Trump’s National Security Adviser:
Lt. General Mike Flynn—“At War with Islam”

November 21, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

This week Trump named Lt. General Mike Flynn to be his National Security Adviser, one of the most powerful foreign policy positions in the government. The National Security Advisor is generally the president’s main foreign policy advisor and key coordinator of implementing his decisions. Flynn is seen as one of Trump’s closest and most rabid advisors. (During the Republican National Convention, he joined in the anti-Hillary Clinton chants of "Lock her up!")

Flynn, a retired three-star Army general and former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA, the Pentagon’s spying arm), claims the U.S. is in a global war, not just against Islamic jihadists but against Islam itself. It’s not really a religion, Flynn argues, but a dangerous political ideology. Flynn has called Islam a "cancer" and said "fear of Muslims is rational." In April 2015 he told Fox News, “I've been at war with Islam, or a component of Islam, for the last decade.”

Flynn vitriolically argues that the U.S. shouldn’t be restrained by human rights, international law, rules of engagement, or other forms of “political correctness” but should ruthlessly fight this “existential enemy.” (This stance and his open criticism of the Obama administration’s “softness” toward and “lying” about Islamic fundamentalists probably led to his 2014 firing as head of the DIA.)

In his recent book, The Field of Fight: How We Can Win the Global War Against Radical Islam and Its Allies, Flynn declares the U.S. should unapologetically condemn Islamic cultures as inferior to the imperialist West, which he calls “far more civilized, far more ethical and moral.” He says the global war against Islam has to begin in the U.S. itself: “If we cannot criticize the radical Muslims in our own country, we cannot fight them either in America or overseas.”

Flynn also calls for more aggressive actions against Iran, including “information warfare” to undermine the Islamic regime. And he targets various countries and forces around the world as part of an “enemy alliance that runs from Pyongyang, North Korea, to Havana, Cuba, and Caracas, Venezuela”—and including “Iran, al Qaeda, the Taliban and Islamic State.” At times, Flynn includes Russia in this enemies list.

Flynn’s appointment basically enshrines Trump’s campaign promises to bomb “the hell” out of ISIS; to practice torture “way worse” than waterboarding; to “load up” the U.S. torture camp at Guantanamo; to assassinate the families of suspected “terrorists”; and to surveil, target, terrorize and possibly put into concentration camps Muslims living in the U.S.

This is all part of a more bloodthirsty, no-holds-barred approach to the challenges the U.S. faces in the Middle East and around the world—an approach even less constrained by appearances of concern for civilian casualties, human rights, or civil rights.

 

 

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