This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.
The United States has formally recognized Israel’s sovereign control over the Golan Heights. In a White House ceremony today with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Trump once again aligned American policy with reality – and the geostrategic interests of the United States.
After all, having the high ground and aquifers of the Golan firmly in Israel’s hands means that such assets cannot be weaponized by her Syrian, Iranian and Hezbollah enemies – and ours. Doing otherwise would be a sure-fire formula for regional war, or worse.
So, will President Trump apply the same logic to the West Bank, another territory with high ground and water resources vital to Israel’s survival? His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, reportedly is recommending a so-called “peace plan” that would recklessly require the surrender of much of that area to Palestinians seeking Israel’s destruction.
Don’t go there, Mr. President.
This is Frank Gaffney.
This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.
Now that President Trump has effectively been exonerated by Special Counsel Robert Mueller of the charge that he and/or his campaign “colluded” with Russia, our national attention must turn to another, far more dangerous and increasingly aggressive enemy: Communist China.
To encourage and inform the needed, focused effort to understand – and counter – the myriad threats posed by the Chinese Communist Party and the country it misrules, several dozen national security practitioners, China experts, business leaders and human rights and religious freedom activists have come together to form the Committee on the Present Danger: China.
Four decades ago, another such committee helped Ronald Reagan defeat the previous totalitarian Communist government that sought our destruction: the Soviet Union. Ours launches today determined to help President Trump do the same with respect to the present, Chinese danger of our time.
This is Frank Gaffney. Learn more at PresentDangerChina.org.
This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.
President Trump just took another courageous and strategically astute step to align U.S. policy with reality in the Middle East, rather than with diplomatic delusions that have, for decades, caused disputes to fester and embolden our enemies, and Israel’s.
As with Mr. Trump’s previous actions relocating the U.S. embassy to Israel’s capital and withdrawing us from the disastrous Iran nuclear deal, his recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights puts America first.
After all, it is in our vital interest to prevent outcomes that would actually have the effect of destabilizing the region, rather than promoting peace – whether in Jerusalem, in Tehran or on this strategic high ground that protects Israel from the chaos in Syria and Iranian forces now being deployed there.
The same is true of Israel’s control over the equally strategic high ground known as the West Bank.
This is Frank Gaffney.
This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.
There’s been much talk lately about a looming trade deal with China. Negotiators are said to be making great progress and that more talks are going to happen next week. Other reports say serious disagreements persist.
Then, there’s the question of whether and when President Trump might meet with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping. Initially, it was planned to occur by this month’s end. Now, it’s been put off, perhaps indefinitely.
Unfortunately, the problem is not just the timing, but the content, of such a deal. There’s also the matter of Beijing’s virtually unbroken record of dishonoring its commitments.
Fortunately, Mr. Trump declared yesterday that, “We’re talking about leaving tariffs on Chinese goods for a substantial period of time, because we have to make sure that if we do the deal with China, that China lives by the deal.”
Amen.
This is Frank Gaffney.
This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.
Following a meeting of the so-called “Two Trumps” – the American one and the “Trump of the Tropics,” Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro – a potentially transformational partnership was announced. President Trump declared that Brazil is now a “major non-NATO ally.” He even suggested it may become a NATO one.
This strategic alliance and the election of the conservative Bolsonaro that made it possible, may be the most strategic development in the Western hemisphere since Fidel Castro’s revolution ushered in five decades of leftist violence and oppression in much of the region.
But for this partnership’s promise to be actualized, it must engineer a hemispheric intervention to end the humanitarian crisis in Venezuela. Before millions more Venezuelans flee their country or die there en masse, concerted regional action is needed to cut off the foreign-supplied financial and security life-support that sustains the Maduro regime.
This is Frank Gaffney.
This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.
There’s something bizarre about the incessant media coverage given to the despicable attacks that killed fifty Muslims in New Zealand mosques last week. The roughly simultaneous murders of some 120 Christians who were hacked to death by jihadists in Nigeria has gone relatively unreported.
The sharply contrasting attention to these incidents is the more remarkable since the reprehensible mistreatment of Muslim minorities around the world – even when the million or more Uighurs being jailed in Communist Chinese gulags are included – pales by comparison to the upwards of 245 million Christians being heavily persecuted globally.
Whatever the reason for this disparate coverage, it feeds the grievously false impression that so-called “Islamophobia” is a massive and growing problem, whereas the actual, intensifying persecution of Christians by Sharia-supremacists and others is not. The media’s silence only emboldens the perpetrators to redouble their oppression.
This is Frank Gaffney.
This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.
There was a gaping hole in the Fox News line-up on Saturday night. One of America’s most popular cable hosts, Judge Jeanine Pirro, was off the air after the network’s management placed her in the penalty box for two weeks.
This punishment is for Judge Jeanine posing a straightforward question during her open on March 9th concerning the source of Rep. Ilhan Omar’s serial and virulent anti-Semitism. Specifically, she asked: “Is her adherence to this Islamic doctrine [of women wearing head-coverings known as hijabs] indicative of her adherence to Sharia law, which in itself is antithetical to the United States Constitution?”
Rather than applaud its anchor for opening a much-needed debate about Sharia-supremacism in America, Fox capitulated to pressure from Rep. Omar’s Muslim Brotherhood friends. It strongly condemned Judge Jeanine, then suspended her for two weeks.
Let’s let #FoxNews know that’s unacceptable.
This is Frank Gaffney.
This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.
The nation’s top military officer yesterday explicitly rebuked Google for providing “direct support” to Communist China and its armed forces. In congressional testimony Gen. Joseph Dunford and Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan warned that Google’s supplying of surveillance technology and other assistance to an ever-more-blatantly-hostile foreign power is harmful to our own security.
They might have added that by giving what might be called “aid and comfort” to the People’s Republic of China, Google has added insult to injury. Its overwhelmingly leftist workers previously had refused to do business with the Pentagon, denying needed skills and expertise to those who would defend them from the likes of Chinese who seek to take our country down.
Google users and shareholders who find such behavior unacceptable – to say nothing of its creepy invasions of our privacy – should raise Cain about it.
This is Frank Gaffney.
This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.
The Republican-controlled Senate is expected today to join the Democrat-controlled House in saying that there’s not a national emergency along our southern border. To be sure, some GOP senators will try to have it both ways, claiming they actually think there is a national emergency. But they oppose President Trump’s unilateral action to address it by constructing new physical barriers that Congress has repeatedly failed to approve.
Such political contortionism is all the more irresponsible in light of the certainty that the emergency is about to become even more acute. The catastrophe unfolding as a result of the collapse of Venezuela’s electric grid will predictably result in large numbers – possibly millions – of additional refugees. Many inevitably will try to come here.
Senators who effectively vote for an open border will be held accountable. Republican ones will likely be primaried.
This is Frank Gaffney.
This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.
An important Senate hearing today will shed light on what Communist China is doing that constitutes a “new era of U.S.-Chinese competition.” A more accurate description for this period would be “wartime,” because Beijing has engaged in unrestricted, and unreciprocated, warfare against us for decades.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman James Risch of Idaho is to be congratulated for calling for a new approach. He intends to encourage a recalibration about the extent and character of China’s increasingly aggressive behavior.
Hopefully, in the process of today’s and coming hearings on this subject, Chairman Risch will not only educate the American people to this present danger, but arouse us to support the actions we must take in response.
These include not only rebuilding our military, but also countering the economic, financial and other asymmetric forms of warfare the Chinese are assiduously employing against us.
This is Frank Gaffney.
