02/10/11 – Noah Shachtman – The Scott Horton Show

Alright, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
I'm Scott Horton, and our next guest is Noah Shockman.
He writes the blog DangerRoomAtWired.com.
0-4-0-Alpha, confirm there's bombs dropping on Mazdrak.
Fucking hell!
Woo-hoo!
I fucking told you nothing but bacteria would live!
Alright, that audio is from a YouTube, from SonicBomb.com.
It's titled, American B-2 Attacks Target in Afghanistan.
It's from Noah Shockman's blog entry at the DangerRoom blog there.
Afghan war doubles.
Now, ten attacks per day.
Welcome back to the show.
Noah, how are you?
Hey, fine, thanks.
I'm really happy to have you here, and I appreciate the fact that you embedded that picture there.
It's something that really bothers me about this era of war.
I mean, longer than Vietnam or any other American military engagements.
Maybe the war against the Indians that used to inhabit this continent.
But we never get to see it on TV.
In fact, you probably could have got more realism from drawings and newspaper accounts in the 19th century of the Indian wars, as far as getting the imagination of the audience to actually engage in what it might be like on the ground where these things are taking place.
All we ever get about the wars in Afghanistan are words on pages.
And it's very rare that TV would show us bombs going off, even if at a distance you can't even see the human beings being killed in the footage.
You know, that's the first time I've seen a picture of Afghanistan in a while now, honestly.
Yeah, well, I mean, in some senses we have to rely on the soldiers themselves to take that footage.
Right, yeah, they just won't show it to us on TV.
I don't know what exactly the mandate is.
Once the TV news people got bored of the Iraq war, that was pretty much it as far as showing us coverage.
They certainly won't show us American soldiers being killed in battle like they did during the days of Vietnam.
Although, to be fair, there's many fewer soldiers being killed.
Well, that's true, but still a record number in Afghanistan.
Last year, for example, 500.
That was as many as during the entire Bush administration, right?
Yeah, I mean, look, I'm not trying to say that the Afghan war is getting increasingly violent.
That's sort of what's going on with these airstrikes.
You know, under Stan McChrystal, who was the previous general in charge of U.S. efforts there, the attitude towards bombing and towards sort of violent coercion in general was to try to view it as a tool of last resort.
But David Petraeus, the current commander, is taking a very different attitude.
And so he's really increased the number of special operations raids.
Tanks are being brought in in Helmand Province.
And the number of air attacks has basically doubled since the McChrystal days.
Well, now, it's funny because in a way it seems like that makes sense from the point of view of the coin strategy, because in a way the coin strategy really is written to not be a couple of year in and out sort of surge work kind of strategy.
It's supposed to be a multi-generational change entire societies kind of thing.
And I guess you need tanks and permanent bases and that kind of thing for a permanent occupation.
But on the other hand, counterinsurgency strategy, I thought the one that McChrystal was implementing was really David Petraeus' baby.
And it said, you know, we should have targeted killings of the bad guys as narrowly as we can define them.
And then we ought to be more or less traffic cops, clear holding and building and creating stability and community policing and whatever for the rest of the society being their friends and not their enemies.
And yet it seems like more and more air attacks, more and more tank attacks is exactly contrary to that doctrine.
But then again, I'm no military guy.
Is there a discrepancy here?
Well, I mean, I think in some ways McChrystal read Petraeus' counterinsurgency manual more literally than Petraeus himself did.
Well, but how's that?
Well, in that McChrystal, you know, the guidance to kind of like that sometimes the best weapons don't shoot and that the key was really to win over populations.
McChrystal really took that literally, whereas Petraeus has always sort of viewed that both in Iraq and in Afghanistan in looser terms.
Remember that in Iraq, Petraeus increased the use of airstrikes sevenfold there.
So it's not as if this was unexpected.
It is actually part of the Petraeus playbook is to sort of do a lot of violent coercion on one hand and on the other, try to partner up with the people.
It's a very delicate balance and it's unclear whether it's going to work.
Well, here's a headline from Antiwar.com.
Today, Petraeus predicts even worse violence in Afghanistan in 2011, cites progress as reason for another record year.
So I guess that's the surge working in Afghanistan.
Well, I mean, it's not completely crazy, right?
I mean, you know, the idea is, I mean, I think his idea is, you know, to try and make this the year that they really, you know, take it to the Taliban and therefore you're going to see some more fighting then.
On the other hand, it's like, come on, man.
This is like year, what, 10 of the war?
Like, how can, you know, how can violence keep going up and up and up and everything be copacetic?
Well, yeah, I mean, that's the whole thing.
The more they escalate American troop levels in Afghanistan, the more Taliban there are to fight, which makes perfect sense if you take in Stanley McChrystal's own math.
And I actually asked Matthew Hastings because the way, pardon me, Michael Hastings, the way the article was written in Rolling Stone, the quotation marks weren't exactly clear.
And he clarified on this show that these are exactly McChrystal's words to him, the insurgent math, for every one we kill, we get 10 more.
Yeah.
It's like digging a hole to get out of it.
Yeah.
So it's a conundrum there.
It's a real conundrum.
And it's really unclear what the best path is.
It's unclear whether McChrystal, whether his way was working.
And it's, you know, Petraeus is citing a lot of progress, but I don't think it's clear yet whether his way is working either.
Well, so how goes the projects in Marjah and Kandahar?
These were supposed to be the kind of set pieces for the counterinsurgency strategy, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, it's a little hard.
I mean, I'm not there.
So, you know, I'm just relying on the same secondhand reports that you are.
You know, Marjah's calmer.
Kandahar seems to be, I'm not sure.
You know, I think some parts are calmer and some parts are more violent.
You know, there's a small stretch of Helmand Province that I know a little bit better.
And it's really taken a couple of years for the place to turn from very, very, very violent to actually, you know, starting to see some rebuilding.
And it's taken a couple of years and it's taken, you know, several thousand Marines in a relatively small farming community.
So it's not as if, you know, societies can't be turned around.
It's as if, you know, violence can't be brought down.
It just takes a lot of people and a lot of time.
And I'm not sure that that's a real scalable model for a country like Afghanistan.
Yeah.
Well, it's funny because they made a real big deal about what great successes these were going to be and then we haven't really heard too much since then about it.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's totally true.
Part of that is they're probably not as big or not as quick of successes as they'd hoped.
And then the other thing is, I mean, let's be frank, is like the only time you're really going to get news coverage in a particular place is when a really violent battle is kicking off.
And so, for example, I think this spring you'll see a whole bunch of news coverage about Afghanistan because there's sort of a fighting season in Afghanistan and things kind of hibernate a little bit for the winter.
Well, now, I don't know if you do much writing about this, but I wonder if you know about the politics.
You seem to have some Pentagon sources and things.
There's been sort of a conflict between whether the president meant what he said about the beginning of the end of the war being this July versus.
Let's just clear that up right now.
Okay.
That figure is nonsense.
I mean, that date is nonsense.
Anybody that's hanging their hat on July 2011 is smoking the good stuff.
That's just not going to.
I mean, it's just not.
It's a made-up date.
It's a made-up date.
Well, see, last fall it seemed like the Pentagon kept saying 2014, 2015 numbers like this, and then Obama gave a speech recently where he said this summer again.
And I wasn't sure whether that was in the State of the Union, right?
You know, see my earlier comment.
Famous 16 words.
See my earlier comment.
I think it's a totally made-up artificial date.
Look, if there are major troop withdrawals in July of 2011 or scheduled then, you can have me back on the show and tease me for what an idiot I am, but I don't think it's going to happen.
Oh, yeah.
Well, I'm not saying I was buying it or anything.
I just wanted some clarity.
Well, but so can you tell me, is it, you know, people that you know in the Defense Department are telling you that, too, or you just know better yourself?
Let's just say I remain unconvinced that July 2011 is going to be a date of significant withdrawal.
All right.
Well, thanks for your time on the show.
I really do appreciate it.
Sorry we didn't have more.
Everybody, that's Noah Schachman at WIRED.