The Center for Security Policy’s Frank Gaffney dedicated Wednesday’s edition of Secure Freedom Radio to discussing the Benghazi attack and the resignation of Gen. David Petreaus with leaders of the anti-Muslim Right. He spoke first with conservative columnist Diana West, who in October claimed that the Benghazi attack was a “fortunate event” because it brought attention to the Obama administration’s “supporting jihad.”
West – who explored similar ground in a WorldNetDaily column yesterday -- told Gaffney that Petreaus’ extramarital affair was “apiece” with the entire philosophy behind the counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan, claiming that American troops are now being ordered to “revere the Koran” and “look the other way” at “polygamy, pederasty, abuse of dogs.”
“I’m not surprised to see the men who prosecuted this doctrine, Gen. Petraeus, Gen. Allen, and who else, we don’t even know how many others, showing such immoral leadership and such corruption of their own personal lives,” she said.
West: In a sense, we live in a COIN [counterinsurgency] world, because I think the doctrine that Christopher Stevens and the Bush administration and of course the Obama administration was pushing was this notion, if you do enough to please the Islamic world you can work with them. But in that process, you become part of the submission. You adopt so much of the Islamic worldview that you lose your own. And I think the counterinsurgency doctrine exemplifies this with guns. It’s a matter of appeasing Islamic masters, of satisfying Islamic norms in order, the idea is to win them over to your side. But you no longer have a side once you’ve given over freedom of speech, which the military essentially gave over in ordering men to revere the Koran and never speak ill of it, once you give over the notion of outrage over polygamy, pederasty, abuse of dogs, which the military institutionalizes in forcing our men to look the other way at these behaviors, which are norms in Afghanistan. You have given away yourself, you no longer have yourself, and as these men come home when these attitudes towards corruption – everything in Afghanistan is done with money, you know jizya, the amounts of, your persuading people to do things not because you’re right or according to the law, but because you pay them, these things are going to seep back into our society. And this tolerance of polygamy, pederasty, etc. is going to seep back in. These are dangerous things, we’re no longer ourselves.
…West: The notion of protecting the populations of Iraq and Afghanistan, which is at the heart of COIN, over protecting American forces in the field, I believe is an immoral doctrine. And I’m not surprised to see the men who prosecuted this doctrine, Gen. Petraeus, Gen. Allen, and who else, we don’t even know how many others, showing such immoral leadership and such corruption of their own personal lives. I don’t think it’s far afield, I think it’s all apiece of a larger philosophy.
Gaffney: Symptomatic of a larger problem, one I think that those of us who revere the military and its place in our society as our defenders must take very much to heart.
Elsewhere in the program, Gaffney spoke with author Andy Bostom, who claimed that President Obama has adopted what he sees as the West’s “cultural self-loathing.” Gaffney agreed, adding that “it really speaks to the psychology of this guy… this hostility to the United States.”
Bostom: I think we’re coming to a phase in the West where this sort of cultural self-loathing. Our engagement now in these wars, the way we’ve conducted them, may be the apotheosis of this trend, this completely self-destructive self-loathing. And our president seems to have totally bought into this mentality that somehow, you know, all the ills of the world are due to western attacks, to hegemony and colonial…and this is all the detritus of the colonial empire, and we are a guilty people, we are a guilty civilization, and he is actualizing policies, it seems to me, based on this mindset. And al Qaeda’s a great example. On the one hand, they aren’t even Muslims, according to our president and his advisors, they’re some sort of vague manifestation of extremism that has nothing to do with Islam, that has nothing to do with Muslims, that’s a sui generis phenomenon or something, but we are incalculably wrong in almost everything we do.
Gaffney: That’s such a telling insight, Andy Bostom. It really speaks to the psychology of this guy, and we’ll be speaking momentarily with Dr. Paul Kengor about his sort of upbringing and influences that may have helped shape this hostility to the United States. But to the extent that it really is translating now into fundamentally misunderstanding the danger that’s being posed to us and therefore making absolutely impossible our success in contending with it, it really is a disaster of the first order and something that I pray we will have members of Congress addressing in the course of these hearings starting this week.
