RUTHFULLY YOURS

The news of the week is that Trump’s second pick as national security adviser, Army lieutenant general McMaster, has kicked Steve Bannon off the National Security Council.  The W.H. is spinning it to the effect that Bannon’s job there is over, since he doesn’t need to keep an eye on Flynn.  Or because Susan Rice has been outed.  Or something.  There’s a lot more to this story, with McMaster emerging with more power.  This is not good news.

The Deep State operatives in the Obama administration knew what they were doing when they targeted retired lieutenant general Mike Flynn, President Trump’s first pick as national security adviser.  Flynn was one of the strongest, most honest voices in Washington on the threat of Islam’s jihadi ambitions.  Although President Trump declared what happened to Flynn “very unfair,” he fired him anyway and appointed Lt. Gen. McMaster, a Bush-Obama squish on Islam.

McMaster’s first act on heading the Trump national security team was to order staff not to use the term “radical Islamic terror.”  He claims that ISIS is “un-Islamic.”  And he even urged President Trump not to say the words “radical Islamic terrorism” in his speech before Congress.  Trump ignored the advice.

McMaster and Bannon clashed big in mid-March, with Bannon and Jared Kushner winning that round.

Perhaps part of the answer is here – the Deep State at the CIA  is working to push out Trump’s anti-jihad appointees and replace them with Obama holdovers.  McMaster is cooperating.

From the Weekly Standard, as reported on Frontpagemag.com, about that clash three weeks ago:

Over the weekend, a personnel dispute within the National Security Council between the national security advisor, H.R. McMaster, and senior White House aides Jared Kushner and Steve Bannon was eventually brought to President Trump himself. As Politico reported Tuesday evening, Trump overruled McMaster, who had sought to move the NSC’s senior director of intelligence programs to another position, reportedly after “weeks of pressure from career officials at the CIA.” Some of those CIA officials, THE WEEKLY STANDARD has learned, were pushing for one of their own to take the job in Trump’s White House.

The CIA career officials had targeted a Mike Flynn appointee and wanted to replace him with an appalling Obama holdover.  The question is, why was McMaster pushing for the Deep State Obama choice?

The current NSC official is Ezra Cohen-Watnick, a 30-year-old former intelligence operations officer with the Defense Intelligence Agency who was brought into the Trump White House by the former DIA director, Mike Flynn. … McMaster had interviewed a potential replacement for Cohen-Watnick: longtime CIA official Linda Weissgold.

Who is this Linda Weissgold whom Trump’s new national security adviser McMaster was trying to bring in, over the objections of Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner?  None other than the CIA Office of Terrorism Obama flack who drafted the false Benghazi talking points, that the 9/11 al-Qaeda attack was merely a spontaneous protest over a video.

Trump overruled McMaster on Weissgold. He overruled Mattis on Patterson. But it’s a ridiculous situation. Top appointees shouldn’t be bringing these people through the door. Period. Lee Smith at the Tablet has a list of some of the cretins that have gone through the door. Smith is no fan of Trump, but the list of people who are still on there, but shouldn’t be, is hard to argue with.

Bannon won the clash, as reported on March 19.  April 5, Bannon is out, and McMaster is stronger than ever.

Who picked McMaster to replace Flynn?  McMaster is not a worthy successor to Flynn.  He is the opposite of everything Trump is supposed to believe in and promised the public regarding the jihadi threat.

Soeren Kern at the Gatestone Institute:

Flynn … has long argued that the West is in a civilizational clash with Islam, and that the war on terror must be expanded and intensified to reflect this reality.

By contrast, McMaster emphatically rejects the notion of a clash of civilizations. His statements on Islam are … not materially different from those of former presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush.

Flynn had this to say about radical Islam:

We are facing another “ism,” just like we faced Nazism, and fascism, and imperialism and communism. This is Islamism, it is a vicious cancer inside the body of 1.7 billion people on this planet and it has to be excised.

Flynn warned:

Ask the people in San Bernardino or South Florida, or the relatives of the thousands killed on 9/11. We’re either going to win or lose. There is no other “solution.”  I believe we can and must win[.] …

We have the wherewithal, but lack the will. That has to change. It’s hard to imagine it happening with our current leaders, but the next president will have to do it.

McMaster believes the exact opposite of Flynn, and the exact opposite of President Trump.  He is an enthusiastic follower of Obama’s policies on the Islamic threat.  He thinks the terrorist ideology is “irreligious” (nothing to do with Islam, folks, move along) and preys on the “undereducated,” and that we should work with the Muslim Brotherhood.

McMaster publicly endorsed a book that called on U.S. military commanders to kiss the Koran and ceremoniously present it to Muslims with a humble apology.

In 2010, McMaster enthusiastically endorsed a book entitled, “Militant Islamist Ideology: Understanding the Global Threat[.]” … Aboul-Enein’s central objective is to urge American policymakers to distinguish between militant Islamists such as members of the Islamic State and non-militant Islamists such as members of the Muslim Brotherhood. …

Aboul-Enein also suggests that if an American soldier ever desecrates a Koran, U.S. leadership must not merely relieve him of duty, but offer ‘unconditional apologies,’ and emulate the words of Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Hammond, which Aboul-Enein quotes as exemplary: ‘I come before you [Muslims] seeking your forgiveness, in the most humble manner I look in your eyes today, and say please forgive me and my soldiers,’ followed by kissing a new Koran and ‘ceremoniously’ presenting it to Muslims.

McMaster’s endorsement of the book, which appears on the jacket cover, reads:

Terrorist organizations use a narrow and irreligious ideology to recruit undereducated and disenfranchised people to their cause. Understanding terrorist ideology is the first and may also be the most important step in ensuring national and international security against the threat that these organizations pose.

With his own words, McMaster damns himself as a threat to our national security.  McMaster is correct that “understanding terrorist ideology is the first and may also be the most important step in ensuring national and international security.”  What he misses is that there is no such thing as “terrorist ideology” – we are facing jihadi ideology, deeply embedded in traditional Islam.  Our enemies are not the undereducated and irreligious; they are radicalized Muslims.

We need Steve Bannon to be fighting for us, because McMaster is not alone in promoting Obama operatives in positions of power and authority in defiance of Trump’s objectives.  At Defense, we had General Mattis wanting to bring in as his top adviser at the Pentagon, Anne Patterson, Obama’s ambassador to Egypt, an infamous promoter of the Muslim Brotherhood and the “least popular American in all of  Egypt.”

At the State Department, Tillerson has promoted the beautiful Sahar Nowrouzzadeh to be in charge of our Iran and Persian Gulf region, a woman who worked for a mullah front group, then helped Obama craft our sell-out to Iran:

A trusted Obama aide who once worked for an alleged Iranian regime lobbying group is one of the individuals in charge of Iran policy planning at the State Department under Secretary Rex Tillerson.

Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, the Iran director for former President Obama’s National Security Council (NSC), has burrowed into the government under President Trump. She’s now in charge of Iran and the Persian Gulf region on the policy planning staff at the State Department.

To make matters worse, Nowrouzzadeh is a former employee of the National Iranian-American Council (NIAC), a non-profit that is accused of being a lobbying group for the Iranian regime. NIAC’s current president, Trita Parsi, has long held close relationships with top officials in the Tehran dictatorship. In February, a group of over 100 prominent Iranian dissidents called for Congress to investigate NIAC’s ties to the Iranian regime.

Nowrouzzadeh has old familiar Obama faces around her.

The Trump team has selected Brett McGurk[.] … McGurk was the point man on (Obama’s) pro-Iran policy, famously arranging for Iran to get $400 million in cash delivered on wooden pallets to the IRGC in exchange for American hostages[.] … Remember when the Trump administration promised to make public the secret agreements that Obama made with Iran? McGurk signed some of the secret documents[.] … Notably, none of those documents has actually been made public.

Who short-listed the soft-on-jihad McMaster for Trump to pick as Flynn’s replacement as top national security adviser?

Why has Sec. of State Tillerson kept on and promoted Obama’s pro-mullah Iran specialist to lead our Iran policy?

Why did Sec. of Defense Mattis push hard to hire Anne Patterson, “the Muslim Brotherhood’s greatest ally in Egypt,” who carried out Obama’s project to push out our ally, Mubarak, and put the jihadi Brotherhood in power?

Lee Smith at The Tablet calls the Trump team “Obama’s Foreign Policy Wizards”:

What’s really bizarre is that the Trump team keeps blaming damaging leaks to the press on Obama holdovers – when the Trump team is hiring Obama holdovers. They may have caught Anne Patterson before she got past the velvet rope, but Obama people staff key positions elsewhere, on Israel, Iran, ISIS, and Syria issues. Which makes sense, since the policies they are tasked with carrying out are so far exactly the same as they were under Obama.

Whoever queued up these disasters does not deserve Trump’s trust.

That McMaster as Trump’s head of the NSC won’t say the words “radical Islamic terrorism” is disqualifying.  This betrays every campaign speech President Trump ever made.

Trump says he’ll drain the swamp.  His own appointees and Cabinet members are filling it up with Obama loyalists.

Hat tip: powerlineblog.com, frontpagemag.com