Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin on Genocide, the SPLC, Military Readiness and more

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Welcome to Secure Freedom Radio. This is Frank Gaffney, your host and guide for what I think of as an intelligence briefing on the war for the free world. A man whose, well, past record and ongoing accomplishments give us a source of extraordinary intelligence and savvy about what’s at stake in this war for the free world is our first guest. He is retired lieutenant general William G. “Jerry” Boykin. He is a man who has distinguished himself in uniform over several decades in the special forces and in the intelligence community. Ultimately serving as the deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence under George W. Bush. He is, among other things, an ordained minister and the executive vice president at the Family Research Council and I am privileged to call him a friend and a colleague and always delighted to have him as a guest here at Secure Freedom Radio, General Boykin, welcome back, sir.

JERRY BOYKIN:

Thank you very much, Frank. I’m glad to be with you.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

You know, I’ve been musing about a poll that has just come out by the Gallup research organisation. It indicates, General, that not since 2001, when I believe you were serving in the Pentagon, has there been as high a level of great concern on the part of the American people, something on the order of fifty-three percent of those in this poll expressing that concern, about crime and violence in our country. You’ve spent your life protecting our country. Do you think, General, that that anxiety is well placed in light of the sorts of dangers that you see both foreign and domestic at the moment?

JERRY BOYKIN:

Yeah, Frank, you know, I’m – I grew up in the 60s, you know, I was in college in the 60s and I saw the Watts riots and I saw the protests against Vietnam and people, you know, rioting all over major cities. And I see now that there’s a repeat of that, but I think it’s probably more intense now and when you look at the fact that we’ve got some organisations that are deliberately stirring people up and encouraging people to riot, and you can take Baltimore as an example, you can take the situation out in Missouri, where we actually had people that came in from other cities, we also had Islamic groups that came in and all they were doing was promoting violence in the streets of America. And I think that this is prominent today and I think that we’re going to see more of this, particularly as we come in to the latter part of the political season.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

I’m afraid you’re right. There’s certainly evidence of collaboration between these groups on an ongoing basis and some indications that they do intend to turn things up as the election season progresses. General, you mentioned the Islamist groups. They are present in large numbers, as you know. You’ve spent, as I say, much of your professional life in uniform waging war against our foreign enemies. To what extent do you feel that the Muslim Brotherhood’s investment in infrastructure of various kinds, mosques, cultural centers, Islamic societies, front groups of various kinds, influence operations and the like, is giving rise in this country to something akin to what we’ve seen most recently in Brussels as a kind of support system for the violent kind of jihad? Is that a reason for concern as well?

JERRY BOYKIN:

Yeah, Frank, back in February when you were honoured in San Diego by the Council for National Policy with the George Washington Leadership Award, during that period I went up and spent a day with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. And one of them said to me, you know, our real concern as we look at what occurred in San Bernardino is that there are jihadist cells like this probably all over the country. These people have come across our borders. The southern border, certainly, but you know, some have come across the northern border. And they have established themselves and they are waiting for the right opportunity, the right target, and for some kind of direction from sort of the spiritual and theological leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood. Now the Muslim Brotherhood has many components. And we should never forget that ISIS is a component of the Muslim Brotherhood. I mean, ultimately, you can tie it directly back to the Muslim Brotherhood. So is this going to get worse? You bet, Frank. They are all over our country. They are gaining momentum. They are not losing momentum. They are not on the ropes. They have not been defeated, as our president would have us believe. And I will tell you, until these communities really start standing up against this, it’s going to get worse. And these mosques, as you – you know, based on a study that you did at the Center for Security Policy about three years ago, where you discovered in a random survey of mosques across the country that over eighty percent of them are in one form or another advocating jihad. And by the way, jihad is holy war. It’s not the internal struggle that everybody wants you to believe. So this is going to get worse, Frank.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Yeah. I fear you’re right, General. Thank you for mentioning that award for which I was tremendously honoured to receive from you on behalf of the Council for National Policy. It was a great distinction and I’m truly, truly grateful for it. Let me ask you, General, as I mentioned, you are not only a storied military hero, you are also an ordained minister. We recently had the government of the United States in the person of John Kerry mention, declare, designate, I’m not quite sure what verb would be appropriate, kind of, that the global jihad is in fact now perpetrating genocide against Christians. Are you surprised that we’ve not seen more of an outpouring of concern or support from the Christian community in the United States over that reality and why do you think that is, sir?

JERRY BOYKIN:

Well, I would encourage you to think back to 1995. When, as a result of what we called the Balkans War, the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, you had the Christian Serbs that were killing the Muslims, the Bosniaks. They were killing them in places like Sarajevo and Tuzla and other parts of the former Yugoslavia. So what occurred? The United Nations intervened immediately. The British and the French took military forces in there to stop the genocide of basically – of the Muslims in there. Ultimately, America had to get involved because the British and the French and our other allies there just simply could not do it. And America had to come in, bring US forces in, provide leadership. Okay, so that was because Muslims were being killed. Now what about Christians? Christians have been brutalised and slaughtered for about a decade now on a grand scale. And if you look at – I would encourage your listeners to go to the internet and look up a town called Ma’loula. M-A-A-L-A-L-O-U, I think is the way it’s pronounced. Ma’loula. That is the oldest Christian village in the world, it’s in Syria. They still speak Syriac. That village has been essentially decimated. The likes of ISIS and the al-Nusra Front came into that village, wiped out the village, killed the spiritual leaders there, raped the women. And some of the women and children were able to escape up into the caves in the mountains eventually before they got to Turkey. But that city has been wiped out. And that’s the oldest Christian village in the world. Have you heard anything about it? Have most of your listeners heard anything about it? No. And that is because these are Christians. They don’t get the same attention. They don’t get the same protection. They don’t get the same support from the international community that it would, you know, that would be provided if in fact it was Muslims that were being slaughtered. And I am – I was actually surprised John Kerry called it genocide. And it’s a major turning point, I think, now that the world has to intervene and do something.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Well, it remains very much to be seen whether the leader of the free world, at least in the past the United States of America will perform that kind of function and mobilise the rest of us. General Jerry Boykin, I’m very pleased to say we have a second segment with you if you’ll stand by. We’ll be coming right back and talk more about enemies foreign and domestic. That and more with General Boykin, right after this.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Welcome back. We’re continuing our conversation with one of my most admired comrades and one of our most decorated military heroes, General Jerry Boykin, United States Army, retired. General, we were talking about the various challenges to us on the home front as well as overseas and one question that jumps out at me is you have been leading an effort to counter a group called the Southern Poverty Law Center that has designated your organisation and mine as hate groups. And I was very pleased to see a top congressman has weighed in on this question. Would you quickly tell us about the SPLC and Congressman Bob Goodlatte’s intervention?

JERRY BOYKIN:

Yeah, SPLC is probably – probably next to the Muslim Brotherhood the most evil group in America. And they have been, they started out as a civil rights organisation in about 1971. But over time, they really became a big money making machine, fleecing people, particularly minorities. And ultimately becoming the, I would say a tool for the uber-left, for every liberal organisation in America. And they are just downright evil. Now, what they’ve labelled you and me and our organisations as hate groups, they’ve labelled some very recognisable people as hate-mongers like Brigitte Gabriel, like Judge Jeanine Pirro, like Sandy Rios and others, Ann Coulter. Now, the question is, what authority do they have to do that? And the answer is, none. None whatsoever. And, oh, by the way, Frank, so that your listeners know, they have about three hundred and fifty million dollars in offshore accounts. They fleece people. And they do it in a very nefarious and underhanded kind of way.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

We’re talking with General Jerry Boykin and, General, you’re describing obvious reason for concern about the activities of the Southern Poverty Law Center. I believe you and others have raised this concern with the judiciary committee of the House. Tell us what Congressman Bob Goodlatte, its chairman, has done in response.

JERRY BOYKIN:

Well, he wrote a letter to the attorney general, Loretta Lynch, in which he addresses the issue of the FBI or the Department of Justice or any government entities that are under the – or under the attorney general’s authority, using the data from the Southern Poverty Law Center. And here’s one of the things – I’ll just read it to you right quick, I’ve got the letter with me right here, it says, Southern Poverty Law Center’s listing of non-violent law-abiding groups has had terrible consequences. In 2012, the headquarters of the Federal Research Council, a non-violent conservative group with no history of committing hate crimes was attacked by a man who stated that he was guided by the Southern Poverty Law Center’s hate map. And that was the day that a man walked in here and shot our building manager and told the judge he intended to kill as many people as possible. So that man was found guilty of domestic terrorism. This is what your listeners need to understand. Southern Poverty Law Center, the one that identified you and your organisation as hate-mongers are connected in federal court to domestic terrorism. Now, it’s time for Americans to wake up and start distancing themselves and demanding that this government hold the Southern Poverty Law Center accountable for the malicious nature of their actions.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Amen, General Boykin. I hope that this letter from Bob Goodlatte will contribute to that. I know that you’ve had some success in discouraging the FBI from the close embrace of these guys, but certainly there are others in the Obama administration that are continuing it and it should be stopped. General, let me quickly turn to one other problem that I know you’re wrestling with as well, based in part on your long service to our country in uniform. You have been warning about what’s being done to diminish our military capabilities, the readiness of our forces, the modernity of their equipment, the, well, the culture of the military as well. Would you speak briefly to that against the backdrop of a, clearly, world in which we’re likely to need that military more than ever?

JERRY BOYKIN:

Yeah, you know, Frank, I don’t know if you saw it, but Bret Baier interviewed three former secretaries of defense and – and they all basically had the same story, that, you know, Obama has had a concern or a fear of the military, that some of the decisions that were made were not in the best interests of the military, etcetera. And you know what I think? I think, where were you when those decisions were being made? Why is it that you didn’t stand up at that time? What you’re showing me is that you lacked the courage to stand up. Instead, you get out and write a book eighteen months after you leave. What’s got to happen in our military is that there’s got to be new leadership in there with a focus on one thing. And that’s military readiness. Not on social experiments. Not on a bunch of nonsense that has nothing to do with preparing our military to do what its mission is. And that is to win wars. And I will tell you that I am really annoyed when I see these former secretaries of defense stand up and talk about how they didn’t agree with this and they didn’t agree with that. And I think there’s got to be, there’s got to be some of the leadership in America today that is, that, you know, the military leaders have got to stand up and lay their stars on the table and say, I won’t support these policies. Instead, what we’ve had is a bunch of sycophants. So what do we have now? We have a military that is having trouble recruiting good people off the streets of America and retaining good people that are already in the military. Because they’re fed up with what they see. They understand that they’re being used as pawns in these social experiments and in this political arena where their mission should be absolutely apolitical. It should be to prepare themselves to fight and win the nation’s wars. Douglas MacArthur, in 1963, stood in the mess hall at West Point and he looked at them and he said, your mission remains fixed, determined, inviolable. It is to win the nation’s wars. Well, we’ve lost sight of that.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Let me ask you, General, and this is hard to say, frankly, the policies that the president has been pursuing have, as you’ve said so well, diminished the readiness, diminished the warfighting capabilities, diminished our ability to deter war, which is fundamentally what we hope the military will do first and foremost. Is it your judgment, sir, based on your years of combat and work in the intelligence community and your insights into policymaking at the highest levels of the Defense Department and the United States government, that these policies are designed to have that effect, not just sort of having it, you know, coincidentally?

JERRY BOYKIN:

You know, Frank, I can’t answer for what this administration is thinking. I can’t answer for why they’re doing what they’re doing. That is certainly a possibility. But I would ask your listeners to think about this. During the Vietnam era, to get a statement out of a POW that was being held in Hanoi, you had to beat that man almost to the point of killing him. And that was the standard. Take it to the limit, but don’t let them kill you. And then they would make a public statement. We had a bunch of sailors in two boats that were taken – and I don’t believe for a minute they were in Iranian waters, but they were taken and within the next three or four hours, they were on television, apologising. And then you get a – then you get a video of one of them sitting over in the corner, crying. Frank, what’s happened to our military? Now, I’ll tell you what part of it is. They have not spent their time being trained on the code of conduct. They’ve spent their time being trained on tolerance and inclusion.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Diversity, sensitivity, and white privilege, yeah.

JERRY BOYKIN:

Yeah, that’s right, on white privilege and nonsense like that. That’s where they spend their training time. I get feedback from military people all the time. Sir, we spent the entire week doing nothing but classroom training on tolerance and integrating women into the infantry. And, I mean, Frank, we’re wasting precious training time at a time when our enemies are growing stronger and we’re growing weaker.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

General Jerry Boykin, I salute you, as always, for your service in so many different capacities, including that you’re rendering to our country now at the Family Research Council as its executive vice president. Keep it up, sir. Come back to us again if you would very soon. Next up, our friend Sarah Stern joins us to talk about the Middle East and the jihad emanating from it and more, straight ahead.