08/03/16 – Mark Perry – The Scott Horton Show

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Introducing our friend Mark Perry, Pentagon reporter, now working at Politico.
This one I think is, yeah, Politico Magazine is where he writes.
This one is called, Get Ready for Obama's October Surprise in Iraq.
Welcome back to the show, Mark.
How are you doing?
Good to be here.
Great.
Thank you.
Very happy to have you here on the show.
Yeah, this is the guy, everybody, that I'm always talking about.
I'm always quoting you from our conversation about what the generals really think of Russia and how they believe their own nonsense about it and how terrifying that is.
I think it's the most terrifying thing in the world, actually, is that conversation that you and I had about that.
I bring it up all the time to every guest, because we're always talking about Russia on the show nowadays.
It scares the hell out of me.
I'll tell you.
It's not getting any better.
Man.
You know, yeah.
Anyway, I'm sorry.
All right.
So this article is about Mosul and the coming assault on Mosul.
And just to sum up real quick, the Islamic State, they've lost Tikrit and they've lost Ramadi.
They've now lost Fallujah.
And they're really, there's a couple of towns that I don't, I've memorized all the names of them, but basically the last two real cities that they own are Mosul in northwestern Iraq and Raqqa in, well, what used to be eastern Syria, northwestern Iraq, these two cities.
And yet the U.S., the Iran-backed Shiite militias, the Shiite Iraqi army, and the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga and the American and Russian backed Syrian Kurdish militias and the Syrian army are after their ass.
Is that about right?
That's about right.
And it appears from my reporting anyway, that the U.S. and its coalition allies against ISIS in Iraq are planning to storm and conquer Mosul at the end of October, which is just in time for our national election.
And they're hoping that they'll be able to organize the front in Syria to conquer Raqqa at about the same time.
And if they do that, if they do both, if, if, if, if they do both, it really unhinges ISIS.
And I could foresee the possibility of the president going on TV and saying, victory is within our grasp.
You know, 72 hours before the election would be quite a bump for Hillary.
And now, when you're talking with all the, all your sources at the Pentagon about all of this happening, are they speaking of it in terms of the upcoming election?
Or you just happen to notice we're talking about October here?
Well, I was told, I was told specifically by one colonel who serves on the joint staff at the Pentagon, that it would be the dumbest thing they could do to plan this to coincide with a political event.
It appears that the forces that they have in place outside of Mosul are ready to go.
It's not at all clear that that's the case in Raqqa.
And they don't want to do this prematurely.
If they try to do it so that it coincides with the election and they fail, it's actually worse.
So I think they're, you know, they're not so concerned about, about the timing of it is, is making sure that it will work.
And I think the Obama administration feels the same way.
When they're ready to go, they're ready to go.
Hillary's probably, I think they're calculating that Hillary probably won't need a bump.
Yeah.
Well, and the fact that the president is going to be campaigning for her is, you know, I'm sure that they figure that's all they'll need.
I agree.
I think that's right.
And, and like you say, I mean, I don't know if they're actually bright enough to think of this, but you certainly make a good point that if it doesn't work out, it could work really badly against them.
Of course, it could fuel attacks across Europe and or the U.S. in that if they prove the far enemy thesis correct, that attacking and that going after the near enemy now won't work.
I don't think we're going to have our caliphate until we get rid of the Americans first, as Osama and Zawahiri always said, if they prove that that's correct, then that could really backfire when it comes to the election and play right into Trump's hands.
Well, that's exactly right.
And that's an excellent point.
I think, and I think it's a real danger.
We've seen over the last, what, three months, increasing ISIS attacks or ISIS inspired attacks, as they're called, in Europe.
And there is real fear among our military and among our NATO allies that as we degrade and start to destroy ISIS assets in Syria and Iraq, the militias or the people who form the militias will be fleeing homewards, or to Europe, having lost in Iraq and Syria.
It's quite possible, in fact, I think it's probably likely that we're going to see more incidents in Europe, more terrorist attacks.
So that's that's the fallout from victory.
That's what happens after this kind of victory.
Yeah.
All right.
Now, so what about the plan for after?
Well, I'm sorry, we're skipping.
We'll go back to how they plan on on pulling this coalition together to even do this.
But I really wonder about the aftermath of whether does it kind of go without saying that?
Yeah, well, you know, Fallujah and Ramadi and maybe even Mosul are going to be majority Shiite cities after this, because that's what happens when you help the Shiite Iraqi army and it's, you know, Iran back militias when cities is they keep them.
Or is the idea that, well, we'll have to find some tribal leaders who aren't compromised or killed by the Islamic State of the Ba'athists and and try to recreate the Anbar Awakening where we put those, you know, tribal types, less religious types on top?
Or are they even talking about that or they're just saying, oh, yeah.
No, all of Sunnistan is going to bow down to Baghdad because that's our magic wish.
Or what are we going to do, dude?
It's really well, that's really the nub of the problem.
And the U.S. knows that the U.S. military knows that the commanders in the U.S. military on the ground know it.
In order for Mosul to succeed, everyone who's in the fight on the anti ISIS side needs to pull together.
So negotiations between, as you noted, Kurd, Peshmerga, Sunni tribes, Shia militias, the Iraqi army is all part of the planning for Mosul.
And the talks, negotiations, attempts at reconciliation, cooperation, handholding goes on 24 hours a day, every single day.
And you can be sure that that's what's going to happen if and when the U.S. coalition storms through Mosul and defeats ISIS.
You know, this isn't like World War II, when it's over, it's over.
In this war, when it's over, it continues.
And the question will become, are we going to get ISIS 2.0?
What is Iraq going to look like?
Are the Sunnis and Shias going to once again turn on each other?
It's not clear that they haven't continued to do that.
So this is going to take, you know, this is like the French Revolution, Scott, this is going to take a generation to straighten out and to figure out.
And we're only at the beginning of that process.
Well, I tell you what, as long as the North Americans are in charge of it, it's not going to work out.
I don't care how many generations we put into it.
It doesn't seem like to me.
Here's a well, and that's just me.
What the hell do I know?
Listen, I, you know, I'm, I'm writing a book on the military from Operation Desert Storm to the present.
And I, yesterday I was writing on my chapter on Kosovo.
We're just not very good at this.
We're not good at nation building, we're not, you know, we don't have a military to build things.
We have a military to destroy things, and they're very good at it.
When we ask them, when it's all over, to kind of rebuild countries, to hold reconciliation talks, to come up with political solutions, that's not what their training is.
And it's, it's not the strong suit for the United States, and it's been something we've tripped over year after year after year.
Yeah.
Well, you know, so tell me this, and I know that, you know, there is no U.S. government.
There's even not even a really a Pentagon view on any of these things.
You've got all different kinds of factions and, you know, political and otherwise, and just differences of opinion and that kind of thing.
But I wonder, is there anything, are you getting a sense there at the Pentagon of some kind of consensus about whether they mean to really redraw that Sykes-Picot border and say, no, Western Iraq is Western Iraq.
It's not Eastern Islamic State, it's not Eastern Sunnistan, it's not Eastern anything.
It's Western Iraq, and thus it shall always be.
And the same goes for Raqqa in that area of Syria, that this is Syria, because here's John Brennan was at the, I think it was at the Aspen conference here, yeah, at the Aspen Security Forum, was saying, jeez, you know, guys, there might have to be a partition.
Yeah, I was, I was really surprised by that, because the administration's policy on this is pretty adamant.
And they said it again and again and again, the borders that are there remain in place, the borders that are there remain in place.
And I think they're right.
I think they're right about it.
Daniel Sewer, who's a kind of a scholar here in town at the Paul Nitze Center, who knows partitions well and the history of partitions well, he said the problem with partitions is someone always ends up on the wrong side of the line.
And it really, if you take a look at partitions in history, the Korea partition, Korea War, the Iran partition, Vietnam War, Europe was partitioned in the Cold War, we had a Cold War.
The Palestine partition, how did that work out?
So in South Asia, Indian-Pakistan partition, millions dead.
So history seems to indicate, or history teaches us, as people would say, partitions don't work.
And it's, you know, the model is the United States.
We don't all get along, but we all have to live together and figure out how to live together.
And I think that that is America's preference for Iraq and Syria.
Maybe it won't be up to us.
But I think that people are asking our opinion, and the Obama administration made it clear we do not, you know, autonomy is one thing, self-rule is one thing.
But to break up a country, they just, they're really skeptical about that.
Yeah.
Although, you know, in this case, and I won't speak for Syria, because I don't know exactly how the ethnic map lays out, and I'm far from convinced that even a plurality of Sunnis in Syria support the war against the central government there, you know, I just don't know.
But at least on the Iraqi side of this question, all the sectarian cleansing has already been done by the U.S. Army and Marine Corps in alliance with the Bata Brigade back during, you know, especially in 2006 and 7, well, 5, 6, and 7.
And the same thing happened under the Kurdish Peshmergas.
They kicked at least, you know, huge numbers.
I don't know how many exactly proportion wise, but huge numbers of Arabs were kicked out of Kirkuk, you know, as the Kurds made that a much more ethnically pure city.
So, really, George Bush already did the partition there.
You know, I guess the Sunnis in Baghdad that are left are only in the very southwest corner of the city.
Otherwise, it's an entirely Shiite city now, right?
Yeah, it's interesting.
You know, I think this is, what I'm about to say, I think is a little bit uncertain.
I have to think it through a little bit more, but I, you know, it's not clear to me that the Shia population in Baghdad is as comfortable with Iran now as they were, say, two years ago.
And we're starting to see kind of a much more independent current among Iraqi Shias that is a little bit frightened and irritated by Iran, which is, you know, which has been somewhat ham-handed.
So we have, you know, we have now among Shia militias, there are some Shia militias outside of Mosul who are starting to welcome Sunni recruits, and they're starting to fight together.
You know, we're at the beginning of that process.
Certainly not complete, it's not a total success, not everyone's applauding, but we're starting to see it.
And, you know, we have to remember, Iraqis and Iranians have Shia, and they're both Shia, so they have that in common.
But Iraqis are Arabs, and the Iranians are not.
So there is tension there, too.
This is, I mean, you know, interesting with a capital I, I think is what I would say.
It's getting interesting, and it's not sorted itself out yet, but we're in the process of doing that.
Well, I mean, the David party has been very reliant upon Iran, but then again, I mean, Iran and America put them in power, they do have power, and they have that as a difference, too.
Just chain of command.
You know, it's not like they're directly under the Quds Force or whatever, that kind of thing.
They never really were that.
So they're sort of like Hezbollah to Iran in a way, right?
Where they're at that level of its own.
Well, you and I, I mean, you and I have been on this interview before, and we've kind of gone through, you know, if we had to do it all over again, I mean, how smart were we, really?
I mean, it was a stupid thing to do, the Iraq War, and frankly, a lie to the American people to get it done, and a terrible mistake, a very costly mistake, a trillion dollars and 4,500 American lives, not to mention the tens of thousands of Iraqi lives.
But we can't roll the clock back, and you know, here we are.
So what's next?
And I'd like to hear from the Obama administration, somebody take that on.
All right, here's what's next, and here's the strategy beyond destroying and degrading ISIS.
Here's what we're going to try to do.
I'd like, or get out, which is, you know, an option.
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Well, you know, as long as we're in the weeds about the Shia groups and their view and their role in the war and all of that, I wonder if you were referring sort of specifically there to Muqtada al-Sadr, or there are other, I guess Ayatollah Sistani has said some nice things.
I don't know how much he really meant it.
Well, I don't know.
I guess he means what he says.
That, you know, please try not to be sectarian and don't take revenge killings and all this kind of thing.
I know Sadr has always tried to be more nationalist, even versus the interests of Iran, even though the U.S. actually chased him into Iran for a time.
He always wanted to have a reconciliation government with the Sunnis, and yet America always actually favored the more Iran-backed factions because they were the ones who needed our power more to take power on the gamble that they would always need us when they ended up choosing Iran and kicked us out.
But anyway, I mean, it sounds like there could be hope in that, right?
Like if Sadr and Sistani really mean it, that they want to work with the Sunnis and they want to be less reliant on Iran now, and they want to move that way, then that could be a way to defeat the Islamic State for good if, unlike under the Maliki years, they really could form some kind of coalition where the Sunnis felt like they were actually part of Iraq and not just, you know, dominated by Baghdad or an afterthought, you know?
Well, you're either very well informed or you have good intuitions or both.
I think Sistani is...
What it is, I've just been doing this for a long time in a row, Mark, is I just remember stuff.
But anyway, go ahead, sir.
I think that Sistani is probably the most creative, important political figure in Iraq, and he is an Iraqi nationalist, and I think he genuinely cares about the future of his country.
Muqtada al-Sadr is kind of like an Iraqi Trump.
He's very flighty, he's very unpredictable.
Four weeks ago he said we should be killing Americans, two weeks ago he said we need to cooperate with the Americans to take Mosul, two days later he said...
But he has a lot of influence.
But I think Sistani is kind of the key here, and the administration listens very carefully to what he says.
He's a man of enormous influence, he wants to rid Iraq of ISIS, and he wants national reconciliation and shared governance, and he has a lot of sway.
So long as Imam stays alive and has the influence that he has, I think that we're going to see, we could see real progress towards national reconciliation.
It's not a done deal, obviously it'll take years, but that's his tendency and that's his belief.
Yeah.
Well, it took him long enough, I mean.
If he had come out for that kind of thing forcefully in 2005, think of what a difference it could have made.
Yeah, I...
Let's take the capital city first, then we'll be nice.
I think that the American invasion was such a shock to the system that it was difficult for Iraqi political figures to kind of grasp what was happening, and then to shape a strategy on what to do, and it took everyone a while.
It took us a while, too.
Yeah.
I mean, evidence of that certainly would be, for example, the Sunnis boycotting that first election win.
Boy, I mean, they had a point that it was kind of illegitimate and it was going to really screw them over, but much worse when they didn't show up at all, you know?
What a mistake.
I think things might have been much different.
Now, of course, they are different.
The problem for a lot of the Sunni tribes is their young fighters and their young leadership are dead, and they're not able to mount the same kind of political offensive or military offensive that they once were.
And let's admit it, a lot of the Sunni tribes are in ISIS, which is basically the remnants of Saddam's Ba'athist army.
That's what ISIS is, and it's fighting under the umbrella of a religion, vicious as it may be.
I simply don't believe that it's more religious than political.
This is a political fight through and through.
Sure.
Well, it's really that alliance that used to be, well, it keeps shifting, the alliances among the jihadists, the tribes, and the Ba'athists there in Sunnistan.
It could be, I guess the best hope then would be for the tribes and the Ba'athists to make a deal against the jihadists, at least in terms of American public relations.
Well, you know, the Anbar Awakening Part II is what we need, and I think that we're, the United States, as I said in my article, is starting to see that a little bit more.
They should just dig Saddam back up, put him back, put his corpse back up there.
At least he's got a clean shaven chin, you know, camouflage, or, you know, olive green.
Long gone.
Yeah, too bad.
Man, so, really, that's something else.
All right, now, so tell me this, what about the U.S. Marine Corps, and what about the Joint Special Operations Command, and what about the CIA, and what about everything about the USA in Iraq right now, Mark?
Well, you know, you kind of touch a nerve, because...
Oh, I left out the Navy and the Air Force, what am I thinking?
You kind of touched a nerve with me, because, you know, I had a report, the reason I did this article is I had a report that the United States was actually paying Anbar tribal leaders directly, bypassing the government, and I could never prove it, and people denied it.
But, you know, the guy told me this was well-informed, but I thought, you know, and it was contradicted so often I didn't write the article about it, because I just didn't have it.
But I've since thought, you know, it's quite possible that the United States is paying the Anbar tribal leaders directly as part of an intelligence finding, maybe the CIA is doing it.
I don't think they are, but I think it's not out of the question.
And the second thing I thought is, you know, that I thought is it would be interesting to explore the kind of line between or cooperation among the Joint Special Operations crew out in the CENTCOM area, and CENTCOM itself.
I think that this probably tests our unity of command here in the United States.
I'm sure that there's probably maneuvering among military officers about who's in charge of what.
But this is really, this is really, Iraq is not only a test for the U.S. Central Command, it is a test for the Special Operations Command, because they're clearly the ones who are deploying people on the ground, in many instances, and are doing the training.
It took me a day to just get information, phone call after phone call after phone call about how many troops do we have in Iraq?
What are they doing?
What units are they from?
Who deployed them?
And who their commanders are?
It's very closely kept, which means the Special Operations Command, that's what they do.
They're very, very good.
They're good trainers, but you know, they can only do so much, as we've seen in the past, where, you know, we train guys, we train, and we train, and we train, and it turns out that they're, you know, that they go quickly to the other side.
This is always, this is always a danger, but these guys are very good who are on the ground.
Yeah.
Well, yeah, Mitchell Prothero, during, I guess it was during the battle for Ramadi, said, hey, listen, you know, it's not a mystery why the Iraqi Army's sniper range just increased by 400 yards or 1,000 yards, or whatever it was.
Those are the Marines that are out there fighting that war.
That's not the Iraqi Army that shoots that good.
Those are our guys.
No, our guys are really good.
There's no question about it, and, you know, we don't, we know, well, you and I lived through it, and we know it, and you covered it.
You know, we could storm up a highway and take Baghdad.
We know how to do that.
We are expert tank killers.
We control the air.
Anything under 25,000 feet, when we're in the air, dies.
We know how to do that.
What we don't know how to do very well, we try, is what you do after the victory, because as we've seen in our lives, victory can turn into a hell of another fight, unpredictable and very ugly, and that's basically what's happened to Iraq, which is why we are where we are right now.
Well, I'm back to the beginning there with the defeat of the Islamic State and what happens to these guys once Raqqa and Mosul fall, and especially, I don't know if anybody has a real count of how many Westerners, i.e., how many people with Western passports have gone to Syria and ended up joining the Islamic State and or, you know, later the Al-Nusra front, this kind of thing, and how many of these people will be now on the loose?
You know, it's not like they're all going to make one big last stand in the desert and we're just going to drop a daisy cutter on them or something like that.
They're going to all melt away, right?
And then, so where do they go?
Well, they go to Europe or they try to come here.
It's going to be very difficult for them to do that, but they can go to Europe, they can go to Istanbul.
We've seen attacks in Dhaka.
I think we're going to see, as ISIS degrades, as the Islamic State degrades, we're going to see more of these kinds of incidents.
I think it goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway, that, you know, once Mosul is taken and if Raqqa is taken and when it's taken, we're not going to see many prisoners.
The militias who are fighting on the anti-ISIS side are not going to read these guys their Miranda rights, I think it's safe to say.
And it's going to be what it has been for quite a while, which is ugly and intimate and bloody, and that's what we're facing.
All right, so that's Mark Perry writing for Politico magazine from the Pentagon.
This one is called Get Ready for Obama's October Surprise, and, you know, it's not all about politics, it's about the war.
It's about to come a war and what's going on in Iraq.
It's really good work, and I hope you guys will help make it viral here.
Get Ready for Obama's October Surprise in Iraq by Mark Perry.
Thank you again, sir.
Thank you, sir.
I appreciate it.
All right, y'all.
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