Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 8/7/24 Daniel Davis on the Middle East, AIPAC and the Ukrainian Incursion in Russia

Episode Date: August 12, 2024

Daniel Davis returns to the show to talk about Israel and Ukraine. They start with Israel’s actions in Gaza and the Zionists’ impact on the 2024 election so far. At the end, they turn to Ukraine��s incursion into the Kurst region of Russia.  Discussed on the show: Davis’ interview with John Mearsheimer Daniel Davis did multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan during his time in the army. He is a Senior Fellow at Defense Priorities 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 @DanielLDavis1and subscribe to his YouTube Channel. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Roberts and Robers Brokerage Incorporated; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; Libertas Bella; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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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 2003, almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton.4. You can sign up the podcast feed there, and the full interview archive is also available at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton's show.

You guys on the line I've got retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Daniel L. Davis, the heroic whistleblower of the Afghan War in 2012, author of the 11th Hour in 2020 America, and host of the Daniel Davis Deep Dive over there on the YouTube's where he says lots of smart stuff and interviews lots of really great guys. Welcome back to the show, Danny. How you doing? I'm doing really good, Scott. always a pleasure to be here.

Great, great. Happy to talk to you again. A lot going on that I'd like for you to comment on. But first and foremost, I'd like to discuss with you what I think I'm going to go ahead and start calling Iraq War 3 and 3 quarters. That's because, of course, there is still some small Sunni insurgency in Western Iraq that America is, I'm not sure the degree, but somewhat active against. But now this then is different. If that's Iraq War three and a half, then this is Iraq where three and three quarters because now we're fighting the Shiites again. This isn't the war against ISIS.

This is again the war now for I lost track of how many times. The war for the bin Ladenites again because we're bombing their enemies, the Shiites. And they're the ones bombing us. I got that right? I suppose. It's so convoluted, man. Who can keep up with this stuff? I know. When I made my mom proofread enough already, and she said, you know what? I lost track when they changed sides for the 11th or 12th time. I couldn't remember which it was anymore. So that is it. But that is who the current trouble is with now, is not with ISIS, but it's with Shiite militia forces attacking Americans and getting attacked by Americans in Iraq currently, correct?

And you know what? I mean, it's been going on for quite a while now. You may recall, I forget the exact date, some numbers of, some number of months back to where we assassinated one of these PMU or PMF leaders on the street in Baghdad because we took him out. And the Iraqi government was just infuriated because those are people in the Iraqi security forces. They're actually paid by the Iraqi government. And we took them out in Baghdad on the street, no matter what. Now then we, again, we assassinated some folks and took out allegedly some people that were getting ready to launch a drone or something like that a week or so before the U.S. troops were injured a couple of days back. So it's just a continuing tit for tat. And then, you know, now we have this issue where Israel is trying to precipitate a war with Iran and Hezbollah. And that includes a lot of these organizations in Iraq. You know, of course, they've been targeting Americans that could certainly accelerate, and you're just like, what in the hell is going on? Why do we keep having troops there that are not fighting anything related to American national security in the middle of this beehive of activities where our alleged partner, Israel, is doing everything in their power to sabotage any move towards peace and trying to spawn a bigger war? It's just madness.

And literally, we've been bombing Iraq for 33 years. Took a couple of years off there from like 11 to 13. And otherwise, we've been bombed. I know it's a lighter tempo in Iraq war, three and a half here, three and three quarters. It's been a lighter tempo. But still, we've been bombing them at least every few months at the very minimum. This whole time, we're just like two years off there since I was a freshman in high school. Yeah. It's just a staggering when you look at it in the context. I mean, you know, I remember when I was in high school and I first, you know, even heard the term. There was a 30 years war. And I remember thinking, that is absurd and insane. Who would ever carry a war on that long? And now then we are, we beat it and we're trying to make it even worse. And it's just as insane as I thought it was back in high school now that it's our reality today.

Yeah. All right, so the real context, you just nailed it, right, is that this is Israel's war. They have the Iranian Shiite Theocracy and its friends are the alliance opposed to Israel in the region now. All the Sunni kings are in America's pocket and Israel's pocket. So it's Iran, not exactly the Iraqi government, but maybe a little bit in a deniable form. like you're saying, these PMU militias very closely associated with the Iraqi army that Petraeus built out of the Bada Brigade there. And then, of course, the Syrian government and Hezbollah and southern Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen. And so you're talking about Netanyahu's trying to make this worse. The real question is how much worse? And is that clearly what he's trying to do now is escalate this thing into a full-scale war, but he knows he's got to be able to drag Biden a long end of the thing because he can't do it alone. That's how I see it.

And to me, if there was any doubt, if anybody was trying to give Netanyahu any benefit of the doubt, that was eliminated when they assassinated the lead negotiator, the lead political figure for Hamas in Tehran during the presidential inauguration, I mean, they chose the absolutely most emotionally sensitive moment to ensure that there could be. no negotiated settlement. There could be no negotiations. And that's, of course, on the heels of April when they destroyed a diplomatic compound in Syria that belonged to Iran. And they continue to assassinate leaders in Hezbollah. I mean, they're doing everything it's humanly possible to spawn a war and drag the United States into it. It's just spectacularly horrible. All right. Now, so we all know that Biden is an insane Zionist and also just plain old insane due to old age at this point, too. And yet, at least there's some reports that he's drawn a pretty stark line here.

And I don't know where the orders come down from exactly, Danny, but I remember reading a news piece in the New York Times the other day that said, BB is insubordinate. He's out of line and he's gone rogue and he's refusing to obey Joe Biden's orders to not do the worst things. and he keeps going anyway. So it seems like these two don't have the very best relationship and that possibly Biden in his more lucid moments is trying to tell his government to tell the Israeli government

to exercise some restraint here or just no way. This is ghost riding a bicycle down suicide hill at this point. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, yeah, I'm sure that those quotes are correct that Biden did say those things. I've seen another couple of them here in just the last few days. But I had on my show, John Mearsheimer earlier today, we were talking about some of these very things. And look, I showed a bunch of clips to where Biden and going all the way back to Obama, I could have really continued to go all the way back even to Jimmy Carter, where, you know,

Americans keep talking about we want a two-state solution and we care about the Palestinian people and they need peace and all this kind of stuff. And then you see the Israelis just point blank, whether it was Benjamin Netanyahu, whether it was Neftali Bennett. they're just saying, yeah, no, we're not going to do any of that stuff at all. There's no two-state solution. We're going to run everything from the river to the sea. We're going to do everything we can to get all the Palestinians out. I mean, they're saying these things out loud. And then they take actions like what's been going on here lately.

And you talk about what the U.S. has said. I mean, just go back just not too long ago to Rafa, where there had been so many civilian casualties on the Palestinian side, so many, you know, the international criminal court had said it's plausible that Israel is conducting a genocide. You've had some other figures, I'm sorry, some other court cases have come down against them since that time and all this stuff. And then Biden finally said, all right, you know what, Rafa is the red line. If you go into Rafa, we're going to hold back some of our weapons, et cetera. And so he started to hold back some of that because Israel said, yeah, whatever you said, in the next day, there's rolling tanks into Rafa. And

Biden got mad again. And we got angry. And he started to hold back. some of the, at least one category of weapons, the 2,000-pound bombs. People in America went crazy. All these other people, both the Republicans and Democrats were saying, my God, how can you do that, withhold anything? So they put pressure. We put pressure on Biden to back off, whereas Benjamin Agnews him. He doesn't even pretend to want to do anything he says. And so now then you're at the most important issue where it could explode into a regional conflict of unprecedented. predictable nature that could include everybody from possibly Iran, Hezbollah, maybe even Turkey, possibly Egypt, maybe Jordan, maybe even Russia and China to some degree because of some

things that have been going on, you know, all kinds of moving pieces going on in here. And this thing is just on the brink of explosion. And nobody in the White House is doing anything except complaining, but they're not doing anything tangible like stopping weapons programs or putting a hard no on any issue here. So Netanyahu's continuing to go forward with whatever he wants to do. That's where we are. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's an election year, and they wouldn't dare across this foreign government

that has, as we can see right in front of our eyes from the news this morning, that they got veto power over American politics. They just got another scalp out of Cory Bush from Missouri. the other day, they got another African-American candidate to run against her, a prosecutor, and they gave him millions and millions and millions of dollars on one issue only. Israel. Couldn't get further from Missouri than Israel. They spent $8 million on that primary campaign just because she was adamant about taking care of Palestinian people. I actually talked about that on my show as well, and I showed some clips of

her in April talking about how, you know, anyone should be shamed if they don't care anything about the Palestinian people who are getting killed. And now then we see the tangible result where the, you know, many of the APEC and some of these other groups funded her opponent to the tune of $8 million for a single house seat primary. I mean, they didn't even got to the general election yet because that's how much they care about complete subservience to Israeli demands. Yep. It's a hell of a thing.

I mean, in a way, I kind of wonder whether Netanyahu is extending the war just to hurt the Democrats more because he just figures he has a more loyal ally and Donald Trump, who, after all, is not backed by any power faction in America other than the Israel lobby. I don't know how you could get any more pliable than what they have right now. So I don't know that he didn't do anything to try to get Trump because he's, He's already got it with where he's at right now. Can you even imagine a president, Kamala Harris, pushing back where Joe didn't?

I don't see it. Oh, no. I mean, well, I wouldn't think it's a genuine worry or anything. But then again, Donald Trump is avowedly in Miriam Adelson's pocket and makes no bones about it. And when Biden held up one shipment of 2,000 pound bombs for a day, Trump denounced him for abandoning Israel. And, you know, call him a Palestinian in the debate. all of this stuff. So, um, and you know, it was funny. I hadn't realized this, but Michael Tracy recently brought up that Trump at a meeting of the Republican Jewish coalition had actually

singled out Miriam Adelson in the crowd and said, hey there, Miriam, thanks for the money. I moved the embassy to Jerusalem because of that money that your dead husband gave me. Thanks for the money. Hope you like your embassy moving that I moved for an example. exact dollar price that you paid. I mean, that's just who he is and how he is. And so, and nobody else supports him other than American voters who don't really count, and

the Israel lobby. But the rest of the establishment is with the Democrats. So that just means he's got to be all the way in the bag for them. Because they're all he's got, you know? I guess, but I mean, who's not in that category, though? Republican or Democrat, House, Senate,

White House, who's not in that category? I mean, Bush tried to not be. Corey Bush, you see what happened to her? Yeah. And, you know, that's a sign shot across the bow that all the other members of Congress or senator or any hopefuls. They see that and they're like, okay, I guess we have to back down. But, you know, here's the problem, Scott. That, as long as the region doesn't explode into anything, that can continue on because people want to get elected. They want to get money for campaigns. They don't want anybody to go against them. So they'll just give into that because

it doesn't matter, you know, really. It doesn't affect anything. thing as far as they're concerned. But when this, if this war explodes in here and now all of a sudden it gets us drawn into a war that all we can do is kill a bunch of people and have a bunch of Americans killed but gain nothing in the end. And it could go even worse. And God only knows how things could spin out of control after that. Then maybe people will go, oh, shoot, we better start looking out for American interest instead of what the Israeli lobbies want. But of course, it'll be too late for that then, but I don't know that short of that, anything will change that dynamic. Yeah. Hey, y'all, let me tell you about Robertson Roberts, Brokerage

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the libertarian antics of cartoon me, along with all my new pals. That's tuttledwins.com slash 10 years. You know, it's the curse of the two-party system in a way, right? that they're going to, there's always going to be, you know, both parties half good and half bad on all different kinds of things. And when it comes to issues like foreign policy, you could have a lot of really good anti-war conservatives in the Republican Party and a lot of good anti-war liberals and progressives in the Democratic Party. But they're never the ones in charge. And the bipartisan consensus by the rulers of both parties is always for the wrong thing, or virtually always.

especially in foreign policy. And so you're right. I mean, I'd hate to think that it's going to have to come to a worse crisis. But you know, it was funny because when you mentioned Bush, I forgot about Cory Bush for a second because I got what Biden's got. And I thought you're going to talk about W. Bush, because, in fact, W. Bush tried to stand up to Ariel Sharon on advice from Colin Powell after September 11th.

And so we have to do a two-state solution now. This is the number one leading cause of anti-American terrorism in the world. And if we solve this, we can wrap this thing up quick. And Bush said, okay, Colin Powell, I'm with you. and then Ariel Sharon sent his minions in the form. Oh, and this is, your buddy Meersheimer will tell you all about this. It's in his book. They sent Tom DeLay, the majority whip in the house.

The third ranking leader of the house. To come and tell the president of the United States, you better back down, boy. Are you going to lose every evangelical vote? Just like they all stayed home for your dad in 1992, we're going to do it to you, Bush's again. if you don't shut the hell up about this and push back down and the Israeli press reported that Sharon's guys could not suppress their delight as they laughed about this and bragged that they saw the whites in Colin Powell's eyes but he blinked first and they won and that was you know before they even invaded Iraq for the Lakoud that was just between September 11th and the start of Iraq War II I was not aware of that part that that isn't used to me Not surprising, but it is news. And that's in the lobby by Mearsheimer and Walt. I'm pretty sure that's in the article version.

It's definitely in the book. But I'm pretty sure that's in the article version of the lobby that Mearsheimer and Walt published in 2006 there. We talked about that book today, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it holds up. I'll tell you what. Okay, so now, before I let you go here,

let me ask you about what's going on on the front in Ukraine. I know the Russians are steadily devourable. what's left of Donetsk under Ukrainian control there. I know there was a lot of fighting around Harkiv, and the news this morning is that not just irregular fighters, but actual Ukrainian soldiers have invaded the Kursk region and had a massive fight there. So I wonder what I'm missing and what's it all mean, you think?

Yeah, this is just another last gasp, ridiculous thing. You may recall last year, toward the end of the 2023 offensive, they launched a strike, the Ukrainian side did on the Denepper River down in the southern part, a round place called Crinky, and they established a beachhead across on the Russian side of that, and a lot of people were trying to make a hay on that. And I remember thinking at the time, I'm like, this is insane. There is no possibility that they're going to be able to penetrate. across the Dnepa River with any combat power

and then threaten the Russians for the same reason that they couldn't do it when they tried their offensive, the main offensive in the summer of 2023. And that's exactly the way it turned out. It was a lot of splashy. There's lots of American headlines that said, you know, Russia or Ukraine is finally making some progress

against Russia, et cetera. Now then here's this one in Kursk to where they have taken some of their badly-needed offensive power and they're making a push into the Kursk region. And by all accounts, it's not small. It's like 300 square kilometers of territory, which is quite sizable. But you can't do anything with it. All they're going to do is make sure that Russia sends forces back up there.

They'll crush what was in there because they don't have the capacity to invade Russia. So all they're going to do is get a lot more people killed, people that they're going to need against. There's already reports, and it has been for weeks and weeks now, that Russia has a force of somewhere between 2 and 300,000 troops. out of contact besides the five to six hundred thousand that they have along the line of combat where they've been making steady progress this entire calendar year now then you've got something that's made a bunch of splashes and again it did what they wanted with got a lot of western headlines and I've seen some people talking even on my channel earlier on an Israeli situation they're saying yeah see all you talk about the Ukraine's going to collapse

now then they're going on the office well that does nothing but gain some headlines it's going to get a lot of people killed it will not change the outcome because it doesn't do anything on the strategic balance of power between the two sides it's just a temporary media splash that's just going to get more ukrainian men kill that's uh that's the embarrassing part of it yeah uh you know what that's even what the experts that talked to the new york times said i just read the piece before we went on here and they said that they gained zero tactical advantage from this they're going to lose every single guy that they sent in right they've already lost like 200 killed and 300 wounded according to the russians but

virtually they're all going to get killed the thousand-something guys all their stuff destroyed and he said they don't even gain any tactical advantage because i think as you were just explaining there the troops that are being sent to kill them are not being moved from ukraine they're all reserves on the russian side of the line anywhere so in other words nothing changes on the battlefield in ukraine in response to their attack inside russia here and and what i get what i'll expect to see the coming few days is that Russia will probably be very angry about that, and they'll probably step up their bombardment in some of the other areas to extract a price. I don't think that they're going to take kindly to this, and it won't be neutral. I think that you're going to see

an even more withering fire elsewhere on the line of contact. It's going to put pressure on the Ukrainian side, and now that they're going to have these men to even defend the areas where they had. So it's just an embarrassing situation that's, again, causing more Ukrainian casualties. Yeah. The only motive that they could even think of, I guess they're just sort of like speculating that, well, maybe the purpose is just to try to make Putin look bad and make the Russian people feel like, oh, I guess Putin can't protect us. But he said, that doesn't work. Well, that's ridiculous. Yeah. I mean, it may, it may have a moment where the people go, wait, what happened? Because for sure, those people down there thought they were safe. And all of a sudden, now here's there's some literal Russian towns that are being, you know, potentially at least periodic. or temporarily captured, because I did see that some of the lines are actually into neighborhoods. Russian neighborhoods have been captured, and it's really upsetting for them. And I'm sure it'll be, I'm sure it is embarrassing to Putin. But all it's going to do is make him mad and make him take more action.

So it's not going to work out well. Yeah. Yeah, what a disaster. On the last note, I just wanted to mention here. This is something that, you know, is I guess, maybe just unique to me right now just because of the happenstance. I'm trying to finish editing this book down to a reasonable length. And for some link reason, I ended up working on my Bosnia section again. This whole thing's kind of out of order. And in fact, I ended up watching a little documentary about the siege of Sarajevo, which lasted

for about four years there. And they talked about the bombing and the sniping and all that and the misery of the Muslim population there under siege by the Serbs for all that time. And, and And I just thought, one, man, there's no hyperbole to it. Oh, he's an absolute horror show what these people are going through. And two, well, that's nothing compared to what the people of Palestine are suffering through right now when you look at what's going on in Gaza. And they call that a genocide just for one day's mask or two days massacre at Sabrinits, a couple thousand, you know, well, I don't know, it was a couple, it may have been 7,000 killed. They call that a genocide. They call, you know, sieging and sniping this city for four years of genocide. But look, comparatively to what's happening in Gaza right now, it's nothing. If you just change the names and told Joe Biden that it was Slobodomelosovich doing this to the Muslims of Gaza and just told them it was Bosnia, then he'd launch a war right now to protect these people. Yeah. And instead, we're providing the bombs to kill them.

It's just anguishing. It is. It's totally nuts. And especially when the sides are so comparable, right? Like, you can just take the cookie cutter and just move it over. The same president who mongered the war back then when he was the senator. It's the same guy in charge now and, you know, isn't willing to do a thing except help the besiegers in this one, you know? Yeah.

It's unreal. It's just, it's hard for me to come. to grips with what the country's doing, with what the political leadership, the military leadership, it's just very discouraging and disheartening. Well, let me ask you, though, do you think that anti-Israel sentiment, broadly speaking, on the right or in the conservative movement is growing? I don't see any evidence of it growing on the right, maybe a little bit on the progressive side, certainly among the youth, which many times.

they don't even want to categorize themselves progressive or conservative they just consider themselves you know the youth uh but i i the longer this goes it just i think you do continue to see the support uh peel away and if this thing explodes into a war i think there's going to be a lot of people that are going to say screw all of you uh i just this is not anything i want to sign up for do something to stop it but we'll see i thought that might have happened before and it hasn't yet Yeah. I mean, like you said, oh, maybe we'll get the reaction after this next war, is like, and then you described how bad it'll be. It sounds like you're describing a Rock War II, which was all for Israel and which everybody should learn their lesson then. Back a generation ago, the fact we're even having this conversation now about, geez, you think the Lakud will get us into another war with a giant Middle Eastern power that starts with an eye, you know, right now is crazy. Yeah, this one might be different, though, in that there was no real cost to us. a lot of cost to the people in the region, but not a lot of cost to us.

This one might be different, especially if it turns into a broad war. I mean, it's not out of the question. We get some of our ships sunk, planes knocked out, troops killed. If it turns into an actual war and the gloves come off for Iran, because right now Iran doesn't want a war, and they've been doing everything they can to prevent one from happening, but if the gloves come off and they feel like that now then they have nothing to gain from resisting their urges, then we could suffer a lot, even though we have a lot more power than they do and could ultimately just crush them, but it would come at an extraordinary

cost for us, I think, worse than anybody, imagine, maybe even worse than what happened in, you know, the OIF, et cetera. Yeah, I mean, it's obvious. I don't know any reason whatsoever to think that they have the anti-missile capability to protect the Al-Ulid Air Base and the Fifth Fleet Base at Qatar and Bahrain, and all of the Army and whoever else stationed in Kuwait, and never mind, you know, whatever base is in UAE and Saudi as well. And the Iranians have so many missiles.

If Russia does, in fact, give them some of their advanced air defense missiles and offensive missiles, it could be a really, really bad war for us. Yeah. Well, and look, go back to January 2007. We got two or three sources on this, including Joe Klein and Newsweek, as one off the top of my head. They grabbed W. Bush, and they brought him to the bunker at the heart of the Pentagon, the basement down there in the bathtub or whatever the hell they call it. And they told him, Mr. President, we're not going to Iran. Don't make us fight Iran. We don't want to do it.

We know the vice president is trying to get us into war with Iran. We're just telling you, man, we don't want to because it would be so costly. So just find another way. And Bush said, okay. and that was you know that was why because Cheney and Petraeus they were conspiring remember the lies about the EFPs and everything they were pushing

so hard for strikes inside Iran in the name of Iranian support for McToddle al-Sauders guys in the spring of 07 and Bush wouldn't do it and it was because the Joint Chiefs had begged him not to because they just said this is we're we got way too much on our plate right

now please don't make us do this you know so there's a lesson for you right there and Bush took it to heart too. And Bush told Ehud Olmert, forget it. I talked to my generals. They told me no. So I'm telling you no. That's it.

You know, you can read that in the Guardian, that part, you know? I will check that out. Yeah. Yeah, because that was the thing. It was in 07 that he told Ulmer, no, and it was later that year was in November that the CIA and the NIC finally put out their estimates saying that they're not making nuclear weapons. So the EFPs were

debunked and the nuclear weapons were debunked in one year. And that really set back the war parties cause for a little while anyway. But anyway, I'm sorry, I know you got to go, Danny, but thank you so much for coming on the show. I love talking about this stuff with you. You know so much about it and got such a great take on everything. So really appreciate your time.

Always my pleasure, Scott. Thanks for having me. 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.