Retired Army Major General Paul Vallely joined host Stephen K. Bannon on Breitbart News Daily Tuesday morning to talk about strategy in the battle against ISIS, referring back to an earlier Breitbart News Daily interview with Ferhang, a Kurdish Peshmerga fighter who was on the front lines against the Islamic State.
Vallely agreed with Ferhang’s description of the Western effort against ISIS as “too soft and too slow.”
“I’ve been into the Middle East five times in the last three and a half, four years, and I’ve just recently returned from Europe on the refugee situation there, and meeting with the Russians. And I can tell you the Russians are making progress, but we are not — because they have a strategy that they’re following, whether you agree with them or not,” said Vallely.
He noted that the Russians have helped the Syrian military recapture vital cities like Palmyra, and begin lining up an assault on the Islamic State “capital” of Raqqa, while President Obama’s strategy hasn’t even been effective at helping Iraq recapture its city of Mosul, despite a year of constant promises that liberation was right around the corner.
“I’ve been to Mosul. It’s doable. But we just have such a dysfunctional national security apparatus, with not a verified and doable strategy to win any kind of wars. It’s embarrassing. We have no respect or credibility in the world,” he said.
Vallely said “you don’t find a cohesive team working toward specific goals” in the Obama Administration, which has repeatedly demonstrated an inability to identify threats, or bring the necessary force to bear against them.
“Just look at our borders,” he said. “We can’t even satisfy protecting our own country and our own borders… which, in a sense, is our national security. Again, it’s just a lack of competent, functional people in our national security team.”
Fixing the problem will require “new leadership that understands what to do with a good team,” according to Vallely — a President and national security team that can “identify the threats, form the armed forces — Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines — to counter those threats” and budget properly for the cost of those intelligence and military resources.
He said the refugee crisis and terror threat in Europe had “tremendously serious” implications for U.S. national security.
“You can see what a disheveled unified effort there is in Euorpe. Even NATO has not come out with a demonstrable type of offensive plan to defeat ISIS, working with the police and intel units. And now, it’s spread to the United States, tremendously. We have ISIS coming across the border now. We have the expansion now of maybe over a hundred cells in the United States that are set to conduct these extreme terrorist operations, so it’s gonna get worse before it gets better,” he warned.
Vallely blamed the incompetence of both Democratic and Republican politicians for our precarious national security situation, noting that Republican leaders lacked “the moral courage to stand up and fight” against dangerous Democratic initiatives, such as President Obama’s plans for resettling large numbers of Syrian refugees in the United States.
“They don’t have the moral courage to stand up against the Democrats and Obama,” he said of some Republicans he had met with. “They basically have given up everything, particularly under the latest omnibus bill, and they’re not doing their jobs.”
“That’s why Trump is out there in a resounding way, getting a lot of support, because he knows the Establishment, they’re all working together, but they’re not performing and they’re not functioning to support and protect the American people,” Vallely continued. “They’re just not doing it. You’ve gotta have courage to stand up today. You’ve got to be a warrior. You’ve got to be able to fight and save this country, because certainly the United States is at a crossroads right now. 2016 is such a pivotal year for America.”
He went on to predict that Donald Trump would win the election, and that he would “bring in the best and brightest people he can, to perform at the national security level.”
Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00AM to 9:00AM EST.
Listen to the full interview with retired Major General Paul Vallely below: