Orlando and Jihad in America

Frank Gaffney spoke with Rowan Scarborough on Secure Freedom Radio this week. Scarborough is the author of “Rumsfeld’s War” and a long time national security columnist for the Washington Times.

Gaffney kicked off their discussion with the subject of the terror attack at the Pulse gay bar in Orlando, Florida this weekend and asked Scarborough for his assessment of the situation:

“I think the take away is that the business plan that the Islamic State has put in place is unfortunately, working. They are unprecedented in their decision to find people who know how to take the internet and take applications that allow you to communicate and turn that into a call for Jihad where you don’t need meetings, you don’t need phone calls. You just have to put it out in enough platforms in target areas where you think you have followers and you can convince one person, two people, ten people to go out and commit mass murder. We saw it at Fort Hood, not Islamic state but the same premise, we saw it in Chattanooga, we saw it in San Bernardino and then over the weekend we saw it in Orlando. And it’s going to happen again, until we bring the Islamic State infrastructure down, which right now Frank, we’re not close to doing.”

Gaffney pointed out that this exploitation of infrastructure is just one manifestation of a much larger effort on the behalf of Jihadists towards Islamic supremacy. Scarborough continued:

“When I talk of infrastructure, I’m thinking of Raqqa, the heart and soul of the Islamic State, and as long as we allow that to operate with their media centers, the brain trust of how to get their message out, this is going to continue. So if you take Raqqa away from them and take Mosul away from them, the call for Jihad is going to diminish, it just has to. Because they can’t possibly replicate this in offices  or bedrooms or wherever around the world. They have a central nervous system that does this and when I say bring down the infrastructure that’s what we and our allies have to do.”

Gaffney then turned the conversation to President Obama’s ongoing effort to close Guantanamo Bay and asked Scarborough how that relates to this recent development. Scarborough responded:

“Well, what has struck me Frank is that the Pentagon has put out over a half a dozen press releases in recent months ballyhooing the fact that they have killed an al Qaeda operative who was a bomb maker or an al Qaeda operative who was a senior leader and that’s fine and in the press releases they say that this makes America safer. But at the exact same time, we have been releasing al Qaeda loyalists, people skilled in the same terror tactics as the people that we just killed. So it’s almost like we have a replenishment program that’s on a delayed basis.  I mean, will they go back to terrorism from Gitmo immediately? Probably not, but after a year or two will committed Jihadists find a way to go back? I think the likelihood is great.”

Scarborough used as an example, a top lieutenant for Bin Laden who was released from Guantanamo Bay and is now a leader for al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

“If you kill a guy on the battlefield, but then release a senior leader like this, where is the gain?”