Retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney had a blunt assessment of the terror attacks that killed at least 12 in Paris on Wednesday, telling a Fox News audience that a major driver of the violence was that those in positions of leadership refused to face the realities of radicalized Islam.

“Political correctness is killing us,” he told “Fox & Friends,” adding that the nation’s leaders needed to wake up to the dangers of the religion in order to keep America safe.

The attacks left two police officers and several members of the Paris-based satirical newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, dead. Witnesses said they heard the attackers shout out “the Prophet has been avenged,” and “Allahu Akbar,” various media reported.

France President Francois Hollande, meanwhile, has labeled the attack an act of terror and placed the city on high alert.

The newspaper — firebombed in 2011 after it published a cartoon of the prophet Mohammed — had actually just printed a new cartoon on Wednesday morning that depicted Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi at a podium, making a statement.

Mr. McInerney’s assessment of the situation is not new. He’s called on many prior occasions for U.S. leaders to quit treating radical Islamism as if it’s a religion like any other — that such political correctness would only endanger American lives — and was especially outspoken after the terror attacks on the U.S. Consulate compound in Benghazi that left four Americans dead.

In September 2014, for example, Mr. McInerney told a Sandhills Community College crowd that the biggest threat facing America was radical Islam, FayObserver.com reported. He also compared Islam to Nazism, as well as fascism and communism.

“Political correctness is killing us,” he said then, FayObserver.com reported. “It is a global war against radical Islam. Let’s call it what it is. … Islam is not a religion of peace.”

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