Sorry, I'm late.
I had to stop by the wax museum again and get the finger that FDR We know al-qaeda Zawahiri is supporting the opposition in Syria are we supporting al-qaeda in Syria It's a proud day for America and by God we've kicked Vietnam syndrome once and for all thank you very very You've been took These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else except as a fact He came, he saw, he died.
We ain't killing they army, we're killing them We be on CNN like say our name bitch, say it, say it three times The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world, then there's going to be an invasion Aren't you guys introducing Retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel Daniel L. Davis the famous whistleblower from the Afghan surge in 2012 the aftermath of it more or less and regular writer for the National Interest and a fellow at Defense Priorities and Featured in my book too and endorsed it too.
Hey, welcome back to the show.
How are you doing?
It's been a while.
I've been glad glad to be here yeah, very happy to have you here and happy to read what's going on and I almost can't believe my eyes and my ears and In the very best way.
I'm afraid I'm gonna be put out of business.
Yeah, right But at least I'm certainly I have to go back and revise now some of the things that I had said in The draft of my new book I'm working on unless things really change it looks like America is pulling forces out of Syria entirely very soon and Half of the forces in Afghanistan they say within six months, but sounds like maybe once that starts I'm not sure what but anyway, I mean Elections coming up there and everything.
So I turn it over to you.
What say you?lieutenant colonel retired lieutenant colonel Daniel L Davis Well number one, I could not be any more happy On both counts and I have been you know Doing everything I can on interviews like this and other other shows to endorse this view and to reinforce why it's right too oftentimes people And frankly, I can kind of understand to a certain degree why people want to ascribe various Motives behind what Trump is doing or say he doesn't know what he's doing, etc But I think he is shown especially in foreign policy issues He's got really good instincts but he doesn't have really good knowledge of how to turn them into operational requirements or realities and and I think that's been one of the problems which which you know, apparently is going to be alleviated with the removal of Secretary of Defense Mattis because he was a big advocate for staying in Afghanistan In fact, according to the Woodward book fear actually talked him out of Getting out earlier So now that apparently Trump has come to the conclusion that you know What if I'm gonna president it if I'm either gonna rise or fall on what I think is right So he's saying here's what I think is right.
We're gonna remove the troops from Syria We're gonna remove the troops from Afghanistan or at least reduce them Hopefully leading towards a full withdrawal here shortly But he is correct because there is a big huge misconception out there.
I'll just tell you Scott That we have to have troops on the ground on foreign soil all over the place to keep us safe here It's almost become a religion.
And in fact, that's that's one of the things that Lindsey Graham has just been you know Shouting to the four winds since this announcement on Syria was made that you know, basically Oh what there's gonna be a new 9-eleven now as though if there are troops in Afghanistan Or if there aren't troops in Afghanistan there will be terrorist attacks and if there are troops in Afghanistan there won't be and Nothing could be further from the truth and this it's even worse in in this regard in Syria, and I'll tell you why There is this belief that if we have troops on the ground there that we can interdict terrorists before they plots before they start or that we can prevent them from coming and that's actually the Rationale that was delayed for why we wouldn't get out of Afghanistan earlier But when you look at actually how Terrorist attracts are started how they are plotted how they are prepared It has nothing to do with our troops over there the 9-eleven report There's two different things that I can point to that can really show you maybe you can link these for your listeners Number one is a 9-eleven report that shows in great detail exactly how 9-eleven actually was formed And it was not formed because of anything on the ground that Afghanistan Khalid Sheikh Mohammed KSM was the mastermind behind that attack and what he did He was traveling all over the world to seven or eight different countries, Sudan Malaysia Philippines a number of other places Pakistan To visit with a lot of terrorist masterminds So the terrain is the twisted mind of a terrorist not a piece of physical terrain He went all over the place.
The only way that Afghanistan even came into the conversation was when Osama bin Laden happened to be there when KSM briefed him But he had just relocated from Sudan and had this meeting taking place a few months earlier it would have happened in Sudan, but it wouldn't have made any difference either because the key area was the terrain of KSM's mind which goes anywhere You don't need any kind of terrain for that to happen And then you look at most of the actual planning was done in Germany in Maryland and Florida and some other US states.
So I don't think we're gonna go occupy those with military operations.
So When you look at how it happened, you can see that it doesn't matter where any ungoverned space will work The second one is a Heritage Foundation report, which actually came out back in 2013, which looked at 56 Terrorist plots that had been either conducted or planned in the United States since 9-11 56 of the 60 were thwarted and four of them took place to include like the Boston bombing and the shoe bomber and some others that didn't work, but of the 56 that were interdicted Let's see 100% of them none of them happened in Because of something in Afghanistan or Syria or Pakistan or Iraq None of them almost all of them had to do with things that happened in the United States The planning was done.
Some of the operational planning was done in the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania not far from here There were people from 26 different nations involved in all of these plots 77 of them came from the United States 33 of them came from Great Britain Only a handful came from Afghanistan But none of the planning took place in any of those places In particular and even in the places where we have troops like Afghanistan the planning still takes place So that graphically shows you in any way You want to look that having troops on the ground on the in Afghanistan or any other specific spot?
Does nothing to keep us safe because what has kept us safe?
What did allow us to interdict those 56 plots that we know about was aggressive global ISR intelligence surveillance?reconnaissance close cooperation between federal and local and state law enforcement agencies and effective cooperation between intelligence agencies of the US and other friendly countries That's what interdicted all 56 of them.
Not one of them was because we have troops on the ground So that's the the baseline right here is that we have to get everyone to understand that we are not Kept safe by having troops in Afghanistan and we will not be at any greater risk By having them come out and the same is certainly true for the troops in Iraq and for the troops in Syria We should we withdraw all of them.
Not just you're not just the ones in Syria but so that's the bottom line Scott is that I And I don't know to what extent Trump is aware of all this stuff or if it's just an instinct and he doesn't really understand the details behind it But he is right.
And of course I can point out all the reasons why he is graphically, right?we help ourselves we can make our National defense stronger by not spending all this money and wasting all this blood and treasure on Places that don't have anything to do with our security.
So I'm a big advocate Hang on just one sec for me guys.
You got to check out Mike Swanson's great book the war state It's about the rise of the military industrial complex in America after World War two during the administrations of Truman Eisenhower and Kennedy and it's a real education.
Check it out the war state By Mike Swanson and also check out his great investment advice at Wall Street window calm All right now so but what happens is Well a couple of things here.
First of all when you talk about in Syria what they say well, we have to be there to interdict terrorists a major part of that seems to be a conflation and a bait-and-switch and Trying to expand the mission and we've seen this in multiple reports where they talk about the the neocons outside of government But inside the Bush administration people like Jeffries and others have talked about.
Well, we're really there for Iran and Yeah terrorists means now Iran our allies and theirs in Iraq the Shiite militias and whatever and the threat of a land bridge also known as a road from Tehran to Baghdad to Damascus to Southern Lebanon and that this is all about interdicting with weapons going from the Shiite alliance.
Never mind Isis To arm Hezbollah against Israel.
And so what about that?
Assuming all other things being equal and the priority of protecting Israel and not turning Israel over to Iran's malign Influence, what do you think look a couple things number one?
I'll hit the last one first Israel is the strongest military power in the Middle East bar none They have the greatest equipment.
They have the greatest Capabilities the the highest trained soldiers I mean they've shown in wars in the past even when they weren't half as capable as they are now Nobody is gonna dominate them militarily the least of which is Iran which would have to travel over thousands of miles and would be wiped out before it ever even got you know a Halfway there should it ever even attempt to do anything?
All Iran can do is cause nuisance and they can certainly help with you know Hezbollah and they can cause you know, some problems on that border and Israel is very equipped to handle all that.
So there's no risk Whatsoever that Iran is ever going to use this Road stuff called a land bridge to actually get to Israel to attack them So when you can just take that right off the table, but you hit it right on the head yet again With this comment about you know, the old bait-and-switch So first of all the whole problem in Syria started when the Obama administration completely against the Constitution Put u.s.
Combat troops on the ground on the soil of a foreign country without either international cover or u.s.
Congress authorization which is required by the Constitution So that's where we started and then he was supporting at first a bunch of untrue or unvetted groups Which turned out to be in some cases allied with al-qaeda or giving them, you know weapons.
That was a disaster So he's punished doing that and then it ended up saying all right, you know what?
We're gonna ally with the SDF.
They seem to be the best and those capable and the most America friendly and we're gonna route Isis out of Raqqa and SDF that's the Syrian Kurdish faction Yeah, sorry about that.
Yeah So and even that should have had Congressional authorization first but be that as it may that was still the mission It was given to the military in October of 2017 that mission was accomplished and by all rights Those troops should have come home, but they didn't instead these neocon people you're talking about some official some unofficial and certainly lots of military Leaders they wanted to find a new mission.
They didn't want to bring them home Well, since Congress didn't authorize it in the first place Congress was kind of like, okay Well, we'll just turn our attention elsewhere and let it stay So they went looking for missions and it turned out to be Oh, let's put pressure on Iran and then Jeffers, I think is there Jeffries?
I think as you mentioned a second ago one of the things he mentioned not two weeks ago was that those troops are gonna be there until Iran is no longer an influence in Syria, which is like saying I'm gonna keep you know, my hand as long as until I get rid of all my fingers.
They're not going anywhere They're an ally.
They're they're boarded with them.
They're not going anywhere So that's that's something that would never happen, which would mean the troops will be there forever But here's one thing I just on a tactical level.
I got to point out those 2,000 troops up there do Nothing they provide no strategic benefit to the United States at most there are literally only a few hundred of Those troops are actually, you know fighters ground troop kind of people the rest of them are trainers training SDF or their logistics or their security because you know when you have that few people in a in a foreign country You know where you know bad guys are literally all around you.
You have to spend most of your energy Defending yourself and supplying yourself.
And so there's not much time left for those guys to go out there so that's the first big issue right now that I have been trying to tell anyone who would listen is if there is this assumption this belief very unsubstantiated that our troops have been Performing some sort of strategic utility that taking them out would leave a vacuum.
There's no vacuum to leave There's those people in this vast track of Syria where they're, you know located They're literally just dots on the sand and those dots on the sand are gonna come out one way or the other They're never expected to be there forever and so we need to pull them out right now because we take enormous risk every day that they have been there from Accidental clashes with Russia with maybe with Syrian forces or just hidden from some of these numerous other al-qaeda back Terror groups that are located in Syria.
So they're just targets in there They do nothing positive and we risk their lives every day for a mission.
That's not even in America's national interest I'm strongly supportive of reducing them.
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Well, but there seems like there might be a vacuum here and we had to leave out and and I'm sorry We're so short on time But of course American intervention along with Turkish intervention helped lead to the rise of the Islamic State and then therefore The alliance with the Syrian Kurds to fight against the Islamic State that had blown up so big it had conquered all of Western Iraq for a time there in Iraq war three starting in 2014 is you know, what even led to the part about aligning with them in the first place?but now and as we've talked about all along at some point America is going to betray these Kurds because at the end of the day, we're allies with the Turks in NATO and have been since World War two and that's not going to change and so the worry is or at least The the asserted worry is and and there's a contemporary claim about Afghanistan to That when we leave there will be hell to pay for the people we've propped up here and that may be Trump rather than telling Erdogan.
Hey promise not to attack the Kurds just you know We'll pressure them to make a deal with Assad maybe and Assad's forces will stand between you and the Kurds and and that'll be good Enough for everyone and let's not have another war here, but maybe he might not do that Maybe he's just getting out of the way to let Turkey attack something like that.
What's gonna happen to these Kurds?
We always betray him and that seems mean and then of course the same thing with the mostly minority Factions that we've installed as the government of Afghanistan and Kabul who are facing Nothing like a stalemate but a rapidly growing rise of the new not so new Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan under the authority of the Taliban and so that means hell to pay for them, too Right, you are so right And then that's that's the really unfortunate consequence of this bad policy that has been in place for years now in both of those locations Is that you know, we do and I have been advocating this just as strongly You know on Fox and every other place that I've been on is that?
Trump needs to put a lot of pressure on Erdogan not to do exactly what you've said Because it's just wrong that we have used these guys to do what we wanted to do and then now leave and leave them on Their own so I truly hope that doesn't happen But in Afghanistan, it's even worse because it's it's so much larger as you pointed out And I do concede that it could go bad It could go south and a lot of people could pay for this and unfortunately that can't be changed We can do the best to mitigate it, but we can't change it And that's the consequence of this horrible policy that we've had year after year And what we absolutely need to not do is make it worse by extending it Yeah, all right.
So now what do you make of it's fun I get such mixed signals about the seriousness of Khalil Zod's effort One of the architects of this policy back in the Bush years now Trump's ambassadors shuttling around all these different countries trying to negotiate trying to figure something out meeting with the Taliban and then I read Months of this stuff and then I read one where a State Department weenie says well listen We're just having talks about one day having talks and we're you know This is all going nowhere And we're not even really trying and a framework of the thing and whether or not to include Kabul and that and I'm saying hey The clock is ticking apparently faster and faster on these guys Is there anything left to negotiate with the Taliban or they're just gonna have to hands off and probably pretend it never happened Look, the Taliban has been saying from the beginning is that they they want the United States out and they've been saying that they would Negotiate if that was on the table and so by having this come out we can say all right Now it is on the table now then because also of that Because we're leaving then now that's Kabul government has motivation to make a deal with the Taliban They've never had before because they've always known that we've militarily got their back Well now then they don't have that assurance anymore now then they're gonna have to make deals that they otherwise wouldn't have made but that's necessary to get to any kind of a peace because the one thing we Got a hope for and count on is the fact that both sides all sides really are sick of war And if they can get to any kind of reasonable accommodation for both sides And this actually can come to an end which it has many times throughout hundreds of years of back in history So that's I'm hopeful that that can happen but the idea that we you know, we need to just keep staying there forever is It's just not gonna help us because it doesn't work.
It hasn't worked and delaying it is just gonna make it even worse Yeah, alright everybody that is Danny Davis at defense priorities and the national interest as well Thank you very much, sir.
Free time.
Appreciate it.
Always my pleasure.
Thanks Hey guys This is burden car from the friends against government podcast here and you've probably heard Scott talk about the crowdsourcing effort on reddit about his Upcoming book all you got to do to get in is to donate $5 a month to Scott's patreon and request to join the private Reddit group in Scott's reddit group You will find a pin post outlining the details for how you can help find source material for Scott's upcoming book by listening to Archived interviews and taking a few notes If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to either myself at bird or kissed or car at car camp it on Twitter And we'll be happy to help.
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