Monday, April 26, 2010 – Walid Phares, Rosemary Jenks, Zalmay Khalilzad

Frank’s monologue today concerns Russia’s alarming arms sales to America’s enemies, making it the “Arsenal of Roguery.”  Dr. Walid Phares of the Foundation of Defense for Democracies talks about how to counter the Shariah “narrative” against the United States and the West. SFR regular Rosemary Jenks talks about the Arizona illegal immigration law, and the political ramifications for the country as a whole.  Former Ambassador to Iraq, Afghanistan, and the United Nations Zalmay Khalilzad updates Frank the unraveling situation in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

MONOLOGUE – April 26, 2010

First, some thoughts of my own about developments that we’re picking up, we’re hearing more and more about by the day, concerning the ‘arsenal of roguery’ as I call it. Now of course, you’re familiar, I’m sure, with the term that Franklin Delano Roosevelt coined 60 years ago in which he used in one of his famous fireside chats to encourage the American people to become, even though many of them were very, very hostile to the idea of becoming embroiled in the then early stages of World War II, but nonetheless argued that America must be ‘the arsenal, the great arsenal, of democracy’. This is a role that the United States not only played with considerable effect in the run up to World War II of course but once we were in it after Pearl Harbor we were not only the Free World’s armory but its savior.

Today we find another country putting its formidable military industrial complex to the service of many others around the globe. Unfortunately the arsenal is Russia’s and the recipients and virtually, without exception, the world’s most dangerous enemies of freedom. Now, let me give you a couple of examples of what I’m talking about. Even as President Obama has insisted that the Russians are becoming more helpful to us in getting tougher sanctions on Iran, something he presumably lubricated with a very favorable strategic arms treaty with the Russians recently, the Kremlin is moving ahead across a broad front in arming the Iranians including completing the nuclear reactor at Pashir that was sold to the Iranians some time ago; transferring, as has been promised for some time now, advanced S300 air defense systems to the Iranians, and a host of other military programs running from aircraft of various kinds to submarines. All of which is making the Iranians, of course, a more formidable adversary and a greater threat.

Russia is similarly selling these very advanced S300 air defenses to Syria – a country that has been put on notice quite properly by the Israelis recently that they would be subjected to retaliatory strikes in the event that Russian designed and who knows, perhaps supplied, SCUD missiles that have recently been transferred we believe to Hezbollah in Lebanon, rain down death and destruction on the Israelis. This would be, sadly, a very grim upshot of the arming of the Iranians, the Syrians and their friends by the Russians, but entirely predictable if less corrective action is taken. The Russians have also been selling advanced cruise-missiles; not only the sea-skimming, supersonic Bramose missiles that are designed to be launched from the air, from the surface of the sea and below water from submarines, the Russians have also recently, I’m told, begun marketing a new and very frightening prospect, namely the concealed launcher for four cruise-missiles that looks from the outside to be simply another shipping container. Something that can be put aboard a ship and brought, perhaps, in a harbor close by the coasts of a country like the United States or Israel or others, and launch with essentially no warning by, perhaps, states who wish to engage in such kind of activity or terrorist groups. It’s only $10million! There are plenty of people who would be only too happy to put that kind of money behind the kind of death and destruction that these missiles are capable of.

And then of course there’s the problem of Hugo Chavez who is now linked, we’re told, to a $5billion purchase of additional arms from the Russians on top of the helicopters and the fighter aircraft and the submarines. We hear now that the Venezuelans will be getting tanks and missiles and perhaps a nuclear reactor of their own. All of this, in short, is the stuff of which wars are made in the future. This practice, needless to say, by the Russians makes a complete mockery of President Obama’s much-touted ‘reset’ of relations with the Kremlin. It is evidence, I believe, that his policy moreover of engaging rogue states is simply translating into additional time for them to buy evermore advanced and deadly weapons from Moscow. So, in short, I’m afraid history is going to show that the metastasizing danger of the Russian arsenal serving rogueries’ worldwide operations is being greatly compounded, if not fundamentally enabled, by the Obama doctrine: ‘Embolden our enemies, undermine our allies and diminish our country.’ If that doctrine id not swiftly corrected and the other, the Russian arsenal for roguery is not thwarted, America and the rest of the free world may find themselves soon confronting threats not seen since we last we’re the indispensible arsenal for democracy.

Those are my thoughts, how about yours? Post a comment below or log onto securefreedomradio.org or the Frank Gaffney facebook or twitter accounts – let us know what you think.