Michael Flynn, a former U.S Army lieutenant general and head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), defended Donald Trump’s call to be unpredictable Thursday and said the killing of terrorist’s families should not be ruled out.
“I am a believer in leaving every option on the table right until the last possible minute,” Flynn said on Al Jazeera. Flynn is currently serving as an adviser to Trump and said he is trying to get the candidate to be more “precise” with his language. Trump has said that he seeks to be “unpredictable” with his foreign policy.
This has drawn sharp criticism from opponents. “Allies do not want unpredictable, they want someone to count on, and adversaries need to know what we will do – if they take certain steps, what consequences. Our troops don’t deserve a Commander in Chief who is unpredictable – that is the worst criteria for a Commander in Chief,” Clinton supporter Sen. [crscore]Tim Kaine[/crscore] said.
Flynn also defended Trump’s calls to kill the families of terrorists. “I would have to see the circumstances of that situation. It would have to be circumstances we are facing at the time,” Flynn said.
The general continued to say: “It could be someone like an Omar al-Baghdadi, let’s say he is still alive, and we find him in a place where it is very difficult to get into, and he is actually using children to protect himself. So what should we do? How would we actually go get him if killing him is better than capturing him? So we have to make these very very difficult political decisions; these are very difficult political decisions.”
While the former DIA director does not agree with the exact language of Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims immigration to the U.S, he does think tighter screening should be in place.
“I think that we have to be cautious about where these people are coming from. What I support is vetting of individuals, the proper screening of individuals who are coming from certain parts of the world like Syria,” Flynn said.