For Antiwar.com and Chaos Radio 95.9 in Austin, Texas, I'm Scott Horton.
This is Antiwar Radio.
First, we're going to go to Gareth Porter, my very favorite.
By special request by way of my Facebook page this morning, the article is, Pentagon Doubts Grow on McChrystal War Plan.
Gareth, of course, is an independent historian and journalist.
You can find virtually everything that he writes at original.antiwar.com slash porter and, of course, at IPSnews.net.
Welcome back to the show, Gareth.
How are you this morning?
I'm fine.
So, Pentagon Doubts Grow on McChrystal War Plan.
I guess let's start off here with this new Pentagon report that was issued on April 26.
What report is that exactly?
Well, this is the twice yearly report to Congress that the Pentagon issues on what's happening in Afghanistan.
And I must say, when I first looked at that report, I kind of gave it a ho-hum, although I thought that there was an angle that I wrote about before, which I won't get into right now.
But the real story, I think, had eluded me when I first looked at it.
And what prompted me to read it again is this column that was published in Sunday's Washington Post.
David Ignatius, of course, a fervent centrist, as he pointed out himself in a story, in an article that he wrote in the Post Outlook section a week earlier, has great access to high-level officials of the Obama administration.
And, of course, in every administration, he cultivates the high-level sources.
And so when he publishes an article that appears to criticize the McChrystal War Plan, at least as far as its implementation is concerned, then, you know, you wake up and pay attention.
And that article in Sunday's paper got me thinking that I should reread the DOD report, because I had remembered that there were a couple of quotes there that made me curious.
And I reread it, and lo and behold, what I found was that if you think about this in terms of what usually happens when the Pentagon issues a report on its wars, that this sticks out like a sore thumb as a report that is really very critical of the McChrystal War Plan, at least its implied message, if not quite openly expressed message, is that we've got a problem here.
So basically, you know, what I found was that the Pentagon report was damning with faint praise, as I put it in my story.
It basically points out that the offensive that was being waged in Marja achieved only, quote, some success in clearing insurgents from their strongholds.
All right, now, remind us about the Marja thing, because this was the biggest deal in the whole world back when it was a big deal.
Well, it was the only deal that was going on at that point.
It was what the McChrystal folks had decided to do in terms of a significant offensive while they were dithering over what to do about Kandahar, which they knew was really the big target for 2010.
But it was so difficult and so complex that they weren't ready to take it on.
And so they felt the need to have some sort of an offensive that would be headlined in the U.S. news media, particularly, and which they could present to the public as a major victory on the way to Kandahar, as it were.
So it was launched in, of course, early to mid-February with great hoopla, with some 15,000 troops.
And now we look back and it's very clear that it was not really achieving what it said it was going to achieve, which was to completely clear the Taliban from this agricultural region, which was passed off, of course, as a major city, or as a significant city, let's put it that way.
Yeah.
Well, it's kind of confusing to me.
I mean, you know, OK, well, I guess in the Marja invasion, I can see why they just wanted to pretend that, look, there's this major offensive that we're about to win.
Watch us win it.
And then they built up the enemy in Marja and even the city of Marja into this thing beyond all reality just in order to have the so-called success there for the American people's brains.
I understand that.
But when it comes to Kandahar or any military operation from a military point of view, I don't understand for the life of me how the army can sit there and say, hey, Kandahar, we're coming in two and a half months.
So you have two and a half months to set some booby traps and get your AKs and run to the hills and then, you know, come back as soon as we're gone again.
I don't understand.
Wouldn't the element of surprise like the Waco mask or something like help?
Well, you don't understand for a very good reason.
And that's because this whole offensive from the beginning, including Helmand and Kandahar, the same thing happened in Helmand, as you know, in the Marja area.
They did the same thing.
They issued a statement well ahead of time saying we're coming in a few weeks.
And so, you know, we hope the civilian population will clear out.
That was the first thing they said, so that there's no there's no civilian casualties.
Then they changed their mind.
The point being, as you've just pointed out, that this gives the Taliban weeks and weeks to plan for their strategy, which in the past has indeed included laying IEDs as a major feature of the strategy.
But there are many other ways that the Taliban can plan for resistance to to the offensive, including, you know, in some specific places, offering some significant military resistance.
But in any case, I think the the key thing to understand here is that McChrystal is subject here to contradictory needs.
On one hand, he's very, very concerned about going into a major city, specifically Kandahar, and having huge fights in the in the streets, urban street fighting, which will inevitably incur major civilian casualties.
I think he's very much afraid that that kind of headline, not just the headlines, but the impact on the Afghan opinion in the Kandahar area would be devastating to his to his plant, because he's made it very clear that he understands that the whole point of this occupation of Kandahar is to be able to, in the end, at least win over the population.
So that, on one hand, is something that he feels is a very strong constraint on the use of military force in a way.
On the other hand, he needs to be able to go in there and take control.
And if the Taliban do, in fact, decide to resist, even, you know, with a relatively small contingent, and I when I say relatively small contingent, I mean, you know, let's say 10 to 20 percent of the total forces that they have available, there there might well be major street fighting.
And this this indeed will will have a major impact on the willingness of people to cooperate with or even to tolerate, let's put it that way, to tolerate the presence of foreign troops in Kandahar, which, as we both know, is already been made very clear that the population does not want that that foreign presence in the city.
And so, you know, my my point here is that I think that he's very confused about exactly how to approach this.
And he's really trying to do two things that are very much in contradiction with one another.
I think in the end, by giving the Taliban that much time, he is indeed going to make it much more difficult, both in terms of the possibility of street fighting and in terms of other ways that the Taliban prepare politically for the for the occupation militarily.
So he's really worried not that they'll just set some booby traps and run, but that they'll set some booby traps and stay and fight and turn Kandahar into the next battle of Fallujah.
Well, this is this is interesting.
I mean, I have I have been reading or watching every interview that Crystal has given over the past year.
And what emerges is precisely the confusion that exists in his own mind about how he's going to do this stuff.
And he does, in fact, talk in one interview about his anticipation that the reaction of the Taliban to going into clear a place like Kandahar, although he didn't mention it specifically, is that they will be laying booby traps, laying IEDs, perhaps some standoff weapons, but not standing and fighting.
And I think that that is what he's counting on.
That's what he's hoping for, that they that the Taliban will melt away, that there will be IEDs, but nothing more.
And therefore, it will be possible to sort of consolidate control without this big battle.
I don't think that's by any means assured.
And indeed, there are reports now just in the past few days that the Taliban are massing forces in Kandahar at a level that is far beyond anything that we've seen previously.
In any of the battles that the Taliban have fought or in any of the offensive the United States has waged in southern Afghanistan.
So this is very much, to say the least, it's up in the air whether there's going to be a major fighting in the city.
Well, you know, I sort of feel like we're kind of discussing inside baseball in such detail here.
If we take a little bit larger view, like, for example, I talked with Pepe Escobar last week, and he talked about how, look, man, the Durand line, that's the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, is just a leftover relic of the British.
They cut Pashtunistan in half, basically, and that's what the people of that region want.
There's no way in the whole wide world that the Taliban, even if America left, would really be able to take over the Northern Alliance, Tajik and Uzbek and Hazara dominated areas.
Nor, even with America's help, will those Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara dominated areas be able to extend their central control over Pashtunistan.
So what the hell is this war anyway?
Are they really trying to create, you know, turn Kabul into Austin and have centralized control over all of Afghanistan?
No, no, of course not.
I agree with everything that Pepe said, except for the idea that the Durand line is meaningless in terms of the distinction between the Pashtun population in Pakistan and the Pashtuns in Afghanistan.
I think there are differences and that there's no intention here to create, if he meant to say that there's an intention to create a kind of Pashtunistan, then I don't agree with that.
But I agree with everything else that he said.
And I do think that this war, it's not about, you know, creating a powerful central government.
They're ready to do whatever they can to avoid essentially, you know, the US military I'm talking about, doing everything they can to avoid looking really bad.
This is, as always, we come back to this theme that this war is about domestic US politics, and about the institutional interests of the folks who are waging the war, personal institutional interests.
So, you know, it's really responses to okay, well, we've got this situation that was created by, you know, history, that is to say the history of the Bush administration's policy in Afghanistan.
And the military has the situation where, you know, they've got a war going on, they're going to try to give the best account of themselves that they can.
And that means dealing with all the contradictions that are inherent in that situation, or, you know, trying to deal with them and usually dealing, not dealing with them very well.
So, I'm sure you saw this insanity in the New York Times from the eighth US urges action in Pakistan, after failed bombing.
And let me page down here, the phrase boots on the ground is in here, they're talking in the New York Times here, literally about, well, here we go.
General Kayani, with whom General McChrystal has forged a positive relationship was essentially told you can't pretend any longer, this is not going on.
We are saying you have got to go into North Waziristan.
Are we going to invade Pakistan now, Gareth?
No, I don't think so.
I think that's, that's the farthest thing from the intention of US policymakers of the Obama administration or the US military.
They know they cannot handle that.
That's, that's out of the question.
Well, but I think it is being used.
George Bush can't handle Iraq.
Well, I mean, this is, this is post-Iraq.
This is a post-Iraq sensibility, for sure.
And I would just point out that, you know, Pakistan is, is a, is 10 times more difficult than, than Iraq ever, ever could, could have been in terms of comparing the two situations for, for US military operation.
And they know that.
Why is Hillary keep threatening them?
Again, she accuses the Pakistani military of harboring bin Laden, keeping him from us.
Well, that's a very good question.
I mean, I think this shows a degree of inability to, to grasp the realities and, and a kind of, you know, jejune sensibility about foreign policy, which really disqualifies her as, as a person to be Secretary of State.
We need a steadier hand at the, at the tiller than that, that's for sure.
To, to basically deny the fundamental reality that the Pakistanis are involved, have been involved for, for decades in a very complex calculus where, you know, Afghanistan is clearly regarded as, as part of their national security requirements.
That is to say, having a position in Afghanistan, which means the Taliban as part of their national security policy, you know, does it simply, you know, not adequate to, to protect stability and peace in the region and the world.
Yeah.
Hey, you and I are always having fun at David Sanger's expense.
Of course, he's the wannabe Judith Miller there at the New York Times, who's constantly lying or, or implying things about Iran's nuclear program that aren't true.
But here's now my new David, my new favorite David Sanger piece from the New York Times, U.S. pressure.
They've renamed it too.
I'm not sure why they changed the title.
U.S. pressure helps militants overseas focus efforts.
And now listen to this, Garrett.
Now, after the bungled car bombing attempt in Times Square with suspected links to the Pakistani Taliban, a new and disturbing question is being raised in Washington.
Have the stepped up attacks in Pakistan, notably the predator drone strikes, actually made Americans less safe?
Have they had the perverse consequence of driving lesser insurgencies to think of targeting Times Square and American airliners, not just Kabul and Islamabad?
In short, are they inspiring more attacks on America than they prevent?
And this is a new question being asked in Washington post New York Times Square fizzle bomber.
That's very interesting indeed.
And I think that it does.
It does show that the problem of this, you know, new bungled attack is is obviously has more angles than simply, you know, allowing the Obama administration to put more pressure on Pakistan.
It does raise issues that even somebody who is generally speaking, as you've suggested, as supportive of the administration's policies as David Sanger, that is to say hard line policies in the Middle East.
You know, this is causing him to acknowledge that this is a more complex situation and that maybe there is another side to this story that has not been adequately thought about.
Well, and as we know from the story of the bogus make pretend calm secret nuclear weapons factory or whatever, David Sanger, and he even confirmed this to the Politico in telling the story of how this happened.
But David Sanger is the White House's go to guy at the New York Times.
They love him.
And that's where this paragraph comes from, is White House officials telling him, geez, we wonder whether maybe bombing Pakistan might make Pakistanis want to bomb us.
Sort of like bombing all those, you know, bombing all those Iraqis from Saudi Arabia all those years made all those Saudis want to attack us.
Yeah, I mean, one hopes that the Times will continue to pursue that angle and see where it leads.
But I have my doubts as to how much that's going to affect the overall tone and substance of coverage.
Well, I'll tell you, the more laws they pass, the thinner that whole they hate us for our freedom excuse grows.
You know, after Joe Lieberman's had his way with our Bill of Rights for 10 years, what freedom is left for them to hate?
That's another angle on it, obviously.
But coming back to David Sanger, I would just add one other interesting point or angle about Sanger, and that is that he's clearly more aligned with Robert Gates and his view of policy toward Iran than he is with the White House.
And, you know, I've done a piece on this, which hasn't been published yet, in the form of a blog.
I'm planning to do a bit of blogging in the future.
I hope that works out.
But what I have discovered in sort of looking into the specifics of what Obama said and what Robert Gates said early to mid-April on this question of whether the United States can live with an Iran that has the capability to make a nuclear weapon but does not go over the line and actually assemble one, the Obama position was clearly to refuse to say that his administration cannot live with an Iran that has the capability, despite the fact that it was David Sanger who invited him to make that sort of statement.
Whereas Gates, in an appearance on Meet the Press a few days later, actually brought up the point himself that having the capability to manufacture a nuclear weapon is in some ways as bad as being able to do so because there's no way of knowing if they actually have gone over the line, which of course is not true.
But he was making that point clearly because, it seems to me at least, that he was trying to push Obama to adopt the red line in U.S. policy of nuclear capability, not of actually having a weapon.
So far I think he's not been successful in that.
And I think Sanger is clearly aligning himself with Gates in this regard.
He's been pushing the line that Gates is a good guy in the administration because he's raising this issue.
Well, you know, we think back to when they got rid of Don Rumsfeld, it was because he wanted out of Iraq and Gates was willing to stay forever.
That's right.
Gates is much more of a hardliner in general than I think most people have understood.
I mean, the one thing that he did that was good was that he opposed an attack on Iran in 2007-2008.
But everything else, on all these other issues, he has been really trying to push the administration in a direction that is much more warlike, at least threatening war.
I don't think he's in favor of attacking Iran at all in the future.
I don't think he would ever support that.
But what he is in favor of is coercive diplomacy.
He wants to have the most credible threat on the table possible.
And I think he believes that we have to have this red line of nuclear capability, nuclear weapons capability, in order to be able to continue to have that threat on the table.
Yeah, well, I mean, it's really dangerous playing with fire here.
I think it is.
I mean, if we have an ultimatum and the consequence is war, I haven't seen the slightest indication that the Iranians are ever going to be willing to shut down that nuclear program, the centrifuges at Natanz.
Maybe if we gave them an outright security guarantee or something, we could swing a deal like that.
But otherwise, they've got so much pride wrapped up in enriching uranium to electricity industrial grade, 3.6% U-235, that they're just not going to stop that.
So what Gates has done here, well, what the regime has done under Bush and continued under Obama, is to put us on a path to war.
There's no other way out of this thing other than to lose face and say, OK, well, we were kidding.
We're not really going to bomb you anyway.
It'd be like George Bush building up all the troops in Kuwait and then not invading.
You know what he's really trying to do with this policy?
I'm pretty sure about this.
Again, Sanger comes into the picture.
Sanger interviewed Gates off the record in early 2008.
And Gates apparently allowed him to quote from this off-the-record interview when he published his book in early 2009, that is, The Inheritance.
In that interview, Gates said the problem with the November 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran is that people who we're working with in the international community, i.e. the Europeans primarily, but China and Russia as well, we're now saying, oh, well, that means the military option's off the table.
And that means that they don't really have to do anything about sanctions against Iran.
In other words, what he's thinking is we have to have the Europeans and others believe that the military threat is on the table, that it's a potential reality, in order to get them to be motivated to do something about a tougher international sanction.
Brilliant.
All right, now one more thing here before I let you go, and I know we both only got a minute here.
Phil Giraldi was on the show last week.
He said his biggest fear is that old Benjamin Netanyahu is going to go ahead and do something stupid and start the war.
What do you think is the real risk of that?
Well, I still haven't ruled it out.
No, I think that it is still a serious threat.
But I do believe that the possibility that the Israeli planes will be shot down is on balance greater than that they will be allowed to go through U.S.
-controlled airspace in Iraq.
Really?
Well, I mean, it is at this point standard operating procedure that an Israeli plane going through U.S.
-controlled airspace will be shot down.
So Obama would have to change that standing order.
Exactly.
The White House has to make an affirmative decision to tell the Air Force, you're going to let those planes go through.
And what I've been told by somebody who has been in Israel and knows the Israeli Air Force people very well is that what would happen is that Netanyahu would launch the planes for the strike without telling anybody in the United States.
Then, after the planes are on their way, he would call the White House and say, the planes are on their way, the ball is in your court, Mr. President.
And on the theory that, of course, he thinks that Obama would not dare to make that political decision.
I think that Obama understands that the consequences of letting those planes go through would be just too serious and that he would stand to have everything that he's trying to do be wiped out.
So I do think that, on balance, it is much more likely that he would not order the Air Force to change the policy, to change the standard operating procedure, and that they would be shot down.
And so, Netanyahu cannot be certain about that.
I think, on balance, I'm going to say the chances are less than 50-50, but I'm still very concerned about it.
Well, like they say, may you live in interesting times, huh?
Yeah.
Alright, well, I wish I had another hour with you here, because I've got a bunch more questions, but we'll just have to do it again soon.
We will do it again soon.
Thanks, Scott.
Alright, thanks very much, Gareth.
Alright, bye-bye.
That's Dr. Gareth Porter, independent historian and journalist.
You can find him at ipsnews.net and original.antiwar.com.
And we're going to be back here with Will Potter in just a minute.
