The threat from radical Islam has at least doubled in the past decade while Washington refuses to even admit the enemy exists, former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn said Sunday.
The world is facing a "cancerous component of the Islamic religion" with a fanaticism that opposes the free world's way of life, Flynn said on
"Fox News Sunday."
"The wolf pack closest to the sled is ISIS, but there are other wolf packs around the world right now that are actually part of this larger expanding, violent extremist version of Islam," Flynn said.
Meanwhile, the American public is looking for "moral and intellectual courage and clarity, and not a sense of … passivity or confusion," from Washington, he said.
Flynn, who retired last summer, wouldn't pin the problem on the White House alone or on a single party, though Republicans and a growing number of Democrats have been critical of President Barack Obama's administration for failing to use the term "radical Islam" in defining the enemy.
"I think that there's confusion about what it is that we're facing," Flynn told Fox News. "It's not just what has been defined as 40,000 fighters in the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. It's also a large segment within this radical version of Islam that is threatening our way of life."
Pointing to a map showing the spread of violent Islamic extremism stretching across the Middle East and northern Africa, Flynn said, "Ten years ago I was drawing that map and there's only two or three dots on it. Today, what you're seeing on a map like that is a doubling of the enemy … a doubling or more."
America's counter-terrorism strategy for the past decade is only one component of an overall strategy, he said.
"We need a much broader strategy that recognizes that we're facing not just this tactical problem of ISIS in Iraq and Syria, … but we're facing a growing and expanding threat around the world in some cases."
The current strategy, he said, has not been working.
"You can't defeat an enemy that you don't admit exists," he said.
Obama has been criticized from Republicans and Christian leaders for his statement at last week's National Prayer Breakfast. He said Christians shouldn't get on a "high horse" over violent actions currently being taken in the name of Islam since Christianity has a past history with the Crusades and the Inquisition.
Were he still on the job and knew about Obama's plan to invoke the Crusades, Flynn said, "I would have recommended that he talk about something else."
"We are not about religions fighting religions," he said. "What we are about is the greater good of the people of this planet, particularly this country, fighting against this evil that exists. And this evil that exists is inside of this religion."
Radical Islam, like other ideologies America has faced such as Nazism and communism, must be defeated, he said. But unlike Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower's leadership in World War II, there is no one in taking control now, Flynn said.
"If everybody's in charge, nobody's in charge," he said.
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