Updated

President Obama was "very foolish" when he told troops in Hawaii that "we are safer" and that "[Afghanistan] is not going to be a source of terrorist attacks again," Steve Hayes said Friday.

"I'm certain that at the White House ... his advisers all cringed because it's a very foolish thing to say," the senior writer for The Weekly Standard and Fox News contributor said on "Special Report with Bret Baier."

Hayes went on to say that Al Qaeda is growing in the region and that the likelihood of an attack is even "greater" than it was just five years ago.

"It's far  more likely that we will see an attack that has roots in Afghanistan," Hayes said.