Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 8/27/21 Daniel Davis on the Kabul Airport Bombing

Episode Date: August 31, 2021

Scott speaks with Daniel Davis about the suicide bombing at the entrance to the Kabul Airport. Davis considers this an especially devastating attack because the soldiers killed were only days away fro...m being withdrawn from the country. He also believes that these withdrawal issues could have been prevented if U.S. troops had left a decade ago instead of flooding the country as they did under Obama’s surge. Davis goes on to explain why he has no respect for those who lie to the families of dead soldiers about what they died fighting for, all while sending new soldiers off to the same pointless mission. Finally, Davis takes on the argument that we should never have given up Bagram Air Base, and he explains why taking it back now would be disastrous.  Discussed on the show: “Looser rules, more civilian deaths, a Taliban takeover: Inside America’s failed Afghan drone campaign” (Audacy) Daniel Davis did multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan during his time in the army. He writes a weekly column for National Interest and is the author of the reports “Dereliction of Duty II: Senior Military Leaders’ Loss of Integrity Wounds Afghan War Effort” and “Go Big or Go Deep: An Analysis of Strategy Options on Afghanistan.” Find him on Twitter @DanielLDavis1. 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; 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

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 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 the 5,500 interviews since 2000. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton dot four you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scott horton show all right hey you guys check it out it's dandy davis a former lieutenant colonel in the u.s army and again a famous whistleblower from the afghan war from 2012 decorated veteran of iraq war one and to, and Afghanistan. And he blew the whistle on how Petraeus was lying that his surge had accomplished anything on the way out in 2012 and said, don't you believe it, America.
Starting point is 00:01:13 And he was sure right about that. And so welcome back to the show. Great to have you on. Thank you for joining us again. You always know it's my pleasure. And defense priorities. That's your home now, right? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:01:27 Yeah, I should have said that earlier in the introduction. All right. Anyway, so it's like this. Top headline on anti-war.com. Kabul attacks kill 73, including 13 U.S. troops. And that's Marines and a Navy corpsman, I believe, was one of them was the last I saw there. So I guess just tell us what's on your mind, your reaction to the attack and your understanding of what happened with this attack at the Kabul airport yesterday. It's just such an egregious, you know, CODA to end this catastrophic 20-year war. I mean, just as a, you know, a brother in arms of anyone who's ever served, we all feel part of that brotherhood, you know.
Starting point is 00:02:12 And when anybody loses their life in combat, it's just you feel it personally. And I certainly do. But this one has got to be even more egregious because, I mean, what can you say to the family members that you're, loved ones lost their lives literally days, just a handful of days before the end of this pointless 20-year war. And that's been what's driving me really from the beginning, ever since I've really back in 2009 when I first started publishing on this stuff, but especially in 2012 after I got back from my second combat tour and new people who were killed in combat. That's what's been driving me relentlessly over the years. Maybe not quite as much
Starting point is 00:02:52 as you, but I've been giving you a run for your money on the relentless drive. part, but that's why. Because, you know, this is not just a policy issue. This is not just a good idea or bad idea. This is catastrophic life and death issues. Men are dead that shouldn't be dead. Women are dead that shouldn't be dead. And that goes for both the United States and the Afghan side because this could have been capped off at least a decade ago. And maybe the same outcome would have happened. Maybe the Afghan government would have been able to stand on their own if we had withdrawing when we had a chance and when they would have had a chance but we didn't take any of those opportunities we just continued to lie every year about how things were making progress
Starting point is 00:03:35 even though we knew for sure behind the scenes that they weren't everybody's like y'all i'm only there for a year so i'll just continue the fiction until it's handed off to the next gun it'll be somebody else's problem well the problem with that is that eventually the catastrophe and the metastasis of the cancer gets so big. You can't spin it anymore. And finally, reality imposes itself over the spin, which is precisely what we had with the collapse of the Afghan government, the rise of the Taliban. Now no one can hide from the truth anymore. And now at the very end, we have one more big casualty list. And it's just such a tragedy because it could have been avoided. Yeah. All right. Now, to zoom in on what actually happened there,
Starting point is 00:04:20 who done it? And do we need to reinvade the country now? There's certainly plenty of people called for that. I was on a few TV shows last night where there was some of the other guests were arguing exactly that thing. And there's been no shortage of heroic congressmen trying to argue for that's what we should do right now. But that is just insane and idiotic to be putting it politely. What we know is that it was high probability that was what's called ISIS K, which is, it's an acronym for basically the same ISIS group that originated in Syria and Iraq, a splinter group has formed in Afghanistan, which basically has drawn itself from the most radical
Starting point is 00:05:05 elements of the Afghan and the Taliban and the Pakistan Taliban, the two separate organizations. Those Taliban were not violent enough for these people. So they formed their own offshoot and called themselves ISIS-K. The thing is that they're relatively small. There's estimates anywhere between 1 and 2,000 total in the country. And just to give you a means of comparison, there's somewhere between 75 and 100,000 Taliban. So, you know, it's just a minuscule number in comparison. But what you see is when somebody's intent on doing violence and evil and murder, it's not that hard because of all the chaos in Kabul, you know, it's an impossibility to suggest that the Taliban had the ability to provide.
Starting point is 00:05:49 perfect security for the area around the Kabul airport. And look, they have self-interest to want to do so because they hate the ISIS and they've been a battle with them for a long, long time. And by the way, 28 people who were killing that blast were Taliban. So this idea that they may have been secretly colluding to try to kill us is absurd because they're not going to sacrifice 28 of their own guys. I mean, that's absurd. But this idea that we need to either keep troops there or send more over there to fight them is absurd because look this just highlights what one of the things we've been saying forever and on your show too the only reason they kill these americans is because they're there if we withdrew earlier if we had withdrawn on may first like
Starting point is 00:06:36 we were supposed to have originally they wouldn't be there they wouldn't have been there to be attacked and after we leave they again won't be able to go anywhere they are a national organization, they may have fantasies about international terrorism, but they've got to leave there in order to do anything anywhere else. And we have great mechanisms to track all of that kind of stuff. And it's been very effective over the years and improved dramatically, which also underscores why we don't need troops on the ground there. And we will continue to keep ourselves safe. But I'm arguing that it'll actually be better because now that we won't have those targets just sitting there waiting to find out if somebody's going to attack them or not. And of course,
Starting point is 00:07:15 the same reason why we need to withdraw from Iraq and Syria, but that's an argument for a separate day, but this logic remains valid. Yeah. Boy, yeah, there's a whole other set of arguments for there. But now, so this is the thing, right? The knee jerks that, look, if 13 of our guys just got killed, well, of course, then we have to put more of our guys in harm's way. We have to continue the war, because otherwise, essentially, we're letting the other guys get the last word, something like that. Yeah, and look, and let me be, let me make sure I'm clear on this. I in no way suggest that there shouldn't be retribution for what happened, and I'm a strong proponent that there should. But that also underscores how effective we can be, because
Starting point is 00:08:00 the same mechanisms that we used to take out Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, Al-Baghdadi in Syria, Soleimenei, when he was in Baghdad that time, all of the organization and the troops and the assets that actually took out those threats to America, none of them were on the ground in those places, none of them, not even the one in Iraq, even though we had troops there, the strike team came from elsewhere. And we will do the same thing here. In fact, I would be surprised if Biden does anything before we get out.
Starting point is 00:08:31 I would strongly suggest and hopefully does wait until after Tuesday, so it'll lessen the chance of any more American targets getting shot while we're, you know, we're still there. once we're out and the risk is lower, then I'm sure he'll use that same capability to make direct strikes on targeted ISIS people and will exact a revenge and a justice for the murderous attack.
Starting point is 00:08:56 Yeah. But you don't need troops on the ground for that. I wouldn't be too surprised if the Taliban beat him to it and just lynched some guys and said, we got them. And I wouldn't be surprised they got the right guys, actually, at this point, you know? It's entirely possible because they have interest, They have reason to do that. Well, and they've been, you know, fighting more than we did.
Starting point is 00:09:15 Really bloody, horrible battles against ISIS for a very long time. And, I mean, that's the thing that, you know, I'm not sure. I've really got to start watching cable TV news again, I guess, because it is important. It's hard. I know, man. You know. But that's, you know, there's a lot of things missing from the narrative, such as the Taliban have a real interest in killing these guys. Aside from just sucking up to us, they hate them anyway.
Starting point is 00:09:44 Yeah. Man, you know, I saw the most disappointing thing. Let me go ahead and complain about this in another interview already. Reed, Coverdale, sent me a video of Tulsi Gabbard saying that the presumed ISIS guys, and she just throws in Al-Qaeda, like, oh, yeah, no, we have to believe Al-Qaeda's in Afghanistan, too, just as long as you're making up stuff. And then she says, yeah, no, they did this because we, won't convert to their religion and so that's you know and I'm thinking wow what a permanent war
Starting point is 00:10:19 we're going to have to fight forever Danny that's interesting Tulsi used to be pretty good on some of this stuff I'm really surprised about that yeah no she's always got the core premises of the terror war wrong and as wrong as she can I'm not really sure why she used to pile around with the Christians United for Israel you know hardcore Christian Zionist crazies movement and stuff like that But it seems like that was a while back. Seems like they have less influence over her. But she sounds like Frank Gaffney on this stuff. It's just absolutely ridiculous.
Starting point is 00:10:51 At one point during the campaign, she put out a video on Twitter where she said there are hundreds of these groups. She goes, look, there's al-Qaeda in the Idlib province. There's al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which America backs in both those circumstances, as she knows. But anyway, there's al-Shabaab in Somalia. I'm like, okay, well, you, all right.
Starting point is 00:11:13 And then next, after that, there are hundreds of these groups. Oh, really? Is that why you can name three? And on the third one, you're already stretching it? Okay. You know, hundreds of these groups. So anywhere there's a SUNY with a rifle, America has to stay a war forever. Come on.
Starting point is 00:11:30 Yeah. That's really one of the fundamental flaws that, number one, that putting troops even does or can help prevent terrorist, attacks against our people, but number two, that you can, that there's even a need for it, because unless they can get out of wherever they are, it doesn't matter how angry they are with a collision of cough rifle. They can't do anything to America or Americans. But if they start traveling and start doing things and making plans, now that they can be identified and interdicted. So unless they do something, there's no point in wasting a lot of resources
Starting point is 00:12:03 that aren't going to be successful anyway, and they aren't necessary, because they can rail and scream all they want in the empty desert and it's not going to make any difference to us. So just leave them alone. Yeah. All right. Now here's the thing. And it's legitimate in its own little
Starting point is 00:12:20 way anyway, right? Is, and I actually hadn't seen this myself, but I heard about it and sounds right. That they've got dead soldiers' families on TV, especially on Fox, I guess. Saying that, you know,
Starting point is 00:12:36 by backing out of the war, that's what means that everybody who fought and it died for nothing. And that's what's the disgrace to their family. They've been proud that their son had paid the ultimate sacrifice for the right reason. And then now the Democrats completely blow it. And that's certainly how they feel about it. But so what would you say to them? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:13:02 You know, you've got to tread careful on that because I have such extremely high respect. and empathy for all of the family members who've lost. It's been, as I said earlier, it's been one of my driving factors and why I've been so relentless over, you know, a decade and a half on that this stuff needs to be ending because of the consequence and the cost to us. So I wouldn't really directly say anything to them because, I mean, any family member who loses a loved one in a combat zone, especially, are desperate for anything to show that the sacrifice was not in vain, that something positive was actually accomplished.
Starting point is 00:13:41 And to be deprived of that is to, in some ways, increase the pain. But what I consider a, you know, almost far more egregious, if not outright, vindictive policy is to tread with that and to apply with that anger and that emotion and say, no, no, They were all heroes and allowed them because then that perpetuates the thing. Like there's some laudatory philosophy or idea that, yeah, let's keep doing this because that's good on them. No, no, it's not because the bloody, hard, cold fact is that these lives have almost all been sacrificed for no gain to our country. They shouldn't have been put in harm's way. They shouldn't have had to sacrifice their lives.
Starting point is 00:14:35 and our country is not better for it. In fact, it's worse for it because our security has been lessened by all of these price and costs that we keep paying, both financially and blood and limbs. So my focus would be on the people who sent them there and who keep sending them there and all these people who want to recommend that we keep going or that we go back in. Look, you go talk to and explain to the mothers and the wives and the kids of the soldiers who haven't died yet and explain to them why it's cool for, their son or daughter to die, for their husband or their father or their mother to sacrifice
Starting point is 00:15:11 their life for no gain to our country. It's self-evident that this is not a successful. Now, when you do that, then I might have a little bit more respect for you. You'll still be wrong. But that's what I want to see. And I'm so tired of seeing people, you know, hold up their sacrifices, though it's something intrinsically valuable by itself that, you know, in spite of what the war has done. Hey, y'all, check out my new book, Enough Already. Time to and the war on terrorism at enough already book.net. Early reviews are that people either think it's hilarious or they get so angry that they put it down.
Starting point is 00:15:45 But it's the Iranian Revolution, the 80s Afghan War, the Iran-Iraq War I, Iraq War I, Iraq War I half, and then Afghanistan, Iraq War II, Somalia, Pakistan, Libya, Syria, Iraq War III, Yemen, and all the special operations wars throughout Africa in the aftermath of the war in Libya. It's all there for you. It might change your friend's mind. Enough already.
Starting point is 00:16:11 Time to end the war on terrorism at enough already book.net. Hey guys, Scott Horton here for Expanddesigns.com. Harley Abbott and his crew do an outstanding job designing, building, and maintaining my sites, and they'll do great work for you. You need a new website? Go to expanddesigns.com slash Scott and say 500 bucks. hey guys check out listen and think audio books they're at listen and think dot com and of course on audible.com and they feature my book fools errand time to end the war in afghanistan as well as brand new out inside
Starting point is 00:16:46 syria by our friend reese airlock and a lot of other great books mostly by libertarians there uh reese might be one exception but essentially they're all libertarian audiobooks and here's how you can get a lifetime subscription to listen and think audio books just donate $100 to the Scott Horton show at Scotthorton.org slash donate. And, you know, the thing of it is, is it's almost all people who have not been over there who talk that way. It's not really, I mean, I'm sure there are veterans families who've got really hurt feelings going on right now. But mostly this kind of thing is invoked by people who probably hadn't actually met a soldier in 10 years or something, you know? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:17:29 Living in New York City in their fancy glass tower. And look, and I think a lot of the people, it's not true of everybody, but a lot of these people who were so quick to traffic on the emotional, these people, they don't even know what you or don't even care. They just think it's an effective tool. And I just, it just rugs me the wrong way. Yeah. Yeah, you know, I hate the partisanship of it all. I mean, I know you lean a little bit right, but it doesn't seem like you're much of a party guy. I'm an American guy
Starting point is 00:18:02 I don't really care much about either party just to be honest with you But it's just You can see where for the people who do put party first How it just dumps down every single thing Out of their mouth in such a horrible way Just destroys any semblance of real debate About what's happening or why
Starting point is 00:18:20 Yeah that is that is so true And you know I mean really This is one of the best examples of that right Where Trump and Biden's people are blaming each other when they should both be blaming George W. Bush and Barack Obama and congratulating each other. And, you know, I mean, that should be the thing of it. You know, Trump negotiated this deal and Biden saw it through. And even in his statement yesterday, he said, look, if McKenzie asked me for more soldiers for the implementation of the evacuation, he can have them. But I asked him, do you have what you want and need? And he said, yes. So that's where.
Starting point is 00:18:59 it stands, and no, we're not re-escalating the war. And you can tell everybody who's hawking it up on this, or I don't know everybody. I should be reading the National Review, I guess, but everybody who I see hawking it up on the war, they're not saying it. If we send troops back, then that means, you realize that means war, and that means another regime change in Kabul, and that means we're going to have to send, what, 50, 75,000 guys and massive air power to now reinforce the Taliban out of all the capital cities and get right back to where we were a year ago supposedly somehow and call that progress toward what because anything less than that what are you going to do you're going to start the war all over again but with your last few guys right
Starting point is 00:19:45 there in their hands better not do that but nobody's even talking about the consequences of that where we have a ceasefire right now we have a handshake and they're living up to it so that would be a pretty big deal to break that at this late date, wouldn't it? You know, this, one of the things I've seen floated around by a bunch of people, so somebody even asked it in the, in Biden's press conference yesterday. In fact, one of the generals I was on with the overnight, again, said, you know, one of the most catastrophic decisions was the decision to give up Bogram Air Base earlier in the process, and, you know, we should, we should just go back and reoccupy it.
Starting point is 00:20:22 And I'm like, you got to be kidding me. Number one, when the, when the bargram was handed over in early July, July 2nd, I believe was the date, at that time, we were operating or we were conducting a withdrawal of 2,500 soldiers with the expectation to leave 600 of them and the embassy compound to continue operating. There was no evacuation. It was just a military withdrawal and a sequenced collapse of all of our facilities, which made perfect sense. It wasn't until you had the almost simultaneous collapse of the political and military. infrastructure in total in Masari Sharif, Kandahar city, and Harat City, the three largest cities outside of Kabul simultaneously. And instead of the Taliban having to fight their way, you know, to win in those cities and then come to Kabul, they literally just drove in their cars to Kabul. So everything was over. And suddenly, and as of April or August 13th, that's when the last city fell, now all of a sudden you have a massive scramble and now it's an evacuation. Instead of 2,500, now it's like well over 100,000. And the idea that to go back and change what actually
Starting point is 00:21:29 happened and say, oh, we shouldn't have given away Bogram then, because it wasn't an evacuation then. Otherwise, of course, that's what we would have done. It made perfect sense. But it didn't make any sense the way if it had just been a withdrawal where the Afghan government and military just continued to function and exist, then everything would have been actually pretty smooth the way it's gone down. But to go back in, are you kidding? me because that would, number one, that airfield is occupied by Taliban. You would have to seize it with a combat operation, kill all those guys, and that by itself is going to be an expensive endeavor, both in blood and treasure.
Starting point is 00:22:05 And then just to your point, this makes all of a sudden the Taliban is now an active enemy. And look, all of our guys in that little compound in Kabul in the airport, they are just like in a fishbow. The Taliban have everything around it to include all the high ground. all they got to do is start lobbing in rockets, some missiles they have, mortars, some sniper fire. I mean, we would be sitting ducks and all of that because we turned the Taliban from what right now is a cooperative partner. I know people hate to even hear that term in association with Taliban, but that's a fact. They are helping us.
Starting point is 00:22:42 They are helping to provide some security from ISIS. They've actually interdicted some of the attacks. They haven't all succeeded already because they've been helping. and they haven't been attacking us. Now you go and you change any of those and all of a sudden it's not 13 casualties. Now it's potentially in the hundreds and that's absurd and then everything gets destroyed.
Starting point is 00:23:02 But that's so obvious or it should be but people aren't thinking anything through us to your point again. They're just thinking emotionally and yeah, we should do this. No, we shouldn't because that's absurd. That's why we're not doing it. We want to get out. So no more Americans die.
Starting point is 00:23:17 That's the objective. Yeah. Well, you know, one of the, the talking points too is that even if they're helping people or allowing people to get out and not standing in the way and trying to preserve the peace in Kabul that still that amounts to them holding all of our people as hostages and bargaining chips and that at any time they could seize them all at any time of course they could. Huh? Of course they could. I mean that's the whole point. As long as we just do what we've agreed to, we're going to get out in a day and a half or by Tuesday
Starting point is 00:23:50 And everybody's going to be out, at least certainly the last majority of them. No one else needs to die if we can just keep, you know, basically 72 more hours clear from ISIS K because we apparently don't have to worry about Taliban because they're keeping their word and they want us out. And that's to our benefit because we don't want anyone else killed. And I mean, look, as far as counterfactuals about how they could have done this otherwise, and the two major problems are first all the weapons they left with the ANA. that then the Taliban ended up just seasoned, right? And then secondly, the evacuation.
Starting point is 00:24:28 But the alternative there, it seems like the only alternative, would have been for Biden to say outright, like in a speech immediately upon taking office, that I know you guys are all going to throw rotten tomatoes at me. However, the ANA and the Kabul government are absolutely ridiculously bankrupt in every way, you know, in terms of legitimacy and money and every other thing. And they're a farce and they cannot last.
Starting point is 00:25:03 And so therefore, we're not leaving the ANA with any weapons. And I know you're going to say, yeah, but that's going to undermine the ANA. And I'm just telling you, they're not going to last anyway. And it's way too big of a risk that the Taliban will just get them all. So we're taking all of the trucks and all of the light arms and all of the everything, all the helicopters, and everything that we've given them, screw it. And if you say that we're drawing all of our civilians from Kabul
Starting point is 00:25:26 will help, you know, undermine confidence in the government there. That's just tough. It was going to fall anyway. And so, you know, Republicans cry about it if you want to, but that's it. And yes, we're getting out by May 1st. In fact, we're going to try to get out by April 1st. And just, you know, maybe 15, so it doesn't sound so foolish.
Starting point is 00:25:48 um and and and and then just yeah tax day that would be more fitting right um and then and then um and then that would be it right just like tough the whole truth and nothing but the truth that's the only way to do it and you know sorry i know it's going to be tough for the people of afghanistan but it was going to be anyway etc but then you know when you put the counterfactual like that there's no way they could do that they're democrats you know i can't be that honest about anything. And so, in fact, I don't even know why they really kicked the can down the road. I know the generals were begging them to give them more time. But he should told them to go to hell then. May 1st is the deadline. That was the deal. My predecessor shook hands, signed the thing
Starting point is 00:26:33 on paper. And so sorry, we got to do it. And instead, maybe it was for political reasons that he wanted for this to be Biden's withdrawal and not Trump's withdrawal, that he was just the junior partner in or something like that. But what a mistake, right? Because we could have been gone and then have the Taliban take of the country after nobody cares because all of our people are already out, you know? And that goes for people who are Quisling's too, you know, translators and so forth. They should get a ride home or, you know, out of there.
Starting point is 00:27:03 Go ahead. Yeah, as you said, that's an important point. It wouldn't have changed the outcome. It would have just changed the cost to us. The same outcome, the Taliban and control of Afghanistan would have happened no matter which way you went, whether we got it on May 1st as a schedule or whether we did it the way we did. That's important to point out. And that's what should have happened.
Starting point is 00:27:23 And we argued that defense priorities, I mean, relentlessly, that that's what we should have done on May 1st for the very reasons you pointed out. And, you know, we see how it worked out. Yeah. All right. So what's the time here? Oh, man, we got to hurry. Did you see this important thing at Odyssey, A-U-D-A-C-Y-O-O-D-C-com? and it's by Jack Murphy,
Starting point is 00:27:46 the former Special Operations Officer. I forgot if he's a Green Beret. I think he's a Green Beret. Anyway, he writes this, Lusa rules, more civilian deaths, a Taliban takeover, inside America's failed Afghan drone campaign. And this is based on new whistleblowers,
Starting point is 00:28:07 new sources, talking to Jack Murphy about the drone war in the Trump era and how loose the rules of engagement from Iraq War III against the Islamic state there were then
Starting point is 00:28:22 brought back over to the Hellman province in the war in Afghanistan where man they're just killing people essentially at random if you touch a radio that's a death sentence, this kind of thing and anyway had you seen that?
Starting point is 00:28:39 I have not but I have seen a lot of things here recently you know, about whistleblowers, specifically about the drone program, exposing what we've all known to be true that it's been grossly ineffective and kills as many innocent civilian peoples as it ever did, you know, alleged bad guys. And even the bad guys you took off, it didn't have any strategic impact. So all we were doing was killing a lot of people, a lot of people by mistake,
Starting point is 00:29:05 and getting nothing for it. It was absurd. It was obscene. And it was immoral. And it should almost be shut. down, or at least dramatically scale back. Yeah, this is just one more piece of it. And I think we knew already, of course, that the number of strikes in Afghanistan had
Starting point is 00:29:22 gone way up. And we knew that Trump had loosened the rules of engagement and not just the rules of engagement, but the command authority. Is that how they call it? Is that the correct lingo for who gets to choose to pull the trigger? Yep. Yeah. So, and they had devolved the command authority all the way down the chain to, like,
Starting point is 00:29:42 captain level or whatever it was to call in any strike whereas you know under obama they had eventually come with stricter rules of engagement there um but this is just a whole new uh point of view into that war there i'm sorry i said which was obama's rules were also he is egregiously bad so absolutely put that in context right yeah exactly and that's what you know daniel just went to prison for liberating the drone papers for us don't remind me that that's so painful for me even consider it is it yeah it's really it's really bad and people should look at the drone papers or the assassination complex is the book um and then again this is at uh odyssey dot com inside america's failed drone campaign against the taliban and it's like yeah check you know five or
Starting point is 00:30:29 eight thousand words or some kind of thing of of in-depth reporting here really great stuff um and then so lastly i wanted to ask you real quick if you could give us a comment about the possibility of uh the CIA and or whoever else, I guess Jasek, getting in bed with the resistance fighters under Massoud's son in the Panshir Valley? Oh, my Lord. That is just the, if we are looking for one more thing to just completely botch on the way out, it would be that. I mean, it doesn't look like Biden's even going to give it the time of day for an even
Starting point is 00:31:04 consideration, so good on him for that. But man, there has been a lot of people, Lindsay Graham has been shouting about that just this morning and that is the most absurd idea that we've ever seen i mean dude you just had every advantage and every money and every support for 20 years and they disintegrated with the first pressure and you want to now go and support a little fraction of that i mean that's insane no absolutely not a hundred percent no get out of it stay out of it leave it to them to do whatever they're going to do yeah all right with that i'll let you go thank you so much for coming on the show again Again, really appreciate it.
Starting point is 00:31:42 Always my pleasure, Scott. Thank you. All right, you guys. That is retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Daniel L. Davis, famous whistleblower from the Afghan surge in 2012 and fellow at defense priorities. 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.

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