Newt Gingrich doesn’t believe the lower Manhattan mosque controversy should be a one-time debate in America.
The former House speaker and possible presidential candidate is promoting an anti-terrorism message that warns Americans against complacency and demands confrontation.
“We have to have the courage to at least define who our opponents are,” said Gingrich, who will continue the terrorism conversation on stage tonight with Denver Post editor Greg Moore.
“For 10 years, we’ve avoided talking about who our enemies are,” Gingrich said.
Radical Islam remains the most dangerous enemy, Gingrich said. Terrorist networks shielded by unfriendly regimes are still plotting major attacks on the United States. Just because recent attempts such as the “Christmas bomber” have failed, the nation shouldn’t let down its guard, he said.
“It’s very dangerous for us to rely on these folks not becoming competent,” he said. “We have to truly worry about them getting nuclear weapons.”
While Gingrich said he supports religious freedom and the right to build mosques, he said the New York controversy has been a useful exercise in asking Americans and Muslims to distinguish between moderates and more dangerous religious fanatics.
Gingrich’s prescription would include heavier U.S. pressure on nations like Saudi Arabia that claim to fight terrorism but also sponsor radical schools of Islam that teach a jihadist brand of religion.
Even some of Gingrich’s fellow Republicans have criticized his previously extreme language on the mosque controversy.
Rep. Peter King of New York said Gingrich should not have compared the mosque to Nazis’ putting up signs at the Holocaust museum in Washington.
As for the war in Afghanistan, Gingrich said, “We’d better figure out how to get it to be a low-cost-enough engagement that we can sustain it.”
The U.S. sustained the Cold War for decades, and “in the end, the American people understood the alternative was worse,” he said.
Gingrich is unlikely to get away without questions on the Republican plan for the federal budget.
“I think this idea of a ‘Pledge to America’ is a useful step,” said Gingrich, who used the “Contract With America” to help push a Republican congressional takeover in 1994.
President Barack Obama criticized the GOP plan last week for seeking more tax cuts for high-income earners and catering to special interests by backing off Wall Street and health care reforms.
Gingrich said Congress could make great progress on deficits by capping the growth of entitlements and freezing domestic spending at 2008 levels.
