Former House Intelligence Chairman Pete Hoekstra is genuinely worried about the fundamental changes President Barack Obama has made to American foreign policy, according to this 28-minute exclusive video interview for The Daily Caller News Foundation.
A Michigan congressman for 18 years, the native-born Dutchman is a man of integrity and candor who has seen American statecraft up close. His years in politics gives Hoekstra the perspective that “the ruling elite in Washington is becoming disconnected from citizens.”
Hoekstra said when former President George W. Bush and Obama claim “Islam is a religion of peace,” many citizens are taken aback. Americans think,“’Whoa. They’re beheading Christians. They’re suicide bombers. They’re taking gays and lesbians and throwing them off the tops of buildings and they’re selling women into sex slavery. That doesn’t kind of look like a religion of peace to me,’” Hoekstra said in the interview.
Tying this cognitive dissonance to the rise of presidential candidate Donald Trump who sounds authentic, passionate and patriotic, Hoekstra said, “people are just frustrated and angry and this may be the election where they go out and say, I want something totally different.”
The former congressman watches the bellwether of embedded Islamafication in Europe and is worried what this could mean for safety in America. Hoekstra warned that accusations of Islamophobia are weapons used to intimidate Americans so that we close our eyes and ears to the “stealth jihad” strategy moving through the West. Islamists “use our laws, our customs to change who we are and to change us into something we don’t want to become.”
Hoekstra confirmed political correctness, such as that exposed by Department of Homeland Security whistleblower Phil Haney in a December video interview, is endangering Americans. All federal agencies, and now even the New York Police Department, are fundamentally shifting their policies with dangerous consequences, he said.
He discussed the refugees who attacked German women on New Year’s Eve in Cologne and elsewhere, and said America can’t vet any refugee or asylee from failed states. America especially can’t vet asylum seekers since the Islamic State is seeding the refugees with Islamic jihadists.
Hoekstra gives a C grade to Republican oversight in Congress, knowing from experience what successful oversight can accomplish.
The new movie “Thirteen Hours: the Secret Soldiers of Benghazi” is reigniting conversations about the mishandled 2012 Benghazi attack that killed four Americans, including an ambassador.
Hoekstra said, “Libya is a huge disaster.” He added it was a planned strategy by the Obama administration to work with the Muslim Brotherhood, rather than former Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi — who maintained stability in northern Africa and who helped control radical jihadists. After Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton insisted in taking out Gadhafi, Hoekstra said Libya became a failed state. It exports ideology, fighters, and weapons. He continued that it spawned what became ISIS, and serves now to help frame up attacks on Europe.
Adding insult to injury, our attackers in Benghazi in 2012, he said, were most likely those who were “trained and equipped by NATO.”
As to why Obama and Clinton did not send help to those under attack on the anniversary of 9/11, Hoekstra said the administration appears to have made a tragic judgment call in that “sending help was going to be more risky than allowing those people to survive on their own.”
“Almost everyone of this administration’s readjustments in foreign policy, whether it’s North Korea, Iran or engaging with radical jihadists like the Muslim Brotherhood, has been a total and utter failure. They’ve seen it as weakness; they’ve used it to leverage and move their programs forward,” he said.
Fired from a Washington, D.C. law firm last year for writing and speaking publicly of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a way that displeased some of the partisan lawyers, Hoekstra is determined to pursue litigation in defense of his right to freedom of speech in the District of Columbia.
Today, Pete Hoekstra is a fellow with the Investigative Project on Terrorism and author of a book on Libya titled “Architects of Disaster.” Follow him on Twitter @petehoekstra. Follow the Investigative Project on Terrorism on Facebook.
Watch the interview for much more.
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