US national security now run by a deranged paranoiac

There has been a host of articles on the new National Security Adviser, retired Lt-Gn Flynn. We have chosen three from the time he was appointed when commentators were still shocked by Trump’s appointments.

This posting has these items:
1) Vox: Michael Flynn, Trump’s national security adviser, believes fake news and partisan conspiracy theories;
2) Guardian: Michael Flynn will be a disaster as national security adviser, contains the video of Flynn’s speech to the Republican National Convention last July, template for Trump’s stump speech;
3) Fortune: Trump’s National Security Adviser Shared Fake News About Clinton, did he even know it was fake?;

Retired Lt-Gen Flynn, screenshot. He is as impulsive as Trump and as contemptuous about international law, especially any restrictions on torture.


Michael Flynn, Trump’s national security adviser, believes fake news and partisan conspiracy theories

And now his job is telling Donald Trump what to believe.

By Yochi Dreazen and Zack Beauchamp, Vox news
November 21, 2016

Donald Trump’s newly appointed national security adviser, retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, doesn’t control the nation’s military, like the secretary of defence. He doesn’t tell America’s diplomats what messages to pass to foreign leaders, like the secretary of state. And he doesn’t tell US spies which governments to infiltrate or which terror leaders to target, like the director of the CIA.

Flynn’s powers are less tangible, but his role is critically important all the same. National security advisers help determine which foreign policy and national security questions reach the president and offer suggestions for how they should be resolved.

That means Flynn will spend more time with President-elect Trump than any other member of the administration’s national security team. He is already helping choose candidates for senior posts while vetoing others, which means Trump’s Cabinet will clearly reflect Flynn’s thinking.

Flynn will have one other responsibility — and this is where the retired general, despite his decades of generally exemplary military service, may be uniquely ill-suited to his role.

As Trump begins to slowly roll out picks for key Cabinet posts, it’s unclear whether he will fill his White House with aides willing to present him with information from reputable sources inside and outside of the government that may conflict with his general worldview or beliefs about a specific issue — or whether he will choose staffers who will shape the information flow to reinforce the new president’s existing views about issues like Russia and ISIS.

And that’s why there’s reason to worry about Flynn. A close look at his recently published book, public comments, and tweets reveal a man who swims in the same swamp of hyperpartisan, frequently fabricated, and disturbingly anti-Muslim rhetoric as Trump advisers like Steve Bannon, the white nationalist who was one of the first to receive a West Wing post.

Flynn is one of those who will most directly determine the new president’s information diet. Based on what he appears to believe, that isn’t reassuring.

How National Security Adviser Flynn could lead Trump astray

Photo of Gen Flynn by by Alex Wong/Getty Images

Flynn’s official title will be assistant to the president for national security affairs, and in technical terms, his powers and responsibilities are fairly clear.

He staffs and runs the National Security Council, which exists to coordinate and synthesize the sometimes conflicting policy proposals that emerge from the Pentagon, State Department, and other agencies. He communicates the president’s decisions to those agencies and works to ensure they’re implemented. And he presents the president with the strategic assessments of high-level officials like the secretaries of defense and state — and then offers his own thinking.

That would be the case for any national security adviser, and any president. But Flynn is likely to be unusually influential because Trump has never held elected office, served in the military, or dealt with even a fraction of the foreign challenges — from ISIS to a rising China and a revanchist Russia — that he will face. Trump has also made comments on foreign policy that are muddled and sometimes contradictory, like raising questions about America’s security commitments to Japan and South Korea, only to then reassure them that nothing would change. Flynn will need to help the new president decide which path to go down.

“A good national security adviser weighs in on debate to inform it but not sway it,” said Loren DeJonge Schulman, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security who formerly served as a top aide to Susan Rice, Obama’s national security adviser. “The truth is that’s incredibly difficult to pull off. Most people who hold that job wind up shading things, even if they’re not trying to.”

In practice, the national security adviser’s powers have been steadily expanding as presidents of both parties concentrate power in the White House. When President Obama was working to normalize ties to Cuba, he entrusted the secret talks to two members of the National Security Council, Deputy National Security Adviser Benjamin Rhodes and then-Latin American director Ricardo Zuniga. Secretary of State John Kerry, according to the Washington Post, wasn’t notified about the negotiations until a late stage. Rice had known about them for months.

One of the most successful recent national security advisers was Stephen Hadley, who held the post under then-President George W. Bush (and is rumoured to be in the running for Trump’s defence secretary).

Hadley was a quiet operator whom both the Pentagon and State Department trusted to accurately relay their views to the president before giving Bush his own assessment. Working with his predecessor Condoleezza Rice, then the secretary of state, Hadley successfully marginalized the more hawkish faction in the Bush administration led by Vice President Dick Cheney. He persuaded Bush to agree to the Iraq surge and curtail some of the CIA’s most brutal and controversial detainee interrogation programs.

But if his past record is any guide, Flynn is unlikely to be the type of “honest broker” that has historically made for a successful national security adviser. He was removed from his post running the Defense Intelligence Agency after losing a bureaucratic battle with the CIA and butting heads with his superiors in the Pentagon — one of the government organizations he will now help oversee from his White House post.

After retiring in 2014, Flynn has actively sought the limelight, often to express extreme views. During his speech at the Republican National Convention, he led the crowd in chants of, “Lock her up!” demanding Hillary Clinton’s imprisonment.

To be an avid consumer and sharer of fake news, like Michael Flynn, you must be both very credulous and also have no sense of normality to squash the more lurid and scabrous ‘news’ such as that Hillary Clinton is involved in a child sex ring.

The tenor of Flynn’s comments has startled other retired officers. Retired Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan when Flynn was running intelligence operations there, reached out to Flynn to urge him to tone down his rhetoric, according to a source familiar with the conversation. Two other retired officers told Vox in separate interviews that they considered Flynn to be “unhinged.”

This might be less of a problem if Flynn were predisposed to push back against some of Trump’s more conspiratorial, racially charged, and anti-Muslim views. The problem is that Flynn seems to share many of them.

He begins his 2016 book, The Field of Fight, by describing his reason for writing it: to expose an anti-American alliance between China, Cuba, and jihadist terrorists that the Obama administration is covering up. This is not an exaggeration; it is literally a defining feature of his worldview:

This administration has forbidden us to describe our enemies properly and clearly: they are Radical Islamists. They are not alone, and are allied with countries and groups who, though not religious fanatics, share their hatred of the West, particularly the United States and Israel. Those allies include North Korea, Russia, China, Cuba, and Venezuela.

There is no evidence that these countries are “allied” with groups like ISIS or al-Qaeda in any meaningful sense of the word. They are not supplying them with weapons, or money, or safe haven. It just makes no sense to speak of an “alliance” between these states and jihadists. Both Russia and China, in fact, are also facing vicious campaigns of Islamist terrorism within their own borders.

Moreover, the idea that countries as diverse as North Korea and Venezuela present some kind of united anti-American foreign policy front is absurd. These countries all have had tense relations with the United States, but in wildly different ways and to varying degrees. They are not part of a united anti-American alliance with each other. Flynn’s construct is like the axis of evil on steroids.

What this speaks to is Flynn’s propensity for hyping up the threat from jihadist groups, and trying to make everything else to fit that frame.

This isn’t someone who’s well-positioned to look at, say, Chinese policy in the South China Sea and give President Trump a reasoned, detail-oriented assessment of Chinese thinking. He’s going to filter that information through his own monomaniacal lens and give Trump a deeply blinkered analysis of what’s going on.

“The rap on him in the intelligence world is that he is great tactically but clueless strategically,” seasoned defense reporter Tom Ricks writes at Foreign Policy. “Not what you want in this slot.”

To make matters worse, Flynn has a serious problem telling true information from false. He seems willing to believe anything that flatters his worldview and casts his opponents in a bad light, no matter how offensive or implausible the information may be. Other tweets alleged a Jewish conspiracy to help Clinton enter the White House (Flynn later deleted his tweet and apologized for it) and falsely accused Clinton of “wearing hijab in solidarity with islamic terrorists.”

These aren’t cherry-picked examples. As CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski documents, broadcasting fringe ideas and fake news was pretty par for the course when it comes to Flynn’s Twitter activity.

This was a serious problem when he was chief of DIA. According to the New York Times’s Matthew Rosenberg and Maggie Haberman, he said so many questionable or false things during his time at the agency that his staff coined a term for them: “Flynn facts.”

Remember, now, that analyzing information is the national security adviser’s main job. Flynn’s principal task is going to be taking the information he gets from the military and intelligence agencies and sorting it in a fashion that helps President Trump get a sense of what’s going on in the world and how he should respond to it.

Yet Flynn, clearly, has a lot of difficulty figuring out what information is worthwhile. He seems willing to believe things as absurd as Clinton being involved in a child sex ring, based on a fake news article peppered with transparently silly quotes (one example: “‘What’s in the emails is staggering and as a father, it turned my stomach,’ the NYPD Chief said.”)

Now, instead, imagine Flynn making hard judgment calls about what is and isn’t true. Imagine him in something like the run-up to the Iraq War, where choosing to believe the wrong evidence helped push the United States into a disastrous military conflict. And further imagine that the president isn’t George W. Bush, who at least had some knowledge of world affairs and some good advisers, but Donald Trump.

Shortly after Flynn entered the political fray in earnest, he told Foreign Policy’s Sean Naylor that he’s “not going to be a general that just fades away.”

That’s proven true. Whether it’s good for the president he’s been chosen to serve — and the country itself — remains to be seen.

Michael Flynn will be a disaster as national security adviser

By Richard Wolffe, The Guardian
November 19, 2016

Say what you like about past presidents and their international legacies, but it’s hard to dispute the calibre of their national security advisers.

From Henry Kissinger to Colin Powell, from Zbig Brzezinski to Sandy Berger, from Condi Rice to Susan Rice: the list is a long line in smart, seasoned and strategic thinkers.

Until now. Donald Trump’s decision to pick Lt Gen Michael Flynn as his most senior national security aide is a rupture with the past and with sane foreign policy.

Flynn is a conspiracy theorist and Islamophobe who hangs around the darker corners of the white nationalist internet. He also lost his last job in the intelligence services, I suspect because he can’t manage his way out of a paper bag.

All of which would be mildly amusing if Flynn wasn’t about to take on a job that will determine the immediate fate of large parts of the globe.

The retired general leads the mob in chanting ‘lock her up’ (Clinton – about 22 minutes in) and putting forward how a strong military, unconcerned about ‘political correctness’ (i.e. refusing to recognise the Islamic threat), can restore the USA to its destined dominant and exceptional role.

The president’s national security adviser plays a unique role inside the West Wing. Unlike almost every other corner of the presidency, national security is unquestionably controlled exclusively by the commander-in-chief.

Trump and Flynn make Bush and Cheney look like tenured professors of military history

Short of declaring war and obtaining a defence budget, the president needs nobody else’s say-so to unleash the world’s most powerful military, intelligence services and diplomatic corps.

Which is why the national security adviser is normally a stable, wise character who can sift through mountains of intelligence, maintain a clear sense of strategic priorities in the national interest, and wrangle the sprawling bureaucracy.

These are all qualities that are hardly obvious in Michael Flynn. Flynn has falsely claimed that Shariah law is spreading across the United States and that the nation is in the midst of a world war with radical Islamists. “Fear of Muslims is RATIONAL,” he tweeted earlier this year.

Flynn previously ran the Defence Intelligence Agency but lost his job after two years because of clashes with officials. For his part, Flynn claims he was fired because he opposed the Obama administration’s view that Islamist terrorists were a fading threat.

Like his new boss, Flynn appears very comfortable with the current Russian regime, working with Russia Today, the Kremlin’s propaganda TV network. He apparently received classified intelligence briefings while running a lobbying firm for foreign clients. He seems to favour working with Russia to combat Islamist terrorists while turning a blind eye to Russia’s designs on Ukraine and its support for the Assad regime in Syria.

As Trump’s trusted adviser, sitting in on his daily intelligence briefings, Flynn’s early record on advising the president-elect is shockingly undiplomatic: haphazard at best and unethical at worst.

In the brief time since he won the election, Trump’s first call with a world leader was not with a trusted US ally but with the Egyptian dictator President al-Sisi. He sat with prime minister Abe of Japan this week, but his aides told the Japanese not to believe every word Trump said.

He met with the populist right wing British politician Nigel Farage before meeting the British prime minister Theresa May. But he somehow found time to meet with several Indian real estate developers to discuss his property interests with them, and the Trump Organization signed a Kolkata deal on Friday.

Amid his many interactions with foreign powers, Trump is speaking without briefing papers from the State Department because his transition team is in such chaos that they have yet to establish meaningful contact with the nation’s foreign policy professionals.

Heck of a job, Flynnie.

We are condemned to repeat history if we choose to forget it. And Donald Trump’s voters have chosen to forget the lessons of the last Republican president.

After eight years of recovery from the catastrophe of George W Bush’s national security decisions, we are now staring at the prospect of an even more impetuous set of decision-makers. Trump and Flynn make Bush and Cheney look like tenured professors of military history.

Never mind that Trump spent most of the presidential campaign pretending he opposed Bush’s war in Iraq, when in fact he supported it. So far as anyone can fathom his position, it was to pick the winning position after the outcome was clear.

When a leader is both boastful and indecisive, the leadership vacuum is filled by aides who feed into the posturing but compensate for the indecision. Flynn fills that Trump-shaped hole perfectly.

But we know where this leads. Cheney cherry-picked manipulated intelligence reports to build a case for the war in Iraq that was the single worst US national security decision in a generation. We are still living with its consequences today, with Isis and a global refugee crisis that is unthinkable without the Iraq war.

Condoleezza Rice, Bush’s national security adviser, was unable to control the hawks inside the cabinet, even as she leaned towards the doves. Flynn doesn’t need to control any hawks, because he is leading the pack.

The opportunity for Flynn to cherry pick intelligence is almost limitless. With his public hatred of Islam and his desire to wage a war of religion, the case for military action will be simple inside the Trump West Wing.

It may be time to concede that one of the biggest winners of this election is the twisted and murderous worldview distilled by Osama bin Laden. Unlike Bush and Obama, Trump and Flynn believe we are engaged in a war with Islam, just as al-Qaida and Isis believe they are engaged in a war with Christianity and Judaism.

The jihadists have infected their enemies with their own sickness. To be fair, this infection had been growing for many years before Trump started running for office. It broke out when Congress – Democrats and Republicans – voted against the closure of Guantánamo Bay. It is obvious in much of the world’s refusal to deal with the Syrian refugee crisis.

But now the sickness has given us Trump and Flynn to escalate a religious-fueled war that is unwinnable.

By picking Flynn as his most powerful national security aide, Trump has confirmed what was obvious all along. He will govern as he campaigned, no matter what his aides say to reassure the world’s anxious diplomats.

Trump’s National Security Adviser Shared Fake News About Clinton

By Mathew Ingram, Fortune.com
November 19, 2016

As Donald Trump puts together his cabinet, some of his picks are getting critical attention for past comments they made that suggest they hold racist or otherwise offensive views about various groups. One of those getting scrutiny is General Michael Flynn, Trump’s nominee for National Security Adviser.

Flynn is a former Lieutenant General who led the Defence Intelligence Agency for two years, from 2012 to 2014, before being forced out. A Pentagon official told the Washington Post at the time that his vision of the future of the DIA was “disruptive,” and others said his management style was “chaotic.”

On Twitter in particular, Flynn has not been shy about holding forth about Muslims, terrorism, and Hillary Clinton. And in several cases he has shared fake news stories about those subjects.

Just a few days before the election, the general tweeted a link to a news hoax from a right-wing conspiracy theory site called True Pundit, and said the New York Police Department had evidence of new Hillary Clinton emails that proved her involvement in or knowledge of money laundering and sex crimes with children, among other things.

Flynn also retweeted a conspiracy theory that the United Nations Agenda 21 programme, which is designed to create sustainable development in emerging nations, would actually put in place a global church in which Christianity would be forbidden and would “undermine America’s sovereignty.”

Earlier this year, the general also linked to a tweet that had a photo of Hillary Clinton wearing a head scarf and claimed that this showed “solidarity with Islamic terrorists.” In fact, she was wearing it out respect during a visit to a mosque in Pakistan in 2009 as Secretary of State. Flynn said Clinton was “showing disrespect for American Values and Principles.”

Follow
General Flynn ✔ @GenFlynn
This is not showing respect. This is showing disrespect for American Values and Principles. #NeverHillary
3:12 AM – 15 Jul 2016
423 423 Retweets 482 482 likes

Flynn has also made a number of comments about Muslims that have led some to question whether he is fit to become National Security Adviser. In one tweet following a terrorist attack in France, he said that Arab and Persian world leaders needed to “declare their Islamic ideology sick” and to admit that it “must be healed” within the next 24 hours.

The general also posted a comment earlier this year in which he said that it was “rational to fear Muslims” and asked his followers to forward a video that claimed Islamophobia is rational and that Islam wants 80% of the world to be enslaved or killed. “The truth fears no questions,” Flynn said.

Follow
General Flynn ✔ @GenFlynn
Fear of Muslims is RATIONAL: please forward this to others: the truth fears no questions… http://youtu.be/tJnW8HRHLLw
1:14 AM – 27 Feb 2016
1,838 1,838 Retweets 1,802 1,802 likes

On another occasion, Flynn retweeted a right-wing, anti-Semitic commentator, Jared Wyland, who shared a video clip that he claimed was of an ex-Muslim telling President Obama about how ISIS is “practising Islam to the letter.” Flynn said in his retweet: “Brother Rashid is worth listening to. Most powerful message I’ve heard in a long time.”