Former general blasts Obama on national security strategy

Former Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn blasted the Obama administration’s national security strategy on Sunday, describing it as too narrowly focused on the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

{mosads}”We need a much broader strategy that recognizes that we’re facing not just this tactical problem of ISIS in Iraq and Syria,” Flynn, who retired last year as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said on “Fox News Sunday.”

“We’re facing a growing, expanding threat around the world,” Flynn said, noting that terrorist threats have doubled in the Middle East and Africa.

On Friday, the administration released its updated National Security Strategy, a 29-page document outlining the major threats to U.S. security.

National Security Adviser Susan Rice on Friday noted that “there is a lot going on,” but emphasized that “while the dangers we face may be more numerous and varied, they are not of the existential nature we confronted during World War II or during the Cold War.”

Flynn agreed that issues facing the nation are not specific to the Obama administration, but emphasized the need for a more comprehensive strategy.

“I think what the American public is they’re looking for moral and intellectual courage and clarity,” Flynn said, adding the public didn’t want “passivity and confusion.”

“There’s confusion about what it is that we’re facing,” he added.

Flynn, who led the DIA for two years under Obama, previously served as assistant Director of National Intelligence and director of intelligence for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, U.S. Central Command and Joint Special Operations Command.

Flynn used an analogy of a quarterback leading a football team down the field.

“I feel like when we say ‘ready, break,’ every player on the team is going off into other stadiums, playing different sports,” he said.

Flynn said it was a “good question” when asked who in the Obama administration is in charge of leading the U.S. counterterrorism strategy. “If everybody’s in charge, nobody’s in charge.”

“We are facing a form of cancerous component of the Islamic religion which has a fanaticism that has everything that is against our way of life and they in fact have declared war on us and I think we have to recognize that,” he said.