RUTHFULLY YOURS

‘This is a good, quick read with insightful analysis of strategies needed to defeat global jihad.”

Al Qaeda’s September 11, 2001, attacks showed that the “totalitarians are back.  This time the dictatorship invokes the name of God, as opposed to the working class or the Führer, but they are back, and they will either kill us or enslave us.”  So writes Dr.Sebastian Gorka in his new book Defeating Jihad:  The Winnable War, an excellent strategic primer for the free world’s current struggle against a totalitarian foe, namely global jihadists.

As Gorka recently explained at a Heritage Foundation presentationin Washington, DC, he views jihadism in a broader history of totalitarianisms like the Communism his father fought against in postwar Hungary.  “As an immigrant who chose to become an American and the son of parents who had to fight for their freedom, I understand 9/11 differently from those for whom the threat of totalitarianism is purely abstract,” he writes.  Given his personal insight, he finds that the “similarities between groups like Al Qaeda or the Islamic State and USSR are too numerous and fundamental to be ignored.”

Discussing Muhammad, Gorka explains that Islam’s “founder was at the same time a political leader, a military commander, a self-proclaimed prophet.  Islam, then, is by its nature and its origins a theocracy.” While Jesus famously taught of the distinction between Caesar and God, “this seminal Christian idea finds no counterpart in foundational Islam.”  Groups like Al Qaeda and the Islamic State “are not in fact ‘perverting’ religious texts but skillfully applying those alleged revelations that best support their cause.”  Given jihadism’s doctrinal basis in Islam, “our current enemy predates even fascism and communism…we have been at war with the jihadists since at least the Barbary Wars of the eighteenth century.”

Gorka highlights how documents like George Kennan’s Long Telegram and NSC-68 (both reproduced in Gorka’s appendices) laid the strategic foundation for international Communism’s Cold War defeat.  By contrast, today “America lacks such a threat doctrine analysis for our post-9/11 world.”  As a result, the “year 2015 was the deadliest for jihadist plots and attacks in America since September 11, 2001.  We are losing this war both in the Middle East and on the streets of the United States.”

Gorka catalogues several American policy failures in the fifteen years since 9/11.  “Afghanistan and Iraq should have taught us the folly of ‘nation building,’” he writes.  While “America has demonstrated in the past fifteen years that it is preeminent in the use of overt force,” such power risks degenerating into “endless rounds of ‘whack-a-mole’ against the growing ranks of jihadists.”

In the realm of ideological warfare, Gorka adds, “[s]ince the 9/11 attacks, political correctness and ideological prejudice—under both Republican and Democratic presidents—have distorted our analysis of the enemy.”  This distortion has “reached outlandish and surreal proportions under President Barack Obama” with his “strange theory” about jihad.  “If we can solve the ‘root grievances’ of the poor and oppressed around the world, there will be no more terrorists, and Americans will be safe,” Obama indicates, notwithstanding the lack of terrorists among millions of poor Chinese and Indians.

To rectify these failures, Gorka draws upon proven Cold War strategic precedents.  “It seems more than obvious, then, that the tools used to defeat the ideological threat of communism could be extremely useful in today’s fight to defeat the likes of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State,” he writes.  He particularly emphasizes that “[u]nless the ideas of the enemy are delegitimized, he will always find more recruits.”

Accordingly, Gorka explains, the

United States must redirect some of its resources from purchasing weapons and hardware to the covert funding of the information warfare campaigns of friendly Muslim governments and private initiatives.  Fewer drones, more psychological operations.  During the Cold War, America established publishing houses in Europe with CIA funds, and it needs to do so again against a new foe.

By contrast, Egypt’s Muslim “Brotherhood is the progenitor of twentieth-century jihadism.  It needs to be recognized as such” by the American government with a terrorist designation, like in Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, Gorka writes.  At home “Washington must resist the continuous lobbying and subversive tactics of groups such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Muslim Public Affairs Council” (MPAC).  These Brotherhood allies “helped establish ‘violent extremism’ as the official label for jihadist terrorism, an act of misdirection meant to weaken our ability to identify and defeat the threat.”

Babies of Iraqi Christian refugees from the Islamic State need diapers – Please help!

Militarily, Gorka judges that the “best use of our soldiers, Marines, and special operations units is as trainers and advisors” with anti-jihadist Muslim regimes and groups.  “In the final analysis, this is a war within Islam,” as doctrinaire jihadists confront Muslims seeking benign interpretations of their faith.  “The final victory in the global war against the jihadists will be won by America’s Muslim allies, led by statesmen such as King Abdullah II of Jordan and President Sisi of Egypt.”

Other policy proposals foreign and domestic round out Gorka’s strategic outline.  He advocates application of the New York Police Department’s world-class counterterrorism intelligence capability” throughout the federal government.  While he focuses on jihadists among Islam’s worldwide Sunni majority, he calls for a “complete reappraisal of U. S. policy toward the theocratic regime in Iran” that “should be further isolated, not embraced.”

On a surprisingly mundane level, Gorka writes that people “don’t have to be a member of Delta Force or an intelligence analyst deep in the bowels of the CIA to be part of the effort to defeat the global jihadist movement.”  “The most important contribution you can make, whatever your ‘day job’ happens to be, is to be an educator” in a world where concerning Islam the “lack of fundamental knowledge is still far too prevalent,” even among policy elites.  In particular, “since September 11, 2001, every American should own a Koran….You owe it to yourself, your family, and all the Americans killed on 9/11 and since to know the truth.”   For similar reasons, Americans would do well to own a copy of Gorka’s book.

Purchase Defeating Jihad from this Amazon link to help the Religious Freedom Coalition