The Smearing of Sebastian Gorka

Sebastian Gorka, author of Defeating Jihad: The Winnable War, is one of Trump’s Deputy Assistants, and an outspoken advocate of the role of Islam in the jihadi movement. In the last two weeks the MSM has led an assault on his character and credentials. A quick look at Gorka’s Wikipedia article, where the war against Gorka is being waged, documents that attacks made mostly by establishment hacks who are being drained from the swamp. Read the Wikipedia article for the standard smear. 

I want to direct your attention to the Times article by Steven Simon and Daniel Benjamin. Both were part of Bill Clinton’s administration and consultant to the Hillary Clinton campaign. They, of course, didn’t get the job. Gorka did.

Benjamin and Simon wrote the classic book, “The Age of Sacred Terror: Radical Islam's War Against America.” According to Wikipedia, it “documents the rise of al Qaeda and religiously motivated terrorism, as well as America's efforts to combat that threat. They review the history of Islamist political thought from ibn Taymiyya in the 13th century, to al-Wahhab (the 18th century founder of Wahabbism) down to bin Laden. The danger, as they see it, is that ‘al Qaeda's belief system cannot be separated neatly from Islamic teachings, because it has -- selectively and perniciously -- built on fundamental Islamic ideas and principles.’”

In the Times article they simultaneously attack Gorka for seeing Islam as part of the problem and taking credit for doing it first. They review how prior to Bush they had talked about the role of the religion and they conclude “The suggestion that Mr. Gorka brings new insight is self-gratifying, grandiose malarkey.”

So what’s their beef with Gorka? In the Wikipedia talk page one editor noted: “If Gorka and the authors both see Islam as a factor in jihadi dynamics, what makes Gorka’s approach Islamophobic in the authors’ mind? … They point to Gorka’s statements that other factors are irrelevant. Early in the article they say he dismisses factors “… like poor governance, repression, poverty and war. ‘This is the famous approach that says it is all so nuanced and complicated,’ Mr. Gorka recently told The Washington Post. ‘This is what I completely jettison.’" To this, Benjamin and Simon reply “… an abundance of scholarship on jihadists is that religious doctrine is not their sole or even primary driver. The issues that Mr. Gorka so defiantly ‘jettisons’ actually do play a role.’” 

They have become politically correct because that’s the only way they can stay in the business. After writing a book call “The Age of Sacred Terror” they have retreated to a notion that Islam is not “even a primary driver.” The swamp has consumed even the best writers on the left. 

Trump is draining the swamp. And the swamp is fighting back!