Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 9/3/21 Danny Sjursen on Afghanistan, Veterans and Counterinsurgency

Episode Date: September 7, 2021

Scott interviews Danny Sjursen and gets his reaction to the Taliban victory in Afghanistan. Sjursen thinks the Taliban’s campaign to take control of the country may soon be studied in war colleges. He also thinks that Scott’s book Fool’s Errand should be studied at war colleges, or at least books just as critical of the wars. Sjursen then talks about how this is a tough time for veterans, but that that isn’t a reason to hold back criticism of the war. That the idea that being antiwar implies a hatred of the troops is ridiculous and convenient for those in power.  Lastly, Sjursen reflects on the counterinsurgency mission he took part in Afghanistan. Discussed on the show: The Hunt for Red October Redeployment by Phil Klay  “American Purpose After the Fall of Kabul” (New Yorker) Curb Your Enthusiasm clip  The Operators by Michael Hastings  War Machine  Reign of Terror by Spencer Ackerman  Danny Sjursen is a retired U.S. army major and former history instructor at West Point. He is the author of Ghost Riders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge, Patriotic Dissent: America in the Age of Endless War and A True History of the United States: Indigenous Genocide, Racialized Slavery, Hyper-Capitalism, Militarist Imperialism and Other Overlooked Aspects of American Exceptionalism. Follow him on Twitter @SkepticalVet. 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. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHahmkWYZOk 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 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 you guys introducing the great danny sherson of course as you know he was a major in the u.s army he was in the iraq war two surge and the afghanistan surge and he wrote ghost soldiers of bagdad And his new book is a real history of the United States, and before that was patriotic dissent.

And he's a regular contributor at anti-war.com. Thank goodness for that. And I should mention, because I should mention, that right there tied with Doug Bondo, he is the most prolific writer probably in American anti-war history, certainly in our current era. And I'm not saying that you have to live up to that week in a week out. until you, you know, fall down of exhaustion. But that just happens to be the case. So if you guys want to read some Danny Sherson, there's a brand new one, pretty much always, somewhere.

Welcome to the show. How you doing, Danny? Oh, I'm great. Thanks for having me. Really happy to have you here. So, listen, I mean, the whole damn thing fell apart, and I want to hear everything that you think about it. You know, frankly, I'm sort of like a mix. And I guess a lot of the vets I talk to who are critical of the war feel the same way. it's uh you know there was like a range of emotions you know they say there's like stages

of grief or something so i've gone back and forth over the last few weeks between you know like a sort of frustration with you know what was it all for the waste the loss even just like the emotional turmoil over the years um talking to guys or even their families who were you know killed or or seriously wounded that i knew or served with me and uh and then completely not surprised not really um maybe the speed the sort of like scope and scale of the takeover you know was a little surprising but i had said you know not to not not to make my predictions out to be amazing or something but i had said in the weeks leading up to this you know i don't think it'll fall within weeks cabul but there's a significant chance it will because this thing may pick up a momentum like

there might be an inertia to this taliban tidal wave and that the thing is probably going to turn on morale and psychological factors. In a way, the speed with which this thing came apart is the ultimate exposure of, well, shoot, I mean, nobody's been more on this than you, right? Nobody's been more astute on Afghanistan. Nobody has been, you know, kind of honing in on the disaster of this war, even back when folks were saying it was the good war than you. And so I'm sure you're not surprised either in a way because it exposes the ludicrous, like the absurdity of the mission, the hollowness of the attempt. And then I think what has angered me and has along the whole time is the lies, the deceit, the deception, the dissembling,

the variety of that from the military leadership, from the civilian leadership, and that all came crashing down. My final guilty pleasure feeling about this, and we can dig into any one of these, is I'm kind of impressed with the Taliban. And right, and I've had, I've had a at least one person say on some sort of social media that I'm like some sort of Taliban supporter, which I find fascinating. I mean, I almost like that. I'm like, well, I must be saying the right things if they got that wrong impression. You know, because what what fascinates me, even just from let's take like a military tactical and operational standpoint, I've been doing a lot of like autopsy reading recently on just how this all came together. And really since about

2014. Autopsy. No, all coroners are apologists for murderers. Everybody knows that. Right. Right. You know, but it is, it is interesting, though, when you look at, like, how effective this campaign was, you know, if you even roll back to about 2014 when they really put this plan into effect, you know, I think they were reacting the circumstances to a certain extent, but they've, just the X's and O's on the map, you know, the way they took highways and slowly isolated district and then provincial centers and the methods with which they convinced, you know, Afghan forces. for the Kupul government to kind of lay down their arms. And the way they went straight to the north and seized Kduz and the Tsarish before the others could get him. What a great move that was, you know, if they could, if they could prove that the warlords in the north had turned bougie, right? We're more, had their houses elsewhere and were really hollow compared to what they

were during the Northern Alliance time. If they could expose the gap between those warlords and the Ashraf Ghani government, because no one wanted to die for Ghani, I mean, folks were saying that. and we don't want to die for, you know, Ashraf Ghani. It was sort of a, it was a well-crafted campaign. You can be illiterate even and craft such a campaign. And I have to stand a little bit and slow clap a bit and say, hey, you called in the chips. You called in our bets.

And it was pretty effective. And I don't think we should forget to give them a degree of credit on a military tactical perspective. Yeah. I mean, look, this goes back to who lost China, right? Shankai Shack lost China. China. Mow won it. And same thing here. All of our discussion about the war, the Taliban are never described as having won the war. Just, you know, well, the A&A lost it somehow or something like that. But, and I think you and I had talked about somebody's going to go back one day and do their PhD project on transcribing or having their super smart computer transcribe all my shows and go back and find all our. correct predictions here, but I think you and I had talked about the possibility that the Taliban would just walk right into Kabul when it came down to it rather than have to lay siege or fight

for it at all. Probably we mentioned that a few times over the years, that that would be, you know, what it looks like when the whole thing comes down. But absolutely. I think, you know what else is interesting, Scott? I mean, because you've studied the longer arc of this, this was a more, so far, right? There could be rebellions that could crop up. Oh, yeah. different areas over the north and oh yeah this is the first day of the rest of their life i mean this is we we don't know what's going to happen now really you know now they have a lot of warlords to appease or kill but this was a more complete victory than 94 96 98 right i mean that they they took the whole place essentially and even the panchia valley appears like they it's it's not holding

out in the same way i mean we'll see what happens but you know mussood's son was talking to them i read and this was just a complete in a way that others you know haven't been there there wasn't rocket attacks and street fighting in Kabul for years like there had been with the moja hadine after they came in like 92 right so that that's interesting and I think we have to take that into account you know someone else is going to do their PhD on probably at the army war college or something you know is going to do their thesis uh on this campaign and study the success of the Taliban efforts. And I think that's fascinating. But it's your point about the media coverage, the political coverage, is basically two, there's two ways to look at it. Biden lost this

personally. This was a Biden failure. This was like, oh, just feckless Biden. Or the A&A were cowards. They didn't want to fight for their own country. And you're right. No one's ever like, well, the Taliban did win, right? Like they did orchestrate a campaign against a, you know, a fairly sizable, although overrated, but fairly sizable Kabul government force that had been backed and assisted and at some points led by the global self-styled superpower. I mean, we do have to give them a little credit here. Right.

So listen, man, did you see that piece by Jack Murphy about the drone war and air war in the Trump years? You know, I haven't seen that particular piece, but I have read a bunch of stuff about just the, you know, especially after the children were killed in that last sort of drone attack, just a lot of reflections on the stats of overall American drone strikes and then stuff in the Trump era. So it's like this, man, is, you know, I think we've known for a long time that total numbers had gone up. You know, the cost of war project

and others, I think human, I don't know if it's HRW or amnesty or some had written about the higher level of casualties from air strikes. And then we knew from, I hate to say it, that fraud Charlie Savage's reporting in the New York Times and others that

they had reduced the command authority, lower down the chain of command. It used to be under Obama for at least the Afghanistan theater. You had to get a general to check off a box before you could do a strike. And they got rid of all of that and all that.

So we already knew that. But then this is from the point of view of the guys doing the killing man. And Jack Murphy, he's a former Green Beret. And he, you know, had numerous sources about all this, including brand new footage that was given to him and talks about how essentially what happened Danny was, unsurprisingly, I guess, the rules of engagement,

which were terrible, right? Everybody, you know, Daniel Hale and the drone papers show how horrible the drone war was in Afghanistan, killing innocent people. But that was under the relatively strict rules of engagement. But then what happened was the Islamic State took over Western Iraq somehow, never mind the backstory there. Apparently we just pulled our troops out of Iraq and that's what caused it. That's all you need to know about that. But anyway, once that happened and they went to war against the Islamic State, well, that was a whole different level of rules of engagement to destroy the Islamic State.

and then those rules of engagement migrated back to Afghanistan. So then it became, even though there's not a cell phone tower for 300 miles in any direction, anybody with a radio is dead meat. And literally, they explode them to death with bombs. And so they just killed thousands and thousands and thousands of people. And then if they had any corroborating evidence or intelligence at all, it was that this guy's in communication with a guy who was once in communication with a guy who we accuse of being Taliban.

And that kind of just absolute, you can't even call it bare bones link analysis, right? It's just computerized conspiracy theory, bull crap. And, you know, I'm looking at the piece right now, and it does sort of, it corroborates some of what we knew, and then it also demonstrates, I think it takes it a little further. So we knew that the strikes, you know, overall air strikes have gone up like six times, you know, from 2015 to 2018, 2019. The oftentimes folks will say, you know, the military is lying about how effective their technology is, how precision it is. But in some ways, that misunderstands the real problem. The real problem isn't whether the drone strike, the missile itself, is precise.

That's a problem, but the issue is targeting. And so even during the Obama era, there was these like signature strikes. is demonstrated that went even further. I mean, what they decide to count as an enemy competent or evidence of being an enemy combatant is not much more than what it took to get stopped and frisked in New York City. I mean, I've studied some of this stuff, you know, on a scholarly side when it comes to, you know, race and policing in New York, and most of the things that are listed are like furtive movement or matches a relevant description. Well, it appears that in Afghanistan and other theaters,

but like you said, a radio or a vague communication with someone that might be Taliban. That is such a great analogy. Fertive movement, exactly. Wasteband. Right. And so that's the thing.

So even if the missile is as technologically savvy as they say, it's not. But even if it is, maybe we're talking about the wrong thing by focusing on the shrapnel. Right. By focusing on the blast radius because it's really,

what does it take to strike somebody? And if the threshold is so low to strike somebody that makes them a target. And if we decide to count anybody who meets that as not a civilian casualty. So like they mentioned in the article in Helmand, they list that one toddler, but not the two random people next to them, next to that child. It's like, how can we ever know and will we ever really know the number of civilians that we were killing? So this whole idea that America pulling out is like a human rights disaster. And as long as we stayed, we were going to protect it. It's like, no, no, we were killing us and the Afghans.

in 2018, 2019, we're killing more civilians in the Taliban. And that was with the numbers we had. And who knows how high it really was. Yeah. We were part of the problem. All right. Now, even though we kind of just answered this question, I'm going to step back one. And this to me obviously sounds like total BS.

And I know that you won't agree with it either. However, I want you to take it seriously for argument's sake, if only because of where it's coming from. and that is General H.R. McMaster, who's, you know, Mr. Brainiac of the U.S. Army, reads books and everything. And he was the National Security Advisor under Donald Trump, the second one there for a while. And it was he and Mattis who came up with the plan for Trump's Afghan surge, 10,000 troops and the massive expansion of the air war that we just talked about.

But he has absolutely livid and all over TV and probably, you know writing articles i guess uh you know complaining about this afghan withdrawal and that's happening at all not just how badly it was botched but that it's happening at all and one claim that i saw him make was that look man you know what right around 2017 we had this thing finally dialed in and we finally had our act together and we really knew what we were doing and we could have man if only i was you know still there this whole time kind of thing things would be going exactly our way and then what happened stupid old donald trump went and started negotiating with these guys and gave him a ceasefire and so then we had to dial back see not the air war we had dial back our ground war against them

our assistance to the a and a on the ground to a degree and our participation and all of that and taking the fight to them. And then ever since then, that was when the Taliban started getting stronger and stronger and stronger. So, you know, but everything was cool back when he was there. And obviously, that's self-serving. But you know what? Maybe it's also true.

And you know what? If you were in charge and you thought you had it straight and then you got fired and then everything went to hell, then you would say it the same way too. So maybe he's right. What do you say to that? I do think we have to take the guy seriously. Look, I think HR McMaster has gone off the rails over the last several years. I've been following him for a long time.

I mean, I come from a world, the West Point world, the West Point History Department world, where HR is a god. I mean, I've told you that, somebody sits at his desk. The desk that he used to have in his office when he taught there as a captain in the major is like, it's an honor if you get that office, right? You get to sit at HR's desk. you know he wrote he wrote dereliction of duty he reads books he's one of those warrior monks right him and mattis and betrayus and all that and he's not always been wrong about everything but i have watched him come off the rails a bit um i've watched him become a hyper hawk more than he was and i have no explanation for that by the way i i really have thought about i don't know why um he may

not be completely wrong that we had the thing in a stasis while he was there. He may not be wrong that we may have been able to maintain that basic stalemate where the Taliban, not exactly a stalemakes, the Taliban was already stronger in 2016 than they had been in, you know, pretty much any other time. And they were creeping up on their power. But we were able, we were probably able to keep them in check. I mean, we went from the Taliban controlling zero provincial capitals to pretty much all of them in the course of what, nine days. I mean, so for, for 19, you know, if we say it was 20 years, it wasn't exactly 20 years that we were there, but let's take that, you know, for 19 years and, you know, 356 days, the Taliban really couldn't control any provincial capitals and suddenly

they did. So I understand where he might come from with that, but what he can't answer, and nobody has really been able to, is to what end for how long? When was the tipping point going to come where we really? turn the tide against the Taliban? When was the Afghan government going to have enough income? What do they have? It was an $18 billion GDP or revenue, I think it was, basically not enough to pay for their own security forces. When was that going to get fixed? When was the massive tiger economy growth for Afghanistan going to come, right? Were they going to be able to pay for themselves? When were they not going to rely on our airstrikes? When were they going to be able to

maintain their own helicopter fleet and their own, uh, fixed wing fleet. When was that going happen? You know, he didn't have any answers for that. He doesn't have any answers for how long. His answer, actually, he does in a way, is forever. I mean, these are the guys who talk about 100 year wars. And I almost respect those folks, because unlike the polite liberals, they will say generational war, like plural, generationals or whatever, right? So there's that. And you know, but I also reject a lot of this warrior monk stuff, and yeah, they read books, Petraeus, reads books. Like, take a guy like Petraeus. First of all, his thesis on Vietnam is all wrong.

I mean, the whole idea that counterinsurgency was going to win that thing, that the real key was, you know, the sort of civil military cords program and the strategic hamlets and the Marines had it right. And if we would have stuck with that, you know, it reminds me of that scene towards the end of the red octoberts. hunt for the Red October, you know, where Captain Rameas is talking with Harrison Ford, you know. So it's like Sean Connery and, you know, Captain Rameas, you know, Sean Connery, the Russians, like, hey, what books did you write? You know, I heard you write books. And he says, oh, I wrote a biography of Admiral Halsley. It's called like the Fighting Sailor about naval combat tactics.

And then Sean Connery, the Russian, goes, I know this book. Your conclusions were all wrong, Ryan. You know, and in some ways, I feel that way about these warrior monk types. Like, they read books, but they're reading all the wrong books. And they're coming up with all the wrong conclusions. So, I don't know, that's my general view of HR. I don't find the critique to be persuasive, but I do understand where it is coming from. It's just there's that next point where I don't think they've ever really been able to answer the question of, okay, to what end and for how long.

Yeah. Well, you know, Douglas McGregor, his former superior officer and I think sort of rival, if you read Mark Perry's take on it. Yes. Um, he, he said in his, uh, blurb for Fools Aaron that he recommended Fools Aaron to the Army War College because he thought it was really important that they look at it, but they didn't. You know, he's, it was the war college of some other thing, two different military schools that he, you know, asked them like, hey, you guys ought to add this book to your roster, whatever, but I see no indication that that ever happened. I don't guess that they're, you know,

into reading things like that so much. Yeah, it's funny you should say that I don't see any of my books necessarily getting on the official reading lists of, you know, the chiefs of staff or anything like that. But I can tell you that there have been at least two officers, one of whom is pretty high up there, who have assigned ghost riders of Agdad like to their lieutenants and captains. And that always makes me laugh a little bit. I have to admit, like there's some sort of like vindicating feeling. But then there's also this part of me that's like, oh, no, like I can't even imagine

someone would do that, you know? Yeah, no, that's correct. there's a little bit different in a way because it is like, you know, it's, it's not like the memoir disillusionment, although there was plenty of analysis in my first book, but it really is a take that folks should be reading that. Like, people who are about to take over brigades and get to that senior level should be reading critical histories of these wars and too often what they read, because I've seen the reading list. I've gone through them. I've read almost everything on every chairman's reading list, every war college reading list. I'm fast.

I'm fascinated by it. In fact, I want to write a whole article about these reading lists. Maybe I will for any more or com. Maybe I write a series. Most of the books that are critical, that they think are radical choices, what they really argue is like the tactics were wrong or like the strategy was a little off, like if we would have done more coin or we would have done a little less coin and more conventional. You know, they nibble at the edges and they never take a look at a book that says the whole thing was preposterous and here's why.

Right. Yep. Yep. Well, that wouldn't be in their interest to do so, would it? Man, so listen, talk to me about veterans. I don't know about, I saw some headlines, about tens of thousands of guys calling the suicide hotlines and stuff as all this has fallen apart. I think, you know, when ISIS rolled into Western Iraq in 2014, a lot of guys took that really hard as well. You know, you're telling me, me and my boys gave R. All in Samara and Ramadi to see. see all this fall apart. I guess Ramadi took another year. But anyway, you know what I mean. So, uh, yeah. And look, I, I know you gave this thing you're all when you're there. I mean,

in Kandahar province of all places in the heart of this thing. Uh, how do you feel about it? And what do you have to say to your guys, major? Well, they've been checking in with me. You know, my, my peers, um, some of my superiors, I mean, there's a general officer in my life who's checked in with me and just been horrified and frustrated and angry and and not they're not a monolith and then my soldiers right I'm in touch with a lot of these guys and people are checking on one another I have noticed that and I've read other veterans who've written that

you know are you doing all right how you feeling about all this and not everyone feels the same way you know some of the veterans are like Biden blew this right and I don't agree with that but some feel that way and I and I know why they do like I like I get it like especially guys who aren't hyper sophisticated on this stuff right who I've been following and reading the books that you and I have, so I don't hate him for it, even if I disagree profoundly with the conclusion. There is something pretty grotesque about the way the volunteer force has been used. And yes, we were all volunteers. And yes, especially if you volunteered after

9-11 and a good bit after 9-11, the evidence was there of what you were volunteering for. But I still don't fully accept the idea that that obviates you of like any sympathy. I do think we have to take that seriously. And I think we're not just victims, right? I'm not that veteran who thinks that. But it's kind of grotesque that we've been used for, you know, enlisted soldiers at the lower level, 30, 40 grand a year, maybe 50. I don't know, with combat pay of stuff like if they're infantry guys. And for these like absurd crusades, hopeless, lie.

about the progress, you know, because they're not just lying in the American people when they say there's light at the end of the tunnel. They're lions of the veterans who have to go back, you know, and I think that that really is obscene, and I understand the frustration about it. I'm glad it's over, or at least this one is kind of probably, hopefully. You know, I'm glad that no one else is going back, you know, hopefully. But, you know, Phil Clyde wrote something in the New Yorker. You know, he wrote that, like, award-winning book. redeployment years back and I did there were parts that jumped out at me and there's just one paragraph that he'd recently published he said how does it it resonate enough that I was reading

it you know just last night in fact highlighting it and it kind of hit me you know because I've experienced some of this with some of my guys said how does it feel as a veteran who watched the Iraqi province where I served fall to ISIS to now watch this country where Marines I knew were shot or blown up or killed fall to the Taliban who cares he says says, who cares how the vets who battled alcohol addiction only to start drinking again this week are feeling? Who cares what my marine friends are feeling as they receive frantic text messages from Afghan allies? Not for sure Americans for the last 20 years. Now, that's a pretty angry paragraph, at least the end. But I will tell you, there are moments I allow myself to feel

that frustration with the public that polls show what 13, 14% were actually following the Afghan war. I allow myself that frustration well and I will tell you a lot of my fellow vets feel it real strongly. Yeah. And I know guys who started drinking again

and I know you guys including myself. You guys know too what a Jedi mind trick, more like a Sith mind trick they use on the public here. No, to criticize the war is betraying the troops. You can't say that the war is wrong. That That's what's stabbing Danny in the back, rather than saying, look, we're risking Danny

and his guy's lives out there for no good reason. This thing ends in 10 or 20 years. It's going to look the same. We ought to not do it. That's controversial. You want to support the troops. You support the war. Everybody knows that.

And so it sucks because people are really stuck behind that. I don't know. I'm sure you must have seen this hilarious clip from Larry David, Curve Your Enthusiasm. where the guy's like, yeah, I just came home from Afghanistan. And everybody thanks him, oh, thank you for your service. Thank you for your service. Thank you for your service. And then Larry's like, hey, how you doing?

And then everybody gets all mad that Larry doesn't, you know, genuflect before this guy for being in the infantry. You know, oh, yeah, dude. We're so much freer in L.A. Because you were out on patrol in the Hellman province somewhere. Let's all pretend to believe that this afternoon or whatever it is. And you're in real trouble, Larry, David. If you don't, too.

Everybody's mad at him, you know, the rest of the episode. And anyway, so they screw the American people. You've got to be willing to say, no, I'm sorry, I have my own criteria for what counts is sticking up for soldiers, and I'm going to stick with that. But you have to have some wherewithal for that, you know? That takes a degree of confidence that's completely lacking. And I actually like it better. I like the Larry David way better.

I can't stand the reflexive and obflexive. obligatory like just thanks and pretend because most of it's pretend like even most of people who are saying it even if they're not saying it in like a mean way or anything not trying to insult you do they really believe that that it deserves a thanks that you patrolled sand gin district you know what i mean like in helmand like it the honest part of it is thanks for putting yourself at risk in a selfless way to protect me you believe at least anyway right you know kind of thing which sure sure you know I appreciate that too Danny frankly you know like boy were you want a fool's errand out there but

the fact that you were saying like hey look to protect my people back home I'm willing to risk my own ass that's a big deal in its own little way you know and in a weird way I'd probably do it again that's the crazy part I mean I don't even know if I liked the way I sound saying that or if I even like that feeling but people ask me all the time what would you do like we should go to the academy again. Would you choose a combat job? Would you do that? And like there's this sick, maybe it's the masochistic, you know, mother's Irish side of the family part, but I probably would. I mean, in a crazy way, there's just this sense of like, well, like, kids were out there

doing it and uh i don't know maybe i maybe i would do the whole thing over again i don't love the way that sounds but and maybe that's even a character flaw that that's possible that i would think that so you know i'm not certainly not like sitting on the veterans or even the the idea of um people like thanking us i think a lot of times it does come from a good place but i think that it also requires like a degree of civilian like gumption that i respect to be like yeah but this whole thing is a mess This whole thing is wrong. And just because I didn't serve doesn't mean I don't get to say that. And I'm a citizen.

And because I'm a citizen, my representatives are the ones supposed to be making these decisions. And I think this is wrong. And so while I respect that you went out there and did it, I think it's a fool's errand. And it doesn't mean that I don't respect the troops to say that. And I do think that, especially in the first decade after 9-11, and really even still, but especially then, that was immediately thought of as being at these. troop and that was a canard that whole thing was purposefully kind of built and it's been there for a long time was there during the vietnam war especially in the beginning but that's dangerous talk and uh and it and it suits the powerful right it suits the hawks to have that be the the culture

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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 audiobooks. They're at listen and think.com and, of course, on Audible.com.

and they feature my book, Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, as well as brand new out inside Syria by our friend Reese Erlich and a lot of other great books, mostly by libertarians there. Rees 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. well and it's funny because some people swear that this never happened there's no evidence there's no real newspaper contemporary newspaper reports about it and this kind of thing and then other people swear that oh they know it's true they saw it with their own eyes of people spitting on soldiers coming home from vietnam conscripts coming home from vietnam and hippies spitting on him who knows whether it happened or not i don't really know but doesn't really matter you know what matters is

what a great myth for anti-war forces to have have to live down forever, even though they never did any of it. Nobody around today saying anything, or in the last 20 years criticizing this policy has anything to do with that. But oh, no, to criticize the mission would be essentially what would the soldiers think if they heard that people back home didn't believe in the war? That's like spitting on them and telling them that they're, you know, doing the wrong thing. And you never want to do that. Think of how bad you could hurt the feelings of a soldier if you were telling him he was doing the wrong thing when of course the whole point is that the think tanks and the secretary the deputy secretary defense for policy

and the president of the united states are doing the wrong thing you can't find any but well i won't say that it's very rare to find someone who would write a whole piece about how really this is all the infantry's fault you know them and their dads that sign them up for this thing or something like that people might write something like that every like once in a while but i can't say i've ever seen one like that i mean in a in a way there's an argument there if no one signs up for the army then we don't have one great but um that's not that good of a point compared to criticizing richard who lied us into war you know what i mean um but but yeah what a great canard as you said what a great little kind of veil to hide behind you know and you know the other

other irony there, Danny, is, you know, I know a guy who ran a business that was near Fort Hood where he's got soldiers coming in all the time. And he's like conditioned from TV that he's supposed to say this. Oh, thank you for your service. Thank you for your service. And he says he quit saying it because all the soldiers were all annoyed by it. And that they would all say the same thing to him. It's just a job, man. It doesn't mean anything. Or something like that, you know? But that was like the refrain. It's just a job. It's like having a different job, only it's this job and not much special to it even you know that's not like a dissenting point of view that's just kind of neutral you know people who spend a lot of time around soldiers

probably do do that less after a while that reflexive thing because i have noticed that you know sometimes when i'm actually further from the bases when i'm further from the world where folks actually know and love and care about and interact with soldiers on a regular basis, you'll actually see more of that sort of reflexive thinking and that, like, strange sense of caveating before they give any opinion by saying, like, you know, I didn't serve and all that. And I understand some of that, but it can go a little far. But people who spend a lot of time around troops, yeah, I've noticed that where they're like, yeah, like, I get it. I know what they're really about. I don't know how they feel. And when you're a professional, and this is a

volunteer force, and the people who stay in, my peers, they're pros. You know, I always will say, like, I felt like a mercenary by the time I got to Afghanistan because I was fighting wars I was against, you know, and I was staying for bad reason. Now, no, I'm not saying that all of my peers felt that they didn't. I happen to. I don't think that everyone necessarily should. That's up to them. But they definitely see themselves as pros. Like, this is a job. this is my career and you know

I'm not a con script I know what I'm getting into I don't need to talk about it all the time and so it doesn't surprise me what you're saying about somebody who's got a business outside hood or a place like that because you kind of get the feel for soldiers

after a while and get a sense for what matters to them what makes them tick I mean sometimes they don't they don't want to always be a cliche they don't want to like be defined just you know some do we don't be wrong there's there's guys out there

who like just can't get enough of it, but that's, that's the exception. I'd say the vast majority that they don't want to be defined by what they did, what they do for living, who they are. I think most of the time that's just, it is just a job. And we, and we should be honest about that. And it doesn't mean that you disrespect the troops. And actually what you were saying about how sometimes there's, there are articles occasionally that are like blame this in the troops.

A lot of times those are actually written by the, by the, by the, that's. which is interesting right right yeah because nobody else would dare say that you know really or very rarely anyway you know there there's i guess there are political radicals who might take that position but i think you're right that that's mostly in fact the only person who comes to mind that i'm thinking of who i can think of who said anything resembling that at all in recent memory the former marine i won't name him here because i don't know he'd probably want me to It's Adam Kokesh. You know, he's the kind of guy who will say, no way, man.

If you're a specialist, you're a grown-ass man. You know what you're doing. Or, you know, whatever it is, that would I'm sure would be his position on that. I'm pretty sure I'm paraphrasing him from, you know, something on Twitter just the other day, in fact. And he was there at Fallujah, which he wasn't fighting. He was like in support at Fallujah, but, you know, more or less, same part of the same war. And I do think that by a certain point in the war. for sure. We knew what we were involved. I felt complicit by the time I was in Afghanistan.

But at the same time, like you said, I really, I did give it my all. I mean, even when I was against the overall war, I mean, at that point, I'm not saying whether this is right or wrong. I have some guilt about it. And then other times I give myself a little grace on it, I don't know, I go back and forth. But when I was there in 2011 in Kandahar, I didn't think we should be doing what we were doing as a country, but I was there and I thought, well, what am I going to do in my district? So it was a combination of definitely top priority in many ways was just walk away with as many of my guys as I could. And there were times, frankly, where I broke rules. I told lies, right? Or I have truths or omissions in order to minimize the number of missions that I was

sending my guys on and all that. But I was also still trying to bring as much stability as possible to the area, partly because if I could achieve that, then maybe there would be less violence and less than my guys would get hurt. But I was still trying. You know, we did give our all. It's not like we were just out there just slaughtering people or just hiding on the base. I mean, it was always more complicated than that.

and it tends to be it tends to be but that and that's part of the frustration is like man we were all in and and people will criticize folks who criticize the war and then we'll forget to criticize people who created and then lied about this whole thing and that is frustrating yeah hey man tell us a little bit more about this counterinsurgency doctrine and you know strategy as you were was it already over i mean this is right at the time you're there in canthard were you implementing coin or everybody's already rolling their eyes at this BS and we're just kind of escalating. I mean, what did this look like to you? And I guess, I mean, again, you know, I can't play a devil's advocate too stupidly. Like, I don't know. The whole thing sounds ridiculous to me,

but maybe there was something of an angle to these people really don't support the Taliban. The Taliban might as well be foreigners to them, really, and that they would like for us to protect them and build up a separate security force to keep the Taliban away and that we can win their hearts and minds so that they'll accept you guys as the security force and then you guys can bring the Afghan National Army in kind of to replace you and what because look the Taliban are a bunch of medieval goons who could possibly want them around so you know I'm trying to set up the parameters for belief that the surge might be a worthwhile policy to try in Kandahar something like that so that you can explain what it

looked like when you tried it sort of deal, you know? Sure. Well, it was still hot enough. Petraeus had taken over. McChrystal had already been fired. Petraeus did this weird back step from what he had done in Iraq. So when he takes over for McChrystal, he actually is a little less coin

than McChrystal was. He re-implements more airstrikes. He takes away some of the limits on rules of engagement. For all his BS, Petraeus did know that Afghanistan was a different country, I mean, in his heart than Iraq, and that the situation was different. He knew he couldn't provide even the false gains at the level he could in Iraq, partly because there was no, like, Anbar Awakening that was really capable of happening, although there were many efforts at that within certain tribes, and I was part of that. It was still big. It was. What I ran into, though, was at least in Kandahar, and I think this was true in Helmins and Koonar and Nuristan, the really heavy casualty districts where the Taliban was popular or at least very strong.

We were so busy trying to fight our way off our bases. We were so busy having our towers attacked on the daily that it made it. it incredibly difficult and almost absurd to believe that we could do the hearts and minds coin, that we could do to separate the insurgents from the population, population-centric coin. That's what I was always trying to tell my boss was, look, yes, I'm paying people who line up at my base every week to, like, clean canals and paint the one road, you know, paint the lines on the one road. Yeah, I'm doing that. And you could say that that's like fueling the economy and I would always say look the only reason I'm able to do that is because

the Taliban stopped shooting us during payday because they're skimming off the top because I'd say six days a week so like when we step off the base every one of my patrols gets hit you know and I mean we're talking direct fire here I mean not just stepping on an IED I mean ambush they were just contesting every single inch of space and we really did only control the ground that we individually stood on and we tried things we raised an Afghan local police, I think we were the first conventional unit, non-special forces unit, although we had an A team with us to help to stand up a Afghan local police unit, which was essentially a militia in our area. And we went and lived in the village that was essentially crossed the road from us. The fact that that still got attacked every day, that little outpost, we called it a VSP village stability platform, which was the mini base that we set up basically in one of the mud huts. at the far end of this village called Charkusa, called the Village Stability Platform,

because the official name for raising the ALP, for raising the Afghan Low Police in Special Forces Lingo, was called the VSO program, the Village Stability Operations. This was the closest thing we had to what Petraeus had done or had built on, which was turning the tribes, right, turning some of the Sunnis against Al-Qaeda.

So it never really picked up the same momentum. I was never able to get more than, you know, say, 20 recruits for that. and who knew many, how many were showing up. Coin was the language we used, but it bore almost zero resemblance to what we were doing in Kandahar, and from what my friends and peers and superiors were doing in Kunar and in Nuristan and Helmand. What we were really doing was fighting a guerrilla war.

And so we never even, even at the height of the surge, in those areas, most units never got to the coin stage. You know, it's like clear hold build is what they say. You got to clear the area. You got to hold it and then you got to build. We really never got out of the clearing phase in most of those areas. And so it was a big, it was, that was a big lie. So we used the terminology of coin.

And every boss that you ever, you know, every colonel had a brief what he was doing on the coin side to the generals, right? Like every week, everyone just made it up, like acted. We all just, like, winked at each other. Like, yeah, that's what we're doing. But all of us on the ground, we're like, that's not really what we're doing. I mean, I know that in order for my career progressing to get out of here and please, the colonel, so he'll go away and stop flying my base to yell at me. I know I have to tell him on doing that, but we never really were.

We never really were. The whole coin thing there was, we never really got into that phase. Not in the contested areas. How foreign were these Taliban guys that you were fighting? Were they even from Helman Province next door, or they were. were from, you know, the Muslim part of India or something? Or who were these guys? Were they Kandaharis?

They were Kandaharis. They were the cousins and the friends and the brothers of most of the people. You know, there would be reports of basically platoon leaders or company commanders in the Taliban, right, who were from Pakistan or some of them had come over from Hellman. Again, I remember I was in kind of the western, southwestern part of Kandahar province. So, you know, Lashkargar was not that far away. Right. And we weren't far from the border of Helmut. So, you know, I'm sure some of them were from Helmand, but every piece of intelligence

that I got was that the foot soldiers, the vast majority, were local. And as for this whole— Wasn't it? The narrative is that the Taliban are the invaders, and you were here to defend the people from the invaders. And then—but that's obviously completely upside down. But, no, that really becomes the premise of the whole mission, right? based on that?

And it fits the narrative that the bosses wanted us to me, that it didn't fit reality, but if you could say, look, the Taliban is really actually foreign, then it makes it plausible that you could do this coin thing, that you could divide them from the population. But that really never matched any sort of reality. You know, like I said, there would be reports that there were some of them were foreign, but here's what I really noticed, because I did this thing called talking to the locals, you know, partly just because I was fascinated by the place. just like I was in Iraq.

I wanted to know because I'm in this country. Like I knew this was a profound moment in my life and I'm interested in people. And I wanted to understand what the hell is happening around me. I left both wars feeling like I really didn't understand. And I know for a fact, I understood more than most. I read more and I talked more. What I found was this.

If you got close enough to some of these people, especially some of the tribal leaders who work with us, they would eventually have some candor with you. And what they would say is, because remember, the narrative is the people hate this brutal medieval Taliban and they really don't want them, they're just scared of them. So if we could somehow wedge ourselves in between that, take away the fear and secure the people, right, that we could win. What I actually found for most people was twofold. One, in a place like Kandahar, which is sort of the birthplace, the home territory of the Taliban, the culture, most people, most people. kind of agreed with the Taliban view of the world. They may not like all the violence. They may

not like the fact that they bury bombs and maybe don't like, don't mark them so well. And, you know, because we had a lot of times where like kids would step on these things. You know, that frustrated a lot of people. And they didn't love being taxed for their opium harvest. But they treated their wives the same way. So there was that element. I mean, in many ways, their social program was pretty popular down there. It may not have been popular in the cities. It may not have been popular in all parts of the north, but in Kandahar, it sure was. And so that was one element. The other element was they were seen as a stable force for law and order.

And the thing is, we have the privilege of saying, oh, the Taliban is evil. Here in America, where we have a vague democracy and some, you know, freedoms, and it's not just a chaotic civil war. But in war-torn societies where the place has been a mess for 40 plus years. They may not have that privilege. And I'll tell you, stability and order looks pretty good. And the Taliban had a reputation down where I was, and in many parts of the country, of being a fairer and swifter meter out of justice. A lot of people would admit to me

that they preferred the Taliban to be the mediators in disputes over goats and land and canals and water and the opium crop, then the corrupt officials, especially from the north in the Afghan security forces, especially the army, where a lot of them were Tajik's and Uzbeks. And even from some of the people down south, I mean, think about it. Karzai, President Karzai's brother, half-brother Ahmad Wali Karzai, ran the drug trade. He was a drug kingpin in Kandahar at the same time that he was, you know, in charge of the place. The people did not see the representatives of the Kabul government, even if they were local, as necessarily more just and less corrupt than the Taliban. And so those two elements, the fact that most people agreed with the social program of the Taliban, even if they didn't like the violence, and the fact they saw them as a better force for sort of order and justice and mediating disputes.

And until we recognize that and admitted it, then the whole idea of this coin program was never going to work. And look, you know what, man? My famous footnote for that is David Petraeus admitting that that was true. And so I forgot if you and I had discussed that particular aspect before in your experience there. But every time I cite Petraeus from now on, I'm citing you with him. That, yeah, even Petraeus admitted it. But my guy, Danny, was a major over there at the time on the ground in Kandahar. said that's exactly right.

And think about that. How horrible and corrupt does our system have to be where people are saying to themselves, thank God that Taliban is here. And how bad does that situation have to be where Petraeus knows it and even admits it as good and as well as you? Petraeus on Afghanistan fascinates me. You know, everything he says now is absurd. I mean, every interview he gives, every statement.

he makes about the Afghan war is just like blame Biden. But when he was there, when he had to run the joint, he had a far more realistic and nuanced view of it. I mean, there's a lot of quotes from him. There's a lot of accounts from people who worked with him. He knew the deal. He knew that we were in the fight of our lives and that we weren't able to implement the stuff that he wrote in his manual.

He co-wrote with Mattis, 324, right? That's the interesting thing about Petraeus is like when he was in the clutch in the breach and had to run that place, he was a lot more nuanced. And I think that that speaks volumes. Yeah. I mean, he sent the head of J-Soc, the hunter killer to go do coin. And then the hunter-killer got fired. And then Mr. Coyne came in and did hunting and killing instead of even trying it, right?

And the whole thing, coin, in fact, you know, I think the record. to show if we check Michael Hastings and the timeline I have to go back and look at the book but I'm pretty certain that McChrystal had essentially if not officially canceled coin before he was fired

and before Petraeus even was demoted to replace him because after Marja he said yeah that didn't work Marge is a bleeding ulcer and that was where because so many people had run off the Marines it was like two Marines for every

citizen, which has got your coin ratio way off the chart and still didn't accomplish a thing. So that was supposed to be the first little mini test case before they went to Kandahar City, and then they never even tried it in Kandahar City, right? Did you know that

there's that really, really interesting kind of powerful chapter in the Hastings book where some sergeant, after like, one of his buddies gets blown up, killed down in Zari District of Kandahar province, he, like, writes an email and gets himself in trouble with his, like, colonel and stuff, right? He writes an email, like, directly to McChrystal saying, like, you should come down here

and see how your strategy's not working and how bad it is. And McChrystal agrees, and he goes down to this little outpost, like, on the frontier in Canada Art province. And he walks a patrol to him. And, of course, like, nothing happens that day. But, like, when he has, like, a sensing session, they call it, like, basically, like, people are allowed to, like, speak freely supposedly and air their grievances, like, the enlist the guys got to talk to him.

And they were all, like, yelling at him and saying, like, you don't understand. That was my base before I got there. That was Copp, Paschamil South. Combat Outpost, Paschamil South. It was named something different because at the time it was named after dead soldiers, but by the time I got there, they said all those base names after the soldiers who died there were getting rid of those

and were giving them all local names. That was my base, and I took it over. And so the fight hadn't changed. I'm almost certain I'm, man, I'm sorry, it was 10 years ago now, but I'm almost certain that I interviewed Michael from that base. And he told me that story before he wrote it in Rolling Stone.

I'm like 95% sure that that's right. That was my exact base. I walked that exact patrol route. I went to that exact, whatever they called it, Ant Hill or whatever, that exact, like, mound that, you know. That's depicted in the movie, War Machine, the Brad Pitt satire, is based on the operators. And that's the book, Everybody is The Operators by Michael Hastings. and so he was great he'd answer the phone at four in the morning Afghanistan time to do my show back then you know I'd talk to him all the time

while he was there when I first read that you know I was just blown away you know thinking about what struck me is when is that was that 09 or 10 that he's down there right yeah so I'm there in January of 11 I get there or February of 11 actually I visit it in January Yeah, I think the book must come out shortly after that, right? It did, yeah, because I'd read it either while I was there right when I got back. But I remember reading it and just being like, okay, I took this thing over from, you know,

the two units before was that unit, and it was just as bad. I mean, in other words, that whole coin program, he's going to come in, he's going to change the war, the surge is going to turn the tide, it's going to change everything. Well, okay, maybe in a few places there was some progress. But I can tell you for a fact is that in the heartland of the town, And the place that's depicted in that book, the place that my crystal decided to go and prove and argue with the soldiers because he's arguing with them in that scene, right? He's going back and forth and they're yelling at him and he's like, no, this will work. I get there a year and a half later.

And if it's not just as bad, it's worse. We control no more ground. We still can't get out of our base without the same attacks. And it was demoralizing to read. I don't want to just personalize it, but I will say on a personal level, reading that command. Ending that outpost, I couldn't help it be demoralized by the whole strategy and just blown away by it. Yeah. Man, what a hell of a thing.

And, you know, I'm sorry, you know, not to personalize on this side, but just from here, this is all the slowest motion train wreck. This happens to be I had great sources of what the hell is going on in the world since, you know, way back even before this century began. So I never got roped into believing in this thing. and was able, you know, never even mind the first decade of it, right? But by the time they're coming around to launching the surge, and there were so many good people opposed to it, you know, like Kelly Vlahos was writing for anti-war.com like once or twice a week and focusing on the coin denistas

and all their conflicts of interest and how nonsensical all of their claims were for, you know, the entire year of 2009. God dang Obama didn't announce the surge until December 1st. We spent the whole year saying, don't do this. And Matthew Ho comes out.

And it's like, look, man, I just got back from Valley X, Y, and Z. And let me tell you something, we should not do this surge. This is crazy. He was a Marine captain, turned State Department official on a provincial reconstruction team over there.

And then the ambassador backed him up, kind of, and said, really, he's right. You should not do this surge. and then they did it anyway and here we are 12 years later talking about

yeah that sucked and the Taliban rule cobble again and just you know I keep people quote me now I like this I mean it

it's not like just some gimmick or whatever I just always had said this it doesn't have to be this way who's making who are making these decisions why is it like this when it clearly doesn't have to be and the proof it doesn't have to be

is look at all all the people who disagree with it. You know, there was this guy, Colonel Gian Gentile. Giant Gentile. I'm sure you know the guy. Yeah, John Gentile, who's writing a one of the chapters. He just pronounced it, John? For Christ's saying.

Yeah, just spell it like, I'm sorry. So he was, he ran the American history or the military history division at West Point right before he got there to teach he had just left. Yeah, he was a colonel. He used to argue with Noggle all the time. Yeah, he was saying, listen, man, I looked at the history books and they say that these guys are all wet. This isn't going to work. This is crazy. That's all they had to do was the right thing. You know what I mean? It was there. History's always written like, well, you know,

that's how it played out. But yeah, but only because they made it this way when they clearly did not have to. All Obama had to do was say, you know, my fellow Americans, let me introduce you to Matthew Ho. He's a Marine Corps captain, decorated hero from Iraq War II. And he's telling me, Don't do it, man. Just got back from there. It ain't worth it. And I believe him. That's all he had to do.

And John McCain, you know what? I'd let you decide, but you lost the election by 10 points a year ago, old man. So screw you. And Petraeus and Gates, if you don't like it, you're fired. That's all he had to do. That's what I would have done. That's what, you know, that's what John Gentile would have done, you know? Yeah.

And he was already saying he commanded a battalion. in West Baghdad in like 06. And he was already saying in 07, 08, 09, you know, in the lead up to the Afghansans, you're saying two things when not a lot of people, but as you mentioned, some important people were already saying it. He was just one of them. He was saying the surge in Iraq was snake oil. The surge in Iraq, you know, at a time when that was not a particularly popular thing

to say, he was saying, uh-uh, no, this thing's not going to hold. It's not what they're saying it is. And it certainly isn't going to work in Afghanistan. And he's saying that from uniform as a full colonel in uniform at West Point, running one of the divisions of the history department. He wasn't saying it like out of uniform. You know, you have this degree of academic freedom when you're on the staff there, especially if you're a permanent professor like he was at that point. You could actually get away with a little bit more critique while you're on staff there. It's like a weird hybrid.

There's like a policy. So anyway, he's saying that right out of bag. dad full professor in the history department west point you know he's not like in veterans for peace you know grabbing the mic and uh you know spencer ockerman's recent book which which i'm uh i'm finishing up right now he's going to come on our podcast uh pretty soon over forts on a hill it's called reign of terror and the way he summarized i thought was really well put he mentions a lot of stuff you and i have about the afghan surge and he's like here because we got to wrap up go ahead yeah he he basically says this this surge no one really believed in it even the people who are

touting it. Like, nobody really believed it was going to work. And he shows that pretty demonstrably. Oh, and he was great on it back then, too. And I'm not his biggest fan for various reasons, but I do respect him, but he was really good on reporting during Afghanistan during the surge back 10 years ago. No way to deny him the credit for that, you know, for sure. Absolutely. But anyway, listen, I'm sorry. I just like talking to you and I didn't realize how late we are here and got to run. But thank you so much for doing the show again, Danny. Appreciate it, but. Hey, thanks for having me. Always a great talk. All right, you guys. That's the great Danny Sherson. He said it should be anti-war.

dot com slash danny but i don't think it is is it no it's danny underscore sherson and just use a j instead of an h but it's just sherson um uh antiwar dot com slash danny underscore sherson and the latest here is the perils of forgetting learn it from the afghan war or repeat it the scott horton show anti war radio can be heard on kpfk 90.7 fm in l a psradyo dot com antiwar dot com scott dot org and libertarian institute.org