Sorry, I'm late.
I had to stop by the Whites Museum again and get the fingered at FDR.
We know Al-Qaeda, Zawahiri is supporting the opposition in Syria.
Are we supporting Al-Qaeda in Syria?
It's a proud day for America, and by God, we've kicked Vietnam syndrome once and for all.
Thank you very, very much.
I say it, I say it again, you've been hacked.
You've been took.
You've been hoodwinked.
These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else accepts as fact.
He came, he saw us, he died.
We ain't killing their army, but we killing them.
We be on CNN, like, say our names, been saying, saying three times.
The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world.
Then there's going to be an invasion.
All right, you guys, welcome me back to the show.
Major Danny Sherrison, active duty major in the U.S. Army and regular writer for Antiwar.com, if you can believe that.
Welcome back to the show.
How you doing, Danny?
Oh, man, I'm glad to be here.
Thanks for having me.
Very happy to have you back on the show here.
You've been gone a little bit.
What happened?
Well, I'll start off with my usual disclaimer, which is that I'm on this show and I'm writing and I'm speaking in an unofficial capacity.
And I do not necessarily speak for the Department of Defense, the Army or Fort Leavenworth or any other institution I've been affiliated with like the United States Military Academy at West Point.
So I say that carefully because I've been on a bit of a tactical pause from writing while I work through what I'll say, just some administrative issues in the military.
I'm not going to comment at length on an ongoing or recently completed investigation for my own sake.
But suffice it to say, I was on a bit of an administrative pause from my writing.
But I'm back on track, back at Antiwar.com and a few other outlets.
I've continued to do my history pieces for Truthdig because those are less controversial.
Although I think they should actually be more controversial because I'm saying I'm actually making bigger points about America.
But no one seems to care because if it happened 200 years ago, they don't think it relates.
But that's kind of the best explanation I can give you.
And I know it's kind of a lukewarm answer, but it's been an interesting few months.
And someday when I'm no longer in the Army, which will be sooner than later, probably before the end of the year, we will talk at length about this pause.
Well, you know, it makes sense for us to believe that you were maybe trying their patience and they weren't sure whether you were crossing their lines and about what you're allowed to say and what you're not allowed to say as an active duty Army officer.
And so and I think, you know, it really depends greatly on just how much they don't like what you're saying.
You know, there seems to be a lot of gray in these rules.
I'll give you one example of how gray it can get.
And I owe everyone a little more research on this, but you'll probably see a piece from me at some point on this.
The DOD system, the computer, we're encouraged to read the news.
We're encouraged to read critical thinking pieces, at least ostensibly.
So you can get to just about any website on the DOD network.
Of course, you can't get to pornography.
You can't get to a neo-Nazi website.
You know, they don't want you working on that kind of stuff while you're on duty.
But you are able to read news outlets.
Would you check scotthorton.org for me?
Because there was a time where at least I know the Air Force was blocking it.
You know what?
Next time I'm on the government computer, I'm going to check that for you.
Because that's what I want to sort of talk about really briefly is I write regularly for tomdispatch.com.
And some of your listeners probably know Tom Dispatch.
And it's a long form sort of analytical site.
It probably leans moderately left or at least anti-interventionist, you know, libertarian to some strands.
And it's one of the most scholarly analytical sites out there.
I mean, Tom is a brutal editor.
He's tough.
He wants everything cited.
You have to have 50 million hyperlinks for every piece.
And he makes sure the writing is crisp.
And he only accepts pieces that are about 2,000 words or more.
So this is a very analytical site.
Well, the other day, and I've been writing for them for over a year.
The other day, I go on the DOD website to try to check out a piece that Tom had just written.
And I find that it's blocked by the censors.
And the censor webpage that comes up, the block page, is nice enough to tell you why it's being blocked.
And it said, hate and racism.
Now, anybody who's ever read tomdispatch.com knows his site is probably the furthest thing from any hate or racism you'll ever see.
But I got curious.
And I'm going to have to check scotthorton.com.
And I'm going to do that first thing in the morning.
But I will tell you this.
I got curious.
If tom is blocked, certainly much more fanatical sites on the right must also be blocked.
So I get up on Google and I check out Breitbart.
Breitbart is free and clear.
Free and clear if you want to read Breitbart.
Okay, so let me go further.
Let me go further in a radical direction.
Let's check out Infowars, right?
Let's check about Infowars, which, I mean, they've been banned from Twitter and Facebook.
I mean, this is the guy who says that the shooting never happened at Sandy Hook, among other things.
You can go to Infowars.com proudly on a DoD network computer.
And so it got me thinking about censorship and the military.
And suffice it to say, there are some inconsistencies, it appears, in the policy.
Now, I don't know who makes the policy.
I don't know what level it's done.
I owe more research on that.
But something is fishy.
Yeah.
Well, I'll tell you what.
When it comes to Tom Englehart and his site and the stuff he publishes, virtually everyone that he publishes is from the left of center.
And so, therefore, as PC as hell, right?
Those lines are never crossed ever because he's not publishing anyone who would think to cross those kind of lines as far as, oh, hate speech or prejudice or this or that kind of thing.
Yeah, far from it.
Nonsense.
Far from it.
Just a really pitiful justification for blocking a pretty solid site.
Yeah.
You know, I don't know.
I have somewhere the screenshot that someone sent me of the ban on my site.
And I'm not sure.
I think they said, you know, that it was like adult content or some kind of thing that was not accurate at all.
They were just, you know, they needed some kind of thing to stamp on there to say why it was banned.
And that was from, you know, Pentagon computers.
I don't know, you know, how exactly the network is set up there from banned everywhere.
Any active duty Army guys listening?
Let me know.
Or if you can't anymore at work, then let me know that.
I'm interested to find out.
Yeah, this stuff is very fascinating.
All right.
So now for those not familiar, tell us a little bit more about your experience in the U.S. Army, Danny.
Yeah.
So I've been doing this for coming up on a 17 or 18 years, 18 years, I should say.
I went to West Point in 2001.
Did my basic training up there.
Played the game for four years.
Graduated.
Still kind of a believer at that point.
Did a tour in Iraq as a platoon leader with some with a scout unit, a Calvary unit.
And then I commanded a Calvary troop in Afghanistan.
Some years later, I was part of both surges, quote unquote, the surge in Iraq, which I believe was a failure and the surge in Afghanistan, which I believe was a failure.
And if you need evidence, just look at how those places are doing now.
But yeah, I sort of got a got pretty critical of the war early on, started writing, wrote a wrote a book called Ghostwriters of Baghdad that was very critical of the Iraq war.
Write regular pieces for a whole bunch of outlets.
Just trying to bang the drum that, look, there are military folks with with pretty good combat records out there who have critical thoughts about these wars, who are skeptical that we're achieving our strategic interests and skeptical of militarism more generally.
Right.
Yeah.
You know, I did a right wing radio show the other day or, you know, a few weeks ago, and we actually ended up wasting the whole segment talking about how no, really, you don't have to be, you know, some kind of, you know, veteran spitting on hippie from, you know, the mythology of the Vietnam era to be against these wars, you know, sending.
And I think it's OK now for people in Houston, Texas AM radio land to hear the idea, the fact, the truth that you were played for suckers.
They lied to you.
They launched a bunch of wars that they did not have to wage at all.
They weren't defending America like in the claims.
They weren't really fighting for freedom like you were told to believe.
And that, you know, for God's sake, at least in 2018, you have to recognize if we haven't won any of these wars yet, then at least now, if not in 2003, at least now, it's, you know, must be time for the, you know, non policymakers in America, just the regular adults of America to have these conversations and figure out just what it is exactly that we're doing over there and allowing our government to continue doing over there.
And it's funny because what I should have just said was, look, plenty of army officers and enlisted men already agree with me.
They talk about this among themselves all day.
And that should have just been the end of that, you know.
But it does still feel like it's this kind of forbidden taboo type subject, depending on, you know, who your audience is.
And I think, you know, the host of the show, he really wanted me to disclaim to the nth degree about just who it is I'm against here and who it is I'm not trying to criticize, you know.
Right.
And I guess that's something you don't have to deal with too bad since you are a currently serving army officer.
But that does come up, doesn't it, all the time.
Well, who are you to criticize?
And you're going, well, I fought in both surges.
That's who I am, you know.
Yeah, it's funny.
I mean, even, don't get me wrong, I can wear my service credentials and they help me to a certain extent with credibility.
But I still get threats, I mean, over social media.
People find my email.
Even as a serving officer, I mean, there are some people who really, really, really don't want my voice out there.
That's true.
And I don't totally understand it.
But there is some substratum of the population that sees it as threatening for an active duty officer of, you know, of middling rank to speak out against the wars.
And I always disclaim myself.
I always say that I don't speak for the DoD.
I always say that I have nothing but love for my troops.
And in some ways, I've had a really great experience in the army.
But in other ways, I have to speak frankly.
And I think that since I take an oath to the Constitution rather than to any individual president, and we've been at war with three straight presidents now, so I'm not even going to bother parsing out which is better or worse.
The fact of the matter is we've been at war through three presidential administrations, each of which was at least four years, the first two were eight years, and my oath is to the Constitution, and therefore, my duty is to speak and to think critically.
Yeah.
Well, you know, it's funny how you look at these things, you know, has so much to do with your conclusions.
So I was just reading the galleys of the new Stephen Walt book, the realist theorist in foreign policy from Harvard University.
It's called The Hell of Good Intentions.
I think it should be called The Hell with Good Intentions.
But anyway, The Hell of Good Intentions.
And, you know, the way that he phrases all this is, this is just a disagreement among gentlemen as to the best grand strategy for American foreign policy.
And, you know, the liberal interventionists and the neoconservatives, why they really think that we can shove liberal democracy down the throats of any country that they invade and decide to social engineer, and that only then can they participate, these countries, in the liberal world order that we've created, this and that.
Whereas he says, no, I think we could accomplish much more for our own interest if we would have a strategy of offshore balancing, where we just make sure that no single power comes to dominate the most important regions of the planet.
But otherwise, we can just stay on our ships offshore and not worry too much about it.
And, you know, so there's a few different things there.
You know, of course, as far as the innocence of the people who are bad on this stuff, you know, I think that there's a responsibility there that he kind of lets them get away with just having bad ideas rather than really doing the wrong thing.
But on the other hand, it really goes to show that, oh, you mean, never mind Ron Paul and complete non-interventionism, we could have had offshore balancing this whole time.
We didn't have to have a war on terrorism, even if you accept the premises of American global hegemony.
It still doesn't mean that we needed to have a war in Iraq at all, a war in Afghanistan at all, a permanent occupation in Afghanistan to keep Russia or China out of it.
No, we don't need any of that.
That's not one of our vital interests, Central Asia.
What does Brzezinski know?
And so, in other words, everybody who got killed in the terror wars so far was wasted.
All those innocent civilians and all those American GIs who went marching into Iraq, marching into Afghanistan, being told that this is enduring freedom, that this is protecting America, protecting their families back home from the terrorists who would come and get them.
Nope.
Actually, sorry, there was a bad grand strategy dreamt up by a bunch of eggheads who don't know what they're talking about.
And because here comes another egghead who says, no, it could have been like this instead of like that.
Again, not principled non-interventionism, but just a much more careful way of going about dominating the planet.
That's all.
You know, you talk about these lives that have been lost, and it's really difficult for me to say that they're wasted.
But I will tell you one thing, and that is I knew it was time to speak up.
I knew it was time to think and write and speak about these things when I could no longer feel comfortable looking a mother or a wife in the eye and explaining exactly what her son or her husband had died for.
And I've done that too many times.
Some people have done it more than me, but I've done it enough for a lifetime.
And the minute that that stops being an easy answer, the minute that you don't have a justification that you can look a mother in the eye and believe as you tell her, then it's time to start questioning these things.
And you mentioned that even if you accept the premises, let's both accept the premise that the war on terror in some form needed to be fought, that Islamic fascism or whatever they call it, Islamism, whatever the right wants to call it, the neocons I should say want to call it.
If you accept the premise that it's a real threat, which I don't, but if you accept that premise, and we'll accept it for a moment, Walt is right.
There were other options.
And we're often led to believe the only option was outright invasion of these countries, was outright hostile interventions and occupations.
We are led to believe that we had no other choice.
When I talk to people, I'm often asked, well, what should we have done?
We had to do something.
But the question is, is anything we've done productive?
And if it's not, and if it's counterproductive, it's time to back up.
It's time to rewind the tape to 2001 and 2003 and ask what the other possibilities were.
Because, you know, it's 18 years in now.
We're coming up on our 18th year.
Kids who were not born on 9-11 are going to patrol Afghanistan next year.
We have to come to terms with that fact and how damaging that is to the republic.
Yeah.
Well, and, you know, I hate to say this, too, but I know it's true.
You'll hear this from civilians all the time, and I guess probably from time to time inside the Pentagon, too, that, you know what?
I guess we just got to kill them all.
Maybe we just got to nuke Mecca and Medina and everywhere else where these damn Arabs live.
Because, look, we tried killing some of them, and that didn't work.
So what else can we do except escalate?
Apparently, they're just going to keep on attacking us.
And that is the way, and, you know, I'll do it.
I'll throw my friend's mom under the bus one more time because it's perfect.
Because she's just a nice little old lady, this old lady that I know, who's my friend's mom from when we were kids.
And now she's a nice little old lady.
And sometimes she's for genocide because, as far as she can tell, those are the only choices.
And, you know, geez, everything we've done hasn't worked so far.
I think she was reacting to the news of one of the massacres in France, where, you know, at the rock show or at the cartoon Charlie Hebdo.
You know, what are we supposed to do?
And there's some significant percentage of the population.
That's the best they can come up with, is that, you know what?
There's just not room for Muslims and Americans on this planet.
I'd say about 30 percent of the American people, if they're honest with themselves, tend to think something like that.
My father's one of them.
This is not something that's far from home for me either.
You know, the question we love to ask but never actually grapple with is this whole, why do they hate us, right, this quote.
After every attack, these people will say, why do they hate us?
Is there nothing we could do to stop them?
And then some people take it to the next level, like you say, and say, well, we might have to wipe them out or we might have to just invade all of the Middle East and seize it.
But no one ever actually grapples with that question.
Why do they hate us?
And no one wants to assert any reason or rationalism on the part of these Islamists.
Look, I have no love for a suicide bomber.
But if you think he is highly irrational, you're misunderstanding his principles.
Okay, something is motivating these people.
For the most part, the number one and number two gripe of the Islamists around the world is not that the United States exists.
They accept that.
They know they can't really change that.
For the most part, what upsets them is, one, the United States has military forces near the holy lands in Mecca and Medina and basically occupying the Middle East and Muslims, and number two, that we have unqualified support for Israel and the Israeli occupation of Jerusalem.
I mean, those are the two reasons why do they hate us.
But we never want to grapple with it.
We never want to look ourselves in the mirror and ask, are we in some way making this worse?
And because we're not willing to have the conversation, we're going to continue, it seems, indefinitely with these perpetual wars.
Right.
Yeah, I think you're totally right about that.
I mean whenever I give a speech, that's basically the only point I try to make or depending on how much time I have.
The first point is always how our government started this fight and got us into this mess.
If I have time, then we'll talk about how they made the sectarian war with the invasion of Iraq and turned the whole region upside down.
And you know what?
I still don't understand why this is so difficult when Ron Paul made huge gains for getting this understanding across way back 11 years ago now when he fought and defeated Rudy Giuliani on this question.
He goes, look, come on, we were bombing them for 10 years before September 11th and everybody went, oh yeah, I kind of remember that.
That's not that bad.
And actually, even though no one ever wants to attack America and the troops and this kind of thing, how hard is it to attack Bill Clinton?
Let me tell you about Bill Clinton, all right?
Bill Clinton kept the troops in Saudi.
Bill Clinton failed to get Israel out of the West Bank.
What a lousy president he was.
He's the one who caused this.
And then that's all, right?
Just like Donald Trump right now could come in and blame all the crises in Somalia, Libya, Iraq, and the Levant and Afghanistan and everything on his predecessors.
It's true.
So you don't have to blame America.
Just blame the politician that whoever you're talking to likes least.
Blame the Bushes.
Blame the Clintons.
It is their fault.
It really is.
I said three administrations, but if I was being honest, I could have taken this back to at least the Carter administration when the Carter Doctrine is promulgated that says the United States will fight and die.
The United States will send troops to fight and die to secure Persian Gulf oil.
That's what the dove Jimmy Carter said in 1979.
So, I mean, now we're looking at how many administrations?
We're looking at seven administrations that have been waging some version of these terror wars or these wars for the greater Middle East, as Andy Bacevich calls it, my really esteemed colleague.
And it's true.
There's enough hypocrisy on both sides to go around, and I'll give you one example of this.
And I'm writing a piece next week for Anymore that's still in the works about Russia and about Trump's policy towards Russia and sort of how the left has gone mad and doesn't understand what he's trying to do.
And my point is that, you know, we should want to be in a degree of peaceful coexistence with these other forces.
And if another person was making peace with Russia on the left, let's say Barack Obama was attempting this summit in Helsinki, what would the mainstream left say?
He's a great statesman.
He deserves a Nobel Peace Prize.
But no, the left says Trump's a traitor and he's committing treason.
When Trump does it, the right, which would have killed Obama for this, which would have called Obama a traitor, says, well, no, Trump's doing the right thing.
And so everyone is just playing for their team.
It's the red team and the blue team.
And so you're right.
We can look at Bill Clinton and say it's his fault and I can make a cogent argument that it is.
But if I'm a Democrat, I could point to George W. Bush or George H.W. Bush and say, no, it's their fault.
So everybody points a finger in both directions and nobody sees that seven consecutive administrations, both half blue and half red, have sort of gotten us into this mess.
And I'm not certain that the two-party system is built to take us out of it.
If that's true, we have to relook at the whole structure of our politics.
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Yeah, I mean, of course, the best example that's going on right now is in Yemen, where Obama started this war and Trump's doubled it or, you know, added on to it anyway.
And so there's no partisan incentive for anybody to do the right thing here.
The partisan incentives are all toward, you know, keep your mouth shut, look the other way and that kind of thing.
And yeah, you know, I think maybe the way to do it is in front of a kind of right-wing audience.
Just go, this is all Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton and Barack Obama's fault.
And then go ahead and mention Reagan and the Bushes in there, too.
But just set it up in a way where they'll be more willing to listen to it.
And then when you're talking to liberals, yeah, that Ronald Reagan and his support for the Mujahideen and, you know, just emphasize the Republican role.
But also go ahead and throw in, of course, he inherited these policies of backing Saddam and backing the al-Qaeda guys or, you know, the Mujahideen in Afghanistan from Jimmy Carter.
I think that's the only reason people take me seriously when I give these speeches at all.
They can tell by the way I talk about it that I really don't favor the Republicans or the Democrats.
I really am just as happy to throw a Democrat or a Republican under the bus for all that they've done.
And at first I think they get kind of defensive when they hear me attack their guy.
But then they hear me ruthlessly attack the guy that they also don't like.
And so they go, OK, you know, maybe it's all right.
Absolutely.
You know, that's the challenge that we have, though, is people sign up for these teams and then hell or high water.
It doesn't matter what the truth is, you know.
No, because it becomes their identity.
You know, these teams become more than just a political, you know, faction.
It becomes an actual moral and ethical identity.
And when you get that attached to a party, I think the blinders are on.
And you're no longer able to make cogent strategy.
And unfortunately, what we have is we have an A team and a B team.
And when the Republicans are in town, we get the Bolton-Pompeo team and, you know, the neocon team.
And then if Hillary Clinton would have won, you know, we would have gotten something similar on the left.
You know, we would have gotten mainstream leftist hawks in positions.
You know, we might have gotten the Brennans or the, you know, the Panettas of the world.
And the question becomes, you know, I may prefer one over the other if a gun is to my head.
But quite frankly, I'm not particularly pleased with the choices.
Right.
So this is not a Democrat or Republican issue.
This is more a question of the mainstream versus, you know, critical thinking.
Right.
Well, and as Stephen Waltz says in there, you know, all of D.C. is basically in on this.
You have whatever, you know, two or three dozen important think tanks that do nothing but churn out excuses for this garbage.
And you had a lot of people, you know, as H.L. Mencken would say, just holding jabs, working for the government here, working inside the national security state and inside the firms that serve it as well, the arms manufacturers, but also all the consultants and all the private spies and all that, everything that, you know, for them, they have every incentive to continue believing this nonsense.
And and then I think he even references the famous quote of Upton Sinclair saying, it sure is hard to get somebody to understand something when his paycheck depends on him not understanding it.
You know, really, really lying, really.
Yeah.
It's a real dirty snowball rolling downhill type of thing.
And I don't know.
I mean, this is why we all at Anti-War.com think that your voice is so important, too, though, is, you know, you're a combat veteran, as you said, of both of these wars, not just both of these wars, but both of these surges.
Seen it firsthand, wrote books about it, obviously, you know, understand the micro and the macro issues involved in these things and that kind of deal.
And so it, you know, confuses the issue for people a little bit enough that, you know, hopefully it draws their attention that here's a currently serving Army major who's fought in these wars, who's saying we need to call it off.
I mean, they say that I have to shut up out of respect for you.
OK, well, now maybe I will just shut up and let you talk, then, if that's the rules.
What do the combat vets have to say about this in 2018 then, Danny?
You know, I refuse to be put in a box.
You know, I refuse for veterans to be used as a political tool by either side.
I'm so sick of hearing that lack of support for the strategy is lack of support for the troops.
I say if you want to support veterans, make less of us.
OK, make decisions that create less veterans.
Make decisions that create less disabled veterans waiting at the Topeka VA with me.
OK, if you support the troops, think critically, even if you disagree with me.
Think critically.
Show me that you're engaged in these wars, that you have some skin in the game and do not make us a tool or a puppet, whether it's for the NFL or for the war or for a political campaign.
It's out of control.
It's inappropriate and it's disrespectful to military members.
We are not a monolith.
We are a diverse bunch.
Some of us are critical thinkers.
We do not all agree.
We are not all Republican.
We are not all Democrat.
We are a variety of things.
And please, please support us.
Create less of us.
Yeah, there you go.
Good deal.
All right.
Well, now, listen, so let me ask you about some of these lesser commented upon wars that you do mention in your recent piece.
I think I forgot to name it.
It's dying for what?
A tour of fruitless American killing and sacrifice.
And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the war in Somalia.
So I think, you know, you mentioned it here and I don't know how much you know about it, really.
So I'm sorry to put you on the spot, but it seems it's one of those where it's just unfair how little attention is paid considering how much violence is being brought on these people by our government here.
Well, the United States has been engaged militarily in one form or another in Somalia pretty much consistently since 1992 at the very end of the Bush administration when he landed Marines on a beach to begin a humanitarian operation or ostensibly one.
We fought militias in Somalia in 1993.
Of course, there was the famous Black Hawk Down incident.
And then in 2001, Somalia, like many countries in the greater Middle East and North Africa, got sort of roped into this war on terror narrative.
So before 2001, Somalia was seen as like a militia fiefdom.
OK, something that was mainly humanitarian concern, only had limited connections to terrorism.
But see, after 2001, places like Somalia that happen to be Muslim and happen to have some minor Islamist element were easy to rope under the title of war on terror.
OK, so you could conduct military operations in places like Somalia under the pretense that this is part of the war on terror.
So the main threat currently, we are told, in Somalia is a group called Al-Shabaab.
Al-Shabaab is like the third iteration of Islamists who want to basically bring Sharia law and stability and lack of corruption to a Somali government that has been fractured since at least 1991.
OK, so in 2001, Al-Shabaab does not exist.
OK, Al-Shabaab does not exist.
It presents no threat to the United States.
It is not on the radar of us and the United States is not on their radar because they don't exist.
After we back an Ethiopian invasion in 2007 and 2008 to stamp out the first iteration of Islamists that were called the Islamic Courts Union, I believe, Al-Shabaab sort of grows out of this like a phoenix out of this first group.
Since then, the United States has been waging operations with special forces, raids, and many drone strikes on Al-Shabaab.
And now Al-Shabaab does threaten the United States or at least ostensibly does.
I mean they make statements against the United States.
They've put a few people in the United States with the pretense of attacking us.
But overall, Somalia is not an existential threat.
Al-Shabaab is not an existential threat to the United States in my opinion.
And yet it's just one more theater where American soldiers kill and die, kill and die under the umbrella of the war on terror.
And what I want to know is what is the legal justification for an American soldier to die or kill in Somalia?
There's no war resolution that specifically names Somalia.
There's no declaration of war.
We haven't done that since 1942.
And if we rope all of these wars under the guise of the war on terror, I'm concerned about what that does to the people on the ground.
How does an average Somali view the United States in 2018 versus how did an average Somali feel about the United States in say 1991?
And I can guarantee you that people had a more positive view of the United States, were more likely to admire the United States before our military intervention than after.
If that's true, we have to ask the uncomfortable and inconvenient question of whether American military operations are in fact counterproductive in a place like Somalia.
Right.
Well, especially when that's supposed to be the definition of victory is we're here to protect the people of Somalia from themselves.
And what are you saying?
They don't agree?
They don't feel safer now?
Well, the polling data is difficult in a place like Somalia.
But what we do know is that support for Islamist groups, support for anti-American groups, support for anti-Western groups and piracy, quite frankly in some cases, has skyrocketed.
Now, causation is not necessarily correlation or correlation is not necessarily causation.
But we have to think about this for a second.
I'm not an expert on Somalia.
I've never been to Somalia.
I know what I read.
And I can smell something fishy.
And Somalia is just one front in the war on terror where I'm not so sure we're increasing positive views of the United States.
Another one is Pakistan where the buzzing of drones haunts children's nightmares, we're told by credible reporting, where people don't like sunny days in the tribal areas of Pakistan because that means the drones can fly.
And people are terrified of it.
And polling data there also shows that views of America are actually decreasing rather than increasing in these very areas where we're supposedly trying to do hearts and minds counterinsurgency and winning over the support of the population.
It's unclear that most fronts in our war on terror are actually achieving that.
Yeah.
Well, and that's the whole thing, right, is in the counterinsurgency strategy, which you fought through both surges on the ground in Iraq War II and in Afghanistan.
And in neither case was the counterinsurgency doctrine of Petraeus and all these guys, you know, based on the French strategy for losing Algeria or wherever they come up with this garbage.
It didn't work there.
Why in the world would we believe that it would work in Somalia, that that Somalis would prefer a bunch of Americans coming and bringing violence to whatever problems they have among themselves?
And, of course, as you're saying, caused by the American overthrow of the Islamic courts union in the first place, they were the you know, the way I read it, Al-Shabaab, the youth, they were the youngest, least influential, least important part of the Islamic courts union.
They were group number 13 in the union.
And their job was to sit over there and be quiet until the war came.
And then guess who's doing the fighting?
The youth.
Now their job is to take the forefront of the whole thing.
When we decapitate the snake, one thing we've found in the last 17 years that when we decap leadership or decapitate key elements of the Islamist movement, we find that like a phoenix rises an even more radical hydra.
We've seen this again and again.
If you trace Al-Qaeda, for example, Al-Qaeda Central, if you trace that brand from 2001 at the September 11th attacks and you trace their rhetoric up to ISIS, which is a nasty outgrowth of Al-Qaeda, you find that actually these movements are getting more radical rather than less.
So right up to and including the killing of bin Laden and then the breaking off of the Islamic State from Zawahiri's control after that.
Absolutely.
100%.
Two years later.
I have one final question, which is this.
If I've been instructed as a mid-range military officer to conduct hearts and minds counterinsurgency and pacification of the population at the tactical and operational level, meaning in the city level or in the country level of, say, Baghdad and then Iraq or Kandahar and then Afghanistan, why shouldn't we be taking an approach of hearts and minds counterinsurgency at strategic level?
Meaning why should we not care how people view the United States?
Should we not measure whether we're creating more or less enemies?
Wouldn't that be the strategic outgrowth of coin?
Now, I'm a skeptic of coin writ large, but I'm just taking it.
Let's accept that it's a viable strategy.
If it is, we need to apply it at the strategic level.
And I want to know how do people in the tribal areas of Pakistan feel about the United States?
If the answer is they hate us more because of our drone program, we need to question the drone program.
Maybe it's working.
Maybe it's not.
Let's not even go there.
We should care.
Right.
We should be measuring it in some way.
We need metrics and we need, you know, demand side and not just supply side metrics.
Yeah.
Well, you know, it's funny.
We can talk about.
Yeah.
Assuming the premise and taking it.
It's an important point.
What you're saying about.
Well, just how well is it working?
How do we measure this long, hard slog as Rumsfeld called it and measure?
And even as he suggested, well, are we making more enemies than we're killing?
That'd be one way of looking at it.
There was a one of these CNAS meetings or something where Andrew Bacevich got up there and described what sounded like Afghanistan and saying, you know, here we are doing our big counterinsurgency search there.
But so he's talking, it turns out that, no, he's talking about Mexico and here's a country that's driven by warlords and drug dealers and corruption.
And, you know, their economy is based on this dwindling oil resource and whatever this, that, the other thing.
And he goes in there and he goes, all right.
So how many you tough guys want to go in and occupy Mexico in order to implement this counterinsurgency doctrine and remake their society for them?
Teach them to elect good men and all this stuff.
And, of course, the whole room is like, oh, geez.
And the point being that, yeah, that's exactly because you know that you're full of it.
Right.
And it's also not really speaking the language that is part of it.
He goes, yeah, exactly.
Because the only reason that you would even propose this kind of thing is because, you know, it's on the far side of the world where the American people can't see the results and won't hold you accountable for what you do there.
But if you had to do this in Mexico.
Yeah, right.
No one would even entertain the possibility of that for a minute.
You know?
Yeah, absolutely.
And we've tried that in Mexico, haven't we?
I mean, if we take a look at American interventions in Mexico from about, you know, we'll say 1846 all the way through the Second World War.
There are several instances where United States troops land, seize ports, seize the capital city, back one government over the next.
And we've had a pretty checkered record with success in Mexico.
Mexico is still a basket case in a lot of ways.
And American military operations appear not to have fixed that problem in the past.
So the idea that we couldn't have in the present, of course, and that was Bacewicz's point, is farcical.
And yet when you lay that model on a Muslim country in the Middle East or North Africa, suddenly everyone accepts it as gospel.
But if you lay that model on, say, the Congo or Mexico, which is much closer to home, people are skeptical.
And that strikes me.
Is there something about the Middle East?
Is there something about Islam that makes people believe that counterinsurgency can work or that American military occupation is viable?
I'm not sure what it is, but someone needs to write about it.
Someone needs to do like a psychological study because it is fascinating.
Yeah.
Well, and, you know, I mean, part of this, too, is we're always – the U.S. government is always picking fights with people who couldn't possibly defend themselves against us.
And so, you know, here we're fighting – I mean, Iraq was a relatively wealthy country, although it was under blockade.
So those people were living, you know, in somewhat desperation at least by the end of the 90s.
But then Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, these are the most poverty-stricken places on earth.
These are the last places that never really had the ability for markets to take hold and increase people's wealth to any reasonable degree.
They've been living the same way they've been living for a long time.
And a lot of that is because of imperialism and intervention by other powers, et cetera, all this time.
But the point being that when we're at war in Somalia, when our war is resulting in the rise of a group like al-Shabaab, or when we're at war in Yemen fighting two wars for and against al-Qaeda there, when we're, you know, helping to tear apart Iraq and Syria in this way, that people starve to death.
People, you know, are already living a marginal existence.
You know, I guess Iraq and Syria aren't bad examples of this.
But certainly in Yemen and Somalia, they had a big famine in 2011 and 12, or 10, 11, and 12, in the Horn of Africa.
And, of course, the people of Somalia got hit the very hardest by it because their country was torn apart by war.
The other countries, you know, distribution systems could somewhat compensate for the lack of the rainfall.
But in Somalia, they were already absolutely living on the margin.
And, you know, FuseNet said that 250,000 people died, of course, most of them children under five years old.
And you could put all of that at the feet of George W. Bush and then Barack Obama, who came in inheriting the same policy and carrying it on.
Absolutely.
Somalia was already at the bottom of the development barrel, water shortages, food shortages, and so is Yemen.
I mean, Yemen's a great example of that as well.
I mean, this is a country that already cannot supply itself with food and water.
It's already more affected by desertification and drought than almost anywhere in the world.
And then the idea that a military strike, specifically like a Saudi-led bombing campaign and isolation campaign, is going to cause anything but a humanitarian disaster is just absolutely obtuse.
I mean, it totally omits context.
And yet most Americans don't know much about the economic situation in places or the agricultural situation in a place like Somalia or Yemen.
So, you know, they are surprised when they hear that there's a famine or a cholera outbreak, and we shouldn't be surprised.
And also, you know, here's one thing about Yemen.
I know I'm kind of going off, but, like, here's how you know you're screwing up.
When two different sides of a conflict that hate each other, like, more than anything in the world, share one thing in common, and that's hatred of America, you're doing something wrong.
What I mean is al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which is one of the more powerful al-Qaeda brands these days, which is mostly in southern and eastern Yemen, they hate America.
But their main enemy on the ground is the Houthis, right, the Zaidi Shia who control the north and west side of Yemen and the ones that are under bombardment by the Saudis.
But you know what?
The Houthis have a chant.
They have, like, an official chant that they do.
And, you know, I don't know the whole thing, but it's like it ends with death to America, death to Israel.
And it's like these two sides literally hate each other, massacre each other.
One is Sunni al-Qaeda.
One is Zaidi Shia Houthi.
They agree on only one thing, and that's that death to America.
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And we back both sides.
We back both sides against each other.
At one time or another, we have certainly backed many different entities in the Yemeni civil war.
And that's what it is.
It's a civil war.
Civil wars tend not to end well when there's external intervention.
Case in point, Syria.
Yeah.
Well, I'll tell you that much.
Well, and so let me ask you this, Danny.
And I'm sorry, we're kind of skipping around.
But back to the opinions of military men about what's going on here.
We talk about these unfair fights and these ridiculous fights.
I mean, you know, back three years ago when the war, when this phase of the war started in Yemen, Mark Perry quoted some generals and some experts complaining about the war in Yemen.
And Michael Horton, the Yemen expert, no relation to me, is quoted saying that, you know, John McCain complains that we're Iran's air force in Iraq.
Well, we're al-Qaeda's air force in Yemen.
What the hell's going on here?
And it was all these air force generals who are in on it.
The air force generals who are making it all possible are really complaining because to them they're saying, well, you just said this is a QAP.
And we're targeting their enemies.
We're helping fight a war against.
And, of course, they're part of the shock troops on the ground serving the Saudi-UAE-USA coalition there.
And so I wonder, you know, and for that matter, picking on the Pashtuns in Afghanistan or fighting any of these wars, it seems like after all this time you must even have two- and three-star generals who really are sick of this and don't want to do this anymore, right?
We're going to just keep on picking on the Somalis for Christ's sake?
And for how long?
Forever?
I mean, don't some of them agree with you, do you think?
I can tell you with near certainty that some of them do agree with many of the points we're making.
What I can't say is whether we're going to hear any of these generals dissent publicly.
My guess is we will not.
It's not a good move career-wise.
It is extraordinary the extent to which the military has dutifully executed its orders with marginal dissent.
Even guys who get out, like, say, you know, John Allen who went and spoke for Hillary Clinton, right, like in his crazy speech at the Democratic National Convention that sounded more hawkish than anything on the right.
You know, even a guy like that who you would say, oh, wow, he's retired now, he's going to be a skeptic of this whole military operation in the Middle East over the last 17 years.
He's not.
I mean he's a hawk.
He's up there screaming about how we're going to kill ISIS and we're going to bury their bodies and all.
I mean the point is there are generals out there I have to believe who tend to agree with us.
There are very few willing to speak out and also very few of the types of people who speak out ever rise to the level of general in the first place.
So we're further decreasing the likelihood of a critical thinking general.
So what you have oftentimes is a lot of dutiful workers, dutiful middle managers that are very great at making the machine run but not so great at making the machine achieve what it's supposed to achieve.
Does that make sense?
Yeah.
Yeah, and especially the part about how do you think you get to be a general in the first place.
It's not by having a lot of moral courage to stand up to your superiors on the way up the ladder.
I get that.
But maybe this should be the campaign then where especially mid-level officers like yourself and others calling out the generals, retired and active duty, to dissent against the ongoing war.
Because after all, they are the ones literally who are sending 19-year-olds to get their legs blown off and maybe their entire life lost and to kill people who dare to resist them in their own countries on their own land.
And so if they're asking that kind of physical courage from the soldiers out there, these young kids who ought to be working and taking care of their families in their home counties where they're from and have them doing this instead, then they ought to have the courage to go ahead and risk their pension.
They'll be able to get a good job on the board of something if they're a two- or three-star general.
They'll be all right one way or the other.
They're not going to have the courage to call an end to this.
It seems pretty weak on their part.
And maybe it could be framed that way.
That this is really a betrayal of these young men.
And these old men know better.
And they're going to keep doing it.
They get up in the morning and keep sending these guys.
I mean, Afghanistan.
Look at Afghanistan.
You just said kids who were not even born on September 11th are going to be arriving on patrol and getting killed over there.
Killing people and getting killed over there here starting next year.
It seems like they've got to know better than that.
They've got to have some kind of – and for that matter, don't they have sons and grandsons in the military because they're military families?
And that's kind of how it works.
They do.
That's really fascinating.
I was just talking to a colonel stationed at Fort Leavenworth.
And he's got like two children who are either in or on their way into the military.
And the current nature of national service is that the general is almost to a man to have at least one child in uniform.
So it's not that I don't think they care.
I know that they do.
And I just would – I would hope to see some more critical thinking about this.
For example, General Dempsey, former chief of staff, extremely bright guy, taught English at West Point, not your typical general.
He's not your typical military man.
He carried like baseball cards around with him, and he's not the only one, with pictures and small bios of everyone who died under his command.
And every day he would show it to other commanders out in the field and would say, hey, make it worth it.
Make it worth it.
Make what you're doing out here worth their lives.
I totally respect the sentiment, but I'm coming to a place where I'm wondering if achievement of our relatively minimal operational goals on the ground is going to link to strategy.
That's what concerns me.
And so I hope we do hear more from the generals.
I know there's a lot of great ones out there who are good human beings.
So this is not to say that like all generals are terrible people.
That's not true at all.
But now is the time I think to speak if you have a critical voice.
You know, I see what you're saying about those baseball cards and all that, but that just seems like so much obfuscation, right?
What does that even mean?
Be brave out on this particular sweep of fighting aged males?
I mean, you know, they're going to be brave out there.
They're going to fight for each other out there.
But as you said, what does that have to do with the strategy?
What are we actually achieving in any case?
And that question just gets put aside, basically.
And, you know, this is what C.J. Chivers wrote in his he's got a new book out about Afghanistan.
Well, the wars in general, I guess.
And they publish an excerpt about Afghanistan there in the New York Times.
And he says, look, there's nothing left for these guys to fight for but each other.
And what's funny is, yeah, that's what we've been saying for a long time.
You know, welcome to the party.
New York Times is finally going to go ahead and admit that this whole thing has been for nothing.
You know, like I said, the day that I could no longer look a mother in the eye and explain why her son died, at least in a way that I felt comfortable with, that's when I knew that all we were fighting for was the patch of dirt we stood on and the man next to us.
And there's something viscerally powerful about that.
But I want more.
I don't know, man.
I think my soldiers need more than just, hey, you're fighting for each other.
The problem with most of these Hollywood movies that have come out is there hasn't been a single critical one for the most part that looks at the war in any broad sense.
Like at least the Vietnam War movies like Deer Hunter and Platoon took a critical look at the war more generally.
All the movies now, they tell the same story.
Brothers fight for brothers.
Stick with your guy and watch his back.
And if you have to die in a faraway land without any context of why we're there in the first place, you got to do that.
I'm not willing to accept that, OK?
Yes, I know.
I've watched soldiers fight and die for each other.
It's heartbreaking.
That shit is heartbreaking to think, man, what if the strategy is not balanced?
What if the ends don't justify the means?
What if this entire thing is counterproductive?
If those things could even possibly be true, my god, I'm concerned.
My god, we better be speaking out.
My god, we better be having this conversation.
And if we're not having the conversation, derelict in our duty or at least I feel I personally would be derelict in my duty.
I can't speak for other officers.
Now, listen, did you ever see Billy Lynn's long halftime walk?
I did.
I read the book and then I saw it.
I didn't think it was a great film, but I did appreciate some of the sentiments within it.
Yeah, I mean it wasn't the most compelling film actually, but at least they were trying in some cases.
And I'm not a big football fan and this kind of thing, but I grew up on it and I sure understand how this works with all the militarism and sports and everything like that.
And it seems like, you know, that's one of those that should be sort of, quote unquote, mandatory.
You know, I'm a libertarian.
I don't really believe that.
But mandatory viewing for everybody who supported these wars and who cheered along with these kind of spectacles at these at these games, you know, not just football, but especially football where they use these young men as props like this and this, you know, massive PR TV show for recruitment and whatever.
Meanwhile, the kid's sitting there having a breakdown from what he's been through and what he's being put through as a prop.
They got, what, Beyonce dancing in the background and all this stuff.
And this kid is like, oh my God, he was killing people over there and it wasn't fun.
And everyone's trying to, you know, congratulate him for it or whatever.
And he's kind of, but, you know, I guess that just goes to prove, though, what you're saying that there's not really a lot like that.
Mostly it's just, you know, the hurt locker where you go out there and take brave risks and have thrills or something.
Absolutely.
And Billy Lynn's long halftime walk was pretty good.
I thought Ben Fountain, who's the author, has another book out that really sort of covers the campaign, the Trump campaign.
It's totally a different style book, but it's also pretty solid.
I recommend it.
But he – yeah, he hits a couple of key points.
The usage of veterans, the partisan hackery that goes into using veterans around the NFL and other sporting events is shocking.
I remember a time – you and I are both just barely old enough to remember a time when really you only saw soldiers at sporting events on, like, Memorial Day and Veterans Day.
And that was enough, right?
Like, those were the two days where we paraded the soldiers in front of the field and we saluted the flag and we all cheered, and that was great.
And always Army and Marine and Air Force ads during the games too, though.
That's true.
You're right.
There's always been a connection between violent sport and militarism probably since the Coliseum.
So that's fair.
But I think we can agree that it's gotten worse.
It's gotten worse in the fact that you can't go to a Kansas City Royals game without a soldier being brought on the field every single game or at least a camera going off the field.
Or at least a camera going off to the soldier in the stands and then a bio of him going across the street.
Shit, I've been that guy.
My wife surprised me and did that.
I wasn't completely pleased by the way.
But every single Sunday it's big flags, flags the size of football fields, right?
And it's 30, 40 soldiers in full dress uniform.
It's just like this parade of militarism that we see every week.
I mean I'm not sure that it's the best way to honor veterans.
Some people may feel some sort of gratification when they see it.
But I'm starting to wonder if this is really detrimental to the republic more generally.
Yeah, well, of course it is.
And by the way, I've got to mention that William or Bill Astore has written some really great stuff about this recently.
And he's also a former officer, retired.
Right, in the Air Force.
Yeah, an Air Force officer.
And so he's got all that kind of moral standing to take this same position.
Can't we just play ball?
And seriously, you know what?
I once saw the Harlem Globetrotters and it was a disgrace.
We've got to sing God Bless America and the National Anthem too.
And we all have to put our hands on our hearts.
And it just feels so, I don't know, last century or something.
Like we can't all just see through the very, very crass marketing by government of itself here.
You know, it's just ridiculous.
Right, right.
But of all places, right, the Harlem Globetrotters, like thinking about the history of Harlem and its racial riots and its continuing abuse by the New York City Police Department.
I mean just the back story.
Well, and also the fun of the game.
Like we're just, you know, we're out of here.
Right, right, right.
Yeah, anyway.
Yeah, it's absolutely wild.
I mean it goes into the kneeling debate, which if we open that up, we're never going to get off the radio.
But like it's insanity when we use soldiers in such a way.
It is no way to honor veterans.
Do not, please, listen, if you're listening and you care at all what I think, do not use my soldiers.
Please do not use me as a prop for whatever political opinion you have.
Like if you hate Colin Kaepernick, like please leave me out of it.
Like I don't give two shits.
Like I have my own opinion about it.
You want to talk to me about it?
I'll tell you about it.
You want to interview me about it on fucking radio?
I'll do it.
But like don't use me, man.
Don't say on behalf of veterans we all have to shit on Colin Kaepernick.
Like that's not my job, man.
Like I'm not a pawn for your political hackery.
Yeah, damn right.
Well, but you know what?
So then am I exploiting you too, using you at AntiWar.com?
Look, everybody, an Army major who's saying that this is wrong.
That's funny you would say that because I think some people who disagree with me would say that.
Some people who disagree with my points would argue that I'm just a disgruntled major, a disgruntled mid-level officer.
And that's all I am.
I'm not some sort of hero.
I've had some sort of great career.
I've had an average career for a soldier who fought 17 years in the war on terror.
That's all I am.
But yeah, some people might say that.
But the difference is that we're discussing things in a critical light.
We're talking about articles that are written.
We're talking about things that I have some expertise on.
And you didn't pull me onto your show.
We met through my academic exercises and through common ideas.
And so I think that there is room for veteran voices.
But I'd say let the veterans themselves speak.
Don't speak for the veterans.
I think that's the key difference.
Yeah.
Well, and, of course, that's how I am because I'm not a veteran.
So I would never try to speak for them.
From time to time, I'll say, hey, listen, if I've got to satisfy somebody's prejudice or curiosity or whatever, like, look, Colonel McGregor endorsed my book.
And it's a hardcore anti-war book with no apologies.
So there's a reason for that.
You know what I mean?
The only opinions that matter are military men.
Well, I got military men.
I got one guy who was a veteran of the Korengal Valley campaign who wrote, to me, the most impressive review, most thoughtful review of my book.
And he stands behind what I wrote in there.
And that means a lot to me.
And, you know, I guess I shouldn't have to disclaim, but in some circumstances, it helps to say, like, hey, you know what?
This is not – I didn't write this with Jane Fonda.
You know what I mean?
This is something that is worth taking seriously from people who might need their mind changed rather than just affirmed.
Yeah.
I've said a few times, man – I've said this to you and I'll say it again – that I actually think sometimes non-military voices have as much or more credibility as military voices.
And the reason for that is, man, I study pretty broadly just like you do.
But if you would have asked me in 2007 when I was down in the trenches of Baghdad, man, I didn't necessarily have a very wide view of the war because I was seeing the war at 10,000 feet through a straw.
I knew everything about Salman Pak and the Rousafa district of East Baghdad.
But I'm not so sure that I was the best voice to analyze American policy in the war.
I became that voice through self-study and a couple hundred books.
And when I marry that with my military experience, I think that's where the value comes in.
But don't let anybody tell you that because you're not a veteran.
You can't speak out about this.
A lot of times veterans, we have a very narrow view.
And if we don't choose to educate ourselves, it's very easy to get caught up in the trenches, man.
Well, and I know from just doing this show the whole time that, you know, the whole terror war long, that if I had not had access to Juan Cole and Robert Dreyfus and Gareth Porter and Patrick Coburn and so forth at the times that I did, then, yeah, I mean, who was to make hide or hair of it?
You know what I mean?
You really needed some people who had some real experience.
And then for me, I'm just lucky because I'm interviewing people all the time.
So I get to ask all these follow up questions and learn all this stuff about it and then keep doing it over and over again this whole time through.
So that's my advantage.
You know, looking at it from here and then.
But, you know, the opposite of that is people who don't know that they need to be finding Bob Dreyfus wherever he's writing, you know, during Iraq War II I'm talking about.
Right.
People who don't know that, they don't get to learn the stuff that he wrote.
And man, if you weren't reading him, then what did you know about Abdul Aziz al-Hakim and the Skiri and why it mattered?
And he knew all about it.
And he was, you know, I don't know who else did, too.
But I know that from what I learned from him at that time mattered that much in my understanding of the whole war, where, you know, I'm sure you probably never got very good briefings on the Skiri and what it was all about, you know?
Right, right.
Yeah, I mean, absolutely.
Absolutely.
All right.
Well, listen, man, I'm sorry I kept you so long, but I like talking with you.
No worries.
That's what I do.
It was a great conversation, man.
We need to have it.
Let's do it again.
Yep.
All right.
Great to have you writing again and happy to have you back on the show.
Really appreciate it, Danny.
Thanks, brother.
I'll talk to you soon.
All right, you guys, that's Major Danny Sherston.
He's writing again at Antiwar.com.
Dying for what?
A tour of fruitless American killing and sacrifice.
And he also has, as he mentioned there, this great series at Truthdig.com, which is all about, or is it .org?
Either way, Truthdig.
Great series, 15, 16 parts now on American history.
Some revisionist early American history of the Revolutionary War.
And right now up through the war against Mexico and the seizing of the southwestern part of what's currently the United States.
All right, y'all.
Thanks.
Thanks for having me.
