Secure Freedom Minute

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un today commended President Trump for stabilizing the peninsula his country has relentlessly sought to dominate since its founding.  But the stability Kim is pursuing means preserving his nuclear arsenal, not eliminating it, and achieving unification with South Korea on his terms.

The backdrop for Kim’s remark was yet-another summit meeting with President Moon Jae-in of South Korea. With each passing day, Moon – a longtime leftist apologist for the North – has doubled-down on appeasing, legitimating and empowering the Stalinist regime across the Demilitarized Zone.

For example, in the run-up to today’s meeting, Moon’s government has reportedly transferred billions of dollars worth of equipment and other materiel in connection with establishing a so-called “Liaison Office.” Such an infusion will only serve to prop up Kim and perpetuate the nuclear threat he poses.  That’s a false and dangerous “stability.”

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Ten years ago today, the global economy was rocked by the virtually overnight collapse of the major U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers. The cost was measured not only in terms of the massive economic damage done.  Arguably, the attendant political turmoil propelled Barack Obama to the presidency, enabling his stated ambition to “fundamentally transform” this country.

Veteran financial analyst and best-selling author Kevin Freeman contends that Lehman was subjected to a type of bear-market attack known as “naked short-selling.”  His forensic investigation suggests it was engineered by Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds of Qatar and the UAE.

Worse yet, Mr. Freeman warns that the United States is dangerously vulnerable to economic warfare today.  That’s particularly concerning at a time when another, potentially decisive election looms in which the strength of our economy is an even more important factor than usual. 

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Twenty-five years ago today, Yasser Arafat fraudulently promised to make peace with Israel in the Oslo Accords. President Trump is determined to stop rewarding the Palestinians for failing to do so.   

Over their strenuous objections and threats, Mr. Trump moved the U.S. embassy in Israel to its capital, Jersualem.  He cut taxpayer funding of the UN refugee agency that has encouraged and enabled the Palestinians’ victimhood narrative, intransigence and jihadism. And he just shut down their influence operation’s headquarters in Washington.

The President is shattering the myths that the Palestinians’ cause is the region’s most important problem and must be resolved on their terms or risk a wider war.

This new reality ought to induce the Palestinians at last to end their futile and costly conflict with an Israel that wants nothing more than to be left alone in security and peace.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

There’s trouble brewing on the Korean peninsula. That may come as a surprise in light of reports that President Trump has agreed to hold a second summit meeting with North Korean despot Kim Jong-un.

To be sure, another summit would be problematic if it proves again to be long on empty promises of the North’s disarmament – promises that simply serve to obscure, rather than curb, Kim’s relentless build-up of his nuclear, missile and other military forces.

Even more worrying, however, is the prospect that South Korea’s radical leftist President Moon Jae-in seems determined to engage in actual, unilateral and reckless disarmament – among other unwarranted concessions to Pyongyang. 

The effect could not only be to undermine Mr. Trump’s diplomacy, but perhaps to encourage Kim Jong-un to miscalculate and act on his dynasty’s decades-long ambition to unify the two Koreas by force.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Seventeen years ago, America suffered a horrific attack that plunged our nation into a war that today has no end in sight. In part, that’s due to the fact that we haven’t been clear about who we are fighting and why.

Candidate Donald Trump recognized this reality and promised to respond, starting by replacing euphemisms like “terrorism” and “violent extremism” with a policy that established the actual source of the threat: “radical Islam” and its jihad-commanding doctrine, Sharia.

Yet, America’s strategy remains unmoored from that direction and we are no closer to victory than on 9/12.  To the contrary, Sharia-supremacists are on the march worldwide, including here at home – albeit more stealthily, for the time being.

President Trump famously called on Muslim nations to “drive them out.”  For seventeen years, we’ve tried settling for less, and must do so no longer.

This is Frank Gaffney.