Secure Freedom Minute

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is touring the Middle East, addressing regional security challenges and U.S. policy towards them.  In Cairo last week, he affirmed America’s commitment to Israel and Christians and its determination to counter those like the Islamic State and the mullahs of Iran who seek to impose worldwide the toxic ideology they call Sharia.

Particularly striking was Mr. Pompeo’s explicit repudiation of the approach embraced a decade ago by then-President Barack Obama, notably in an address he also made in Cairo. Obama low-balled the threat from ISIS, embraced the Muslim Brotherhood and engaged and then-enriched the Iranian regime.

By contrast, President Trump has decisively attacked the Islamic State, denounced the Islamists’ supremacist ideology and stopped enabling the ayatollahs’ misrule in Tehran. Now, Mike Pompeo must forge the regional partnerships needed to finish these jobs.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

The Nation lays to rest today one of its greatest naval leaders and most indefatigable freedom-fighters.  Four-star Navy Admiral James “Ace” Lyons’ passing last month is an occasion not only for fond remembrances of a fallen colleague, but for reflecting on the robust strategies he championed and executed during his seven decades of service to our country.

For example, Admiral Lyons helped devise and operationalize President Reagan’s plan for destroying the Soviet Union without firing a shot.  He recognized the grave danger posed by Sharia-supremacists in Iran and elsewhere in the Muslim world, and strove to counter them, in and out of uniform.  And as Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet and over the years following his retirement, he warned about Communist China’s growing threat – and promoted practical steps for defending against it.

Farewell and following seas, Admiral Ace Lyons.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

President Trump heads to McAllen, Texas today to meet with Border Patrol and other government officials struggling to secure our porous border with Mexico.  While he is tamping down expectations for the trip, it’s likely to showcase the significant contribution an effective barrier can make to their success in protecting the rest of us.

Meantime, the President is being encouraged to accept a deal to get something in the way of funding for “the Wall” in exchange for an amnesty for some who have come here illegally.  In particular, Sen. Lindsey Graham is proposing legalization and a path to citizenship for so-called “DACA kids” and those who were previously given what’s known as “temporary protected status,” even though they immigrated unlawfully.

Doing so would amount to a magnet for more illegal immigration before the border is secure – and a grave mistake.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

The claim by Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer that the humanitarian and security nightmare at our southern border is a “manufactured crisis” calls to mind the famous Marx Brothers line “Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?”

Fortunately, recent polling makes clear that the vast majority of the American people – including overwhelming numbers of Democrats – perceive that illegal immigration is a real crisis.

That’s because we see that such immigration is accompanied by increased crime, drug- and human-trafficking, sexual and other abuse and, yes, the threat of terrorism. As a result, we recognize that public safety and national security are being endangered by drug overdoses, gang violence, murder and mayhem – often on a very large scale.

Thank you, Mr. President, for fulfilling your oath of office by standing firm for a secure border, not disorder.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Tonight, President Donald Trump will make a critically important prime-time address to the nation about the crisis at the southern border.  He will employ that quintessential “bully pulpit” to explain his determination to protect our countrymen and women from growing and serious transnational threats through the appropriate use of personnel, technology and, yes, a barrier.

The President would do well in the course of his remarks to cite the powerful testimony about the necessity of building a wall that was delivered last night on Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox News.  It came from an unlikely source: the Border Patrol chief under Barack Obama, Mark Morgan, who lost his job when the Trump administration came to office.

Mr. Morgan affirmed that he and experienced professionals agree that “walls absolutely work.”  Mr. President, please take that bipartisan case to the American people.

This is Frank Gaffney.

BRUCE BECHTOL, Professor of Political Science at Angelo State University, Member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the Korea Observer, Member of the Board of Directors of the Council on U.S.-Korea Security Studies, President of the International Council on Korean Studies:

Details on the criminal enterprise that props up the Kim regime

How to best counter North Korea’s proliferation networks

GORDON CHANG, The Daily Beast contributor, Author of The Coming Collapse of China and Nuclear Showdown: North Korea Takes on the World:

Implications of Xi’s recent bellicose rhetoric

Lasting repercussions of China’s former One Child Policy

Why did Xi postpone the fourth plenum meeting?

TODD BENSMAN, Senior Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies:

The reality of terrorists traveling through Latin America to get to the U.S.

Consequences of Panama and Costa Rica’s “Controlled Flow” policy

SAM FADDIS, Former CIA Ops Officer, Spent twenty years as an Operations officer in the Middle East, South Asia and Europe, Former Candidate for Congress, Senior Subject Matter Expert at Axon/Lockheed Martin, Author of Beyond Repair: The Decline and Fall of the CIA (2009):

The significance of securing the US border

Why a conventional approach will not work for Afghanistan

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

National Security Advisor John Bolton traveled to the Middle East to clarify that President Trump has two important preconditions before U.S. forces will be withdrawn from Syria:  First, Turkey must refrain from attacking our Kurdish allies there. And, second, ISIS must be defeated.

It’s very good news that the U.S. government is determined to achieve these goals. Defeating such Sharia-supremacists – whether those waging jihad under the ISIS banner or those like Turkish President Erdogan who has supported ISIS – must be our purpose, in the Middle East and beyond.

To learn what that will take, all of us should review an indispensable explanation of Sharia and what its adherents are obliged to do to achieve our submission produced in an excellent video-based course by our colleagues at Understanding the Threat.  You – and our leaders – have a need to know.

This is Frank Gaffney.  Visit UnderstandingtheThreat.com.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

“No Wall, no deal.”  That’s how Vice President Mike Pence described the Trump administration’s bottom line in the fight with congressional Democrats who voted yesterday to provide no funding for “the Wall.” None. Zero. Nada.

More is riding on this fight than whether America’s southern border will, at last, be secured.  This is President Trump’s PATCO moment.  As when Ronald Reagan took on air traffic controllers using an illegal strike to extract pay raises, Mr. Trump’s presidency will be defined by whether he prevails over Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and the Open Borders crowd.

Therefore, Donald Trump must hold the line.  He’s to be commended for doing so to date and for ordering the U.S. military to build, if not the Wall, then other barriers to illegal immigration and the growing threat it poses to public safety and national sovereignty.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Communist China is poised to land an unmanned rover on the dark side of the moon.  This will be an interesting scientific mission.  Like all of China’s space ventures, however, it will also have a distinctly military purpose.

Specifically, the Communist Chinese have made no secret of their intention to dominate what’s called the “earth-moon system” to gain strategic advantage.  That goal would be greatly facilitated by operations on the moon’s far side, where they will be difficult to monitor from earth.

Such hostile activities demonstrate the wisdom of President Trump’s decision to create a U.S. Space Force – a capability that’s becoming ever-more-vital to our economic, as well as security, interests.

Consequently, as Mr. Trump considers candidates to be the next Secretary of Defense, he needs to ensure that his pick recognizes and unequivocally supports America’s Space Force.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Now that we have finished running out the clock on 2018, it’s time to begin a new count-down.  No, I am not talking about the 2020 election tick-tock – although Sen. Elizabeth Warren and countless other Democratic presidential candidates earnestly want us to do so.

Rather, experts say we face the prospect that in slightly less than two months, America will have lost, perhaps permanently, the ability to compete for – let alone dominate – the global marketplace for so-called 5G wireless technologies. 

If the United States doesn’t engage immediately, these fifth-generation arbiters of the future of mobile communications, the Internet of Things, personal privacy, state-of-the-art surveillance techniques, cyberwarfare and military superiority will be controlled instead by Communist China.  And such control will imperil this country’s security and sovereignty, and what remains of the Free World’s.

It’s time to act – while we still can.

This is Frank Gaffney.