Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn (Ret.), who served as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency under President Obama, and has advised Republican presidential candidates Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Donald Trump stated that “we’re losing” the fight against terrorism and the US’ leadership is “not there” in the Middle East on Tuesday’s “Fox & Friends” on the Fox News Channel.
Flynn said, “I think the first thing that we have to do is we have to stop apologizing for what we’re seeing here. … This is a political ideology that’s wrapped in this false cloak of radical Islamism. And let’s face it, the strategy that we have is not working. In fact, right now, we’re losing — and I’m talking about a very big war that’s beyond Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, others you’ve had have talked about Libya, were talking about Yemen. And now, you know, Europe, multiple times, we’ve already seen attacks in our country.”
He added, “We apologize because — we tend to apologize as though we’re going after some religious idea, but in fact, this is a political ideology, and they cloak themselves in the religion, because they know that is a major weakness of us.”
Flynn further argued, “Going into Mosul, going into Raqqa, those are necessary things that we have to do tactically, to basically send a message that we are not going to allow these guys to have a safe haven in a large part of the Middle East, but we are going to have to go after this enemy strategically in a much different way. … We have to bring a coalition together. There has to be an Arab — a big, big Arab component to this coalition, and the Arab leaders that are still willing and understand that they have a problem themselves, they are going to have to be brought together. But that’s going to require US leadership, something that we are void of right now, honestly, because I have recently talked to many of these leaders out in the region, and they want US leadership, but it’s just not there.”
He later added, “Our help right now is piecemeal, it’s uncoordinated, and it’s not led, and I think that that’s part of what we have to do.” He further argued the US should have a “direct discussion” with Russia about fighting terrorism. He did concede that Russia had failed to go after ISIS.
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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