Trump Terrorism Adviser Says War on ISIS About Ideology
One of the key figures driving President Donald Trump’s national security policy outlined a counterterrorism vision on Monday squarely focused on defeating ISIS beyond the battlefield.
Sebastian Gorka’s view of the ISIS threat melds with many in the White House who believe that the U.S. is engaged in a nontraditional war against radical Islam.
Gorka, and others in Trump’s orbit, allege that previous administrations have not properly combatted the ideology they say fuels terrorism, and that the U.S. government has struggled to define the war it is fighting.
“In this current warfare environment, body bags are not a good metric for winning,” said Gorka, a deputy assistant to the president, during an event at The Heritage Foundation. “You can kill a jihadi high-value target. But what happens if the next day, 20 people volunteer to replace that jihadi? The last 16 years we have become preeminent in exquisite whack-a-mole. Oh, and we are good at it.”
“We look at physical battlefield actions as the metric for success,” Gorka continued. “We have to understand 80 percent of this war will be fought in the mind, and 80 percent of our conflict will be fought in the media domain.”
Early Actions
Gorka, a former Breitbart News national security editor who has held positions at various military educational institutions, did not outline specific policies that transfer his ideas into action.
But some early actions by the Trump administration, and others reportedly being considered for roles in it, reflect a different approach to counterterrorism explicitly focused on “radical Islamic terrorism.”
At the Heritage event, Gorka defended Trump’s controversial executive order temporarily halting refugee admissions, and travel from seven countries the Obama administration and Congress had designated as posing risks of terrorism.
Livesteaming from @Heritage in 5 minutes. https://t.co/kOWPYeEGWp pic.twitter.com/4evsAKqCIb
— Sebastian Gorka PhD (@SebGorka) February 13, 2017
Politico reported Monday that Gorka was one of the few White House staffers consulted ahead of Trump’s order, which has been blocked by the courts.