Fmr. General: Islamic Cancer at War with the US

A top former Army general is criticizing the Obama administration's strategy in the war on terror, saying it isn't working.

Ret. Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn was director of the Defense Intelligence Agency under President Barack Obama before he retired in August 2014. He said one of the core problems is that the administration has not accurately identified our enemy.

"You can't defeat an enemy that you don't admit exists," Flynn told "Fox News Sunday."

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

From the rise of the ISIS caliphate to the bloodthirsty rampages of Boko Haram in Nigeria, Flynn said the proliferation of Islamic terrorism to new regions across Africa and the Middle East is proof that the U.S. plan has not been successful.

He said the Obama administration needs to move beyond a strategy that focuses merely only on tactical airstrikes on ISIS.

Overall, he described what he sees as a sense of "passivity or confusion" coming from the Obama administration because they have failed to create a comprehensive strategy.

"We're kind of like a football team with a quarterback at the huddle and the quarterback says 'ready, break,' and everybody's supposed to step to the line and the team's supposed to move down the field together in a synchronized way to the goal line to win," Flynn said.

"I feel like when we say 'ready, break' all the players on the team are heading off to different stadiums to play different sports," he added.

Flynn said that's partly because there's no central leader of the U.S. counterterrorism effort.