Sebastian Gorka, expert in matters of national security and recent national security adviser to President Trump, has written The War for America's Soul (2019), which provides a current and in-depth assessment of domestic and foreign threats to the American Republic as a follow-up and amplification of his points made and discussed in his two recent books, Why We Fight: Defeating America's Enemies — with No Apologies (2018) and Defeating Jihad: The Winnable War (2016).

Dr. Gorka (Ph.D., Corvinus, Budapest) is a recent émigré from England and Hungary.  His refugee Hungarian father and mother landed in London after the 1956 Hungarian uprising.  His father Paul was an anti-communist resistance leader betrayed by British intelligence during the scandalous time of the traitor Kim Philby.  He was imprisoned by the commies but escaped during the short period of the Hungarian freedom uprising in 1956.  Sebastian, his son, served the government of Hungary in the period after the fall of the Berlin Wall during the transition to freedom form commie slavery.

Dr. Gorka is a former campaign adviser on national security and then deputy assistant to President Trump after the election of 2016.  He has lectured and advised U.S. military special operations schools on asymmetric war — namely, irregular non-national terrorist, communist, and Islamic threats to America, foreign and domestic.  He was awarded the Joint Civilian Service Commendation by U.S. Special Operations Command for his counterterrorism education and policymaking efforts.

If you read the various commentaries on Gorka on the internet, it is easy to see he has upset the liberals and academics — who can't think of anything good to say about him.  I would consider that a great recommendation in the current environment of academic and media shills for the left who specialize in vilification and character assassination of anyone who proposes a conservative answer for a serious political question.

In the book The War, Gorka devotes time to the history of American security policy; the importance of recognizing propaganda and espionage in the strategy of the communists; and the effectiveness of the Reagan "we win, they lose" approach.  He interrupts to tell the story of Chesty Puller, Marine hero for all time.  Then he returns to the question: do we know ourselves, and do we know the enemy?  He lays it out: research, preparation, and resolve.  He tells the long version of Islamic and jihadi history with plenty of detail — in fact, his history is quite authoritative, particularly emphasizing the changes in jihadi strategies and the new developments of multinational and internet-savvy efforts of the jihadi Islamists and their reliance on the effect of disruptive terror on Western nations.

He provides extensive interviews of Victor Davis Hanson and Conrad Black, two political historians of import.  Later in the book, he engages President Trump in an interview.  All this is invaluable.

The content of the previous two books, one written even before the election of 2016, is also valuable for different reasons.  Why We Fight (2017) starts with a discussion of the importance of fighting, then the worldwide problem of jihadi aggression, unconventional asymmetric conflict, and the relentless nature of the jihadis, interrupted by a review of the Whittaker Chambers matter and the revelation of commie sabotage and espionage.  Then a review of the importance of the Trump election in 2016 and how that disrupted the Deep State regime and more, bolstered by a long interview of Dave Rubin.  After that, some appendices on Gorka's work with the special ops and his recommendations on good resources to use in research of political issues; the importance of the Trump administration commitment to Israel; a description of the jihadis, and finally a very nice review of the reason why the jihadi problem must be understood historically as something that goes back before the founding of the United States, jihadi depredations of Western civilization and Christians dating to the 7th century. 

Defeating Jihad provides Gorka's best historical analysis of the jihadi, aggressive Islamist movements through history, beginning with Mohammed. 

Gorka's books are all informative and helpful for those of us concerned about the culture and political wars, but his efforts to explain important players in the 1,400-plus-year Islamist history is particularly good, even if much shorter than the outstanding work of Robert Spencer and Raymond Ibriham, reviewed by me here at American Thinker.  His narrative on the efforts of the commies is also particularly splendid in the book The War for America's Soul.  To start with any of the three books is to become better informed on the threats to our beloved country.  Sebastian is a patriot and a man of fortitude and good humor — certainly a match for the wimps of the left.

John Dale Dunn, M.D., J.D. is an emergency and corrections physician and inactive lawyer in Brownwood, Texas.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr.