Ambassador R. James Woolsey, former director of Central Intelligence and current Chancellor at IWP, recently appeared on CNBC to talk about the terror attacks in Paris and the threat that ISIS poses to the United States.
Amb. Woolsey said that it was crucial for the United States to take the lead in the war on ISIS, and he noted that the Obama administration is not doing enough.
His prescription for dealing with ISIS was straightforward and forceful: “We have to go after them. We have to pull together a coalition with us and France and NATO.”
Ambassador Woolsey said that a good foreign policy needs to have clear objectives. To protect the American people, he said that we needed to make reforms at home and at the same time destroy the caliphate in Iraq and Syria.
He rejected the notion that the United States should change its policy to align with Russia and Bashar Al-Assad of Syria to Defeat ISIS. Joe Kernen, co-anchor of “Squawk Box,” asked how the U.S. can defeat ISIS without Russia or Syria’s cooperation. Ambassador Woolsey said that this can be done through NATO: “France has already said that they have been attacked and [are] at war…and if they reach a conclusion under article 5 [of NATO] then we would all come to France’s assistance.”