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Dec. 23, 2024 - Epoch Times
22:57
Sebastian Gorka: How the Trump Admin Will Tackle Terrorism and National Security Threats
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Nobody should shed a tear for this regime falling.
Nevertheless, you know, from the Wall Street Journal on down, these utterly naive analyses of, oh, well, this new guy may have been al-Qaeda, but he's a moderate now who's replaced Assad.
That's sheer lunacy.
As part of our special series on the transition period, Sebastian Gorka breaks down the complexities of recent events in Syria and what many don't understand about President-elect Donald Trump's approach to geopolitics.
So it's this fine line between insane interventionism of the neocons and ridiculous isolationism of the neo-Buchananites.
President Trump is about one thing, peace through strength.
Gorka is Trump's pick for Deputy Assistant and Senior Director for Counterterrorism at the National Security Council.
This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Jan Jekielek.
Sebastian Gorka, such a pleasure to have you back on American Thought Leaders.
Great to be back.
Thank you for having me, Jan.
Well, we're going to talk about the incredible complexities of Syria today.
But before we go there, congratulations on becoming the Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Counterterrorism at the National Security Council.
And that's an elevated role for this position, as I understand it.
It is unusual to have.
So this is the Byzantine minutiae of White House ranking structures.
There are three senior positions inside the White House working for the president.
The highest is assistant to the president.
That, for example, Mike Waltz, the national security adviser.
Then there are people at my rank, deputy assistant to the president.
And in reverse kind of order, because it sounds the coolest, the lowest rank is special assistant to the president.
These are all abbreviated AP, DAPs and SAPs.
It's very unusual to have somebody of my rank, a deputy assistant to the president, to be a senior director in the National Security Council.
It doesn't happen very usually.
I think that's a function of having worked for the president already in the first Trump administration.
So it gives me a little bit more oomph, if you will, to my position running counterterrorism.
Well, and it seems like terrorism is kind of an elevated issue for America in general right now.
I'm wondering if you could comment on that.
Sadly, it is for numerous reasons and both extrinsically and internally.
So what do we have internally?
We have four years of a literal open border.
The official Biden figures are 8 million illegals let into the country in the last four years.
Those are the ones that we know of.
If you add to that the so-called gotaways, people who never interact with Customs and Border Patrol or DHS at the border, you can probably safely double it.
So that's 16 million people who've crossed into America who we don't know who they are.
If only 1% of them Our malefactors, our jihadis, al-Qaeda, ISIS, al-Nusra, Hamas, then we're talking about divisional-sized assets.
We're talking about potentially thousands, if not tens of thousands, of malefactors.
So that's Tom Homan, that's going to be the border czar, that's going to be Governor Noam, that's going to be Kash Patel, who are going to have to identify these people and then neutralize them, get them out of America.
That's just the domestic counterterrorism threat.
Then if we look externally, Where to begin?
Biden's surrender of Afghanistan gives it back to the Taliban.
It becomes a safe haven once again for jihadis like al-Qaeda.
Then we see the disastrous events in Syria.
Don't get me wrong.
The Assad regime was 50 years of just bloodthirsty dictatorship.
But now who's taken over?
Well, a guy who was part of ISIS. This person who says, oh, I like minorities now.
Well, jihadis rarely become moderate, especially after they attain power.
So there is much for us to do day one when it comes to the domestic terrorist threat and when it comes to the recredescence of global jihadism.
Well, if I may, the president, I think in all caps, if I recall, was saying, you know, let this all just play out.
What's your thinking about that?
Well, look, what people don't understand about President Trump's geopolitical stance, and I tried to explain this in the first administration, Is he's neither a neo-Buchananite isolationist, this wing of the conservative movement that says, who cares about the rest of the world?
Pull down the shutters on the Pacific and the Atlantic.
It's irrelevant.
He knows that's asinine because it didn't work in 1941 in Pearl Harbor.
It didn't work on September the 11th with the al-Qaeda attacks on America.
Yet he's not the other extreme.
He's not a neoconservative interventionist.
He doesn't believe in this ridiculous concept that, you know, you can go to Afghanistan, you can go to Iraq and create democracy at the end of a gun barrel.
What he does, and he's actually approved this term, I coined the description of his foreign policy as surgical strength.
He's not an interventionist.
But when you cross a line, for example, Assad's use of chemical weapons in Syria, he doesn't talk about red lines.
He takes action.
He drops 52 cruise missiles on that Syrian airbase.
When he heard that 300 Russian mercenaries were running around the Middle East, he didn't say, don't do that, Putin.
He ordered the then Secretary of Defense, kill them all.
And in the Battle of Kashyam, he did what no president has ever done since the 1917 October Revolution.
Killed hundreds of Russian military personnel in four hours.
Why?
Because he wasn't going to invade that country and try and create some kind of, you know, panacea paradise.
No, he said, Russia, stop destabilizing this region.
Stop threatening our troops.
I will come down like the hammers of hell.
So it's this fine line between, you know, insane interventionism of the neocons And, you know, ridiculous isolationism of the neo-Buchananites.
President Trump is about one thing, peace through strength.
Yeah, and it's very interesting because I use that example often about, you know, the Russian, you know, gray zone, you know, mercenary soldiers, unclear affiliation in Syria.
But once they were gone, there were no more, let's say, interventions, right?
Right.
But there are multiple examples of that.
So whether it's the cruise missile attack on Syria, which happened, remember, during the quasi-state visit of Xi Jinping to Mar-a-Lago, and you can see the footage of President Trump, you know, leaning over the dictator of China, saying through the interpreter over the, you know, the best chocolate cake in the world, oh, by the way, I just turned the Syrian airbase into a sheet of glass.
That act wasn't just a message for Assad.
That was a message for Beijing.
That was a message for Kim in North Korea.
That was a message for Putin.
You cross the line.
We're not going to talk about threats.
We're just going to take action and leave.
The same thing with the Moab, the Moab that we dropped on al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.
Or Qasem Soleimani, the most dangerous terrorist leader in the world, the guy who ran all the proxy threat groups for Iran.
What did we do?
He had to be recognized by the signet ring that was left on the severed finger after we droned his convoy and took him out when we informed the president he was about to attack upwards of 600 U.S. servicemen in the Middle East.
He just said, kill him and kill him now.
And it's very interesting.
Where did we decide to neutralize Soleimani?
On the road to the Iraqi Prime Minister's offices in Iraq, sending a message that we know what you're doing in the region, and this is a message for everyone in the region, that we will not countenance people threatening our interests, and we will take action.
So it's this very precise, overwhelming use of force when necessary, but then in the meantime focusing on U.S. national security, prosperity of Americans.
You know, it's very interesting.
You mentioned this moment, interaction with Xi Jinping.
I'm curious just of your analysis of why President Trump would, you know, kind of in a very unprecedented move, invite Xi Jinping to the inauguration.
I haven't discussed this with him, but I think it's a genius move.
And I had Gordon Chang on my show to discuss it last week.
There's two kind of obvious interpretations.
Number one, You're inviting the dictator of the world's largest communist nation to show how a peaceful transition of power looks.
Hey, this is how it should be.
You should have a government that represents the people.
And 77 million Americans spoke and they said they don't want Kamala Harris.
They don't want an extension of Biden-Obama.
They want President Trump in office.
This is how it's done.
This is how the will of the people is exercised.
And then on top of that, it's this idea that who's going to be there?
Everybody.
I mean, look at the list of heads of state that have already been invited.
This is a message that American leadership is back.
Recognize it or not at your peril, the old sheriff is back.
So either way, it's a genius move.
Well, let's jump to Syria.
I've heard analyses, and actually, for people that I respect, that I find credible, ranging all the way from this is an utter and complete disaster, Assad was providing stability in the region, and now we have some sort of ISIS-related leader that's going to take, and unlikely to be moderate, right?
And then the other side is something like, well, Syria was a client of Iran and Russia, frankly, and so it's frankly very good for American interests to have this regime fall, even though obviously there's challenges associated with that as well, but it's obviously the better option.
So where do you land?
Maybe give me a broad picture of the complexity of this situation.
Yeah.
Well, it is incredibly complex because most of the players or the key players like Jolani, like Assad himself, have switched sides in the last 14, 15 years or have created new allegiances.
When you see Assad in recent years trying to make friends with the Saudi regime, what is a client state of Iran doing making friends with the Saudi regime?
Well, because he was desperate to strengthen and shore up his own government, which was under assault from Free Syria Forces.
So it is beyond just one 30-minute interview to express the complexities of the situation.
But let's just fix the key points.
This regime...
It was truly hellacious.
Look at the now released footage, the drone footage of Hama.
It wasn't enough for Assad's father in 1982 to kill at least 40,000 Arabs in Hama who were against his regime.
Now his son did it again.
I mean, Hama, today, if you look at the latest drone footage, Looks like Hiroshima.
It looks as if a nuclear bomb had landed.
And that's conventional weapons, artillery, being used against Syrian civilians.
So nobody should shed a tear for this regime falling.
Nevertheless, you know, from the Wall Street Journal on down, these utterly naive analyses that, oh, well, this new guy may have been al-Qaeda, but he's a moderate now who's replaced Assad.
That's sheer lunacy.
I mean, I've been studying the jihadi movement for the last 30 years, from its birth after Kemal Mustafa Ataturk dissolved the caliphate, you know, the establishment of the Ikhwan Muslimin, all the way through to al-Qaeda and ISIS. Since 1924,
there's never been a jihadi leader Who has been severing heads on video, like Daniel Pearl, who suddenly becomes a moderate and says, oh, today I like Jews and Christians, and I will take over this country and we'll be fine now.
I mean, that's just ridiculous.
So the idea that a jihadi changes his clothing, if anybody believes that, I have a bridge to sell you in Connecticut.
What we see right now is a country in flux, especially after October the 7th.
Israel has done in the region.
They've basically redrawn the map of the region because of their very, very aggressive operations against the worst jihadi organizations, the satrapy proxies of Iran in Hamas, in Hezbollah.
And there is a possibility.
I'm not going to, you know, predict what President Trump is going to do or Colonel Waltz, the incoming national security adviser.
But there is a moment of opportunity now To work with our partners and friends in the region.
So whether it's the Kurds in the north, whether it's Israel securing the south, or whether it's, I mean, let's be clear here.
I mean, this is where it gets into the granularity.
There are numerous Arab actors, militias in Syria who are not jihadi and not Assad and just want that country to have a representative government.
So whether it's Arab Freedom fighters, whether it's the Kurds, whether it's Israel, whether it's our Gulf state allies.
I mean, think about what we did in the first Trump administration with the Abraham Accords.
I mean, truly historic.
Those nations want the Abraham Accords 2.0.
They want to add to the list of nations who are normalizing relations with Israel.
So the potential is huge.
There's a few other things that are happening in the region, too.
I can't help but think the Druze are seceding from Syria or going to try.
I still don't know exactly how Israel is going to respond to that.
You can imagine they'd be interested in that.
Given the reality you just described, and you also have Erdogan and Turkey saying, hmm, you know, I think some of these lands are ours, actually.
So, you know, what complexity is that at here?
Well, look, the Druze seem to be highly, highly motivated, and they could be another potential partner for, you know, those who wish to stabilize the region.
The question for Erdogan and for Ankara, and I'll leave this to Senator Rubio and the President, is does that nation wish to behave as a decent pillar of NATO? I mean, this is the thing.
This is a NATO nation.
What is the goal of that regime, and does it fit into a collective defense alliance, which is NATO? Those are the questions that they need to answer for themselves and provide credible answers to the incoming cabinet of President Trump.
That's to be settled probably behind closed doors after January the 20th.
Thinking of NATO, I've seen a lot of criticism of NATO and questions about NATO's value from parts of this coalition that elected President Trump and the people coming into office right now.
How do you read that?
So, when it comes to President Trump and NATO, I mean, the majority of the representations are utterly fallacious and, you know, classic fake news, you know.
I've done a lot of interviews with foreign press agencies in the last few months, especially after the president won.
And to have the head of the, I won't mention the country, but a Scandinavian news agency, Sit in my studio and say, so is President Trump going to leave NATO? And it's like, I mean, we've been in power before.
President Trump has been the Commander-in-Chief.
What did he do then with regards to NATO? He said one very simple thing.
Stop freeloading.
Stop being deadbeats.
When we came in, less than 30% of NATO nations were meeting their targets.
Were actually paying the agreed upon 2% of GDP to their defense so that we could have a robust collective capacity.
And the president said, that's inadequate.
That's inadequate.
And because of that art of the deal bargaining, you know, playing hardball, what happened?
By the time he left office, That number had, the number of those who were actually paying their dues had gone from 22, 23 percent to more than 60. We'd almost tripled the strength of the alliance by saying, you want to be a friend of ours?
Act like a serious alliance member.
That's all the president wants.
If you want to be a friend of ours, act like one.
And it was very successful.
And so you think NATO is important.
Look, I think NATO, the original mission, is absolutely more important than it's ever been.
I mean, think about it.
Whatever you think about Ukraine, it's on the border of NATO, right?
Hungary, where I lived for 15 years, shares a border with Ukraine.
The Baltic states know very seriously what it means to be invaded and have your sovereignty swallowed up by Moscow.
You don't have to read Spikeman or Mackinder, the great geostrategists of the 20th century, to understand that which happens on the Eurasian landmass sooner or later impacts upon the safety and the prosperity of all Americans.
So the idea that there should be an organization there that plays a role in Protecting the integrity of that continent, probably a good thing for America.
The other question is, there's been various ideas about what to do with the Western Front, right?
Which is, of course, Communist China.
With regards to China, I mean, let me be very honest.
When I arrived in the White House the first time, With my background in counterterrorism, that is what I expected to do.
But once you get the clearances and once you read the president's daily intelligence briefing and you have access to the most powerful intelligence resources in the world, you realize very rapidly that every other threat is totally manageable.
Whether it's ISIS, Al-Qaeda, whether it's North Korea, whether it's Russia, whether it's Iran, these are all absolutely eminently manageable.
I mean, look at ISIS. We had been told by Obama This is a generational threat we just have to live with.
Like you just have to suck it up and deal with it.
Well, President Trump said, what?
We just have to put up with this recrudescence of this brutal caliphate in the Middle East?
Absolutely garbage.
He unleashed our Tier 1 operators, JSOC and everybody else, got the lawyers out of the way and said, kill them.
Destroy the physical caliphate of ISIS. And within a matter of months, that which we had been told would be here for generations cease to exist.
So that's the level of decisiveness that we had and the capacity we had to deal with all of these multiplicity of threats.
I was there for the summit in Singapore.
We dealt with North Korea.
We put them on a track towards some kind of quasi-normalization.
But China is sui generis in a category all of itself.
And this is what I learned from the President and from amazing people like Peter Navarro.
There is only one peer competitor we have which has the will and the capacity to displace us.
And don't listen to me.
Read the primary sources.
Go back to the 1990 book, Unrestricted Warfare, by two then-senior PLA colonels, who are now generals in the People's Liberation Army, who write the guidebook on how to take down a superpower like America.
Listen to the speeches from the Central Committee, from Xi Jinping, about, you know, one belt, one road, how every nation will be either a tributary nation, a satrapy, or defeated.
They have a plan.
It's not Sebastian Gorka talking.
For the 100th anniversary of the revolution in 2048, they wish to be the sole hegemonic power in the world.
And China has been working on this for decades now.
Whether it's one belt, one road.
Whether it's, you know, co-opting the rare earth mineral deposits in Africa.
Whether it's investing in, you know, various regions close to America.
In ways that are deemed by the local governments to be very gracious and kind, but are actually about locking those countries into military cooperation with Beijing.
Beijing is the primary challenge for America, but the good thing is President Trump fully understands that.
As we finish, what do you view as the key things that you need to do in your role on day one?
Well, look, my job is going to be a reflection, an implementation of what the president wants, what National Security Advisor Michael Waltz wants.
Very simply put, to protect the innocent and to bring justice to evildoers.
It's really that simple.
I mean, my field is going to be counterterrorism.
The terrorist threat are the personification of evil, and they wish to harm the innocent, whether it's our American citizens who are still taken hostage by Hamas in the Middle East, Whether it's innocent people at a Christmas party in San Bernardino who were slaughtered by their, you know, jihadi colleagues just a few years ago.
My priority will be protecting the innocent from evildoers and bringing justice to those evildoers with all of my colleagues.
Well, Seb Gorka, it's such a pleasure to have had you on again.
Thank you.
The pleasure is mine.
God bless.
Merry Christmas.
Thank you all for joining Sebastian Gorka and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders.
I'm your host, Jan Jekielek.
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