September 27, 2025 • 33 mins
Newt talks with former Army Captain Jesse Petrilla, about his new book, “If It Takes a Thousand Years: From Al-Qaeda to Hamas, How the Jihadists Think and How to Defeat Them.” They discuss the mindset and long-term strategies of jihadist groups, emphasizing their generational approach to conflict. Petrilla shares insights from his experiences in Afghanistan, where he facilitated interrogations of Taliban and Al-Qaeda members, and highlights the cultural and ideological differences between the West and jihadist groups. Petrilla stresses the importance of understanding these differences to effectively counter the jihadist threat. Their discussion also touches on the challenges of immigration and assimilation, the influence of tribalism in the Islamic world, and the potential dangers posed by a lack of awareness and education about these issues in the West.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
On this episode of the News World. During an interrogation in Afghanistan,
when asked how long the jahadis intended to fight, a
Taliban commander uttered the words, if it takes a thousand years.
This chilling statement illustrates both how terrorists at this level
operate and the generational approach they take when it comes
to bringing destruction to the world. The West is facing
(00:27):
a determined enemy with a fundamentally different worldview. In his
new book, If it Takes a Thousand Years From Al
Khayeda to Hamas, how the Jahadas think and how to
defeat them, Former Army Captain Jesse Petrilla provides unique insight
into the Jahada's mind, featuring interviews with Taliban and Al
(00:48):
Khalida members just after their capture, interviews with international journalists
and professors, warnings from Europelo politicians, as well as experiences
from his travels throughout the London world. I am really
pleased to welcome my guest, Former Army Captain Jesse Patrolla.
He served as a civilian advisor to the US Department
(01:09):
of State and he was a liaison officer in the
Army to the Afghan Secret Police, facilitating the interrogations. However,
four hundred captured Taliban and Al Kaeda members. Jesse, Welcome
(01:37):
and thank you for joining me on neutral.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Thanks for having me, mister speaker.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Let's start with your own career. Talk about when you
joined the army and worked your way up to captain.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
Sure, my interest in the jihadist movement really started after
September eleventh. I turned eighteen actually that year, just a
few months prior to the attacks, and so my entire
adult life and my generation really was shaped by that moment.
We really felt that there was a real threat out
there and very few people, I should say, understood the threat.
(02:12):
And so I embarked on a journey to research the
mindset of our enemies and who would do such a thing,
and spent a decade prior to going to Afghanistan in
twenty twelve. It was really the culmination of a decade
of research on the mindset of our enemies that really
came together there where I joined the military after farting around.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
For several years.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
I mean, most kids are pretty lost, and I was
no exception really what I was given that opportunity. I
was at the detention facility in Parwan there which was
where we kept several thousand of the highest level of Taliban,
al Qaeda and other terrorist detainees. As I mentioned, I
had been researching this previously, so I had this list
of questions. I actually already wrote most of the book,
(02:57):
or so I thought on the subject, and I went
into the cells. I had all access badge. I took
full advantage of it, sat down with senior Taliban members
and said.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Hey, what makes you tick? Why do you do this?
How did you get started.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
I would go back to my shipping container home and
write down everything I learned that day, so it was
very firsthand.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
I used their words.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
The book is filled with first hand accounts of how
the Taliban, how the Jihatis in general, think, and how
they tick. The more that I would learn, the more
eye opening it would be, because it's just such a
fundamentally different mindset than what people in the West are
used to. It's a very long term thinking. Those words
(03:44):
the title of the book, if it takes a thousand years,
were told to me by a captured Taliban commander where
I asked him. I said, hey, look, we've got you caught.
How long are you going to keep fighting us? And
he said you have me in a cage, but my
children will fight you, and their children will fight you.
If it takes a thousand years, we will win. I
(04:04):
would say the number one if I had to summarize
how they operate, That sums it up. They fight these
generational wars, whereas Americans and those in the West typically
it's rare to even get us to think a couple
years out, let alone a thousand years. Americans typically think
two to four years at a time at most, because
that's our re election cycle. So our politicians are looking
(04:26):
at their next election and thinking, Okay, what can I
do for the next two to four years and leave
a legacy and get re elected. Whereas our enemies don't
think like that. They just focus on the next generation.
And that's where we've got to change our mind.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Even though they're determined to defeat us. At a personality level,
you make the point that they're very different from say
prisoners you'd find in an American prison. Their interpersonal attitude,
their skills are very very different. What was it like
talking to them directly?
Speaker 3 (04:57):
That was one of the biggest surprises, if not the biggest,
participating in these interrogations, and there were over four hundred
of them that I sat in on that I was
directly talking to these folks.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
You would go in there and they would say, hello,
mister Jesse, how are you?
Speaker 3 (05:13):
Just very genuinely warm seeming. And the takeaway from that
that I got was it really isn't personal.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
They don't want you dead, they don't want me dead.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
They want all of us to submit or die. It's
a much more macro, longer term thinking. They're really looking
at our kids, their kids as well. They're trying to
indoctrinate and get to the next generation. There's just this
slow chipping away strategy. If you go to San Quentin
or one of the other prisons that we've got in America.
I mean, these are tough folks that don't have the
(05:46):
best inner personal skills. But it was very scary and
to a person that's untrained, they would think that this
is legitimate. Whereas these people, they'd easily have given the
opportunity to just slit your throat without even thinking about it.
I mean, they don't. I don't respect life like we do.
It's a completely different mindset. I'll give you a couple examples.
One of the Taliban commanders that I talked to the
(06:08):
way that it works.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
You're not pouring water over their ends.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
Saying tell us what you know like in the movies,
you're drinking tea with them. You're their friend. In fact,
the first chapter of the book is called Tea with
the Taliban. And one of the guys that I was
talking to you start out, you say, hey, tell me
about your family. And he said, just very nonchalantly, he said,
I have nine kids. I had ten, but my daughter
dishonored the family. So I killed her, just like taking
(06:31):
out the trash, just a normal everyday thing.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
And what was scary about that?
Speaker 3 (06:37):
It was so cold how he said it, just so nonchalantly.
And I would hear similar stuff again and again, and
it goes so much deeper than just one individual action.
It's a cultural thing. If he had not killed his daughter,
his life might be in danger in that culture, where
his friends and family would say, what's wrong with you?
Why didn't you kill your daughter? She dishonored the family?
(07:00):
Are you without honor? And you can see that even
played out in the West. There was the case in
Texas of Yaser Sayad, who was on America's Most Wanted
If you recall that that was about ten or fifteen
years ago.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
He made the most wanted list.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
That was the taxi driver that killed his two daughters,
Sarah and Amina Sayad. And he was on the run
for over a decade. And what happened when they finally
caught him, it was just because a neighbor saw him
over the fence. He was essentially living out in the open.
They arrested and convicted his own son, his brother, and
there were other members of the community that had helped
(07:34):
him along the way, and it just shows that they
thought he did the right thing. He murdered his two
daughters because they had non Muslim boyfriends. They refused to.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Wear a he job. It was a very clear honor killing.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
And so this goes so much deeper than just a
criminal element. It really is a cultural element. These are
fundamentally different cultures that jihad has come from. Another example
I'll give in Afghanistan, there's a tribe called the Neuri
standing to be the equivalent of a city council member
in a Nuristani tribe, there.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Are three prerequisites.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
You have to be a good orator, and you have
to host the entire village at a banquet ten times,
all right, and you have to kill five rival tribe members.
I mean, I was a city council member in another
life in southern California, and I'm glad I didn't have
to murder five people in the town next door to
get my seat. But this is a very normal thing
(08:28):
in that part of the world, and so it's very
much intertwined. It's not so much of a religious thing.
It's intertwined as well with tribalism because Islam grew out
of these tribes, and these tribes grew up for the
last fourteen hundred years, they evolved with Islam. It's very intertwined,
this tribal culture. So you see a lot of crossover
(08:49):
when it comes to respect for life or lack thereof.
There was a kid that was brought in that was
caught with a suicide vest and thankfully they disarmed it.
It was probably about fifteen years old, but a lot
of these guys, they don't know how old they are.
That's another thing. It's a very timeless society. And he
comes in, he looks very young. And I told the
Afghan that I was working with that was part of
the prosecution team.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
Wow, this guy looks so young.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
That's just so sad, like a teenager putting on a
suicide vest going to kill himself. He said, that's not
the youngest. And I said, what's the youngest suicide bomber
you've ever caught? He said six years old. And so
you think about it, it's like somebody strapped a bomb
on a six year old. And this is the ideology
that we're up against. And this is not somebody that
you can sit down and sign a peace treaty with.
(09:33):
It's not something it's not a government that you can
negotiate with and have them surrender and have a nice
ceremony and be done with it. The jihadis adhere to
this very sick belief that just does not value life.
It's an absolutely fundamentally different viewpoint than our own.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
One of the things I found fascinating in your book,
you actually encountered detainees who had lived in the US,
some of whom had actually grown up in the US.
To what extent did they just sort of reject American
culture and revert what what's going on in their heads?
Speaker 2 (10:25):
That was one of the scarier realizations or discoveries there.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
One guy that I told him I needed him to
sign a document. I go up to him and I said, well,
I got to wait for a translator, and he says,
I don't need a translator, just very clearly, no accent.
And then I said, wait, you so you speak English?
He said yeah, I speak it fine. And where are
you from?
Speaker 2 (10:43):
And he said, Ohio.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
What would stop him from doing jihadis activity at them
all of America or something. I mean, it's really scary
and it shows that immigration reform we need common sense
policies that protect America from this. It's not so much
about defeating the jihatas it's about protecting what we've got.
And you have folks that come here. He came here
as a small kid. We've got to look at realistically,
(11:09):
where are their allegiances. It's very tricky. I mean, we
haven't really dealt with this in the first couple hundred
years of our existence as a nation because it's intertwined
with a religion. But you can see where these people
are coming from and the cultures that are from there,
and unfortunately, there's this fallacy of cultural relativism, as I
call it, where people think that all cultures are equal,
(11:30):
and the reality is that cultures, like some of the
examples I just gave are certainly not equal to Western
Judeo Christian values that our nation is built upon, because
even if somebody isn't religious, if they grow up in
this culture, they are still adhering by our laws are
largely based off of Judeo Christian values that is our culture.
But this is just so counter and we can look
(11:52):
at Europe to see the problems that a more or
less open immigration system has created, and we need to
start addressing it. And thankfully this is starting to come out.
We need to look at what policies will force assimilation
that out of all of the solutions, that's the number one.
We need to find ways to promote patriotism in our schools,
(12:14):
to promote Jenao Christian values in our youth, because we're
failing this next generation. You have kids, and it's both
immigrant and natural born as well, children that do not
feel allegiance to our country. And it's not just the
Taliban fighter that decided as a teenager to go fight
in Afghanistan and leave Ohio. You have kids that are
(12:37):
born and raised here that have nothing to do with
those cultures that are marching with the queers for Palestine.
Banners and completely ignorant and misinformed. Over the last few decades, unfortunately,
the left has been attacking institutions that promote patriotism, that
promote assimilation. You have, like the Boy Scouts, for example, has.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Been completely neutered.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
They're trying to take the Pledge of Allegiance out of schools,
all these different things, and then they filled the universities
with these whack job professors that are giving children a
terrible education. I think we have completely failed to educate
the next generation about our enemies. And that was no
(13:19):
more evident than when we saw the pro Hamas protests
on colleges. There was a survey that was actually done
that was reported by NBC, conducted by a group called
Generation Lab. It showed one out of eight college students
in the weeks after the Hamas attack outright supported it.
There was another survey they did a few months later
that it had increased. It was one out of four
(13:41):
actually supported, one out of four on American college campuses.
And they just are completely ignorant to what kind of
people they're supporting. I mean, if they think that they
support women's rights or.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
What have you.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
I mean, they're very ignorant on the subject. So if
you're listening to this, you're probably already aware. But the
question I would ask the listeners to ask themselves is
are your children or grandchildren aware of the threats that
we are facing from not just the jihadist enemies, but
others as well. So, I mean, what's worse if we
have isolated terrorist attacks or a generation of children that
(14:16):
are turned into pro jihatas zombies that we see on
these campuses, that would open the doors for our enemies.
So I would recommend get them books on this subject,
talk to them. There's a great book called If It
Takes a Thousand Years available on Amazon that I would recommend.
It's a good read, easy for a teenager to read
or a young adult. But this is an ideological war,
(14:37):
and they have our children in their sights. It's not
something that is going to slip by them. I mean,
they're very much focused on the next generation. In fact,
on their own. That's the primary way that jihadist recruit
is getting to kids. Does the Jihad seem attractive to
join as an adult? It's a lot easier to get
to a kid, And let's face it, a kid's brain
(14:59):
is mush until they reach maybe twenty five.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
I'm going to ask you one question about the Taliban.
The great deal of Afghanistan has to be understood as
tribal rather than religious. The tribal ties are very, very,
very deep to what a cent in that sense is
the talibana geographically defined threat, whereas Al Khalida, for example,
is by definition a global threat.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
Taliban is kind of a misnomer.
Speaker 3 (15:25):
I think, even though it is technically it's an organization,
it does have leadership, they don't really look at themselves
like that. They're really the students of the madrasa. And
so in the Pasto language, talib singular means student, Taliban
means students. These are the students of the Islamic schools.
And out of the four hundred interrogations or so that
(15:46):
I participated in, I don't recall a single one that
did not go through these Islamic madrasas. And so their
primary focus is on educating kids to this fundamentalist ideology.
How they recruit, that's how they grow. It's not just
specifically focused on that region. Their allies around the world.
(16:07):
They all operate in roughly the same way that jihadis
really share two commonalities all the groups, whether it's the Taliban,
al Qaeda, Hakani, what have you. Their number one goal
is to establish a global Islamic caliphate, which is a
government under Sharia Islamic law. They only split the world
(16:27):
into two parts. They call it Dar al Islam, which
is the land of Islam, and Dar al Harb the
land of war, and so it's one or the other.
Dar al Islam is the land that's been conquered that's
under Sharia law, Daryl Harb being where they're trying to conquer.
And that's the ideology that the Taliban, that these students
of the Islamic schools are taught to believe. And so
(16:49):
the second commonality is that they all have this long
term emphasis on indoctrinating the next generation, and so that
is shared by all of them. I think are saving
grace is that they are split into this tribal mindset.
Humans are wired that way. We have the republican tribe,
we have the democrat tribe. We have all these different groups,
and even within that, we have different groups that we
(17:11):
get into and that's just how we're wired as a species.
But they take it to the extreme and the Islamic
world is so fractured, and it's really our saving grace.
I mean, the fact that they're so disjointed that they're
all fighting each other. I mean, I think the conflicts
that we face are not against governments of the Middle East,
but the Variousjihattist factions, and so heaven forbid, there'd be
(17:34):
a month's raider that would unite the clans north of
the Wall and get all the tribes together, because we'd
be in a lot of trouble. Those tribal differences where
they fight each other, whether it's Sunni tribe or Shia tribe,
or or the Palestinian tribe or all these other so
called tribes that have started that stuff seems to come first.
Their hatred of each other is deeper than their hatred
(17:57):
of the West. And it's wild to see it play out.
I mean, I saw it there where we would have
to separate detainees that were from different tribes because they
would kill each other on site. Pashtune would see a
hazarda and be at his neck, and it's just like, okay,
it's very different. I remember even in more western Islamic nations.
I remember my first trip to the Middle East was
to Jordan and driving along the desert Highway there. I
(18:19):
wanted to stop at some of the different villages that
look neat. I wanted to go get something to eat,
and the taxi driver said, no, we can't stop there.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
We're not part of the tribe. You can't go there.
You'll get killed.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
It's crazy, And I'm just thinking, it's like, Okay, that's
a little different than where I grew up.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
I mean, imagine driving to New York and being like,
we can't stop in Jersey City. We're not part of
the tribe. So it's very, very different, that's for sure.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
Now, when you were done in Afghanishan, you went on
and toured a large part of the Islamic world. What
did that teach you?
Speaker 3 (18:53):
The biggest takeaway, as I alluded to earlier, is it's
really not personal. A lot of these cultures were very warm,
very welcoming, especially from the Arab world. It's very different.
In visiting Islamic nations throughout the world and studying their history,
I realized what works in that part of the world,
because you do have so many of these different tribes
(19:16):
or tribal mindsets that are all at each other's throat.
It's the only things that work. The only forms of
government that works is a dictator, unfortunately, and so you
see the most stable places in the Islamic world were
led by a king, by some kind of a strong man,
and this is true throughout recent history. You look at
(19:36):
Kamal auto Turk, I think is the best example that
these people need an auto turk to keep them in line.
And that's where our foreign policy, I think failed to
understand just what a different mindset we're up against. I'm
guilty of in two thousand and four of going along
with it when President Bush was saying democracy is on
the march, and you remember that.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
I was like, yeah, this is great. We're going to
free them and they're gonna love us. This is great.
And it really fails to take into account all these
differences and.
Speaker 3 (20:06):
Where they're at culturally. In the Federalist papers they mentioned,
you know, even Plato alluded to this as well and
some of the older writings that for a democracy to work,
a culture has to have reached that level of thought
to handle it, and these cultures, certainly most of them.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
Have not yet and it takes time.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
I mean, I remember one of the Taliban guy as
one of the fighters was brought in and the interrogator
came out laughing. You said, you never believe what just happened.
This guy I was taking notes during the interrogation and
he stopped me in the middle. This is the interrogator speaking,
he said. He stopped me in the middle of the
interrogation and said, through the translator, what's that stick in
(20:46):
your hand?
Speaker 2 (20:47):
He had never seen a pen before in his life.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
And these are the people that were trying to teach
Western democratic republican style governance.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
He didn't know what a.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
Pen was, never seen one. Granted this was thirteen years ago.
So the big game changer, though, I think in that.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
Part of the world is the Internet.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
Now that guy that doesn't know what a pen was
probably has a smartphone in his hand, and much of
the Middle East is getting connected. They're seeing there's another way.
I think that's causing a lot of the unrest. It
certainly sparks the Arab spring with social media, it will
shake out. I think over the next few generations. I
am optimistic that you will have huge swaths of the
(21:27):
Islamic world that will be going through a reformation. And
it's already happening they don't like what they're seeing. So
I'm optimistic. I think it's a game changer. But again,
you can look at history, recent history, very recent every
time that open elections have been held in that part
of the world, that jihadis always find a way to
seize power, even if they're not in the majority.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
It happened in Libya.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
You could see in Egypt when we sold Hosnimabarak down
the river.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
They held an open.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
Election, the Muslim Brotherhood took charge Tunisia where the Arab
spring started. Kaza Is another examples. Gave them the vote,
and who do they vote for. They voted for Hamas
and so you can see the Auto Turk's reforms being
unwound in Turkey where they're now becoming more and more
of an Islamist state. And so anytime there's open elections,
(22:15):
they vote for what they know. They vote for Sharia,
and it's something that will take generations to get away from.
And it's not up to us. That's the thing is,
it's really not up to us. But it should be
reflected in our foreign policy that we understand that because
we've made that mistake twice now where we knock out
a secular dictatorship, and it's actually more than twice because
through other foreign policy missteps where we knock out secular
(22:38):
dictators and then they replace it with Islamist governments, and
we fail to understand that a strong man is what's
needed in these parts of the world.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
From that standpoint, though, I'm watching what is happening in
Turkey and it's frankly very sobering to see what was
probably the most methodical effort to get to a post
religious Islamic country may outa Turk just gradually being peeled
back by ord to one who clearly is moving towards
(23:27):
an Islamis state.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Would you agree with them absolutely? Is?
Speaker 3 (23:32):
I mean, it's really disappointing to see before our eyes
that happen. It's unfortunately not a surprise when you understand
who these people are and how aggressive they are. Just
to give you an example of how they seized power
in Egypt, this was just undermined Mubarik.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
There.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
They do the same things. They're very aggressive in Turkey
as well. Whenever their elections. There was a priest that
I talked to. He organized a bus of Christians from
a village to vote in one of the referendums and
the bus shows up and the Muslim Brotherhood there is
the largest Islamist movement in the country. They have made
themselves easily recognizable. They grow a beard, they mark themselves
(24:12):
on their forehead so they know who.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Each other is.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
And what happened is they were standing out in front
of many of the polling places with knives and just
threatening anybody who didn't have a bruise on their forehead
and didn't have a beard. And this bus shows up
to vote. Guys with knives came out, the beard had
bruised Muslim Brotherhood members and they said no, turn the
bus around, and none of those people from that village
got to vote. That is how they intimidate, that's how
(24:38):
they operate, and it doesn't even need to be the
majority of a country to do that. And so we
need to understand that. I mean, that's why it's so
important to support these secular leaders that are the strong
men in these types of nations, because if we don't,
if we say, yeah, let's give them some democratic reforms
or undermine the leadership, we see the results.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
I mean, you can look at Syria.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
I mean you can look at what they did when
they toppled as odd. We're sure he was a brutal,
wicked dictator, but the alternative now we have the former
head of ices now in charge. I was talking to
somebody just this morning about that, where they would say, no,
what happened to isis didn't iis go away? And it's like, well, no,
they just trim their beards and put on a suit
and change their plans.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
It's the same thing.
Speaker 3 (25:22):
They realized that drowning people in cages and setting them
on fire wasn't winning the hearts and minds, so they
decided to think a little bit more long term and strategically,
and that's what they do. They're fighting these long term
battles and that's why we need to be educated on it.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
Talk a little bit about what you see happening on
campuses and the scale of organization and money that's going
into things like the Muslim Student Association that now is
all across the country.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
Right.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
Yeah, I think it really comes down to parents being involved.
We're in a country that is the product of affluence.
We've had a pretty affluent country for the last entry.
There really hasn't been a lot of hardships since World
War Two and so you have kids that are searching
for purpose. I think we have a purpose problem in
this country. We had a purpose problem after World We're
(26:13):
two as well, where you had the Baby Boomers came
in one of the best times, just after one of
the worst times. The previous generation, the Greatest generation, they
lived through the Great Depression.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
They felt purposeful.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
I mean, they were plowing the fields, working in the factories,
trying to figure out how to eat, and they had
to go storm the beaches of Normandy.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
They had real threats that they had to face.
Speaker 3 (26:36):
And then what happened is the Baby Boomers came and
it was great economy. I mean, there were sure individual hardships,
but overall life was pretty easy and it's been pretty
easy since then.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
So they lacked purpose.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
There were some legitimate causes like the Civil Rights Act
and others that they got behind and passed. But then
so many of them got into teaching. They started having
their own or view that it's like, Okay, now they're
searching for something to do, and they're grabbing these purposes
that they really don't know much about. Some of them
aren't that big of an issue. I mean, you look
(27:10):
at the transgender causes and other things that they're pushing
that it's like, Okay, they're just looking for something someone
to champion, whether or not they even care about the
individual cause. And so if you look at these protests
on the college campuses or on not just college campuses,
but protests everywhere that are in favor of Palestinians or
what have you, or over as I say, prohamas people
(27:31):
under twenty five and people over sixty five.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
There isn't a whole lot in between.
Speaker 3 (27:36):
And I think part of that, of course, is attributed
to the fact that when you're in your working age
of life, you're busy.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
But a lot of it I think has to do
with nine to eleven.
Speaker 3 (27:44):
I mentioned I was eighteen when nine to eleven happened.
My generation, a lot of us went, and we went overseas,
we joined the military, and if even if we didn't,
we felt that there was a real thread out there,
and it kicked the can down the road a little bit.
But this next generation, though, they're searching, they're very much
searching for purpose. If you're searching for purpose and finding
(28:04):
it in in different groups like Black Lives Matter or
LGBTQ rights or what have you, it might be misguided
and a few people might do stupid things, but you're
not going to march off a cliff supporting those things.
But supporting hamas you will. This is a real threat
to the West. The Jihadis are a threat. It's a
very long term threat, and if you want to open
(28:27):
the door for these guys, it's going to have a
very negative impact on Western civilization. And so for them
to be getting behind this issue, it's suicidal, it really is.
Dennis Brager actually wrote the blurb for my book and
the opening thing, and he called the Jihadis the monsters
of our time, and that's just it. These really are monsters.
And I tell my kids the monsters are not real,
(28:47):
but it's a lie. These are the monsters of our time,
and the children need to understand that.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
To what extent do you think there's a genuine danger
that we are going to lose the internal ability to
oppose those these kind of moves.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
I think we need to understand that these students that
are protesting on college campuses are the future voters of America.
These are our future presidents, these are our future senators,
our future members of Congress, and if we don't do
something in the next thirty or forty years as they're
taking over, they will enact disastrous policies that will have
(29:25):
incredible long term consequences.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
You could look at.
Speaker 3 (29:28):
Europe as the example of what some of these policies did.
They had this open immigration, they perpetuated it with this
generous welfare system that enabled these welfare reliant slums. And
I mean, the surest way to make sure that people
don't assimilate is to throw money at them and build
a bureaucracy of helpers whose jobs depend on these people
staying as part of the system. And so you see
(29:50):
the same types of demands from AOC and others that
are pushing for similar terrible policies, and you have young
people getting behind it without knowing the consequences, and so
it is a legitimate threat. I have full confidence, though,
if it gets too far, that Americans will step up
and right it. Unfortunately, I think that it might get
(30:11):
worse before or will get worse before it gets better.
But there are an awful lot of people yourself included
myself that if you served in any elected position, if
you served in law enforcement, if you join the military,
you swore an oath to defend the Constitution, and there
are an awful lot of us who have, and I
have full faith in the American people, especially now that
(30:34):
the Internet is more or less open through X and
other means, that they'll see what's going on.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
They're not going to like it, and they'll right the wrong.
Speaker 3 (30:44):
But I don't know what changes unless it gets really bad,
because you've seen that classic saying we're hard times creates
strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times creates
weak men, and weak men create hard times. So we
are in the last glory there right now, and I
don't see how things get better without this next generation
(31:07):
feeling some kind of hardship. Because those people that storm
the beaches of Normandy, that lived through the Great Depression,
they're the ones that put a man on the moon.
They built the Interstates, they invented the internet. Al Gore
did not invent the Internet, but they did, they worked,
and they persevered, and I think it really takes that
(31:29):
hardship to find purpose and to really have a reckoning,
And unfortunately that's.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
Where we're heading.
Speaker 3 (31:35):
Buy silver, learn how to grow your own crops and
be able to weather the storm, and teach your kids
the values that are so important to keeping this nation free.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
Well to thank you for joining me, because in a sense,
your new book, If it Takes a Thousand Years from
Al Khalida to almas how the Jahadas think and how
to defeat them. In a way, you are part of
the wake up call and you are laying out for
the American people how great the danger is and what
we're going to have to do. It is available now
on Amazon and in bookstores everywhere, and I want to
(32:07):
really thank you for helping us and being part of
this podcast.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
Well, thank you very much, mister speaker.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
I think it's important that we remember we're not fighting
against the Jihadiss, We're fighting for America. We're fighting for freedom,
and that's what it's all about. It's about preserving what
we've got.
Speaker 4 (32:26):
Thank you to my guest, Jesse Patrol.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
You can get a link to buy his new book,
If it Takes a Thousand Years on our show page
at newtworld dot com. Newtworld is produced by Ginglishree sixty
and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Guarnsey Slow. Our researcher
is Rachel Peterson. The artwork for the show was created
by Steve Penley Special thanks to the.
Speaker 4 (32:49):
Team at ginglishree sixty.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
If you've been enjoying Newsworld, I hope you'll go to
Apple Podcast and both rate us with five stars and
give us a review so others can learn what it's
all about. Right now, listeners of Newtsworld consign up for
my three freeweekly columns at ginglishtree sixty dot com slash newsletter.
Speaker 4 (33:09):
I'm Newt Gingrich. This is Newtsworld.
On this episode of the News World. During an interrogation in Afghanistan,
when asked how long the jahadis intended to fight, a
Taliban commander uttered the words, if it takes a thousand years.
This chilling statement illustrates both how terrorists at this level
operate and the generational approach they take when it comes
to bringing destruction to the world. The West is facing
(00:27):
a determined enemy with a fundamentally different worldview. In his
new book, If it Takes a Thousand Years From Al
Khayeda to Hamas, how the Jahadas think and how to
defeat them, Former Army Captain Jesse Petrilla provides unique insight
into the Jahada's mind, featuring interviews with Taliban and Al
(00:48):
Khalida members just after their capture, interviews with international journalists
and professors, warnings from Europelo politicians, as well as experiences
from his travels throughout the London world. I am really
pleased to welcome my guest, Former Army Captain Jesse Patrolla.
He served as a civilian advisor to the US Department
(01:09):
of State and he was a liaison officer in the
Army to the Afghan Secret Police, facilitating the interrogations. However,
four hundred captured Taliban and Al Kaeda members. Jesse, Welcome
(01:37):
and thank you for joining me on neutral.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Thanks for having me, mister speaker.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Let's start with your own career. Talk about when you
joined the army and worked your way up to captain.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
Sure, my interest in the jihadist movement really started after
September eleventh. I turned eighteen actually that year, just a
few months prior to the attacks, and so my entire
adult life and my generation really was shaped by that moment.
We really felt that there was a real threat out
there and very few people, I should say, understood the threat.
(02:12):
And so I embarked on a journey to research the
mindset of our enemies and who would do such a thing,
and spent a decade prior to going to Afghanistan in
twenty twelve. It was really the culmination of a decade
of research on the mindset of our enemies that really
came together there where I joined the military after farting around.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
For several years.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
I mean, most kids are pretty lost, and I was
no exception really what I was given that opportunity. I
was at the detention facility in Parwan there which was
where we kept several thousand of the highest level of Taliban,
al Qaeda and other terrorist detainees. As I mentioned, I
had been researching this previously, so I had this list
of questions. I actually already wrote most of the book,
(02:57):
or so I thought on the subject, and I went
into the cells. I had all access badge. I took
full advantage of it, sat down with senior Taliban members
and said.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Hey, what makes you tick? Why do you do this?
How did you get started.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
I would go back to my shipping container home and
write down everything I learned that day, so it was
very firsthand.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
I used their words.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
The book is filled with first hand accounts of how
the Taliban, how the Jihatis in general, think, and how
they tick. The more that I would learn, the more
eye opening it would be, because it's just such a
fundamentally different mindset than what people in the West are
used to. It's a very long term thinking. Those words
(03:44):
the title of the book, if it takes a thousand years,
were told to me by a captured Taliban commander where
I asked him. I said, hey, look, we've got you caught.
How long are you going to keep fighting us? And
he said you have me in a cage, but my
children will fight you, and their children will fight you.
If it takes a thousand years, we will win. I
(04:04):
would say the number one if I had to summarize
how they operate, That sums it up. They fight these
generational wars, whereas Americans and those in the West typically
it's rare to even get us to think a couple
years out, let alone a thousand years. Americans typically think
two to four years at a time at most, because
that's our re election cycle. So our politicians are looking
(04:26):
at their next election and thinking, Okay, what can I
do for the next two to four years and leave
a legacy and get re elected. Whereas our enemies don't
think like that. They just focus on the next generation.
And that's where we've got to change our mind.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Even though they're determined to defeat us. At a personality level,
you make the point that they're very different from say
prisoners you'd find in an American prison. Their interpersonal attitude,
their skills are very very different. What was it like
talking to them directly?
Speaker 3 (04:57):
That was one of the biggest surprises, if not the biggest,
participating in these interrogations, and there were over four hundred
of them that I sat in on that I was
directly talking to these folks.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
You would go in there and they would say, hello,
mister Jesse, how are you?
Speaker 3 (05:13):
Just very genuinely warm seeming. And the takeaway from that
that I got was it really isn't personal.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
They don't want you dead, they don't want me dead.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
They want all of us to submit or die. It's
a much more macro, longer term thinking. They're really looking
at our kids, their kids as well. They're trying to
indoctrinate and get to the next generation. There's just this
slow chipping away strategy. If you go to San Quentin
or one of the other prisons that we've got in America.
I mean, these are tough folks that don't have the
(05:46):
best inner personal skills. But it was very scary and
to a person that's untrained, they would think that this
is legitimate. Whereas these people, they'd easily have given the
opportunity to just slit your throat without even thinking about it.
I mean, they don't. I don't respect life like we do.
It's a completely different mindset. I'll give you a couple examples.
One of the Taliban commanders that I talked to the
(06:08):
way that it works.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
You're not pouring water over their ends.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
Saying tell us what you know like in the movies,
you're drinking tea with them. You're their friend. In fact,
the first chapter of the book is called Tea with
the Taliban. And one of the guys that I was
talking to you start out, you say, hey, tell me
about your family. And he said, just very nonchalantly, he said,
I have nine kids. I had ten, but my daughter
dishonored the family. So I killed her, just like taking
(06:31):
out the trash, just a normal everyday thing.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
And what was scary about that?
Speaker 3 (06:37):
It was so cold how he said it, just so nonchalantly.
And I would hear similar stuff again and again, and
it goes so much deeper than just one individual action.
It's a cultural thing. If he had not killed his daughter,
his life might be in danger in that culture, where
his friends and family would say, what's wrong with you?
Why didn't you kill your daughter? She dishonored the family?
(07:00):
Are you without honor? And you can see that even
played out in the West. There was the case in
Texas of Yaser Sayad, who was on America's Most Wanted
If you recall that that was about ten or fifteen
years ago.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
He made the most wanted list.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
That was the taxi driver that killed his two daughters,
Sarah and Amina Sayad. And he was on the run
for over a decade. And what happened when they finally
caught him, it was just because a neighbor saw him
over the fence. He was essentially living out in the open.
They arrested and convicted his own son, his brother, and
there were other members of the community that had helped
(07:34):
him along the way, and it just shows that they
thought he did the right thing. He murdered his two
daughters because they had non Muslim boyfriends. They refused to.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Wear a he job. It was a very clear honor killing.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
And so this goes so much deeper than just a
criminal element. It really is a cultural element. These are
fundamentally different cultures that jihad has come from. Another example
I'll give in Afghanistan, there's a tribe called the Neuri
standing to be the equivalent of a city council member
in a Nuristani tribe, there.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Are three prerequisites.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
You have to be a good orator, and you have
to host the entire village at a banquet ten times,
all right, and you have to kill five rival tribe members.
I mean, I was a city council member in another
life in southern California, and I'm glad I didn't have
to murder five people in the town next door to
get my seat. But this is a very normal thing
(08:28):
in that part of the world, and so it's very
much intertwined. It's not so much of a religious thing.
It's intertwined as well with tribalism because Islam grew out
of these tribes, and these tribes grew up for the
last fourteen hundred years, they evolved with Islam. It's very intertwined,
this tribal culture. So you see a lot of crossover
(08:49):
when it comes to respect for life or lack thereof.
There was a kid that was brought in that was
caught with a suicide vest and thankfully they disarmed it.
It was probably about fifteen years old, but a lot
of these guys, they don't know how old they are.
That's another thing. It's a very timeless society. And he
comes in, he looks very young. And I told the
Afghan that I was working with that was part of
the prosecution team.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
Wow, this guy looks so young.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
That's just so sad, like a teenager putting on a
suicide vest going to kill himself. He said, that's not
the youngest. And I said, what's the youngest suicide bomber
you've ever caught? He said six years old. And so
you think about it, it's like somebody strapped a bomb
on a six year old. And this is the ideology
that we're up against. And this is not somebody that
you can sit down and sign a peace treaty with.
(09:33):
It's not something it's not a government that you can
negotiate with and have them surrender and have a nice
ceremony and be done with it. The jihadis adhere to
this very sick belief that just does not value life.
It's an absolutely fundamentally different viewpoint than our own.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
One of the things I found fascinating in your book,
you actually encountered detainees who had lived in the US,
some of whom had actually grown up in the US.
To what extent did they just sort of reject American
culture and revert what what's going on in their heads?
Speaker 2 (10:25):
That was one of the scarier realizations or discoveries there.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
One guy that I told him I needed him to
sign a document. I go up to him and I said, well,
I got to wait for a translator, and he says,
I don't need a translator, just very clearly, no accent.
And then I said, wait, you so you speak English?
He said yeah, I speak it fine. And where are
you from?
Speaker 2 (10:43):
And he said, Ohio.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
What would stop him from doing jihadis activity at them
all of America or something. I mean, it's really scary
and it shows that immigration reform we need common sense
policies that protect America from this. It's not so much
about defeating the jihatas it's about protecting what we've got.
And you have folks that come here. He came here
as a small kid. We've got to look at realistically,
(11:09):
where are their allegiances. It's very tricky. I mean, we
haven't really dealt with this in the first couple hundred
years of our existence as a nation because it's intertwined
with a religion. But you can see where these people
are coming from and the cultures that are from there,
and unfortunately, there's this fallacy of cultural relativism, as I
call it, where people think that all cultures are equal,
(11:30):
and the reality is that cultures, like some of the
examples I just gave are certainly not equal to Western
Judeo Christian values that our nation is built upon, because
even if somebody isn't religious, if they grow up in
this culture, they are still adhering by our laws are
largely based off of Judeo Christian values that is our culture.
But this is just so counter and we can look
(11:52):
at Europe to see the problems that a more or
less open immigration system has created, and we need to
start addressing it. And thankfully this is starting to come out.
We need to look at what policies will force assimilation
that out of all of the solutions, that's the number one.
We need to find ways to promote patriotism in our schools,
(12:14):
to promote Jenao Christian values in our youth, because we're
failing this next generation. You have kids, and it's both
immigrant and natural born as well, children that do not
feel allegiance to our country. And it's not just the
Taliban fighter that decided as a teenager to go fight
in Afghanistan and leave Ohio. You have kids that are
(12:37):
born and raised here that have nothing to do with
those cultures that are marching with the queers for Palestine.
Banners and completely ignorant and misinformed. Over the last few decades, unfortunately,
the left has been attacking institutions that promote patriotism, that
promote assimilation. You have, like the Boy Scouts, for example, has.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Been completely neutered.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
They're trying to take the Pledge of Allegiance out of schools,
all these different things, and then they filled the universities
with these whack job professors that are giving children a
terrible education. I think we have completely failed to educate
the next generation about our enemies. And that was no
(13:19):
more evident than when we saw the pro Hamas protests
on colleges. There was a survey that was actually done
that was reported by NBC, conducted by a group called
Generation Lab. It showed one out of eight college students
in the weeks after the Hamas attack outright supported it.
There was another survey they did a few months later
that it had increased. It was one out of four
(13:41):
actually supported, one out of four on American college campuses.
And they just are completely ignorant to what kind of
people they're supporting. I mean, if they think that they
support women's rights or.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
What have you.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
I mean, they're very ignorant on the subject. So if
you're listening to this, you're probably already aware. But the
question I would ask the listeners to ask themselves is
are your children or grandchildren aware of the threats that
we are facing from not just the jihadist enemies, but
others as well. So, I mean, what's worse if we
have isolated terrorist attacks or a generation of children that
(14:16):
are turned into pro jihatas zombies that we see on
these campuses, that would open the doors for our enemies.
So I would recommend get them books on this subject,
talk to them. There's a great book called If It
Takes a Thousand Years available on Amazon that I would recommend.
It's a good read, easy for a teenager to read
or a young adult. But this is an ideological war,
(14:37):
and they have our children in their sights. It's not
something that is going to slip by them. I mean,
they're very much focused on the next generation. In fact,
on their own. That's the primary way that jihadist recruit
is getting to kids. Does the Jihad seem attractive to
join as an adult? It's a lot easier to get
to a kid, And let's face it, a kid's brain
(14:59):
is mush until they reach maybe twenty five.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
I'm going to ask you one question about the Taliban.
The great deal of Afghanistan has to be understood as
tribal rather than religious. The tribal ties are very, very,
very deep to what a cent in that sense is
the talibana geographically defined threat, whereas Al Khalida, for example,
is by definition a global threat.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
Taliban is kind of a misnomer.
Speaker 3 (15:25):
I think, even though it is technically it's an organization,
it does have leadership, they don't really look at themselves
like that. They're really the students of the madrasa. And
so in the Pasto language, talib singular means student, Taliban
means students. These are the students of the Islamic schools.
And out of the four hundred interrogations or so that
(15:46):
I participated in, I don't recall a single one that
did not go through these Islamic madrasas. And so their
primary focus is on educating kids to this fundamentalist ideology.
How they recruit, that's how they grow. It's not just
specifically focused on that region. Their allies around the world.
(16:07):
They all operate in roughly the same way that jihadis
really share two commonalities all the groups, whether it's the Taliban,
al Qaeda, Hakani, what have you. Their number one goal
is to establish a global Islamic caliphate, which is a
government under Sharia Islamic law. They only split the world
(16:27):
into two parts. They call it Dar al Islam, which
is the land of Islam, and Dar al Harb the
land of war, and so it's one or the other.
Dar al Islam is the land that's been conquered that's
under Sharia law, Daryl Harb being where they're trying to conquer.
And that's the ideology that the Taliban, that these students
of the Islamic schools are taught to believe. And so
(16:49):
the second commonality is that they all have this long
term emphasis on indoctrinating the next generation, and so that
is shared by all of them. I think are saving
grace is that they are split into this tribal mindset.
Humans are wired that way. We have the republican tribe,
we have the democrat tribe. We have all these different groups,
and even within that, we have different groups that we
(17:11):
get into and that's just how we're wired as a species.
But they take it to the extreme and the Islamic
world is so fractured, and it's really our saving grace.
I mean, the fact that they're so disjointed that they're
all fighting each other. I mean, I think the conflicts
that we face are not against governments of the Middle East,
but the Variousjihattist factions, and so heaven forbid, there'd be
(17:34):
a month's raider that would unite the clans north of
the Wall and get all the tribes together, because we'd
be in a lot of trouble. Those tribal differences where
they fight each other, whether it's Sunni tribe or Shia tribe,
or or the Palestinian tribe or all these other so
called tribes that have started that stuff seems to come first.
Their hatred of each other is deeper than their hatred
(17:57):
of the West. And it's wild to see it play out.
I mean, I saw it there where we would have
to separate detainees that were from different tribes because they
would kill each other on site. Pashtune would see a
hazarda and be at his neck, and it's just like, okay,
it's very different. I remember even in more western Islamic nations.
I remember my first trip to the Middle East was
to Jordan and driving along the desert Highway there. I
(18:19):
wanted to stop at some of the different villages that
look neat. I wanted to go get something to eat,
and the taxi driver said, no, we can't stop there.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
We're not part of the tribe. You can't go there.
You'll get killed.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
It's crazy, And I'm just thinking, it's like, Okay, that's
a little different than where I grew up.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
I mean, imagine driving to New York and being like,
we can't stop in Jersey City. We're not part of
the tribe. So it's very, very different, that's for sure.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
Now, when you were done in Afghanishan, you went on
and toured a large part of the Islamic world. What
did that teach you?
Speaker 3 (18:53):
The biggest takeaway, as I alluded to earlier, is it's
really not personal. A lot of these cultures were very warm,
very welcoming, especially from the Arab world. It's very different.
In visiting Islamic nations throughout the world and studying their history,
I realized what works in that part of the world,
because you do have so many of these different tribes
(19:16):
or tribal mindsets that are all at each other's throat.
It's the only things that work. The only forms of
government that works is a dictator, unfortunately, and so you
see the most stable places in the Islamic world were
led by a king, by some kind of a strong man,
and this is true throughout recent history. You look at
(19:36):
Kamal auto Turk, I think is the best example that
these people need an auto turk to keep them in line.
And that's where our foreign policy, I think failed to
understand just what a different mindset we're up against. I'm
guilty of in two thousand and four of going along
with it when President Bush was saying democracy is on
the march, and you remember that.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
I was like, yeah, this is great. We're going to
free them and they're gonna love us. This is great.
And it really fails to take into account all these
differences and.
Speaker 3 (20:06):
Where they're at culturally. In the Federalist papers they mentioned,
you know, even Plato alluded to this as well and
some of the older writings that for a democracy to work,
a culture has to have reached that level of thought
to handle it, and these cultures, certainly most of them.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
Have not yet and it takes time.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
I mean, I remember one of the Taliban guy as
one of the fighters was brought in and the interrogator
came out laughing. You said, you never believe what just happened.
This guy I was taking notes during the interrogation and
he stopped me in the middle. This is the interrogator speaking,
he said. He stopped me in the middle of the
interrogation and said, through the translator, what's that stick in
(20:46):
your hand?
Speaker 2 (20:47):
He had never seen a pen before in his life.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
And these are the people that were trying to teach
Western democratic republican style governance.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
He didn't know what a.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
Pen was, never seen one. Granted this was thirteen years ago.
So the big game changer, though, I think in that.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
Part of the world is the Internet.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
Now that guy that doesn't know what a pen was
probably has a smartphone in his hand, and much of
the Middle East is getting connected. They're seeing there's another way.
I think that's causing a lot of the unrest. It
certainly sparks the Arab spring with social media, it will
shake out. I think over the next few generations. I
am optimistic that you will have huge swaths of the
(21:27):
Islamic world that will be going through a reformation. And
it's already happening they don't like what they're seeing. So
I'm optimistic. I think it's a game changer. But again,
you can look at history, recent history, very recent every
time that open elections have been held in that part
of the world, that jihadis always find a way to
seize power, even if they're not in the majority.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
It happened in Libya.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
You could see in Egypt when we sold Hosnimabarak down
the river.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
They held an open.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
Election, the Muslim Brotherhood took charge Tunisia where the Arab
spring started. Kaza Is another examples. Gave them the vote,
and who do they vote for. They voted for Hamas
and so you can see the Auto Turk's reforms being
unwound in Turkey where they're now becoming more and more
of an Islamist state. And so anytime there's open elections,
(22:15):
they vote for what they know. They vote for Sharia,
and it's something that will take generations to get away from.
And it's not up to us. That's the thing is,
it's really not up to us. But it should be
reflected in our foreign policy that we understand that because
we've made that mistake twice now where we knock out
a secular dictatorship, and it's actually more than twice because
through other foreign policy missteps where we knock out secular
(22:38):
dictators and then they replace it with Islamist governments, and
we fail to understand that a strong man is what's
needed in these parts of the world.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
From that standpoint, though, I'm watching what is happening in
Turkey and it's frankly very sobering to see what was
probably the most methodical effort to get to a post
religious Islamic country may outa Turk just gradually being peeled
back by ord to one who clearly is moving towards
(23:27):
an Islamis state.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Would you agree with them absolutely? Is?
Speaker 3 (23:32):
I mean, it's really disappointing to see before our eyes
that happen. It's unfortunately not a surprise when you understand
who these people are and how aggressive they are. Just
to give you an example of how they seized power
in Egypt, this was just undermined Mubarik.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
There.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
They do the same things. They're very aggressive in Turkey
as well. Whenever their elections. There was a priest that
I talked to. He organized a bus of Christians from
a village to vote in one of the referendums and
the bus shows up and the Muslim Brotherhood there is
the largest Islamist movement in the country. They have made
themselves easily recognizable. They grow a beard, they mark themselves
(24:12):
on their forehead so they know who.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Each other is.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
And what happened is they were standing out in front
of many of the polling places with knives and just
threatening anybody who didn't have a bruise on their forehead
and didn't have a beard. And this bus shows up
to vote. Guys with knives came out, the beard had
bruised Muslim Brotherhood members and they said no, turn the
bus around, and none of those people from that village
got to vote. That is how they intimidate, that's how
(24:38):
they operate, and it doesn't even need to be the
majority of a country to do that. And so we
need to understand that. I mean, that's why it's so
important to support these secular leaders that are the strong
men in these types of nations, because if we don't,
if we say, yeah, let's give them some democratic reforms
or undermine the leadership, we see the results.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
I mean, you can look at Syria.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
I mean you can look at what they did when
they toppled as odd. We're sure he was a brutal,
wicked dictator, but the alternative now we have the former
head of ices now in charge. I was talking to
somebody just this morning about that, where they would say, no,
what happened to isis didn't iis go away? And it's like, well, no,
they just trim their beards and put on a suit
and change their plans.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
It's the same thing.
Speaker 3 (25:22):
They realized that drowning people in cages and setting them
on fire wasn't winning the hearts and minds, so they
decided to think a little bit more long term and strategically,
and that's what they do. They're fighting these long term
battles and that's why we need to be educated on it.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
Talk a little bit about what you see happening on
campuses and the scale of organization and money that's going
into things like the Muslim Student Association that now is
all across the country.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
Right.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
Yeah, I think it really comes down to parents being involved.
We're in a country that is the product of affluence.
We've had a pretty affluent country for the last entry.
There really hasn't been a lot of hardships since World
War Two and so you have kids that are searching
for purpose. I think we have a purpose problem in
this country. We had a purpose problem after World We're
(26:13):
two as well, where you had the Baby Boomers came
in one of the best times, just after one of
the worst times. The previous generation, the Greatest generation, they
lived through the Great Depression.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
They felt purposeful.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
I mean, they were plowing the fields, working in the factories,
trying to figure out how to eat, and they had
to go storm the beaches of Normandy.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
They had real threats that they had to face.
Speaker 3 (26:36):
And then what happened is the Baby Boomers came and
it was great economy. I mean, there were sure individual hardships,
but overall life was pretty easy and it's been pretty
easy since then.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
So they lacked purpose.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
There were some legitimate causes like the Civil Rights Act
and others that they got behind and passed. But then
so many of them got into teaching. They started having
their own or view that it's like, Okay, now they're
searching for something to do, and they're grabbing these purposes
that they really don't know much about. Some of them
aren't that big of an issue. I mean, you look
(27:10):
at the transgender causes and other things that they're pushing
that it's like, Okay, they're just looking for something someone
to champion, whether or not they even care about the
individual cause. And so if you look at these protests
on the college campuses or on not just college campuses,
but protests everywhere that are in favor of Palestinians or
what have you, or over as I say, prohamas people
(27:31):
under twenty five and people over sixty five.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
There isn't a whole lot in between.
Speaker 3 (27:36):
And I think part of that, of course, is attributed
to the fact that when you're in your working age
of life, you're busy.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
But a lot of it I think has to do
with nine to eleven.
Speaker 3 (27:44):
I mentioned I was eighteen when nine to eleven happened.
My generation, a lot of us went, and we went overseas,
we joined the military, and if even if we didn't,
we felt that there was a real thread out there,
and it kicked the can down the road a little bit.
But this next generation, though, they're searching, they're very much
searching for purpose. If you're searching for purpose and finding
(28:04):
it in in different groups like Black Lives Matter or
LGBTQ rights or what have you, it might be misguided
and a few people might do stupid things, but you're
not going to march off a cliff supporting those things.
But supporting hamas you will. This is a real threat
to the West. The Jihadis are a threat. It's a
very long term threat, and if you want to open
(28:27):
the door for these guys, it's going to have a
very negative impact on Western civilization. And so for them
to be getting behind this issue, it's suicidal, it really is.
Dennis Brager actually wrote the blurb for my book and
the opening thing, and he called the Jihadis the monsters
of our time, and that's just it. These really are monsters.
And I tell my kids the monsters are not real,
(28:47):
but it's a lie. These are the monsters of our time,
and the children need to understand that.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
To what extent do you think there's a genuine danger
that we are going to lose the internal ability to
oppose those these kind of moves.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
I think we need to understand that these students that
are protesting on college campuses are the future voters of America.
These are our future presidents, these are our future senators,
our future members of Congress, and if we don't do
something in the next thirty or forty years as they're
taking over, they will enact disastrous policies that will have
(29:25):
incredible long term consequences.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
You could look at.
Speaker 3 (29:28):
Europe as the example of what some of these policies did.
They had this open immigration, they perpetuated it with this
generous welfare system that enabled these welfare reliant slums. And
I mean, the surest way to make sure that people
don't assimilate is to throw money at them and build
a bureaucracy of helpers whose jobs depend on these people
staying as part of the system. And so you see
(29:50):
the same types of demands from AOC and others that
are pushing for similar terrible policies, and you have young
people getting behind it without knowing the consequences, and so
it is a legitimate threat. I have full confidence, though,
if it gets too far, that Americans will step up
and right it. Unfortunately, I think that it might get
(30:11):
worse before or will get worse before it gets better.
But there are an awful lot of people yourself included
myself that if you served in any elected position, if
you served in law enforcement, if you join the military,
you swore an oath to defend the Constitution, and there
are an awful lot of us who have, and I
have full faith in the American people, especially now that
(30:34):
the Internet is more or less open through X and
other means, that they'll see what's going on.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
They're not going to like it, and they'll right the wrong.
Speaker 3 (30:44):
But I don't know what changes unless it gets really bad,
because you've seen that classic saying we're hard times creates
strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times creates
weak men, and weak men create hard times. So we
are in the last glory there right now, and I
don't see how things get better without this next generation
(31:07):
feeling some kind of hardship. Because those people that storm
the beaches of Normandy, that lived through the Great Depression,
they're the ones that put a man on the moon.
They built the Interstates, they invented the internet. Al Gore
did not invent the Internet, but they did, they worked,
and they persevered, and I think it really takes that
(31:29):
hardship to find purpose and to really have a reckoning,
And unfortunately that's.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
Where we're heading.
Speaker 3 (31:35):
Buy silver, learn how to grow your own crops and
be able to weather the storm, and teach your kids
the values that are so important to keeping this nation free.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
Well to thank you for joining me, because in a sense,
your new book, If it Takes a Thousand Years from
Al Khalida to almas how the Jahadas think and how
to defeat them. In a way, you are part of
the wake up call and you are laying out for
the American people how great the danger is and what
we're going to have to do. It is available now
on Amazon and in bookstores everywhere, and I want to
(32:07):
really thank you for helping us and being part of
this podcast.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
Well, thank you very much, mister speaker.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
I think it's important that we remember we're not fighting
against the Jihadiss, We're fighting for America. We're fighting for freedom,
and that's what it's all about. It's about preserving what
we've got.
Speaker 4 (32:26):
Thank you to my guest, Jesse Patrol.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
You can get a link to buy his new book,
If it Takes a Thousand Years on our show page
at newtworld dot com. Newtworld is produced by Ginglishree sixty
and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Guarnsey Slow. Our researcher
is Rachel Peterson. The artwork for the show was created
by Steve Penley Special thanks to the.
Speaker 4 (32:49):
Team at ginglishree sixty.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
If you've been enjoying Newsworld, I hope you'll go to
Apple Podcast and both rate us with five stars and
give us a review so others can learn what it's
all about. Right now, listeners of Newtsworld consign up for
my three freeweekly columns at ginglishtree sixty dot com slash newsletter.
Speaker 4 (33:09):
I'm Newt Gingrich. This is Newtsworld.
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