Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 8/19/22 Shane McCarver Debunks Petraeus’s Lies in the Atlantic

Episode Date: August 23, 2022

Scott talks with Shane McCarver about an article he published last week at Antiwar.com challenging the wild assertions David Petraeus made in his Atlantic article earlier this month. Despite its length, Petraeus makes almost no concrete claims in his piece. Instead, he spends 10,000 words to make vague notions about grit and commitment that conveniently protect him from blame. One of the few specific arguments he does make, however, is that the U.S. should have supplied the Afghan National Army with more Russian-made MI-17 helicopters. McCarver was a soldier in Afghanistan working on this exact task up until the collapse of the ANA last summer. He explains to Scott why Petraeus’s argument that more helicopters could have prevented the Taliban’s victory is absurd.  Discussed on the show: “In Rebuke of the Dishonorable David Petraeus” (Antiwar.com) “Afghanistan Did Not Have To Turn Out This Way” (The Atlantic) Shane McCarver was a soldier in the United States army from 2013-2017. He worked as a logistics analyst on the DOD contract maintaining the MI-17 helicopters and the PC-12 fixed wing aircraft of the Afghan Air Force and Afghan Army Special Mission Wing from November 2018 until July 2021. He has since found honest work as a shipping coordinator for a manufacturer in Newport, New Hampshire. 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; and Thc Hemp Spot. 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 anti-war.com, author of the book, Fool's 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 2004. 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 all right to you guys introducing shane mccarver he was a soldier in the u.s army from 2013 to 17 and worked with the afghan air force in afghanistan um and so uh it says here he has since found honest work as a shipping coordinator for a manufacturer in newport new hampshire and he wrote this great piece for antiwar dot com in rebuke of the dishonorable

david petraeus welcome the show Shane how are you doing fine thanks Scott how are you i'm doing great really appreciate to join us here so um tell me uh what's beef with uh old general Patrice here? Well, Saturday morning, I was drinking my coffee reading this article. I got my blood boiling a little bit when he said that the problem with Afghanistan was our lack of commitment. You know, over 2,000 soldiers died, two trillion dollars spent, and it was a lack of commitment. That's what this guy had to say. You know, that's one of those selfish and just frankly ridiculous things I've ever read. Yeah. And by the way so that piece that you're talking about is in the atlantic it's the same one that i mentioned on the

kennedy show the other night if anybody saw that where i was saying you know he wrote this what six thousand word or ten thousand word thing about how it's everybody's fault but his it's called um that's actually the title our lack of commitment in afghanistan and he i think he does have a throwaway line about hey look i'm not saying this to absolve myself or anything like that but then he does not continue on and elaborate that. Here's where I blew it or anything like that. So he clearly is absolving himself. He's saying we snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Well, what do you know about that? Yeah. I mean, it's a ridiculous statement. He says numerous times throughout the article that, you know, his plan is his counterinsurgency strategy worked so brilliantly in Iraq. And

You know, he mentions it that numerous times and that, you know, if it just had more time and more commitment in Afghanistan, it probably would have worked there, too. You know, you never mentions that after, you know, the United States left Iraq, that everything came crashing down, that the Iraqi army fled in the face of an ISIS assault. That never gets brought up once in his article. And so it's just a pretty ridiculous statement. He, the only specifics he really gives, he's very vague throughout the old thing about what we could have done. differently in Afghanistan. He doesn't say a whole lot. One thing specifically that he mentions that I have a little experience with, he mentions that maybe if we had given the Afghan military more Russian-made helicopters and aircraft that they knew how to maintain that that maybe somehow

would have would have would have would have helped them you know, not collapse at the very end, which is just pretty ridiculous. So I worked on the contract. where we maintained the Russian helicopters, the MI-17s for the Afghan Special Mission Wing. And, you know, yeah, there were some guys who knew how to maintain them. A lot of the old guys who had been around since when the Soviets were there. I mean, these guys were pretty old, the ones who knew what to do. The young guys, they had really didn't have a whole lot of interest in learning. It seemed to me they were always disappearing whenever it was time to do work.

I mean, the Ukrainian subcontractors pretty much kept that fleet in the air too. too. So I don't know, you know, Patrice wouldn't know that. He wasn't sure he was in an office the whole time. What does he know? Somebody just told him that, yeah, the Afghans know how to maintain these aircraft. So, you know, he knows no details about that. He just knows whatever report somebody put on his desk. Yeah, exactly right. And, you know, you're so right too about how, boy, he just bloviates someone for 10,000 words without really ever saying anything at all. You know, if you just had more valor and exercised more commitment and strengthened your strength and persevered through adversity, then, you know, the whole thing that could have

been written by Madison Avenue. He's not even talking about. He doesn't say, well, we did have this and that problem when it comes to the town of Conduz. And down there in Lashkargaa and, you know, in the capital of Helmand Province, what our Marines were up against was this and that problem, but they had almost solved it or anything specific at all. You wouldn't even know that there are provinces with specific names that need to be discussed in any kind of real sense. The whole thing is just glittering generalities, as they would say, in advertising, right? Exactly. I mean, he mentions vaguely that they had some success, limited success, fighting corruption,

but doesn't specify how or, you know, how they combated it or what the success was. But if you read the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction's report on the stabilization efforts, you know, it talks about the time. when he was in command there, and that's not the case at all. They had no success fighting corruption at all. All they were doing was giving more money to certain warlords, which was just making the other warlords even more angry. I mean, it was just, you know, you give to some,

and it makes the rest just even more furious. So it's just creating more allies. Their strategy, it didn't work in Iraq, and it wasn't working in Afghanistan either. I mean, the Taliban was growing stronger by the day. It was easy recruiting grounds for them. Yep. And hey, I quote Petraeus himself in my book saying, well, you know, the people actually prefer their own local kind of customary court system to the one that we have set up for them.

Yeah. Well, so what does that mean? They look for their own systems of criminal and civil dispute resolution rather than accepting those of the mayors and the police chiefs and the judges. and the political appointees under the American puppet regime. So what's he saying? He's saying there's no demand for what he's supplying, and he knows it. Exactly. You know, they had no background when they went into Afghanistan,

no background of what the people were like, what the culture was like. They didn't know anything. They, you know, people, Petraeus and people just like them, all the Bush administration, Obama administration, they all thought the same thing that they could fix the problem, you know that they have all the answers you know they don't know anything they don't know anything about afghanistan or the people and they surely never talk to any afghans besides the few people high up in the government you know the most corrupt ones of all they never talked to anybody else so what do they know

about it i mean how could you how could you possibly have any idea how to how to fix this entire country when you don't know anything about it you've never even talked to the people right yeah it's amazing too to hear them talk about well what we needed was a general Commitment. Well, how long's a generation? It's 19 years, 20 years, right? Yeah, I mean, there was fathers and sons who fought in Afghanistan.

Isn't that generational commitment? Yeah, we gave him a generational commitment. We got nothing for it whatsoever. He wanted a second generational commitment? No, seriously, after 40 years, it would have been fine. As Elizabeth Cheney said, when should we leave Afghanistan? Never. That's right.

And no eggs are planning. you're not allowed to ask that question yeah it's completely nice and you know by the way too what i noticed in there was uh he never brought up the idea of the popular support for the national government at all never remind the local court system as it filters downtown in kandahar province or whatever the hell but um the support for the existence of a national government at all or especially the one created by the u.s in Kabul to rule over the people and it's It's pretty easy to see why a lot of especially Hazaras and Tajik's and Uzbeks would prefer that government to the Taliban. That doesn't necessarily mean they supported it at all.

And he doesn't even raise a question, I don't think, of whether anyone in Afghanistan, other than the people directly on its payroll, supported the existence of the regime whatsoever. And how another 20 years is supposed to change that. Right. So I worked with a lot of Afghan subcontractors, civilian subcontractors, guys that spoke perfect English. And, you know, they were all connected. They had families that were well connected and fathers that were all connected. But even they had frustrations with the central government that they would voice all the time. So if even they're somewhat unhappy, I can imagine that people aren't connected, the ones who don't have these great paychecks coming in every month, they must have had to be absolutely furious. Why would they be happy with these people coming and telling them what to do? These people, they don't even know from other provinces that don't even speak the same language that they do. Right. Yeah, there's something that someone must have told Petraeus that at some point, I think I remember an anecdote where McChrystal was surprised to learn or some officer was surprised to learn.

What do you mean our translator doesn't speak the same language as these people? And it's like, yeah, well, they speak Pashto and he speaks Urdu because they're entirely different ethnicities, man. And it's really, it's, you know, it's not even the same. I was trying to think of an analogy in North America. There's really not one handy for, you know, just asking people to conquer and rule people who are just, you know, completely different than them. I mean, the, the, the, the, uh, Hazaras and Uzbek's inside the Afghan army, they had no motivation to conquer Kandahar province for Uncle Sam.

you know, or to conquer it for themselves or for any other reason. That's down where the Pashtuns live. You're not going to change that. You're not going to rule over them from far away with a different ethnicity and a different language. Yeah, it's just crazy. I guess leave the ethnicity and language out, but it's still like saying just Connecticut is going to rule Texas forever and tell us what to do all the time. Like, no, they're not. We're going to do what we want to do.

Exactly. Yeah. Everything he says in this article, it just doesn't make any sense. He talks about how, you know, if we had given them more Russian-made equipment, then that would have, you know, made things better. But that's not realistic at all. Who in Congress is going to say, okay, we're not going to buy these great black hawks and Chinooks from North Brumman, Lockheed, and everybody else.

But we're going to go ahead and buy some Russian-made equipment instead and send that to the Afghans. Hell, it's illegal, right? That's what they had to get the Indians to buy the Russian helicopters for them back in 2017. Right. And then get around their own stupid sanctions on the Russians. You had two different, you had two different divisions almost there. You had the Afghan Air Force and then you had the Afghan Army Special Mission Wing. So they were just completely separate from each other, but they didn't cooperate at all,

even though they were supposed to both be under, you know, the Afghan military as a whole, the umbrella. But they were controlled, you know, by. two different generals, basically two different warlords. And for us to do anything, you know, if we needed, if we didn't have, if we needed to put an engine in an aircraft on the Afghan Air Force side, but we didn't have one there and we had to bring it from the SMW side, you know, it was a whole big deal. They wouldn't let you take the engine from one side to the other and you had to get,

you had to go to the big chief to get permission. It was just, they couldn't even work together amongst themselves in the government. It's just, you know, they're from different tribes. within there so how could that ever work right and then it it doesn't make sense and by the way so the aircraft that you're maintaining there and all that that was all essentially for close air support or what other so the MI17 it was mainly used to transport the soldiers into battle and then get them back out and would also provide air support I see yeah um and I guess and just the Afghan army overall or the two different Afghan air forces overall was that their primary mission is air

support and you know working with the infantry like that or well you know there's no really bombers did they no not that i saw there's no good uh highway system there i mean helicopters were kind of the fastest way for them to get soldiers around to where they needed to be right um you know i wasn't involved in a strategic side i was on the operation side but that that's what i saw you know I always saw them ferry and ferian soldiers off to the battle there. Yeah. Yeah, man.

And now, I'm sorry, what years were you there again? So I was there from 2018 to 2021, July 15th, I think I left. Oh, a year ago. Oh, yeah. So, like, kind of right before the beginning of the fall of the thing. Yeah, I was not.

happy with the security situation there i wanted to uh to get out of there as quickly as possible man so tell me like right at that time what did you think about the guys that you know in the afghan air forces that you were leaving behind you guys knew that their force was going to cease to exist within four weeks or not so there was a lot of denial amongst uh amongst uh the the american like the longtime contractors and a lot of the Afghans too that we worked with that this was going to happen and even that the Americans were going to leave it all I mean up until even when I left in July a lot of the longtime American contractors they all thought we would be there at least until December I mean they just didn't believe and the Afghans too they didn't believe that we were

leaving I mean that the denial was complete up until the very end yeah from what I saw they just did not believe it that it was going to collapse you know I just didn't see it that way, it seemed to me that it was going to come to an end pretty quick. Man, give me just a minute here. At the Libertarian Institute, we published books, real good ones. So far, we've got Will Griggs-Snow Quarter, Sheldon Richmond's coming to Palestine, and what social animals owe to each other, and four of mine, fools Aaron, enough already, the great Ron Paul, and my brand new one, hotter than the sun, time to abolish nuclear weapons.

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See The Roses, only in theaters, August 29th. Get tickets now. What a crazy thing. to have be so necessary for the war to come to an end and have them botch it in such a fall of Saigon type of a way, the way that they did, and complete with the suicide bombing and the drone strike of the innocent family

on the way out the door and all this stuff. It's just, man, it's like we're living in a novel or something, you know? It's just a disaster, absolute. If you were an fiction author and you were writing about, you know, most idiotic and horrible way for the war to end. This would be it, you know, other than somebody accidentally drops a nuke or something, you know, I don't know. Right. And then on top of that, nobody's held accountable for any of it. The 13 Americans that died needlessly, the seven

Afghan children that were murdered after that so that the Biden administration could look tough. It just didn't make any, it's just ridiculous. Nobody's held accountable. Nobody even gets a write-up in their in their file no demotion you know much less anybody go to jail right yeah and they're you know whatever shame that they have uh i really need to find this because i know i'm almost certain it was in the new york times oh i'm gonna definitely have to find this footnote and get the quote just right and everything but it was something about how yeah no look man what we did in the middle east and, you know, including Afghanistan, this whole time, it's so bad. It really is.

So that's why we have to double down and pour all these weapons into Ukraine. This is our redemption for 20 years of failure in the Middle East. It's now, instead of being the evil empire overlording it over these people and trying to quell and pacify an insurgency, now we're back on the side of the heroes, the insurgents, against somebody else's evil empire, the Russians. And it's just, man, like, these are the people who run our State Department, right? Like, they're just watching movies and speaking in these most ridiculous kind of terms about it. And they really think, not only are they doing the right thing, but this is kind of their absolution for Afghanistan and Iraq and the rest.

And just to show how it goes full circle, about a dozen of those Russian helicopters, those MI-17s that we've maintained in Afghanistan. We brought those to the UAE because they were planning some kind of over-the-horizon thing that they called it and where they were going to maintain the helicopters in the UAE and then send them back. Well, anyway, they were in the UAE and everything collapsed. So then helicopters got sent to the United States. And then as soon as this Ukraine thing happened, they sent those helicopters to Ukraine. So it's come full circle now. Those very same ones.

Amazing. Amazing. Amazing. And now, what had happened to them in the UAE? So, nothing, really. We packed up some things, you know, to helicopter, some spare parts. And it was a good excuse for them to buy a whole bunch of other stuff and set up shop in the UAE. And then immediately, you know, everything collapsed in Afghanistan. So that, you know, quickly came to an end. Oh, I see. Everything there. I see. They were. Okay. I got you. They were essentially being, you know, maintained and revamped and whatever for Afghanistan in the UAE.

Exactly. I got you. Because they didn't have the capability, you know, even though Petrae said that they do have the capability, they did it. And we knew that. So we were going to set up in the UAE to do it for them. I got you. I was thinking that you meant like them. And then they sold them to the UAE for use against the Jimenez or whoever, that kind of thing.

But I got you. So, yeah. And then those same helicopters for the ANA are now backing up the Azov battalion. Ain't that something? Ain't that something? What a world. Well, listen, I mean, the good news here is that America's war in Afghanistan is over, and there's no going back.

You know, I can't imagine what it would take for a president to put ground troops in Afghanistan ever again now. You know, so I'm sure they'll probably have robots prowling around assassinating people from time to time, but I guess possibly special operations guys. from time to time but hope not but at least the war to keep the posh tunes from taking over the capital city is over if that failed so what the hell and what has seen how i wonder what you thought sitting at home watching the taliban just walk right into Kabul on a pose like that yeah it was it was really something to watch you know as soon as as soon as

they said that Mizari Sharif fell and surrendered, you know, just knew that that was over. Way up in the north. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh-huh. Like, oh, boy, they thought this through. They got a plan and it's on. Yeah. I mean, this was coordinated well in advance. So that's actually another thing that Petraeus said, you know, he blames the botched pullout. He said that the deal, you know, to pull out at the end of the summer was a, was a big mistake. But the original deal was actually to pull out in May at the beginning of the fighting season. Right. So, you know, the big mistake was then delaying it another four months.

If they hadn't had done that, the Taliban obviously had this assault plan. In fact, McGregor had Trump sign in order to get everybody out in December. So, you know, before Biden even had a chance to ruin her, I guess by the end of his presidency in January. No, it was supposed to be by the end of December 31st. And if they'd done that, then, and then the Taliban still wouldn't have really been able to get into gear for the fighting season, as you're saying, for another, at least till, you know, April, if not May, before they even got their ass in gear. And that was what they're all looking for, right? Was that decent interval where, well, gee, if the Afghan government falls now, that's their

fault not ours and we're not even looking anymore kind of thing. And that was what they didn't get by kicking the can down the road. And that was the military's fault, right? Because they pressure Biden, they wanted Biden to stay so bad. They made him agree to at least review it. And so that was what cost them the time that they needed when they should have been getting out right then exactly he's obviously being pressured to keep them there i'll give him credit i mean he made the right decision to get out but he just delayed it for way too long it was if he had just had the had the stones to stay a little longer to do the right thing and stick with the original deal and get out in the spring that would have been it yeah man uh well i sure hope that the disaster

Asterous pullout hasn't done too much to give pullouts themselves and even this one a bad name. I don't think too many people argue that like, yeah, we never should have left the way Petraeus does here, you know. And he doesn't even really mean it, right? He's just trying to say, this is somebody else's fault because I got fired a long time ago. Everybody remember that, you know? Yeah, that's right. What a scumback. And so I challenged him to a debate at the Soho Forum.

I hope, well, I sent a tweet to Gene Epstein. I hadn't talked to Gene about it, but I bet you, Gene, well, I know that Gene at least has the stature to try. I don't know whether he has the stature to really succeed, but he did get Bill Crystal out. And, you know, he used to be the business editor of Barron's Magazine. So that means he's an important guy. And so, man. And then that'd be funny because then I would just barbecue his ass in front of everybody. It would be hilarious.

I bet I could get quotes from terrorists in Mosul about how grateful they are for all the AK-47s he gave them and stuff. You know what I mean? I bet. Yeah. This guy's record, his shit list is long and I got it all right here, you know? And you should ask him what he thinks about Assange being, you know, persecuted and locked up. for all these years for the same thing

that Petraeus did. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. In fact, Petraeus, you know, he even leaped above top secret stuff. That's just discussions literally between him

and the president about what they're doing. And all he got was a misdemeanor in two years probation. Unbelievable. By the way, at the time around here, the rumor was that the CIA

did a coup and overthrew him and turned him into the FBI. because they hate him so much. So I don't know if that's really true or not, but that was sort of what the ex-spies were saying. Probably the only good thing to CIA has ever done. Yeah, I know, right? You know, the Washington Post talked about how

as soon as he left Afghanistan and came to take over CIA, the first thing he did was order the analyst to write up a thing about how he'd done a great job in Afghanistan and everything over there was going great when he left, and they refused to do it. And they had a really long thing in the post where the CIA told this, whole story of the post. Yeah, he tried to make us say that he did a good job, and that's not true. And then, apparently, they refused to do that. I forget if they either did an accurate

estimate, or they just refused to do an estimate, but they refused to do the one he wanted them to write, one way or the other there, which is, I thought, a pretty funny anecdote that he was trying to force that that way. Oh, absolutely. And, you know, we know, we know. We know, too, just from the timeline, but also from the great reporting of Seymour Hirsch about his role in backing the terrorists in Libya and beginning in Syria before he got canned that summer. So, right, didn't he get, it was what, like June, May or June or later in 2011 when he got fired? Do you remember? I can't even remember that. I was still in college drinking beer at the time. I don't even remember.

Okay. Well, it was like yesterday to me, but I can't remember yesterday either. So what the hell? But, yeah, anyway, so he did get Libya and Syria started off on behalf of the Mujahideen before he was gone. And his successors, you know, picked that up and carried it from there. In fact, Hillary even threw him under the bus. Rand Paul said, hey, man, what's all this about running guns for the terrorists out of Libya on to Syria? And she goes, oh, jeez, you'd have to ask somebody from the agency about that. I don't know about that. Which, of course, she does know about that.

But that was her saying, hey, if anybody's going to go to prison for treason, it's going to be him, not me. Yeah, I can see that. Maybe Hillary's the one who orchestrated the coup in the CIA there. Oh, that's funny. I wonder about that. Her connections, you know, how much loyalty she's. got there probably not too much but you never know again it all depends on which office of course john brennan was willing to carry her water no matter what so we saw that on rushergate so

anyway um you know what you make this great point here um about these guys um from ohio and Chicago who were killed in July of 2019. And this was a green-on-blue attack, right? Right. So Petraeus in the article, he's saying that, you know, towards the end, American soldiers weren't even in danger, that there was, you know, not much to worry about. They weren't on the front lines, he said, which is, there were no front lines in Afghanistan. People who were supposed to be our allies were shooting American soldiers in the back, like these two young men I mean and they were the marines were fighting in helmet and the green berets were

fighting in nangahar and they were getting killed too like not that much but they were dying over the last in the trump years you know right there's not everything that he writes in this article is false these two young guys died i remember it in 2019 and i was in country i didn't know these guys but it was just it was just very sad to hear these two young guys guys, one was, had a wife back in North Carolina. The other one, his parents, they'll never see him again. It's just very sad, died for, for no reason, for politicians and generals too scared to just get us out of Afghanistan. Yeah. You know, the New York Times ran a story about the Marines down in Hellman and how when they're training their soldiers, they have one of their own

with a sniper rifle up in the tower keeping Overwatch on all the soldiers' backs and they call them the guardian angel snipers there because at any moment the people their training might murder them right so anytime a big week would come by

anytime there would be any American general they would always have guardian angels around them I mean they would have by a huge escort of bodyguards with them so you know Petraeus was walking around anywhere in Afghanistan he was he would have bodyguards. So to say that, you know, they're not on the front lines. Okay. Well, you wouldn't go anywhere without a court of bodyguards, but everybody else, you know, they're perfectly safe, right?

Yeah. Man, I'm so glad that you wrote this article, and I sure appreciate this interview, too. I mean, I consider David Petraeus to be the great American fraud. I mean, really should go down into history, absolutely, is one of the most ridiculous and dishonest failures of a joke of a person and whoever did anything other than win public relations contests. And I guess

the Commandant's daughter is what a suck-up he is. As kissing little chicken shit, that's what Admiral Fox Fallon called him

back then, you know, during a Rock War II, which is exactly what he is. He's pathetic. And that's why he won't debate me at the Soho Forum because he's terrified

that my 130-pound ass would whip him up and down that stage. That's right. But wouldn't that be fun? You hear me, Patras? I'm calling you out, boy. We'll see how good that does. That might work. Say it imposto.

All right. Hey, listen, man, I'm glad you came home in one piece, and none of them insider attacks got to you over there. But sorry that you had to go through that experience all together either way. But glad you're home. Glad you found honest work in the open market, as you said here in your bio. And thanks for writing this for Afghanistan, I mean, about Afghanistan, for anti-war.com. And keep them coming if you got more to say about what you learned over there, man.

It would be very interested to see. Thanks, Scott. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me on. All right. Thank you. Everybody, that is Shane McCarver. and this one's called in rebuke of the dishonorable David Petraeus.

The Scott Horton Show, Anti-War Radio, can be heard on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. aPSRadio.com, anti-war.com, Scotthorton.org, and Libertarian Institute.org.