Freedom Under Attack – Part 2
| By: Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin (retired); ©2012 |
| Given events happening in the Middle East, is America especially vulnerable to attack? |
Introduction
As we approach the American Presidential election, our next president will not only have to deal with an economic crisis, but also with the rise of militant Islam in 22 countries in the Middle East, and Islamic terrorists infiltrating our southern border here in America.
Benjamin Netanyahu: If you look at what has happened politically, not economically, to the world, but what has happened politically to the world, you see a clear trajectory of the rise of militant Islam.
William Boykin: Those young Muslims out there today that may be very peaceful, that want nothing to do with jihad are encouraged to come into the Brotherhood, to come into Hezbollah, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, or any of these other terrorist organizations because their theology is being played out right now.
Netanyahu: You see it not only taking over countries, which it has, but also extending its sway over many people. But their goals are unlimited. Whatever their successes so far, they don’t intend to stop.
My guest today is retired three-star general William G. Boykin, former commander of Delta Force, who later became commanding general of all US Army Special Forces around the world. He also served at the CIA in clandestine missions, and for four years he served as Undersecretary of Defense.
John Ankerberg: Is this going to have risks for our safety of Americans here in this country?
Boykin: There’s no question about it. The number one priority for the President of the United States is to defend the nation. You know, even our southern borders are being infiltrated right now. And you can say that’s an invasion of America. We’re finding prayer rugs, we’re finding terrorist training manuals. We’re finding all kinds of paraphernalia that relates directly back to terrorist groups. So they’re coming across our borders and they’re setting up cells in America.
Join us for this special edition of the John Ankerberg Show.
***
Ankerberg: Welcome to our program. Two weeks ago, folks, I had the privilege of hearing Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin speak at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. General Boykin is one of America’s elite warriors. He was chosen in 1978 to make up the first unit in America’s ultra-secret and deadly Delta Force. He then became the commander of that unit, and then later still commander of all US Army Special Forces. He’s also served a tour at the Central Intelligence Agency and retired in June 2007 after serving his last four years in uniform as Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence.
General, we have been inundated with news about the killing of our Ambassador in Libya, and then we have riots in 22 countries in the Middle East that continue to go on. Where do you see these events taking us in the future?
Boykin: Well, first of all, we need to recognize that this is a failed US foreign policy that has created this environment that allowed this kind of thing to happen. If you were a Muslim, either Shia or Sunni, right now you would be ecstatic, because you see the theological global Caliphate being formed now, which is the re-creation of the Ottoman Empire. That’s why they’re excited. That means their messiah is going to come. The day of judgment is about to come, and the messiah is coming. So they’re emboldened, they’re encouraged. And then on top of that, our president went over there right at the very beginning of his presidency and apologized for America. Now, what message did that send? It sent a message that America is weak. Instead of a message of strength, it sent a message of weakness. And now they are even more encouraged because they see the great Satan, that’s America, as being weak now, as not being willing to stand up to them. And what this is doing is it is encouraging this same kind of thing to occur all over the world. It is enhancing their recruiting. Those young Muslims out there today that may be very peaceful, that want nothing to do with jihad, are encouraged to come into the Brotherhood, to come into Hezbollah, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, or any of these other terrorist organizations, because their theology is being played out right now. So I think that what you’re going to see until we take a firm stand against this, you’re going to see this continue, and you’re going to see more and more threats to American embassies and American interests all over the world.
Ankerberg: I think what people in America don’t realize is you’ve got different power blocs that are trying to establish a worldwide Islamic Caliphate, but they’re trying to do it from their country. Let’s take the different ones. You started with Egypt here and you’ve got the Muslim Brotherhood which also has its tentacles into 16 other countries. And, if I remember correctly, when I was watching their president now talk, some of the people that were supporting him were saying their headquarters is not going to be Cairo; it’s not going to be Alexandria. Their headquarters for that Caliphate is where? It’s Jerusalem. Talk about how do you see the Muslim Brotherhood, and in what danger now is Israel?
Boykin: Well, Israel is totally surrounded by enemies, by people that want to destroy them. There is at least a three-way power struggle in the Middle East right now. Egypt, which wants, because Al-Azhar University is there, and that’s where the Muslim Brotherhood began in 1928, they want to be the new head of the Caliphate. At the same time you have Iran, which wants to control the Muslim world, not just the Shia world, but the Muslim world. And that’s why the nuclear weapon gives them a power they’ve never had, an influence they’ve never had before. They want to be in charge of the Caliphate. And then you have Turkey, and Turkey is coming apart at the seams right now. You know, just as we speak there are things going on in Turkey right now. Turkey was the Ottoman Empire. Turkey was the head of the Ottoman Empire. Turkey wants to reassert itself as the ruler of the Caliphate, which is what the Ottoman Empire was. And so you have at least a three-way power struggle.
But now you can throw in some other players in there. You can throw in Pakistan, and Pakistan is a nuclear power. What mitigates against Pakistan’s real influence is the fact that they’re first and foremost enemy is actually India. So they haven’t gotten as involved as these other entities there. But then you also have another player which has been very influential, and that’s Saudi Arabia; because Saudi Arabia wants to dominate the Sufi-Salafi sects within Sunni Islam. So Saudi has been funding terrorism for a very long time. But the Saudis are on the defensive now. The Saudis see their day coming to an end. But you have a real power struggle there for who’s going to dominate.
Ankerberg: When I heard you speak at the National Press Club in Washington, you made a statement that surprised me, and that was, Saudis don’t have nuclear power now, but they could easily get it. Tell our folks why.
Boykin: Well, the Saudis helped to fund the Pakistani nuclear program. The Saudis did not build nuclear weapons for themselves, because they wanted to keep them out of the Persian Gulf because of the obvious animosity with Iran and the fact that it would create an arms race. But overnight the Saudis could fly an airplane into Pakistan and say we want, you know, a portion of those weapons that we helped fund for you to build. So Saudi could become a nuclear power overnight.
Ankerberg: So the question is, right now you also have Iran. We talked a lot about that last week for the folks that missed it. Why is Iran a special place all to itself?
Boykin: Well, Iran is Shia. And Iran is also Persian, versus the rest of the Muslim world which is predominately Arab in that part of the world. Now, the majority of the Muslims in the world are not Arabs at all, nor are they Persian. Most of them are actually Asians; Indonesia is the largest country. That said, Iran has always wanted to assert itself as the dominate influence in Islam. And this nuclear weapon that they, I believe have built, but others would say are close to building, gives them a leverage that they’ve never had. So Iran really believes, as all Shias do, that they have to throw the world into chaos in order to bring in the reign of their messiah. And there is one common enemy of both Sunni and Shia, and that’s Israel. And that’s why, if Iran was to use a nuclear weapon against Israel, in their theology they would then create an atmosphere that would bring their amessiah and bring the day of judgment and ultimately their Mahdi would establish sharia globally.
Ankerberg: How does Israel, with all these power blocs, plan for the future?
Boykin: Israel has been planning for the defense of Israel ever since 1948, probably ’47, actually, when the UN declaration was first signed. But they have been planning for how they would strike Iran for probably the last 20 years or more. So their planning is ongoing. They are under an existential threat. And it’s not just the Iranian nuclear program. They’re surrounded by tens of thousands of missiles from Hezbollah and Hamas. And so every day is a new day for Israel in terms of, what’s going to happen today? The mainstream media does not tell us, they get rockets and missiles almost every day fired into villages in Israel. They live under this kind of threat. So defending Israel is their number one priority. It’s not the economy, it’s defending Israel. And that is what Benjamin Netanyahu has on his mind when he wakes up every morning.
Ankerberg: Stick with us, we’ll be right back.
BREAK
Ankerberg: Alright we’re back. We’re talking with General Boykin, and we’re talking about the crisis that’s going on in the Middle East and where America is at, what’s happening in Israel. And you constantly hear people talking about an Islamic Caliphate. Imagine if you had Egypt, Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Jordan, Syria, if they all came together into one global Islamic super-state, and they pooled all their financial, political and military resources. That’s what their goal is. Their main enemy would then be Israel and the United States. If that’s the goal and you’ve got these different power blocs that are trying to be the headquarters for that goal of the start of the Islamic Caliphate, who’s going to win of the different power blocs? When we interviewed the Prime Minister of Israel, this is what he said. Listen.
Netanyahu: The militant Shiites in Iran are openly racing, and boasting that they are racing to develop nuclear weapons with the explicit announced goal of wiping Israel from the face of the earth, re-establishing the Caliphate, of course under militant Shiite Iranian rule—the Caliphate includes the territories from Iran to Spain—developing long-range ballistic missiles first that are targeted to every European capital and within a decade to reach the eastern coast of the American mainland.
Ankerberg: Alright, General, after we have watched the prime minister say that, I want to ask you, who do you think, of the different power blocs in the Middle East, who do you think is going to win?
Boykin: Well, my answer is probably not the obvious, but I think Turkey becomes the ultimate winner in this whole thing, for a variety of reasons. One of which is, I believe that the Iranian nuclear program will be destroyed. I think that if Israel has to they’ll do it alone, but hopefully they will have US support. And we are not going to get there with sanctions. Which really leaves the only power in that whole region is Turkey. Turkey is very rapidly moving towards becoming no longer a democracy, but an Islamic republic which will be totally under the authority of sharia or Islamic law. And Turkey, because of its roots in the Ottoman Empire, will ultimately, I think, be the supreme power there that will dominate the region.
Now, stop and think about, as you’ve sort of indicated, Turkey as a reestablished Ottoman Empire with authority over all of those Islamic countries in the Middle East and North Africa. And just think of what that’s going to do in terms of recruiting among young Muslims to the Islamic cause, to the jihadist cause. Think of what it’s going to do to the Persian Gulf with a Caliphate controlling 60% of the known recoverable oil reserves in the world today, and how they will have an absolute monopoly on the distribution of that oil, what it’s going to do to the global economy, particularly America’s economy; because we could be, but we are not, energy self-sufficient. So, I see this as a very dangerous scenario.
Ankerberg: General, when I was reading your book Never Surrender, and you’ve talked about how Muslims, leaders that you’ve worked with in the military, how they’ve brought you to their homes, how you’ve attended weddings, how you’ve even attended funerals, how you have been at feasts with them, how they even took you to their mosque, which they weren’t supposed to do. And you have seen, and you have said repeatedly, there is a difference in Muslims in the world. Share a little of that.
Boykin: The largest Islamic population in the world today is Indonesia. It’s not the Middle East. Only 20% of the world’s Muslim population is actually Arab, or even Persian for that matter. But Muslims, generally speaking, have not been radicalized. The problem is, the only voice for Muslims in the world today are the jihadists. It’s the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda and Hamas and those kinds of organizations. And Muslims are actually open to the gospel of Jesus Christ. In fact, there is a huge revival going on in the Islamic world today where they’re coming to know Christ in record numbers. And what I think that we need to be focused on is, how do we encourage them to come along beside us or let us come along beside them to fight against the extremists that are represented by the theologies and the actions of the Muslim Brotherhood and its elements like al-Qaeda and Hamas, as well as Hezbollah, which is, you know, a creation of Iran. We need to stand against those people, and we need the rest of the Muslim world to do it. But nobody seems to be focused on going out and encouraging those people to help us with standing against them.
Ankerberg: People have taken different surveys of those that are radical. If you have 1.5 billion Muslims in the world, what percentage of that 1.5 billion have you concluded are radicals?
Boykin: Well, it depends on who you talk to and what data you look at. It’s somewhere between 15 and 28%. That’s a lot of people. Of one and half billion, that’s a lot of people who get up every day believing that their task from Allah is to destroy infidels and to convert the world as they establish the Caliphate. In America that is probably on the lower end. But, again, the problem is, those that don’t want sharia, those that don’t want to participate in jihad, do not have a voice. And we need to find ways to give them a voice.
Ankerberg: What is it like living under sharia law?
Boykin: It’s brutal. That’s where women are second-class citizens. Husbands are allowed to beat and rape their wives. They cut off hands. They kill apostates, anyone that leaves their faith. And it’s just brutal. It’s incredible. And, by the way, it is in America today, in our legal system, where we know from a study that was completed last year that sharia was used in 50 court cases in 23 US states to adjudicate those cases. It’s in our system today.
Ankerberg: Christians that are listening right now, why should they even care about all this that’s happening in the Middle East? And why should this affect us in terms of thinking about who we’re going to elect president?
Boykin: The hope for America is Christians. The hope for America is that Christians rise up, get off the pews of the church and get involved in what’s going on in this country. It was Christians that stimulated the separation from the Crown of England. It was Christians that brought about the Revolutionary War. It was Christians that brought about the Civil War, that raised the awareness of the evils of slavery. Today it is Christians that have to save America. And if they just sit on the pews of our churches waiting for the rapture, I believe that they will be held accountable for doing nothing at a very critical time in the history of this nation that God gave us, and something that has to be protected by the Christians, people of faith.
Ankerberg: Alright, next week, I’m going to ask General Boykin, what will be the consequences to our military and to our nation’s safety if we cut $1 trillion out of the American defense budget? You talked about this up in Washington. I want you to share that information with our people. Join us next week.
