Today, Fox News' Neil Cavuto hosted Christian Broadcasting Network's Erick Stakelbeck to discuss the current situation in Libya. After Cavuto complained about the lack of support the Arab League has provided in Libya, Stakelbeck stated, “You know Neil, you want to know the dirty little secret here? The elephant in the room? When Arab Muslim nations see infidel, non-Muslim powers like the U.S., France, and Britain bombing a Muslim country, they don't like it very much. That's just the way it is.”
Although he is the "terrorism analyst" for CBN (founded by controversial televangelist Pat Robertson), Stakelbeck may need to take a quick crash course in the history of the Middle East and brush up on his facts about Libya. While the Arab League has made some conflicting statements about Libya, it has maintained its support for UN Resolution 1973 which authorized the no-fly zone.
Moreover, Arab countries have assisted the United States in previous military endeavors and some are assisting NATO in Libya now. And guess what? One of those countries even has the word “Arab” in its name - United Arab Emirates (UAE). The UAE has pledged 12 airplanes to the mission in Libya. 6 of those planes arrived in Italy on March 27. Qatar has also committed itself to assisting NATO. A country of only 1.5 million people, Qatar was the first Arab country to help maintain the no-fly zone over Libya on March 25.
Arab countries have also assisted the United States in previous conflicts. In fact, during the Gulf War, more than half of the American B-52 bombing raids flown over Kuwait and southern Iraq took flight from Saudi Arabia.The State Department recognized the role the country played in the following words:
In 1990-91, King Fahd played a key role before and during the Gulf war, helping consolidate the coalition of forces against Iraq and define the tone of the operation as a multilateral effort to reestablish the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Kuwait. Acting as a rallying point and personal spokesman for the coalition, King Fahd helped bring together his nation's GCC, Western, and Arab allies, as well as nonaligned nations from Africa and the emerging democracies of Eastern Europe.
Previously, CBS's founder Pat Robertson has said that "if somebody is a committed Muslim, he's probably not very moderate," that "Islam is not a religion, it is a political system ... bent on world domination," that "Osama bin Laden may be one of the true disciples of the Quran," that Muslims "don't understand what reasoned dialogue is," and that a "holy war between Islam and Christianity" is “going to come.”
So Stakelbeck's smear against Muslim nations shouldn't have come as a surprise to Cavuto.
Later in the show, Cavuto himself compared the allied efforts in Libya to the Last Supper and asked, “Which one's Judas?” So maybe it's really Cavuto who got exactly what he wanted when he invited on Stakelbeck.