Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 10/22/21 Gareth Porter on the Self Licking Ice Cream Cone

Episode Date: October 28, 2021

Scott is joined once again by Gareth Porter to discuss a piece he wrote at the beginning of the month for Responsible Statecraft. But before talking about the article, Porter gives a quick update on the developing situation in Lebanon. The article Porter wrote talks about the “self licking ice cream cone,” a saying used to describe the self-perpetuating nature of the military-industrial-congressional complex. Porter explains how these perverse incentives kept us embroiled in war for two full decades.    Discussed on the show: “How the ‘self licking ice cream cone,’ prolonged the 20-year war” (Responsible Statecraft) “This Air Force commando called in 688,000 pounds of bombs in one battle” (Task & Purpose) Joe Kent on Fox News Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist on the national security state. He is the author of Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare and, with John Kiriakou, The CIA Insider’s Guide to the Iran Crisis. Follow him on Twitter @GarethPorter and listen to Gareth’s previous appearances on the Scott Horton Show. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: The War State and Why The Vietnam War?, by Mike Swanson; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; EasyShip; Dröm; Free Range Feeder; Thc Hemp Spot; Green Mill Supercritical; Bug-A-Salt; Lorenzotti Coffee and Listen and Think Audio. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjYu5tZiG. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of antivore.com, author of the book, Pools Aaron, time to end the war in Afghanistan, and the brand new, enough already, time to end the war on terrorism. And I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2000. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton dot for you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scott horton's show hey check it out guys i've got gareth the great on the line hi gareth the great how are you doing hi scott are we are we actually on the radio here it's recorded not live unfortunately but uh depending on how good you do you might become the sunday kpfk show here although we're getting started a little bit late i don't think it's going to be long

enough because i got to go at the top of the hour so uh but it'll be a hell of a podcast everyone's going to hear it uh which is good because they love this stuff um that's why everybody listens my show because they get to listen to me talk to you uh my first question is are you back now from Beirut? Yes, yes. I spent two weeks there with my wife's family and visiting my wife's family and not doing too much else. All right.

I get it that you're not doing journalism there, but also there's a lot going on in Lebanon right now. And I know that you could help to explain it a lot better than a lot of people, especially since you just got back from there. Can you give us some kind of update? I'm sorry. I know that's not what you wrote your article about or anything. Yeah, I think the key thing is that there's no doubt that there's a showdown in the making in Lebanon, politically, which involves both, you know, the domestic forces there of those opposing Hezbollah and those supporting it, obviously, with the international sort of forces arrayed primarily.

you know, against Hezbollah with, with U.S., I think, leading the charge, but not alone. And that was what was really going on here when there was shooting in the street while I was there, with several people killed. And, you know, it was turned on and turned off in a way that indicated that this was not just happenstance, this was carefully planned. So I think we can look forward to more of the same. in the near future. Well, I'm so out of date on Lebanon,

and I never did know that much about it in the first place, but I thought that there was a coalition between Michael Aoun, who is the leader of, you tell me, which Christian faction again, and he was in a coalition with Nasrallah and Hezbollah, right? And now, are they at odds at this time? No, no, they're still in the coalition, but there's the extreme right Christian forces under Zhaja are the ones who are pushing

and in the forefront of the confrontation, military-style confrontation, with Hezbollah and its allies, the Christian allies of Hezbollah. And so that's what we were seeing in the street while I was there. And are you saying that the U.S. is behind this? well i think in some sense they are supporting it you know i'm not in position to say that they were explicitly involved in planning this but i there's no doubt in my mind that in a broader

sense they were approving of this general uh thrust that's that's as far as i would go at this point and now but so this coalition of hesbala and the christians they are the ruling coalition correct and i know it's a weird confessional um constitution there i don't know how well you know that if you can explain how that works at all well you know i would just say that yes there there is a political um system that is based on uh you know religious uh religious factions both uh christian and uh muslim um and that that is that has that has has been the basis for Lebanese politics for generations, and it's now in the process of really breaking down in the sense that it's becoming the basis for a violent confrontation, which we've

not seen in generations. And that is because of pressure from the international system led by the United States. The outcome is yet to be clarified, but look, I mean, Hezbollah has the guns. They have the primary military forces, and they're not going to allow themselves to be pushed out of power by Zhaja's extreme right-wing Christians. And I think that's the bottom line here. hold the higher cards. All right.

Well, I think I need to be regularly reading Charmine Narwani, for one. I know that I'm way behind on this. Do you have any other good recommendations for regular writers on Lebanon? At this point, I can't think of anybody who is really covering it that deserves to be loyally read. I think you're on the right track. Charmine's coverage is going to be reliable. okay cool man sorry if i sound all nervous all of a sudden i just got invited back on the kennedy show on fox news i always get nervous when i get these emails from her produce like oh man

that'll be fun i'm going to say some anti-war stuff uh man uh man okay listen let me talk to you about this great article that you wrote i love this phrase you know last night i did a presentation for a bunch of high school kids it was quite a few of them uh uh uh a pretty large group for this guy's history class. And they were some bright kids. They asked really good questions at the end, you know, like really insightful kind of ones and stuff. It was really great. But anyways, one of my answers to them was, you see kids, it's all a racket. Like the soldiers call it a self-licking ice cream cone. And I can see all their faces kind of light up, because everybody likes ice cream cones. And then everybody tries to picture exactly how that would

work. The ice cream cone has a tongue and it eats itself. Is it start from the bottom of the cone or what? And everybody just loves that. And even if they don't know exactly what it means, they know sort of what it means. There, it sounds like some terrible perversion of correct ice cream licking, you know? So let's start with that. That's your title, how the self-licking ice cream cone prolonged the 20-year war in Afghanistan. And you wrote it for Quincy, and now it's at the anti-war.com site.

of course. So go ahead and say things now, sir. Yeah, so this does in fact use this concept of self-licking ice cream cone to analyze the to explain why this war in Afghanistan went on so damn long. And basically it takes as its

sort of a second level of analysis, Morton Halperin's three kinds of institutional interests which I think is a good way to sort of encapsulate the range of interests that were being promoted institutionally that really spelled out the ways in which this war was prolonged. He lists three kinds of institutional interests as first budgetary resources interests, That is to say the interests primarily of the military services and the Pentagon generally in assuring that their budgetary resources are at least going to be maintained at the sufficiently

high level, if not increased. And of course, in the case of Afghanistan, we saw that there was a huge increase back in around 2009, 2010, which was then maintained. It was based initially on the idea or the expectation that the U.S. military would be fighting in Iraq for many years. And unfortunately, for the U.S. military, that was not to be because the Iraqi government allied with Iran made it clear that they wanted the United States out over a period. relatively short period of years. And so there was a rapid sort of rapid reduction in U.S. forces over that period from 2010 to 2014. And that meant, of course, that somebody else, you know, some other mechanism had to be found in order to fill that gap because the Pentagon

had planned to have a 14% increase in their budget during that period. And this was based on the idea that the Iraq war would continue at a high level. But instead, it was going to dwindle down. And, of course, that meant that Afghanistan had to fill the gap. And so all those forces that were going to be committed to Iraq, had to be fighting in Afghanistan. And so that's why the war in Afghanistan was the savior of the Pentagon and the army in particular and allowed those institutions to maintain the kind of level of budgetary resources

that they had counted on. And so I think that's a key factor here in explaining why that war had to go on and why it had to go on at a high level. second kind of institutional interest that was involved were mission capabilities that the military is used to having assigned to them over some period of time. And of course, that meant that the Army had to find the missions and the capabilities that went with maintaining their role in Afghanistan, and that was part of the deal in which the war went on, and they found constantly new missions. Then the third one that Morton Halperin talks about is internal staff morale.

And by the way, this is a little asterisk here. My piece, which I think was around 1,200 words, should have been much longer in order to explain some of this stuff, because what that meant, in fact, Although Morton Halper and himself didn't say so was the senior staff morale, not just the, it didn't have to do with GI morale. Right. These guys are on their seventh tour. Exactly. It was the generals whose morale had to be maintained. And of course, the war in Afghanistan was turned into a perfect way of doing that because it was necessary. to have rapid turnover of generals in senior positions or rapid turnover of senior staff so that the maximum number of generals could be promoted to higher levels. And that's exactly what happened in Afghanistan.

And as a result, you had a historic milestone here, which was that by 2020, The U.S. military had the same number of generals that it had when World War II ended, which shows just how extreme this principle was carried to, in terms of maintaining senior staff morale in Afghanistan. Yeah. Hey, y'all, check out our great stuff at Libertarian Institute.org slash books. First of all, we've published no quarter the ravings of William Norman Grigg, our Institute's late and great co-founder. He was the very best one of us, our whole movement, I mean, and no quarter will leave his mark on you, no question. Which brings us to the works of our other co-founder, the legendary libertarian thinker and writer Sheldon Richmond. We've published two collections of his great essays, coming to Palestine, and what social animals,

owe to each other. Both are instant classics. I'm proud to say that coming to Palestine is surely the definitive libertarian take on Israel's occupation of the Palestinians. And social animals certainly ranks with the very best writings on libertarian ethics, economics, and everything else. You'll absolutely love it. Then there's me. I've written two books. Fool's Errand, time to end the war in Afghanistan, and enough already. Time to end the war on terrorism. And I've also published a collection of the transcripts of all of my interviews of the heroic Dr. Ron Paul, 29 of them, plus a speech by me about how much I love the guy. It's called The Great Ron Paul.

You can find all of these at Libertarian Institute.org slash books. What a racket. You know, I did this radio show in Chicago where the guy's anti-war, kind of a right-leaning populist sort of guy. So he's basically anti-war on Middle East stuff. But boy, when we got to China, he got all hawkish. And I was just telling him, oh, man, all that's so overblown. And he was so resistant to hearing it from me. And then I said, come on, everybody knows.

You know, and I know, and the whole audience knows. Everyone knows. America is corrupt to its core. And the key to it all is the military industrial complex. The companies that make the ships and the long-range bombers, they bribe the government to continue these policies. And he said to me, you know, that does sound right. Yeah.

I think, you know what? I think you really got a point there, Horton. I'm like, yeah, of course, man. Come on. China ain't coming here. China's already an over-extended empire, man. They're not coming this way. Yeah, so this is really true.

Not to start talking about China, but just to talk about the racket, right. Right. The self-licking ice cream cone is an idea which is really going to catch on now because everybody knows that it's true when you explain it. It's clearly so true that it's undeniable. And so it's really, as I see it, this is the future of analysis of the war system. And let me just add that there were points here that I really didn't have a chance to cover in my piece, but really to fill out this concept really should have been covered.

And one is that there was never any real national security need for U.S. troops to be in Afghanistan from the very beginning. It was entirely just a convenience for the U.S. military to keep the troops there. And it was so obviously not necessary in U.S. national interests that as I've written, and I'm sure you will recall when I bring it back to your memory, there were U.S. generals whose primary interest was a primary interest was NATO who were able to convince the Pentagon that they should turn the war over to NATO, which had no business whatsoever running a war in Afghanistan. But it was agreed to because it was regarded as such a sideshow of no real importance.

I quote in the book, I quote in the book, Gareth, General Eichenberry, before he was ambassador, Ikeemberry. positively he's not being cynical about it he's saying that yeah this is a really great team building exercise for the NATO alliance yeah yeah it was all about the NATO alliance not having anything to show for itself they needed

a war they needed a cause and this was a gift to them to allow them to make that argument and they made a complete hash of it I mean it was you know the NATO, the Canadian general, who was in charge of NATO's forces in Afghanistan, later wrote a book, as I've again written about years ago, saying that we didn't know what we're doing. We made a hash of it. And it was a mess.

Yeah. And listen, it's also, it should be pointed out, too, that a big part of the reason that they had, quote, unquote, to stay in Afghanistan was just as a bridge to the war in Iraq. It was going to take them like a year and a half. I don't know why I took them that long. It's like a year and a half to build up the forces required to invade Iraq. And so they needed to be able to save the American people. Oh, there's a big old war going on out there. When, in fact, there was just a couple of hundred guys, and they let them get away. And in fact, I learned a new anecdote, Gareth, about Toribora.

There was a piece and task and purpose about, it was a profile of the guy who was, you know, the man on the scene, the lead Air Force, air controller on the ground. a one-man air traffic control and bombing run coordinator and everything and he ran the entire air war at torra bora there attached to the delta force and they just make the statement out of you know with no particular relevance it just shows up there in the story of his life that they cancel the whole thing on December the 9th when bin laden didn't get away till the 17th so even where i've all always said, you know, they did call in some big air power, and they could have got them, but they refused to send in the green berets and the Rangers like Delta was begging for, and never mind the Marines, but in fact, they didn't, I'm giving them too much credit even for the airpower. They canceled the a airstrikes on the 9th? And by the way, they said because there was a friendly fire incident somewhere else in the country, they had really scaled back other airstrikes elsewhere in the country that were of lower priority.

And so they had all of these extra planes for the Battle of Torbora. It all the, the whole country worth of planes. Everybody's in Nangahar province. And they canceled. I'm sorry, I'm just going on and on, but man. What this reveals, obviously, is that the operations of the U.S. military are never really about a genuine national security need or requirement. They are about the internal interests of the national security. state itself. Now, you know, there are conflicts within those interests, right? They're not all the

same. They're very different at the same moment and at different moments. So you see, you know, some people within the military who are upset at what's going on and what's been decided. But the reason is that other institutional interests are being served. So that's, I mean, it's always about that. And, you know, another point that I could have made and should have made, but didn't have the space was to talk about how, you know, Afghanistan was a vehicle to make new major careers for both McChrystal and Petraeus. Well, Petraeus had, you know, he'd already started to make his career in Iraq, but Afghanistan and McMaster. And McMaster. It was well. But, you know, I mean, these were, these were days when they were able to use a war to promote

themselves. And it was nothing more than that. I mean, they knew. that this war was unwinnable. As I point out in the article, McChrystal said in his campaign plan that, look, we have a fundamental problem here because the major interests in this society have already decided that they need to align with the Taliban in order to basically prevent these warlords from wreaking havoc in the society. And he had no answer to that. He never did find an answer to that. In fact, the warlords were his allies, as of necessity, he decided to align with them. And he knew that that was a loser from the very beginning. And for Petraeus, of course, I mean, he knew that he was not going to win this war.

He knew that it was not win a bull. But he decided to go out because it was part of his career building plan. And so I think everybody needs to understand that this is what these wars are really all about. Hey, listen, I got to tell you, I got more and more and more friends who fought in that war all the time. And I've been traveling a lot this year, and I've met a lot of guys who, you know, fought in Iraq and or Afghanistan, both. And that's the thing that gets lost in all this, you know, Petraeus and McChrystal and the rest of these guys getting their ticket punched, these State Department goons and CIA, you know, spooks and whoever people getting their jab. done you know for their own interest they're getting people blown up to death and maimed beyond belief and uh you know you start your article out talking about this guy joe kent a republican run for

congress and i think you saw is that what you linked to here is this fox news interview yes so we saw the same fox news interview where hey this guy takes it personally that these people lied the whole time because he took a sacred oath and risked everything and lost everything including his own spouse and as he complained to that interview it was after Trump tried to get

everybody out of Syria which happened twice that the military just essentially said belay that order and enforced Trump to back down and kept the people in Syria but also I think he said he was an Afghan, I forget Iraq but I think he was an Afghan war vet

and it lost people there and that's the part of this that always gets left out it's all you know you can have all kinds of ruthless politics around who runs housing and urban development but you're not talking about people getting the bottom half of their body blown off by an iED when it comes to the consequences of who wins and loses those you know political battles here yeah it's about time that those issues that issue particularly be brought to the center of the entire political fight over national security policy. I mean, that's got to be done. Absolutely. Yeah. All right. Well, listen, I'm about out of time here, Gareth, but I appreciate you coming on the show and all your great analysis. And am I right? Is it okay for me to ask you here for the record? Is it right that you're writing a new book about the origins of the Cold War with the Soviet Union in the 1940s? It's not about the origins of the Cold War. It's about the Cold War as precisely what we're talking about, a vehicle for the institutional interests of the military

and the Pentagon, particularly, and their non-military allies from time to time, but primarily the military and the Pentagon to advance their institutional interests. And it will document some unknown cases of this of how they deceived the public, deceive the president, deceived Congress in order to advance those interests. So it's really a complete sort of rewriting, not a complete rewriting, but a major revisionist view of the Cold War in light of what both you and I now know about what it was really all about. Yeah. Awesome. All right. Can't wait. Thank you so much, Gareth, for your time. Thank you. Glad to be back, Scott. All right, you guys, listen, just about everything Gareth wrote in the last 20 years can be found in his archive at

anti-war.com. And that's for truth out and for IP. news and truth dig and everything except the American conservative magazine all of that stuff is at TAC and we all just linked to that

but responsible statecraft and of course the Grey Zone project all of that stuff is at all those places I just named and it's also all in the archives at antivore.com so go and catch up the Scott Horton show anti-war radio can be heard on

KPFK 90.7 FM in L.A. APSRadio.com, anti-war.com, Scott Horton.org, and libertarian institute.org.