Rep. Martha McSally (AZ-2) Sits Down With Secure Freedom Radio

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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. It is a high pleasure and great privilege to welcome for the first time to our microphones a woman who has distinguished herself in uniform of the United States Air Force, specifically and now in the halls of the United States Congress. She is Representative Martha McSally. She represents today, the people of the second congressional district of Arizona. She is also a retired Colonel in the United States Air Force, who has distinguished herself in a number of ways- notably flying the first combat mission for a female and also commanding for the first time as a female, the squadron of the Air Force involved in combat operations, an A-10 instructor pilot among other things. Congresswoman, it is great to have you with us. Thank you for all of that service to our country and that you are providing at the moment Welcome aboard.”

MM: “Thanks for having me on Frank.”

FG: “Let me just talk about a couple of things that are high policy that I know you’re also following closely and I think, are concerned about as am I. Maybe we could start with Iran. What’s your take on what’s happening in the negotiations with Iran and the advisability of the deal that seems to be emerging?”

MM: “Well, we’re past the deadline, as you know. So the proposed deadline of June 30th has already been blown through. It seems to me that we are pretty far away from an agreement that would be considered to be a ‘good deal’ by those of us who care about this largest state sponsor of terror getting a nuclear capability, being legitimized by the leader of the free world, and continue to be an existential threat to our strong ally, Israel. So, we’ve passed the legislation in the House, in the Senate with the veto-proof vote that allows us to give an up-or-down vote as to the final deal- with some other restrictions involved and if they go past July 9th, for the final agreement, then we will actually have thirty additional days to review and put the brakes on any bad deal and I’m of a view that ‘no deal is better than a bad deal,’ and it seems like from what we’ve seen out of the Framework and the reports of the negotiations, that there’s still several very concerning elements to the concessions that the administration has made with their myopic approach that they’ve ‘just got to get any deal’. Well, you know I’ve had six combat deployments and a couple masters’ degrees in national security, so I’ve been studying this issue and this region my whole twenty-six years in the military and I’ve been a strong, loud voice in making sure that we have the strength to vote down a bad deal. I read a letter written from the Arizona delegation, bipartisan, eight of nine of us signed it to the Speaker Nancy Pelosi to make sure that they understood where we we’re at related to what constitutes a good deal versus a bad deal. I’m deeply concerned that the President wants to do whatever it takes to get ‘a deal’. At the same time, by the way, not looking strategically at the larger issues in the Middle East and Iran’s role- the blood that they have on their hands, of American soldiers and others through their proxy wars- through Hezbollah and Hamas and the Quds Force, and all that they continue to do as a state sponsor of terror, somehow being dismissed as they are working to have some sort of legacy item in Obama’s failed foreign policy.”

FG: “Your colleague Congressman Trent Franks, also from Arizona, has made the point that the Iranians have apparently adopted a doctrine which calls for the use of electromagnetic pulse against our electric grid and that, as you know, would constitute an existential threat to the United States as well as to Israel. Is that of concern to you as well?”

MM: “Absolutely and yes of course none of this is discussed in the deal so yes absolutely. This is a potentiality that some people may think is a low probability but certainly high risk and if that’s a part of their doctrine, that actually could be a devastating blow to us as a nation as well.”

FG: “Let me switch gears and we could spend days talking about this and I hope we will in the future have a further conversation with you about the Iran piece but your approach seems just right to me. How about this effort to ‘degrade and defeat’ as the President calls it, the Islamic State? Two of our colleagues today in the Wall Street Journal, Hillil Fradkin and Scooty Libby, talk about this as a ‘phony war’. You’ve been in real wars. I wonder especially as an accomplished air force pilot what you make of the kinds of strikes we’ve been making to date against the Islamic State. Does it really amount to a ‘phony war’?”

MM: “Absolutely. I have been very critical of the administration and their failed strategy of how they’re using air power in a gradualistic, pin-prick sort of way since they started strikes a year ago and again the false choices they tend to create, which is ‘it’s either air power, which isn’t working or send a quarter-million Americans on the ground, which we don’t want to do’. So we have this sort of false choice between boots-on-the-ground versus air power and because of the failed way they’re using air power, it’s making people think ‘well air power must not work’ but the reality is, from the very beginning, we had the ability to defeat and destroy their command and control, their logistic capabilities, some of the ways they’re getting resources, while they’re out in the open- some of their military capabilities, and even now we are using a gradualistic approach that reminds me of Rolling Thunder in Vietnam that just doesn’t work and we are doing minimal strikes. We have legitimate targets that we are not hitting because of concerns from ‘maybe one civilian casualty might happen’ and look, we don’t want civilian casualties. I get that that could turn an entire village against us but the laws of armed conflict are very clear. I’ve been involved in the targeting process from being in a wingman in the A-10, a squadron commander, and then all the way up to the combat and command level running our targeting cell for Africa Command. I understand this process. We want to minimize civilian casualties; of course we don’t target civilians. We do everything we can whether its vary our run-in headings or delay fuses, and all sorts of things in order to minimize civilian casualties but the thought that we would come off a legitimate target and not hit it and therefore embolden ISIS to murder hundreds and thousands more civilians because we want to make sure we don’t have one civilian casualty, while we’re hitting a legitimate target, is just ridiculous. So I’ve been very critical, really cornered the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the Secretary of Defense last week in an Armed Services Committee hearing about this. I’ve written about it. I’ve been speaking about it on national television. We have vital national interests at stake here and we are hoping that somehow the Iran-backed Shia government in Iraq is going to be inclusive of Sunnis and get them to fight or have Shias fighting in Sunni territory and hoping that it all works out- hope is not a strategy and we’re acting like an air force supporting their ground force as oppose to fighting for America’s vital national interests to destroy and defeat them and create the space for a political solution. But now it looks like ISIS is taking on America and winning, which adds to their recruiting and the foreign fighter flow and all the things that show they have the momentum and not us.”

FG: “Congresswoman let me just ask you very quickly and we only have about a minute left but it is important. Your experience in the military has been extraordinary and yet I find myself in disagreement about one point in what you’re doing in Congress and that is, as I understand it, championing this idea that woman should serve not only in combat roles like you have but also in ground combat positions. Would you just explain why you think that’s a good idea and whether if it does involve reducing the standards for our military personnel, men specifically, that might actually prove counterproductive to good combat operations capability?”

MM: “Yes, it has never been against the law for woman to be in ground combat first of all. It was only against the law for woman to be in the air and in the sea in combat. While this has always been a policy and the policy has changed but look, this is about the best fighting force and my advocacy is we have to pick the best man for the job, even if it’s a woman, no matter what the job is. Lets set the standard. We can include physical, plus aptitude, plus leadership, plus all sorts of other things we need in our fighting force, and lets pick the best person. The fact that we would say that woman can’t do this and all man can. By virtue of that, you know Serena Williams is not capable but Justin Beiber is? That’s ridiculous. This is about America. We are individuals. We are meritocratic. We have in the past lowered standards of criminal records and high school graduation and aptitude tests in order to fill the army in the 2005, 2006, 2007 timeframe. So, we’ve lowered our standards in the past but we don’t need to lower standards. We need to keep standards that are based on the war fighting job and then we need to let people compete and pick the best people for the job. That’s my perspective. This is about the best fighting force.”

FG: “This is a subject for a longer conversation again soon. Thank you very much for taking the time to be with us today. Congresswoman McSally of Arizona, it’s great to talk with you and as I say I hope you’ll continue serving your country as you are and have done for so long and so well. Keep it up, talk to us soon.”