* Skip to main content: Latino/SBC/Fox Business (Home/Slideshow/Interactive: Fox News/SBC/Latino/Fox Business) * Skip to main content: Fox News/Fox Business (Article Page: Fox News/SBC/Latino/Fox Business) Fox News - Fair & Balanced Fox News Digital Network Fox News Fox Business Small Business Center Fox News Radio Fox News Latino Fox Nation Fox News Insider * Register * Login Account You're logged in as Account * Edit Profile * Logout Wednesday, April 7, 2010 as of 11:14 AM ET Search Site __________________________________________________ Search On Air Now » Anchors and Reporters » * * Home * Video * Politics * U.S. * Opinion * Entertainment * SciTech * Health * Travel * Leisure * World * Sports * On Air Previous Slide Next Slide * Special Report Special Report Weekdays 6p et * Fox Report Fox Report Weekdays 7p et * The O'Reilly Factor The O'Reilly Factor Weekdays 8p et * Hannity Hannity Weekdays 9p et * On The Record On The Record Weekdays 10p et * America Live America Live Weekdays 1p et * America's News HQ America's News HQ Weekends 12p et * America's Newsroom America's Newsroom Weekdays 9a et * The Cost of Freedom The Cost of Freedom Saturday 10a et * The Five The Five Weekdays 5p et * Fox & Friends Fox & Friends Weekdays 6a et * Fox News Sunday Fox News Sunday Sunday 2p et * Fox News Watch Fox News Watch Saturday 2:30p et * Geraldo at Large Geraldo at Large Weekends 10p et * Happening Now Happening Now Weekdays 11a et * Huckabee Huckabee Saturday 8p et * The Journal Editorial Report The Journal Editorial Report Saturday 2p et * Justice with Judge Jeanine Justice with Judge Jeanine Saturday 9p et * Red Eye w/ Gutfeld Red Eye w/ Gutfeld Weekdays 3a et * Studio B Studio B Weekdays 3p et * War Stories War Stories Saturday 2a et * Your World Cavuto Your World Cavuto Weekdays 4p et * Politics Home * Elections * Executive Branch * U.S. Senate * House of Representatives * State & Local * Courts * Pentagon Politics Arab Spring Optimism Gives Way to Fear of Islamic Rise By James Rosen Published October 28, 2011 | FoxNews.com * Print * Email * Share * Comments * Recommend * Tweet From the first stirrings of change in the Middle East nine months ago, optimism at the prospect of 100 million young people rising up to seize their democratic freedoms has been tempered by fear in Western capitals that radical Islamists might also rise up and try to hijack the so-called Arab Spring. And now, many analysts say, that fear has been realized. In Tunisia, where the epic season of unrest began, last Sunday’s historic elections appear to have resulted in an Islamist group winning a governing majority. In Libya, an ex-terrorist once jailed by the Central Intelligence Agency now runs the country’s foremost military organization, and new political leaders speak openly of enacting Sharia, the ultra-harsh code of Islamic law. And in Egypt, where the world’s oldest civilization is bracing for elections next month, rioters have recently forced the evacuation of the Israeli embassy and waged vicious attacks on Coptic Christians. Worrisome in their own right, these developments also raise difficult questions, in an already contentious political season, about the conduct of President Obama and his national security team: Has the White House done all it could to steer the Arab Spring in the right direction? Have events to date strengthened U.S. security – or left America weakened abroad, with Islamic fundamentalism ascendant? At a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Thursday, Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., told Secretary of State Hillary Clinton the Mideast “really worries me,” and asked what the Obama administration “plans to do to make sure that we don't have a radical government taking over those places.” “Revolutions are unpredictable phenomena,” Clinton replied. “I think a lot of the leaders are saying the right things and some are saying things that do give pause to us….We're going to do all that we can within our power to basically try to influence outcomes. But, you know, the historic wind sweeping the Middle East and North Africa were not of our making.” Jamie Smith, a former CIA officer who has made three fact-finding trips to Libya this year, warns that the sense of unity that bound the country’s disparate rebel groups during their eight-month revolt has evaporated since Muammar Qaddafi fell from power. In the dictator’s place, Smith says, the oil-rich but woefully mismanaged North African state is relying on the Transitional National Council, made up of inexperienced ex-rebels, and the Tripoli Military Council, headed by Abdel Hakim Belhaj. The latter was once head of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), which the U.S. State Department classifies as a foreign terrorist organization. It is unlikely that Belhaj’s loyalties to the United States run strong: Smith notes that the CIA captured Belhaj in 2004, briefly held him in Thailand, and ultimately returned him to the custody of Qaddafi in Libya, where the former LIFG fighter languished in prison until his release last year. “So now you’ve got a radical Islamist terrorist leader who is running the most powerful military group in Libya,” said Smith, a veteran of the U.S. war in Afghanistan. “In that area of the world, the people with the biggest guns make the rules. And this guy has got the guns. And he’s going to make the rules.” Not all veteran analysts of the Mideast see the TNC’s embrace of Sharia as an imminent threat, nor the broader trend in the Arab Spring as hopelessly dark for American interests. Patrick Clawson of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy draws encouragement from the fact that the region’s revolutions, by and large, have not been marked by strong expressions of anti-Western or anti-Israel sentiment. And he suggested that Washington can work reasonably well with governments whose legal codes do not mirror our own. “The Saudi government has been perhaps the most vigorous applier of Sharia law throughout the Muslim world for decades, and yet Saudi Arabia and the United States have had a pretty close relationship on national security issues,” Clawson told Fox News. “And that's very different than a secular revolutionary government like that in Syria, which certainly doesn't apply Sharia law, but which has been happy to sponsor terrorist attacks against Americans.” Some conservatives, however, are inclined to blame the Obama administration for mishandling the Mideast upheaval. Frank Gaffney, a former Reagan-era Defense Department official who now leads the Washington-based Center for Security Policy, expands his definition of the Arab Spring to include the Iranian uprising of June 2009, which the regime in Tehran used lethal force to suppress. Gaffney contrasts the Obama administration’s fairly cautious response to that event – framed, at the time, as part of the president’s attempt to “engage” Iran – with Obama’s swift call for the resignation of Hosni Mubarak during the Egyptian revolution this year. “The president of the United States in both cases did the bidding of the Islamists, who wanted to preserve the regime in Iran and who wanted to remove the regime in Egypt,” Gaffney told Fox News. “And I think that quite apart from what his intentions were, in so doing, he made all the more predictable this very unhappy outcome that I think is playing out before our eyes.” The next shoe to drop in the region will likely be the Nov. 28 elections in Egypt. U.S. officials are bracing for a strong showing by the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group that boasts a long history of organized opposition to the Mubarak regime, and whose foreign offshoots include Hamas. Related Video Human Rights Defenders at Risk Arab Spring sheds light on worldwide issue * Print * Email * Share * Comments * Recommend * Tweet * View Article Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. You must login to comment. View Article Advertisement Latest Politics Videos * Brian Terry's mother lashes out at Holder * Why is Obama wading in religious waters? 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