Breitbart News National Security Editor Dr. Sebastian Gorka, author of the best-selling book Defeating Jihad: The Winnable War, talked about Monday’s terrorist attacks in Berlin and Ankara on Tuesday’s Breitbart News Daily with SiriusXM host Alex Marlow.
Gorka noted that, unlike many terrorist attacks, a great deal of information about the Ankara shooting was immediately available to the public because Russian Ambassador Andrey Karlov was murdered in front of a crowd of journalists.
“While there’s lots of jihadi snuff videos out there of hostages being executed, there really is nothing like the video of this ambassador giving a speech at an art gallery, and then being gunned down on camera – and then afterwards having the individual make his statement, his calls of ‘Allahu akbar,’ and his comments on the Syrian conflict actually recorded,” Gorka observed. “Whatever the geostrategic ramifications, that video will be with us for decades, and I’m sure will be used to incite more violence.”
“What we do is that this young man, very well-dressed young man, was part of some special police unit. So he was a Turkish national, and as a result, he represents the epitome of what we call the ‘insider threat,’” he said. “Turkey has suffered from terrorism for decades, but usually it’s by external actors or Kurdish nationals and so forth. In this case, it’s someone who’s in the security services, had some kind of vetting, was carrying a weapon, and then decided to become a jihadi. So this is an insidious threat that all nations have to think about.”
Marlow asked about reports that one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s key political allies is claiming that “shadowy NATO forces” were behind the Ambassador’s murder.
“Well, you know, Moscow loves to perpetuate dezinformatsiya, or disinformation. The whole television network RT is an amazing example of that,” Gorka noted. “The reaction will probably be some spinning of conspiracy theories by the fringes of the administration and those that are acolytes to it. But I think the actual response that we’re waiting for the most is from Putin. Will he use this as he’s used other events to exploit the instability, such as in Ukraine or Syria?”
“This provides for him, if we look at this in the cold light of day, various options to exploit the geostrategic ramifications he can gin up, simply by being the head of state of the country whose ambassador was assassinated,” he said.
Gorka said he “tends to reject the concept of ‘lone wolf’” attacks, so it’s likely just a matter of time before connections between the Ankara shooter and organized terrorism are discovered.
“‘Lone wolf’ was a phrase invented by the Obama administration to make the average American dumber,” he said. “It’s a phrase made to make you disconnect the dots. To me, there is no such thing as a lone wolf because whoever we’re talking about, whether it’s this police officer, the Boston bombers, whether it’s the 9/11 hijackers – whoever it is, they’re all connected. And the connective tissue is, of course, the ideology of jihadism. Let’s wait and see. I think that there may be some kind of broader conspiracy, but let’s just wait a few days and see what the Turkish find.”
Marlow quoted the rant from the Ankara gunman: “We die in Aleppo, you die here.”
“Right, so this is a narrative tag that has been used by jihadis before – that the crimes of the West in the Middle East, interferers, drone strikes, bombings, you name it, must be reflected in violence in the heartland,” Gorka said. “This is all part of the broader combining of philosophies of al-Qaeda originally, that melded the concepts of ‘near enemy’ and ‘far enemy.’ In the fifties and sixties, the jihadists were taking down the near enemy, which is the Arab regimes they saw to be un-Islamic. Now, after Afghanistan, with Iraq and other initiatives and military operations by the West, they want to take the war to the far enemy. That’s us.”
“Take the fight to the heartland of the infidel; this is very much an ISIS tactic. ISIS is fighting on multiple fronts – the Middle East, in North Africa, where it’s building and expanding its Caliphate, but also in the heartland of the United States,” he warned.
Gorka noted that the Berlin truck attack has “already been accepted. The responsibility for that attack has already been taken by an ISIS affiliate.”
“If that turns out to be true, then that just proves once again, we are in a multi-fronted war against a global jihadi movement,” he said, arguing that “the ball is literally in Vladimir Putin’s court, and it will be his reaction that shapes whether or not this has broader ramifications.”
“The only thing that is of note for us is this question of the insider threat,” Gorka added. “Can we put in place better vetting procedures? Are we allowed, as a nation here in America after January 20th, to jettison political correctness and talk about the ideology that motivates people like this police officer? That is something I dearly expect, and it is one of the most important ways to inoculate ourselves from this kind of threat occurring here in America.”
Marlow quoted from President-elect Donald Trump’s reaction to the Berlin attack – that “Islamic terrorists continually slaughter Christians,” and called it a “bold” statement, very different from what President Obama might have said.
“Absolutely,” Gorka agreed. “This is an indicator of how everything will change in just a matter of one short month. And this is very important; let me just give you one data point your listeners should be familiar with: when Iraq was invaded, when we invaded in 2003, there were 1.4 million indigenous Christians in that nation. Iraqi nationals went to church on Sundays. Now, with the rise of ISIS and the declaration of the Caliphate, there are significantly less than 200,000 left.”
“We, as a nation, engaged in Iraq only after the Yazidis – a polytheistic small sect – were hounded up Mount Sinjar. We went to save the polytheists. But there’s a much, much larger story, and that is the concerted targeting of Christians. Of course, a Christmas festival in Germany is an incredibly symbolic target. Let’s not forget this isn’t just about Europe,” he said.
Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.
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