On Friday May 5, 2017, Dr. Sebastian Gorka, Deputy Assistant to President Donald Trump spoke at the RNLA's National Policy Conference on the Islamic threats to the United States and other Western societies. Dr. Gorka's gave an impassioned speech and a history lesson to conference attendees on the National Security issues facing the White House, and his role as an advisor to President Trump.
According to Dr. Gorka, President Trump considers the Islamic State "as it is and not as he would wish it to be." This is fundamentally different as to how the Obama Administration viewed the Islamic State by "distorting reality to fit a pre-conceived notion of what the world should be like."
Dr. Gorka outlined three main points in his speech to internalize what the threats are to America and why it is one of Trump's central missions is to destroy the biggest terrorist insurgency to the United States:
1. The Islamic state is unique among threat groups because they are considered to be the first ever trans-regional insurgency. In the past, insurgents have been trying to take down one single government by fighting. In contrast, ISIS is not trying to take down one government, they're trying to take down ALL governments.
2. ISIS is "impressive" when it comes to recruitment. ISIS isn't held in just one region--they have members throughout the world. Dr. Gorka describes that an insurgency, in contrast to a terrorist group of just a few individuals, has the ability to recruit tens of thousands of fighters (not just sympathizers) with now more than 85,000 active jihadists. Of this group, over 6,000 are Westerners -- who have freedom of movement on Western passports.
3. The third issue with respect to ISIS and their success has to do with their narrative or their messaging. There is a core narrative among the different Jihadists, but ISIS has made one addition. Essentially, according to Islam's eschatology (the belief in end-times such as Armageddon in Christianity), this "holy war" is to be the last and final war. Therefore, the messaging across ISIS social media outlets is to further show that the end times is against the Western world, and therefore the importance to join the insurgency is important now more than ever.
Dr. Gorka ended his presentation by explaining that President Trump is committed to helping our partners in the Middle East by fighting their wars for themselves through training and supplies. He is not committed to winning this war with Americans being on the front lines.
To watch Dr. Gorka's speech in its entirety, click here. To purchase his book Defeating Jihad: The Winnable War on Amazon, click here.