Tag Archives: Secure Freedom Radio

Don’t Fund Obama’s Importing of More Jihadists

Three attacks over the weekend have shaken Americans’ complacency.

While officials decline to define the perpetrators as terrorists, most of us have already concluded that we are facing an increasing threat. Unfortunately, Congress is poised to compound the problem.

Despite a knife-wielding, Minnesota-based Somali refugee slashing nine innocent civilians, federal legislators are expected shortly to approve a continuing resolution that would, in part, fund the migration of over 100,000 more “refugees” from places like Somalia, Syria and other nations rife with Islamic supremacism.

If we can’t vet such migrants, we are very likely to face still more jihadists, including those who use violence to terrify us, or perhaps who seek to use stealthy techniques to accomplish the same goal – our submission to Sharia.

Don’t like that prospect? Tell your representatives not to fund Obama’s endangering of public safety.

Americans Are Right to Be Worried About Crime

A new Gallup poll shows 53% of those surveyed said they “worry a great deal” about crime and violence and another 26% worry about it a “fair amount.”

The intensity of concern is the highest at any time since 2001 and represents a fourteen percent increase over the previous year’s data. What could possibly be prompting such worry?

Maybe it’s the growing evidence that jihadists – perhaps including some President Obama is determined to import from Guantanamo Bay – will kill more of us here at home. Maybe it’s the sustained, disabling assault on America’s cops. Maybe it’s the crazy bipartisan insistence on freeing tens of thousands of violent drug felons, even though over 70% of them typically return to crime.

Americans are right to be worried – and to insist on a course-correction.

The Muslim Brotherhood is a Terrorist Organization

This week, a new front was opened in the War for the Free World. That’s the long-running conflict between freedom-loving people and those who would enslave us.

In our time, Islamic supremacists are targeting the non-Muslim world. And the most influential organization within that global jihadist movement is the Muslim Brotherhood.

Yesterday, Sen. Ted Cruz and Rep. Mario Diaz Balart introduced companion bills in the Senate and House calling for the Brotherhood to be designated here – as it is in a number of other countries – as a terrorist organization.

If so designated, we could at last begin to shut down and roll up the vast array of front groups and infrastructure that Muslim Brothers have established over the past fifty years. The object, in their words, is to wage “civilization jihad” to “destroy Western civilization from within.”

We can’t let them succeed.

Rep. Brian Babin on Refugee Programs: “ISIS has promised to exploit them”

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Frank Gaffney: One facet of the war of ideas which has not received anything like the attention that it requires from our government, and to some extent at least until lately, from many of our people is the, well the war that is being waged in the form of the hijra. This is a term that many, again, are unfamiliar with. It is meant to describe kind of a colonization, a practice that goes back to the roots of Islam. We’re watching it play out in vivid technicolor and with a lot of human tragedy on the shores of Europe these days. But a man that has been focused like a laser on the implications for our own country of the possible resettlement here of vast numbers of folks who may in fact my be brining not just a desire to breath free and all of that, but a jihadist Islamic supremacist agenda as well. He is Representative and doctor, Brian Babin, he represents with great distinction the people of the 36th Congressional District of Texas, a member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and also the Science, Space, and Technology Committee, but perhaps to his greatest credit a member not only of the United States Air Force, but also an Airborne Artilleryman in the United States Army Reserve and the Texas Army National Guard. Congressman, I think this is your first time with us, welcome sir it’s long overdue. Thank you so much for what you are doing today as well as your past service to our country.

Rep. Brian Babin: You’re quite welcome Frank, it’s my honor and privilege to be on your show, and really to have the honor of knowing you and meeting you several times during my short time up here in the U.S. Congress, since being sworn in this past January. But you know you do so much good, it’s folks like you that focus the attention of the public on the where it needs to be, and the national security implications and the things we’re playing tug of war with up here in Washington could not be more stark in seeing the Iranian nuclear deal on one side, and then the ISIS, and the refugee crises on the other side. Both of these have dire implications for our country, and we’re seeing these things played out, and quite frankly back in July I dropped a bill called the Resettlement Accountability National Security Act or HR3314, and what this is going to do, because a lot of folks don’t realize this Frank, is that the United Nations is actually in charge of determining where our refugees are going to come from in the United States at tax payer’s expense and I think it’s high time we’ve had a lot of complaints from localities, communities around this country that are suddenly inundated with foreign refugees, in the hundreds and sometimes thousands, that just overwhelm their schools, and their facilities their health care facilities, hospitals, law enforcement agencies, and I think it’s time that we push the pause button, and that’s what my bill does. It’s going to push the pause button until the General Accounting Office can do an assessment of just what this is costing the tax payer, because overwhelmingly they are on federal assistance programs food stamps, you name it, and then they’re dumped into the local community, and as I said earlier they’re going to swamp the schools. I’ve been a school board member and a small town mayor and I could attest to this, and we want to see what this is costing us exactly, we do not know. And then on the other hand Frank, we’ve got the national security risks and it can be no more apparent than what we’re seeing of the millions, the hundred of thousands of millions of problems that are springing out of the Middle East, running from ISIS, and the civil war in Syria, and coming into Western Europe and wanting to make their way over here to the United States, and 70,000 per year are already coming in. President Obama has said he’s going to take at least a minimum of 10,000 more, and with this new power, the Power to Parole, he calls it we might have many tens of thousands more added to that seventy.

FG: Let me ask you about the national security piece of this specifically Congressman Brian Babin, because I think your, as I say, rendering an incredibly important service, and I just want to commend all of our listeners this legislation you’ve introduced called the Resettlement Accountability National Security Act, HR3314, is a direct response to a concern that I know you have and I think many of us have and should have, that amongst the people that are being brought in or will be brought in in the future in these refugee resettlement flows will be people who wish us harm, who are being put there perhaps by the Islamic State perhaps by al-Qaeda, both of these organizations having said they will use this vehicle to insinuate their operatives. When you look at what’s being done today Congressman Babin, in terms of the vetting of these people, is it up to snuff? Is it possible even for the FBI for example to do the kind of vetting that would assure us such jihadist are not admitted unknowingly into this country?

BB: I think it’s virtually impossible to vet these people properly, because I mean who do you go to? The police department and start asking questions, I think that’s just ridiculous. ISIS is already exploiting a lot of these refugee programs. I mean you don’t have to look any further than the turmoil that some of the terrorist and criminal acts in Western Europe as well as the United States like Garland, Texas Chattanooga, Tennessee. These people are already here and they have promised, and when I say they that’s ISIS, has promised to exploit these and will continue to do so. They’re coming here as we speak, and you don’t have to look any further than some of the videos, and the U.S. statistics itself said that the current refugees that are coming into Western Europe, I think it’s 71 percent are military aged males twenty to thirty years old, only thirteen percent are women, and fifteen percent are children.

FG: Congressman let me just turn quickly if I can because we’re almost out of time unfortunately, but the concern I think we both have again is, there doesn’t seem enough being done within the Congress, either in your chamber or in the Senate to evaluate this process. I’m told there’s never been a hearing since this Refugee Resettlement Program began some twenty odd years ago. What’s up with that, and give us a sense of how your legislation that would press, as you say, the pause button on refugee resettlement, pending a really serious study by the Congressional accountability folks, will fare as you see it? Are you finding receptiveness on the part of your colleagues and most especially the leadership?

BB: You know what I hate to tell you, but I received some cold shoulders, because I think folks are so inclined to be politically correct up here, because they are going to be perceived as being possibly uncompassionate, but the truth and passion should lay with America’s citizens, and communities, and towns, and our country because this bill, this Resettlement Act that we’re trying to pause, virtually guarantees an opening for ISIS to come in, establish U.S. bases, legally get tax payer funds, and it’s insane to subject the future dire consequences that our kids and our grandkids will suffer because of it.

FG: And you know one of the things that strikes me about this is Congressman, as you say, there’s this false notion that it is the only thing we can do is just to admit these people. There is a higher duty, as you know having sworn the oath of office repeatedly to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States, that every one of your colleagues ought to be taking as their first responsibility. And what I just want to say in closing is your leadership on this legislation, again it’s HR 3314, and the work that my colleague Ann Corcoran and other colleague Jim Simpson, are doing to try to elevate these issues what is going on, what the dangers are, what the abuses are, is the sort of thing at a minimum cries out for a hearing, oversight hearings in the relevant committees in the Congress, I guess those would be the Judiciary Committees, and we will look forward to working with you to that end, both here on the program I hope as a future guest, and certainly in our respective capacities as you do your work on the Hill. Keep it up sir; come back to us again very soon, and in the meantime God speed with HR3314.

Fear a Mideast Conventional Arms Race, Too

James Jay Carafano discussed the likelihood of a conventional arms race breaking out over a nuclear Iran, among other possible repercussions of the nuclear deal, on today’s Secure Freedom Radio.

FRANK GAFFNEY: Welcome back. We’re joined by Jim Carafano. He is one of the country’s preeminent figures in the national security arena. Certainly in Washington, D.C. He comes by that as a result of his distinguished service in the United States Army, finishing up as a Lieutenant Colonel. He is also a man who has spent years now, honing his skills and making a real contribution to the public policy debate at the Heritage Foundation, where today he is the Vice President for the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy. Jim, welcome back. It’s always good to have you with us, my friend.

JIM CARAFANO: It’s good to be with you.

FG: Well, this is Iran Day. We’re still trying to dissect what has been done by the President and his minions. It doesn’t seem as though it’s getting more appealing the more we’re able to study the details. What do you make, Jim, of the deal broadly defined, and specifically looked at from your perspective as a military man what it means militarily and strategically.

JC: In full disclosure, I was never against negotiating to begin with, and here’s why: I believe that Iran sees having a nuclear breakout capability as fundamentally a vital interest. You never negotiate away vital interests. You think back to the Paris Peace Accords in 1973: the only thing we wanted from North Vietnam was a recognition that an independent South Vietnam would be okay. For one thing, the North never was going to negotiate away, and we all know that, now that it’s the 40th anniversary of the North Vietnamese Army marching into Saigon.

If the one thing we know they’re not going to turn away is the capability to be a nuclear weapons power, then there’s no way these negotiations could ever get to a reasonable end, and that’s exactly what we saw. The President stood up and declared we have blocked every pathway to them getting a bomb. We know that’s not true. And that is the core of concern about the deal in the Congress, in the countries in the region, which are much more afraid now than they were before the deal was signed.

FG: Jim, we have in addition to concerns about the nuclear weapons program—which I couldn’t agree with you more is going forward apace under this deal—but also new reason to be concerned that this negotiation has led to, or will shortly lead to, an easing of Iranian access to conventional weapons. And of course vast amounts of money that they can spend on it among other purposes. How serious a problem does that represent?

JC: That’s a very underrated part of this problem, here. We all complain that “Oh no, there’s going to be a nuclear arms race.” People are afraid Iran’s going to get a nuclear weapon, then Turkey’s going to want one, Saudi Arabia’s going to want one, Egypt’s going to want one. Everyone believes that now. Even the Administration recognizes it that that’s a real concern. But what we’re seeing is we’re seeing a conventional arms race. Countries are racing to arm themselves out of concern of the rising Iranian power. In turn, the Iranians are amassing massive, massive amounts of cash as a result of this sanctions relief. And when you add that on top of other economic activity, we could be talking about three to four hundred billion dollars being dumped into these countries. And then once they have access to the conventional arms market unrestrained, you’re going to see a massive conventional arms race. This is an incredibly dangerous situation: conventional weapons pouring in to the region on top of multiple nuclear armed countries in the region.

That would be okay if we didn’t care, but they call it the Middle East for a reason: it’s in the middle of everything. It’s the lynchpin between Asia and Europe and the United States, not just for energy, but for finance. It’s the movement of people—we worry, for example, about migrants flowing into Western Europe. Destabilizing this part of the world is a prescription for global disaster. Ebola is the thing where “Oh my God, wouldn’t it be terrible if Ebola was everywhere?” Here is the contagion of war and violence that could potentially grow everywhere. That’s what’s at stake here. When you sign a deal which is supposed to bring peace, and the next day people are frantically worrying about everything getting worse, that’s not a comforting, hopeful sign.

FG: No it’s not, especially as you say in a region that is as fraught with the instabilities and dynamics of danger that this one is.

Jim, let me ask you to respond quite pointedly and directly to the principle argument—strip everything else away—the principle argument now being made by President Obama and his supporters, or apologists, and that is, “Well, if not this deal, we will have war.” How do you respond to that?

JC: First of all, I think it’s this deal and war. Once you sign this deal you’re actually accelerating the likelihood of regional conflict. I think that’s a fact. And it’s a lie, right? It’s not this deal or war. I actually think if we went back to the status quo of just heavily sanctioning the regime–I mean that was actually working pretty effectively in terms of, not solving the problem of Tehran, but in terms of keeping the regime on the defensive. The status quo, in my lights, would be much, much more preferable to this.

FG: I couldn’t agree with you more. Jim, you have been working for a long time, and the Heritage Foundation as well, on one particular facet of this that I think is now really coming to the forefront, or should. And that is that the Iranian nuclear weapons program will give Tehran in due course, for sure, maybe later, maybe sooner, the option of exercising what apparently their doctrine calls for, according to Congressman Trent Franks in more than twenty places as a matter of fact. Namely, an electromagnetic pulse attack against this country, designed to devastate our electric grid and therefore our country. How serious a threat do you regard that as being? And, if it were to eventuate, what might the consequences be?

JC: Look, here’s why you worry about that: first of all, what would it mean. There’s a very interesting study just out from a research center in London.

FG: Sponsored, by the way, by Lloyd’s of London.

JC: Lloyd’s of London, it’s an insurance company.

FG: They know something about risk!

JC: Right. Estimated costs of a loss of the electric grid in the United States: $1 trillion dollars. So think about if you had a trillion dollars, you could save the Greek economy. You could save an entire country.

FG: You could make a substantial dent on ours as well, now that I think about it.

JC: So just the economic loss, I mean, that’s with all the other human things that would go on with that. Just the economic loss is unbelievably massive. So we know it’s incredibly dangerous to lose the grid. We just know that.

We also know for a fact that EMP can take a grid out. That’s just physics, we know that. And if you were a country like Iran and you want to threaten the United States, it would take you a long time and a lot of money to have a comparable nuclear arsenal, to having hundreds or thousands of weapons that you can deploy. But a handful of weapons which essentially can do the same amount of damage, is going to hold America just as effectively at risk as having a thousand nuclear warheads. From an Iranian perspective, that strategy makes sense.

FG: Yeah, Jim, that’s even if they don’t actually mean what they say, which is “Death to America.” That is, they’re not just interested in holding us at risk and deterring us from interfering with them, but they’re actually interested in destroying us.

Our guest is Jim Carafano. He’s the Vice President for National Security and Foreign Policy at the highly regarded Heritage Foundation here in Washington, and a Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army, now retired. And the author, most recently I believe, of “Wiki at War: Conflict in a Socially Networked World.”

Jim, let me turn to one other thing you’ve been musing about, and that is parallels between what the North Koreans did when we were led to believe that we had successfully negotiated them out of having nuclear weapons, and what their friends and allies and partners in crime, the Iranians, are likely to do. Talk a little bit about the parallels here.

JC: Right, so, actually both the President and government said yesterday, “We have blocked every path to a nuclear weapon.” When you look at the nuclear and missile infrastructure that Iran has today—not what they might have two or three years from now, but what they have today—and you look at what North Korea had before it did a breakout, and you look at what countries like Pakistan had before they did a breakout, they have that same capability. So it’s already there. We’re not preventing them from having a nuclear breakout capability. They’re already there. And if North Korea and Pakistan are any example, then the notion that somehow we’ve blocked them, that statement is already overcome by events.

FG: So in your professional judgment, James Carafano, you believe that when the President says this deal will assure—and set aside this question of blocking the path and so on—but at the very least he’s giving us the assurance that it will be at least a year before the Iranians can break out. Do you discount that?

JC: Well the Iranians have no reason to breakout in the next year, because they’re going to get $150 billion dollars in cash. I wouldn’t break out either if you were going to give me $150 billion dollars in cash. I’d take the $150 billion dollars and then I’d break out.

FG: But is it a year that they will buy through this mechanism, or do you think it’s far less?

JC: I think if they’re lucky they’ll buy two years. But here’s why the President isn’t lying to us: the President’s looking at the piece of paper in front of him and saying if everything in the world unfolds exactly as written in this piece of paper, Iran won’t get a nuclear weapon.

FG: “On my watch.”

JC: For ten years, right. But what you have to weigh against that is Iran’s record. They’ve never abided by any piece of paper that they signed. They didn’t abide by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. If they did we wouldn’t be doing this today. And the fundamental goal is to have a weapon.

FG: It is, and that has been their abiding purpose, as you know so well. Jim Carafano of the Heritage Foundation, thanks again as always for what you do there, and your past service to our country, as well. Keep it up, and come back to us again very soon.

$150 Billion to Iran is Worth $8 Trillion to the U.S.

Congressman Peter Roskam (IL-6) discussed the new Iran nuclear deal on today’s Secure Freedom Radio.

FRANK GAFFNEY: Welcome to Secure Freedom Radio. This is Frank Gaffney, your host and guide for what I think of as an intelligence briefing on the war for the free world. A man I am privileged to say is a much-admired member of the United States House of Representatives, and certainly a friend to this program, is Congressman Peter Roskam. He is the distinguished Representative of the people of the 6th District of Illinois, a member of the House Ways and Means Committee—in fact chairs its oversight committee. He is also a member of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, and Co-Chair of the House Republican Israel Caucus, and a leader on the issue that we’re particularly anxious to talk with him about, which is of course the newly unveiled deal. I call it the “ObamaBomb” deal. Congressman Roskam, welcome back. It’s good to have you with us, sir.

PETER ROSKAM: Thank you, Frank, great to be with you.

FG: So, what do you make of this ObamaBomb deal, Congressman? You’ve been warning about it in its preparation for some time. You’ve been really leading in the House the opposition to what the Administration’s been doing. Now it’s done. What do you make of it?

PR: Well, it shouldn’t be a surprise, but I got to tell you the breadth and the scope and the depth of this failure, I do find jarring. I think to take a step back and look and say, “How is something this bad possible?” It’s bad because Barack Obama, for the past several years, has pursued a foreign policy that has centered on his personality, as opposed to what’s in the best interests of the United States. He has been desperate to communicate to the world that he, and he alone, is able to talk the mullahs into what he characterizes as a good deal with Iran, and this is something that has eluded everybody else. So he’s now making a false claim that this is a good thing. But the breadth of it is actually jarring to me. I’m absolutely surprised.

FG: And, specifically, I’d like to get your thoughts on sort of three pieces of this that I’m troubled by most especially. That the breadth with respect to the preservation of the infrastructure of Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

PR: Look Frank, the original deal, the original architecture, the design of the negotiation was to be, “Okay, the sanctions come off in stages as the Iranians dismantle their nuclear infrastructure.” But of course, that’s not what is happening. The sanctions are coming off, and the Iranians are able to keep their nuclear infrastructure. So importantly for the Iranians, they get the imprimatur of approval now of their nuclear ambition as somehow legitimate. And you and I, and everybody listening to this show, knows they don’t have a legitimate ambition as it relates to nuclear power. They have the ambition of using that as a cudgel and a threat of terror.

FG: Well, and quite possibly as a weapon of mass destruction actually, vis-à-vis most notably Israel. And that was another piece of this: you mention that the sanctions are coming off. I guess the breadth of the impact of that is also astonishing. Not just the sort of front-loading of the sanctions relief, which is contrary to what we were promised, but also Congressman Peter Roskam, the degree to which this is going to be an immense amount of money being put in the hands of people who will use it for all kinds of malevolent purposes, not just nuclear weapons.

PR: In terms of the equivalent to the United States, thinking about how much this means if you were going to do the same thing to the United States economy, $150 billion dollars for the Iranian economy today is equivalent to $8 trillion dollars to the United States economy.

FG: Woah!

PR: So can you imagine the influx of cash that that would mean to the United States Treasury? It just takes your breadth away.

FG: It does. And again, when you overlay it on the kinds of things that these folks have been involved with for years, and we have every reason to believe will continue to be engaged in, that’s a lot of terrorism. That’s a lot of nuclear missiles, and so on.

Congressman, the other piece of this—and you touched on it a moment ago, but I’d really like to get your further thoughts on in—John Bolton has been warning the Israelis, they’d better bomb Iran right now, because there’s not just this imprimatur of legitimacy, you’re actually going to have, as the Washington Free Beacon points out today, international folks—the International Atomic Energy Agency, but also folks representing the various governments that have been party to this deal—all over Iran. Helping the Iranians with their nuclear program going forward. Helping teach them how to protect their nuclear programs. This is unbelievable and clearly is going to make what we do next vastly more difficult, even if there’s a Republican president, won’t it?

PR: Yeah, that’s right. This puts tremendous on the Israelis, and it’s pressure that they don’t need and they don’t deserve. And I’ll tell you this: a couple of years ago, Prime Minister Netanyahu was in Washington, and I was in a small meeting with him, and during the course of the discussion he spent a lot of time discussing 1967. Well, as you know and I know, the world basically told Israel not to act in 1967. Israel said, “This is an existential threat.” They acted preemptively, and history exonerated them and it was a great victory for the Israelis. So, it begins to set up the same sort of dynamic. I obviously can’t speak for the Israeli government, but you’ve got to imagine there’s an entirely new calculus that’s going on today at the highest echelons within Israel to be thinking about “Okay, we’ve basically been told we’re on our own.” It’s a shameful for the United States to have done this.

FG: It is. And as a great admirer of Israel, as are you, Congressman Peter Roskam of Illinois, I know that it pains you, but it is somewhat heartening that in the face of this adversity, it seems as though the always fractious Israeli body politic has really come together. Is of one mind on what a danger this is.

This is against the backdrop of something else I wanted to talk to you about, Congressman. You have been a leader in fighting not only this Iran deal, but also the efforts to impose through boycotts or divestment or sanctions, economic warfare on the government and people of Israel. You had a signal accomplishment in that regard recently. Talk a little bit about it.

PR: This was an effort that was first brought to my attention by the former Israeli Ambassador, Michael Oren, who wrote a piece and he said, “Look, there’s been three waves of attempts to marginalize Israel historically. The first was militarily, and that failed. The second was through terror, and that failed. But the third is now to try and isolate Israel economically and to take away her legitimacy.” So the movement is called BDS: boycott, divestment, and sanctions. It’s largely coming from European capitols that are saying, “Okay, we’re not going to invest in Israeli companies and so forth.” So, what we did was in the trade bill—the TPA bill—we put in, and now it is an objective of the United States—a formal trade objective of the United States, official policy—that our trade negotiators are tasked with negotiating vis-à-vis European trade partners to push back on BDS. It’s a very important marker to put down, and we can now hold the Administration to account. We can inquire of these negotiations, and we’re trying to push back against this very, very insidious movement that’s spawning out of Europe, mostly.

FG: I salute you for it. It is something we ought to be attentive to here at home, as you know there are lots of people who are pushing this on college campuses and elsewhere.

Congressman Peter Roskam, I mentioned that you are a member of the House Select Committee on Benghazi. Let me close by just asking you what the Devil’s going on with the State Department and their delivery to you all of emails relevant to your investigation that Hillary Clinton and her team have seemingly been stashing or otherwise trying to suppress. What are you all going to do about it?

PR: Well you remember this was basically, there was a false narrative that the Democrats in the Administration were communicating as it related to the Benghazi Select Committee. The false narrative was this, and they actually had a website that was set up, and it said, “Well, all these questions have been asked, and all these questions have been answered. There’s been several Congressional committees and thousands of documents that have reviewed these things. There’s nothing more to see, and there’s nothing more to say.” Turns out that wasn’t true. Turns out that there were a number of documents that had never been seen, and a number of witnesses who had never been interviewed. Now the State Department is absolutely wrapped over an axle based on non-disclosures, based on conflicting information. Hillary Clinton has fundamentally been deceiving people now, saying, “I was not under a subpoena. I submitted every document,” and so forth. All of that turns out not to be true.

Time is not the friend of the people who are trying to minimize the Benghazi investigation. And the truth will come out. God bless Trey Gowdy: he’s been tenacious, he’s been forthright, he’s been clear. He’s been relentless in the pursuit of these documents, and we’ll get them.

FG: All of which is needed, and unfortunately it seems as though some of the documents that have now been surrendered make clear that Hillary Clinton was also deceiving about earlier lies to the American people—namely that this was all a function of some riot over a video that went bad. We look forward to your efforts, as well as those of Trey Gowdy, Congressman Peter Roskam on the Benghazigate affair, and all of these other issues. We thank you for your leadership. Keep it up, and come back to us again very soon, if you will.

Dershowitz on Secure Freedom Radio: “sad day in American history… the worst foreign policy deal we’ve made”

Frank Gaffney interviewed renowned Harvard law professor and author Alan Dershowitz on Secure Freedom Radio about the  nuclear deal with Iran.

Dershowitz , who is politically liberal but a staunch defender of Israel, was harshly critical of the deal and the way it’s being made:

This is a sad day in American history. We’re about to make probably the worst foreign policy deal we’ve made, certainly the worst since the ill-fated North Korea deal which resulted in North Korea obtaining nuclear weapons.

They [Iran] have outmaneuvered us at every point in time and made us look like absolute fools to much of the world.”

Gaffney asked Dershowitz what impact this would have on other nations and his answer was less than encouraging, to say the least:

I think it increases the chances of war, not decreases them. And makes it inevitable that Iran will cheat. Israelis will catch them cheating and America will say no, they’re not quite cheating, they’re just stretching the limits a little bit. There will be conflict between Israel and the United States and Israel as a sovereign democracy surrounded by enemies will have to do what Netanyahu said yesterday they will have to do and what the minister of defense said they would have to do and that is defend themselves.

He also pointed out, as other critics have, that this could lead to an arms race in the Middle East:

I think it increases the chance of many Arab Sunni countries in the area developing or buying their own nuclear facilities from North Korea or elsewhere, or Pakistan.

It also will give Iran the financial capacity to continue to export the kind of terrorism that resulted in the death of so many Americans in Lebanon, so many people in Argentina. The world is a much more dangerous place this week than it was last week.

Gaffney points out that “reluctant proponents” of the Iran deal say that not doing anything will lead to war. Dershowitz disagrees with that estimation and suggests that the world would be better off with no deal than this deal and suggests continued sanctions and embargoes would have been a better alternative.

When asked if the nuclear deal will legitimize the idea of a nuclear Iran and make it harder for Israel to protect itself, Dershowitz responded “there’s no doubt about that.” He then went on to suggest that among Israelis, this issue unites the right and left in the common cause of their nation’s defense stating that “Israel will never accept a nuclear weapon in the hands of Iran.”

The conversation then shifts to the impact of the nuclear deal on America and the security risks that come with it.

When Gaffney asks Dershowitz how Democrats in congress should proceed, he says “They have to be Americans first and Democrats second. They have to put the interests of this country before the interests of a particular administration.”

Dershowitz suggests that the first question which must be answered is whether or not this is a treaty and then points out that while the U.S. Constitution requires a two-thirds approval from the senate, the Obama administration is twisting the deal to not be a treaty and will require only one third of the senate to agree. If it’s not a treaty, he continues, it should at least require a majority vote but he states that there’s a “very plausible case to be made that this is a treaty.”

Dershowitz concludes:

This should always remain a bipartisan issue. It should unite liberals and conservatives, it should unite Democrats and Republicans, it should unite Jews, Christians and Muslims. This is something that endangers everybody.

The complete interview can be found below:

A Traitorous and Catastrophic Deal

Andrew McCarthy joined Frank Gaffney on today’s Secure Freedom Radio to discuss the newly-announced nuclear deal with Iran.

FRANK GAFFNEY: Welcome to Secure Freedom Radio. This is Frank Gaffney, your host and guide for what I think of as an intelligence briefing on the war for the free world. There is a major new development in that war. It is the deal that has been unveiled earlier today in Vienna, featuring agreements between the United States, and a number of other nations, and the Islamic Republic of Iran. We are told it is going to close all of the pathways to a bomb for the Iranians, and that—well, I don’t know that anyone has said quite “peace in our time,” but it certainly sounds as though that’s what we’re setting ourselves up for.

To evaluate all of this, I am thrilled to say we have with us a regular featured guest here at Secure Freedom Radio: the former federal prosecutor turned pundit extraordinaire, best selling author and commentator, Andy McCarthy. Andy, thank you for joining us, especially on this occasion to help us make sense of what has gone down and what is likely to come of it. Good to have you with us.

ANDY MCCARTHY: Thanks so much, Frank. I appreciate it.

FG: Well, so let’s start, I guess, with what we know about this deal. I’m fond of saying that if you want it bad, you get it bad. Certainly seems to have applied. How bad is it, in your estimation?

AMC: I would call it traitorous, Frank.

FG: Woah.

AMC: I don’t use that word lightly. We are talking about a deal with a regime that is a committed enemy of the United States, that has reaffirmed that just in the last few days, if there were any doubt about it. A regime that has killed thousands of Americans since 1979, that has expressed not only no remorse about it, but more to the point has essentially committed to continuing that course. And what we have done is move from a commitment made by Barack Obama when he was running for president—both times—that Iran would not be permitted to get a nuclear weapon, and that they would do things like shut down, physically, their nuclear production facilities one way or another, to a situation where the West is now actually aiding and abetting the Iranians in the development of nuclear energy under circumstances where it can quickly be converted to military use.

Worse yet is that they have essentially dropped every single commitment to the American people in the way of red lines against the Iranian deal. I mean, basically we are complicit in our enemy’s not only being able to develop the worst, most lethal weapons known to man, but also to destabilize that region in a way that will have other Islamist governments given incentive to harm us. So how it could be more of a catastrophe, I don’t know.

FG: Well, presumably it could be more of a catastrophe if the Iranians were getting the nuclear weapon right away. But I think my concern is—Andy, not disagreeing with anything you’ve said—is we don’t know how long it will be before they decide to say “Okay, now we have it.” Because as you’ve indicated, essentially all of the wherewithal they need is not simply preserved in place—there will be some adjustments made to various pieces of it, but nothing that’s irreversible—and they can essentially break out at will.

This is the kind of thing that I think does warrant the kind of very strong language you’ve used here, and the question I guess is—and I know you’ve been evaluating this for some time—given that these redlines have all been breached, given that the Iranians are clearly salivating at the prospect that they now have international legitimation, and in a way protection, does this foreclose, or at least greatly complicate, the job of, say, the government of Israel, in contending with this threat in a more direct fashion? Which I suspect they’re concluding is now needed.

AMC: I think it does, Frank, because I don’t see how the path is clear to Israel to now try to stop Iranian weapons development the only way as a practical matter it can be stopped, or at least set back, which is by an attack. Under circumstances where the West is now working with Iran: for example, one of the major terms of this agreement that was actually flaunted at the press conference as a major triumph, which is actually a major disaster, is that the Iranian nuclear program is now going to be placed under what’s called “International Sponsorship for Research and Development.” That’s a longwinded way of saying it’s going to be taking place under the auspices of one of the great powers—to my knowledge which great power has not been identified yet.

What that essentially does is put Israel—and it’s not the only condition in this deal that has that character—but it puts Israel in the position of if they were to attack, they’re not only attacking Iran, they’re attacking one of the Western powers, which I think would probably be unacceptable. Well, that may be taking it too far, but it’s certainly something that majorly complicates Israel’s capacity to take physical action.

If they’re not going to take military action, I don’t see that there’s any other way to address this. The only other way to address it would be as people like our old friend Michael Ledeen has been saying for years, that we have to give greater support, much greater support, to the dissidents in Iran. But frankly, if we’re in bed with the regime, which is essentially what Obama has done here, I don’t see how that does anything but demoralize Iranian dissenters and any democracy, or at least anti-regime, movement that may have been viable in Iran.

FG: It certainly undercuts them, there’s not question about that. So we’ve given a get-out-of-jail-free card to the Iranians if this deal is in fact going to go into force. Andy, you’ve been carefully thinking about and researching—and again our guest is Andrew C. McCarthy, the bestselling author of among other things, “Willful Blindness” and “Catastrophic Failure”. We’re witnessing a case of willful blindness of the first order, of course, and a catastrophic failure, as you say. What we are also going to watch play out here over the next sixty days, apparently, is some kind of Congressional deliberation. It’s under very stringent restrictions, self-imposed. Give us a flavor of why those restrictions were self-imposed, Andy, and what Congress can do now, and more to the point what can we do to ensure that Congress does actually reject this deal.

AMC: I don’t think they will reject it, Frank, I’m sorry to say, because Obama’s victory is kind of baked in the cake at this point, thanks to the Corker legislation: this bipartisan bill that was done in early May, that people like I argued vigorously against because it shifts the Constitutional function against international agreements. So without getting into the weeds, rather than having to get 2/3rds supermajority of the Senate to approve the deal before it can be ratified, which is what Obama would have been looking at, under the Corker legislation the presumption is switched. The opponents of the deal now need 2/3rds to disapprove the deal. Given that the number of Democrats in the Senate and the House that thought that you were going to get 67 votes in the Senate and 291 in the House to reject this thing, is illusory I would say, at best.

FG: Well I would hope that you’re wrong about that, Andy, that it’s an insuperably hard problem. It’s a hard problem, to be sure, but I do think there are a couple of things going for us. One is that the American people seem to be overwhelmingly opposed. We’ll see how that plays out as they’re subjected to endless demagoguery and indoctrination on it, but their instincts are right, I think, for all of the reasons that you’ve described. The other is that, I was listening to a number of the presidential candidates over the past 24 hours, Republican presidential candidates, and I don’t think there’s a one that is in favor of this. So this will be a defining moment, clearly for them and for our polity, as well as perhaps for our national security. You will be following it closely, as will we with the benefit of your help. Thank you, Andy, for taking some time to talk about this as the news is breaking today. Keep up the good work, my friend, at National Review Online and PJ Media, and come back to us very soon.

Mary Katharine Ham on “End of Discussion” and the Left’s Outrage Industry

Mary Katharine Ham discussed her new book, End of Discussion: How the Left’s Outrage Industry Shuts Down Debate, Manipulates Voters, and Makes America Less Free (and Fun) with host Frank Gaffney on today’s Secure Freedom Radio. The complete audio can be found here.

Frank Gaffney: Welcome back! I’ve very pleased to say we’re joined—I think for the first time here at Secure Freedom Radio—by Mary Katharine Ham. You know her from her contributions to public debate at Hot Air Blog, and also as a political analyst for Fox News. She is also the author with Guy Benson of a terrific new book. It’s entitled End of Discussion: How the Left’s Outrage Industry Shuts Down Debate, Manipulates Voters, and Makes America Less Free (and Fun). Mary Katharine, great to have you with us. Congratulations on this important new book.

Mary Katharine Ham: Well thank you very much. It’s been a pleasure to talk to as many people as possible, sometimes for the first time on their show. I can’t believe I haven’t been on before!

FG: It’s our bad if you haven’t! But the point is you’re here with us now, and you’ve really hit such an important topic at such a timely moment, and I congratulate you for your perspicacity in anticipating it. Talk a little bit about what you’re getting at with this idea that there is an outrage industry and how it operates.

MKH: Well, Guy Benson, my co-author, who’s also a Fox News contributor, and I have joked that it’s paradoxically great for the book but terrible for America that we’re so on point in this particular news cycle. Since we’ve been talking about End of Discussion and going around the country and discussing it with people, this is a feeling that almost everyone feels. As Guy and I were coming up in political commentary we started noticing, “Oh my, certain subjects seem mighty off limits, and seem more and more off limits and more scary to talk about in the public eye, with so little grace for any mistake or any misplaced word.” It did bother me that it happened to us, but we’re public figures, we take some of the language policing on when we take this job; I know Media Matters is always listening to me, so I get that.

What bothered me even more was when it started trickling down to regular people who are now afraid to post something on their Facebook or Twitter because they’re sort of plausibly public just by having a social media profile, and can lose their jobs or become a national news story over something that they said about a news story.

FG: Mary Katharine Ham is our guest. She is of course a Fox News Analyst and Hot Air blogger. She is the editor-at-large, in fact, of the Hot Air Blog. She’s also a mighty contributor to our public policy debates about all manner of things, and I think it’s incredibly important that you’re addressing this question of are we now finding as a result of the kind of pressure from what you describe as the Left’s outrage industry in your new book End of Discussion, is a kind of self-censorship, as well as the pressure from those who adhere to this industry, or at least conform to its dictates. How is that translating into pressure on, as you say, just regular folks, as well as more visible political figures like yourself?

MKH: You see it all over the place. We’ve had several examples just since we’ve been promoting End of Discussion on the road. Unfortunately, we have terrible stories about a Miami principal who posted an opinion about a news story on the McKinney pool party video which went viral everywhere and was a huge national news story. He posted a comment on the Miami Herald’s website about that incident. He backed the cop, [and] some people happened to disagree with him. His comment was neither vulgar nor racist. There was nothing wrong with it, except that he disagreed with the people who could make a stink about it. And they got together and made a stink about it, and he lost his job. That kind of thing is really frightening, and it means that other people look at that and of course their speech is killed. They don’t want to put just a simple opinion out there.

Our argument in End of Discussion is, look, if you can’t hold even a mainstream opinion about a news story—pro-traditional marriage is another one, which up until several years ago and I think last Tuesday, Hillary Clinton held and Obama several years ago changed his mind. If you can’t hold that opinion and also hold you job, how free is your speech?

FG: Mary Katharine, I want to turn to something that has been very much on my mind of course, and I was speaking with General Jerry Boykin about it a moment ago, and that is a kind of red-green axis, it seems, that has been forged between, on the one hand, the Left—and you’ve just described their operations fairly vigorously—but also the Islamists. People who you’d think wouldn’t see eye-to-eye with the Left on just about anything. What I wondered about is when you are analyzing what’s happening here and this practice of essentially self-censorship, shouldn’t we be very concerned that freedom of expression itself is at stake if in deference to the sensibilities of Islamists—Islamic supremacists especially–we don’t talk about their efforts to bring their Shariah program here?

MKH: First of all, when it comes to free expression, yes, Islamists are not huge fans of that. It is interesting to watch the Left align with people who will literally kill you for making a cartoon. Liberals always say, and I’ve been on TV with plenty of them who say, “I’m all for free speech, but…” There’s no ‘but’ behind “all for free speech.” Even if the speech offends you, we are supposed to protect it. That’s how this works. It is immaterial what you think of Pamela Geller’s event, once someone tries to kill her for drawing cartoons. I’ve been so amazed and disheartened to see so many people cop out on that.

The Left, in service to multiculturalism and respecting other cultures—except for you know, the conservatives who disagree with them in their own country politely. Can’t respect those people—but in service to quote unquote co-existence, they end up giving up some of our core values. And frankly I think it’s a lot easier to talk about how Indiana’s religious freedom law is endangering all of us and turning the clock back—which of course it’s not—instead of talking about ISIS or Iran. Those are much harder things to talk about and much harder problems to solve than crushing Memories Pizza under your boot.

FG: But so important to do, as you say. Again, our guest is Mary Katharine Ham. We’re talking about her marvelous new book, which is entitled End of Discussion. One of the things I’ve been struck by, Mary Katharine, is that we are kind of endlessly hectored by the government, at every turn really, to respond when we see something anomalous that is dangerous, that could cost people their lives. Notably, an unattended package in an airport or bus station or something. But while we’re told we must say something about that, when we’re seeing these kinds of actions, these kinds of inroads really being made at the expense of our Constitutional rights, we’re being told “No, don’t say anything about that.” You’ve offered the admonition that you don’t want to gratuitously offend people, but you don’t want to be cowed either. How do you recommend we walk that fine line?

MKH: A couple things we talked about in End of Discussion is, look, the number of people who are truly offended by whatever made up thing everyone is being offended by today—because that’s part of the problem, right? These rules are capricious. They change all the time, and something new is offensive every day. I’m pretty sure someone raised a ruckus last night during the USA women’s soccer game—in which we took the World Cup—about making World War II jokes about defeating Germany and Japan. And it’s like, lighten up. This is not offensive. The Holocaust is offensive. This is not offensive. Since the rules change all the time, these people are making up being offended. There’s a handful of people who are pretending to be offended, and we should not be cowed by the tiny group.

We argue also in End of Discussion , look, if you’re going to be cowed by these people who are on Twitter, social media activists and a handful of those guys, of course you’re going to be cowed by people with guns. We’re not going to be able to stand up for anything. So it’s sort of training wheels to be able to say to the social media activists, “Look, your concerns are noted, but I’m going to continue to tell my joke. I’m going to continue to draw my cartoon. I’m going to continue to have the art that I enjoy, instead of listening to you neo-Puritans and your new rules.”

FG: Bless you, and thank you for that courage, and hope that you will inspire a lot of others to exercise it as well. As you continue to make the rounds, not just here but elsewhere, Mary Katharine Ham with your book End of Discussion: How the Left’s Outrage Industry Shuts Down Debate, Manipulates Voters, and Makes America Less Free (and Fun). Come back to us again very soon, if you would.

Tear Down This Wall 2.0

Twenty-five years ago, the Berlin Wall was breached, an act that began the freeing of millions of people from the Evil Empire and its repressive ideology of Soviet Communism.

That happened thanks to a combination of the unquenchable yearning for freedom of peoples long denied it and an American strategy for helping them achieve it, one crafted and executed by President Ronald Reagan.

Mr. Reagan’s plan for destroying the Soviet Union involved the use of all instruments of national power – including political warfare, energy and economic initiatives and the restoration of U.S. military might.

This proven approach to countering and defeating a totalitarian ideology bent on our destruction should serve as the model for checkmating its counterpart in our time: “Communism with a god” – the Islamic supremacist doctrine of shariah.

Let’s roll.