{"id":3872,"date":"2015-07-28T13:52:32","date_gmt":"2015-07-28T19:52:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/?p=3872"},"modified":"2015-07-28T13:57:06","modified_gmt":"2015-07-28T19:57:06","slug":"retired-us-general-drones-cause-more-damage-than-good","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/retired-us-general-drones-cause-more-damage-than-good\/","title":{"rendered":"Retired US general: Drones cause more damage than good"},"content":{"rendered":"

Retired US Lieutenant General Michael Flynn calls for “different approach” on drones in interview with Al Jazeera.\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n
\n

Al Jazeera
\nclick here for original article<\/a><\/p>\n

US President Barack Obama’s former top military intelligence official has launched a scathing attack on the White House’s counter-terrorism strategy, including the administration’s handling of the ISIL threat in Iraq and Syria and the US military’s drone war.<\/p>\n

In a forthcoming interview with Al Jazeera English’s\u00a0Head to Head<\/a><\/em>, retired US Lt. General Michael Flynn, who quit as head of the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in August 2014, said “there should be a different approach, absolutely” on drones.<\/p>\n

“When you drop a bomb from a drone\u2026 you are going to cause more damage than you are going to cause good,” Flynn said.<\/p>\n

Flynn was a senior intelligence officer with the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), which is responsible for the US military’s secretive and controversial drone program in countries such as Yemen and Somalia.<\/p>\n

Asked by Al Jazeera English’s Mehdi Hasan if drone strikes tend to create more terrorists than they kill, Flynn, who has been described by\u00a0Wired<\/a>\u00a0magazine as “the real father of the modern JSOC”, replied: “I don’t disagree with that”, adding: “I think as an overarching strategy, it is a failed strategy.”<\/p>\n

“What we have is this continued investment in conflict,” the retired general said. “The more weapons we give, the more bombs we drop, that just\u2026 fuels the conflict. Some of that has to be done but I am looking for the other solutions.”<\/p>\n

Commenting on the rise of ISIL in Iraq, Flynn acknowledged the role played by the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. “We definitely put fuel on a fire,” he told Hasan. “Absolutely\u2026 there is no doubt, history will not be kind to the decisions that were made certainly in 2003.”<\/p>\n

“Going into Iraq, definitely\u2026 it was a strategic mistake,” said Flynn on\u00a0Head to Head<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The former lieutenant general denied any involvement in the litany of abuses carried out by JSOC interrogators at Camp Nama in Iraq, as revealed by the\u00a0New York Times<\/a><\/em>and\u00a0Human Rights Watch<\/a>, but admitted the US prison system in Iraq in the post-war period “absolutely” helped radicalise Iraqis who later joined Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and its successor organisation, ISIL.<\/p>\n

Calls for accountability<\/strong><\/p>\n

Flynn also called for greater accountability for US soldiers involved in abuses against Iraqi detainees: “You know I hope that as more and more information comes out that people are held accountable\u2026 History is not going to look kind on those actions\u2026 and we will be held, we should be held, accountable for many, many years to come.”<\/p>\n

Publicly commenting for the first time on a previously-classified August 2012\u00a0Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) m<\/a>emo<\/a>, which had predicted “the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in Eastern Syria (\u2026) this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want” and confirmed that “the Salafists, the Muslim Brotherhood, and [Al Qaeda in Iraq] are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria,”\u00a0the former DIA chief told\u00a0Head to Head<\/em>\u00a0that “the [Obama] Administration” didn’t “listen” to these warnings issued by his agency’s analysts.<\/p>\n

“I don’t know if they turned a blind eye,” he said. “I think it was a decision, I think it was a willful decision.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Retired US Lieutenant General Michael Flynn calls for “different approach” on drones in interview with Al Jazeera.\u00a0 Al Jazeera click here for original article US President Barack Obama’s former top military intelligence official has launched a scathing attack on the White House’s counter-terrorism strategy, including the administration’s handling of the ISIL threat in Iraq and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3872"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3872\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3875,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3872\/revisions\/3875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}