GETTING PEOPLE KILLED IN AMERICA
Frank Gaffney: Obama’s Failure to ‘Grapple with the Reality’ of Sharia and Jihad is ‘Getting People Killed in America’
Breitbart, by John Hayward, June 15, 2016:
Frank Gaffney, founder of the Center for Security Policy, responded to President Obama and Hillary Clinton’s complaints about being forced to use the phrase “radical Islam” on Wednesday morning’s Breitbart News Daily with SiriusXM host Stephen K. Bannon.
Gaffney said that for all of Obama and Clinton’s efforts to minimize the importance of using the correct terminology for the enemy we face, the bigger problem is that “they don’t want to go anywhere near the underlying reality, which is that inherent in the sort of DNA of Islam, its adherence called sharia, is the root of this problem.”
“It’s the root of the problem with respect to killing homosexuals, it’s the root of the problem with respect to oppressing women, it’s the root of the problem with respect to genocide against Christians, killing Jews wherever they can, and apostates, on and on,” Gaffney said.
“And that is this idea that a brutally repressive, totalitarian doctrine has to rule the whole world, and jihad – which is another term they don’t want to use, and in fact they’ve got a new report out of their advisory group at the Department of Homeland Security that says, you know, you can’tuse words like ‘sharia.’ You can’t use words like ‘jihad.’ You gotta focus on those ‘right-wing violent extremists. They’re the real problem,” he said.
“That’s what’s getting people killed in America – a failure to grapple with this reality. And I’m afraid Donald Trump is right that the President has exhibited, if not sympathy for the terrorists, certainly for the Islamic supremacists. And the documentation for that is certainly all overSecureFreedom.org, as well as what we talk about, day in and day out,” Gaffney declared, referring to the Center for Security Policy’s website.
On the matter of Islamic supremacism, Bannon asked Gaffney about former House SpeakerNewt Gingrich’s call for a congressional investigation into the threat.
“He referred, unfortunately, to a particular model that the anti-anti-communists managed to irradiate, the House Un-American Affairs Committee,” Gaffney said of Gingrich’s proposal. “I do think congressional oversight, congressional investigation, congressional efforts to hold the executive accountable, is absolutely essential.”
He said one of the reasons we’ve seen Obama and Clinton “responding so viciously to Donald Trump’s criticisms” is because “they are hugely vulnerable in this area, and a decent investigation by the Congress, accountability by the Congress, would expose this – and, I think, make it clear you don’t want, you can’t afford four more years of this stuff under a President Hillary Clinton.”
Bannon lamented that current House Speaker Paul Ryan undercut the points Trump and Gingrich sought to make. “What you guys want, and holding people accountable for this Islamic jihad, Islamic supremacism, the imposition of sharia law here in the United States of America – Paul Ryan says, ‘Nope, that’s not American values. You guys are haters, you guys are nativists.’” He asked Gaffney what his advice to Ryan would be.
“I had the chance to speak to one of his senior people last week, and I would say the same thing: you’ve got to get this right,” Gaffney responded. “It’s not just Paul Ryan. I’m sorry to say, a whole bunch of other people on the Republican side of the aisle, for most of the past fifteen years, have been getting this wrong too, I’d say starting with President George W. Bush.”
He said Bush made his famous “Religion of Peace” declaration after being subjected to “an intensive, highly successful political influence operation, and I believe it screwed up American foreign and national security policy, from his time to the present one.”
“Look, there are peaceful Muslims, no question about it. There are Muslims who don’t want to live under sharia any more than the rest of us do,” Gaffney declared. “I believe they can be our natural allies. But mistaking either their number, or their importance, or their standing against the authorities of Islam who say, ‘wait a minute, sharia is Islam, sharia is the way this has to be practiced’ is the height of folly, not just professional malfeasance.”
“This is a moment when we’ve got to understand that hundreds of millions of Muslims believe Islamic supremacism is God’s will, and they will engage in jihad – not just of the violent kind, Steve. They’ll do hijra, this migration, to expand the faith. They will use zakat, funding, material support if you will, for terrorism, to enrich and enable the jihad,” Gaffney warned.
“And, of course, they will do what the Muslim Brotherhood has been all about – we don’t even know they’re here for fifty years! They’ve been running what they call ‘civilization jihad’ against America, and it’s working. Part of why President Obama got it wrong, part of why President Bush got it wrong, why Republicans and Democrats in office have gotten it wrong, is the success of the Muslim Brotherhood in running influence operations that have obscure the true nature of sharia, and the jihad that it calls for,” he argued.
Gaffney declared that the Muslim Brotherhood is “absolutely a terrorist organization.”
“Its franchise Hamas is a designated terrorist organization. It aspires to use violence in the way of Allah, as its creed calls for. The federal government of the United States, under Republicans and Democrats, has repeatedly found it to be a terrorist organization. We need to designate it as such,” he urged, noting that Senator Ted Cruz – who Gaffney served as a national security adviser during his 2016 presidential campaign – has co-sponsored legislation to that effect.
Bannon asked why only 80 Republicans in the House have signed on to the effort to designate the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization, and asked why the other 252 Republicans were reluctant to do so.
“The bigger question is, why isn’t the State Department doing this right now?” Gaffney replied, pointing out that no new legislation would be required for them to do so.
As for the recalcitrant House Republicans, Gaffney said it goes back to Speaker Ryan: “If he doesn’t get what we’re up against, he’s not going to be supporting this legislation. One of the first things he could do, to show that he does get it, I believe would be to schedule this legislation that has been offered up, and has been now approved by the House Judiciary Committee, it is ready to go to the floor, to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization.”
“Get that floor time, get that vote. Demonstrate that Republicans do have a clue about the danger we’re facing, and are preparing to take responsible action,” Gaffney urged Ryan. “It’s what the public expects them to do. Look, we all, Republicans and Democrats, need them to do.”
Bannon rephrased that advice in somewhat stronger terms, saying Ryan should bring Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and FBI Director James Comey before Congress to “keel-haul” them for security lapses that grow more obvious as each new detail of jihadi Omar Mateen leaks out through the media. He wondered how Ryan and his caucus could leave it up to media outlets like Breitbart News to hold the Administration accountable, when oversight is a clear duty of Congress.
“We need a serious investigation,” Gaffney agreed. “Those guys would claim, hey, wait a minute, we’re in the middle of an ongoing one with regard to this. The thing that needs to be investigated is how we got here.”
As a starting point for such an investigation, he recommended a book he co-authored with Center for Security Policy Vice-President Clare Lopez, See No Sharia: ‘Countering Violent Extremism’ and the Disarming of America’s First Lines of Defense.
He also recommended See Something, Say Nothing: A Homeland Security Officer Exposes the Government’s Submission to Jihad by Philip Haney, also a recent guest on Breitbart News Daily.
“There’s plenty of evidence that what we’ve been doing is willful blindness to a threat that has been metastasizing by the day. That ought to be the object of these investigations. You’ll find, if you ask the FBI – certainly the agents, if not the leadership – have you been handcuffed by this willful blindness, have you been kept from doing your job? They have. So has the military. So has the intelligence community. So have the DHS law enforcement guys,” Gaffney said.
“It’s going to get more of us killed, if we don’t get this corrected,” he warned.
“Republicans ought to be in the lead, because this is one of their strong suits, or at least has been historically, national security. They’re not measuring up. They’re not stepping up. We need them to do it, and I think Donald Trump is – you know, with all of his faults, and there are some – he’s got this right,” he said. “We don’t need to import more jihadists. The American people understand that. We need to stop the ones that are here as well – even, and most especially, really, those that are doing business as the Muslim Brotherhood.”
He warned that the Muslim Brotherhood is “stealthily, covertly subverting us from within,” and “creating the infrastructure that jihadists are using around the world, to do the violent jihad as well. It’s both that we need to address.”
