Rep. John Fleming Sits Down with SFR

FG: 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’. In the front lines of that war, and indeed in the front lines of other facets of it but at the moment in the United States Congress is our first guest. He is Representative John Fleming, a medical doctor by training now representing the people of the Fourth District of Louisiana. He is a member of the House Armed Services Committee and also the Natural Resources Committee; he chairs its Subcommittee on Fisheries and so on. He is also the co-founder or prominent member of a number of other caucuses relevant to our present topic, and I’m very pleased to have him back. Welcome Congressman, thanks so much for taking the time to join us.

JF: Thanks Frank, absolutely

FG: Well I’m canvassing as many folks as I can get my hands on, both on and off Capitol Hill, about, well I call it the ‘Obamabomb’ deal. What did you make of it, and what do you think its prospects are in your chamber?

JF: Well, I think it’s a terrible deal. I mean Mr. Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, I think really clarifies for us very quickly. Remember that we had a vote a month or two ago on whether to have congressional oversight on this. I voted against that and the reason was because it created a very, very low threshold for the President to get his way. Instead of a two/ thirds vote for a treaty, he said we had to have a two/thirds vote to override his veto in both houses. What’s the chance of that? I would say slim to none. We really hurt our negotiating position by doing that because basically the President didn’t have to worry about disapproval. He could pretty much give into any thing he wanted so that he could get this notch on his belt, and be able to claim that he’s brought ‘peace in our time’; when in fact, it is a very bad deal but it’ll probably be years out before we see just how bad this deal is.

FG: You know, one of the other things that is aggravating about this deal, Congressman Fleming, is that the president went yesterday, or sent his minions to the United Nations to begin the process of unraveling the sanctions regime there and in Europe, even before the sixty days that provided for in this rigged game as you say, and I commend you for voting against the Corker-Cardin bill. I think it was a mistake, too. How do you think members of Congress, and for that matter constituents in the fourth district of Louisiana, are likely to take this gambit that the president isn’t going to wait for whatever congressional assent might be forthcoming. He’s going to steal a march on you and get the bulk of the sanctions already lifted by the UN.

JF: I think they’ll be outraged, at least my constituents will be in Louisiana. But they won’t be surprised. This is consistent with a lot of things this president has done. He comes to the aid of our adversaries, and he turns his back on our friends. So what to do about this? Again, he’s basically in my opinion stabbing our trusted ally, our most cherished ally, Israel, in the back, and he’s giving everything they essentially want to Iran, which is a nation, as you know, that sponsors terrorism that has killed thousands of Americans. There just completely shocked, but not surprised, again, because this is a repeated behavior by this president.

FG: You know, one particularly egregious example of the president’s, well, willingness to embrace our enemies and undermine our friends, Congressman John Fleming, as you know from your service on the Strategic Forces Subcommittee and the House Armed Services Committee and also as a member of the Missile Defense Caucus, is the abandonment for a time of a missile defense in Europe. We’re now hearing the Russians say, “Well we’ve now taken care of this missile or at least the nuclear threat from Iran. Mr. President, we call on you to scrap the sort of substitute system” that he had talked about putting in there. Do you anticipate the president will now take that step as well, leaving Europe as well as us substantially vulnerable to these sorts of threats which abide?

JF: Again, I wouldn’t be surprised, but again I pray that he doesn’t do that. Because we all also know that there’s nothing in this deal that prevents Iran from locking onto new ballistics, intercontinental ballistic technology. So their ability to deliver missiles both within the region and an intercontinental basis is going to get much better, so it would be shocking to think that we would leave our friends in Europe vulnerable. So what is going to have to happen, I’m afraid, is that each and every country is going to have to really open its’ wallet, and purchase missile defense technology and also become a nuclear state for deterrence. We know that for instance Saudi Arabia and other counties in the region are already working on doing that knowing that this was coming down the pipe. So this President, who wants to be an anti-proliferation President, when it comes to nuclear arms, is actually going to step it up a huge amount; and again, I just pray that he doesn’t try to remove more missile defenses in Europe from our NATO and aligned partners there.

FG: You know speaking of deterrence, Congressman Fleming, we have allowed unfortunately, particularly under this president, our own nuclear forces to decline rather dramatically, really atrophy, as well as have arms controlled induced cuts. What is your thought as you watch what the Russians are up to in Ukraine at the moment and making very bellicose noises against some others in Europe including some of our NATO allies, on their periphery. Is our deterrent adequate, and do you fear, as some have said on my program, that we may be at the threshold of miscalculations that could result in a nuclear war in Europe, if we’re not careful?

JF: Yes, I’ll take you back to Marine General Joseph Dunford, who’s the nominee for the Joints Chief of Staff, he was asked, ‘what is in your opinion our major threat out there’, and he said it was Russia. You remember that Romney said that in the 2012 debates and he was mocked by president Obama as saying he has a cold war mentality, well look, Putin is doing everything he can to reconstruct the old Soviet Union but in a modern way. Not under communism, but certainly under a totalitarian government; and Russia is rapidly modernizing its military. They are already violating the INF treatment, the Intermediate Range Nuclear Arms, and of course they have incurred into Ukraine, took over Crimea. I mean they are expansionists, and yet our president barely even notices it. Then we have the rebalance to the pacific, which I think is a good idea, but I don’t think we should be taking away resources from Europe. I think were actually zig-ing when we should be zag-ing. Were cutting our army another 40,000 troops strength, when in fact the world is a more dangerous place every day

FG: It is indeed. Speaking of which, again tying again to your work on the House Armed Services Committee, Congressman Fleming, and also your efforts on behalf of missile defense. A development that is very concerning to me is happening in both the Russian arsenal and the Chinese, namely, the advent of hypersonic maneuvering warheads, which would be designed explicitly to try to defeat our missile defenses. Could you just talk quickly about your sense is to what threat that represents and what we should be doing about it.

JF: Well yes, I mean obviously our missiles are designed for conventional ballistic and intercontinental ballistic missiles, and there’s things that can be done to defeat that, as you say hypersonic, traveling at speeds that are faster than what our defense can really provide, also multiple warheads, the ability to redirect after something is launched, where it can have an abnormal pathway. And so the question is, well do we really have an edge in technology over China and Russia? The answer is that they are rapidly catching up to us, and in some areas they are surpassing us, particularly Russia, when it comes to technology. So we’ve enjoyed a huge technology edge really almost since World War 2 Frank, and that edge, that gap, is collapsing rapidly. Even the generation five fighters, both Russia and China’s, are catching up with us, and they will be surpassing us on that. Meanwhile, we are squabbling over unimportant things, that were spending money on military, when in fact there’s a huge problem that were going up against, and well go through that same cycle. When we get in a conflict we’ll be behind, well lose the edge, and that means American lives.

FG: It does, I may even mean defeat. Congressman, John Fleming, your insights into these matters is really important and valued by our audience. Thank you for taking the time to join us, I’ll hope you’ll do so again, very soon.