Live from Music Row Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – guest host Gulbransen welcomed U.S. Rep. Mark Green (R-TN-07) to the newsmaker line to weigh in on the death of Bin Laden’s right-hand man, al-Zawahiri and the ideology that America is evil and must be brought down.
Gulbransen: Congressman Green, how are you, sir?
Green: I’m doing great. How are you guys doing?
Gulbransen: Doing wonderful. I know you wanted to talk about … I completely forgot the topic we were talking about today, because it’s been one of those days.
Green: Understood. It is al-Zawahiri’s death. You know I was actually on the ground hunting him back in 2004.
Gulbransen: That’s right. That is amazing. That’s very good news.
Green: It’s pretty exciting that we killed him. This guy helped mastermind the 9/11 bombing and the death of 3,000 Americans, served as Bin Laden’s second in command. Zawahiri was actually a physician initially. He … was a terrorist even longer than Bin Laden was.
He actually recruited Bin Laden to form al Qaeda, so he had been involved in Egyptian jihad decades prior, doing terrorist acts against Israel and in Egypt. but his death should be celebrated. I mean, this guy was a horrible human being, and it’s good that the world is rid of him.
Gulbransen: Who deserves the biggest credit for this accomplishment and getting rid of the terrorist?
Green: I think the [Central Intelligence] Agency, probably. It sounds like they found him, located him and cleared the missile hot. Of course the president had to approve it, so you have to give some credit to the president.
It’s unfair not to do that, but you know, but a safe haven is what Afghanistan is now because of the president. We can never forget that, with the way we pulled out. It just created a vacuum, and now Afghanistan will be a safe haven to other terrorists besides al-Zawahiri.
But the actual … decision was made by Biden. So we have to give credit for that. But men and women on the ground did the mission, and most importantly the intel that helped us find this guy since 9/11. So it’s a big day for us to have taken him out.
Gulbransen: President Biden had famously said that he was the guy that had advised the Obama administration to not go take out, or not pull the trigger, on Bin Laden himself. So this is sort of an interesting change of seats as it were.
Green: Actually Biden was asked to leave all the planning meetings for the Bin Laden hit by Obama. Obama threw him out of the room, according to the people who were in the room.
And that was a very small number of folks. He was initially in the planning and Obama asked him to leave, and he never came back to the rest of the planning.
Gulbransen: I guess the next question is where do we go from here? Is there a vacuum that another terrorist takes his place, or what are we expecting in the future now?
Green: Yes, it’s real important for Americans to understand that we have not defeated an ideology, we’ve killed a man who helped spawn an ideology. But the ideology remains, and that is that America is evil and it has to be destroyed.
So these terrorists, you chop the head of the snake off and the next one pops up. But you hope in the process, though, that you deter people. But I think we should never become complacent. As long as this ideology exists on the planet we will be at war with it.
Gulbransen: Very true. And it’s been for, at least, I mean, of course 9/11, 2001, brought it to our attention. But I mean it’s been a battle going for longer than even that.
What’s going on in Congress this week?
Green: This week Congress is out, so there are a lot of foreign trips going on. Those people who are on foreign affairs and armed services are out traveling, visiting troops and negotiating with countries to work on things like trade and how we handle China.
There are also lots of congressman back in their districts doing their own stuff related to serving constituents as well as campaigning. I mean this is a campaign here, with an election in November. A lot of work is going on even though we’re not in D.C.
Gulbransen: And of course, we’re in the backdrop of the China-Taiwan situation, which is a much lengthier conversation. Real quick here, what what was the latest status? I think there was some back-and-forth – is Speaker Pelosi going to visit Taiwan, or did they cancel that?
Green: So the last I’ve heard is she’s going. We don’t know if she’s going to spend the night. But we can’t let the Chinese bully us on who our leadership can go visit. That’s absurd.
We’re a sovereign nation and we’re gonna send our people wherever we want to send them. Taiwan made the invitation and she took it up. The last person who visited the country of course was Newt Gingrich. And I think that was ’94.
China is just bullying and sabre-rattling. I don’t think anything comes of it. What would happen if they shot down the Speaker of the United States House? That would be horrible. That would be an act of war.
Listen to the interview:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
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