12/06/16 – Mark Perry – The Scott Horton Show

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Alright you guys, this is Scott Horton's show.
I'm him.
Check out the archives at ScottHorton.org.
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Alright, introducing Mark Perry.
He is, I guess, primarily a Pentagon reporter.
I don't know if that's exactly the right title, but something like that.
Regularly publishes in Politico magazine.
That's Politico.com slash magazine.
And this one is very important.
I ran it on AntiWar.com and on the Libertarian Institute site for you as well.
It's on my Twitter feed.
It's everywhere.
Unbelievable piece here.
James Mattis' 33-year grudge against Iran.
Mattis, of course, being the Marine General now named by Donald Trump to be his incoming Secretary of Defense.
Welcome back to the show, Mark.
How are you, sir?
I'm great.
It's great to be here.
Good, good.
Very happy to have you back on the show here.
And, I guess, let's first of all just talk about the legality of that.
There seems to be some kind of quibble as to whether Donald Trump can name this general to be his Secretary of State or not, huh?
Well, there's a...
I mean, pardon me, defense, I meant to say.
Yeah, there's a law that you have to wait seven years once you've been in uniform to take over a civilian position.
It can be waived by an act of Congress or a sense of Congress, sense of the Senate.
Mattis is at, I think, yeah, five, maybe less, three years, four years.
So, it's, you know, we have to do two things.
You have to get the waiver and you have to be confirmed.
Now, Donald Trump seems to feel confident that he can do that and he probably can.
But the law is there for a reason and that's to keep, you know, the revolving door of Washington a little less revolving.
Well, I guess, I mean, the idea, too, and am I right, this goes back all the way to the National Security Act of 1947, right, in the first place?
Yes, and there's also, you know, we have two of these problems now.
We have the National Security Act.
We have also Nepotism Act where, you know, we've all been hearing lately about Donald Trump's family and the conflict of interest.
So, this administration hasn't even taken office yet and it's up to its neck in legal problems.
Yeah.
Well, now, but as far as having a Marine Corps general be the Secretary of Defense, it's funny because it almost sounds, as John, you would say, quaint at this point, that sort of the idea that was unquestioned, I guess, at the time that Congress passed this law.
I can't imagine them passing a law like this now.
Are you a dare question a general in any way whatsoever?
But the idea was that the job of Secretary of Defense and the job of top general are very different things.
And we shouldn't have generals be secretaries because it's just a different kind of a job to be the civilian overseer of the military versus just being a member of the military promoted up to the top spot, which is, for whatever reason, they decided, I guess, in some, you know, ancient Jeffersonian kind of a way.
They didn't want the system to work like that, where the biggest general becomes the secretary.
Well, you're exactly right.
Traditionally, the United States does not mix its civilian and its military jobs.
And there's a good reason for it.
It would be like taking a, you know, this is like appointing Nancy Pelosi to run the U.S. Central Command and putting her in uniform.
In this case, we're taking Mattis, James Mattis, who's a fine officer, a very good military thinker, and a very good combat commander.
And we're putting him in what is essentially a political job.
He's a military officer.
He has no training for this, no experience in it.
And it's just, it's a bad idea.
And to kind of state the obvious, it militarizes the chain of command.
Now, you know, people kind of pooh-pooh me when I say that.
Well, you know, Mattis is not anxious for a war in the Middle East.
That's not clear, but that's what they say.
And I say, well, that's not the point.
The point is, you don't need a military thinker in a political job.
You need a political thinker.
You need to have people who can make political assessments.
And it's very important that we have that, especially in the U.S. chain of command, which goes from the president and the secretary of defense to the geographic commanders in the field.
Well, dare I hope for a silver lining that maybe he doesn't have the kind of faith in the Navy that the Navy has and the kind of faith in the Air Force that the Air Force has, and that he might actually, as a Marine, advise the president that we've got about 90% more empire than we need here, sir?
Well, I was the subject of a kind of a rough critique on, I think it was in the Washington Free Beacon or something, saying that I don't like, it's clear that I don't like Mattis.
That's not true.
I like him.
I mean, I've talked to him, I think, once.
I know some of his staff pretty well, or his former staff.
And I've always thought him to be a pretty careful guy.
He's made some odd and disturbing kind of statements.
But it's not a matter of liking or not liking.
It's a matter of having a very careful and deliberate person in the job whose first tendency will not be to pull the trigger.
Now, people say that's not his first tendency.
It's not his first tendency to pull the trigger.
But putting him there, especially with his former chief of staff, General Joe Dunford, who's now the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, especially with those two there, you know, we have a United States of Marine Corps, basically, in the Pentagon.
Well, but like I was saying, do you think there could be a silver lining in that?
That maybe some of these other services will be, I don't want to say neglected, that's not really the right word, but that maybe this Marine might be able to recommend a strategy that's not so dependent on having such an expensive Navy and Air Force?
Which, after all, I mean, come on.
How many carrier battle groups we got right now with no enemies in the world except Al Qaeda?
Eleven.
Yeah, so that's a lot.
Well, I think there is a possibility of that.
There is a possibility that James Mattis is a conservative with a small seat.
And he has said in the past, and I'll give him full credit for this, that America's economic might is its greatest weapon.
You can't, but you cannot be sharpening your economic might if you're spending $600 billion at the Pentagon.
So I'm hoping that you're right, that maybe he'll go to the president-elect, or the president, when he becomes president, Mr. Trump, and he'll say, let's hold down the spending on the military.
An extra $50 billion a year doesn't buy us that much, and it would be much better for us to focus on a little fiscal austerity and building that infrastructure that you keep talking about.
So you're right.
I think there's a chance of that, but I think it's also clear that Mr. Trump has made it plain that he wants to spend a lot more money on the military.
That's bad news.
I think that's bad news.
Yeah, I mean, again, I'm not really spinning for these guys.
I'm just trying to really read the tea leaves here because it's really hard to know or say what they're doing.
It sort of makes sense if Trump does want to retrench mostly to hire a tough guy Marine Corps general to cover his right flank as he retrenches.
It makes sense even that he would want to spend a lot on the military as he brings it home in order to placate them so that they don't murder him and overthrow him.
Because, you know, these things happen.
So that makes sense.
But I'm just saying we have no real reason to believe that, right?
Like if this was Ron Paul up there and Ron Paul was hiring some generals like this, you would think, well, I guess he's hiring Mattis to cover his right flank as he brings the empire home.
But with Trump, it's like, I don't know, throw some spaghetti at the wall and then tell me what you think it means.
Because we don't know anything.
We don't know what it means.
He says he's on both sides of every issue.
Yeah, that's it.
And I've noticed that you're exactly right.
But I've noticed that because of that, people kind of impute to Trump what they hope is the case.
You know, he appointed Mattis because he well, he wants a strong defense.
He also needs a level headed guy.
He's going to he's going to appoint Romney because he's really at heart a moderate.
The truth is, and you just said it, we don't know.
We're guessing.
But I do know that, you know, in the aftermath of the publication of my article, it's very clear to me that the far right in this country believes, whether it's true or not, but they believe they're empowered.
The attacks on me for being anti-military and anti-Mattis, which is true, were were really over the top as a result of this article, which I thought was all I was doing was saying, listen, there's more to this guy than he's an avid reader and a combat commander.
Right.
And there's good reason to question whether this is an appointment that we should applaud.
I mean, it it poses some problems.
And I think his appointment does.
Well, if you take Trump's word for it, as much as he said about it, he picked Mattis because he's the toughest SOB in the room and he wanted the guy that reminds him the most of Patton, who he can trust is going to win if he sends him into battle instead of just leading us into some stupid quagmire kind of a thing.
So that's what Trump has said about the guy and said that that was why he chose them, that that was the the trait that he was looking for was toughest SOB around.
And this Marine Corps general fit the bill.
So, you know, that doesn't sound much like only Nixon can go to China and cover my right flank while I retrench.
That sounds a lot like just plain old militarism like before.
Yeah, well, it sounds to me like Donald Trump spends between one o'clock and three o'clock in the morning, not simply tweeting, but watching reruns of the world at war.
You know, the thirty five part BBC series on World War Two.
And, you know, he's kind of like a sopranos kind of guy, 70 years old, who gets off on this.
I mean, the the you know, the references to MacArthur and Patton are constant.
But I can't imagine Dwight Eisenhower appointing Patton to anything, let alone Secretary of Defense.
It's just not what he did.
And and and that's what's kind of disturbing here is, you know, you're right.
It sounds like he wants a tough guy at defense, but you don't need a tough guy at defense.
What you need at the Defense Department is a bean counter, a guy who really focuses on budgets and politics and how to get the budget under control.
You know, if he's really concerned about having a warfighter somewhere, the Defense Department put Mattis back in uniform and put him in charge of Iraq.
But that's not what he did.
He gave him the largest, most complicated bureaucracy in the world to run.
And it's not clear to me that this guy is is trained or has the experience to do that.
Yeah.
And that's a good point.
As you're saying, he could have put him right back in uniform and put him on the ground and running the war against Islamic State or even as commander of Central Command, who would be the boss over him.
Right.
Sure.
Absolutely.
He could do that.
I mean, you know, he's the president.
They could do whatever he wants when it comes to the military.
But putting him at the head of the Defense Department, I'm I'm skeptical.
All right.
So let's talk about Iran.
You say here and we'll get to Iraq or two in a minute.
But you say that, you know, Mattis, he goes back, obviously, before 1983 and he is still upset about the Iran trained, as you put it here, Iran trained suicide truck bomber in Beirut in 1983.
So, first of all, could you explain a little bit about the truth of that?
Because I hear conflicting things.
It was Hezbollah or it was the Amal militia and one or the other was closer to Iran at the time or whatever it was.
But I guess the common story is Iran had Hezbollah.
Is that it?
You know, as usual, you're well informed.
There is there is no question after many years now of focusing on this, that Iran was behind it.
They were upset with the loss of four of their diplomats who were murdered and who've never been found.
They don't know who did it.
They did not want the U.S. intervention in Lebanon.
They viewed us as being pro-Israeli.
They were right.
We did not we're not even handed in the civil war, which we were supposed to be.
We were not just separating the parties.
We were on one side and not the other.
And tensions had been growing and it was, you know, Iran had been a historic enemy of ours since the Iranian revolution in 1979.
And they trained and assigned a suicide bomber to blow up the Marine and French peacekeeping barracks in Beirut.
And I remember the morning it happened.
And it was a grim, grim scene.
241 Americans, 220 plus of whom were Marines.
And it was a it was a tragedy, a catastrophe.
Now, you know, the choice then was, are we going to double down and go get them or are we going to get the hell out of there?
And at the time in the Reagan administration, the guy who was arguing for let's go get them, reinforce and really do a job on Lebanon was George Shultz, a former Marine.
And the guy who was arguing against that was Caspar Weinberger, Secretary of Defense, a Navy guy.
And Caspar Weinberger won the argument and we withdrew.
But it rankles that, you know, those 241 dead Americans and 220 plus dead Marines.
It's it's still very close to the surface and a very sensitive topic among the Marine Corps.
Yeah.
And it and, you know, Mattis mentions it regularly.
Well, you know, I was a little kid at the time, but now that I'm getting older, I'm realizing how quickly time passes once you're already an adult.
And how 1983 to you guys who are just 10 or 20 years older than me, it must seem like it was just yesterday.
The same as the 1990s feel like just yesterday to me kind of thing.
Right.
So I can see how that that hadn't faded away.
Sort of like when Jimmy Carter said, oh, the Iranians, I don't know what they're crying about.
That coup is ancient history when it was just 26 years ago and it had lasted for 26 years.
It wasn't ancient at all, but he expected them to have been over it by then.
Yeah, they you know, the Marines don't get don't get past these things.
The Army is different, you know, really, as Army, Navy, Air Force.
They're really it's really different.
These those are much larger services.
The Marine Corps is a smaller, more ingrown, almost parochial service.
In my article, I said it's the closest thing the military has to a cult.
I think that's right.
I mean, you know, the the top officers in the Marine Corps all know each other and have served together.
And, you know, we're going to see how that works.
Now that Madison, the JCS chairman who served together and how they work it out as the as the leading military and defense thinkers of the Trump administration.
Well, now, so as far as the grudge against Iran, you also mentioned in the article, it's not just the Beirut bombing of 83.
Obviously, we've had tensions with Iran ever since 79, as you said.
Then, you know, there's you know, the I think you even mentioned the tanker war.
Yeah, you do mention the tanker war in here.
And and I guess you could even mention the betrayal of the Iraqi Shia by Bush senior in 91 when he urged them to rise up and then stabbed him in the back because Iran there.
And then just I'm just citing some more bad blood on both sides.
And then the real big one, I think, and this goes for Mattis, as well as Mike Flynn, the army general, who's the new national security adviser that both of them not only fought against Al-Qaeda in Iraq and the Sunni based insurgency in Iraq.
But they also fought against Muqtada al-Sadr and the nationalist part of the Shiite coalition, which was actually the least Iran tied of the major Shiite groups.
But the way it was phrased at the time and the way the mythology has lasted, of course, is that this was all Iran's fault that Muqtada al-Sadr was resisting the Americans, particularly in 2007.
So and then in their statements from both of these guys, that they clearly blame Iran for the deaths of their men, as military guys put it.
Their men died fighting against Iranian backed Shiite militias in Iraq war, too.
And they take that just as personally.
And that was only 10 years ago.
And so that's right.
And, you know, I mentioned this to a friend of mine and he said, well, man, if I was them, I'd feel the same damn way.
And I said, me, too.
And that's why I wouldn't make you the secretary of defense.
Because I would understand.
I understand that.
Right.
Billy, Johnny and Hector all died on your watch fighting these guys.
And now you're supposed to make nice with them.
OK.
But so we're going to not have you do it then.
Because business is business here.
And your point of view has got to be put aside for the better interests of the country in the future.
Right.
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I would think that's right.
Absolutely.
And it is the salient point.
I'm not, you know, I say in the article that for Mattis, I mean, he says this all the time, you know, General Mattis, what is the top three threats facing America?
And he says Iran, Iran, Iran.
It's a kind of an obsession.
And I think it comes right, as you say, it comes right out of the Iraq War.
And, you know, there were Hezbollah operatives on the ground who answered to Iran in Iraq.
America, the IEDs were the highly technical IEDs.
The roadside bombs were developed in Iran.
So they were said to be anyway.
Well, they were said to be.
But I mean, this is, you know, whether or not they were, the Marines sure think they were.
Exactly.
And, you know, this is, so this is a, I call it a grudge.
And I think it is.
I think it's kind of a grudge match.
And there aren't many Marines you can sit down with and talk, you know, reasonably about Iran with.
You just, they're not reasonable about it.
And it's, you know, I agree with you on the other thing.
It's hard to blame them.
But as you point out, the question is, all right, so do you make a guy with that kind of a grudge Secretary of Defense?
Well, and, you know, here's the part that's really worrying to me.
And there's two anecdotes here.
One is Mike Flynn trying to pin Benghazi on Iran, of all things.
Talk about, you know, al-Qaeda in Iraq.
But meanwhile, to pin that on Iran?
And then Mattis, too, as I learned reading your article here, that Mattis sounds like the dumbest of truthers saying, did you ever notice that ISIS never attacks Iran?
When Iran and ISIS have been at war with each other, you know, full on in Syria, at least, since 2012 or 13.
And in Iraq, again, since 2014.
We got the Quds Force and ISIS going toe-to-toe daily over there, with America providing air cover for the Iranians.
And this guy is, he's the top general and he doesn't know that?
He doesn't understand the difference between the Bata Brigade and their most avowed enemy group in the world?
Well, you know, it's a, I have to be really blunt here.
I mean, I thought I'd heard that Mattis had said something like that, that ISIS in Iran, you know, but his claim came at an April meeting in Washington.
The talk he gave at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
And he said, you know, three quarters of the way through a talk, just think for a minute.
He said it was the one country that ISIS hasn't attacked.
It's Iran.
That should tell you something.
Do you think it's just a coincidence?
And I read it.
I was really shocked.
And I thought, well, ISIS hasn't attacked Israel either.
So the question is, are ISIS and Israel linked?
Yeah, what about Brazil and China and Uganda?
You know, it's ridiculous.
And, but what was shocking about it was not, what was shocking, really shocking about it to me, was not that he said it or that it's been said.
It's that James Mattis said it.
Yeah, that he thought it.
He clearly knows better, or should.
So, you know, I think it goes back to the grudge.
I just think that they can't get past the animus that they have for Iran.
Listen, there's a lot of reasons not to like Iran.
I think you can make an argument that we shouldn't be an ally of Iran.
Fine.
But don't make it up.
Don't make this stuff up.
It's bad enough in the world.
We don't need to see conspiracies and links when they're not there.
And we don't need to appoint somebody.
I mean, I think he's going to be asked during his confirmation hearing whether he really believes that.
I'm almost certain he'll be asked.
It'll be interesting to hear his answer.
Yeah, well, and you know, with Mike Flynn, he co-authored a book with Michael Ledeen.
And is now, you know, in the book at least, has claimed that, I think maybe you mentioned this in your article.
I forget.
There's been so many lately.
But, you know, they got this idea that it's Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, ISIS, Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba.
Who else you got?
Antarctica.
They're all in on it against us.
This is madness.
Even for Michael Ledeen, this is madness.
Well, we're back to where we started, Scott.
Because, you know, with the Bush administration, the axis of evil, and here we go again.
And, you know, I think the chill is on.
I mean, I definitely feel it.
That it's going to, you know, people are empowered now.
They elected a guy.
And everyone is lining up to praise him and applaud him and to make, you know, the walk into Trump Tower to see him.
It's amazing to me the number of people who could barely speak his name when he was running for president.
Now they can't wait to go see him.
It's really, it's an amazing thing to witness.
Yeah.
Well, I hate to say it.
I mean, he could have chosen just business guys that nobody ever heard of from the Midwest somewhere, I guess.
Not that they would necessarily be any better.
But I wonder if maybe we're better to settle for generals than actual neocons.
Because the actual neocons made themselves such enemies of Trump over the last year.
Thank God.
They've really made themselves unwelcome.
And it could be worse, right?
Like we could actually have Ledeen, not just his sock puppet.
Well, I agree with you.
I mean, the neocons, I think, are out.
But never underestimate their staying power.
I mean, they were still prominent even in the Obama years.
They made their influence felt.
And, you know, I think it's clear to me Mattis is not one of them.
He's not a neocon.
And he certainly wasn't comfortable with the Iraq War at all.
But, you know, he's not a guy who stood up and said this is a mistake either.
Nobody did.
Yeah.
Well, he helped really lead the invasion in 03, right?
Yeah, he was 1st Marine Division commander and headed up that highway to Baghdad.
A hell of a fight, but an unnecessary one.
A stupid one.
And, you know.
One that he didn't have the moral courage to resign over at the time.
He had the physical courage to put himself and other people in danger maybe, but not the moral courage to sacrifice himself for it.
I was talking to a colleague the other day who was saying, well, you know, Mattis will be good because he can stand up and say no to Trump.
And I said, well, maybe.
I mean, the last time a military officer said no to a president was 25 years ago.
And that was Colin Powell told Clinton no on gays in the military.
It didn't have anything to do with war.
Right.
So, you know, I think that it's not a given at all to me that James Mattis, especially if he thinks ISIS and Iran are linked, James Mattis is going to say, you know, Mr. President, this is a bad idea.
Well, OK, I'm sorry for keeping you so long, but let me ask you one more thing then.
To vastly oversimplify it, I think maybe after all this time it is somewhat sinking through, right?
That people do somewhat understand that it's America, Turkey, Israel, and the Sunni kings versus Iran, now Iraq, even though we're still sort of friends with Baghdad, too.
Syria and Hezbollah are the Shiite axis, and they're all backed by the Russians.
And so Trump is saying, well, I want to back off Assad and I want to back off Russia.
And I wonder whether you think that, I mean, since we're talking about these guys believing in these crazy things about ISIS and Iran and this kind of stuff, Benghazi and Iran, I wonder if you think that they actually can even, not whether they can, but do they even think about it in the way that I just more or less gave a thumbnail sketch of?
And do they not realize the contradiction that continuing to pick a fight with Iran and make a whipping boy out of Iran is contrary to the whole starting to get along with Russia and their Shiite axis friends or Shia Crescent whatever friends?
Because it seems, you know, just like Obama fighting against Iran in Syria at the same time he's making a nuclear deal with them.
It seems like kind of a split policy.
And I just wonder whether you expect a little more coherence going forward maybe on that.
I don't.
I don't expect more coherence.
And back to the grudge again is why.
Yeah, I think, you know, you said it earlier in this conversation.
We don't really know what Mr. Trump has in mind.
That's the wild card here.
I can say this.
There are important and powerful and very high-ranking military officers who understand fully the real complexity of what's going on in the Middle East, and they don't want any part of it.
And they certainly don't want to pick a fight with Iran.
And I've actually talked to a very senior military officer who said, you know, our failure is our inability to see things from other perspectives.
He said, you know, if you look at a map of the Middle East and you see where all of our assets, our military assets are stationed, he said, you know, we look at that and we say, well, we're just protecting our interests.
But if you're Iran and you look at that, you look at it as a threat.
And you should.
He said, we need to understand this kind of calculus.
Now that's a very, very senior guy, very influential.
And so, you know, that gives me some hope, some optimism that there are, and this is a good crew we have in the Pentagon.
These guys who are in the chief of staff position are among the best we've ever had in my lifetime.
Actually, that's true.
And we're going to have to see whether those views hold sway or whether we're going to get, you know, a replay of what happened, what is it now, 16 years ago, and what it will do to our country.
I think it's undecided.
We don't know what will happen.
Yeah.
Well, it's really a bummer, too, when, you know, this whole exercise is kind of a funhouse mirror version of what the founders envisioned when they were worried about having a standing army at all.
They went ahead and created one anyway.
But, you know, their biggest worry is that the standing army is going to always get us into trouble.
And more and more now, we seem to rely on them to rein the neocon and, you know, think tank and military industrial complex eggheads in a little bit.
And, in fact, like in 07, I don't know if you think maybe I'm overstating this, but in 07, it seems to me that pretty much the CIA, the State Department, and Admiral Fallon at CENTCOM basically vetoed the president of the United States and stopped the war with Iran.
I agree.
And they just were insubordinate in a good way.
Thank God.
But then that raises real questions about why does the president even bother showing up for work in the morning, really, if these are the guys who really run the place, you know?
Well, you know, I'm sure that Mr. Trump thinks that as president of the United States, he's going to have enormous power.
But the truth is that it's always been a slow, deliberate, and consultative process.
And, you know, when he said on the campaign trail, I'll give them orders and believe me, they'll obey them.
I mean, I just thought he doesn't get it.
The president really doesn't give orders like, I order you to.
He'll give a directive.
After a long discussion, especially when the use of military force is involved, after a long discussion, he'll give a directive.
But, you know, it's not as if you order the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the Oval Office or the CENTCOM commander to the Oval Office and point your finger at them and say, I order you to.
Presidents can do that.
And the CENTCOM commander would say, yes, sir, right away, sir.
But that's not really the way it happens.
This is a longer, more consultative process, very deliberate, often very slow, often frustratingly slow.
But there's a reason for that.
I remember a discussion I had with Caspar Weinberger back in the Reagan years.
And it was a formal interview.
I was given 30 minutes with him, and we ended up talking for an hour.
But he said, what have you noticed about the Pentagon since you've been reporting on it, Mark?
And I said, nothing seems to happen here, Mr. Secretary.
There's papers, there's committee meetings, there's this study, there's that study.
Nothing gets done.
And he said to me, well, Mark, you're a good liberal.
What do you want us to do?
And I said, well, actually, I don't want you to do anything.
And he said, and that's exactly what we're going to do.
We're not going to do a damn thing.
Sweet.
Yeah, the good old days.
I remember peacetime when I was a boy in elementary school.
Yeah, I remember it too.
In the Ronald Reagan years, Ronald Reagan, the big, tough Republican hawk who was going to get us into a nuclear war with the Soviets.
And instead, it was all just birds chirping compared to this.
That is absolutely right.
I said, but, you know, Mr. Secretary, you're building this huge military.
And he said, that's right.
He said, but, Mark, we're not building it in order to use it.
We're building it so that we don't have to use it.
And I thought, you know, there are smart people in the world, and they understand the cost of war, and they don't want any part of it.
I'm not sure that's true now, and it bothers me.
Well, and that was really a bad plan because we saw what happened with that where Madeleine Albright said, what's the point of having a giant military if it's not your play toy?
Come on, let's go.
Yeah, Madeleine Albright.
And she's just one, but she was speaking for all of Washington, D.C.
She was speaking for Charles Krughammer and foreign affairs.
This is our unipolar moment, everybody.
We've got to go for it, right?
That's consensus.
Let me tell you, Hillary Clinton rolled her out during the campaign and said, oh, Madeleine Albright loves me.
I turned to my wife and I said, oh, my God.
Yeah.
Yeah, that Hillary, she sure is tone deaf, ain't she?
I'll tell you.
Unbelievable.
She got quite a few things wrong.
That was one of them.
That was one of them.
And, you know, she was surprised when there were critiques.
She was surprised.
Yeah, well, she probably never heard it.
But yet, no, so, well, I'll tell you.
Then what about this?
What's the latest rumors you heard about who's going to be the Secretary of State?
Can we hold out hope for some reasonable sort of somebody?
You know, I've been tracking a little bit.
The interesting name here is this guy, John Kelly, who's another Marine Corps general.
And he was a deputy commander to Mattis in Iraq.
So think of it.
We have a chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who's a Marine.
Kelly, who's Secretary of State, who's a Marine.
Jim Mattis, Secretary of Defense, who's a Marine.
Flynn, who's a National Security Advisor, who's Army.
Or maybe you'll have Petraeus, who's Army.
So, you know, we have a government of military officers.
We no longer have civilian control of the military.
We have military control of the military.
Man.
Yeah, and they're saying, yeah, they're saying Kelly for maybe for homeland security.
Because I guess he's the guy from South Com, is that right?
Which means overlord of Latin America.
Yeah, it's incredible to me.
Everyone talks about, oh, everyone critiqued my piece.
Oh, Mattis, he understands civilian control of the military.
What do you mean he understands civilian control of the military?
He's a four-star general.
Right.
Yeah, if he did, then why didn't he turn Trump down and say, I'm sorry, sir.
The law says seven years.
I understand civilian control of the military.
Now we're going to have a general who's Secretary of State.
We're going to have Petraeus or Kelly as Secretary of State.
Or we're going to have Kelly as homeland security.
Come on.
It's ridiculous.
It's got to not be Petraeus.
Oh, my God.
Tell me this, Pentagon reporter.
Is there a stop Petraeus front in D.C. at all anywhere?
Sure.
And it's in the Army.
Really?
Yeah.
No, I'm not.
He's a, you know, I was talking to a very good friend, very senior Army officer the other day, and he said, David Petraeus is the second best strategic thinker of my generation.
And I said, who's first?
And he said, Stanley McChrystal.
And I found that surprising.
But I think that that is the, that kind of is the general or almost universal belief in the Army.
But here's the problem.
People don't like Petraeus in the Army because of his ego.
He has huge ego problems.
And there were a lot of people who applauded when he, you know, was forced to resign because of an affair and leaking classifieds.
There were people who wanted him busted to private.
He's really disliked by many people inside the Army.
But he is a very competent, you know, again, he's a very competent battlefield general.
But does that make a good Secretary of State?
Well, and I'm not even certain that's true if you look at his actual record in Iraq.
Well, there are people who question it.
That's true.
But you're right that that certainly is the common consensus.
And that's my worry, is that nobody ever critiques it.
Everybody says, oh man, he gave secrets to his girlfriend.
How embarrassing.
I mean, he'd be criminal if he was a lower rank guy.
But for him, it's how embarrassing.
But nobody ever talks about, well, he really escalated and lost two wars.
Remember that?
But, you know, that's not really part of his record.
You know, that part got glossed over.
Everybody just memorized the slogan that the surge worked.
They never really analyzed whether it was true or not.
And so it just stuck.
I think that's right.
That's right.
All right.
Well, OK, let me ask you one more thing as long as I got you on the phone, Pentagon reporter man.
Tell me about what the whoever, whichever different services, as far as you understand it, what they think and how they feel about Donald Trump's stand that he would much rather get along with Putin than launch a new Cold War.
Or continue the one we've got.
Well, I mean, that is the one area that people are really skeptical.
And again, you know, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was asked, what's the greatest threat to the United States?
He said Russia didn't say Iran.
He didn't say ISIS.
Didn't say Iran.
Didn't say North Korea.
Said Russia.
So sidling up to Russia is kind of a no go area in the Pentagon.
A lot of people there are very worried.
Russia has forward deployed some of its tactical nuclear weapons.
But this is a generational split.
The older military officers who are retired don't want any part of a fight with Russia.
They think it was a mistake to expand NATO to the borders of Russia.
Understand why Russia is sensitive about that.
Are worried that, you know, we're going to end up being in NATO forever.
And expending loads of money on NATO forever.
And kind of applaud Trump's, you know, they don't do it publicly, but they kind of privately applaud Trump's, you know, let's not have a war with Russia.
And it's the one, you know, outside of his kind of over the top trust of Putin and admiration for Putin.
He's right about Russia.
Let's not have a war with Russia.
Let's, you know, how many Americans do you think should die for Estonia?
And how many military exercises do we need to have in Moldova?
What the hell are we doing in Moldova?
So, you know, there's a lot of mistrust in the military about Russia.
But there is a sliver of military, older officers in the military who understand and take Trump's point of view on Putin and think that we ought to ratchet back a little bit.
Yeah.
Well, that's going to be a real test to see whether he gets his way there.
That seems to be one of the few things that he really does have a firm opinion on.
But, you know, like you said, nothing gets done around here, meaning it's hard for the president or anyone else to turn the ship of the Pentagon around on a policy like that.
Yeah, that's right.
All of NATO for that matter.
I think Putin is going to be tougher than he thinks.
Now, Mark, I'm sorry.
I know you haven't or I don't think you've written about this or anything, but you may have heard something.
I wonder if you have an opinion.
It's OK if you don't want to comment if you don't know.
But a lot of people are pretty suspicious that when the Air Force bombed a Syrian military position in Deir ez-Zor in Syria a couple of months ago, that that was a deliberate, you know, attempt at sabotage, that it was insubordination in order to destroy the president and the secretary of state's deal that they had made with the Russians for a second ceasefire in Syria there.
And then it was the disputed attack on the the humanitarian supply convoy a couple of days later that led to the final end of that ceasefire and a continuation of the war.
And people said, oh, geez, you know, was an accident.
I guess there's an official report.
This is odd.
Geez, you know, these things happen.
Fog of war.
What are you going to do?
But a lot of people weren't buying that in the first place and including very serious people, you know, who I guess I could quote.
But anyway, I just wonder what you think about that.
Well, I, you know, this is a tough one, because every time I say no, no, no, no, no, that couldn't happen.
You know, 10 years later, some FOIA comes out and shows that I was full of beans.
I suppose this kind of thing is possible.
My initial reaction to it was when I heard the reports that it was purposeful, an attempt to break a ceasefire kind of signal to the whatever.
I thought, no, I don't think so.
I just don't think so, because there's a hell of a price to pay for something like that.
Yeah, I got to admit, that was my initial impression, too.
But then, you know, these guys, these colonels, majors, wherever they are in the Air Force or in CENTCOM, they're really kind of, you know, they're really careful, and in order to do something like that, a lot of people have to be in on it.
And, you know, it's not the case that one guy makes a decision and presses a button and something happens.
There are, you know, targeting committees, political committees of targeting committees, chief of staffs who go through the target list, reviews by the White House of the target list.
It takes a lot to launch a combat operation, air combat operation on a target in Syria or Iraq.
It's a long, involved process, frustrating.
And in order for something like that to happen, a lot of people have to be in on it.
It sounds like a lot of people screwing up, too, though, right?
To bomb something that everybody knows is a Syrian military base where they're in the middle of a fight against the Islamic State.
The complaints that I keep hearing is that the process is so unwieldy, that the process is too unwieldy for it to happen, number one.
And that it's so unwieldy that in some cases it's ineffective.
By the time we spin up a combat operation, even if it's in the air, it's too late.
That we're, you know, our tempo of operations, air operations, is not good.
That's what I keep, that's the complaint I keep hearing.
And when I say, well, good enough to take down a hospital, people look at me like I've lost my mind.
So, I, you know, it's possible, but it seems to me unlikely.
Sure.
Yeah, no, I hear you.
I mean, we're talking about a government program here, after all.
That's right.
So, how good is it supposed to work, really?
You know, how often is your mail on time?
All right, well, listen, thank you so much for sharing so much of your time with us today on the show, Mark.
I really appreciate it.
It's always a pleasure.
It's always a pleasure any time.
I appreciate it.
All right.
Thanks very much again, and everybody, that is Mark Perry.
He writes at Politico magazine, Pentagon reporter there.
This one is called James Mattis' 33-Year Grudge Against Iran.
A lot of really important stuff in there.
And, in fact, it's on the page at LibertarianInstitute.org today.
So, thanks again for listening.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is the show, The Scott Horton Show.
And it's our first big fun drive over at the Libertarian Institute as well.
Check us out at LibertarianInstitute.org slash support.
Thanks.
Hey, y'all.
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