Former Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn (Ret.) argued the president isn’t “fully committed” to the fight against ISIS on Wednesday’s “On the Record” on the Fox News Channel.
Flynn was asked, regarding the fight against ISIS, “Is the president committed to this?” He answered, “I don’t believe he is. I don’t believe the president is fully committed to this thing, because I just, I mean, if we were, we would have a real vision and really strong leadership behind what it is that we’re trying to achieve in the Middle East, and I just don’t feel it. … Greta, I just returned from another trip, just this past week, to Egypt and to Israel and I will tell you, there’s a real sense of abandonment, and there is a real sense of distrust, or kind of, you know, ‘What are you guys trying to achieve here? Are you really into this thing? Is your heart really into it? And I just don’t see it.”
Earlier, Flynn argued, “we are putting too much emphasis on the military component of this strategy that is — to me it’s really a nonexistent strategy in the Middle East right now.”
He further said that when it comes to the fight against ISIS, “commitment is the the real answer. I don’t think — in fact, I know, no enemy is easy to defeat. Every time we go out, you know, every time we fight somebody in some type of conflict, it’s going to come with tragedy and sacrifice. So, this is not — it’s not, it’s probably not good to say that it’s easy to defeat somebody. … I think the right word is ‘commitment.’ It’s commitment. Now, we committed, and can we get our partners in the region committed to actually defeating these guys? Every single enemy, as long as they’re properly defined, can be understood much better, and can be defeated. There’s no enemy that’s 10 feet tall, trust me. And we have defeated these guys already, one time in the 2009 to 2011 time frame, and they were subdued, and they weren’t around at that time. Now, what has happened is, we’ve allowed these guys to come back, and it’s not just in Iraq, it really started up again in Syria. So, I mean, I think what we’re looking for is we’re just looking for clarity out of the White House to tell us what it is that we want to try to achieve, and don’t lay this solely on the military.”
Flynn also spoke on the attitude of people on the military, he stated, “I think, just from a number of friends that I have, I mean, it’s ‘Let us do our job. Give us the authority, tell us what it is that you want to do.’ I mean, train more than 60, they know that they can do that. ‘Give us the capabilities that we want want. Give us the tools that we need, and let us go and do the job that we want.’ That’s a portion of what it is that we need to do for a strategy in the Middle East that includes both Iraq and Syria.”
Flynn also said that the fact the US has only trained 60 Syrians to fight ISIS is “embarrassing to those in the military.”
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