I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of Antiwar.com, author of the book Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and the brand new Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism, and I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2003, almost all on foreign policy, and all available for you at scotthorton.org.
You can sign up for the podcast feed there, and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scotthorton show.
All right, hey, you guys, check it out.
It's Danny Davis, a former lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, and again, a famous whistleblower from the Afghan war from 2012, decorated veteran of Iraq War I and II, and Afghanistan, and he blew the whistle on how Petraeus was lying that his surge had accomplished anything on the way out in 2012, and said, don't you believe it, America, and he was sure right about that, and so welcome back to the show.
Great to have you on.
Thank you for joining us again.
You always know it's my pleasure.
And defense priorities, that's your home now, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, I should have said that earlier in the introduction.
All right.
Anyway, so it's like this, top headline on antiwar.com, Kabul attacks kill 73, including 13 U.S. troops, and that's Marines and a Navy corpsman, I believe, was one of them was the last I saw there.
So I guess just tell us what's on your mind, your reaction to the attack, and your understanding of what happened with this attack at the Kabul airport.
You know, it's just such an egregious, you know, code to end this catastrophic 20-year war.
I mean, just as a, you know, a brother in arms of anyone who's ever served, we all feel part of that brotherhood, you know, and when anybody loses their life in combat, it's just, you feel it personally, and I certainly do.
But this one has got to be even more egregious, because, I mean, what can you say to the family members that your loved ones lost their lives literally days, just a handful of days before the end of this pointless 20-year war?
And that's been what's driving me, really, from the beginning, ever since I've, really back in 2009, when I first started publishing on this stuff, but especially in 2012, after I got back from my second combat tour, and knew people who were killed in combat.
That's what's been driving me relentlessly over the years.
Maybe not quite as much as you, but I've been giving you a run for your money on the relentless drive part.
But that's why, because, you know, this is not just a policy issue.
This is not just a good idea or bad idea.
This is catastrophic life and death issues.
Women are dead that shouldn't be dead.
Women are dead that shouldn't be dead.
And that goes for both the United States and the Afghan side, because this could have been capped off at least a decade ago, and maybe the same outcome would have happened.
Maybe the Afghan government would have been able to stand on their own if we had withdrawn when we had a chance, and when they would have had a chance.
But we didn't take any of those opportunities.
We just continued to lie every year about how things were making progress, even though we knew for sure behind the scenes that they weren't.
Everybody's like, yo, I'm only there for a year, so I'll just continue the fiction until it's handed off to the next guy, and it'll be somebody else's problem.
Well, the problem with that is that eventually the catastrophe and the metastasis of the cancer gets so big you can't spin it anymore.
And finally, reality imposes itself over the spin, which is precisely what we had with the collapse of the Afghan government, the rise of the Taliban.
Now, no one can hide from the truth anymore, and now at the very end, we have one more big casualty list, and it's just such a tragedy, because it could have been avoided.
Yeah.
All right.
Now, to zoom in on what actually happened there, who done it, and do we need to reinvade the country now?
There's certainly plenty of people calling for that.
I was on a few TV shows last night where there was some of the other guests were arguing exactly that thing, and there's been no shortage of heroic congressmen trying to argue for that's what we should do right now.
But that is just insane and idiotic, to be putting it politely.
What we know is that it was high probability that it was what's called ISIS-K, which is, it's an acronym for basically the same ISIS group that originated in Syria and Iraq.
A splinter group has formed in Afghanistan, which basically has drawn itself from the most radical elements of the Afghan and the Pakistan Taliban, the two separate organizations.
Those Taliban were not violent enough for these people, so they formed their own offshoot and called themselves ISIS-K.
The thing is that they're relatively small.
There's estimates anywhere between 1,000 and 2,000 total in the country, and just to give you a means of comparison, there's somewhere between 75,000 and 100,000 Taliban, so it's just a minuscule number in comparison.
But what you see is when somebody's intent on doing violence and evil and murder, it's not that hard because of all the chaos in Kabul.
It's an impossibility to suggest that the Taliban had the ability to provide perfect security for the area around the Kabul airport.
Look, they have self-interest to want to do so because they hate the ISIS, and they've been at battle with them for a long, long time.
By the way, 28 people who were killed in that blast were Taliban.
This idea that they may have been secretly colluding to try to kill us is absurd because they're not going to sacrifice 28 of their own guys.
That's absurd.
But this idea that we need to either keep troops there or send more over there to fight them is absurd because, look, this just highlights one of the things we've been saying forever and on your show, too.
The only reason they killed these Americans is because they're there.
If we withdrew earlier, if we had withdrawn on May 1st like we were supposed to have originally, they wouldn't be there.
They wouldn't have been there to be attacked, and after we leave, they again won't be able to go anywhere.
They are a national organization.
They may have fantasies about international terrorism, but they've got to leave there in order to do anything anywhere else.
We have great mechanisms to track all of that kind of stuff, and it's been very effective over the years.
It improved dramatically, which also underscores why we don't need troops on the ground there, and we will continue to keep ourselves safe.
But I'm arguing that it'll actually be better because now that we won't have those targets just sitting there waiting to find out if somebody's going to attack them or not, and of course, that's the same reason why we need to withdraw from Iraq and Syria, but that's an argument for a separate day, but the logic remains valid.
Yeah.
Boy, yeah, there's a whole other set of arguments for there.
So this is the thing, right?
The knee jerks that, look, if 13 of our guys just got killed, well, of course, then we have to put more of our guys in harm's way.
We have to continue the war because otherwise, essentially, we're letting the other guys get the last word, something like that.
Yeah, and look, and let me be, let me make sure I'm clear on this.
I in no way suggest that there shouldn't be retribution for what happened, and I'm a strong proponent that there should, but that also underscores how effective we can be because the same mechanisms that we use to take out Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, al-Baghdadi in Syria, Soleimani when he was in Baghdad at that time, all of the organization and the troops and the assets that actually took out those threats to America, none of them were on the ground in those places, none of them, not even the one in Iraq.
Even though we had troops there, the strike team came from elsewhere, and we will do the same thing here.
In fact, I would be surprised if Biden does anything before we get out.
I would strongly suggest, and hopefully he does, wait until after Tuesday so it'll lessen the chance of any more American targets getting shot while we're still there.
Because we're out and the risk is lower, then I'm sure he'll use that same capability to make direct strikes on targeted ISIS people and will exact a revenge and a justice for the murderous attack.
But you don't need troops on the ground for that.
I wouldn't be too surprised if the Taliban beat him to it and just lynched some guys and said, we got him.
I wouldn't be surprised if they got the right guys actually at this point.
It's entirely possible because they have interest.
They have reason to do that.
Well, and they've been fighting really bloody, horrible battles against ISIS for a very long time.
And yeah, I mean, that's the thing that, you know, I'm not sure I've really got to start watching cable TV news again, I guess, because it is hard, I know, man, you know.
But that's, you know, there's a lot of things missing from the narrative, such as the Taliban have a real interest in killing these guys.
Aside from just sucking up to us, they hate them anyway.
Yeah, man, you know, I saw the most disappointing thing.
I'm gonna go ahead and complain about this in another interview already.
Reid Coverdale sent me a video of Tulsi Gabbard saying that the presumed ISIS guys and she just throws in al-Qaeda like, oh, yeah, no, we have to believe al-Qaeda is in Afghanistan too, just as long as you're making up stuff.
And then she says, yeah, no, they did this because we won't convert to their religion.
And so that's, you know, and I'm thinking, wow, what a permanent war we're gonna have to fight forever.
Danny.
It's interesting.
Tulsi used to be pretty good on some of this stuff.
I'm really surprised about that.
Yeah, no, she's always got the core premises of the terror war wrong and as wrong as she can.
I'm not really sure why.
She used to pile around with the Christians United for Israel, you know, hardcore Christian Zionist crazies movement and stuff like that.
But it seems like that was a while back.
It seems like they have less influence over her, but she sounds like Frank Gaffney on this stuff.
It's just absolutely ridiculous.
At one point during the campaign, she put out a video on Twitter where she said there are hundreds of these groups.
She goes, look, there's al-Qaeda in the Idlib province.
There's al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which America backs in both those circumstances as she knows.
But anyway, there's al-Shabaab in Somalia.
And now I'm like, OK, well, yeah, all right.
And then next after that, there are hundreds of these groups.
Oh, really?
Is that why you can name three and on the third one you're already stretching it?
OK.
You know, hundreds of these groups.
So anywhere there's a Sunni with a rifle, America has to stay at war forever.
Come on.
You know, that's that's that's really one of the fundamental flaws that that, number one, that putting troops even does or can help prevent terrorist attacks against our people.
But number two, that you can that there's even a need for it, because unless they can get out of wherever they are, it doesn't matter how angry they are with the Kalashnikov rifle.
They can't do anything to America or Americans.
But if they start traveling and start doing things and making plans now, then they can be identified and interdicted.
So unless they do something, there's no point in in wasting a lot of resources that aren't going to be successful anyway and aren't necessary because they can rail and scream all they want in the empty desert.
It's not going to make any difference to us.
So just leave them alone.
Yeah.
All right.
Now, here's the thing, and it's legitimate in its own little way anyway, right, is.
And I actually hadn't seen this myself, but I heard about it.
And sounds right that they've got dead soldiers, families on TV, especially on Fox, I guess, saying that, you know, by backing out of the war.
That's what means that everybody who fought in it died for nothing.
And that's what's the disgrace to their family.
They've been proud that their son had paid the ultimate sacrifice for the right reason.
And then now the Democrats completely blow it.
And that's certainly how they feel about it.
But so what would you say to them?
Yeah.
You know, that's you got to tread careful on that, because I have such extremely high respect and empathy for for all of the family members who've lost.
I mean, it's been as I said earlier, it's been one of my driving factors in why I've been so relentless over, you know, a decade and a half on that.
This stuff needs to be ending because of the consequence and the cost to us.
So I wouldn't really directly say anything to them, because I mean, any any family member who loses a loved one in a combat zone, especially are desperate for anything to show that the sacrifice was not in vain, that something positive was actually accomplished.
And to be deprived of that is to, in some ways, increase the pain.
But what I consider a, you know, almost far more egregious, if not outright vindictive policy is to tread with that and to ply with that anger and that emotion and say, no, no, they were all heroes and allowed them because then that perpetuates the thing.
In fact, there's some laudatory philosophy or idea that, yeah, let's keep doing this because that's that's good on them.
No, no, it's not, because the the bloody, hard, cold fact is that these lives have almost all been sacrificed for no gain to our country.
They shouldn't have been put in harm's way.
They shouldn't have had to sacrifice their lives.
And our country is not better for it.
In fact, it's worse for it because our security has been lessened by all of these pricing costs that we keep paying, both financially and blood and limbs.
So my focus would be on the people who sent them there and who keep sending them there and all these people who want to recommend that we keep going or that we go back in.
Look, you go talk to and explain to the mothers and the wives and the kids of the soldiers who haven't died yet and explain to them why it's cool for their son or daughter to die.
For their husband or their father or their mother to sacrifice their life for no gain to our country, that it's self-evident that this is not a successful.
Now, when you do that, then I might have a little bit more respect for you.
You'll still be wrong, but that's what I want to see.
And I'm so tired of seeing people, you know, hold up their sacrifices, though.
It's something intrinsically valuable by itself that, you know, in spite of what the war has done.
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And, you know, the thing of it is, is it's almost all people who have not been over there who talk that way.
It's not really I mean, I'm sure there are veterans families who got really hurt feelings going on right now.
But mostly this kind of thing is invoked by people who probably hadn't actually met a soldier in 10 years or something, you know?
Yeah.
Living in New York City on their in their fancy glass towers.
And look, I think a lot of it's not true of everybody, but a lot of these people who were so quick to to traffic on on the emotional, these people, they don't even know what you're doing or don't even care.
They just think it's an effective tool.
And I just it just rubs me the wrong way.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, I hate the partisanship of it all.
I mean, I know you lean a little bit right, but it doesn't seem like you're much of a party guy.
I'm an American guy.
I don't really care much about either party, just to be honest with you.
But it's just you can see where for the people who do put party first, how it just dumbs down every single thing out of their mouth in such a horrible way, just destroys any semblance of real debate about what's happening or why or.
Yeah, that is that is so true.
And, you know, I mean, really, this is one of the best examples of that, right, where Trump and Biden's people are blaming each other.
Right.
When they should both be blaming George W.
Bush and Barack Obama and congratulating each other.
And, you know, I mean, that should be the thing of it.
You know, Trump negotiated this deal and Biden saw it through.
And even in his statement yesterday, he said, look, if McKenzie asked me for more soldiers.
For the implementation of the evacuation, he can have them, but I asked him, do you have what you want and need?
And he said yes.
So that's where it stands.
And no, we're not re-escalating the war.
And you can tell everybody who's hawking it up on this or I don't I don't know everybody.
I should be reading the National Review, I guess.
But.
Everybody who I see hawking it up on there, they're not saying if we send troops back, then that means you realize that means war and that means another regime change in Kabul.
And that means we're going to have to send, what, 50, 75,000 guys and and massive air power to now re-force the Taliban out of all the capital cities and get right back to where we were a year ago, supposedly somehow, and call that progress toward what?
Because anything less than that, what are you going to do?
You're going to start the war all over again.
But with your last few guys right there in their hands, better not do that.
But nobody's talking about the consequences of that where we have a ceasefire right now.
We have a handshake and they're living up to it.
So that would be a pretty big deal to break that at this late date, wouldn't it?
You know, this one of the things I've seen floated around by a bunch of people, somebody even ask it in the in Biden's press conference yesterday.
In fact, one of the generals I was on with overnight again said, you know, one of the most catastrophic decisions was the decision to give up Bagram Air Base earlier in the process.
And, you know, we should we should just go back and reoccupy it.
And I'm like, you got to be kidding me.
Number one, when the when the Bagram was handed over in early July, July 2nd, I believe was the date at that time we were operating or we were conducting a withdrawal of 2500 soldiers with the expectation to leave 600 of them in the embassy compound to continue operating.
There was no evacuation.
It was just a military withdrawal and a sequenced collapse of all of our facilities, which made perfect sense.
It wasn't until you had the almost simultaneous collapse of the political and military infrastructure in total in Mazar-e-Sharif, Kandahar City and Herat City, the three largest cities outside of Kabul simultaneously.
And instead of the Taliban having to fight their way, you know, to win in those cities and then come to Kabul, they literally just drove in their cars to Kabul.
So everything was over.
And suddenly and on as of April or August 13th, that's when the last city fell.
Now, all of a sudden you have a massive scramble and now it's an evacuation.
Instead of 2500, now it's like well over 100,000.
And the idea that to go back and change what actually happened and say, oh, we shouldn't have given away Bagram then because it wasn't an evacuation then.
Otherwise, of course, that's what we would have done.
That made perfect sense.
But it didn't make any sense the way if it had just been a withdrawal where the Afghan government and military just continued to function and exist, then everything would have been actually pretty smooth the way it's gone down.
But to go back in, are you kidding me?
Because that would number one, that airfield is occupied by Taliban.
You would have to seize it with a combat operation, kill all those guys.
And that by itself is going to be an expensive endeavor, both in blood and treasure.
And then just to your point, this makes all of a sudden the Taliban is now an active enemy.
And look, all of our guys in that little compound in Kabul, in the airport, they are just like in a fishbowl.
The Taliban have everything around it to include all the high ground.
All they got to do is start lobbing in rockets, some missiles they have, mortars, sniper fire.
I mean, we would be sitting ducks.
And all of that because we turned the Taliban from what right now is a cooperative partner.
And I know people hate to even hear that term in association with Taliban, but that's a fact.
They are helping us.
They are helping to provide some security for ISIS.
They've actually interdicted some of the attacks.
They haven't all succeeded already because of they've been helping and they haven't been attacking us.
Now you go and you change any of those and all of a sudden it's not 13 casualties.
Now it's potentially in the hundreds.
And that's absurd.
And then everything gets destroyed.
But that's so obvious, or it should be.
But people aren't thinking anything through, as to your point again, they're just thinking emotionally, and yeah, we should do this.
No, we shouldn't, because that's absurd.
That's why we're not doing it.
We want to get out so no more Americans die.
That's the objective.
Yeah.
Well, you know, one of the talking points, too, is that even if they're helping people or allowing people to get out and not standing in the way and trying to preserve the peace in Kabul, that still that amounts to them holding all of our people as hostages and bargaining chips and that at any time they could seize them all.
At any time.
Of course, of course they could.
Huh?
Of course they could.
I mean, that's the whole point.
As long as we just do what we've agreed to, we're going to get out in a day and a half by Tuesday and everybody's going to be out, at least certainly the vast majority of them.
No one else needs to die if we can just keep, you know, basically 72 more hours clear from ISIS-K, because we apparently don't have to worry about Taliban because they're keeping their word and they want us out.
Yeah.
And that's to our benefit because we don't want anyone else killed.
And I mean, look, as far as counterfactuals about how they could have done this otherwise, I mean, the two major problems are, first, all the weapons they left with the ANA that then the Taliban ended up just seizing.
Right.
And then secondly, the evacuation.
But the alternative there, it seems like the only alternative would have been for Biden to say outright, like in a speech immediately upon taking office, that I know you guys are all going to throw rotten tomatoes at me.
However, the ANA and the Kabul government are absolutely ridiculously bankrupt in every way, you know, in terms of legitimacy and money and every other thing.
And they're a farce and they cannot last.
And so therefore, we're not leaving the ANA with any weapons.
And I know you're going to say, yeah, but that's going to undermine the ANA.
And I'm just telling you, they're not going to last anyway.
And it's way too big of a risk that the Taliban will just get them all.
So we're taking all of the trucks and all of the light arms and all of the everything, all the helicopters and everything that we've given them.
Screw it.
And if you say that we're drawing all of our civilians from Kabul will help, you know, undermine confidence in the government there.
That's just tough.
It was going to fall anyway.
And so, you know, Republicans cry about it if you want to, but that's it.
And yes, we're getting out by May 1st.
In fact, we're going to try to get out by April 1st and just, you know, maybe 15.
So it doesn't sound so foolish.
And and and then just, yeah, tax day, that would be more fitting.
Right.
And then and then and then that would be it.
Right.
Just like tough.
The whole truth and nothing but the truth.
That's the only way to do it.
And, you know, sorry, I know it's going to be tough for the people of Afghanistan, but it was going to be anyway, et cetera, et cetera.
But then, you know, when you put the counterfactual like that, there's no way they could do that.
They're Democrats.
You know, I can't be that honest about anything.
And so, in fact, it's so sad.
I don't even know why they really kicked the can down the road.
I know the generals were begging them to give them more time, but he should told them to go to hell.
Then May 1st is the deadline.
That was the deal.
My predecessor shook hands.
Signed the thing on paper.
And so sorry, we got to do it.
And instead, maybe it was for political reasons that he wanted to for this to be Biden's withdrawal and not Trump's withdrawal, that he was just the junior partner in or something like that.
But what a mistake.
Right.
Because we could have been gone and then have the Taliban take over the country after.
Nobody cares because all of our people are already out, you know, and that goes for people who are quislings to, you know, translators and so forth.
They should get a ride home or, you know, out of there.
Go ahead.
Yeah.
As you said, that's an important point.
It wouldn't have changed the outcome.
It would have just changed the cost to us.
The same outcome, the Taliban in control of Afghanistan would have happened no matter which way you went, whether we got it on May 1st as a schedule or whether we did it the way we did.
That's important to point out.
And that's what should have happened.
And we argued the defense priorities.
I mean, relentlessly, that that's what we should have done on May 1st for the very reasons you pointed out.
And, you know, we see how it worked out.
Yeah.
All right.
So what's the time here?
Oh, man, we got to hurry.
Did you see this important thing at Odyssey?
A.U.D. A.C.Y.
Odyssey dot com.
And it's by Jack Murphy, the former special operations officer.
I forgot if he's a Green Beret.
I think he's a Green Beret.
Anyway, he writes this looser rules, more civilian deaths, a Taliban takeover inside America's failed Afghan drone campaign.
And this is based on new whistleblowers, new sources talking to Jack Murphy about the drone war in the Trump era and how looser rules of engagement from Iraq War three against the Islamic State there were then brought back over to the Helmand province in the war in Afghanistan, where, man, they're just killing people essentially at random.
If you touch a radio, that's a death sentence, this kind of thing.
And anyway, had you seen that?
I have not, but I have seen a lot of things here recently, you know, about whistleblowers, specifically about the drone program, exposing what we've all known to be true, that it's been grossly ineffective and kills as many innocent civilian peoples as it ever did, you know, alleged bad guys.
And even the bad guys you took off, it didn't have any strategic impact.
So all we were doing was killing a lot of people, a lot of people by mistake and get nothing for it.
It was absurd.
It was obscene and it was immoral and it should almost be shut down or at least dramatically scaled back.
Yeah, this is just one more piece of it.
And I think we knew already, of course, that the number of strikes in Afghanistan had gone way up and we knew that Trump had loosened the rules of engagement and not just the rules of engagement, but the command authority.
Is that how they call it?
Is that the correct lingo for who gets to choose to pull the trigger?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So and they had devolved the command authority all the way down the chain to like captain level or whatever it was to call in any strike.
Whereas, you know, under Obama, they had eventually come with stricter rules of engagement there.
But this is a whole new point of view into that war there.
I'm sorry.
I see.
Which was Obama's rules were also egregiously bad.
So absolutely.
Put that in context.
Right.
Yeah, exactly.
And that's what, you know, Daniel Hale just went to prison for liberating the drone papers for us.
Don't remind me that that's so painful for me to even consider.
It is.
Yeah, it's really it's really bad.
And people should look at the drone papers or the assassination complex.
And then again, this is at Odyssey dot com inside America's failed drone campaign against the Taliban.
And it's like, yeah, you know, five or eight thousand words or some kind of thing of in-depth reporting here.
Really great stuff.
And then so lastly, I wanted to ask you real quick if you could give us a comment about the possibility of the CIA and or whoever else, I guess, JSOC getting in bed with the resistance fighters under Massoud's son in the Panjshir Valley.
Oh, my Lord.
That is just the if we are looking for one more thing to just completely botch on the way out, it would be that I mean, it doesn't look like Biden's even going to give it the time of day for an even consideration.
So good on him for that.
But man, there has been a lot of people.
Lindsey Graham has been shouting about that just this morning.
And that is the most absurd idea that we've ever seen.
I mean, dude, you just had every advantage and every money and every support for 20 years and they disintegrated with the first pressure.
And you want to now go and support a little fraction of that?
I mean, that's insane.
No, absolutely not.
One hundred percent.
No.
Get out of it.
Stay out of it.
Leave it to them to do whatever they're going to do.
Yeah.
All right.
With that, I'll let you go.
Thank you so much for coming on the show again.
Really appreciate it.
Always my pleasure, Scott.
Thank you.
All right, you guys.
That is retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Daniel L.
Davis, famous whistleblower from the Afghan surge in 2012 and fellow at Defense Priorities.
The Scott Horton Show, Antiwar Radio, can be heard on KPFK 90.7 FM in L.A.
APS Radio dot com, Antiwar dot com, Scott Horton dot org and Libertarian Institute dot org.
