TO CONSPIRACY theorists like Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), the Obama administration’s approach to the Arab world is the product not of considered diplomacy but of wicked “influence operations,” traceable to the Muslim Brotherhood and its agents. Exhibit A among those agents with murky “ties” to the Muslim Brotherhood, Ms. Bachmann warns darkly, is Huma Abedin, a longtime aide to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Ms. Bachmann’s accusations are in the squalid tradition of McCarthyism and other shameful chapters of our history in which politicians have slandered their rivals as un-American, allied with enemy forces or guilty by association with shadowy forces. Her tactics are no less ugly than those of her predecessors.
