Field of Fight: How We Can Win the Global War Against Radical Islam and its Allies, by Lieutenant General Michael T. Flynn. About a week ago, he was mentioned as a potential Trump running mate. His book became available on Tuesday, and I finished it on Thursday, just before the attack in Nice. My thoughts:
1. The ratio of rhetoric to substance is too high for my taste.
2. The endorsement from Michael Ledeen is fitting. Like Ledeen, Flynn views the regime in Iran as the root of much evil.
3. Flynn frequently says that “we are losing” the war against radical Islam, without spelling out his basis for that assessment. At one point, he cites a figure of 30,000 deaths from terror attacks in 2014, compared to fewer than 8,000 in 2011. He also cites figures indicating that there are now 35,000 ISIS fighters in Syria, compared to 20,000 in 2015. Otherwise, I did not find any data, anecdotes, or analysis that justifies the claim that we are losing.
4. He asserts that
contrary to conventional wisdom, Radical Islam played a major role in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq long before our arrival in 2003
He provides support for that contention. Nonetheless, he says that
It was a huge strategic mistake to invade Iraq militarily. . .our primary target should have been Tehran, not Baghdad, and the method should have been political–support of the internal Iranian opposition.
5. He argues that we should use social media against radical Islam.
6. He says that we should call for a reformation of Islam.
7. He argues that we need to gain support of local populations, and what they most value is security. They will join whatever side they believe is winning.
Relative to the goal of gaining the confidence of the local population, I would imagine that the effect of drone strikes is small, and not necessarily positive. I do not believe that Flynn offers an opinion on that issue.
For me, (7) raises the question of whether we should send troops to the Middle East to try to defend local populations against Islamic radicals.
Suppose that we were to follow the libertarian policy of avoiding all foreign intervention. One scenario could be that as a result local populations in the Middle East decide that they have to accommodate the Islamic radicals. Then the radicals become strong enough to destabilize Europe and perhaps even take over some countries there. By the time they get around to attacking the U.S., they could be much closer to parity with us militarily than they are now.
On the other hand, I could argue against intervention by saying that the local populations appear to have too little capability and motivation to defend themselves against Islamic radicals for us to try to do the job for them. I would like to have seen this issue addressed in Flynn’s book.
Here is an op-ed by Flynn.
Has anything worked?
Why would radical Islam in the middle east lead to destabilization in Europe? The middle east was a basket case for a long time, and it didn’t affect Europe. It has only started affecting them because they allowed Muslims to invade (immigrate).
Within a few generations Islam will control Europe. We are losing the war against Islam, but not because of drone strikes.
I met General Flynn once when he commanded DIA. The guy knows as much as almost anyone except DIRNSA about what Iran is really up to. The trouble is that anything he writes must pass through the Pentagon’s and IC’s pre-publication reviews, which consequentially means he is forbidden from backing up his claims with hard evidence, practically all of which, by its very nature, is necessarily classified.
However, taking into consideration these reviews and all those scrutinizing eyes of intelligence professionals, and the need to preserve his reputation, and the fact that his ideological enemies would be happy to contradict any of his assertions and ruin his credibility but can’t refute his statements, gives some extra weight to the case to trust him and his claims.