General Michael Flynn isn’t easy to sell as a victim. He really did lead chants of “Lock her up!” at the RNC in 2016, really called Milo Yiannopoulis “one of the most brave people I’ve met,” and seems to have believed Trump won the popular vote.
Flynn is also a puzzle. He’s been outspoken and critical of America’s Middle East adventures in a way that’s almost unheard of in a military man. In a paper about Afghanistan he once wrote, he said, “Merely killing insurgents usually serves to multiply enemies rather than subtract them.” He denounced our intel there as “ignorant,” “incurious,” and “disengaged.”
Flynn was pushed out as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014 after a series of clashes with civilian leadership and figures within the defense and intelligence realms, acquiring a reputation as difficult, mercurial character around whom too many unwelcome news stories occurred. He had been an intelligence advisor to Stanley McChrystal, and also publicly opposed the Obama g…