02/03/16 – Daniel Davis – The Scott Horton Show

Hey, Al Scott Horton here to tell you about this great new e-book by long-time future freedom author Scott McPherson, Freedom and Security, the Second Amendment and the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.
This is the definitive principled case in favor of gun rights and against gun control.
America is exceptional.
Here the people come first, and we refuse to allow the state a monopoly on firearms.
Our liberty depends on it.
Get Scott McPherson's Freedom and Security, the Second Amendment and the Right to Keep and Bear Arms on Kindle at Amazon.com today.
All right, you guys, welcome back.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, The Scott Horton Show.
ScottHorton.org is my website most of the time when it's working.
Live here on the Liberty Radio Network from noon to 2 Eastern.
And now on with the interviews.
First up is Daniel Davis, a former lieutenant colonel in the Army, and now he's writing at TheNationalInterest.org with Paul Pilar and some of those other guys over there.
This one is called Throwing More U.S. Troops at Afghanistan Isn't the Answer.
Welcome to the show, Daniel.
How are you?
I'm doing really well.
Thanks for having me.
Very happy to have you here.
And I could have sworn that I'd interviewed you before, but I guess I was just thinking of what Gareth Porter had written up about you back when.
Man, I could have sworn I'd interviewed you.
But anyway, so you had this really interesting story, and I guess maybe I'm just thinking about my interview of Gareth on this subject, too, but your thing was you were some kind of supply officer in Afghanistan, which gave you the ability to travel all over all the different aspects and theaters of that war, right at the height of the surge, which gave you a real perspective on that war that was lacking basically anywhere else at the time.
Is that right?
Pretty close.
I wasn't a supply officer.
I was actually an acquisition officer for building equipment to units all over the country.
So that's why I was able to go, but I did see all those things you just mentioned.
Well, I guess I don't understand the difference between those two things.
Acquisitions or supplies or whatever, yeah.
You were a clinger.
I get it.
I mean, not in the dress, though.
You were Radar O'Reilly.
And so, okay, but so this gave you the perspective on the war, and if I remember right, what you said was, hey, everybody, this ain't working.
And this was in what year now that you came out?
2012.
2012 that you came out.
Okay.
So I guess if you want, you could start with what was the situation then and or now, or if you want to start with now and compare it to then, things have gotten better or worse in what ways.
Obviously, we have many fewer troops in Afghanistan right now compared to then, but I guess if you could just give us a general kind of overall assessment of the situation there that a listener might need to hear.
Yeah, sure.
And it is useful to start in 2012.
What I had seen when I was over there was a really down-on-the-ground, first-hand view of exactly what was going on with the training of the Afghan forces, you know, with the fight with the Taliban, with what the U.S. forces were doing, and all of that, and literally over all the primary fighting locations throughout the country.
At that time, that was, of course, at the height of the surge, as you mentioned, General Petraeus was in charge down there, and General Petraeus and a number of other senior leaders and several of the two-star generals who were in charge of various regions were routinely telling at congressional testimonies or in media reports and interviews, etc., that things were on the right path.
It's a tough fight, but we're making progress, and we're on the right azimuth, as Petraeus said on a number of occasions.
And when I got there, I was encouraged by that, because I was—obviously, we want to succeed at what we're doing.
We want to see the war successfully end.
But in the course of all my travels around the country, I saw that almost the exact opposite was the case.
Not only was it not getting better, it was getting demonstrably worse.
And the soldiers that I talked to at every single stop all validated in their area exactly what I saw, that it was getting worse.
And at that time, I just felt a moral obligation to tell people what was going on, because all the people knew back in the United States, from watching the television or reading congressional reports or other kinds of media, that things were getting better.
And they were like, well, all right, we're having to pay a price, but we got to keep supporting it because it's working.
But it wasn't.
So people are making decisions based on inaccurate information.
And so I wrote those reports, and felt obliged to do it.
Well, now, when it comes to—back then, when you say it was getting worse, was the surge making it worse, or it was just getting worse in spite of the surge?
And what exactly does worse mean, anyway, just more territory controlled by the Taliban?
Yeah, in the primary sense of worse, it's that the violence is increasing.
And yeah, you're absolutely right.
It was made worse by the surge.
There was a number of places, specifically where—I remember this one really poignant experience that has stuck in my mind, is that one of the Taliban regional commanders that we had captured in a certain location, during his interrogation, he got mad at the interrogator, not because he was trying to milk him for information, but he said, I didn't want to be a Taliban.
I had no interest in being a Taliban, but you guys came in, and part of your operations drew more violence into my area, and some of my family members were killed, and I had an obligation to try to protect them.
He said, so you drove me into the Taliban.
We saw that many places, that places that we put troops in, where there hadn't been any before, had violence sticking up, because now then there's fights to head, where there was no fights before.
So yeah, we go over there and we conduct all these operations, we're naturally going to have more violence, and more people who would never have joined the Taliban did.
Well, now, but on the other hand, obviously that makes sense, right, but then the argument would be, well, we're trying to kill more of them than we make, and if we do make a few more, that's one thing, but what we're doing with this surge is, and this is what Petraeus, I believe, had sold publicly, that we're not going to defeat the Taliban entirely.
That's impossible.
We're going to whoop them so bad, that come July 2011, they're going to come whimpering to the table and agree to our terms.
That was what was supposed to happen here.
And so, would you say that that was always just a fool's errand, or that, you know, maybe if they had done this or that better, they could have actually achieved that so-called benchmark?
No, there was no chance it could never have worked.
It was a fool's errand from the beginning.
And it wasn't hard to figure out, especially from people who were over there, because you're not taking more people out than you're creating.
For every one you take out, you could be creating three, so you're only making the matter worse, no matter how many you kill, because, and there's so many reports and analysis that validate this, that every time we take somebody up, there is no shortage, there will always be more to replace them than we took out there, and that's exactly what turned out to happen.
All right, and now, so, what all's changed since 2012?
Well, so, before, or since 2012, of course, we had the drawdown, which started in 2011, and what, I guess it was in early 2014 that the alleged combat mission quote came to an end, where we didn't engage in direct combat with the enemy.
What happened, what was expected was that when we had a smaller number of troops, that the violence would also come down, because we're not out there to have, you know, conflict with them on a daily basis, because prior to this surge, that's exactly what we saw.
Every time we added troops, the violence added in coordination with it, so as much as we put troops there, there was more violence, so the thought was going to be, as many had hoped, that when the troops went down, so would the violence.
Unfortunately, because the surge stirred up so much hatred and animosity and built the Taliban up, that now then when our troop numbers went down, the violence at first stayed the same, and then it started actually increasing, because more of the Taliban were out there and fewer of the defenders were out there, and so the violence actually went up.
And now, so, whatever happened, though, to the government in the box, and the brilliant new counterinsurgency strategy that was different from every other counterinsurgency strategy before that had all the most brilliant minds like Petraeus and Flournoy behind it, and they said they're going to change the entire society over there.
Yeah, that briefed well, and it did brief well on American TV networks, but that also never had any chance, because specifically in that one that McChrystal so famously said in Marja, that we're going to bring government in a box and all that, well, they bring in somebody who's from outside there who has no credibility or support from the community and tries to impose him, and it was absolute disaster, because not the Taliban, but the local people rejected it and rebelled against it, and it just absolutely didn't work, and that guy ended up being fired and left in disgrace, although it was kind of quiet.
And after that, you know, we saw that it was discredited, and we at least stopped trying to do that, but it never had any chance.
Well, I'm sorry, hold it right there, Daniel.
Everybody, I'm talking with retired Lieutenant Colonel Daniel L. Davis.
He's writing at The National Interest, nationalinterest.org, throwing more US troops at Afghanistan isn't the answer, and we'll be back in, what, three or four?
Hey, Al, Scott Horton here.
It's always safe to say that one should keep at least some of your savings in precious metals as a hedge against inflation.
If this economy ever does heat back up and the banks start expanding credit, rising prices could make metals a very profitable bet.
Since 1977, Roberts & Roberts Brokerage Inc. has been helping people buy and sell gold, silver, platinum, and palladium, and they do it well.
They're fast, reliable, and trusted for more than 35 years.
And they take bitcoin.
Call Roberts & Roberts at 1-800-874-9760 or stop by rrbi.co.
Hey, Al, Scott Horton here for NPV Engineering.
This isn't for all of you, but for high-end contractors specializing in industrial construction and end users who own and operate industrial equipment, NPV offers licensed professional consulting on chemical and mechanical engineering for your projects.
Tanks, pressure vessels, piping, heat exchangers, HVAC equipment, chemical reactors for oil companies or manufacturing facilities, as well as project management support and troubleshooting for those implementing designs.
NPV will get your industrial project up and running.
Head over to NPVEngineering.com.
All right, you guys, welcome back.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, The Scott Horton Show.
I'm talking with retired Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis of the U.S. Army about the disaster in Afghanistan.
He's got this really good piece here, At the National Interest, throwing more U.S. troops at Afghanistan isn't the answer, and there's so much to cover here.
I guess, let me ask you about the deal that Obama signed with Karzai back a few years ago, Daniel, that had America staying in some capacity till 2024.
Now, I haven't really heard any coverage of that since the time that it happened, and I wonder what exactly was that deal, because, you know, I thought that it meant we're leaving troops there to swear to protect the government we've created in Kabul till at least 2024.
Is that not correct?
Well, that's kind of the intent, although it was effectively non-binding, because, you know, you have more administrations, you have Congresses that have to approve or whatever, but it laid the framework out for that, but that's the intent.
It was kind of underneath it that we would keep some kind of military presence there as long as it took to keep that government in power.
And now, is it right that 10,000 guys can, that's what we have there now, and I guess there are a couple thousand more from Europe, can they keep this government in power?
Or are we really facing the possibility of a fall of Saigon, rooftop helicopter type moment here?
If all you're interested in, literally, is keeping the physical government in Kabul alive and in power in Kabul, then yeah, you can do that.
That number of troops would be sufficient to do that, but that does nothing to protect the country or to make the country a viable entity or to increase the credibility that the government has among the people.
See, that's kind of the lost part of all this.
If that government doesn't have the confidence of the people that they want to follow, but it doesn't make any difference whether they don't get overrun or not, whether there's a Saigon or not.
For example, the government itself is very much dysfunctional.
As you may know, there was so much corruption in the last presidential election that they had to do something that wasn't even in the Constitution and basically put two guys in charge with the prime minister and a chief executive, whatever that means, and they don't get along very well, and even now, what, it's been two years, I guess, since the election, they still don't have a minister of defense, so they don't even coordinate their defense policy very well.
So it's very dysfunctional.
You know, I said to Ann Jones one time, are we risking a fall of Saigon type moment where the Talibs just walk right into Kabul?
And she says, son, the Talibs are in the parliament right now in Kabul.
They've already marched right in there years ago.
Yeah, and they don't have any need to because, I mean, we've basically have sealed Kabul off from the rest of the country anyway because they are afraid to go outside.
I mean, there's reports just this week where there's many of the U.S. staff don't even travel on the roads in Kabul.
They have to go anywhere from helicopter because it's so unsafe, and that's in the capital itself.
So the Taliban have effectively quarantined the government right now, so they don't need to storm it and, you know, lose troops in the process.
We've helped them do that on our own.
Yeah, it seems like at some point they could do maybe even just sort of a soft coup and just kind of consolidate the power that they, I guess, you know, instead of storming into Kabul, they're just walking right in and negotiating their way into power.
But now, so could never even mind American intervention here.
Could any or Pakistani or Iranian or Russian or any other intervention in a vacuum?
Could the people of Afghanistan ever have a state or do any of them want to have one?
Or they would rather just have an area, a country, where they do things the way they've always done things, with their loya jirgas and this and that, and Kabul can go to hell.
Well, prior to 1979, when this whole, when they had the Soviet Union in there and went in for their intervention and they had the coup within Kabul, in the 40 years prior to that, there was almost complete peace throughout the country.
And they all did live together, you know, in peace, and there was no violence that was going on, whatever.
But since that got unleashed, and then once the Taliban were having their civil war with the Northern Alliance, then we come in and basically take the side of the Northern Alliance and all of the violence that's spiked up since then, the whole generation of people alive right now don't even know anything but violence and war, and they don't want war, no.
Nobody wants war.
They want to see it ended more than anybody.
The problem that we have is that there's, because the federal government in Kabul is so weak and corrupt, and all the military districts are equally corrupt, is that you almost have, de facto, a bunch of fiefdoms running around, whether a warlord or whether an actual government member, and so there's no incentive for anybody to work together.
So right now, it's just, to answer your direct question, whether it's Pakistan, Russia, China, because things are so messed up right now, it's going to take a decade or more of concerted effort just to get things calmed down so that they can live in peace again.
Yeah, I mean, it seems like the less foreign intervention, the better, because they have to basically figure out how much power each of these different groups and tribes and warlords really have from the bottom up, rather than distorted by American money and guns and airstrikes and the rest.
So wherever we've intervened, we've basically made people bigger than they really are.
So wherever we back off, then those prices have to fall back down to their real level again, you know?
Well, well put, and of course, the mechanism that we've injected to do that, just imagine how many Afghans we have trained, and how much weapons we've sent in, how much ammunition.
I mean, there's this stuff that we provided has enabled them to have a lot more of these armed conflicts within the different groups within there.
So we've made the violence more effective, and you're right, it's exactly, that's a great way to put it, it's going to have to play itself down now until it gets back to some sort of stasis to where then, you know, they can actually negotiate and end this thing on their own.
Yeah, and you know, in the Iraq War, it at least made sense on the surface that, hey, if we're fighting a civil war for the majority to kick the minority Sunni Arabs out of Baghdad, well, we can accomplish that and call that the surge worked, that we won the war for Sadr at the same time we're bombing him.
But in Afghanistan, it was never like that.
It's always been a war against the majority who have absolutely refused to go along for 14 years straight.
Yeah, and they don't see any reason to do so, because, you know, we're trying to impose our form of government, or our preference of form of government onto them that doesn't fit what they have ever successfully done.
And even though it's not, you know, literally a US style democratic system, it's a system that we imposed on them, as opposed to the one that they wanted, which was a parliamentary system, by the way, they've many of them have been lobbying for that for the full 14 years.
Because that's what they want.
That's what they'll support.
And instead, we impose this presidential system.
And it's just, in every way, whether politically, militarily, we just think to keep it a mess.
All right, now, so how can America ever get out of here?
Because they can't unless they can call it a victory, right?
So we're just going to be here for till 2024, and then 34 and 44?
Well, that's where it's going to take some leadership, somebody, whether a strong Congress or a new president that understands things and has the courage to lead on this is going to have to change something.
Or we're just going to be stuck in that spiral, which means we'll never accomplish our security goals for the region, and they'll never accomplish their goals for a peaceful survival in life.
But we have to do that.
It's got to end somehow, it cannot continue on, like you just said, to 24, 34, 44, and all those.
All right.
Now, let me ask you this.
How many of the commanding officer types and you know, around in the Afghan theater when you were there ever talked about Alfred, Alfred Mackinder, and the world island and we must dominate Central Asia to keep Russia and China out of Central Asia, because North America must rule the center of the heartland forever, like in the big new Brzezinski, because that seems like a big part of why America refuses to leave Afghanistan that nobody ever talks about it.
We always stay focused on more narrow questions about what's going on in Marjah rather rather than really asking what the hell are we doing there when everybody knows that it can't be won according to the stated goals?
Yeah, at least among the military commanders, and it's all the way up to two star generals that I had interaction with none of them had those thoughts in mind.
In fact, they didn't have any concern one way or the other what the geopolitical situation was above them.
They were literally just focused on trying to contain their, their battle space and especially the lower down you went, they just wanted to accomplish their tactical goals, keep their guys alive and go home.
War through a soda straw, as Robert Gates says, but now so but what about the big picture?
I mean, do you think that that is what it's about?
Or everybody is just looking at it through a soda straw or what?
You know, I almost wish it was that way, because then there would be a, you know, a conch coherent plan and a thought that, you know, you could actually change to get it in.
The problem is, and there's a new report out by the Center for Strategic and International Studies that flatly called it what it is, the US has no strategy.
All we do is tactical moves, you know, do we keep 9000 or do we keep 5000?
No one even talks about what they're going to accomplish.
It's just we just do these little tactical moves with no thought to what the strategic is.
That's my biggest concern is that we have no strategy.
We don't even think on geopolitical levels.
And so we just muddle along and we don't even know what success would ever look like because we don't quantify success.
Yeah.
Well, and then, you know, as always, God help us if we get people in power who actually think they know what they're doing and know what they want to do.
I'll just make everything that much worse.
We're better off just muddling through.
You know what I mean?
Paul Wolfowitz and his men, Richard Perle, they came to D.C. with a plan in 2000, 2001.
They knew exactly what to do and they ruined everything for everyone.
Got the whole 21st century off on the wrong foot for all of mankind.
Yeah.
I disagree with that.
Yeah.
And it was because they had a moral foreign policy.
No more of this, you know, real politic.
They care, you know.
Well, that was the surface story anyway.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's what they said.
All right.
Hey, listen, I really appreciate your time on the show.
And I'll go ahead and tell you now some of these quotes are going to end up in my book here before the end of the year.
I really do.
I appreciate it.
My pleasure.
Thanks for having me on.
I really appreciate it.
All right, y'all.
That is Daniel L. Davis, former lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, now writing for the national interest at national interest dot org.
And we'll be right back.
Hey, I'll Scott here.
If you've got a band, a business, a cause or campaign and you need stickers to help promote, check out the bumper sticker dot com at the bumper sticker dot com.
They digitally print with solvent ink.
So you get the photo quality results of digital with the strength and durability of old style screen printing.
I'm sure glad I sold the bumper sticker dot com to Rick back when he's made a hell of a great company out of it.
There are thousands of satisfied customers who agree with me to let the bumper sticker dot com help you get the word out.
That's the bumper sticker dot com at the bumper sticker dot com.
Hey, I'll Scott here.
If you're like me, you need coffee, lots of it.
You probably prefer taste good, too.
Well, let me tell you about Darren's Coffee Company at Darren's Coffee dot com.
Darren Marion is a natural entrepreneur who decided to leave his corporate job and strike out on his own, making great coffee.
And Darren's Coffee is now delivering right to your door.
Darren gets his beans direct from farmers around the world, all specialty premium grade with no filler.
Hey, the man just wants everyone to have a chance to taste this great coffee.
Darren's Coffee dot com.
Use promo code Scott and get free shipping.
Darren's Coffee dot com.
Hey, I'll Scott Horton here for Liberty dot me, the great libertarian social network.
They've got all the social media bells and whistles.
Plus, you get your own publishing site and there are classes, shows, books and resources of all kinds.
And I host two shows on Liberty dot me.
Eye on the Empire with Liberty dot me's Chief Liberty Officer Jeffrey Tucker every other Tuesday and The Future of Freedom with FFF founder and president Jacob Hornberger every Thursday night, both at 8 Eastern.
When you sign up, add me as a friend on there.
Scott Horton dot Liberty dot me.
Be free.
Liberty dot me.
Liberty dot me.
Be free.
Liberty dot me.
Be free.
Liberty dot me.
Be free.