The former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency blasted President Obama for downplaying the threat from Islamists and overstating our readiness due to an “allegiance to ideology” that skews decisions and policies that are at odds with what’s happening on the ground.
Retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn decried the Democrats and media elites who focus on gun control and “Islamophobia” instead of religion. “It’s a cancerous form of radical Islamism and we cannot allow it to exist on this planet anymore,” he said.
Flynn made his remarks in an interview with the Daily Caller News Foundation:
While Obama has claimed “we’re on track” with fighting ISIS, Flynn says here, “we’re not on track.”
“His strategy is not working,” as he decries senior government officials who out of fear or self-interest, refuse to tell the president the facts.
Asked to connect the dots on releasing GITMO prisoners, Bowe Bergdahl and others, Flynn says, “Obama has made incredibly poor decisions that have made us less safe.”
As for the continuation of announced releases by the Obama administration of GITMO prisoners, which is under attack from Republicans like this, Flynn says in this video “we should be capturing, not releasing, more GITMO prisoners.” After release, Flynn says, these detainees are returning to the battlefield, picking up networks and providing a command and control capacity that works against the United States’ interests.
Flynn, having served in Afghanistan when Bowe Bergdahl left camp and in a position to know about the reassignments needed to find Bergdahl, says we “certainly shouldn’t be trading them [GITMO prisoners] for those like Bowe Bergdahl.”
Other topics discussed in the video are the mistake of invading Iraq, the disaster of toppling Libya’s leader, the error of allowing Pakistan and Syria to be safe-havens and using America’s military as a social experiment while allowing our readiness to decline.
Flynn says, “We are allowing the threads of this nicely woven fabric to be pulled apart.” He believes it will take more than one president after Obama’s term to right the ship of state for America to lead the world again.
Flynn left the DIA last year after clashing with other officials in the intelligence community over how the DIA should be reformed. As evidenced by this interview, he is blunt, candid and isn’t afraid to challenge superiors when he thinks they’re wrong — attributes that did not endear him to administration officials.
He’s absolutely right about the damage done to our foreign policy and standing in the world. No one trusts the word of the U.S. anymore, not after disappearing red lines and promises about what Obama could get from a nuclear deal with Iran — almost all of which failed to make it into the final agreement.
That trust will take a long time to rebuild — if it ever can be.
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