Read Online The Field of Fight: How We Can Win the Global War Against Radical Islam and Its Allies by Lieutenant General (Ret.) Michael T. Flynn, Michael Ledeen - Free Book Online

the overall level of violence didn’t noticeably decline until the fall of 2008 as Baghdad, Diyala, Salahaddin, and other cities were subjected to large-scale Multi-National Force-Iraq Coalition operations and supported by tribal forces.
    The Iraqi Awakening—and similar successes in Afghanistan—might have gone even faster, and proven more durable, if we had more aggressively challenged the doctrines of al Qaeda and the Taliban. There were numerous Iraqi imams who rejected the revolutionary doctrines of the insurgents. Chief among them was the most important Shi’ite religious figure, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Sistani exemplified the “moderate” Muslim. From the earliest days following the invasion, he ceaselessly counseled cooperation between Shi’ites and Sunnis, even calling for calm and understanding after the bloodiest sectarian attacks. His was the strongest and most revered voice in the Iraqi Shi’ite community, and we should have echoed it. In like manner, we should have denounced the Islamists’ embrace of suicide terrorism and their constant efforts to provoke a sectarian civil war.
    This did not happen in either Iraq or Afghanistan, nor is it happening today anywhere in the Middle East. It should. There are plenty of Islamic religious leaders who, like Sistani, detest the radical jihadis. Yet senior American policymakers, ever since 9/11, have shied away from any criticism of Islam, repeating, despite all manner of evidence to the contrary, that “Islam is a religion of peace.” This insistence on denying the existence of jihad led President Obama to the absurd claim that the Islamic State has nothing to do with Islam.
    We’re not going to win this war by denying what’s in front of our collective nose. It’s long past time for us to denounce the many evils of Radical Islam. The people in the region know it well, as anybody could see by looking at the millions of Iraqis and Afghans who risked their lives to vote in their respective elections despite the jihadis’ promise to kill them.
    Despite our failure to attack our enemies’ ideology, we still defeated them every time we went after them on the battlefield. Their successes invariably came hard on the heels of our decisions to withdraw, first in Iraq and then in Afghanistan. It’s difficult to find anyone who thinks that the Surge in Afghanistan achieved anything remotely approaching that in Iraq, but I disagree.
    It wasn’t easy, and Afghanistan was tougher than Iraq.
    When we arrived in Afghanistan in June 2009 we found an HQ in complete disarray, while the enemy was on the march. The threats were increasing and expanding around the country and we felt the International HQ was under siege. Few of the international officers had even left the HQ to travel outside the compound. And the military systems and processes you would expect to find in order to understand what was going on around the battlefield, especially after eight years, weren’t in place. Frankly, it was disappointing, and after so many years, we suddenly found ourselves starting from scratch—again.
    Upon assuming command, General McChrystal immediately started to tighten everything up. He instilled a sense of discipline into the staff and into the leadership around the country as quickly as he could. Many of the first steps he took were neither welcomed by the international team nor by some on the American side. One of the seemingly minor things was shutting down the alcohol-serving bar inside of the ISAF compound. Here we were in a Muslim country in the middle of a war and the International HQ was holding drinking parties practically every night. Officers, enlisted, civilians, you name it, were carrying on and making all sorts of noise. You could hear all of this in the relatively quiet city of Kabul and everyone knew. The Afghans didn’t like it at all. We weren’t seen as serious, about them or ourselves. This type of behavior certainly didn’t carry that message.