All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Antiwar Radio.
I'm Scott Horton and our first guest on the show today is Kelly B.
Vallejos.
She writes for us at Antiwar.com, also, of course, at the American Conservative Magazine.
And I've got a couple of great articles here I want to talk with her about.
Welcome back to the show, Kelly.
How are you doing?
Good.
Thanks for having me, Scott.
Well, I appreciate you joining us today.
Uh, let's start with this piece here at Antiwar.com/Vallejos.
Surge finally getting a second look.
Uh, could it, could it really be true that anyone, I don't know, east of the Mississippi River decided that they would try to examine the actual facts beneath the propaganda narrative that surges work and the surge is working and the surge did work and the next surge will be great too.
And everybody knows that surges are things that work.
Uh, someone is taking a second look at that.
Okay.
Well, I mean, this is typical Washington.
I mean, um, as I mentioned in the piece, I mean, there's been no lack of, uh, criticism or scrutiny into the surge since the, the moment it began or was, you know, crafted by, um, the, you know, the Kagan's and, and portray us in all his help mates and, and handlers, um, back in 2007, I mean, we've been criticizing it on antiwar.com for years and, uh, more recently criticizing the mythology of the surges, a having worked in and B being a template that could be used in Afghanistan.
But in, as Washington goes, I mean, we might have had, um, you know, a grip on the truth years ago, but until so-called quote unquote, you know, credible voices start looking at this and giving it a second look and somehow, you know, it doesn't become a real criticism.
And what I point out is that now among the military blogosphere and particularly in think tanks in which people like former officers who have worked, you know, with Petraeus and have, have, have been advisors in these wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, they're starting to take a second look.
And so now it's becoming news and, um, becoming more of a serious exercise.
Doesn't take away from all of the criticism and the, and the fine, you know, um, perseverance of people like say, you know, Phil Giraldi or Gareth Parter, people who write for antiwar.com.
I'm just pointing out that finally, you know, there's been, there's grumbling within the military itself, within the military community, you know, that perhaps Petraeus is a, is getting too much credit for what happened in Iraq and be, um, you know, what really happened there.
Let's take a second look.
Yeah, I like that.
They're just jealous.
So he gets to be a big star.
Well, now here's the thing too.
They all knew that they were lying basically, right?
Because the, the entire setup for the surge work theory is that he took command.
David Petraeus took command of the Iraq war just as the civil war was ending after, uh, they had helped for years on end.
They'd helped the Shiites wage the civil war against the Sunni Arabs of Baghdad and, uh, so-called cleanse them to where it was a 85% Shiite city right around the time he got there.
And then all he did was accept the same surrender that the Sunni based insurgency had been offering since 2003, which is if you'll just let us patrol our own neighborhoods, give us a little bit of money and some guns, we'll stop fighting you.
So that was his brilliant, uh, you know, victory in war is that he bribed the enemy to stop shooting him and even then waited until they were in the very weakest position of all, not because of his efforts, but because all the generals that came before him helping Muqtada al-Sadr and, uh, Abdulaziz al-Hakim put drills in the Sunni Arab skulls to death, uh, and, and eventually forced them all out of Baghdad.
I mean, everyone in the military knew that as well as everybody at antiwar.com knew that, right?
That the surge didn't do anything.
It was just a coincidence in timing.
Well, you know, the, the surge, you know, the idea of the surge with the capital S is developed into a template for a counterinsurgency strategy.
When in reality, which, you know, now people like, you know, um, Douglas Olivant, who I point out in my piece, you know, he was a national security, um, he's a national security fellow now at the new America foundation, but he was once an advisor for Trey, he points out that this isn't, this isn't a strategy.
These were tactical decisions made by the generals, uh, mostly to get our fannies out of Iraq and with some semblance of, you know, uh, pride and, and, and, and integrity left.
Um, this, this was not a strategy, quote unquote, that could be later on, uh, overlaid into, onto the Afghanistan war.
And so he's pointing out that as a strategy, you know, if, if we're looking at this as a strategy, we are lost and he points out that it is not worked, you know, coin or current insurgency as molded by this sort of surge in Iraq has not worked in Afghanistan, nor will it, because it's like, as you pointed out, the dynamics were completely different and they were out of mostly out of our control.
Whereas the mythology has portray us riding in on a white horse with his, you know, 30,000 additional troops.
He comes in, he starts, you know, um, laying down all these counter insurgency, uh, sort of tenants, you know, um, and the place just, you know, magically, you know, become safer for Iraqis, um, safer for political resolution and, you know, next thing you know, you have Thomas Rick and, you know, all of the other punditry class talking about how he won the war.
Thanks to David portray us.
And what all of our points out quite rightly is that's just not what happened.
A lot of the dynamics were out of our control and the United States and, you know, uh, including, you know, portray us and, you know, Crocker and others were sort of help mates to bringing the, the violence down, but the, the political resolution is not there and it's still a mess.
And we're seeing, we're seeing all that today.
Um, but you know, the mainstream media, you know, ends up over simplifying everything for the lowest common denominator audience anyway.
And they've oversimplified this surge, um, and what it means.
And it's all in David portray us as favor, because it makes him look like he single-handedly saved the war in Iraq when he didn't.
Yeah.
Well, and it's too bad that, um, you know, back at the time when they were trying to push all this on us, it was all accepted so uncritically because the, the phrase, the surge is working and the surge worked repeated so many times.
Now, here we are three, four years later.
Um, and, uh, it's, it's basically just stuck that way when, in fact, at the time that people like yourself who were, you know, taking a look critically at what was going on there, uh, could see that it was all just a bunch of hogwash.
I mean, you go back and look at, um, the good soldiers by the Washington post reporter, uh, David Finkel, uh, the, it's the, the team from, or the, the group from the collateral murder video, when they called off the war against the Sunni insurgency, they went ahead and took the war to East Baghdad against the soldiers and a Lieutenant Colonel cause large, um, is portrayed in this book as just worshiping this new coin doctrine.
Wow.
We got the new book about how to do it.
Come on guys.
And he was really gung ho about it, but within just a few weeks.
It was sitting there collecting dust on his desk and they never picked it up again.
It was just, they didn't believe in it at all in the U S army.
It was nonsense.
It was, it was really, as I think you've said on, on the show before, it was about adding time to the Washington clock, not really changing anything in Iraq.
Right, right.
Exactly.
So in that regard, on that level, the surge did work.
If the surge was instituted to, um, maintain the general's reputation to get us out of this war to start withdrawing at some point, um, to save face, you know, with some level of dignity, um, a, you know, strategic messaging, you know, effort, then it did work.
But if the surge was supposed to make way for a long term stability, political and otherwise, and established Iraq as a friend in that region, um, as a geopolitical ally in that region, it did not work.
And I don't think that the mainstream media has made that, um, that, that difference clear to us as an audience.
And what I was trying to point out is that it's bubbling up through military circles, right?
And we'll see if that can get mainstream attention at least.
And of course, as you say, this became not just a myth about the great victory in Iraq, but this became the basis for let's do the same thing in Afghanistan.
And maybe we can talk a little bit about how well that's working out.
When we get back from this break, everybody it's Kelly Vlahos from the American conservative and antiwar.com.
All right, y'all welcome back to the show.
It's antiwar radio.
I'm Scott Horton and I'm talking with Kelly B Vlahos from the American conservative magazine and antiwar.com.
That's original.antiwar.com/Vlahos.
I think if you just put antiwar.com/Vlahos, it'll forage on there anyway.
Uh, so we're talking about this great piece surge, finally getting a second look, and, um, I, I still do want to fit in some here about, uh, Obama being great for business as long as, uh, you receive dividend checks from Blackwater, uh, or XE or whatever it's called now.
But, um, first I want to do, um, I think I probably interrupted you too much.
I'd like to give you a little bit more chance to describe some of this dissent against the Petraeus surge worked myth in DC and in the military.
And then maybe we can go over and talk about its application in Afghanistan a little bit more.
But I think most of this criticism that you're citing is about Iraq.
Am I correct?
Yeah.
I, and I think, I think, you know, what I've been hearing for a couple of years now, um, and off the record conversations, casual conversations with people within the military community is that David Petraeus isn't as well liked, you know, in the ranks, you know, and among other senior officers as he might be portrayed in the sort of slavish media coverage that he's been getting over the last two years, David Petraeus is a, he is an outstanding politician, you know, of his time, you know, he's a political general and, you know, he knows, he knows exactly, you know, what pathways to take, who's back to scratch and, you know, what messages to send.
And one of the key things that he's done as a political, uh, general is surround himself with adoring media.
Um, his access to the media is, is, is, is legendary or media access to him is legendary.
So much of the coverage has been fawning and I think it's reached a saturation point for many, um, within the military who, who, you know, sort of acknowledged his star, you know, in the past and saw that as sort of a natural outgrowth of this, you know, this, this sort of path that he's taken as a political general.
But I think people are getting fed up with it because for a couple of reasons, one, that when this coin template was placed on the Afghan, uh, war, um, there was a, there was a lot of hand wringing over that to begin with.
Well, now it's clearly not working.
And to see general portray us, continue to get all of these aqua odds for his, you know, surge in Iraq is sort of, you know, sort of kicking sand in the wound or salt in the wound.
Um, it's, it's, it's getting increasingly difficult to, to sort of whitewash a, what happened in Iraq because we were seeing all this violence happening in Iraq and realize that the political situation there is a mess and it's not getting better and they are not turning out to be our best ally.
Iran has more influence than we do over there.
And then we see violence up in Afghanistan, more dangerous for our soldiers, you know, which I think is key.
I mean, sadly, I mean, you and I and people are antiwar.com beating the drums for civilian casualties for years, but what really gets noticed in the mainstream and among the military community is when there's an uptick in violence against our soldiers, which has been happening for over a year now.
So I think when you see David portray us in these, these various photo ops, whether it be at, in front of Congress or his retirement ceremony, and he's continually to be played up as King David, I think it's starting to really people so that these private conversations about portray us and, and is sort of the mythologizing is now reaching the blogosphere where people are going enough already, which I quoted one, you know, um, one, uh, noted blogger, military blogger, Carl prime.
He's an Iraq veteran.
He's, he's been a critic of coin, but he's certainly pro-military saying, come on, stop the hagiography here.
Let's call it for what it was.
This surge was a not so successful and B it wasn't all portray us is to his credit in the first place.
You know, and I think that I wanted to write about that because I think that is starting to see the, the legend breakdown.
And I, you know, interview friend of mine, Doug McGregor, um, also a veteran senior officer who points out, you know, once we, we, we, we accept the fact that the surge of the sham, that's when this mythologizing will stop.
And it did betray us.
His star will finally fall.
And I'm sure there's not, there's not going to be a lot of people crying about that within the military.
Well, you know, I guess I have to go back to, but didn't they know they were lying all along?
I mean, back in 2007, when they escalated the war and when Bush announced the escalation, um, the entire theory was we're going to achieve these benchmarks.
And that phrase was almost as popular in the media as the surge is working at the time.
And, um, it was supposed to be in, I forget, August or September that betrays was supposed to go to Congress and report on his benchmarks and how well he had achieved them.
They put it off for a month.
I guess he showed up, I think it was supposed to be September and he showed up in October and, uh, and said, uh, well, you know, nevermind the benchmarks it's, but the surge worked anyway or something like that.
But the benchmark number one, supposedly was, we're going to create so much peace in Baghdad that all the different political factions in the country can get together in their parliament and work out all their differences, um, through the democratic system instead of blowing each other up and they never did do that.
Right.
But see, you know, it's all about images and it's all about, you know, sort of like the emotional impact and what they did, I mean, just like you pointed out, the violence was down because the civil war had come to an end, the Sunnis lost and they knew it.
So they were able to be bought off, work to get rid of Al-Qaeda.
They were already, you know, they already been ethnically cleansed throughout, you know, Iraq.
So the violence was down.
The, you know, there's a debate now on whether, you know, uh, betrayers caused that or not, but the violence escalated it.
Cause he went and picked a fight with the soldiers for no reason.
Right.
But the solder, they stood down, they made a cut, they made a tactical, you know, a decision to stand down and wait this thing out.
So, and you know, statistically and on the news visually, you know, the, the violence was down, things looked better, but it's hard to capture the political stuff is harder to capture.
Once Americans who are barely paying attention in the first place, see the, the nightly news, they see the violence is down and things are moving along.
You know, they tune out, you know, nobody tuned back in to realize that that political reconciliation never happened.
You know, the oil money wasn't flowing, you know, to the people that, you know, people that there were, you know, still 5 million people displaced and nobody tuned in for the rest of that.
So he was able to, you know, he was able to, you know, deflect and, you know, and, and, and, and procrastinate on the benchmark meetings, you know, and Congress, because at that point, nobody cared anymore.
They just wanted to see the violence go down.
Yeah.
The violence is down, was down.
And yeah, it's still down.
If you're going to compare, say 2005 levels.
Right.
But I mean, today, you know, you see bombings every day there.
Yeah.
That's horrible.
Now you won't see that on TV, but you'll see that in the headlines at antiwar.com.
That's for sure.
Correct.
Um, and now to the Afghanistan thing, it's, it's amazing, I guess, you know, again, if, if the victory really is adding time to the Washington clock, then I guess it counts, but if they really thought that they were going to take the surge model from Iraq and apply it in Afghanistan, they're hugely and terribly mistaken in, in Iraq, they were fighting a civil war on the side of the majority.
Uh, in Afghanistan, they're fighting a up mountain battle, never even mind hills, and they can never win there.
They're fighting to install a tiny minority that has made allies with the Indians and what they're not going to be able to hold onto that place without the U S military there to protect them for one day.
Right.
They still call Karzai the mayor of Kabul.
And in fact, it was Stanley McChrystal and his guys called him the mayor of his palace.
He sits in the palace doing heroin all day.
He's not even the mayor of Kabul anymore.
Well, I mean, you could see that Washington is getting a little nervous because, you know, in response to these attacks in Kabul, uh, the other day, they're saying, well, this just proves the desperation and the last throws of the Taliban and they're like, okay, reality check here.
You know, just like the Ted offensive show that the NBA were near defeat.
Right.
I mean, it's, it's, it's a joke.
And I think anybody with, with half a wit that saw these attacks the other day that, you know, they know that this, this just proves that things have gone so badly over there.
I mean, if, if they had their test cases, Marjah and Kandahar, did either, did they make any progress in either of those cities with clear hold and build doctrine, government in a box, right.
You know, and with Kabul, that was the test case for whether the Afghan military was able to secure by themselves a population center, because they're, they they've had full, the Afghans have had full control of the security there for a while now.
You know, so this, they, the Taliban struck right at the heart of our sort of plan there, which is to build up Afghan security so they can take over their country once and for all.
So they, if it's, it's all about message like the surge, and this is all about message, they're winning.
The Taliban is winning.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, again, we didn't have time to talk about Blackwater, but I want everybody to check out who says Obama's bad for business at antiwar.com/Vallejo is also a great piece.
This one is surge finally getting a second look.
Thank you very much for your time, Kelly.
Thank you.
