New National Security Adviser Making Left Crazy

President-elect Trump’s pick for national security adviser is already making leftist heads explode:

If you thought the hand-wringing among the cast of Hamilton over the impending Trump presidency was bad, it apparently does not compare to the growing despair among the Obama White House team. What has them most upset? The elevation of Steve Bannon or Jeff Sessions? No, it turns out that the most “devastating blow” was the selection of a fellow Democrat – Lt. Gen. Michael Fynn – as National Security Adviser. The Associated Press reports:

As Obama hopped from capital to capital, news of the emerging Trump administration followed him, dominating news conferences and private meetings with leaders…. Each time Air Force One landed in another foreign capital, cellphones buzzed and White House officials’ faces fell as the latest news came in about Trump’s team-in-waiting … The selections deflated the hopes in the White House that Trump, faced with the awesome duty of running the nation, might tone it down after the campaign.

Of all the Trump’s choices, White House officials said it was the selection of Flynn that felt like the most devastating blow, given the immense authority the national security adviser has over matters of war and peace.

By the time Obama arrived in Peru, the creeping sense of despair among his aides was palpable.

So why are Obama aides so upset about Flynn, who Foreign Policy magazine reports “as a boy … would help arrange bus rides for Democratic voters on election days in his hometown.” Simple. Because he warned them about the danger of Obama’s Iraq withdrawal and predicted rise of ISIS – and then, after leaving office, called Obama out for failing to heed that advice.

I had the pleasure of hearing Gen. Flynn speak at the recent Restoration Weekend conference in Palm Beach earlier this month. He’s as advertised — tough, abrasive and feisty. So what’s not to like?

It was under Flynn’s leadership that DIA issued a classified report in 2012 predicting everything that has come to pass in Iraq since Obama’s withdrawal of American troops – warning that the chaos in Syria was creating conditions that could allow al-Qaeda in Iraq (now ISIS) to make a comeback and declare an Islamic caliphate.

The DIA — Defense Intelligence Agency — is something of a red-headed stepchild in the intelligence community, often at odds with the establishment luvvies of the CIA and, increasingly (alas) with the NSA. Flynn will never win any popularity contests with this crew, which is perhaps all to the good.

Everything Flynn’s DIA predicted came true – and he was pushed out because people in the White House didn’t want to hear it. As Flynn told the New York Times, “it didn’t meet the narrative.”

He was right and they were wrong. Now he’s in and they are out. Hence the “creeping sense of despair” on the Obama team.

Tough.