LATE, BUT NOT TOO LATE:

Bush Weighs Reaching Out To ‘Brothers' (ELI LAKE, June 20, 2007, NY Sun)

The Bush administration is quietly weighing the prospect of reaching out to the party that founded modern political Islam, the Muslim Brotherhood.

Still in its early stages and below the radar, the current American deliberations and diplomacy with the organization, known in Arabic as Ikhwan, take on new significance in light of Hamas's successful coup in Gaza last week. The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood is widely reported to have helped create Hamas in 1982. [...]

These developments, in light of Hamas's control of Gaza, suggest that President Bush — who has been careful to distinguish the war on terror from a war on Islam — has done more than any of his predecessors to accept the movement fighting for the merger of mosque and state in the Middle East.

Should Mr. Bush ask his diplomats to forge new channels to the Muslim Brotherhood it would also be a recognition of the gains their parties have made in elections in the last three years. In Egypt, Iraq, and the Palestinian territories, Islamist parties trounced their secular rivals. In part this was because these parties offered an uncorrupt alternative to the more secular parties in power, but some advocates inside the administration also say it reflects a tangible momentum for parties that seek to create Islamic republics. One State Department official yesterday said, "Our policy has to change from more democracy, fewer headscarves."

Had they recognized this sooner they might have prevented a lot of the current mess in Palestine and avoided the Ahmedinejad debacle for Iranians - cutting the deal offered under Khatami -- but it's a big enough change that it's hardly surprising that the bureaucracy would make it slowly.

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 20, 2007 7:37 AM