A Sensible View of ISIS

Michael Flynn certainly has a strong background in intelligence - director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, where he was the nation's highest-ranking military intelligence officer. Previously, he served as assistant director of national intelligence. He was also commander of the US special forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he hunted down al-Zarqawi. This is an excerpt from an interview with Der Spiegel.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: How should the West fight this enemy?
Flynn: The sad fact is that we have to put troops on the ground. We won't succeed against this enemy with air strikes alone. But a military solution is not the end all, be all. The overall strategy must be to take away Islamic State's territory, then bring security and stability to facilitate the return of the refugees. This won't be possible quickly. First, we need to hunt down and eliminate the complete leadership of IS, break apart their networks, stop their financing operations and stay until a sense of normality has been established. It's certainly not a question of months -- it will take years. Just look back at the mission we created in the Balkans as a model. We started there in the early 1990s to create some stability and we are still there today. 

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Is the Balkans mission a model for the current war?
Flynn: We can learn some lessons from the Balkans. Strategically, I envision a breakup of the Middle East crisis area into sectors in the way we did back then, with certain nations taking responsibility for these sectors. In addition, we would need a coalition military command structure and, on a political level, the United Nations must be involved. The United States could take one sector, Russia as well and the Europeans another one. The Arabs must be involved in that sort of military operation, as well, and must be part of every sector. With this model, you would have opportunities -- Russia, for example, must use its influence on Iran to have Tehran back out of Syria and other proxy efforts in the region.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: For that to happen, the West would have to cooperate fully with the Russians.
Flynn: We have to work constructively with Russia. Whether we like it or not, Russia made a decision to be there (in Syria) and to act militarily. They are there, and this has dramatically changed the dynamic. So you can't say Russia is bad, they have to go home. It's not going to happen. Get real. Look at what happened in the past few days: The president of France asked the US for help militarily (after the Paris attacks). That's really weird to me, as an American. We should have been there first and offered support. Now he is flying to Moscow and asking Putin for help. 

SPIEGEL ONLINE: A Western military intervention runs the risk of being seen as a new attempt to invade the region.
Flynn: That's why we need the Arabs as partners, they must be the face of the mission -- but, today, they are neither capable of conducting nor leading this type of operation, only the United States can do this. And we don't want to invade or even own Syria. Our message must be that we want to help and that we will leave once the problems have been solved. The Arab nations must be on our side. And if we catch them financing, if they funnel money to IS, that's when sanctions and other actions have to kick in. 

SPIEGEL ONLINE: In February 2004, you already had Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in your hands -- he was imprisoned in in a military camp, but got cleared later as harmless by a US military commission. How could that fatal mistake happen? Flynn: We were too dumb. We didn't understand who we had there at that moment. When 9/11 occurred, all the emotions took over, and our response was, "Where did those bastards come from? Let's go kill them. Let's go get them." Instead of asking why they attacked us, we asked where they came from. Then we strategically marched in the wrong direction. 

SPIEGEL ONLINE: The US invaded Iraq even though Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11.
Flynn: First we went to Afghanistan, where al-Qaida was based. Then we went into Iraq. Instead of asking ourselves why the phenomenon of terror occurred, we were looking for locations. This is a major lesson we must learn in order not to make the same mistakes again. 

SPIEGEL ONLINE: The Islamic State wouldn't be where it is now without the fall of Baghdad. Do you regret ...
Flynn: ... yes, absolutely ...
SPIEGEL ONLINE: ... the Iraq war?
Flynn: It was huge error. As brutal as Saddam Hussein was, it was a mistake to just eliminate him. The same is true for Moammar Gadhafi and for Libya, which is now a failed state. The historic lesson is that it was a strategic failure to go into Iraq. History will not be and should not be kind with that decision.