by George Rasley
August 18, 2021

Events in Afghanistan have proven that in his must-read book The Field of Fight and in his assessment of the corrupt state of America’s intelligence apparatus General Mike Flynn was right about everything.

Which is, of course, the reason that the Washington establishment, and especially the Obama-Biden intelligence apparatus, went to such great lengths to set him up and get rid of him.

What Flynn said about the war Islam has declared on the West was this:

There is no escape from this war. Our enemies will not permit that. We will either win or lose, and at present we look like losers. Knowing that the current administration (Obama-Biden) will not challenge them, our enemies will press hard to gain every possible advantage before a new president, potentially with the will to win, takes office.

But Mike Flynn’s worst sin was to publish this indictment of the defense and intelligence establishment:

U.S. intel officers and our operators were out in the field, talking to people, getting a sense of what was going on [in Iraq]. The failure was political. We had plenty of information, but we didn’t get the picture totally right. It wasn’t an analytic failure; in my opinion, it was driven – as so many intelligence failures are – by a policy failure from the top ranks…

A similar failure is happening today with ISIS and al Qaeda. There’s plenty of information, but it conflicts with the “narrative” of our policy makers. When politicians are wedded to an unreal story line for their own convenience and purpose, the intelligence gets suppressed or bottled up.

One disastrous outcome of this willful decision making is the 2015 intel scandal at the United States Central Command in Tampa. This scandal, in which senior military and political officials were accused of ignoring, suppressing, or rewriting intelligence analyses about Afghanistan, is an alarming indicator of policy overreach into a system that must provide truth to power.

There can be no winks, no nods, there must be brutal truth telling. Those intelligence personnel who give in to their own personal weaknesses and who are overly cautious because they fear an ass-chewing or worse, are being irresponsible. In combat, their weakness results in loss of life and national defeat. (Emphasis ours.)

Today, in Afghanistan we are seeing the desperate results flowing from a corrupt military and intelligence bureaucracy that rewards everything but brutal truth telling.

Fortunately, Mike Flynn (despite all the pain and humiliation he and his family have been put through) is still in the brutal truth telling business. In an email recently circulated to friends General Flynn had this to say about what is going on in Afghanistan and beyond:

Regarding Afghanistan and beyond; I believe we have passed the point of salvation for our senior military leaders and politicians. We have allowed military and civilian lawyers (read rules of engagement restrictions) to become all powerful and our Generals (indecisive and risk averse) to become nothing more than career seeking politicians. Those are 2 big reasons we have continued to fight and lose wars (we are trained at participating in wars and untrained at winning wars since WWII).

AFG [Afghanistan] is a sad situation, as were the Kurds in Iraq, but at least Trump pushed our respect internationally (being tough and smart is better than being tough and stupid). Today I don’t believe America is respected the way we were only a few short months ago. More countries visit China these days than come to the U.S. and China is prepped to recognize the Taliban once they declare the Islamic State simply to embarrass us. My sense is Taiwan is having some incredibly uncomfortable internal discussions (American apathy is likely starting to sink in). As are a lot of US allies in Europe. I also believe China is doing a lot of war gaming of costs and benefits currently with respect to the south China sea and Europe.

We are now in a fully engaged information war. Soon it may be worse—I pray our senior military leadership is intensely planning all options—the best plan offers the most options at the last possible moment. So now we wait. Trust me, our enemies are not waiting. They plan and they don’t care about stupid mask policies or fake insurrection BS. Our enemies will be working on the next three vulnerabilities we haven’t even thought about. I believe Russia and China are clear eyed on our corrupt political leadership that they and many other nations no longer respect nor fear.

America will come back and soon but it will come at a cost. If the bureaucracy in WDC (esp., DOD, State and the IC) want to keep acting like utopian ideologues, we will lose, if you find your courage, we will win. I say step up, stand up and straighten up your backbones, demand far better from your leaders and let’s start winning again.

As Mike Flynn wrote in The Field of Fight, “We’re in a world war against a messianic mass movement of evil people, most of them inspired by a totalitarian ideology: Radical Islam. But we are not permitted to speak or write those two words, which is potentially fatal to our culture. We can’t beat them if we don’t understand them and are afraid to define them, but our political leaders haven’t permitted that… That’s got to change.”

— General Mike Flynn Was Right About Everything originally appeared at ConservativeHQ.org.