General Flynn (FP: Foreign Policy)

W.J. Astore

Is the U.S. military doomed?  I’d say yes.  But it’s not because our troops are uncommitted, our weapons are bad, and our tactics are flawed.  Rather it’s because of the conventional wisdom in Washington and the Pentagon that continues to commit our troops to unnecessary and unwinnable wars.

This conventional wisdom is perhaps best summed up in a speech by retired Lieutenant General Michael T. Flynn, the ex-chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).  It’s worth reading the speech in full, not because it’s especially original or insightful, but because it’s so unreflective and representative of Washington’s collective wisdom.

Here are General Flynn’s main points as I see them:

1. The American public must be committed to an open-ended ideological war “for decades.”

2. That war is against “grotesque” Islamic extremists who “hate our ideals” and who are “committed to the destruction…