Former DIA Director Says Obama’s “Drones Only” Counterinsurgency Strategy Not Working

Adam B. Lerner

July 17, 2015

Obama’s former defense intel chief: Drones a ‘failed strategy' 

The Obama administration’s former top military intelligence officer came out against the president’s drone program, calling for a “different approach, absolutely.”

“When you drop a bomb from a drone … you are going to cause more damage than you are going to cause good,” said retired three-star general Michael Flynn, who ran the Defense Intelligence Agency from July 2012 through August 2014, in an interview with Al Jazeera English’s “Head to Head” set to air July 31.

Asked by Al Jazeera’s Mehdi Hasan whether drone attacks radicalize more terrorists than they remove from the battlefield, Flynn responded: “I don’t disagree with that.”

“I think as an overarching strategy, it’s a failed strategy,” the senior intelligence officer said.

Flynn also commented that the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq “definitely put fuel on a fire” that led to the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. “The more weapons we give, the more bombs we drop, that just … fuels the conflict.”

“[H]istory will not be kind to the decisions that were made certainly in 2003,” he added, calling the invasion of Iraq a “strategic mistake.”

Flynn previously oversaw aspects of the military’s drone program in Yemen and Somalia during his time at the Joint Special Operations Command.

Since leaving his post at the DIA in 2014, Flynn has been a sharp critic of the Obama administration’s assault on ISIL, including in a piece for POLITICO Magazine.