In fighting the war on terror, it would be nice to think there is a role for one of the few U.S. scholars to warn of the danger from militant Islam in advance of September 11. Instead, the nomination of Mideast scholar Daniel Pipes to the board of the U.S. Institute of Peace has turned into one of the nastier confirmation battles of the Bush Presidency.
Bear in mind this is not a lifetime appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court. It's a position at a relatively obscure government think tank for a term of four years. The Institute of Peace was set up by Congress in 1984 to research non-military solutions to world conflicts and has earned a reputation as politically centrist, not to mention occasionally as a political sinecure.
Mr. Pipes would be much more than a time-server. He is founder and director of the Middle East Forum in Philadelphia. He's taught at Harvard, the University of Chicago and the Naval War College. He is the author of a dozen books, several on Islam. He runs a useful Web site -- http://www.memri.org/ -- that posts English-language translations of the Arabic-language press. [Correction: Daniel Pipes is not affiliated with www.Memri.org. That information was misstated in yesterday's editorial, "Peace Pipes," on Mr. Pipes's nomination to the U.S. Institute of Peace. (WSJ Aug. 20, 2003)]
For years Mr. Pipes has been raising the alarm about Islamic terrorist organizations operating in the U.S. -- including in an article with Steven Emerson for this page on August 13, 2001. After 9/11 he made the obvious point that the best hiding place for radical Muslims in the U.S. would be in moderate Muslim communities and in mosques. He favors "profiling," which is to say paying more attention at airports to young Arab men than to American grandmothers. If the polls are correct, most Americans agree with him.
For these insights, Mr. Pipes is now being dubbed a "racist" and a "bigot" -- the equivalent of appointing former Ku Klux Klan figure David Duke to a civil rights position, as one opposition group analogized last week. The Council on American-Islamic Relations is leading the charge, calling Mr. Pipe's appointment "a slap in the face to all those who seek to build bridges of understanding between people of faith."
Anyone who's read Mr. Pipes's work knows such accusations are absurd. Yes, he has a point of view, which he expresses vigorously and with which we sometimes disagree. But he has repeatedly stated that radical Islam, not Islam itself, is the threat. As he's said, in a line oft-quoted by his supporters, "Militant Islam is the problem, and moderate Islam is the solution."
Leading the charge against Mr. Pipes in the Senate is Ted Kennedy, aided by Democrats Tom Harkin and Chris Dodd and their fellow-traveler Jim Jeffords. A committee vote on the nomination was postponed last month after Senator Kennedy rose to attack him. President Bush is now reported to be planning to bypass the Senate and give Mr. Pipes a recess appointment while Congress is on vacation. This would allow Mr. Pipes to serve until the end of next year.
This is a good idea. The subtext of the Pipes confirmation battle is the conflict between two views of how to defeat terrorists. The pro-Pipes side believes they have to be confronted and defeated; the folks opposing him believe they can be mollified and co-opted. Appointing Mr. Pipes would send an important signal about which side is running U.S. foreign policy.
