Dark Forces: The Truth About What Happened in Benghazi by Kenneth R. Timmerman Page A

successfully that the United States was not at war with jihadi Islam, but with “violent extremism,” an amorphous, undefined “ism” that had nothing to do with Islam. He succeeded in getting the White House to issue that view as an official policy statement in August 2011. 6 Muddying the waters even further, Wiktorowicz argued that al Qaeda and obscure sovereign citizen groups in the United States posed equal threats to the United States, even referring to them in the same sentence as “violent extremist groups” the U.S. government had to combat. 7
    The tragic irony is that Wiktorowicz himself seemed to acknowledge the fatal flaw of his own approach. “For reformist Salafis (i.e., the purists, or political Islamists he championed), there is great concern that the Muslim community is not ready to engage in jihad, either against incumbent Arab regimes or the United States,” he wrote. “It is not that jihad is rejected as a tactic of religious transformation, rather, reformists believe that several prior phases are necessary before a jihad is permissible.” 8 In other words, as Dr. Gorka put it, it’s just a matter of timing and tactics.
    Dr. Patrick Sookhdeo, a renowned scholar of Islam who advised the British General Staff on Islamic law, warned that the Obama administration’s approach of cozying up to the Muslim Brotherhood was foolhardy.
    “The [Obama administration] view that Islam and the United States are compatible is extraordinarily short-sighted. Islamists all share the same aim, the creation of an Islamic state ruled by Sharia. This is an end result completely incompatible with freedom, equality or democracy. The threat from al Qaeda is an ideology which is rooted in a classical interpretation of Islam,” Dr. Sookhdeo explained. “Trying to win the war of ideas without ideology is foolhardy.”
    From Egypt to Libya to Syria, the United States tried to separate violent from nonviolent Islamists, supporting the political Islamists in the hope they would neutralize the jihadis. “I believe this is a very dangerous policy,” Sookhdeo declared. “We are engaging the wrong kind of Muslims. Instead of dealing with those who share our values, who share our ethos, our fundamental principles, we engage and back those who seek our destruction.” 9
    EXTORTION 17
    Among the Americans who fell victim to the administration’s confused policy were some of our most undisputed heroes, the best of the best of the Special Forces community: SEAL Team 6, also known as Naval Special Warfare Development Group, or DEVGRU. These are the men who took out Osama bin Laden in a well-planned raid in May 2011.
    You and I were never supposed to know about the involvement of SEAL Team 6 in the bin Laden raid. But, because of leaks at the very top of the Obama administration, we know an awful lot about Operation Neptune Spear that once was highly classified. Those leaks ultimately may have cost the lives of seventeen members of SEAL Team 6 as well as thirteen other U.S. warriors in Afghanistan when their Chinook CH47-D helicopter was shot down by the Taliban on August 6, 2011. It was the single biggest loss of life in the history of the Navy SEALs.
    Karen and Billy Vaughn were the parents of one of those men, thirty-year-old Aaron C. Vaughn. “The day after the bin Laden take-down, we got a frantic call from Aaron in Afghanistan, telling us to clean our social media of any reference to him or his buddies,” Karen told me. “ ‘Mom,’ he said: ‘we’ve been outed. There’s chatter that they’re going after our families. You’re in danger.’ ”
    Aaron Vaughn was referring to braggadocio comments made by Vice President Joe Biden on May 3, 2011, when he identified “our brave Navy SEALs” for the successful bin Laden raid. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was disgusted at Biden’s loose lips, and chastised him publicly for putting the family members of the Navy SEALs in danger.
    And Biden wasn’t alone. At an awards