MG Flynn (on intell mainly)

[SWJ Blog]

Mike Flynn and the “Howling Waste”

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[davidbfpo]

Fascinating article, no doubt prompted by his support of Donald Trump:http://www.politico.com/magazine/sto...general-214362

It ends with:

For his part, Mike Flynn admits to a sense of deep frustration as he walks through airports these days and sees soldiers patted on the back by an American public and politicians who long ago abandoned the fight. He’s still shouting that the war is not over, and the only way Flynn knows to bring those soldiers all the way home, and keep faith with those who never made it back, is to find a way to win it.

Within is a passage on 'talking with the enemy', AQ in Iraq, which I don't recall being public:

As JSOC’s director of intelligence, Flynn interrogated the senior Al Qaeda commanders at length. Sitting across from them at the detainee screening facility at Balad Air Base, Iraq, Flynn wondered why such obviously educated and intelligent people were devoting themselves to tearing their country apart, regardless of the horrendous toll in innocent lives.
“Over the course of all those interrogations, I concluded that ‘core Al Qaeda’ wasn’t actually comprised of human beings, but rather it was an ideology with a particular version of Islam at its center,” Flynn said in the recent interview. “More than a religion, this ideology encompasses a political belief system, because its adherents want to rule things—whether it’s a village, a city, a region or an entire ‘caliphate.’ And to achieve that goal, they are willing to use extreme violence. The religious nature of that threat makes it very hard for Americans to come to grips with.”

Amost stranger than fiction. I cannot recall any similar exchange in WW2, leaving aside "listening to the enemy" and the politeness shown at surrender ceremonies. Nor in post-1945 conflicts.