Angry Planet - When Soldiers Tell the Pentagon That It's Wrong

Episode Date: August 25, 2022

Dissent. It’s a word people don’t like to hear, especially coming from the military. But it’s also a vitally important component of any vibrant democracy. Dissent, especially informed dissent, can pull us back from the brink and help us make better choices. We are one year out from the end of America’s direct involvement in Afghanistan and, after two decades of war, it’s time to start listening to the dissenters.That’s what the new book Paths of Dissent: Soldiers Speak Out Against America’s Misguided Wars hopes to do: give voice to that informed dissent.With us today is one of the books’ editors, returning guest Andrew Bacevich. Bacevich is a West Point graduate, a 23 year U.S. Army Veteran, a professor emeritus of history and international relations at Boston University, and … a dissenter.Buy the book here.Angry Planet has a substack! Join the Information War to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict.https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribeYou can listen to Angry Planet on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is angryplanetpod.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/angryplanetpodcast/; and on Twitter: @angryplanetpod.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast. Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. People live in a world with their own making. Frankly, that seems to be the problem. Welcome to Angry Planet. Hello and welcome to Angry Planet. I am Matthew Galtz. And I'm Jason Fields. Descent. It's a word people don't. don't like to hear, especially coming from the military, but it's also a vitally important component of every vibrant democracy. Cents, especially informed dissent, can pull us back from the brink and help us make better choices. We are one year out from the end of America's direct involvement in Afghanistan, and, after

two decades of war, it's time to start listening to dissenters. That's what the new book Paths of Descent soldiers speak out against America's misguided wars hopes to do. a voice to that informed dissent. With us today is one of the book's editors, returning guest Andrew Bacevich. Bacevich is a West Point graduate, a 23-year U.S. Army veteran, a professor emeritus of history and international relations at Boston University, and a dissenter. Sir, thank you so much for coming on to the show and talking with us about this new book. Glad to be with you. Thank you very much.

Can you tell us kind of the origin story of this book? You know, I don't remember precisely, but Danny Sherson, who is a veteran of both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, like me, a graduate of West Point, and as a friend of mine, and of course, some conversation we had came up with this idea of putting together a book that would provide the opportunity for a variety of, of veterans, or those two wars, to describe what they see as wrong. For your listeners, I think one of the things I would want to emphasize is the voices are all over the place. It's not that there is one particular point of view being represented here, but a variety of points of view, albeit all of the contributors have problems with why we undertook these wars and how they were conducted. Right. It's 15 different essays, 15 different points of view, different branches. And like, as you said, everything's kind of, it's a bunch of different perspectives on this war.

Because you have 20 years of conflict, different generations fought, and different areas were radically different from each other, different branches had completely different. different experiences. How did you go about picking who you were going to have write essays? And like, how many did you look at that didn't make the cut? Well, to the first question, we recruited some people that I happen to know to have encountered. We recruited some people that Danny knows. And we recruited some people that neither of us knew, but, you know, through third parties. It was very much our intention to, you know, to honor the requirements of diversity, not simply diversity in terms of race and gender,

certainly diversity in terms of service. You know, we got army people, marine people, we got a sailor, where they served and what their specialties were. So that helped, I think, to give us that, variety of perspective that was one of our important goals. Can you define for us what dissent means in this particular case? So serving soldiers. Now use the term soldiers.

They might be, you know, they might be Marines, they might be sailors. But but but but but but but but but but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, who had the temerity, the courage, to speak out against the war in which they were serving or in which they had only very recently served. I think that's probably about a good definition as I can give you. So let's, I wouldn't say start because we've started now, but I'm curious about the dedication is to a person named Ian Fisher. And he's mentioned a couple times in the book outside of the dedication. Why is it dedicated to him and what is his story?

Well, Ian Fishback was a dissenter, was, he's deceased. In many respects, was the first military dissenter of our post-9-11 wars. West Pointer serving in Iraq was witness to what he was persuaded to be war crimes committed by U.S. troops. And as was his duty, he reported what he saw and knew up the chain of command. Chain of command blew him off. Ian Fishback refused to be silenced and went public to the press. more significantly to members of Congress,

and most significantly to Senator John McCain of Arizona, I think is McCain, who more than anyone else, took up the cause. And ultimately, in response to Ian's complaints, thanks to McCain's efforts, legislation was passed and reluctantly signed by President George W. Bush, that outlawed, specifically outlawed the kind of behavior that had come to Ian's attention. And for a while he was very famous. You know, he was on the Time magazine, 100 most influential people list.

But the story has a very sad ending. I'm not a medical professional. I'm not able to explain what happened. but clearly Ian was beset by demons of some kind that destroyed his life. And he died. I don't know why. I don't know how. But he died roughly a year ago.

But certainly in Danny Sherson's estimation and my estimation, he represented the very best of the dissent tradition of speaking out against what he believed to be moral iniquity and pursuing it doggedly in an effort to try to fix the problem. So he came to a sad end. There's no question about that. but he was he ought to be remembered as a heroic figure. Just a few more specific details I want to throw in here.

He was stationed at Ford operating base of Mercury in the Fallujah district of Iraq and saw what he considered to be torture in the treatment of detainees, and that's what caused him to start blowing the whistle. And, you know, he got Senator McCain to pay attention. So that's kind of like filling out his life, I think. And I think that is crucially important. And I think it's an interesting spirit that carries the book forward. I have an unfair comparison slash question to ask you.

Maybe it's because it was my dad's war. And so I spent a lot of time thinking about it and talking with him about it. but I always gauge Iraq and Afghanistan, the global war on terror, and America's response to it against its response to Vietnam. And it just feels like despite these 20 years of war, it has not penetrated the public consciousness as much as Vietnam did. Do you disagree, disagree, and why do you think that is? I think it's true. Why? Well, a couple of reasons, I think. Number one, fewer of us served in Iraq and Afghanistan in comparison with the number that served in Vietnam.

Many of those who served in Vietnam were conscripts. Those who served in Iraq and Afghanistan were all volunteers. Now, we may sort of want to quibble a little bit and point out that some of the volunteers, perhaps many of the volunteers joined for reasons other than a desire to go kill Iraqi, you know, malcontents for economic reasons, but nonetheless, they were volunteers. I think another key factor is that is a disparity in casualties, U.S. casualties, between Iraq and Afghanistan on the one hand and Vietnam, on the other hand. The financial cause of our post-9-11 wars are monumental.

We don't really know what the costs were, but certainly they're in the trillions, trillions of dollars. That's invisible to the average American. What the average American tends to be sensitive to is American casualties, in a particular American KIAs. and they were simply fewer in number in our post-9-11 wars in comparison to Vietnam. And that, I think, is what provides some of our fellow citizens, obviously not all, but I guess I could say many, sort of a permission to sort of check out,

to not pay attention to what is being done in their names. Does that change the role of dissent or how important it is? Who's listening? The honest answer is I don't know who's listening. Not enough of us, I would say. I mean, I think, I think from Danny's point of view and from my point of view, we're trying to get more people to listen. More Americans who have not experienced the wars to try to listen to,

the views, the experiences, the perspective, the conclusions of those who have served. How many people are going to read this book? I don't know. Perhaps with your guys help, a lot. But that's what we're trying to do, is to bring the wars to the attention of our fellow citizens who, quite frankly, have not shown much interest. Now, here we are. We're speaking on the first anniversary of the fall of Kabul, meaning the first anniversary of the end, so called, of our longest war, and to the extent that Americans are paying attention to military affairs, they're fixated on Ukraine. I can understand the attention that Ukraine is getting. But hey, wait a second. How about a 20-year effort to pacify Afghanistan that ended in abject,

failure. When we think that there would be some demand for accountability, but that seems not to be the case. So in a small way, our book is intended to push back against this public indifference. It's the cost of free pizza, right? As you eloquently put towards the end of the book. And I do want to ask about that essay, but I think everything you said, it just kind of underpins that whole thing. But let's something else I want to ask you more immediately is you mentioned Afghanistan in there. And we're, we're a year out from us leaving. What was it like for you to watch that happen? And how do you think, how do you feel about how it was handled?

Well, I wish Danny were on the program with us because he served there. And I did not. My war is Vietnam. And so I could watch those events in Kabul with a certain amount of distance. Yeah, dismay. Yeah, sort of a sense of, my God, 20 years of effort, and this is what it comes to. But I don't believe that my own feelings were as visceral as were the feelings of those who actually served and many of whom in one way or another sacrificed.

You know, in the book, we've included a number of folks who served in Afghanistan, and they give their account. We've got an essay, for example, by Kevin Tillman. Kevin Tillman is the brother of the football player, the NFL football player who was killed early in the war, Kevin and his brother were serving together in the same unit. And the army was quick to announce that his brother had been killed in combat, killed in action. It soon emerged that he'd been killed in a friendly fire incident. And in the meantime, the army had awarded him a silver star, a high-ranking award for valor, as part of basically of a cover-up.

that's the sort of thing that we welcomed in our collection. And I don't mean that every essay is an effort to uncover some kind of a scandal. That's not the case at all. But I think the Tillman story is an example of the sort of misguided behavior on the part of high-ranking officials that American citizens ought to reflect on. It certainly wasn't an isolated incident. Yeah, I'm going to read a quote from it, actually, something that caught my eye. Truth lies in propaganda is the title of the essay. There were a few nightmare scenarios we had discussed prior to enlisting. One was that our service might be used as a tool for profit and

power not to defend the country or for the good of humanity. But we hadn't imagined just how bad things would get. After Pat's death, a phrase kept running through my head. How the fuck is it possible? And I just like, yeah, this is one of the my favorite pieces in the whole book. It's just like if you aren't familiar with Patrick Tillman's story,

there's a great book by Oh, his name escapes me now. The guy, where men win glory by Crack Hour, John Crackauer, that really kind of covers it. And I think is a really important cross-section of what those early 2000s were like in terms of the military and the kind of the propaganda efforts. And it's a lot of this stuff is hard to read.

And it felt like bearing witness as a civilian in a way is the very least I could do outside of, you know, thanking people for your service, which you skewer a little bit at the end in your free pizza essay. Another one essay I wanted to ask you about is the one by Joy and how she got her humanity back from the Army. Can you tell us a little bit about that one? Sure. I'm sorry to confess that Joy is our only female contributor. We had two others who had promised to deliver essays and didn't come through. Joy came through, and I think she came through big time.

hers is a fascinating story she she enlisted specifically enlisted to become an army journalist because her long-term aspirations were in journalism this is a way to get a leg up to begin to learn the craft so she became an army journalist deployed to Iraq she served two tours in Iraq and learned to her surprise maybe she shouldn't have been surprised But the Army really isn't interested in journalism. The Army isn't interested in propaganda. And her job was to make a very bad news story into something that looked and smelled like a good news story. For her, it was, I think it's fair to say, a demeaning experience,

but it was also a deeply instructive experience. And she got her humanity back by leaving the army ultimately and then setting out on a career as a writer. I think anybody who reads her essay will conclude that she is a natural writer, a gifted writer. So it was a great thrill. for Danny and I to include her piece in the collection. Can you tell us a little bit about the specifics of what she was made to do,

the instruments we're talking about? Well, it was the guidance she was given by the people she worked for. You know, there is no bad news. No, we are not losing. All actions are successful. And as someone who was genuinely committed to journalism, she was appalled by having bosses, in essence, telling her to lie. And to some degree, her essay is more than a little black humor in it as she tries to try. put up with the instructions that she's getting.

And it's frankly, it's rather remarkable that she comes out on the far end, able to see her experience and perspective and move on. I'll give you a little taste, Jason. I've got it right here. As directed, our public affairs team never used the word failure in print, never hinted at the possibility that every victory was actually a loss, and never ever, technically, lied. Military public affairs is a propaganda of omission.

We, the government's very uniformed journalists, didn't overtly fabricate. We just diligently told only the news deemed appropriate for team spirit. We painted only the pictures the generals wanted the troops to see. Resistance was not entirely futile, but it was swiftly punishable. Any attempt at sketching even a minimally accurate portrait of the daily chaos that we observed would be censored at best. Instead, we adeptly performed the moral contortions required to maintain a semblance of sanity while spinning the yarns of winning. We wrapped around our battle buddy's eyes at times not even noticing we'd gotten ourselves tangled up in them too. And then she kind of details like, you don't say detainee.

You say detained insurgent in kind of like the different ways that you dress things up so they don't seem as bad as they actually are. You sanitize. The way you sanitize it. And she has some pretty, after that, she said, I won't read the whole book, but she has some pretty fascinating, like, conversations that she recalls, where staff above her is gently guiding her into the conclusions that she should be drawing in what she writes. And that's kind of how her essay plays out. And it's a good one.

It's one of the better ones in here, I think. No. which is why I brought it up. Well, it does make me wonder one thing, which is the kinds of experiences that these participants had and the kind of descent that they express, is it particular, do you think, to these two virtually endless wars? I mean, are these things that soldiers have been expressing forever or? Soldiers have been complaining forever. I think only in some instances does unhappiness translate into active opposition? And that's what dissent is.

Now, to emphasize, our dissenters, these 15 essays that we've collected, Some of the writers are de facto have become de facto pacifists. They view all wars with horror and oppose them all. Some of them are opposed to our post-9-11 wars, but would not necessarily define see themselves as opposed, let's say, to World War II. We have at least one, two, actually, that I can think of, that would probably classify themselves as supporters of the post-million-11 wars who were appalled at the mismanagement of those wars.

And the ways in which the conduct of those wars, directed by people on high, led to terrible waste. and failure. So there were critics of specific wars, not necessarily opponents of all wars in general. I personally think that's one of the strengths of the collection. We're not sort of beating on one drum, but rather offering readers a variety of perspectives,

all of which would fall under, in our estimation, would fall under the umbrella of descent, And I know from my point of view, that's one of the things that lends the collection value, because we're hearing different voices, different points of view. Yeah, you could have touched on what I saw as a recurring theme in the book, which is this moment of revelation or maybe disillusionment, I guess, is probably the better word, that it kind of recurs throughout the essays. and also these feelings of being lied to or betrayed,

this grappling with the truth is very prevalent throughout this. Why do you think that, like, distinct, as kind of Jason was saying, distinct from other wars, what was it about the global war on terror that has made this such a resonant theme? Well, I don't know if what I'm going to say applies broadly to the global war on terror. But with regard to the contributors to this essay, these are all people who in one way or another were direct participants. They weren't reading about the war in the New York Times. They weren't learning about it on, you know, PBS.

So they were experiencing aspects. None of them experienced the wars in their totality. They were experiencing aspects of the war that they found offensive, wrong-headed, immoral, in one way or another, totally unacceptable, and therefore felt moved to express their dissent in one way or another. Another thing that struck me about this collection is that we often hear about dissent, or we often maybe pay attention to the dissent that comes out of the officers. It is a different kind of thing to get dissent and a different kind of,

story when we hear from the grunt. And that was one of the essays that also struck me in here. Can you tell us about that one? When grunts complain. Yeah, I'll call him by his nickname, J-Man. Fascinating story. Jay-Man was born abroad, came to the United States. I don't remember what age he was when he came to the United States, but he was a kid, attended Marquette University. University, got an undergraduate degree at Marquette. And the day he became a citizen decided he was going to enlist into the United States Army. So he's already in his early 20s. He's not a kid. He's an enlisted soldier. He's a private when he deploys to Iraq.

Serged with the 82nd Airborne, which is, you know, an elite unit. in a part of the 82nd that has a very specific function, and that is that based on real-time intelligence to embark upon patrols at night with a small number of his fellow soldiers and to eliminate so-called high-value targets, basically an attempt to decapitate the insurgency. And we know enough of, the way operations by the 82nd were conducted under the overall supervision of General Stanley

McChrystal to know that these people were very, very good at what they were doing. The J-Man and other members of his squad realized that a strategy of decapitation was going to take forever. You go ahead, you decapitate the leadership and guess what? The insurgency finds other leaders. They come back. They get replaced. And there we go on and on and on.

So J-Man and several members of his squad wrote an article that they were able to place in the New York Times that basically said, hey, wait a second. Here's a grunts point of view. And as grunts, we know that if this insurgency is ever going to be defeated, it's going to have. to be defeated by Iraqis, not by a bunch of Americans who aren't particularly wanted in Iraq in the first place, who are trying to win the war for them. And this is, I mean, on the one hand, you would say, well, that's a pretty obvious point. And on the other hand, you would say, what a striking insight and bit of wisdom to come from the mouths of, you know, a Sergeant E5. The war has a sad ending, but J-Man's story has a happy ending.

He gets out of the army. He goes to Northwestern University, gets a Ph.D. in political science, and he's presently teaching at the U.S. Military Academy, trying to put his insights that he gained as an enlisted soldier to work in trying to provide some wisdom to future generations of office. I came to know him pretty well, and he's just, frankly, a wonderful guy, and he's written a very insightful and excellent essay for our collection. Ultimately, what is the price of free pizza? Well, that's the title of my concluding essay. And it takes off from sort of the annual hoopla surrounding veterans.

day. I'm probably particularly conscious of that hoopla because I'm a veteran. And you can't help notice as a veteran that when Veterans Day comes around, the internet is full of ads, newspapers, do they think that they have any ads left? They have ads offering free car washes, you know, 30% off on goods at your local target. And indeed, donuts, free donuts. and indeed free pizza. And this celebration of veterans just struck me as both entirely bogus and probably completely sincere. I mean, it's the thank you for your service gesture, but one that at least has some substance attached to it. And a stop by, we'll give you a free slice of cheese pizza.

And it seemed to me that there's something important there that reveals, what is it? Corruption? Untruths. An unwillingness to confront what we require are men and women in uniform to go do, supposedly on our behalf. So I just use that as a sort of a takeoff point for my concluding essay. And I think it's something that really provides an overarching theme for the entire collection. Yeah, I think there's a sense that we love veterans until we're made uncomfortable by having to face the thing down. So it's like, well, we gave you free pizza.

you know, I've done my duty. I thank you for your service, and we give you all these lovely benefits on Veterans Day. That's very well-put. That is very well-picked. Then, like, once we've said that, I don't have to deal with it anymore. I've done my bit. And that's not true.

I think at the very least, you could do something like Reed, paths of dissent and get informed about different opinions of these wars in the past 20 years. I'll ask you a hard question that we've kind of alluded to, a couple times now. Why do you think civilians have such a hard time actually listening to vets, especially when it's hard and especially when the opinions are contentious? Because if it involves a conversation, it's an uncomfortable conversation. The vets, the vets aren't saying, thank you for sending me to Afghanistan. They're saying, I went to Afghanistan at your behest, and here was my experience, and here are the

consequences. And I think that can be tough for a civilian, even a well-meaning civilian, to absorb, to think about. And so as you just suggested, it's a lot easier to offer a free piece of pizza and say, well, I've done my bit. And, you know, and then, you know, go all. And then, you know, go on with one's life. Andrew Bacevic, the book is Paths of Descent. Soldiers speak out against America's misguided wars. Thank you so much for coming on to Angry Planet once again and talking to us about it. I'm grateful for the chance.

That's all for this week. Angry Planet listeners. As always, Angry Planet is me. Matthew Galt, Jason Fields, and Kevin O'Dell. It's created by myself and Jason Fields. If you like the show, kick us $9 a month at AngryPlanit.substack.com or AngryPlanetpod.com. get early access to the mainline episodes and their commercial free, as well as bonus episodes whenever you get a chance to get those out.

We will be back next week with another conversation about conflict on a name your planet. Stay safe until then.