Duncan Hunter Interview Series- Taking Obama and Company to the Woodshed

This is the fifteenth in a series of conversations with former Congressman and conservative stalwart Duncan Hunter. He has agreed to these sessions as one way to keep his message of Reaganesque foreign policy and constitutional domestic policy on the front burner for the American people and his Republican colleagues. Hunter is currently spending much time and personal capital positioning a group of conservative candidates to take back congressional seats from liberal Democrats. With any luck, Mr. Hunter will choose to run for the presidency come 2012. But for right now, the 2010 midterm election is his mission. The interview takes place with Hunter from Washington DC.

AJM: How are you, Congressman?

DH: Good. We’re traveling to a funeral, but we got another 20 minutes before we get there so were good to go. How are you doing?

AJM: Good, good. Just wanted to let you know that this morning we had a great session on Free Republic with your friend Nick Popaditch. And he was very well received and gave some great answers. He sounded like a young Duncan Hunter. Heck, he sounded like even an old one.

DH: (laughs) That’s great. Nick’s a good guy.

AJM: One of the questions was who…or name some political figures that he admires. Of course, he started off with Reagan and then he mentioned one of his mentors – Duncan Hunter – how do you like that?

DH: Well that’s great. He’s a good man. And I think he has a really good chance of winning this thing too.

AJM: I think I told you yesterday that they do not have a primary opponent. That’s good news. He can concentrate on the real target.

DH: That’s wonderful. Really good.

AJM: He answered about 20 questions. Got a great response from the folks on the site. So he should be getting a few donations from the Free Republic crew. There are even some that are actually down in his district.

DH: That’s good. How many people tune in to that? How many people do you think heard or read the Gunny?

AJM: Well, he was only there for an hour. Remember when we did yours a couple years ago when you came onto the site?

DH: Yeah.

AJM: Well, by the end of it there were 700 hundred or so responses. But in addition to the responses a couple of thousand views – a couple of thousand that didn’t necessarily post anything but saw what you had to say. Within a few days, I imagine Gunny’s views will be well beyond 1000.

DH: That’s great.

AJM: Yeah, And in that short hour I think there was 140 responses and maybe 400 to 500 views.

In addition, I told them I’m ready to volunteer for his campaign and will try to get this stuff out to the blogosphere. See if we can’t find a home for if he wants to write up anything, to find a good place to post that too.

DH: That’s super. It’s neat that he doesn’t have a primary opponent. That will give him a lot of clear sailing.

AJM: Yeah. No money invested for trying to beat back someone for that seat. When I was talking to April yesterday I told her that with Filner they have a very target rich environment. Would you agree with that?

DH: Oh yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely.(laughing)

AJM: OK. Well I got just a couple of quick questions for you today.

In the news in the last week and a half or so, since Joe Biden was over in Israel and Israel announced 1600 additional homes to be built in Jerusalem – which has always been their plan – Obama and Hillary decided to publicly dress Israel down in the media. What is your take on that?

DH: Yeah. I think Israel has proven time and again that it’s one of the very few true friends that the United States has in that part of the world. And we are trying constantly to maintain that tiny postage stamp of a nation. I think the Obama Administration is a glaring example of the misguided American ‘leadership’ which comes to the forefront from time to time, which somehow feels that by giving away a few edges of land, that it is going to help Israel in the long run. And experience has shown us that that does not work.

AJM: I agree with that. And I don’t think Israel should be giving up any more land to.….

DH: Not an inch!

AJM: And Biden, in his remarks in Israel, mentioned that the Palestinians deserve a contiguous territory. That means connecting Gaza to the West Bank, and I just don’t see that happening.

DH: The answer to that is that the people – these islamic radicals - who make bombs, which they intend to utilize in on going terrorist activities against Israel, don’t even know what the word ‘contiguous’ means.

So you have this unusual situation which has endured for years in which artsy craftsy liberals in Washington DC, like Joe Biden – the famous author of the ‘split Iraq into three parts’ Plan – sit around cutting paper dolls up into different shapes hoping that one of them is going to provide the master plan for the survival of Israel and appease their enemies. And in the end, the only currency that they have to achieve the ends that they say they want to achieve, is giving away property, giving away land.

The Israelis gave away a lot of oil producing territory in years past. They’re being urged now, for example, to give portions away of the Golan Heights, which gives them a critical, tactical defense of a very important area, from which they’ve previously been attacked.

So the formula in the end for liberals in Washington with respect to Israel is always capitulation of some sort. These liberals in the Obama Administration still haven’t ‘broken the code’ that the people who would destroy Israel aren’t interested in concessions. They are interested in the elimination of Israel.

AJM: Exactly, exactly. Now jumping on to a domestic issue, Lindsey Graham, Senator from South Carolina, was out in the media earlier in the week and over the weekend, browbeating the Obama Administration for not moving fast enough on the new Amnesty Plan. So it’s obviously established that Graham and his RINO cohorts are planning the next McCain-Kennedy. I would like your response to Mr. Graham.

DH: Well, I think that the McCain-Kennedy amnesty bill is founded on the erroneous assumption that somehow an amnesty plan can precede any border enforcement and be meaningful. And it can’t. It’s akin to a state government debating whether the speed limit should be 55 miles per hour or 65 miles per hour; and all the while there is no highway patrol and everybody is doing 100 mph. You simply end up with a legalization which provides a magnet for millions more people to come to the United States illegally, and thinking they’ll catch the next amnesty. And at the same time, it’s never coupled with increased border enforcement.

So the answer is, Lindsey, enforce the law; build more border fence! But first take note of the fact that where the fence has been built, where the real Hunter double fence has been built, illegal immigration and the smuggling of narcotics has been reduced MASSIVELY. Now the fence we built in San Diego resulted in a reduction of illegal crossings in our sector by more than 90%. It also resulted in the crime rate in the county of San Diego dropping – according to the FBI – by more than 50%, after the fence was built. Meaning that there is an enormous population of criminals who cross the border regularly, not to work, but to hurt Americans and destroy American property. That fact is buttressed by the statistics that more than 25% of the inmates in our federal penitentiaries are criminal aliens, illegal aliens. People who snuck into the United States not for any benign purpose, but rather to hurt our people and destroy our property. You have to have border control!

AJM: It seems like such a simple concept. I just wonder how you, after all those years of promoting this and being blocked, mainly in the Senate, I mean you and a few of your House allies have been pushing this stuff for a very long time. How did you restrain yourself from marching over to the Senate and grabbing these chumps by the lapels and shaking them??

DH: Well actually, the House members went over and beat up on the Senate about 100 years ago with sticks and canes, so subsequently, that was forbidden. (laughs)

AJM: (Laughing)

DH: Unfortunately, the practice was outlawed. (laughing) So you can’t beat up on a Senator, even ones who deserve it.

We found out it was hard to distinguish between the Senators and the statues when we got over there. You had to hold a mirror up to the mouth of the figure. And if a little vapor formed, it was a statue.

AJM/DH: (laughing)

DH: The point is with respect to the border fence, we built some 600 miles of ‘fence’ or border structure, of the 854 that was authorized by the law that I authored, the Secure Fence Act. But what I specified was a double fence. And I specified, for example, over 300 miles of it to be constructed in Texas. And the Texas Senators watered that down drastically, to 60 miles of non-double fence, with their governor cheerleading on the sidelines. The Texas border is on fire right now with drug smuggling, criminal activity, kidnappings, and the smuggling of people.

So you’ve got to have a border fence that’s absolutely enforceable, Mr. Graham.

Now I also told the good Senators and Homeland Security that the “Virtual Fence” would be virtually worthless. And they’ve now….

AJM: ….come to recognize that!

DH: …killed the thing. Yeah, the virtual fence has now been abandoned. I told them further that they’d pay Boeing a fortune. Boeing had never come in under cost on any project they’ve ever done for the American taxpayer, whether its military aircraft or a virtual fence.

They must have got tired of looking at the field reports, where the Border Patrolmen had their laptops bouncing off the ceiling as they were vectoring left and right in the open deserts as bands of illegal aliens zigzagged on them in the dark of night.

The virtual fence was one of the dumbest acts in show business yet they were able to propose and pitch this thing - and pay for it – with a straight face.

But you’ll notice nobody is suggesting that they put a virtual fence around the Whitehouse. They decided to keep a real one.

AJM: Well a few of your opponents in the 2008 election, and one in particular, was all about the virtual fence. That was Rudy Giuliani, if you recall.

DH: Well, they should have put Rudy down there in one of those vehicles with a Dukakis helmet while the Border Patrolman was being told to “turn left, no, turn right. Oops, they zigzagged on you”. This thing was based upon these vehicles being able to zigzag around gulches and gullies and canyons in the Southern Arizona desert ….at night. It got to the point that they were running over the people that were crossing illegally on the rare occasion they were anywhere near locating them at all. That proved to be impossible.

AJM: Yeah. I guess last question here. It looks like according to, I believe, the Wall Street Journal, that China is actually helping Iran with their nuclear and missile programs. I know China has been a sore spot with you for decades. So I’d like you to address our current crop of leaders on what the hell to do about these guys?

DH: Well, I think the US State Department has discovered a less than profound fact: China likes money.

And China really does have a military-industrial complex. Many of their companies, like Romney’s friends at Huawei corporation, which helped to give the Taliban their communication system and helped to build an air defense system for Saddam Hussein to use against American aircraft, was formed by a former officer of the People’s Liberation Army. So they have a very tight wrap between their military and their so-called corporate industrial base.

So China likes money, and the Iranians have offered them money. I think that they also feel that they are achieving some foreign power leverage by aiding the Iranians - especially with what they perceive as a groveling adversary in the White House.

And I think America’s options are narrowing substantially now with respect to Iran.

AJM: With respect to China, if you were President and you found out this week that despite their lip service that they don’t support the Iranian nuclear program, that they actually are, at least on the delivery systems if nothing else, what do you do as president? I mean obviously Obama’s not going to do it.

DH: I think you undertake massive sanctions on trade. And if you don’t have the particular levers in place, you seek those levers from Congress, which I think you would get. So massive sanctions on trade.

I think this exposes one of the huge mistakes on the part of Republicans and Democrats over the last 20 years, which was to move a great deal of the American industrial base to communist China. It deprived us economically, strengthened them economically and gave them the hard cash that they’ve used to arm significantly. From the Sovremenny Class missile destroyers that they purchased from the Russians for close to a billion a piece, to the Kilo class submarines, to dozens of lesser systems. China is arming, largely, with American cash. And now it’s abundantly clear that they have no respect for America’s concerns with respect to the Middle East.

Another thing that is bothering me tremendously is the fact that after America has shed blood, sweat and tears to win the Iraq war, China briskly moved in, straightened their bowtie, and promptly snapped up one of the large petroleum concessions in Southern Iraq.

AJM: Well we let them do that.

DH: That’s right, we let them do that. A massive, massive mistake on the part of the Americans.

AJM: With all this trouble out there now, and much more on the horizon, it seems we need someone like a Duncan Hunter in the oval office, not an Obama.

DH: Now we’re talking.

AJM: I tell you, you are right about a lot of these things, including the fact that we don’t hear Republicans standing up to China any more than the democrats.

DH: No. Exactly. A lot of our folks have drunk the Kool Aid on ‘Free trade’, and allowed the industrial base of the country to be shipped overseas, based on the idea that somehow they’re gonna go to Heaven.

AJM: (laughs) They speak Chinese in heaven, apparently.

DH: The idea of ‘free trade’ is as stupid as the idea of ‘free love’. It’s something that does not work and does not exist in the real world.

AJM: And correct me if I’m wrong Congressman, if we really want to have or need to have low wage countries making our products, why not use allies? The Philippines for example, that…

DH: Absolutely. Absolutely. But on the other hand we’ve got a lot of them also. If you look at the dispersal of the American industrial base, we’ve generously ladled it out all over the world.

But I would say the most dangerous transfer has been that to China, because China, of all the countries that we moved our industrial base to, the greater part of it, as represented by this disadvantage in trade right now – our huge trade loss – we moved it to a country which is not only taking these American dollars, but is building a formidable military system with it. Including strategic systems, nuclear tipped systems, which are at least partially targeted at the United States of America.

AJM: It makes no sense.

DH: We’re helping them to pay for the very missiles that are becoming increasingly sophisticated and are pointed at us.

AJM: You’ve explained this to your colleagues over and over. What is the response you get from your Republican colleagues? The Yukon Stare?

DH: Well, listen. You understand the Republicans and the Democrats, and their adherence to the politics of free trade – like Al Gore sticks to the politics of global warming. I think it is clear now that they are simply wrong! And I think a lot of people that went along with it now understand the debilitating effect it has had on the United States economy.

AJM: Yeah. And that is only ONE of the major problems with it.

DH: That’s the primary reason for having a so-called ‘jobless recovery’. It’s tough to recover when your job is in Beijing. The whole idea that is spouted regularly on news shows is that consumers will get confidence, they’ll go to the stores, they’ll buy things, and the factories responding to those purchase orders hire back people and produce more products. Now that works, unless the factory is in Beijing.

Americans can race to Wal Mart, buy billions of dollars worth of products, and have it result in not a single factory hire in the United States, because all the products are made off shore. So you can jumpstart an industrial base; just not your own.

AJM: (laughs) Well it’s good for the Longshoremen, I guess.

DH: That’s it: A few people to handle the products and a few people to ring the cash registers.

AJM: Absolutely. Finally, on this whole idea of what the ‘health care’ reform is going through right now. The idea that they are going to “deem it” through, or use the Slaughter rule to deem the vote in the house and then use this reconciliation to get the Senate bill through. Do you want to comment on this mess?

DH: I would say simply this. If the Democrats try to trick the system into producing a legislative outcome, this socialist clap trap, that is against the will of more than 70% of the American people, they are going to pay a steep penalty at the polls. That’s what these nutty machinations amount to – attempting to trick or game the system.

AJM: They (dems) must obviously not think so, because they are willing to do it.

DH: Well you’ve got the debate right now between Democrats who say ‘this is our last hurrah – let’s get everything we can get while we have the numbers no matter how unpopular’ and others that say ‘I’d like to come back next year’. Mr. Obama is trying to convince a lot of people that they should win purple hearts for him.

AJM: (laughs) If they do somehow manage to get this turd through do you think that the Republican mantra, for all the people running like Gunny Pop and others, should be “we are going to overturn ObamaCare when we get in”?

DH: Oh absolutely! Yes. Overturn all of Obama’s socialist programs.

AJM: Well, very good. You’ve been gracious again with your time. When are you back home?

DH: Hey, it was good to talk to you. We’ll probably be back tonight, after the funeral here.

AJM: Now I talked to Sam briefly when I called you the other day, and he says the bun is about to pop out of the oven. Has that happened?

DH: No, they don’t have the new baby yet, but we are on pins and needles.

AJM: Well get back home for that!

DH: Well listen, the best to your family Jim.

AJM: Well thank you very much and we’ll talk soon.