The Daily Beast Podcast - Afghanistan Vet Elliot Ackerman: Why We Should Bring the Draft Back

Episode Date: August 21, 2022

Author and war veteran Elliot Ackerman holds a very unpopular opinion about the draft: he supports it, but only because he thinks it could be a good thing for Americans. He joins this bonus episode of The New Abnormal to explain why he holds this take and how he sees it ultimately helping create more peace and less war. Plus, he shares his experience trying to evacuate people, including the Afghan girls’ robotics team, out of Afghanistan and what his new book The Fifth Act: America’s End in Afghanistan is all about. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Molly Zhang Fast, no relationship to Kim Jong-un. I'm a left-wing pundant and a writer at the Atlantic Invo. And I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy, and current cable news conscientious objector. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart, conversations with the wisest and funniest and funniest people in science and media and politics that help make what's happening today clearer. Our world has been turned upside down. And on The New Abnormal, we'll talk about the people who got us into this mess and how we'll hopefully get ourselves out of it. Hello and welcome to another Sunday bonus episode of The New Abnormal. And we thank you so much for being here.

Today we have an extra special guest with Elliot Ackerman, who's a former Marine Corps Special Operations team leader and the author of the Fifth Act, America's End in Afghanistan. And he's going to talk to us all about his new book. But first, let's have some fun. Are you guys ready to listen to some clips? Hell you. Not especially. Go on. This is, I'll listen to the clip.

Okay, good. So the bad news is we're going to talk a lot about Mr. Trump today. The fallout still continues a week and more later from his home being rated. But outside of that, there's some people like Carrie Lake, who have former local Fox personality who's now running for office. Well, she's, as the kids say, simping for Mr. Trump. He is gutsy. The guy has bigger. Okay.

Wait, let me think about how I want. want to word this. My staff always says, whatever you do, do not say balls. So I'm not going to say it. That guy has a backbone made of steel. I'll tell you what he's got. I don't know if you heard of this, but he's got BDE. Anybody know what that means? Ask your kids about it later. I call it big DeSantis energy, right? He's got the same kind of BDE that President Trump has. And frankly, he has the same kind of BDE that we want all of our elected leaders to have. Oh, boy. Really sorry.

You know what's bad about that clip? Everything. She's actually pretty charismatic. It's true. I mean, so like, even though whatever she's, I mean, she has terrible, terrible case of brainworms, but one of the worst I've ever seen. But you can tell she's actually really charismatic. No, absolutely. But, I mean, to be talking about Trump having.

Big Dick energy. Like, I don't know, these people are all, there's a pathology that I can't wrap my head around and they all need to be under somebody's care. That's the brand. I know. You want my hot take? Please. Carrie Lake actually has BGE, what I mean by that is Ben Garrison energy where she's

projecting something absolutely insane onto Donald Trump that doesn't exist. For those who don't remember, Ben Garrison's the idiot who draws Mr. Trump. with humongous muscles with machine guns and it's just really horny for them. You're absolutely right. It's the same thing. It's the people who draw the cartoons of Trump as the big musly guy when he's, well, look at him. But it's just unbelievable. And like that's what they want in a leader of big dick energy. It's like, okay. Also just amazing that like, as we always say, it takes so long for these people to get a term

that everybody was using two years ago. More. Yeah. And look, as a lot of people pointed out after she said this, like this is the same party that doesn't want kids to be told that gay people even exist because they shouldn't be talking about sexuality with kids. And she's sitting there and go ask your kids what BDE means. Amazing point. Okay, well, the simping continues. The former President Trump's eldest son's fiancé, Ms. Kimberly Guilfoyle, she feels like they all do. She feels like she's been wronged and the family's been wronged. They love President Trump and they want him back in the White House. That's what this is about.

time and time again President Trump has been exonerated they have been pulling this stuff on him for six years starting with illegally wiretapping him at Trump terror which everyone says oh you guys are making this up that didn't happen it happened president to sue them for that by the way

because it's a legal wiretap he's entitled to penalties and fees because of that that's a whole other story but he is the singly most persecuted person in American political history but people who are Democrats, independents, libertarians, whatever you want to say they're all coming out in droves to say they support the president.

So all they have done is just magnify his excellence, 10x more, to the point where the American people are begging. Literally, I see people every day, begging him to run again in 2024. And we would be only so lucky as a country because he's the only thing standing between them and us. Literally, he's standing up. Understood. Let me cut in real quick. First of all, I think a couple that shares their stash is good for them. I think they're going to make it.

That's traditionally what happens with couples. Yeah, no, absolutely, absolutely. I'm not going to name names here, but let me pose a question to you. Do you know what it takes to be the worst person at Fox News? You're the expert on this, Andy. Well. You really want to go down this road. No, it's Kimberly Guilfoyle.

It always was. She did get fired, right? Yeah. Remember, this is the woman who, after the whole Roger L's thing, was calling other women at Fox and San Francisco. and saying, you better get out there and defend him. And, I mean, look, my general thing is when you want to know how a person is, ask, like, the hair and makeup people at the network.

Right. They're still in a coma. That's all I'll say. Ask the hair and makeup people at Fox about what working with Kimberly Gilfoyle was like. I don't want to because I am scared. I know what they'll say. I've read. I mean, she, the thing that I love about Kimberly Gilfoyle is that she has the goods on Donald Trump Jr. and I think the big question is now what happens.

The only thing that would be good about this is if Biden decides not to run and Gavin Newsom jumps in. And it's Newsom versus Trump. And for those who don't know, Newsom used to be married to Kimberly Guilfoyle. But she did have a different face then. Well, that's true. That's true. It's true. I mean, like, you could look at that picture and think that was a different person. A hundred percent.

Absolutely. That would really make for an interesting race. Truly the best race we could ask for. I mean, it would be horrendous, but yes. But from a podcasting perspective. Oh, yes. That's what matters. Yes. Yes. Speaking of Fox News, there's a personality, former representative, Sean Duffy,

who people may know as having a similar as power as Mr. Trump. He came from reality TV on the real world. Then rose to power now is retired in the graveyard of Fox News. He has some thoughts as well that we're going to listen. do. I think former President Trump is a flight risk? Where is he going to flee to? His plane has his name written on the side in giant gold letters. Yeah, that's a good point. I hadn't thought of that. If only we had thought of that. Your Honor, my client has a driver's license. He will not be fleaked to Mexico. He has a license plate.

He can see his name in giant gold letters. I mean, we know that. I, that's amazing. I hadn't heard that clip. Look, spot the lie. He's not wrong. When I was watching the real world San Francisco back as a wee lad, I did not feel like they found the best contested in him. I did not know the way I'd be vindicated in the future. So, we, last week, we were making fun of the simple son, Eric, a good deal and just saying how sorry we felt for him. But I have to say, I think he said something prescient this week that I'd like to hear your thoughts on. It's not even the Republican Party. I'd say it's actually the Trump party.

If you look at all the people who have been successful, you know what I like in that, it's where he talks about how his father has killed others. Yes. Killed other Republican dynasties. Kill being an interesting, like I would think that kill would be a phrase I might not pet. Yeah. Kill is more for when you go on those set up hunting safaris where they do everything for you except fire the actual shot and then you pose over the animal like you're a big shot. That's Eric's version. But he's not wrong. He is absolutely not wrong.

It is Trump's party. And by the way, that's true whether or not Trump is the nominee in 2024. The party has been completely remade in his image. And even if it moves past him and even if someone like DeSantis gets the nomination, it's still Trump's Republican Party. I just like that he got his father's genetics of saying the quiet part loud. Yeah, exactly. But none of his father's charm or charisma.

No. No. No. One last thought. One Charlie Kirk. He has a new culture war to pick with those liberals. It's actually not new. I think we may have even covered him doing this before, but he's got a culture war that he'd like to start. It's about indicting the college industry. I didn't go to college. Yeah, we know. A lot of young people need to consider that path. Look, the college cartel has done such damage to our country.

I believe the college cartel is no better than the Mexican drug cartel. And what they've done to our nation's youth, the bad ideas they've been spreading, the idea of pathogens that have been infecting the inner core of our society. I love the college cartel. I would like to get in this cartel. But you know how proud he was. was when he came up with that. Can you just picture it?

Do you believe he came up with that? Fair point. It's pretty dumb, though, so he might have. I don't know. No, that's like... But you're probably right. You're probably right. That is probably the smartest thing anyone he's paid has thought of in a long time.

I got a different wager. He either came up with the dumb pathogen's idea or the cartel idea and then mix the two metaphors. Because, yeah, that's how you make it good is to mix the metaphors. Yes, yes. That's what they teach you. college, Andy G. If you had just been in the cartel, you would know that. There was an episode of the great comedy show community that was called Grifting 101, and Matt Berry played a conman who taught a

class on grifting. And I feel like if that were a real thing, Charlie Kirk would have gone to college. He's absolutely right. Because classes like that don't exist in college, there was really, there was no reason for him to go to school. He didn't need to go to school to learn how to be a grifter. It's just you learn by doing, like any trade. So not a surprise that he didn't go to college. Elliot Ackerman is a former Marine Corps Special Operations Team Leader and the author of The Fifth Act, America's End in Afghanistan. Welcome to New Abnormal, Elliot Ackerman.

Thanks for having you, Molly. You are younger than Jesse and I, but that's okay. Not really, though. Right. Jesse and I don't like it when our guests are younger than we are and have done more, but okay. So what we were talking about before we started taping was that you have written a lot of books, really in rapid succession, which I'm a little bit also jealous about besides being younger than me. But you started talking about how you started working on this book, The Fifth Act, America's End, in Afghanistan. Well, you know, it actually wasn't a book that I was planning on writing, you know, a year ago in August as, you know, Afghanistan was called. collapsing and the fall of Kabul seemed imminent. I had a, you know, just an exchange with my editor.

And, you know, and he basically said, listen, you know, not a lot of people been paying attention to Afghanistan. Maybe there's an opportunity here to publish sort of a short 30,000 word paperback original, some of your writing on the subject. And we read that we would do that. And then he went off sort of on his end of summer holiday. And I did the same. And that coincided with, you know, the last two weeks of August when Kabul collapsed and there was this very dramatic evacuation at the airport, and I wound up being sucked into some of those efforts to get our Afghan allies out of the country and sort of coming out of that very intense two weeks. It just was very, it became obvious to me that that was a story that needed to be told and that this book we had

quickly agreed to do would become the story of those last two weeks of the summer, kind of in addition to a larger story about, you know, what happened over these 20 years in Afghanistan. Well, you just explained to our listeners for those who don't know you a little bit about your relationship with Afghanistan. Before I became a writer, I served as a both a Marine Corps infantry officer, special operations officer, and then later as a CIA special operations officer. And that was all about eight years. And I served in both Iraq and Afghanistan. So I am a veteran of the war.

How did your relationship with Afghanistan change over the course of all these years? You know, it's a 20-year war. So it has had this very consistent and enduring presence in my life. So, you know, I've had a relationship with the war, or had a relationship with the war longer than I had a relationship with my own children or even with my wife. So when the war is suddenly is ending, it's, I mean, it's actually, it's a little bit disorienting because this thing has been sometimes at the forefront, but at least always in the background of my life. And so the book is also, you know, it's part memoir and it's part, a part deals with the subject of how war can feature in someone's life for so long. Did you have people in Afghanistan who you had relationships with and when this was happening last year?

What was your involvement there? So the short answer is, yes, many people that I've had enduring relationships with who are still in Afghanistan or, you know, Afghan comrades of mine who were, you know, maybe worked with me. You know, one was my interpreter, for instance. And he has since migrated to the United States. But his father, his mother, and his sisters were still in Afghanistan, as well as his younger brother who was still fighting in an American-backed unit. And they all needed to get out.

And so I was involved very much, you know, with helping get them out. out of the country. Most of the people whose cases I was involved in actually just were not people I knew. These were strangers who were put in touch with me. So you were involved in doing one of the, like I knew other people who were involved in that kind of trying, like Evan McMullen, who were trying to kind of get people out. Did you feel, I mean, what was that experience like? It was really a crowdsourced effort. So with, you know, people just sort of figuring it out as they were going along and everyone knowing what they could kind of bring to the table to help the effort from people, for instance, who are good at fundraising and new high net worth individuals

who wanted to help, who, for instance, would be willing to contribute a lot of money for a private jet to fly into Afghanistan. You know, at one point, I was involved with an effort to get out the Afghan girls robotics team because a number of people in Silicon Valley were very keen to get them out. And that plane was paid for, but there were more seats on the plane than members of the girl's Afghan robotics team, so we're trying to fill up that plane with people. But, you know, in and of itself is surreal. So people being involved with those efforts, you know, other people who were journalists on the ground, who were willing to kind of step away from their roles as journalists and work as activists to help Afghans navigate through the Taliban checkpoints into Kabul

and get to the airport. The value I think I was able to add to some of these efforts was, you know, I have a pretty good network still in the military and in the intelligence world. And so was fortunate that, you know, a couple good friends of mine were at the airport. And I was able to, through them, sort of help navigate groups of Afghans into Kabul International Airport through the American checkpoints. So when I say this was crowdsourced, it was really, you know, a team kind of coming together online, figuring out what each person could add to the effort and then trying to, you know, get. these people onto flights. A lot like the fall of Saigon, right? Right. If the fall of Saigon, if we'd had, you know, signal and and WhatsApp and been

connected in the way that we're connected today. Did people not get out too? Yes. Plenty of people did not get out, unfortunately, and are still there. And, you know, some of whom, you know, we're still trying to get out. Biden talked about the withdrawal from Afghanistan for the first time in 20 years. The United States is not at war. Is that right? Well, it certainly begs a question, right, Molly? like what does it mean to be at war?

So if his definition of the United States is not at war for the first time in 20 years because there are zero troops in Afghanistan, that doesn't seem to hold up under scrutiny because we still have troops in Iraq and in Syria and in places like Nigeria. So does that mean we're a war in those countries? Sort of what is the criteria for the United States being at war? I don't bring it up to sort of as like a linguistic parlor game. but the stories we tell ourselves about war and how war, what it means to start a war, what it means to end a war,

you know, is very important for how we think about war and the strategies, strategies we apply to our wars. You know, and I would argue that the idea that the only way to have a successful outcome in Afghanistan was to have complete and total peace in Afghanistan with a true presence, U.S. true presence of zero, is probably not a strategically sound position from which to embark a, upon any effort in Afghanistan. And it doesn't hold up to historic efforts. I mean, listen, like look at this, you know, look at the Second World War.

We still have troops in Europe or the Korean War. We still have troops in the Korean Peninsula. We need to have, I think, a little bit of a more nuanced understanding about what war means and how we advance our interests as a country. So I don't think President Biden's statement that, you know, for the first time the United States is not a war in Afghanistan, is accurate. And I would also just add, it certainly is inaccurate because, you know, we just, what, 10 days ago killed the head of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.

So clearly we're still shooting into Afghanistan. Well, and also, aren't we in war in Ukraine? I mean, even if we don't have troops there, I mean, that is clearly a war. Right. And so I think overly simplistic narratives about war are not helpful. Do you like, I mean, when you look back on your experience serving. I mean, what are the things you sort of learned from being in the field that you feel could be useful to the rest of us to sort of understanding foreign relations and war and what's happening right now? If you were to say, like, if there's one, I feel like lesson that should be lit up in lights at the end of the war in Afghanistan and the Forever War, I think that that lesson is we as Americans should really pay attention and be cognizant to the ways that our war are.

Our wars are structured. Every war that we have fought since the revolution has had a structure around it. And a structure is kind of what sustains the war in terms of blood and treasure. So, you know, the civil war, the first ever draft America has as it has in the Civil War. Same thing with the first ever income tax. So that's the blood and treasure for the Civil War. Second World War, we have a war bond drives and a national mobilization and a draft. Vietnam, a very unpopular draft that leads to an anti-war.

movement that ends the war. The war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the way those wars are constructed is the blood comes from our all-volunteer military. That's who has fought these wars. And the treasure comes from our deficit. You know, the last year America passed a balanced budget was in 2001, and there's never been a war tax. The result of that construct is that the American people have been anesthetized to the cost of war. We don't feel the war. It's not a critical issue in American political life. And our politicians, thus, have been given this very long leash to go out and wage war. And I think we as citizens should be extremely skeptical of any American leadership that would want to go to war with a construct by which we, the American people, don't really

feel it, because that is sort of a construct in which they, as politicians, won't be held accountable. And that lack of accountability is what leads to 20-year wars. wrote about bringing back the draft a very controversial idea. Do you think that could really solve the capriciousness with which leaders go to war? Well, I think it would certainly solve the capriciousness with which leaders go to war. I mean, the question is, is it politically viable that we are going to necessarily bring back a draft in peacetime when there isn't a truly existential threat to America's survival? And, you know, I think no. I don't think that, you know, I haven't put my poll. in the field, Molly, but I have a feeling like that's not a very super popular. I'm probably not going to

win my congressional seat by making that my issue I'm going to run on. But, listen, I bring it up in my writing because I think it's something we should talk about because when we do talk about it, it makes us see more clearly and understand more clearly the ways that we do wage war when there is no draft and we don't have skin in the game. So, you know, the draft has been, you know, has always been a moving target in American life. There's sometimes this assumption that like, you know, in Vietnam, every single person in wore uniform was drafted. That's not true. It was about 25%. Actually, there were more draftees in the war in the Second World War military than in the Vietnam era military. So, you know, do I think that if we had a U.S. military today where maybe 5% or 10% of the ranks

were draftees, would every American be paying much closer attention to the issues of war and peace, if they knew that when their son or daughter turned 18 years old, that that person, that young person would have a one in 10 chance of having to serve in uniform, yeah, I think we would be paying very close attention to these issues. And it might change the conversation or at least move the conversation of both war and peace, more to center stage in America and life. And that could be a good thing.

I'm, like, obsessed with the idea of a year of national service. It's funny because it's like, it's so unpopular. Yeah. But it's beloved by. by both the left and the right. And I think the idea of national public service also gets to the, I mean, listen, the U.S. military and national public service has done, you know, it's done a couple of great things in our society historically.

It has been both a tool of incredible social mobility, you know, the GI Bill after the Second World War, the post-9-11 GI Bill. I mean, if you serve a four-year enlistman and are honorably discharged, you'll get your college paid for at any public or private university across the country. but it's also been a tool of societal mobility, but it's also been this incredible societal leveler in our atomized American society where we are just more and more self-segregating

the military and public service forces people of different backgrounds to do something together for a year or two years. And again, I think that would be healthy in American society at this point. Yeah, me too. I really am quite fixed on it. This was super interesting.

I'm so excited to read this book, The Fifth Act, America's End in Afghanistan. Thank you, Elliot Ackerman. Thanks so much you're having you, Molly. On that note, we'll wrap this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking to smart folks from the Daily Beast and beyond

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