I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of Antiwar.com, author of the book Fool's Errand, 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, you guys, check it out.
I got Mark Perry on the line.
Good old Mark Perry.
You know, I was just talking with James Carden earlier about you and your journalism that you wrote up about McGregor versus McMaster, about how to fight a war against, a conventional war, against Russia and Eastern Europe, because that's important, and so, of course, you wrote the most important thing about it, so it happened to come up earlier on the show, but today you got a really important one here at Responsible Statecraft.
It's called The Striker is a Death Trap, and there's direct quotes on that.
I'm pretty sure they're not ironic or scare quotes, they're quotes of someone who knows, saying so authoritatively, The Striker is a, quote, death trap, but you're paying for it anyway, and in other words, American GIs are going to die in it anyway.
Welcome back to the show.
How you doing, Mark?
It's great to be here, and as always, you're on topic and on time.
It's good to hear from you again.
Yeah, man, well, happy to talk to you about this, and, you know, we could be talking about any aspect of the military.
It's all caught up in, essentially, these rackets, right?
I don't know who originally, was it Chuck Spinney, or who originally coined the phrase self-licking ice cream cone for the economics of militarism in America?
I don't know who coined the phrase, but it's pretty apt.
I mean, we're caught in a cycle here of producing weapons of war that don't work, or when they work, when they don't work the way they're supposed to.
The Striker is a classic example.
I remember when it was first fielded.
This is an infantry carrier vehicle.
Carries about nine members of a squad.
It's supposed to be an improvement on the Bradley, is that it?
It's one step below the Bradley.
It's supposed to carry soldiers, but it's not an armored personnel carrier.
Eric Shinseki, the former Army Chief of Staff, way back when, fell in love with this idea.
So I had them design the Striker, and they did so, and it initially got very high marks.
But it rolls over, and it's very lightly armored, and it is almost useless when it runs over an IED.
So it's actually ended up costing lives, and it's proven to be very controversial.
And here we go again.
The Army just led a contract to Oshkosh Defense for $942 million to fit the Striker with a lethal weapon.
But the problem is, the problem with the Striker is not its lethality, it's that it's vulnerable.
They're not fixing the problem that they have, which is that its armor is too thin, and that it really can't carry soldiers all the way to the battlefield.
It has to stop short of the battlefield because it's so lightly armored.
So we're stuck with a weapon that we can't stop producing.
We keep shoveling money at it, hoping it'll work, and it's not going to work.
Well, I mean, I don't know.
I don't want to sound completely naive Pollyanna here.
It seems after completely losing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that they really just want to use the CIA to back moderate rebel suicide bomber head shopper bin Ladenite terrorists around the world against their enemies and not send in the infantry to anywhere to get blown up anytime in the near future.
Probably right.
I think that the military, despite its public statements, it's kind of rah, rah, we're going to fight until we win kind of attitude, is sick of these wars and wants out.
And the sooner we get out, the better.
And I think we're on the way out.
I mean, you know and I know there's going to be a lot of foot dragging because there's always foot dragging.
And there are going to be a lot of claims and counterclaims, as you know, and I know about who won what and who lost what.
But I think the bottom line here in the new Biden era is that we're finished with these wars.
We're well rid of them.
Yeah, there's going to be some more deaths on the way out the door, but we're walking out the door.
I really hope that's right.
Iran is too big to fight, and they already pretty much blew up every country that can't fight back.
So they're kind of out of countries to attack right now, sort of.
I guess they could bomb Riyadh.
I don't know if I'd mind that.
I think that if our job was to destabilize the Middle East, well, mission accomplished.
We did that.
Iran is not going to take over the region.
Their military is not strong enough to do it, even if they wanted to, and it's not clear they do.
Turkey has got the best military in the region, but they don't want to take over the region.
Saudi Arabia has a weak military.
They don't want to take over the region.
Iraq is flat on its back economically.
Syria is plunged in a civil war.
Egypt is an economic basket case.
So what are we doing?
Why are we there?
These questions keep getting asked, and they're never answered.
And so I think that for a lot of military officers, it's just time to pack up and leave.
Of course, we're still going to have to project force into the region.
We're still going to do that, just to reassure the neocons that we're doing it.
But I think that, I mean, here we are, how many months?
August, September, two months away from the 20th anniversary of 9-11.
The global war on terrorism is over, and we lost.
Yeah.
Well, which, of course, means they can start it right back up at any time, especially if, you know, something big happens, which they've shown.
I don't know.
It's not that easy to get into the United States, but they can hit pretty big targets in Europe pretty quick.
And you got all those hawks of the last generation who are kind of distracted on Russia and China and whatever right now.
They got, you know, a whole stack of, you know, talking points about radical Islam and the danger of the terrorist threat and whatever to kick right back into publication, you know, as soon as they're ready, as soon as something bad happens.
If they end the terror war, but they don't end the policy of dominance in the Middle East, then the terrorist war against us is still going to continue.
We'll go end up, you know, I mean, I don't know.
They're still backing them in the Idlib province, and they're still backing them in Yemen.
So right now, it seems like the pro-terror wars are dominant, but that can switch back again pretty quickly, you know?
Well, I think it's always been true that they're able to hit us, and that'll remain true.
The question is whether that fundamental truth means we need to deploy, you know, name your number, another 15,000 troops to Afghanistan.
No, it's not going to stop them from hitting us.
Another 15,000 to Iraq for what reason?
By the way, so we're going to get back to this striker debacle here in a second, but those are, of course, two major wars where, you know, it earned the nickname the Kevlar Coffin, here you call it.
You imagine that's how you lost your boy is to just some scam, some worthless, way too big truck that nobody wants, and you gave your one good son for that, you know?
I don't know.
Anyway, sorry for anybody out there who that's your story.
I don't mean to pick a fight.
I just mean, like, I can put myself in that position.
Imagine how horrible that'd be.
But in this war, so right now, they've left Bagram.
I mean, the claims are that they locked the gate and turned out the light at Bagram yesterday, the 1st of July, which is just unbelievable, but apparently it's true.
But they're saying they're going to leave, you know, air capacity in the region somewhere, and they're going to leave 650 troops at the embassy in Kabul, which I don't think was part of the deal with the Taliban and could, I don't know, possibly be a deal breaker with them.
But clearly Biden has decided he's not sending 15,000 more to start the war against the Taliban all over again.
He's admitted defeat on that.
But then the real question is, can he, you know, it's not Joe Biden we're talking about after all.
Is he determined enough to keep forces out and not re-escalate when everything really starts going to hell, which would probably be, you know, right around September, October when when and maybe even sooner than that.
I guess once the Taliban figure that it's too late for Biden to come back, they're going to march right into the capital city, aren't they?
Well, I'm not so sure.
I think that there are parts of the Afghan military that are pretty dedicated and pretty well trained that can hold on for a fairly long time to some provincial capitals.
I think that, you know, you can keep the airport in Kabul.
You could probably keep Kabul.
I think it'll probably be, you know, the Taliban's really dedicated and they are.
It'll be a longer and more protracted fight.
Maybe not August or September, maybe August, September next year.
But no matter when it is or whether it happens, it would have happened 20 years ago or 10 years ago or five years ago, or it might happen 10 years from now.
We're just we're just not going to win that war in the way that we think we're going to win it.
So.
And you think the generals accept that now that, ah, screw them.
Who cares who rules Kabul?
Oh, I don't think that they accept that.
I think that there's a lot of disquiet, discomfort with it.
But if you ask them, you know, well, what's your plan?
They don't have one.
Yeah.
Well, we're going to send McMaster back over there to abolish corruption.
I was just going to say, you know, you you can dust off the old Stan McChrystal playbook, which didn't work with 90,000 or 60,000 or 30,000 soldiers or 3000.
It's not going to work.
So, you know, why kid yourself if you're going to have to get out eventually and inevitably anyway?
Do it now.
Save yourself a lot of heartache.
Save yourself and the American people a lot of money and treasure and blood and just cut your losses and leave.
And I think that's what's happening.
Yeah.
Look here, you and I both know that what you need is some Libertarian Institute things like shirts and sweatshirts and mugs and stickers to put on the back of your truck.
And to give to your friends, too, that say Libertarian Institute on them so that everyone will know the origins of your oppositional defiant disorder and where they can listen to all the best podcasts.
So here's what you do.
Go to LibertasBella.com and look at all the great Libertarian Institute stuff they've got going there.
Find the ad in the right hand margin at Libertarian Institute dot org.
LibertasBella.com.
You guys check it out.
This is so cool.
The great Mike Swanson's new book is finally out.
He's been working on this thing for years.
And I admit I haven't read it yet.
I'm going to get to it as soon as I can.
But I know you guys are going to want to beat me to it.
It's called Why the Vietnam War, Nuclear Bombs and Nation Building in Southeast Asia, 1945 through 61.
And as he explains on the back here, all of our popular culture and our retellings and our history and our movies are all about the height of the American war there in, say, 1964 through 1974.
But how do we get there?
Why is this all Harry Truman's fault?
Find out in Why the Vietnam War by the great Mike Swanson available now.
Now, isn't it funny?
I'm younger.
You're a little bit older.
I know you remember better than me.
I wasn't born till 76, but I did grow up in the shadow of the Vietnam War.
And they did have to wear that black guy around for a little while, you know, and it seems like it's different this time where the narrative is.
Why are we leaving?
I can't.
We can't imagine why you would give in to the Taliban now, right?
And snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and this kind of thing.
And since no one knows the first thing about the war, I guess, then that narrative kind of, you know, people look at the calendar and they go, OK, has been 20 years and that's a long time.
But geez, you're just going to throw in the towel now.
Something bad might happen.
I just posted a clip on my Twitter there of Biden at a press conference, which is amazing.
He held a press conference.
How do you like that?
But then they're all shouting at him.
Yeah, but what if something bad happens after we leave?
And that's the frame of the whole thing.
You know, it's not like with Vietnam or they're like, what is taking so long to finally call this thing quits, you know?
I think that what we don't realize, or maybe the White House press corps doesn't realize, is that the vast majority of the American people don't care.
They don't want us there.
They want us out.
They don't view this as a national humiliation.
We did the best job we could.
And now it's time to come home.
And Vietnam was a little different.
You know, we didn't have an all-volunteer force.
It was on the front pages of every newspaper every day.
It was the topic of conversation around every dinner table.
It never occurred to anybody that we could actually lose a war.
Things have changed.
And I think now that with an all-volunteer force and the kind of the endless war syndrome that we've been in, people are shrugging.
This is not going to get Biden unelected.
It's not going to get him reelected.
It's going to be consigned to a footnote below, you know, infrastructure negotiations and everything else that, you know, he's trying to do in the January 6th insurrection and all of that.
The war in Afghanistan is just not registering.
Yeah.
And that's good for Biden.
And, you know, in a way, I think it's probably good for all the rest of us, too.
Yeah, I'll take it.
I'll take it.
You know, yeah, they showed him that clip I was posted was they keep trying to ask him about Afghanistan.
He goes, ah, come on.
It's the 4th of July.
Leave me alone.
I'm going to go to a barbecue and we'll talk about this next week.
And I'm like, hey, I'll take it.
You know what?
What's he going to do?
He's going to get up there and holler that, like, we lost.
You know what?
He can't do that.
So let him have his little barbecue.
We lost the war.
It's over.
You know, that's right.
So now these strikers, I guess our guys are just going to be driving around in circles at Fort Hood and Fort Bliss.
Are they going to be rolling over and dying in them?
Well, you know.
They definitely can't take them into combat.
They can't take them into combat.
I think they need a major redesign.
That's not going to happen.
You know, people, soldiers accommodate themselves.
If you put on full kit, you know, your combat camis and your knapsack and your canteen and your bandoliers and your armor and your helmet, you can't strap in.
There's too much.
So you make decisions, you know, what to shed, which makes you more vulnerable, but at least you don't die in a rollover.
So my bet is, you know, we're going to do what we do best in the U.S. Army.
We're going to, you know, tell the rest of America that we've got the problem solved.
We've got it licked.
We're very well aware of these issues and we'll take care of them.
Don't you worry.
And we won't take care of them.
And we're just going to make sure that we don't use the Kevlar coffins, the striker infantry carrier vehicle in situations where it makes our soldiers vulnerable.
The problem with doing that is then why have it to begin with?
And this is a, I think that this is a constant problem for the Army of upgrading or downgrading or expanding or modernizing a force.
And what you end up doing is making it too big, too slow and too unmaneuverable to really use effectively in combat.
And what you need to do, not just with the striker or even with the Bradley fighting vehicle or especially the M1 tank, is you kind of need to scrub, you know, scrub the planning boards and start over again.
The problem with doing that, it costs billions of dollars to do that.
And so, you know, I think that what needs to happen in the U.S. Army is a major rethink of modernization.
And I think that that's going to happen.
I think the Army is in budgetary trouble.
They have problems in their leadership.
They don't have a good plan going forward.
Their modernization effort is suspect.
So, you know, I think that we're due for some major changes in the U.S. Army.
They're coming soon.
There are too many people, there are too many soldiers in the U.S. Army who are aware of these problems and aware that they're not being fixed.
And they're going to step in and fix them.
You know, we're going to have some scandals and it's going to be embarrassing for them, but they deserve it.
Yeah.
And this is really something else here.
You have a quote from a man you characterize as a senior Pentagon official telling you this is the most egregious example of corporate welfare I've seen in a long time.
He knows the Army well and he would know it when he sees it.
Yeah.
And that's really just $100 million for the new machine guns that they want to put on it.
But I think he said it's how many billion overall has gone into this program?
$4 billion?
Yeah, it's huge.
And, you know, it's been around for quite a while, 25 years, 20 years.
It really hasn't proven its worth.
I mean, as I said, the first time it was fielded, people, you know, soldiers sang its praise and said, oh, this is terrific.
But in the years since then, especially as a result of the Iraq War and Afghanistan War, there's been some real troubling issues raised and they haven't been dealt with.
You know, there's this new movie.
I'm sorry, I forget the name of it.
Came out not long ago about a siege of an American base in Afghanistan.
It's a pretty good war movie.
You know, I don't know.
It raises the question, what the hell are they doing all the way out there?
You know, but one of the scenes in there, I think it must be this truck.
It's some huge truck that they didn't want in the first place.
And the headquarters made them take and now they want it back.
So we got to drive it back.
And then they die on the way or the guy driving the truck.
Anyway, I guess everyone else gets out and the guy driving the truck drives it right off the side of a cliff and dies in the thing.
And it's all supposed to be based on a true story there that he was, you know, their favorite sergeant or whatever it was, had died driving the truck.
But then, as you say here, it's design.
In other words, they don't they don't really claim that this is supposed to be for combat like an MRAP or a Bradley.
This is supposed to be for moving light infantry forces, as you put it here, close to an objective.
In other words, like driving them up from Kuwait to Basra and then from Basra, they'll go on an armored personnel carrier to Baghdad.
Something like that.
Right.
Yeah, that's right.
So you compare it to a Chevy Suburban.
And in fact, you could buy a whole lot of Suburbans for four billion dollars.
Well, if you take a Chevy Suburban and put some armor on it and, you know, put some bars on its windows and put guys with helmets inside of it, you have a striker.
And it's but it's still a Chevy Suburban, you know?
Yeah.
It's not going to take it's not going to take a tank round.
Yeah.
So this I mean, this is a fundamental problem.
I suppose you need a vehicle like this.
But if you're going to have a vehicle like this on the battlefield, it has to be a lot less invulnerable than this one does.
And if it's not, then why would you sign a contract with a company for 942 million dollars to put, you know, a machine gun on it if it's if that's not what it was intended to do?
So this is, you know, this is this is throwing pretty good money after bad.
And a billion dollars is no small change in the U.S. Army that just saw a hit to its budget of three point one billion dollars.
It doesn't make any sense.
Really puzzling.
Is it just that Oshkosh Defense spends a lot of money on lobbying in D.C.?
It's our money anyway.
It's just a small percentage of the cost.
I think it's all kinds of I think that's probably one factor.
I think the other factor is, you know, they're trying to make this thing work.
And their solution is to make it more lethal.
But that's not the problem.
The problem is that it's vulnerable.
So they're, you know, they're applying a tourniquet to the wrong part of the body.
They're, you know, they're they're trying to fix a problem, fix one problem by fixing another problem that doesn't exist.
I mean, it's just it it doesn't make any sense.
There are people inside the U.S. Army who are shaking their heads, wondering why in the world you would give a billion dollar contract to a company that's going to mount a cannon on top of a striker vehicle that isn't intended to be used in combat.
Yeah, seriously.
Well, it reminds me.
So your book, I think, is The Pentagon's Wars.
But there's a movie called The Pentagon Wars, and that's about the 1990s, about the Bradley fighting vehicle.
It stars Robin Hood, men in tights, whatever that guy's name is.
The surprise guy from the meme.
And he's like the Air Force officer who's sent to do a little bit of double checking on the army here and shows just what an absolute death trap the Bradley was at that time.
And and a big part of it was the generals kept changing what they want.
I think it started out.
We want a light truck for moving guys from here to there.
And then they kept adding more and more armor and more and more guns and more and more things in a way where, you know, it really does need tracks now instead of tires.
And then it just kept just building on itself like that.
I think it started out as a strike or something.
Right.
Yeah.
There are these kinds of problems.
They're there.
They're peculiar to the U.S. Army.
I mean, as I said earlier, you know, I think that they need to go back to the front of the class to the blackboard, erase everything that they've written down and just start over.
What do we need?
What do we want it to do?
How much will it cost?
Does it work?
I mean, I do I think that, you know, at some point the army is going to have to do a real murder board and a scrubbing of its of its programs and weapons to figure out, you know, how to be relevant because it's not relevant now.
And it's not a very effective force with the weapons it has.
I don't doubt.
The boldness and the courage of individual soldiers, I think that that's been proven beyond a doubt.
The question is, you know, how do you know how do we serve them best and preserve their lives in combat situations?
And the striker doesn't do it.
Yeah.
I like Ron Paul on this.
Back in 2008, he told The Washington Post, we could defend this country with a couple of good submarines.
Sounds about right to me.
I think so.
Yeah.
And that would be if the mission was defense and not global domination.
So kind of a disconnect there.
Indeed, it is.
Yeah.
All right.
Listen, I'm sorry.
I know you got to go.
And I do, too.
But I really appreciate you coming back on the show.
Always great to talk to you, Mark.
Always good to be here.
Thanks.
Thanks a million.
All right, you guys.
That's Mark Perry.
This time he's at ResponsibleStatecraft.org.
The striker is a deathtrap, but you're paying for it anyway.
The Scott Horton Show, anti-war radio, can be heard on KPFK 90.7 FM in L.A.
APSradio.com, AntiWar.com, ScottHorton.org, and LibertarianInstitute.org.
