http://hirhome.com/TRUMP/TRUMP_05_eng.htmWho makes foreign policy for Trump?
hirhome.com/TRUMP/TRUMP_05_eng.htm
When we examine the backgrounds of those chosen to make foreign policy for Trump, we find they are Establishment figures with a history of supporting pro-jihadi policies.
Historical & Investigative Research – 21 May 2017, by Francisco Gil-White
http://hirhome.com/TRUMP/TRUMP_05_eng.htmAs I write, Donald Trump is in the Middle East, making his way to Israel. What can we expect? We have predicted that, on the substance, Trump will be another version of Obama. Since this claim clashes with almost everybody’s perception of the world, we are forced to defend it.
As they campaigned for the US presidency, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were represented in the media, and indeed behaved in public, as diametrical opposites. Aside from dissimilarities in etiquette and personal style, Trump loudly repudiated not only Obama’s specific decisions but their very philosophy, holding Clinton—the public face of Obama’s foreign policy—personally responsible for fostering the growth of radical Islam and, in this manner, undermining Israeli security.
The extreme contrast between Trump and Clinton makes it difficult to imagine them playing on the same team, so Trump’s electoral victory is a clear challenge to the idea that the US system is run by a political cartel, the core claim in the HIR model. This is, therefore, a ‘natural experiment’: the scientist does not control it, but the variables of interest align fortuitously, as if he had organized it all himself to test his hypothesis.
Foreign policy will here give the sharpest possible test. On the nature of the US political system, there are two possibilities of special interest:
1) If it is a free market, and Trump and Clinton are genuine rivals, then we expect Trump’s foreign policy to exhibit sharp differences.
2) If a power elite-cartel controls both main parties, then we expect, as outlined in Part 1, that Trump—quite despite his loud protestations to the contrary—will walk down the traditional path of previous administrations.
That traditional path, as documented in Part 2, has long been pro-jihad and anti-Israel (← not an editing error).
So far, Trump’s head fakes in immigration policy, the missiles he dropped on Assad, his declared intention of assisting the Rojavans, and his summit with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu have convinced many people that Trump really does mean to deliver on his campaign promises. To these people, the first possibility looks right.
We are not convinced. In Part 3 we contributed the relevant (though mostly unknown) historical context in order to dispel the impression created by the Trump-Netanyahu summit, exposing Trump’s continuity with the anti-Israeli policies of his predecessors. Since then, Trump has hardly contradicted our analysis.[0] And in Part 6, we will expose the true bias of his presumed ‘anti-jihadi’ policies.
Should you find our analysis persuasive, we will then need to explain this consistency in US policy—immune to any and all election results.
In Part 4, we began to outline one such explanation. We examined the history and structure of the US policymaking system and found that the Carnegie, Ford, and Rockefeller networks are heavily involved in several key think tanks, chief among them the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), which they helped create. Year after numbing year, working outside the democratic process, the CFR produces recommendations that—regardless of who wins at the polls—reliably become US foreign policy. It walks and talks like a cartel.
This implies that elections in the US, though utterly necessary to preserve the appearance of a functioning democracy, are irrelevant to policy, and that’s why the pro-jihadi and anti-Israeli tradition can persist despite the election of Donald Trump. This is the HIR model.
How useful is it? The evidence will judge.
The model predicts, as mentioned in Part 4, that Trump will recruit his foreign-policy team from the same pro-jihadi, CFR circles that supplied the key policymakers for previous administrations. To provide continuity with Obama/Clinton policies, Trump’s handlers will not hesitate to re-hire them.
We shall now see how well these expectations match the evidence. I shall examine those positions most relevant to ‘international security’ and therefore to policies regarding the growth of radical Islam and the defense of the State of Israel.
As I conduct this survey, I will keep score for the CFR.
█ FOREIGN POLICY ADVISOR (Richard Haas)
█ FOREIGN MINISTER (Rex Tillerson)
█ CIA DIRECTOR (Mike Pompeo)
█ #2 AT THE NSC (K.T. McFarland)
█ #2 AT THE NSC (Ricky L. Waddell)
█ NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR (Michael T. Flynn)
█ (ALMOST) NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR
(Robert S. Harward)
█ NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR (H.R. McMaster)
█ DEFENSE SECRETARY (James Mattis)
█ DEPUTY ADVISOR ON COUNTERTERRORISM (Sebastian Gorka)
█ WHITE HOUSE CHIEF STRATEGIST (Steve Bannon)
FOREIGN POLICY ADVISOR
(Richard Haass)
Even before the election, Trump made clear who whispered in his ear. In mid-2016, “when Donald Trump was asked by Megyn Kelly who he is listening to as top national security advisers, the first name Trump mentioned was Richard Haass.”[1]
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Richard Haass
Who is Haass? Since 2003, he is the president of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
Score one for the CFR.
The president of the CFR will naturally recommend people from his circle. That influence is apparent in how Trump filled some of his key foreign-policy positions.
FOREIGN MINISTER
(Rex Tillerson)
Trump’s Secretary of State—in other words, his foreign minister—is Rex Tillerson, who before this was CEO of ExxonMobil.[2]
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Rex Tillerson
The Rockefeller network has always spread outward from ExxonMobil, which earlier went by the name Standard Oil, when John D. Rockefeller founded it. So Tillerson has been one of the biggest players in that network.
Why does this matter?
Because there is no real separation between the Rockefeller network and the CFR. The Rockefeller network created the CFR, is still one of its most important patrons, and is directly involved in its direction. David Rockefeller (John D.’s grandson) became director of the CFR in 1949 and then stayed on as honorary president (he passed away March 2017). His daughter Peggy is a CFR member of the board. And ExxonMobil, the company that Tillerson was running until recently, is listed as a “founder corporate member” of the CFR.
In other words, the CFR will be running the State Department.
Score two.
THE CIA DIRECTOR
(Mike Pompeo)
Trump chose Mike Pompeo to head the CIA. Pompeo’s reputation as an anti-jihadist owes much to his earlier criticisms of Obama (and especially of Obama’s nuclear treaty with Iran). But we have seen in the cases of Ronald Reagan and George Bush Jr. that public ‘enemies’ of jihad don’t always mean it (Part 2).
Of course, some Trump followers will have been delighted with Pompeo’s nomination because he is a ‘Tea Party Republican’—which means, you would think, that he is pro-liberty and against the Establishment, no? Think again.
Image result for mike pompeo
Mike Pompeo
Pompeo is a big fan of spying on US citizens and believes that Edward Snowden should be executed.[3]
And Pompeo is a card-carrying member of the Establishment: he is one of 5 members of the Distinguished Advisory Committee of the Wichita Council on Foreign Relations, “having its roots in the prestigious New York Council on Foreign Relations.” Yep, the CFR.
Score three.
#2 AT THE NSC
(K.T. McFarland)
For Deputy National Security Advisor, Trump chose K.T. (Kathleen Troia) McFarland, earlier a “Fox News national security analyst.”
Though her NSC stint was brief (reportedly, she will now be ambassador to Singapore), she strongly influenced perceptions, for she had excoriated Trump’s softness on jihadism on television. When she was appointed, her fame no doubt convinced many that Trump would be ‘tough on jihadism.’
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K.T. McFarland
But don’t forget: You are the company you keep. Let us examine a few important relationships.
Caspar Weinberger
Under Ronald Reagan, McFarland was a close aide to Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, and so well appreciated by that group that she received in 1985 the highest decoration that the Pentagon can give to a civilian. She was ‘playing ball.’
That same year, her boss Weinberger was busy helping Reagan and Bush Sr. to send weapons to Ayatollah Khomeini’s jihadi regime (and to the Nicaraguan terrorists): the Iran-Contra Affair. (Weinberger’s trial was aborted thanks to Bush Sr.’s presidential pardon.[4])
Jamestown Foundation
McFarland is a board member of the Jamestown Foundation, a think tank focused on issues that are “strategically or tactically important to the United States.” On that same board has served Zbigniew Brzezinski. This is the genius who, as Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor, invented—right before Reagan—the policy of arming and training jihadis. Brzezinski has boasted publicly about this policy, which gave us the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and then ISIS.[5]
The Jamestown Foundation has that typical think-tank bipartisanship so diagnostic of a ruling cartel (see Part 4): Carter’s people and also Reagan’s: Democrats and Republicans: all in agreement: all pro-jihad.
Left to right: Brzezinski, Weinberger, Reagan
David Petraeus
When Roger Ailes, FOX News founder, wanted to convince General David Petraeus—chosen by Obama to run CENTCOM and then also the CIA—to launch a republican presidential campaign funded by Rupert Murdoch, he sent McFarland in person.[6]
What policies does Petraeus favor?
If McFarland and her former bosses at FOX News—allegedly the ‘pro-Israel’ network—are so besotted with Petraeus that they want him for president, then he must be a staunch Zionist, no? Doesn’t seem that way.
During his tenure at CENTCOM, with the full weight of his prestige as commander of US forces in the Middle East and North Africa, Petraeus became a ‘political general,’ demanding publicly that Obama force the Israelis, at long last, to create a PLO/Fatah state and thus keep the Muslim states happy.[7]
Oh, and McFarland is “a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations.”
Score four.
#2 AT THE NSC
(Ricky L. Waddell)
Major General Ricky Waddell has replaced K.T. McFarland.[7a] Waddell is from General David Petraeus’s inner circle, and in fact was, under Obama, one of a handful of top advisors to Petraeus, at CENTCOM, assisting his revision of strategy.[7b]
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Ricky Waddell
Given that Petraeus strongly urged Obama, in public, to give PLO/Fatah a state in Judea and Samaria (see McFarland), we may expect a similar bias in Waddell, especially considering that his boss, H.R. McMaster (see McMaster), led—in the Obama years—the handful of top Petraeus advisors that Waddell belonged to.
NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR
(Michael T. Flynn)
This general, briefly the National Security Advisor, is an interesting character. Though he is gone now, Trump did choose him, and he was prominent in the campaign, helping establish, with his reputation, the candidate’s ‘counter-jihad’ bona fides. Flynn’s reputation, however, seems to rest entirely on his own testimony.
The story was first aired in an interview to James Kitfield (from Politico), immediately before Flynn left his post as Obama’s Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). “In remarkably blunt comments for a general still in uniform,” wrote Kitfield, Flynn accused that he himself was the “lone voice” in the Obama administration calling for getting tough on jihadists,[8] a claim later reinforced in statements to Seymour Hersh.[9]
According to this narrative, Flynn was forced out because Obama couldn’t tolerate his anti-jihadi emotion.
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Michael T. Flynn
There is a counternarrative. Unnamed Obama insiders, per the Washington Times, say that Flynn was ousted not, as he claims, because he had “tougher views than Obama about Islamic extremism,” but because “Flynn failed to follow guidance from superiors.”[10] Flynn, they say, has “a deep maverick streak,”[11] and some accuse that “his management style could be chaotic.”[12]
No comment on Flynn’s management. But the ‘anti-jihadi’ story is strange. Watch the dates.
From 2003 to 2008, Bush Jr.’s Pentagon created a vast prison system in Iraq designed to produce a powerful jihadist movement. Lots of innocent people were detained without charges and mixed in with condemned jihadi terrorists. The latter, allowed to control prison social life, coerced everybody into the jihad. The man in charge, General Douglas Stone, himself called it “jihadi university.”[13]
After five years—a bachelor’s degree!—“jihadi university” was dismantled and its graduates—over the objections of local Iraqi sheiks and the Iraqi government—were just… let… go… The result was ISIS.
ISIS then caused a war in Iraq that spread to Syria.
Is this what US policymakers wanted? A jihadi war in Syria? Consider the sequel.
In June 2012, it became public that Obama’s CIA was running a program to arm the—allegedly democratic—‘Syrian opposition’ to Assad. But there was an interesting detail: “the arms themselves are coming from Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.” Why would these governments wish to arm democrats?
I ask because Turkey is run by a thinly-disguised jihadist party. The regimes in Saudi Arabia and Qatar are both openly jihadist. And the weapons were “funneled mostly across the Turkish border by way of a shadowy network of intermediaries including Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood,” a jihadist organization.[14] Isn’t it more likely that jihadis will send weapons to other jihadis?
Hold that thought.
Now, a policy must be planned and executed. Since this CIA operation was on the Syrian ground at least from June 2012, it had to be a bureaucratic reality—or at the very least a definite idea—two months earlier, in mid-April, when Obama nominated Michael Flynn to head military intelligence (DIA).
Did Flynn get the nod because Obama wanted someone congenial to pro-jihadi CIA operations? It’s the obvious hypothesis. The CIA and the Pentagon’s DIA are members of the same ‘intelligence community.’ And the Pentagon is useful to any intervention in a foreign war.
After taking over as DIA Director in July 2012, Flynn produced, in August, a secret report on the war in Syria. This report confirmed that everybody in the ‘Syrian opposition’ (except for the Rojavans) was indeed jihadist, including the recipients of CIA-sponsored weapons. Immediately, Obama gave his favorite ‘Syrian rebels’ more weapons and military training, after which they joined ISIS—i.e., the Pentagon’s “jihadi university” graduates—en masse.
Did Flynn resign in protest? Did Obama get rid of him? Hardly. Flynn stayed until August 2014. This, to me, spells ‘pro-jihadi cooperation.’ So, Flynn’s story, told to Seymour Hersh, that he was always bombarding the White House with unheeded anti-jihadi emotion, is a bit strange.[15]
I like this other story better: Flynn is pro-jihad. As he left the DIA, he donned a fake ‘anti-jihadi’ and ‘anti-Obama’ costume so the power-elite cartel, in its new ‘Trump’ version, could later reuse him and continue its pro-jihadi policies as always. It’s all show.
But the show, I will allow, is really quite spectacular. During the campaign,
“Speaking to thousands of supporters… Trump vowed to ‘knock the hell out of ISIS’… before pointing the finger at the Democrats.
‘ISIS is honoring President Obama,’ he said. ‘He is the founder of ISIS. He is the founder of ISIS, okay? He is the founder. He founded ISIS. And I would say the cofounder would be crooked Hillary Clinton.’ ”[15a]
In fairness to Bush Jr., he was the founder of “jihadi university,” out of which came ISIS. But Obama/Clinton did continue along that path. And who carried out this continuation? None other than Michael Flynn, Trump’s co-campaigner and then his National Security Advisor.
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Kenneth Juster
Oh, and Flynn brought Kenneth Juster—from the Council on Foreign Relations—to the National Security Council.[16]
Score five.
(ALMOST) NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR
(Robert S. Harward)
Flynn was asked to leave when his contacts with Russians became a public embarrassment. Trump then offered the vacant post to General Robert S. Harward, who declined. But Trump—or his handlers—did want him. This is once again revealing, because Harward supported the Bush Jr./Obama policies that recruited so many Muslims to jihad.
Image result for Robert harward
Robert Harward
In the Bush Jr. years, as we saw above, the Pentagon created a prison system in Iraq where lots of innocent people were imprisoned together with hardened Islamic terrorists, who then forced the rest to join the jihad. Operating from 2003 to 2008, this “jihadi university” produced ISIS (see Flynn).
For the first three years of this, 2003-2005, Harward worked at the National Security Council’s (NSC) counterterrorism office. This job description, in a normal world, would have led Harward to end “jihadi university.” But perhaps this is an Orwellian world. Perhaps ‘counterterrorism’ really means ‘pro-terrorism.’
How to find out? We could look at Harward’s earlier postings.[17] But let’s follow him to his next job instead.
In the period 2006-2008, ‘counterterrorism’ expert Robert Harward was placed in charge of JSOC (special forces) in Afghanistan, where he started a new “jihadi university” on the model of the first (it’s a franchise business!). Two-thirds of those picked up in Harward’s raids, incarcerated in Bagram, were innocent, according to an internal military report. As in Iraq, once locked up with hardened jihadis, these innocent were forcibly recruited to jihad.
When Obama came in, he named Harward to “oversee detention operations in Afghanistan.” From this position, Harward sabotaged an effort to release the innocent; the jihadi recruitment program continued.[17a]
Presumed ‘counter-jihadist’ Donald Trump, then, wanted Harward for National Security Advisor… Speaks volumes.
When Harward said no, Trump offered the job to Lt. General H.R. McMaster. McMaster’s nomination allows us to make, once again, the same inferences about Trump.
NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR
(H.R. McMaster)
Trump came into office declaring that he would do it all differently. Unlike Obama and Clinton, he would fight the enemies of the US. And, by Jove, he would call a spade a spade! The danger, he shouted, was “radical Islamic terrorism.”
[Cut to H.R. McMaster, facing his new staff at the National Security Council (NSC).]: “[T]he label ‘radical Islamic terrorism’ was not helpful” announces McMaster, “because terrorists are ‘un-Islamic.’ ” They “are perverting their religion.”
Islam, then, is ‘the religion of peace.’
The Obama/Clinton and Bush Jr. cliques—as the New York Times points out—used precisely this language, so McMaster’s speech came as a great relief to professional NSC staff members, “many of them holdovers from the Obama administration” (and the Bush Jr. administration).[18]
H.R. McMaster
McMaster’s bias makes it natural that he should appoint Obama and Bush Jr. stalwarts to advise him:
● Ricky Waddell, Deputy National Security Advisor, earlier with David Petraeus in the Obama administration (see Waddell).
● Dina Habib Powell, Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategy, earlier a top aide in the Bush Jr. (she helped select Bush’s top personnel).
● Lisa Curtis, Senior Director for South and Central Asia, earlier a CIA hand that was an advisor in Bush Jr.’s State Department.
● Fiona Hill, Senior Director for Russia and Europe, earlier a national intelligence officer in the Obama administration.[19]
Obama and Bush Jr. staffers, Obama and Bush Jr. appointees, and Obama’s and Bush Jr.’s apologies for Islam. Business as usual, then? Yes, because this is doctrinal.
And who’s been overseeing this doctrine? Why, McMaster!
His previous job, under Obama, was Deputy Commanding General, Futures of the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, which educates close to half a million soldiers plus a fair number of civilians.[20]
What does McMaster recommend, in the way of educational material?
For a taste, peruse Militant Islamist Ideology: Understanding the Global Threat (Naval Institute Press, 2010). The author is one Youssef Aboul-Enein, formerly a top ‘counterterrorism’ advisor in the Obama administration. The book is riddled with problems; I will focus here on one.
Mr. Aboul-Enein alleges a distinction between “militant Islamists”—ISIS and others who murder ‘infidels’—and “non-militant Islamists,” such as the Muslim Brotherhood, which, he claims, is not a threat. One problem with that: the Muslim Brotherhood helped arm the jihadis in Syria who later joined… ISIS (see Flynn). So this distinction is without a difference.
And yet, “McMaster wholeheartedly endorsed [Aboul-Enein’s book] in 2010 as ‘excellent’ and ‘deserv[ing] a wide readership.’ ” This endorsement appears on the back cover.[21]
No doubt the Muslim Brotherhood is pleased.
The Brookings Institution also seems pleased. Senior fellow William McCants said the following in support of McMaster’s “repudiation of [Trump’s] lexicon and worldview”:
“ ‘McMaster, like Obama, is someone who was in positions of leadership and thought the United States should not play into the jihadist propaganda that this is a religious war.’ ”[22]
Consider the logic of that. Jihadists certainly use propaganda—e.g. when they denounce Western values as supposedly evil. But ‘jihad’ means ‘religious war’ and a ‘jihadist’ is the one who fights it. This is a simple definition—not propaganda.
Why do Brookings scholars say otherwise? And why do they endorse McMaster?
Here’s our take. The ruling cartel in the US has for decades supported a pro jihadi policy (Part 2), working through powerful think tanks such as Brookings (Part 4). This policy can succeed only if Westerners do not understand it, so Brookings obscures the very meaning of ‘jihad’ and applauds McMaster for saying that “terrorists are ‘un-Islamic.’ ”
Now consider the following four facts, all consistent with this model:
● “Qatar [has been] arguing that Muslim Brotherhood-style political Islam is the Arab world’s best hope for democracy”;
● Qatar allied with the Muslim Brotherhood and with Obama to arm and train the jihadists in Siria that later joined ISIS (see Flynn);
● “the Qatari government [is] the single biggest donor to Brookings” and its former prime minister “sits on the center’s advisory board”[23]; and
● Fiona Hill (above), McMaster’s right-hand man, is a Brookings scholar.
(But Donald Trump is a counter-jihadist?)
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David Petraeus
On the Israeli front, what can we expect?
Well, McMaster belongs to David Petraeus’ circle and, as noted above, Petraeus—Obama’s man—has been quite adamant that the Israelis should be made to genuflect and forced to accept the creation of a PLO/Fatah state in Judea and Samaria (see McFarland).[23a] McMaster now promises that Trump will call for “Palestinian self-determination” in his trip to Israel.[23b] No surprises there.
Oh, and H.R. McMaster is a “member of the Council on Foreign Relations.”
Score six.
DEFENSE SECRETARY
(James Mattis)
James Mattis was, under Obama, commander of CENTCOM—which oversees US military operations in North Africa and the Middle East—from August 2010 to March 2013. In other words, he was the man on the ground, in charge in the key ‘Area of Responsibility’ when Leon Panetta (Obama’s CIA director, then his secretary of defense) and Michael Flynn (Obama’s DIA director) partnered with the Muslim Brotherhood to arm and train the Pentagon’s jihadists in Syria (see Flynn).
Who did Mattis want as undersecretary for policy? Anne Patterson.[24]
Patterson is reportedly close to David Petraeus, the general who loudly calls for removing Judea and Samaria from Israel to create there an independent PLO/Fatah state (see McFarland). She close to Leon Panetta. And, perhaps not coincidentally, Patterson seems cozy, too, with the Muslim Brotherhood.
James Mattis and Anne Patterson
Right after forcing Hosni Mubarak out of power in Egypt, Obama demanded immediate elections, which only the Muslim Brotherhood could organize quickly enough for. Then he sent Patterson to be his ambassador to Cairo. Patterson was there when, thanks to Obama, Mohammed Morsi, from the Muslim Brotherhood, was elected president, and also when he was ousted after dramatic, widespread demonstrations. She was Obama’s mouthpiece at the epicenter, voicing Obama’s intense displeasure that the Muslim Brotherhood had been removed from power.
There is a widespread perception among Egyptians that Patterson was a US tool to impose Muslim Brotherhood rule upon them.[25]
Mattis was unable to make Patterson responsible for Pentagon policy because two senators became stubbornly opposed; but though she wasn’t confirmed, it is clear where Mattis himself wants to go—or, rather, keep going. That may explain why the CFR seems so happy with him.
“Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that Mr Mattis would be a ‘great choice.’ ‘He is not only a consummate warrior but also a deeply learned student of warfare. He would bring a thoughtfulness and wisdom to the cabinet that is badly needed. He is also a man of unassailable probity — another important attribute that this administration needs,’ said Mr Boot.”[26]
Score seven.
DEPUTY ADVISOR ON COUNTERTERRORISM
(Sebastian Gorka)
Sebastian Gorka, “a former Breitbart News national security editor and fixture on Fox News,” gets a lot of criticism from the ‘left’ as a supposed ‘Islamophobe’ hard-liner. Talking Points Memo, for example, considers Gorka to be in the “anti-Muslim fringe” and therefore entirely beyond the pale.
TPM relies on two quoted experts: Omid Safi, director of Islamic Studies at Duke University, and author of Memories of Muhammad: Why the Prophet Matters, and Engy Abdelkader, professor at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service (Georgetown University), and author of When Islamophobia Turns Violent.
Gorka’s book, Defeating Jihad, these two say, is “ ‘propaganda’ ” and replete with “ ‘anti-Muslim bigotry and prejudice.’ ” His opinions of Islam are “ ‘sloppy, superficial, bigoted, and ideological.’ ” Besides, Gorka regularly appears on a radio show hosted by Frank Gaffney, whom TPM calls an “anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist” heading an “anti-Islam think tank.”[27]
Omid Safi and Engy Abdelkader
Such reactions by the ‘left’ might suggest that Gorka really does fit with Trump’s campaign promise to fight jihadism. And yet the counter-jihad movement doesn’t seem happy with him either.
Jihad Watch, for example, complains that “President Trump continues to speak about ‘radical Islamic terrorism’ while hiring people who remain in Obamoid fantasyland.” One of these people, according to Jihad Watch is no other than Sebastian Gorka. An article by John Guandolo accuses that, in a radio presentation,
“Sebastian Gorka stated ‘99.9% of Muslims do not support terrorism (jihad)’ despite a mountain of evidence and polling data proving this comment untrue.”[28]
Indeed, surveys show that Muslims in Western countries are being radicalized, and every day there is greater support among them for suicide bombings against ‘infidels.’ In the United States, where Gorka lives, 15% of young Muslims say they are in favor.[29]
The piece in Jihad Watch also fulminates that
“Gorka ends [his book] with the call for the United States to spend billions of dollars supporting ‘Muslim reformers’ in their ‘ideological war to delegitimize the message of holy war against the infidel and bolster modern interpretations of Islam.’ ”
What rankles is Gorka’s presumption that “the message of holy war against the infidel” can be “deligitimiz[ed]” from within Islam as ‘un-Islamic,’ which brings Gorka’s language close to McMaster’s. This “demonstrates,” says the author, “that Sebastian Gorka is either completely free of any clue of Islamic doctrine or is intentionally lying about what Islam actually teaches.”
Indeed, if Gorka believes that violent jihad is ‘un-Islamic,’ then he does not understand the content of the Qur’an, the content of the hadiths, the normative weight of the Sira (Muhammad’s accepted biography), or the canonical interpretations of the most respected scholars in the Muslim tradition (such as Ibn Hazm of Cordoba). And if so, he is no different from most Western officials, whose representations of Islam have been denounced by prominent ex-Muslims—such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali—as irresponsible apologies for Islamic doctrine.[30]
Is Gorka, then, only a pretend ‘counter-jihad’ warrior? You are the company you keep.
Gorka consorts with Frank Gaffney, who parades himself as a counter-jihadist. But Gaffney, starting in the 1970s, was an aide to Richard Perle, and later worked with him at Ronald Reagan’s Pentagon, which worked overtime to arm the jihadist Khomeini regime in Iran (Part 2). Perle was deeply involved with that circle and assisted Iran’s expansion into Iraq.[31]
Gorka’s wife Katharine—part of Trump’s U.S. Department of Homeland Security transitional ‘landing team’—was director of the Hungarian office of the National Forum Foundation, led by James Denton. This Denton has received an award for his prominent role assisting the jihadi destruction of Yugoslavia.[32]
Denton has also directed Heldref Publications, established by Jeanne Kirkpatrick, a member of Ronald Reagan’s National Security Council and heavily involved in the conspiracy to send weapons to Khomeini’s jihadi regime in Iran.
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Sebastian (with bocskai) and Katharine Gorka
Then there is the question of Sebastian Gorka’s apparent sympathies with groups that espouse antisemitism.
The clue comes from Trump’s inaugural, to which Gorka, of Hungarian origin, decided to wear a bocskai. This frankly odd piece of attire, one guesses, was worn to make a statement. And that’s how followers of Jobbik—Hungary’s second strongest party, considered very ‘far right’—took it. Thus, “a few far-right Hungarian publications wrote up approving stories about Gorka’s attire shortly after inauguration.” But why would they see Gorka’s bocskai as a salute to them? Because that’s how they dress: Jobbik followers “have taken to wearing bocskai jackets to formal events.”[33]
Context is everything.
How ‘far-right’ is Jobbik? Well, French politician Marine Le Pen—also called ‘far right’—“has ruled out forming a group with Jobbik in the European Parliament, considering it too extreme.”[34] Why “too extreme”? Perhaps because Jobbik “ha
been accused of anti-Semitism,”[35] whereas Le Pen has been working hard to soften her party’s antisemitic reputation.[38]
Is it fair to accuse Jobbik of antisemitism?
Consider that Jobbik followers are fond of Miklos Horthy (which explains the bocskai, “popular during Horthy’s rule”).[36] They like him so much that, each year, they commemorate Horthy’s 1919 march on Budapest.[37] That’s a bit of a giveaway because Horthy ruled Hungary in WWII, allied with the Nazis, and deported more than 400,000 Jews to Auschwitz.
Or consider Csanad Szegedi. This character, a onetime “rising star” in Jobbik, first “came to prominence as a founder member of the Hungarian Guard,” a group that, before it was banned by courts in 2009, “wore black uniforms and striped flags recalling the Arrow Cross, a pro-Nazi party which governed Hungary at the end of World War II and killed thousands of Jews.” Not surprisingly, Szegedi “was notorious for his antisemitic comments.” None of this embarrassed Jobbik. But when political enemies of Szegedi documented that he was from a Jewish family, that was embarrassing. Szegedi was forced out of Jobbik.[39]
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A younger Gorka, wearing the same bocskai (from Facebook)
Gorka is of Hungarian origin, and lived, studied, and worked in Hungary for years, where he held high-profile government jobs and became a media ‘expert on counterterrorism.’ It is hard to accept that Gorka wore a bocskai to the Trump inaugural without understanding that Hungarian antisemites—now running Hungary’s second-biggest party—would see it as a ‘high five’ to them.
WHITE HOUSE CHIEF STRATEGIST
(Steve Bannon)
Long before becoming Trump’s campaign strategist, Steve Bannon had made a name for himself as a ‘counter-jihadist.’ His visibility contributed strongly to the perception that Trump will be ‘tough on Islam.’ And he continues to have that effect, because Bannon is now, according to many, ‘the power behind the throne,’ calling all the shots. TIME magazine called him “The Great Manipulator” and “The second most powerful man in the world.”[40]
By presidential memorandum, Trump included Bannon in the National Security Council. When this created too much controversy, the new head of the NSC, H.R. McMaster, officially removed Bannon from this NSC role. But, even so,
“Bannon retains a top-level national security clearance, the ability to sit in on most NSC meetings, and a West Wing office steps away from the Oval Office door.”[41]
Moreover, Bannon helped select McMaster as head of the NSC. Few doubt that Bannon’s influence will be strongly felt in Trump’s foreign policy.
So, who is Bannon?
Image result for steve bannon
Steve Bannon
Until recently, he was executive chair of Breitbart News, which claims to speak for the ‘alt-right’ movement. “We think of ourselves,” says Bannon, “as virulently anti-establishment, particularly ‘anti-’ the permanent political class.”[42]
Really? Among other high-profile jobs, Bannon once worked as special assistant to the Chief of Naval Operations—the top admiral at the Pentagon.[33] He was always ‘Establishment.’
And his high-profile Pentagon stint was during the Reagan administration, when Pentagon top-chief Caspar Weinberger colluded secretly with other top Reagan officials to send weapons to Khomeini’s jihadi regime in Iran. Bannon remembers those days fondly: he wrote and directed In the Face of Evil, a documentary film celebrating Ronald Reagan.
Bannon fits right into the pattern we’ve been tracing here.
Is the ‘alt right’ just another cartel con? Perhaps. The late Andrew Breitbart, founder of the ‘alt right’ internet mecca, Breitbart News, also helped launch the Huffington Post, at the very opposite end of the political branding spectrum.[43]
Conclusion
For anyone casually perusing the Western media, Donald Trump will appear as an erratic and ineffective man, perhaps, but sincerely committed to getting ‘tough on jihadism,’ and hence a big contrast with his predecessor, Barack Obama, and with his campaign rival, Hillary Clinton. But is this true? Or is it a show?
Put another way: Is the US system, as they tell us, a free political market, with democratic responsiveness to the people? Or does a political cartel—entirely immune to the result of any election—have a stranglehold on power? To try and decide, we may look at how Trump filled his top slots with foreign policy responsibilities.
We have seen Donald Trump, Mr. ‘anti-Establishment,’ getting mostly people from the Obama and Bush Jr. administrations to fill appointments with top foreign-policy responsibility. He is using mostly people that have been heavily involved with pro-jihadi and anti-Israeli policies, which, as explained in Part 2, are quite traditional. And a crushing majority of these appointments involve people who have membership in, or are closely connected to, the group we identified in Part 4 as the brain behind US policy: the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). All of this follows rather closely the predictions of the HIR model, built on the hypothesis that a political cartel runs the United States.
Topic: Who Makes Foreign Policy for Trump? New Dr. Gill-White research!!! (Read 1452 times)