Secure Freedom Minute

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

The day after President Trump eliminated Qasem Soleimani, the world’s most dangerous terrorist, China announced that it was putting an official with a self-described record of “cleaning up the political ecology” on the mainland in charge of its operations in Hong Kong.

Luo Huining’s  installation seemed sudden, perhaps to exploit the United States’ preoccupation with the aftermath of Soleimani’s killing. Whatever its motivation, entrusting the Hong Kong portfolio at this sensitive time to someone with no background in the territory, but a record as a thuggish enforcer of Xi Jinping’s diktats, is ominous.

While we are understandably focused at last on the fact that Iran is at war with our country and has been for four decades – especially the 22 years Soleimani ran Tehran’s jihadist operations, we must be prepared to hold China accountable should it crack down on Hong Kong. 

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

From the moment official Washington learned that Donald Trump had successfully neutralized Iran’s Terrorist-in-Chief, General Qasem Soleimani, the President’s many American critics began a show of disunity that can only embolden our nation’s jihadist and other foes. The mullahs may mistake that quest for domestic political advantage as encouragement to exact murderous revenge against us.

Every one of us has a vital interest in deterring violent Iranian retribution. And if it occurs, those who seemed prepared to blame the President, rather than the avowed enemies who perpetrated it, will be as wrong as they are reprehensible.

As former Senator Joseph Lieberman put it in the Wall Street Journal today: “President Trump’s order to take out Qasem Soleimani was morally, constitutionally and strategically correct. It deserves more bipartisan support than the begrudging or negative reactions it has received thus far from my fellow Democrats.”

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

President Trump’s liquidation of Qasem Soleimani, an Iranian terrorist with immense amounts of American blood on his hands, has not only exacted a measure of revenge for Iran’s murderous jihadism. He has struck a direct blow at the regime in Tehran that brutally oppresses its own people and increasingly threatens ours.                                                                                                                                                                                Soleimani’s assassination must now be followed up with an intensified campaign aimed at empowering Iranians to bring about, at last, the removal from power of the rest of the thugs who have, for forty years, called for “Death to America.”

As we take necessary steps to deter the mullahs’ retaliation in-theater, we must also act immediately to roll up Soleimani’s foreign legion, the terrorist group known as Hezbollah. It has units inside the United States who inevitably will be ordered, later if not sooner, to attack targets in this country.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Forty years ago, Iranian regime operatives masquerading as students seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran. In recent days, Iranian regime operatives masquerading as Iraqi militiamen hoped to do the same to the one in Baghdad, our largest anywhere in the world.

President Trump sensibly responded to the present danger  to our personnel and facility by authorizing the embassy’s Marines to disperse the so-called “protestors” and by promptly dispatching reinforcements. The militiamen withdrew, at least temporarily, on New Year’s Day.

The episode serves as a reminder, however, that the ayatollahs who have been our self-declared enemies for four decades are a threat to us, as well as a tyrannical menace to their own people. Rather than remain on defense against further Iranian attacks, the United States should actively delegitimate the mullahocracy and help the long-suffering Iranian population bring about its downfall, at last.  

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

If Communist China ever goes to war with the United States, which side is victorious may depend on who has most effectively mastered and brought to bear an exotic technology called quantum computing. It can enable myriad forms of weaponry to be vastly more powerful, survivable and/or lethal.

Unfortunately, scientists at U.S. and other Western universities are reportedly actively helping a Chinese research team led by the “Father of Quantum,” Pan Jian-Wei. While Pan denies it, an American corporate intelligence firm has determined that he works with the Chinese military. In China, everybody works for the military if the Communist Party tells them to.

Scientists, companies like Google and Wall Street firms like MSCI that are helping the People’s Liberation Army become more dangerous are aiding the enemy. It’s high time they’re stopped before they get a lot of us killed. 

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

One of the most frightening aspects of the Chinese Communist Party’s growing malevolence is an innovation known as the “social credit system.” By combining several hundred million surveillance cameras, facial-, voice- and walk-recognition software, quantum computing and artificial intelligence to spy on transactions, communications and other behavior, China is able to monitor practically everything about its people in real time.

Beijing is now using such data to reward those who conform to its conduct requirements and punish those who don’t. The penalties can involve denial of travel opportunities, education, employment, housing and result in incarceration.

Worse yet, such Orwellian abuses of personal information are proliferating. The Washington Post reports that hundreds of thousands of American college students are being monitored by their schools with a view to effecting behavior modification. Unless we act to stop this creeping totalitarianism, it will metastasize further.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

A little over two thousand years ago, an event of such momentousness occurred that it literally reset the clocks on human history. With the birth of Jesus Christ came the promise of “peace on earth and good will towards men” and the impetus behind Western civilization and our own Nation.

As we celebrate this holy day, we must also remember the 327 million who follow Him and are terribly afflicted for doing so.

Jesus called upon us to protect those who suffer for Him. It is not enough to wish them a Merry Christmas, or even to pray that they survive it. We must resolve to use this New Year to save the persecuted Christians by holding accountable those who oppress them and by imposing costs for their crimes against humanity.

This is Frank Gaffney. Find out how you can help at SavethePersecutedChristians.org.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

To its great credit, the Trump administration has recognized the grave threat posed to the national security of the United States – and, for that matter, most of the world’s other nations – by the fifth-generation wireless networks on offer from the Chinese Communist Party doing business as Huawei.

In recent years, the American government has relentlessly warned its allies – and anybody else who would listen – not to get hooked up to Huawei’s 5G communications systems on the grounds that they will enable Beijing to engage in ominous data-theft and -manipulation.  

The Chinese Communists have responded by thuggishly threatening nations that heed our warnings. So, Washington must: a) push back hard against such behavior; b) desist from supplying technology or know-how that will offset much-needed sanctions on Huawei; and c) supply as soon as possible American alternatives that will provide reliable, affordable and secure communications networks.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

For all its professed concern about people, the Left actually has nothing but contempt for them.  That helps explain the horrible things its various totalitarian leaders have perpetrated, including crushing repression, concentration camps, killing fields and manufactured famines.

Still, it’s shocking when Leftists are caught cynically using Big Lies to induce the innocent to conform and submit. 

Most recently, House Democrats repeatedly lied to secure the impeachment of Donald Trump. Notably, they said he had to be stopped immediately before he further violated the Constitution, corrupted the next election, endangered our children and compromised national security.

Now, though, Democrats are in no hurry to get the Senate to try and remove him. And they think we are stupid enough not to notice their bait-and-switch. A lot of Americans are likely next November to show Pelosi and Company what we think of them.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Speaker Pelosi declined immediately to send to the Senate the articles of impeachment that she rammed through the House yesterday. Clearly, that spectacle isn’t about removing Donald Trump from office. Rather, it’s an act of political warfare, intended to damage him in the coming presidential election.

Should Senators repudiate this prosecution of the President – let alone acquit him – the electoral benefits of the Trump impeachment would be greatly diminished. Delaying such an opportunity for Mr. Trump to receive, at last, due process is as cynical as it is unjust.

Such machinations, moreover, affirm a meme the President Tweeted after the House voted last night: “In reality, they’re not after me, they’re after you. I’m just in the way.”

The Senate must be promptly sent the articles of impeachment and consign them to where they belong – on the ash-heap of history. 

This is Frank Gaffney.