The United States must have a "robust, ready military" to respond around the world in the case of terrorism, and not take the military off the table as an option, which we've done for several years now, former U.S. Army Chief of Staff Ray Odierno said on Tuesday.
"We have to make sure we take a comprehensive approach to deal with this, and one of those is tightening up and making sure we do proper vetting," the retired general told Fox News' "America's Newsroom" host Bill Hemmer. "I think we should have an international agreement on how we do that. I think we should cooperate with all other nations. But here in the United States specifically, we need to tighten up on that, and there's several other actions we need to take as well."
It is important the military is ready to be used, and the United States must also target the use of propaganda, especially the use of social media to recruit potential terrorists.
"We have to come up with a common understanding on how we're going to attack this and not allow them to use these capabilities in order to convince people to conduct attacks on innocent people," Odierno said. "We have to go after funding of ISIS and other extremist organizations, Islamic extremist organizations, and we can do that through international cooperation."
The Obama administration has been leading from behind, Odierno continued, and it's now time to lead from the front and be aggressive while bringing nations and the capabilities of the U.S. government together.
"I think we're starting to put the right leadership in place with Gen. [James] Mattis as secretary of defense and Vincent Viola as secretary of the Army," said Odierno.
Meanwhile, Odierno said he believes the assassination of Russian Ambassador Andrey Karlov, who was shot to death by an off-duty Turkish policeman Monday, could be a "whole different" type of attack.
"This could be somebody who was supporting the Syrian rebels and does not like the fact that Russia has supported the current government," said Odierno. "I'm not sure we'll ever know for sure, now that the individual's been killed, but it just shows the underlying problems that we continue to see in the Middle East, the complexity of it."
Odierno said he knows Viola very well, as he and the Trump nominee attended West Point together.
"He's served in the Army, so he understands what the sacrifice is," said Odierno. "He's a self-made man. He started with nothing and made himself into something very important. He never lost that connection to the military."
Viola also understands international issues and the business side of the military and he will "bring an energy that we need."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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