Some brave thinkers recognize that beneath the intrigue surrounding the Benghazi tragedy lie the traces of something much larger and far more dangerous.

Frank Gaffney and the Center for Security Policy hosted a panel on November 13, 2012 to discuss "Benghazi: US Foreign Policy and the Threat of Sharia Doctrine."  Guest panelists included Dr. Andrew Bostom, Diana West, and Stephen Coughlin.  The event was taped in its entirety and is available here.

The information offered by the experts suggests, to put it very simply, that the Middle East is rapidly unifying and heading toward a strict application of sharia; that sharia is a totalitarian form of government utterly incompatible with American ideas of freedom and liberty; and, as Diana West noted, U.S. policy is "making the world safe for sharia," as opposed to keeping the world, and specifically America, safe.  In Benghazi, that policy proved fatal.

The Center for Security Policy panelists aren't the only thinkers to question whether this administration has an affinity for sharia.  In his article "Obama knew: Did ideological soft spot for Sharia keep US government from protecting Benghazi consulate?," American Spectator's Jeffrey Lord suggests that the highest levels of the Obama administration are "in some fashion simpatico with a totalitarian ideology."

That "ideological soft spot" may explain why President Obama "can't," as Rep. Dana Rohrabacher declared, "utter the words 'Muslim terror attack.'"  And far worse than words, as Frank Gaffney noted: "The evidence suggests that the Obama administration has not simply been engaging, legitimating, enriching and emboldening Islamists ... [it] has been arming them[.]"

Of course, the identification of the parties responsible for orchestrating the tone and content of the misleading information relayed to the American people in the aftermath of the attack is a serious issue that must be pursued.  In addition, the Petraeus-Broadwell affair revealed other important security concerns.

But those very valid points still cloud the most foundational questions -- what were our ambassador and the CIA doing in Benghazi, and what was the underlying policy that guided their actions?  And further, we must ascertain whether or not our government's "See No Sharia failure of imagination" renders it unable to competently assess the threat to our security.

Decades earlier, another courageous thinker, Whittaker Chambers, discovered a similar phenomenon to Benghazigate when he dared to reveal the identity of a prominent member of the Communist spy network, Alger Hiss, an official in FDR's State Department.  In his famous autobiography, Witness, Chambers wrote: 

When I took up my little sling and aimed at Communism, I also hit something else...the forces of that great socialist revolution, which, in the name of liberalism, spasmodically, incompletely, somewhat formlessly, but always in the same direction, has been inching its ice cap over the nation for two decades.

Chambers was relentlessly attacked by the mainstream media as he testified before Congress, indeed exposing the underbelly of that much larger target and the media's leftist sympathies.

The facts uncovered in the Benghazi incident may also point to something else much more ominous.  As Diana West bravely put it, we are discovering that "Uncle Sam joined the jihad."

Most Americans would not consider that enlistment a winning move.

In Witness, Chambers feared that when he broke from Communism, he left the "winning world" to join the losing, although he still clung firmly to his faith.  In truth, instead of Chambers's slingshot dealing a major blow to the socialist revolution, the movement flourishes within today's Democrat party, aided by a like-minded mainstream media.

Even though Chambers's allegations were proven true time and again in the years that followed, the media, as documented by Dr. Paul Kengor, assisted in a concerted "anti-anti-Communist" campaign.  The result: in the American conscience, the name of the investigation from the House Un-American Activities Committee is recalled as the politically incorrect "House Un-American Committee."  The parallels with today's "Islamophobia" are unmistakable.

The American people deserve to know, as the main focus of the Benghazi investigation, whether our government's political correctness and ideology have gone beyond negatively affecting the conduct of our diplomacy and defense to the point of actually sympathizing with our enemies.  PJ Media's Roger L. Simon dared mention the "t-word," leaving us to contemplate where the fuzzy line between treason and sympathy begins and ends -- and when that question will be officially raised.

This president has not led us to believe that he has a misunderstanding of Islamic ideology.  Recall Obama's boast during the 2008 primaries:  "I knew what Sunni and Shia was [sic] before I joined the Senate Foreign Relations Committee."  In Cairo, Obama told the world it was his job as president to "fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear."  Obama also recently told the U.N.: "The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam."  Those U.N. remarks, censored for the most part by the mainstream media, left many wondering whether such a sentiment trumps truth-telling and freedom-of-speech protection.

In her latest column, Diana West wrote: "If there is a lesson here, it is simple: A leader who will betray the First Amendment will betray anything."  Although she was referring to Petraeus, that lesson can aptly be expanded to encompass the rest of the government hierarchy.

Betrayal can also be disguised as "flexibility."  When "leaning forward" dangerously weakens the knees of our economy and foreign policy bends the back of our security and respect around the world, the resulting posture may be a bow before sharia.

Like Whittaker Chambers, New Media must bravely aim its "little sling."  If New Media David can topple Democrat-Media-Complex Goliath by exposing the truth of Benghazi, our nation will be better able to survive the much larger threat of a world governed by sharia.