10/22/14 – Andrew Cockburn – The Scott Horton Show

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Alright y'all, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton, this is my show.
Next up is Andrew Coburn.
He's the author of Rumsfeld, This Rise, Fall and Catastrophic Legacy.
And he now writes at Harper's Magazine, harpers.org, of course.
Flying blind, the U.S. air power lobby, botched bombing missions and bootless combat is the latest relevant and previously warthogs and all.
U.S. Air Force's foolish plan to scrap its most effective plane.
Welcome back to the show, how are you doing Andrew?
Pretty good, how are you doing?
I'm doing good, I appreciate you joining us.
Now, I got a lawnmower right outside my window, so I'm going to try to leave my mic off and let you explain for a while here.
And you do have a lot to talk about in these articles.
I think a lot of people noticed that it seems strange that they were using B-1 bombers in order to bomb ISIS targets outside of Kobani last week.
Some people were just impressed, wow, a B-1.
But it seemed to me, maybe it's not overkill, but maybe just the wrong mission altogether for a plane like that.
And boy, you sure seem to think so.
Well, yeah, I mean, it's actually pretty ridiculous.
I have to give a little bit of history here.
The B-1 was originally conceived and sold as it was going to be a supersonic nuclear bomber that would race to Moscow and drop nuclear weapons on the Kremlin.
That was actually back in the early 70s when they first touted it.
And it had two functions.
The official one was, as I said, to drop nuclear bombs on Moscow.
Well, actually three.
The second one was to, you know, to fulfill the Air Force.
The U.S. Air Force always has and always does and always will put its faith or, you know, rest its legitimacy on long-range bombers.
That's what it likes to do because that way they're free and clear of, you know, the pesky army and anyone else.
And they can get more money that way.
The third and maybe most important reason at the time, at least, was this B-1 was going to be built in California.
And Richard Nixon wanted to sew up the California vote for his reelection in 1972.
And then Gerald Ford wanted to do the same thing in 1976.
So it was, in a sense, the Republican bomber.
So as it happened or as it so often happens, the B-1 turned out to be pretty much of a dog in terms of its design.
It couldn't fly to Moscow supersonically.
It would have run out of gas long before then.
And it would almost certainly be shot down.
You write in here that it couldn't even make it over the Rocky Mountains with a full load of bombs.
That's right.
So they sort of recast it as a conventional bomber.
And it was still a dog.
And as you mentioned, as I say in my last piece in Flying Blind in Harper's Magazine, it couldn't, you know, it can't even make it over the Rocky Mountains with a full load of bombs.
And it has to be pretty careful going through the Rocky Mountains, too, because, you know, it's very unmaneuverable.
Takes about half a mile to turn.
So it can't exactly nip in and out of those mountain peaks.
Has to go quite carefully.
Nevertheless, the Air Force says this is an ideal weapon for assisting troops in combat on the ground.
Troops are in a firefight.
They're hunkered down behind, you know, one set of bushes and the Taliban or whoever, you know, a few hundred yards away behind another set of bushes.
And the B-1 is ideal for, you know, picking out the enemy, you know.
Well, you know, the thing is, you know, two or three miles up at least normally.
And it's bombing by essentially by computer.
So they can't see the enemy.
They can barely see the ground.
And, you know, they're meant to be able to bomb with great accuracy from that height, hitting the right people and not the wrong people, who would be our troops.
Well, as you can probably guess, it hasn't turned out that way.
In fact, they left a trail of havoc and civilian casualties across Afghanistan.
There was some, you know, in 2008 and 2009, there was some horrendous, what the Air Force likes to call CIVCAS incidents, where they basically blew a bunch of civilians to pieces.
And one, I think it was 90 in one case, 120 in another.
But the Air Force, you know, they continued on because it's a bomber and they love it.
So we come to an incident that happened this last June, which really shows the whole thing, which was a group of American soldiers were on a patrol essentially in Afghanistan.
And there was a fairly routine deal.
And high above circulating in sort of five mile circles was a B1.
And it came toward the end of the day and they were going to the wars where they expected to be picked up by helicopter.
And someone started shooting at them, wasn't any kind of big battle.
It was just, you know, maybe one or the most two guys taking potshots.
So some of this group, in fact, five of them sort of set off up a hill to try and, you know, get behind the people who were shooting at them.
And meanwhile, they called up the B1 and said, you know, we're under attack, you know, can you help us out?
It was getting dark by this time.
And apologies for sounding a little bit technical, but soldiers on that kind of mission, these are special forces soldiers, they have an infrared beacon or strobe on their helmets, which gives off an infrared sort of flash so that, you know, other people, most people can't see it, but someone wearing night vision goggles can.
And that's very important because up in the B1, they were looking to see trying, peering out their window, which is about three inches thick anyway, because it was built for a supersonic bomber, looking to see if they could spot who, you know, where the Americans were and where the enemy were.
And they reported, but they said, well, we don't see any, you know, these flashes and therefore we're going to, you know, we'll drop the bomb where we see, you know, people firing, you know, the flashes from gun, from muzzle, from people firing their weapons.
So they duly dropped, you know, a thousand pounds of bombs and blew these five soldiers to pieces.
And it turns out that, in fact, it was impossible for them to see friendly troops because their equipment that they had on the plane didn't allow them to see these infrared strobes.
No one had bothered to tell them that.
No one thought this was any big deal.
And as a result, you had five dead Americans and a dead Afghan soldier was with them.
I'm sorry to sort of go on a technical length about it.
No, I'm very happy that you have.
No, it's an important story.
I was hoping you'd tell the whole thing like that.
For sure.
So, but what it tells us, I mean, what it shows us is how little the Air Force, in fact, you know, the military as a whole really cares about what they are actually meant to be doing.
You know, here's a very important thing, supporting troops on the ground.
If, you know, assuming you have a war or have fighting, which of course we don't want, but assuming that's happening, you want to be able to protect, you know, American troops on the ground.
And they designate this lumbering sort of piece of junk to do the job with predictable results like the tragedy in June.
And I think so before you say it was just a sort of technical weapons thing, which I know you're not saying, it really points to a wider thing, which is what, you know, our defense system is really all about.
And it's not about fighting in the most efficient way possible.
It's about getting money for budgets, protecting your turf, doing down the other services, and, you know, to heck with the, you know, with the poor stiffs on the ground.
Yeah, sure looks like that.
And that's, you really get to the kind of the other side of that same story in your other article from back in January, which I forget if we talked about.
I think we did talk about it at the time, but we can go back over the other side of this, too, on the other side of this break, about the A-10.
And here's a plane that's actually useful for this kind of mission, and they want nothing to do with it, with an exclamation point on their emphasis there.
So we'll be right back with Andrew Coburn after this.
Hey, Al Scott Horton here.
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All right, guys, welcome back.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show, The Scott Horton Show.
Got Andrew Coburn on the line.
Flying Blind is his blog entry here, I think latest, at the Harper's blog.
The U.S. Airpower Lobby, Botched Bombing Missions and Bootless Combat.
And so he's telling the story of a terrible friendly fire incident in Afghanistan from, I think you said just this June, is that right?
Yeah, just last June, yeah.
Where a B-1 dropped, I guess, a JDAM, satellite-guided bomb, on some American Army soldiers on the ground because their infrared goggles didn't match the same wavelength as their infrared blinkers that should have worn them off.
And so entrusting the technology, they basically turned their decision-making over to it.
And they're bombing from so far away they have no way to confirm with their own eyes, and so they don't and kill their own guys, which brings us again back to the war against the Islamic State on the outskirts of Kobani there, at this time, backing up Kurdish rebels.
And I guess it must be American Special Forces with the laser pointers on the ground by now helping to coordinate the air attacks there, but even then still using these big bombers.
So that obviously gets to the question of the A-10.
And I found another article from you here at Harper's, Tunnel Vision, Will the Air Force Kill Its Most Effective Weapon There?
So I know there's a big discussion all about the incentives behind it and all that, but just for starters, what exactly is the status of the A-10?
Did they kill it, or was it coordinated?
It's still hanging on by its wingtips.
Actually, due to the Congress, who we don't think much of in many ways, but the fact that the Air Force is trying to get rid of something that, the one plane that really delivers and doesn't kill a lot of civilians and does protect American troops on the ground, that somehow got through to the Congress, thanks to a lot of grassroots support.
And so they voted overwhelmingly to...
Well, basically they said the Air Force couldn't spend any money on killing the A-10 this year.
Can they buy more?
And who makes them, by the way?
Well, they've long gone out of production.
The Air Force shut down the production line as soon as it possibly could, back in the 80s.
Oh, they haven't been making them for a long time, but they have been able to maintain them all this time.
Right, yeah, and they've upgraded them.
So they're still, I think we're down to about 250 of them now, and actually less, it's about 200, I think.
And now for people not familiar, this is the one that has the gigantic-looking engines on the wings, and hell, I don't know how else to describe it.
I had a toy one, a G.I. Joe, in the 1980s when I was a kid.
It's the one that flies low and slow.
Oh, and the pilot sits in a titanium bathtub, they call it, so he can fly right into combat, basically.
Right, the whole idea was that he could fly close enough to the ground to actually see what was going on.
So, you know, the pilot could actually see with his own eyes or else use binoculars to actually see what was happening.
And to be able to do that, it had to be very, you know, well-protected against ground fire, which it is in all sorts of ways, including the famous titanium bathtub.
And it had to be very maneuverable, which it also is, you know, so it can fly low and slow, which you need to be so you're not sort of whizzing over the target and can't see what's going on.
And therefore, you have to be very nimble, all of which it is.
And also, the other big feature is it has this very powerful cannon, which fires very accurately, is the point, rather than bombs, which are always prone to inaccuracy.
Anyway, the interesting thing about it, you think, well, that's great.
You know, we're very good of them to have this weapon.
The Air Force only bought it because they thought the Army was going to take the, you know, it was a budget competition with the Army.
They thought the Army was going to take away that mission.
So they built it.
But the moment they got rid of the Army threat, they wanted to kill it because the Air Force hates, really hates the idea of spending precious time and dollars on protecting American soldiers when there's more interesting things to be done, like dropping nuclear bombs on Moscow.
So they've done their best to kill it.
Yeah.
Well, now, wait, so let's really dwell on that point for a minute there because, you know, this point has been emphasized a lot of times by a lot of people.
I know you and you're writing as well.
But no, really, the Air Force really hates serving the Army.
Never mind the individual soldiers down there, the individual GIs who need help right now.
To them, the entire concept is, you know, the lowliest of janitorial work.
And they would rather be Iran's Air Force than the Army's Air Force.
Yeah, well put.
In fact, they're backing the Quds Force and their front men in Iraq right now.
So maybe that's a perfectly apt analogy.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So that's it.
And the reason, you know, they think like that is because, you know, years ago, the Air Force was born.
It was just part of the Army, you know, like the artillery or something.
And they hated that.
They hated it.
So they fought for and got their independence.
And they got their independence.
Their big argument was we can win wars on our own, you know, no need to have the Army, you know, mucking around in the mud and things like that.
We can bomb the enemy's sort of heartland and cause him to surrender.
And, you know, that's all you need.
So give us lots of money, please.
Well, they promised that in World War II.
It didn't work.
They promised it in Korea.
It didn't work.
They promised it, you know, you can go on and on.
It never worked.
But, of course, in the meantime, they get to receive and spend a lot of money.
So they're very popular, you know, with industry and the Congress.
So that's really how the game is played.
Well, now, is there any pressure in the Army to say, well, just give us the damn planes and we'll fly them and you guys can go off and do your, you know, pretend that you'll ever be in a dogfight again when you're really bombing civilians in their own countries all day.
And we'll just have the A-10s to back us up since you don't want the job.
Well, in a sane world, of course, that would happen.
The problem is back in 1947, I think it was, the Army, there was a famous thing called the Key West Agreements where the services all sort of signed treaties with each other as to who would do what.
And they promised not to poach on each other's missions.
And the Army promised not to fly any fixed-wing combat aircraft.
And, you know, the Army is always kind of the wuss in these affairs.
They always get beaten out in the big budget fights and so forth.
But the Navy gets F-18s.
It's not fair.
Yeah, yeah.
The Navy gets F-18s.
The Marines have, you know, we have three air forces, you know, the Air Force, the Navy, and the Marines.
But the poor old Army still sort of staggers along, marches along, limps along.
And they've never had the guts to really stand up and say, we demand, you know, we want those A-10s, which they obviously should do, because they now have a big helicopter lobby.
And so lots of people's careers and retirements and everything are hooked into the magazine.
Although I think we learned in Iraq War II that those Apaches and Cobras are basically useless in battle against men with just shoulder-fired weapons.
Right.
They pull them right out of battle quickly.
Right.
Exactly.
You're exactly right.
We saw in that, you know, famous WikiLeaks video, we saw that the Apache is quite good at sort of shooting a bunch of civilians in the street.
But in an actual battle against, you know, ground defenses, it's completely useless.
In fact, they've lost.
I gather that in these recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, they've lost about 50 Apaches, which is quite a lot.
And, you know, to people firing with not very sophisticated weapons.
A surprising amount.
Wow.
Yeah.
I didn't realize it was that high.
Yeah.
So, you know, that's the situation.
So going back to your original question about did the A-10 get saved?
It's saved for the time being.
The Air Force is obviously grinding its teeth.
They're rather a vindictive crew, the present sort of leadership of the Air Force.
And they don't like, you know, they had this big plan to get rid of it.
And, you know, because everything's going to be done by this incredible dog they're building, the F-35.
So they promised that would do everyone's job and the Congress stopped them.
So they'll probably try again next year.
So we're not home free.
Right.
Yeah.
And that F-35, of course, has all the exact same problems as the B-2.
It's going too fast to do the job well.
Simple as that.
It's going too high.
It's going too fast.
It can't maneuver.
I know.
It gets worse.
It goes downhill from there.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
That's just for starters.
It starts with couldn't possibly and then gets worse.
Yeah.
Exactly.
It's an absolute mess.
And, by the way, no one should misinterpret any of this as a celebration of strafing or anything like that.
It's a narrower point we're talking about here, the dysfunction of the military and the empire and the way it all works, of course.
Exactly.
Just so everyone's clear on that.
And I really wanted to get Patrick on the show to talk about the war today, too, but he was busy doing a debate.
But, anyway, he may be on the show tomorrow.
But thanks again for your time, Andrew.
It was great talking to you.
OK.
You're welcome.
Take care, Scott.
That's the great Andrew Coburn.
He's at Harper's.org.
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