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New U.S. National Security Adviser Has a Different Assessment of America's Relationship with Islam
(Bloomberg) Eli Lake - While Gen. Michael Flynn focused on defeating the ideology of radical Islam, the new U.S. national security adviser, Gen. H.R. McMaster, has focused on getting radical Muslims to turn on al-Qaeda and other terrorists. McMaster helped rewrite the Army's counterinsurgency doctrine during the Iraq war, to apply the lessons of asymmetric warfare to the Muslim world. This meant in practice that he learned how to make allies out of Muslim fighters who had killed Americans, to turn the local population against al-Qaeda. In McMaster's war, ideological purity was a hindrance to an effective campaign for the hearts and minds of pious Muslims. Lt.-Col. (ret.) John Nagl said McMaster "understands that the world is not one dimensional, that the Muslim world is not one-dimensional. Even people who are our enemies today may decide to fight on our side tomorrow."