Stop the Coming Civil War: My Savage Truth

by Michael Savage

  When the attack occurred, U.S. forces that might have intervened were not ready, and there was no clear description of how a response might have been launched if needed.

  In other words, neither the State Department nor the Department of Defense had taken the “deteriorating security environment in Libya” seriously.29

  The report explains all this, but it leaves out the most important aspects of the Benghazi failure. My view is that even despite the lack of preparation and the underestimation of the chance of an attack, those who did try to mount a counteroffensive to save our personnel were forbidden to take action.

  They were forced to stand down.

  Americans died.

  In January 2014, the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released its bipartisan report on the Benghazi terrorist attacks. It contained information so shocking, I can’t believe it hasn’t been the focus of an investigation. The report said that “as many as fifteen individuals supporting the investigation or otherwise helpful to the United States have been killed in Benghazi since the [September 11, 2011] attacks.”30

  Fifteen people who helped us in Benghazi have been killed since then?

  Are we supposed to believe that those deaths are not somehow connected to the fact that these people helped us on that night? Are we supposed to believe that their deaths are just a coincidence?

  Or do you think that their identities might have somehow gotten into the hands of our jihadist enemies and that those who helped us are being systematically eliminated by terrorists?

  The purging of our own seasoned military commanders may well go beyond what happened in Benghazi.

  As I’ve said, it is likely that there is a contingent in the U.S. military that wants to see President Obama ousted. In addition, though, some of the most powerful men and organizations in the world are also in favor of ousting Obama. They would love to see the president marched out of office.

  Is it possible that the president has for the past several years been appointing his own handpicked military officers to second-in-command positions in many areas of the military? Might they be put in place in order to monitor how the commanders are handling their jobs and to report any threats their commanding officers might present to what many see as an ongoing takeover of the U.S. military by the current administration?

  Obama seems to be continuing his purge of the military in order to avoid the kind of refusal to obey his orders that occurred on the night of the Benghazi attack. But his purge has other implications.

  Is Our Military Being Emasculated?

  The president’s weakened military faces new threats from around the world. I’ll deal at great length in the next chapter with the threat that Russia poses for us as it annexes Crimea and advances its takeover of bordering countries. For now I want to explain to you the threat we face as Iran and China up the military ante in the Middle and Far East.

  In late 2011, Iran threatened to station its warships off the U.S. coast. The threat came only a few months after Iran had sent warships through the Suez Canal, the first time that nation had ever deployed warships in the Mediterranean Sea.

  In early 2014, Iran made good on the threat, announcing that its warships were on their way across the Atlantic Ocean with the intention of being stationed in international waters near the U.S. coast. This move is assumed to be a response to the U.S. stationing its warships near Iran.

  One expert sees the Iranian move as a dry run in order to embarrass Barack Obama and at the same time make U.S. military commanders and advisors drop their guard when the ships take no hostile action. The most likely tactic the Iranians might use from military vessels would be an electromagnetic pulse attack, which could disable our electrical grid and disrupt communications.

  It may be more than a dry run. After Iran had said it would station its warships in a threatening position, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard claimed that it was in possession of missiles capable of carrying multiple warheads. Iranian defense minister Hossein Dehghan formally announced the delivery of four different types of ballistic missiles, named Qiam, Qadr H1, Fateh-110, and Persian Gulf. He said, “These missiles are able to hit and destroy enemy targets with precision, and they meet a variety of the armed forces’ needs. The weapons have strengthened Iran’s deterrence power and military might.”31

  Now that might be nothing more than military bluster, but what it does point out is that Iran is mocking Obama and his unwillingness to oppose its terrorist intentions against our country. One Iranian general called Obama a “low-IQ president” whose threats to intervene in the Syrian crisis were “the joke of the year.” He elaborated: Obama and John Kerry “speak of the effectiveness of ‘the US options on the table’ on Iran while this phrase is mocked at and has become a joke among the Iranian nation, especially the children.”32

  The threat that the Iranians were laughing at? Obama had said in an interview that he has “a high degree of confidence” that the Iranians will flinch “when they look at 35,000 US military personnel in the region that are engaged in constant training exercises under the direction of a president who already has shown himself willing to take military action in the past, that they should take my statements seriously.”33

  The reason he needs to tell Iran and our other enemies around the world that they should be afraid of us is that what he’s doing to the military sends exactly the opposite message.

  He’s cutting back on the U.S. military drastically in the face of growing threats from Iran, China, and Russia. How serious are those cuts? The Pentagon plans to reduce the number of soldiers by 70,000 to 80,000, to as few as 440,000. That represents the elimination of more than an eighth of the total number of soldiers in our armed forces. Chuck Hagel explains it as a matter of cutting costs: “Congress has taken some important steps in recent years to control the growth in compensation spending, but we must do more.”34

  In a time of global military conflict, Obama wants to weaken our military even further than he has already. A president who has never met a domestic spending program he didn’t want to triple in size has decided to cut spending where we most need it: from our defense of our country against foreign enemies who already understand he is the weakest president in U.S. history.

  In the 1960s, about 7 percent of members of the U.S. armed forces were married. Today, nearly 50 percent of America’s volunteer army, navy, and air force are married. So, of course, Obama decides to slash benefits, including health-care copays and deductibles. He would also reduce the subsidies military families receive for housing and other goods. So how does Obama propose to make some of these cuts? On the backs of our married military fighters. The proposed cuts would make it much more difficult for military families to make ends meet. A 1 percent ceiling on military pay increases, coupled with a likely 5 percent increase in housing costs, would mean that an army sergeant with a family of four would face a $1,400 annual salary cut, while an army captain would lose $2,100 in income.35

  Obama cuts our military families’ benefits while he’s giving free food and medical care to illegal aliens. As former vice president Dick Cheney put it, Obama “would much rather spend the money on food stamps than he would on a strong military or support for our troops.” Beyond that, Cheney said, “our allies around the world are absolutely convinced that they can no longer trust the United States to keep its commitments—that includes the Israelis, Saudis, a lot of others in that part of the world.” In addition to decimating our military capability, the Obama administration has not taken steps to increase our grid security, and military advisors are recommending that the governments of states along our coastlines do that on their own.

  So much for Obama’s “threat” that Iran should be wary of U.S. military power in the Middle East. It’s Iran’s own threats that we need to be worried about. Those threats should be interpreted as a thumb in Obama’s eye. Iran sees the president as having submitted to its will and will not stop it from gaining nuclear weapons.36

  At the sam
e time, a top Iranian commander has indicated that Iran has used Hezbollah troops to infiltrate the United States, saying, “America, with its strategic ignorance, does not have a full understanding of the power of the Islamic Republic. We have recognized America’s military strategy, and have arranged our abilities, and have identified centers in America [for attack] that will create a shock.”37

  As the Geneva nuclear deal is being implemented, security officials in the Middle East have confirmed that Iran is proposing to participate with Russia in joint military exercises.38 Iran is in Russia’s backyard, and not in America’s backyard. The United States has effectively given up its positions of strength in the Middle East because the Obama administration has sided with the wrong players in every foreign policy decision it has made.

  In addition, China has developed a new supersonic missile capable of delivering both conventional and nuclear warheads. It’s what’s known as a hypersonic glide vehicle, which is launched into space, from where it is allowed to glide to its target at speeds of up to eight thousand miles per hour. It is very difficult to defend against, and the Chinese have indicated that it is intended for use against aircraft carriers at sea.39

  As this threat was being revealed, Adm. Afshin Rezayee Haddad, the commander of Iran’s Northern Navy Fleet, announced that “Iran’s military fleet is approaching the United States’ maritime borders, and this move has a message.”

  The message he’s trying to send to Barack Obama is that this is Iran’s response to the presence of American warships in the Persian Gulf.40

  Adding insult to injury, Iran media showed a “documentary” video that contained simulated footage depicting Iranian drone missiles bombing the Israeli cities of Tel Aviv and Haifa, as well as the Ben Gurion airport and the Dimona nuclear reactor. This was intended to show what would happen in the event of an Israeli or a combined U.S.-Israel attack on Iran. In the video, Iranian drone missiles were also shown engaging in attacks on the USS Abraham Lincoln and other targets in the Persian Gulf.

  Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei explained that he thought it was “amusing” that the United States thought Iran might diminish its military capabilities.41

  Don’t get me wrong: Iran is no military match for the United States.

  The problem is that we have a commander in chief who is decimating our military.

  He’s allowing America to be bullied by forces that are not close to what our military is capable of.

  I believe that he’s signaling to the world that he’s afraid. Beyond that, I’m convinced that he’s intentionally attempting to gut our military with what amounts to a leftist, anti-American military cleansing.

  The U.S. military is increasingly unready to respond to the forces amassing against it.

  The Middle East is in chaos thanks in large part to Obama’s mismanagement of the situation in Syria and his failure to negotiate a status of forces agreement with Iraq, which is descending into chaos at the hands of terrorists who are taking over more and more territory in that country. Afghanistan will soon follow.42

  Obama’s hostility toward making sure our military is prepared to fight in the event it is necessary, coupled with the steep decline of morale among our war-weary soldiers, make the threats of China and Iran more disturbing.

  Retired army general Robert Scales says this: “The Army has 85% of its brigades not combat-ready. It does not have one single developmental program for a combat system at all. Zero.”43

  The question is, how far will Obama go in order to save his presidency?

  The insidiousness of Obama’s military evisceration plan, one that has already taken down Dooley, Mattis, McChrystal, and others of their superior level, is that it not only removes our best officers, it destroys morale across our armed services. When capable young soldiers who once thought of making a career in the armed forces see what’s happening to their superior officers, they decide to leave military service. Those who stay have to navigate a minefield of Obama’s operatives and political correctness just to do their job.

  For instance, at a time when radical Islam is at our door, more attention is paid to so-called “sexual assaults” in the military than to how enemies are trying to attack us. In the past year, reports of sexual assaults on women have risen by 46 percent.44 Forty-six percent! So, all of a sudden, just like that, our military is filled with sexual predators?

  Listen. I don’t think there is anything more despicable than a man forcing himself on a woman. There’s no place for that type of crap in the military. But equally reprehensible, in my view, is the false accusation of sexual assault. And I don’t think there’s any question that false accusations, and Obama’s feminist agenda, have driven the reports of sexual assaults to implausible heights.

  Feminism’s influence in the military is growing faster than Antarctic ice. Assault can mean something as simple as being told, “Honey, you’re cute.”

  Feminists have long lobbied for women to be allowed in combat, and the military is planning on making that happen by 2016. And in keeping with the Obama army’s attempts to feminize the military, the Marine Corps seems to want to “ensure that female Marines are provided with the best opportunity to succeed.”45

  Do you know how they’re likely to help female Marines “succeed”?

  By lowering the physical standards for them.

  According to traditional army requirements, recruits have to be able to do a minimum of three pull-ups. Anecdotal evidence from boot camps indicates that nearly half the female recruits cannot accomplish the pull-up requirement.

  In chapter 9, I’ll explain to you how our school system has been reduced in quality by defining educational success as having equal outcomes for all students, regardless of their intelligence or capabilities.

  The military is gradually doing the same thing. It has redefined itself, so it seems, to include women on the battlefield, despite the fact that in this case, unlike in education, soldiers’ lives may well be put at risk by having to depend on other soldiers who are physically unable to meet the requirements necessary to do their jobs.

  The military’s transformation based on the principle of the equality of the sexes doesn’t stop with attempting to put women in combat or redefining sexual assault in order to include behavior that has nothing to do with sexual assault. It is part of Obama’s agenda, and it has only one goal: to weaken the military on every single level.

  The government has spent more time on gerrymandering standards than on prosecuting Maj. Nidal Hasan, a Muslim who killed thirteen and wounded thirty-two at Fort Hood. Beyond that, because soldiers are not allowed to carry weapons at Fort Hood—this thanks to another Democratic president, Bill Clinton—three more were murdered and more than a dozen injured in a second shooting at the same base.

  And no one is looking into the likely penetration by agents of radical Islam into the FBI, the CIA, the DHS, and the military itself.

  I see these as the by-products of a radical regime.

  I believe that the president’s decimation of our military’s command structure has roots in his fear of losing his authority over our armed forces. My view is that he is removing military commanders who he suspects of being patriotic and bound by oath to the Constitution and replacing them with officers he thinks will be loyal to him.

  Thanks to this administration’s handling of the military, I fear that our armed forces are weakened to the point at which the remaining Western democracies have no reliable ally against the threat of our enemies today. The world is a dangerous place. As Islamist terrorists expand into standing armies, and as the military threat of China and Russia grows, there is no place for vulnerable nations to turn.

  After the president announced a military pivot to focus more on the Far East and the increasing military belligerence of China, Adm. Samuel J. Locklear III, chief of the Pacific Command, had this to say about our military presence there: “Our historic dominance that most of us in this room have enjoyed is diminishing.”46

/>   In the wake of Obama’s ongoing purge, the question is not “Who will our allies turn to for protection?” but “Who will we turn to when we can no longer defend ourselves?”

  Are you starting to see a pattern?

  Ask yourself these simple questions:

  Why are top commanders being purged from our military?

  Is the president responding to those in our military who might disagree with his policies?

  Is the president fearful of a potential military coup against his presidency?

  Let’s go back to some not-so-distant history for the answers.

  Former Egyptian president Mohammad Morsi abandoned the democratic principles he was elected to uphold and tried to make Egypt into an Islamic dictatorship under the Muslim Brotherhood. But, ultimately, Morsi failed, was overthrown, and placed in jail. By the Egyptian military.

  As I see it, the president may be fearful of having his authority challenged by his own military commanders. It may go so far as his intentional purge of our military commanders in order to preemptively guard against the possibility of a coup such as the one that overthrew Morsi.

  In my opinion, the reason why Obama initially suspended some U.S. financial aid to Egypt after Morsi’s ouster was that he favors the Muslim Brotherhood and hates any movement toward democratic governance in the Middle East. But beyond that, I think he sees the overthrow of Morsi, who had assumed dictatorial powers, as a foreshadowing of what might happen to him as he moves in a similar direction.

  I haven’t lost hope. While the story I’m about to relate might seem insignificant, I find it very promising.