they are hard to come by. I hope this is one aspect of the Center's activities that will be reconsidered."
Monday, March 3, 2008
Ohio Muslims unite behind Obama
A large majority of Muslim-Americans voted for George W Bush on the road to the White House eight years ago.
Among them are the 60,000 Muslims of the economically depressed Cleveland area.
They are mostly middle-class naturalised citizens, disappointed with the Bush administration's record and with a powerful sense that their religion has been misrepresented in the years since 9/11.
The city boasts Ohio's largest mosque, a building that until a few years ago was a Christian church, complete with a wooden spire, but is now attached to the Shiite Unity Center.
| | I'd vote for Obama - he has some new ideas Mohammad Assar Shiite Unite Center |
"Republicans think there are more votes from other sources, so they forget and ignore," said Mohammad Assar, a placard-carrying Bush supporter in the past.
"I'd vote for Obama. He has some new ideas."
He was speaking to the BBC, with other leaders of the mosque, after evening prayers.
There was exasperation at the on-going war, and a sense that social justice - a central tenet of Islam - is being ignored: "We all know that in the US Constitution it calls for peace and justice, but if we look around the world do we see any peace and justice?"
Uneasy about being publicly critical, most asked not to be identified.
"We are sometimes given the short end of the stick but in general we're treated fairly... I agree with the brothers [that] if you look at the cost of the war in Iraq so far, how much of these billions could have saved lives in the US alone," said one.
Identity politics
The fact that Mr Obama has Muslim roots on his Kenyan father's side, despite being a committed Christian, clearly makes him the most intriguing candidate, for many here - though may be less so for second-generation immigrants.
Zaid Farukhi, who works in his father's multi-million-dollar electronics business, says Mr Obama may be his choice this time round, but escaping identity-politics altogether would be his preferred position.
| | When you're making prayer, regardless of whether you're a doctor, lawyer, multi-millionaire or king, you've got to stand shoulder-to-shoulder Khalid Samad Youth leader |
"Most of the Muslims in America have become independents now, which in a sense is probably better for them because they need to get more active in politics," he said.
The unifying nature of Islamic values is well-illustrated in Cleveland by the close ties that exist between upwardly mobile immigrants and the self-described indigenous Muslim converts.
"When you're making prayer, regardless of whether you're a doctor, lawyer, multi-millionaire or king, you've got to stand shoulder-to-shoulder," says Khalid Samad, an African-American Muslim convert, who works with inner-city youths.
He does acknowledge, however, that the historical concerns of Muslim African-Americans are different from, say, a newly-arrived doctor from Pakistan.
Mr Samad is actively campaigning for Barack Obama, and trying to bring minority groups together, including the local Latino voting bloc.
'Media demonisation'
Building common-cause coalitions is one of the ways that Muslim activists believe they can make their votes - and their issues - count more.
That is certainly the view of another convert, who is playing a central role in educating Cleveland's Muslim population about the voting process.
Julia Shearson's ancestors may have arrived in the first wave of English settlers to America, but now she is dressed like millions of other Muslim women around the world, and running the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) office in the city.
She is well aware of CAIR's role as a lightning rod for criticism from right-wing advocacy groups who regard it as a cloak for so-called Islamofacism.
She rejects the conspiracy theories completely, but contends that Islamophobia - stoked by media demonisation - is a daily threat to all American Muslims.
"We should be drafted as advisors and policy experts, as people who can help understand and help mediate this horrible crisis between America and the Muslim world," she said.
"Exactly when our help could be most utilised, we've been effectively marginalised and stymied and stifled... But at the same time it will never work. A people can never be kept down."
CAIR is not endorsing specific candidates, but she sees the move towards Mr Obama, by the young in particular, as part of a wider awakening.
"What we see happening in the Muslim community is that our young people who before used to go into medicine - their parents are now saying, we have enough doctors - they're all going into journalism, political science, and law."
"It's wonderful to see them really stand up and try and protect their families from these horrible civil rights abuses."