Sorry I'm late.
I had to stop by the Wax Museum again and give the finger to 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 had.
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, he died.
We ain't killing they army, but we killing them.
We be on CNN like, say our name, bitch, say it, say it three times.
The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world.
Then there's going to be an invasion.
Okay, guys, on the line, I've got the great Daniel L. Davis.
He was a U.S. Army colonel and a whistleblower.
When they're wrapping up the Afghan surge, he came forward and told the truth in the face of the great American fraud, David Petraeus' lies about that war.
And now he's had defense priorities and he writes regularly for the National Interest and such like that.
And here he is, man, in the USA today, right where everybody can find it.
John Bolton is gone and good riddance.
He was pushing Trump away from peace and diplomacy.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing?
I'm doing great.
Thanks for having me, Scott.
Very happy to talk to you again.
You know, me and Dan McAdams were just joking about, did you see this headline where Trump said, Bolton was holding me back in Venezuela and Cuba.
So these things are double-edged swords and contradictory kind of positions among all these guys.
And that's assuming you take Trump at his word on that.
But I tend to believe the bad parts and dismiss the good ones.
But anyway, I did.
I did see that.
And I said, holy cow, are you telling me Bolton was actually a restraint?
I mean, I thought we were blaming him for the whole, you know, Maduro thing there.
He must have convinced Trump that this is going to be easy.
Let's do it.
And then Trump saying he wanted to go further.
Anyway, so he is gone, though.
So as Dan McAdams said, you got to stop and take a minute to be happy about that.
Talk to the youngins here for a minute, Danny, who aren't too familiar with John Bolton, other than his big, crazy walrus mustache.
And what other reasons they should have been afraid of him?
Yeah, he has been nothing but a destroyer from the beginning.
He got us out of, I believe it was the ABM Treaty under George Bush.
Of course, he led the charge on the Iraq War, never repented from that, always to this day still claims that there was positive things about it.
You know, he got us now out of the INF Treaty.
He was trying to get us into mess in Venezuela.
He's been nothing but just like almost obsessed with getting us into a war with Iran.
I mean, there's no war that he doesn't seem to want to like.
I mean, he's always been advocating military measures and constant provocations against both Russia and China.
I mean, there's almost nobody that's off his radar.
And that includes North Korea, where he was, as you may remember, advocating for military strikes prior to being elevated to the National Security Advisor.
So everywhere you want to look, he wants to destroy things, but he has no skills, especially weird coming from someone who used to be a diplomat at the United Nations of all places, in creating any kind of agreements, in creating peace, in creating situations that actually work to our advantage.
And so just almost for that alone, you know, it is good that he's gone.
Now, the real issue is going to be is who replaces him.
So I haven't gotten too excited yet.
I mean, my hope is certainly that Douglas MacGregor, who's hands down the most qualified person for that job, and would certainly be the most beneficial to the United States in advocating for ways to actually bring Trump's instincts into operational reality in ways that benefit the United States.
But there's also lots of people talking about basically the protégés of John Bolton or other neocons that are out there.
So we're not out of the woods yet, I guess.
Yeah.
Well, you know, MacGregor came up in talking with McAdams as well.
And I don't know if you saw the speech that he gave.
Were you there at the Ron Paul Foreign Policy Conference there in DC a couple of weeks ago?
I was not.
I actually missed it.
So MacGregor gave a speech there, and I'm pretty sure we blogged it at antiwar.com.
I think Eric posted there, but you can find it at the Ron Paul Institute page.
And I'll tell you what, man, there's a right wing colonel I can support.
And, you know, and he is imperfect.
He's not a full non-interventionist libertarian.
And he did say, you know, on the Tucker show that we had a carpet bomb the Taliban on the way out of there, which I think, you know, just I don't get that.
But anyway, I don't care.
I figure I do care.
That's horrible.
But compared to everybody else, I mean, we're talking.
And it's like this, too.
He goes down the list.
He goes, look, we don't have to fight in Syria right now.
We don't have to fight.
I don't know if he mentioned Iraq war three and a half, but we don't have to fight in Syria.
We don't have to pick a fight with Iran.
We don't have to stay in Afghanistan.
And in Russia and China?
No.
And he goes through and he, you know, specifically debunks the Chinese threat and the idea that they even seek to be any kind of world hegemon in the first place.
This whole idea is cooked up in America, not in China.
And just, man, he's really good on this stuff.
And he goes on and on.
I'm leaving stuff out.
I think he, yeah, he did Korea.
He went down the list and essentially he sounded like almost like Ron Paul himself.
Yep.
Yeah, there's no doubt.
I mean, and he's the great tank hero of Iraq war one.
And, you know, because you were there.
Well, I don't know what's a hero about slaughtering a bunch of boys in their tanks, but he won that big battle, right?
Yeah, I mean, you know, I've had a number of conversations with him even recently.
And, you know, going all the way back there, which is one of the reasons I've so admired him all the way through, is that I've seen him under fire.
I've seen him, you know, he'll be able to, you know, fight like a wild, crazy man, you know, and succeed in the teeth of great opposition.
But he's also wise enough to know that that should only that sword should only be unleashed under the most extreme of circumstances.
And the vast majority of time, the vast majority of time, the greatest benefits to America is not fighting.
And, you know, that's what distinguishes him from so many other people who want that job is that they almost look for ways to fight, whereas he's looking for ways to accomplish America's objectives without fighting.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, he actually told me in an email one time, I forget exactly who he was comparing.
I think it was essentially comparing the American national security establishment consensus itself to the British who wanted to stay in India after World War II.
And they just couldn't get it through their thick skull that those days are over.
And you've got you guys have got to go.
You've got no right to do this.
You're ruining your own country.
It's time to call it off.
That's, you know, the kind of perspective on the broad level, on the historical level that I like hearing, you know.
And yeah, I don't know.
I don't get it why Trump don't hire him.
I know he's seen him on the talker show saying essentially Donald Trump is right about all the things that Donald Trump says that are right.
And, you know, doesn't really contradict him in any rude way for not following through.
Seems like the perfect guy for the job.
You know, yes.
And the thing that really cements Doug as being the best person for this job is that he has the same foreign policy views as the president.
And so Trump's instincts are really right on so many of these things.
But you've had, you know, Bolton and McMaster before that.
They always wanted to push him in different directions.
They wanted to, quote, educate him on things.
And they knew better in all these regards.
And so they're always, you know, with Secretary of Defense Mattis, I mean, he's been on record as saying how, you know, he tried to push things away here and he openly subverted the president on getting out of Syria and, you know, and claimed that that was the reason he left.
Well, the problem is we shouldn't be in Syria.
So that's what the president has been saying.
All these advisors are not supposed to be changing the president's mind.
They're supposed to be putting into effect the things that he wanted, which was why he got elected.
Because that's one of the reasons why, frankly, I voted for him, because he said he didn't want to do any more stupid wars, didn't want regime change and all this.
And so Doug gives him the best chance for someone who has his viewpoints that will take his intent and turn it into operational reality.
And nobody else that's been up there so far, and so far no one I've even seen mentioned for the job, can do that.
Yeah.
Well, and look, I mean, for whatever reasons, including the advice of the Hawks, I think the chance of him getting the job are pretty slim, unfortunately.
And, you know, we're going to be stuck with essentially the conventional wisdom.
Trump doesn't know enough to, if he was going to pick McGregor, he would also be picking a lot of other really good guys at the same time, because he finally figured out, oh, here's the group of guys I should get.
You know what I mean?
Like he could have hired Jim Webb.
They're talking about, oh, he might hire Jim Webb.
No, he didn't hire Jim Webb.
He's got Rand Paul sitting right there.
It could be the Secretary of State.
It could be a senator to run from in four years if he wants to run for president in four years.
You know, he's got the guys of the national interest.
He's got guys like you who could be on the National Security Council staff.
Doug Bandow and Ted Carpenter from Cato and Paul Pilar could help run the CIA or be the National Intelligence Director.
Yeah, it's not hard to come up with essentially like, you know, a good half dozen or eight or 10 good names of just the right guys to fill in all these positions and get it done.
But the president himself is just not that interested.
You know, he could stay up at night reading the internet and stuff.
He just doesn't do that.
Yeah, I don't know.
I mean, my belief and hope all the time has been, though, if Doug can just get a personal sit down with Trump, I think because he speaks Trump's language, and I think that there would be, you know, at least the potential for some chemistry there that you can't get just hearing about him.
Someone telling you that this guy exists or even watching him on Fox, you know, some, although that does seem to have some influence.
So my hope is that he gets that interview and he doesn't just like look at his name on a piece of paper, but he actually talks to him.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, the whole thing is, like you're saying, there's this whole consensus has it that to withdraw from these places to knock off this world empire is just absolutely unthinkable.
The entire consensus precludes even the thought of it.
And but here's a guy who makes it all seem very realistic that, in fact, it doesn't have to be this way.
It shouldn't be this way.
It shouldn't have been this way.
You know, the post Cold War world should have been one of disarmament and increased trade and freedom, not war.
And so we did it all wrong.
And now is our chance to call it.
I have 30 years.
But now is our chance to get the 21st century off on, you know, the second or third, you know.
And and so, yeah.
And and and make Trump believe like you're saying, oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
No, it's perfectly believable.
We'll still be best friends with the British or whatever.
We don't need to be in NATO anymore.
We don't need to dominate the entire Pacific Ocean from now into eternity.
We don't need to have a nuclear war, et cetera.
You know, yeah, they just keep on going in this because and the thing which McGregor is so sharply focused on and why, you know, I always advocate his elevation any time I get a chance is because the things that he's talking about, the resistance to always using the military sword as an answer for everything.
And all of these things that you just mentioned is because to do something that will pull back from that, will greatly increase our economic opportunity and will also strengthen our security, ironically, by pulling back from some of these things, because now that we won't be literally frittering away our money and our blood all over the place where it doesn't need to be spent.
And instead, we can actually focus on actual national defense, not national offense.
And so we'll be more stronger economically and stronger security wise.
I mean, it's an absolute win win.
Hold on just one second.
Be right back.
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Again, that's right there in the margin at Scott Horton dot org.
Hey, guys, check it out.
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All right.
Let's talk about Afghanistan.
It looks like this whole thing's gone to hell because the military won't give up that Bagram Air Base and the Taliban won't settle for less than that.
So maybe it really was that one suicide bombing, but it seems more like they, you know, I don't know, man.
I'm actually really confused about how I was playing out there.
It seemed like the Taliban were agreeing that it was true that they had agreed to the deal, that the deal was essentially finalized, that had 5,000 troops coming out in a couple of months and then presumably, but they never exactly said this, I don't think, that the rest of the troops would be out in a year or a year and a half.
I don't know, man.
I'm actually really confused about how I was playing out there.
It seemed like the Taliban were agreeing that it was true that they had agreed to the deal, that the deal was essentially finalized in a year and a half.
I was surprised to hear the Taliban say that they had agreed to that with such a kind of undefined ending to the thing, but now it's off anyway.
I don't know.
What's going on, do you think?
Yeah, I read just this morning, actually, some new Taliban statements where they're going into a little bit more detail on that, where they're saying, yeah, we had agreed to that.
We were surprised at how it worked out there with that because we've been fighting and dying on both sides all the time.
I think it was October of last year when this first started, and as Pompeo said, just a couple of days later, we've killed hundreds, if not over, close to 1,000 Taliban in the same time period.
So they're certainly coming out on the short end of that stick, but the fighting has continued to go on openly.
No one's said anything different, so that shouldn't have been any kind of a trigger, but the key part of what that Taliban said was they said, look, we're willing to go into a ceasefire with the United States and agree to not even attack any of their people.
Why?
We're willing to attack any of their people while we do the inter-Korean stuff here and the negotiations with the Afghan government.
They were ready to follow through on that and to go through with that while not attacking the United States.
That's a big win on the way out because they also said that it would be a complete withdrawal within 16 months.
So they weren't demanding an immediate everybody leave next Tuesday kind of thing.
They were saying something reasonable and strategically rational thought.
I mean, it was a big win, and I don't know really what happened with that.
I can't believe it was just Trump finding out that that one soldier from Puerto Rico had been killed in that suicide bombing because there's been lots of others that have happened, too.
So I'm not sure if that was just him saying, oh, well, that's, you know, convenient reason for me to claim publicly or something else.
But that's certainly something we need to get back into pretty quick.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, it might have made sense for the Taliban to call off the suicide attacks for a week or two.
These guys are going to be these guys.
You know, it's kind of this is why I said in the book, we shouldn't make a deal.
We should just go because, you know, I can't imagine the Americans essentially conceding surrender.
And that's we see all of this pressure.
That was the title of one of the articles and, you know, it was circulating around last week.
And they're saying on Fox News that this is surrender.
Well, that was where we've been defeated.
So they have they can't do that.
You know?
Yeah.
And I actually wrote a piece in The National Interest, I guess, four or five days ago where that's exactly what I suggested.
I said, look, based on all my combat experience over there and I gave several examples, we don't even need to be talking to the Taliban.
We need to set on our own objectives, on our own timelines and our own conditions.
This is what we're going to do.
And we'll, you know, we'll coordinate with the Afghan government and we won't just, you know, abandon the Taliban.
We're going to spend time to prepare.
But then that's going to require the Afghan people who have to live with the outcome to negotiate whatever kind of solution they can.
And if they choose to do more bloodshed, that's regrettable, but that's something that only they can decide.
If they want to be sick of war, they can.
They have historical precedent where they can work something out between them to end this bloodshed.
But they have to do it.
We have proven we can't enforce that from the outside.
And that's what has to happen.
So let's don't even talk to the Taliban.
Let's just set our own withdrawal timeline and then let these things take their natural course.
Yeah.
And I'm pessimistic about the future of the thing.
You know, Matthew Ho, though, has one optimistic point, which is that when the Taliban took the capital city and then tried to conquer the whole rest of the country back in the 1990s, they had the support of Bill Clinton as well as King Fahd and I forget which dictators of Pakistan at the time, to do so.
Where in this case, they don't.
In this case, at least presumably, the Imran Khan government would not be, you know, financing and encouraging the Taliban to take over the whole country.
But instead, the Americans ought to be able to lean on them and the Saudis to support, essentially, calling time out right here.
I mean, the lines, the so-called lines, the amount of territory taken by the Saudis and the amount of territory taken by the Taliban is essentially Pashtunistan without too much more than that.
It seems like they got, you know, pretty much their areas locked down.
So, hey man, let's call it a state with strong federalism and autonomy and you guys have your side of the country and we'll have our side of the country kind of thing and not fight.
It seems like if we don't have outside powers really pushing for one side to defeat the other, it's not going to work.
Well, you know, even within the last few years, the Taliban have been expressly saying out loud and in public that they don't, they no longer desire to conquer and govern the entire Afghanistan.
They only want, like you said, some of their areas and they want to have a say in a federalized, kind of loose federalization situation.
But there certainly seems to be a lot of room for multiple sides of people to say, hey, let's have some kind of loose federation, not a strong central government, which they have historically never had anyway, and go back to something that's culturally acceptable to them and then see what they can work out.
But part of the problem is actually the, you know, the so-called friendly side.
I guess our side is that a lot of these warlords like Dostum and some others, some others up in the north with Mohammed Ata, they have their own agenda and things that they want to see.
And I'm not sure that they've ever been completely behind a unified Afghanistan anyway.
And so let's let them all figure it out and maybe let Ata have his part up in the Balkh province.
Let Dostum have his out on the west and the Taliban or the Pashtuns, you know, on the east and whatever else.
All these are, let them figure this out.
But they can figure it out and they will if we put the forcing mechanism of our withdrawal into the equation.
Yeah.
Well, the one I'm most worried about is Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who made a deal with the government and came in from the cold but then, which is great because he was leading this Hispi-Islami group that was fighting an insurgency and killing all these people.
But then at the same time, he just made peace with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and invited him quote unquote in, literally in, from the cold.
Now he's in Kabul and he has his militia and he's right there ready to cause all kinds of trouble.
He was one of the worst warlords in the 1990s and he's right there ready to do whatever he wants.
In fact, I think I quote in the book or there was a Washington Post story where the Kabul government, they made this deal with him and then like two or three months later they were saying, oh man, we're really not sure what's going to happen here.
He's acting like we surrendered to him and that he's the boss around here now.
We got a real problem.
So, anyway, but like you're saying, what are we going to do about that?
This was the best solution after all these years of war.
The Green Berets never did hunt him down and kill him.
Now he's made peace with the government.
Now he's in Kabul with his militia men and what are we going to do about it?
You know, we can't.
It's already over.
And it's just, it's theirs to figure out.
They have to live with the results of whatever it is.
Whether they want Hekmatyar in or not, whether they want, you know, some of these other guys, some of these Taliban guys in or not, whether they want to work with something with Mohammed Atta or Dostum, that's something that they have to figure out.
But we can't and we have no play in that.
We just have to move out of the way and let them sort out their own life.
Yeah.
That's funny because that reminds me of something Ann Jones told me on the show years ago where I was going, yeah, I don't know, man.
It seems like maybe it wouldn't even take an invasion force.
Maybe the Taliban could just walk right into Kabul and sack the city somehow.
Saigon moment.
I think that was the context.
And she laughs and says, young man, the Taliban are in the parliament right now.
Which I guess she was referring to the Hizb Islami guys.
Half of them had already come in and were participating in the government.
She was saying, you know, the primary job of the police in the country is tracking down runaway women and girls.
You know, that's essentially, that's the government that we're supporting.
Nevermind when the Taliban come, that's the government that's already there.
Right.
Yeah.
I mean, every way you look at it, every angle, every aspect, it all comes to the same thing.
We need to shut the war down and withdraw immediately.
Yeah.
Hey, listen, here's the thing about it too, is Americans keep dying in this thing too.
For whatever reason, people can't be too bothered about the Afghans unless it's crocodile tears.
And now we have to stay to protect them.
But the ones getting killed by the American side or the American backed side, nobody cares for them so much.
But Green Berets keep getting killed, fighting out there in Nangarhar.
And I don't know if any Marines have been killed and what they're doing down there in Helmand right now, but there are guys fighting and dying and in danger.
They're still, you know, they say this one guy got killed in the suicide attack.
So that's why we have to keep the war going longer and make sure that more American GIs are going to die in this thing.
Yeah.
It doesn't make any sense at all.
And think about it.
If you're a young kid going over there right now, and you know that this war is already 20 years old and on its way to being over one way or the other here pretty soon, and you got to go and lose your legs in that thing.
You know, I don't know.
Yeah.
It doesn't make any sense.
Well, and you tell me, I mean, you were in the army.
And I know that for you officers, you older guys, especially these are like, you call them your guys.
These are my guys.
You know, sending them on trips on highways across the country where they get dead.
I mean, what the hell?
It seems like there'd be some kind of, I mean, obviously not a real mutiny, but that there'd be some kind of resentment built up.
I guess the enlisted don't matter in the scheme of things, but inside the officer core, like, man, this is really pretty bad what we're doing to our own kids here.
You know?
Yeah.
I think there should be a lot more of that.
And I'm not sure why they're in.
I don't know what kind of rationale or justification other than, well, this is what our, you know, political leaders have ordered to do.
So we're going to do our job.
That's what we're trained to do, whatever.
But you know, at some point you got to say, I want to see somebody with a high rank active duty, you know, say to the, to the president or secretary of defense or whoever, you're asking us to accomplish something that can't be accomplished militarily.
And if we execute this mission as ordered, all you're going to do is lose American lives for no gain to the country.
And you need to say that out loud.
And no one's been willing to do that.
And instead they keep on the fiction that this is preventing a new 9-11, which is absurd, but that's where they hide behind.
Yeah.
Well, and in fact, right, there is some insubordination, but it's entirely the other way.
And you have, it's almost unbelievable to me, although it's believable, but shocking, not surprising, I guess, as they say that you have the former and current commanders of central command and the former and current generals in charge of the Afghan war.
All four of those men have essentially crossed their arms and said, no, and publicly denounced the president's plans to leave and said, uh, there's still Al Qaeda here.
Our security requires it.
We're not going anywhere.
That Bagram base are belong to us.
Yeah.
And a part of that is, is because they, they, their own, uh, lineage and history is tied to all the stuff that was there.
So if we just left, then that suddenly makes them look stupid.
Uh, you know, like, why didn't you come to this conclusion before?
And, and I think it's defending their own history and all of their so-called accomplishments.
And, and it's just, it's, it's actually embarrassing.
Yeah, man.
All right.
Well, listen, thank you for being on the show and all the great work that you're doing to fight against these wars and this crazy foreign policy, Danny.
Always my pleasure, Scott.
And same to you.
I'm glad to see you fighting a good fight nonstop.
All right.
Talk soon.
All right, brother.
All right, you guys, that is retired.
Lieutenant Colonel Daniel L.
Davis, U S army.
He's at defense priorities.com, the national interest.
And here, this one is running in the USA today.
Bolton pushed Trump into more risk war and casualties.
Good riddance.
All right, y'all.
Thanks.
Find me at libertarianinstitute.org at Scott Horton.org, antiwar.com and reddit.com slash Scott Horton show.
Oh yeah.
And read my book fools errand timed and the war in Afghanistan at fools, errand.us.
