Politician

As a member and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee during the 2000s, I met with civilian and military officials in Kurdistan, Libya, Jordan, Israel, Egypt, and Yemen. They shared many of the same international defense priorities as the United States. We acknowledged our differences, but we worked from where we found common ground.

Obama's 'reset' with Russia and 'pivot' to Asia never materialized.

The West needs leaders with the courage and the will to fight the scourge of radical Islam.

America's bipartisan strategy for years has been to deny jihadists with sanctuaries anywhere in the world from where they can plan, prepare, and train for attacks against the West.

Governing has always been hard.

Any customer of government - whether it's with education, taxes, housing, or health care - understands the frustrations when they have a bad experience. They're stuck and can't go anywhere else.

The forces that rescued Americans on Sept. 11, 2012, were not the U.S. military. They were not the militias that overthrew Gadhafi. They were Gadhafi devotees who were loyal to him and to the U.S. government with whom their leader reached a 'deal.'

Gingrich, Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, and Clinton passed legislation because they understood and appreciated the difficult political process. They fought for their principles yet recognized the need for compromise to get anything done.

Both Presidents George Bush and Barack Obama pursued policies of regime change after 9/11 - with Bush removing al-Qaida's safe haven in Afghanistan and the sadistic anti-American dictator Saddam Hussein in Iraq - but Obama took it a step further and disregarded regional stability as a guiding factor for U.S. policy.

America needs a bipartisan foreign policy that is predictable, pragmatic, and understandable.

It seems that whenever America faced a challenge, it faced it and overcame it.

The primary role of government is to provide for the safety and security of their populations.

I served 10 years on the U.S. House Intelligence Committee, and I had the distinct privilege of meeting with real U.S. spies throughout the globe.

Boko Haram, by itself, has destroyed large areas in Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, and Niger.

A real possibility exists that we will be forced to confront, contain, and ultimately defeat radicalism and al-Qaeda alone, or at least with far fewer allies in the region than we had before.

Radical jihadists hate Americans for who we are. They cannot be managed. They cannot be trusted. Engaging them is a tragic fool's errand. We need to realize that they are at war with us and that we cannot control their motivations. We instead need to confront them, contain them, and ultimately defeat them before they defeat us.

Libya became a rat's nest of extremism after NATO helped depose dictator Moammar Gadhafi, and it now exports weapons, jihadists, and ideology to Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

The Islamic State has proven that terrorists can seize and deploy modern military equipment on lesser-armed opponents.

The Panetta/Petraeus combo is a powerful tandem. I've seen both of them up close and personal at the CIA and in Iraq.

I'm not OK with clergy, students, and those of different opinions lying and expressing hateful speech in the name of love, but again, it is their constitutional right. I'm not OK with their conduct, but in America we tolerate it, as obnoxious and spiteful as it may be.