Media against taking on ideological war with radical Islam

Bill Gertz:

World War II bomber pilots liked to say if you're not taking flak, you're not over the target. By any measure, Sebastian Gorka, a counterterrorism adviser to President Donald Trump, is in the eye of an unprecedented flak storm from liberal press outlets. The enemy fire proves he must be doing something right.

"Look, these attacks are just too predictable," Gorka said in an interview. "As they say in the military, ‘you're only taking flak if you're over the target.'"

For Gorka, the most revealing aspect of the many column inches devoted to the criticism is that "it's never truly about our policies or the issues that matter most."

"It's always personal, always ad hominem," he said in an interview at the Conservative Political Action Conference. "That tells you all you need to know about the other side's true weakness. They can't win on the merits of their case, so they ‘play the man, not the ball.'"

For the new president, Gorka is an antidote to the politically correct counterterrorism policies of the past eight years under Barack Obama.

The shift has set off controversy. Several news articles about Gorka in recent weeks were laced with personnel attacks, innuendo, and caustic comments from critics. The media assault came from the upper levels of the mainstream press including the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. Other lesser publications such as Politico piled on. Vanity Fair labeled him Trump's "jihad whisperer."

All promoted a common—and to many observers false—narrative asserting that Gorka, deputy assistant to the president and member of the new Strategic Initiatives Group, is unqualified, anti-Islam, racist, fascist, or worse.

"I would be very concerned if the likes of Politico, the New York Times, and Washington Post were not attacking me. And Trump voters would be too," Gorka said.

Gorka said the goals for the new Trump administration's counterterrorism program and policies are simple. "As the president said [Friday] we will ‘obliterate' groups like ISIS and wipe the scourge of radical Islamic terrorism from the face of the earth," he said.

The media attacks prompted friends and supporters of Gorka on Capitol Hill and in the military and special operations community to voice their support.

"The bottom line is Sebastian Gorka's work is a necessary tool for all special operations forces in developing critical thinking," said an Army special operations officer familiar with Gorka's counterterrorism lectures in Tampa, Florida, and Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
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There is more.

Gorka is an interesting guy who is not afraid to take on his critics.  I recently saw an interview of him by a BBC talking head  and Gorka repeatedly accused him of committing "fake news."  Gorka's father was a hero in the Hungarian revolt against the Soviets. Gorka has written a book on defeating radical Islam-- Defeating Jihad: The Winnable War.  You can find an excerpt from the book here.