01/21/10 – Michael Hastings – The Scott Horton Show

Hi y'all, welcome back to the show, it's Chaos Radio 95.9 in Austin, Texas, Anti-War Radio, I'm Scott Horton.
We're streaming live worldwide on the internet at chaosradioaustin.org and at antiwar.com slash radio, and our next guest on the show today is Michael Hastings.
He writes the Hastings Report at True Slant, he's the author of I Lost My Love in Baghdad, A Modern War Story, and lately he's been writing for the Washington Post, the LA Times, Foreign Policy, Salon, Slate, Daily Beast, and other publications of repute.
And I could have swore, Michael, that I saw you in the New York Times as well, writing for them.
Welcome back to the show, how are you?
Great, thanks for having me.
And is that right, that I saw your byline in the New York Times, I guess I'm thinking of the Washington Post.
Yeah, it was probably the Post I was covering for them in Baghdad for a couple weeks, working on a longer story for GQ magazine about the future of Iraqi democracy, funnily enough.
Yeah, hilarious.
And so now, you've just left Baghdad a couple days ago and you're in Istanbul, Turkey right now, right?
Correct.
Let's see, I'm not sure where to begin this, I guess with the myth that the surge worked.
Unfortunately, the worst of the civil war has been over for a while.
I don't know whether that means it's the eye of the storm or what, but the worst death rates of 3,000 a month and all that from back in 2006 and 2007 is over.
And as far as TV is concerned, at least in this country, Iraq ceases to exist.
That's the bad old days of the Bush administration and there's not too much to know about what's going on in Iraq.
And it sort of replaced Afghanistan as the forgotten war, as best I can tell, at least in media terms here.
But I guess, you know, really to start here, what were the benchmarks?
What was the surge supposed to accomplish and did the surge accomplish those things?
You know, I want to figure out, you know, what's happened in the time since the surge worked and everybody quit paying attention.
Sure.
Well, right now we're approaching March 7th and March 7th is going to be elections in Iraq.
It's going to be really the second nationwide election.
The first was in 2005.
Now the reason these elections are important is because basically the entire withdrawal strategy in Obama's plan to get us out of Iraq hinges on the fact that these will be sort of a peaceful election, have a peaceful transition of power, so we can very quietly start drawing down the 110,000 troops we have left there.
Now here's where the surge narrative comes in.
You all remember back in 2007 when General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker instituted this new strategy to contain the civil war that was going on in Iraq at the time, as you mentioned, when, you know, you'd have a hundred dead a day, a very, very, very dark time.
So they sent an extra 30,000 troops there.
Now the goal of the surge was twofold.
First it was to establish a credible security situation, make things relatively more peaceful, but the reason for that, the reason for the security was always based on the promise that in a secure situation, the Iraqi government will have what they would call, what American officials call political breathing room to start a sort of a reconciliation process.
Now that always has been the missing part of the surge.
We saw a significant decrease in violence, you know, attacks two years ago, you'd have something like 200 attacks a day, now attacks in Iraq are down to 15 a day.
But this political reconciliation has not happened.
And with the elections coming up, we, you know, the hope was that this would be a sort of a great opportunity for, to, to, you know, leave the sectarianism behind to put the civil war behind Iraq.
But in fact, the opposite has happened as we've gotten closer to the election, where sectarian tensions have flared up again, most recently with the banning of 511 candidates from the Iraq, from running for the election.
And just coincidentally, most of these candidates happen to be Sunni, and also secular.
And obviously, that's not really a coincidence.
Well, okay, so, well, first of all, everybody, it's Michael Hastings, the Hastings Report at trueslant.com.
The article is the day democracy died in Iraq.
And I guess we'll get to the plus in a minute here.
But so I'm trying to go off of, you know, my best memory of Patrick Coburn's explanation of who's who, and what all, and of course, I've interviewed a hell of a lot of people, but he's always, you know, the expert's expert.
And so basically, the Sunnis lost the civil war, and they decided, basically, Petraeus decided to accept their offer that they'd been making for years, which was, if you'll just let us patrol our own neighborhoods, and stop fighting us, we'll stop fighting you for a little while.
And at this point, Petraeus, since they'd lost the civil war to the Shiite militias and army anyway, basically took them up on that offer.
And they've pretty much, almost entirely anyway, marginalized Al Qaeda out of existence.
And then this was the conciliation was supposed to be that since the Shiites had the majority vote, and they had the majority of the property in Baghdad, and they had won out the civil war, that they would be willing to at least let the Sunnis hold minority positions in the government.
That's the best they could ever do, would be a minority vote.
And yet, you're telling me now that Nouriel Maliki and his government are saying, if you're the kind of guy who could possibly get elected to a Sunni leadership position, you're not even allowed on the list?
Exactly.
And that was, you know, my first answer didn't quite get to the point, but specifically, the metric for the surge was, the surge is only useful, the sacrifice of Iraqi and American's life is only useful if you could have an end result of a political solution.
And right now, that political solution's in jeopardy.
And it's exactly as you said, essentially, what the surge did was consolidate the power of a Shiite Islamist government in Baghdad.
And the idea would be for them then to reach out to the Sunnis who allied themselves with the Americans to fight Al-Qaeda, to allow them back into the government, and to give them sort of a stake, what they would call, become a stakeholder in the future of Iraq.
But what we've seen over the past few weeks, it's rather troubling.
I mean, to be honest, what we've seen over the past year is rather troubling.
There's been, you know, illegal detentions, there's been assassinations, there's been the occasional massive high-profile bombing.
But essentially, sort of U.S. military and U.S. sort of political officials could ignore all that.
They could ignore that and say, well, you know, we're still progressing, democracy's still in the march.
They basically still speak in sort of the same kind of rhetorical terms that they did under the Bush administration, though it's toned down somewhat.
But what we've seen, in fact, with this recent move, which is basically the government, there was a commission within the government of Iraq that has banned popular Sunni politicians from running for office, which essentially says that the Shiite government that we propped up during the surge is saying, we don't want to share power, you gave us breathing room, and what we're going to do with that breathing room is strangle our opposition and eliminate it completely.
Okay, now, who's surprised about any of this?
The Americans.
The Americans are surprised.
The Americans who work in the State Department, certainly, and the U.S. military officials were caught by surprise by this.
You know, it's one of these things where, personally, I have sort of a generally pessimistic view about the future of Iraqi democracy anyway.
But there was this sort of sense, certainly over the last few years, I know a lot of journalists in the press corps sort of felt this way, well, maybe they can, maybe the U.S. and Iraqi government can pull this out.
Maybe there can be some sort of democratic future for Iraq.
And so it's sort of putting your skepticism on check for just one second.
And we didn't really know which way it was going to go, because there had been some signs that okay, there's a somewhat free press, there had been some cases where, after the provincial elections last year, that okay, maybe there is a kind of national identity that can reappear in Iraq, that could get, you know, put the bad old days of sectarianism behind them.
But this really, now this, with this latest move, really does not bode well for any kind of inclusive, multicultural, multi-sectarian government.
And so, no, I mean, am I surprised by it?
No.
Are most journalists?
Not really.
But certainly the U.S. officials were definitely, I think it's fair to say, surprised by this.
Wow.
You remember the old blogger Bill Mahn?
He did a piece, I forget if it was when the Constitution was ratified in October of 04, or whether it was after the election of January, I think it was after the election of January of 2005, he had a blog entry called Ayatollah Yusof, and I mean, this is the thing, anybody who's listened to this show, or has been reading antiwar.com this whole time, or great many different good journalists all around the world and all around America, has known that this has been a war since the very beginning to install whoever the Ayatollah Sistani wanted in power.
They had no choice.
They invaded the country.
They called it democracy.
They toppled the minority government, and they had no choice but to replace it with the majority one, which means the Shiite Ayatollahs, including Sistani, who's an Iranian.
Well, certainly, here's the sort of cherry on top of the karmic narrative of America's involvement in Iraq, is that the reason these bans are taking place, and as I mentioned, the bans for running the elections are essentially targeting Sunnis and secular candidates.
The guy behind the bans, there's two fellows.
There's one, a name that might be familiar to your listeners, Ahmed Chalabi, who heads the De-Basification Committee that is responsible for banning the candidates, and another guy named Adi Alami, who recently got out of jail in a U.S. prison in Iraq after being accused of killing two American embassy officials and two American security guards and six Iraqis in a bombing allegedly linked to Iran.
So essentially, and this is what American officials would say privately, that the people behind the banning of all these Sunni candidates and secular candidates have very close ties to Iran.
And Ahmed Chalabi, of course, is well known for being basically the Pentagon's guy in the run-up to the war who supplied all the faulty intelligence, which the case for war was actually based on, has now reappeared, this time not as an American friend, but as an American enemy, as the U.S. sort of withdraws from Iraq to show up and say, you know, to sort of be behind the scenes, essentially, the Americans call him essentially an Iranian agent.
But essentially, the allegation is that he is doing the bidding of Tehran or certainly playing Tehran off against Washington.
Well, you know, I have a report here.
This one's from The Forward.
There were others.
I think Richard Sale covered this for UPI.
This one is from June 4th, 2004.
Intel agencies fear Iran used Chalabi to lure U.S. into Iraq.
Now, if most people, if you just, I think if you Google Iran and Chalabi, you'll mostly find reports about somehow Doug Fyfe, he got the information that America had broken Iran's codes and that he had notified them.
But then there was this whole other level to the story was that the DIA and the CIA had put out a report together saying that they thought that the Iranians had used Ahmed Chalabi all along, that it was not just, you know, him looking out for his own interest, but him covering their interests and working to get the United States to destroy Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq.
Sure.
I mean, you know, Ahmed Chalabi himself, I mean, he's a brilliant guy and he knows how to play each side against each other and has used the U.S. to its interest when it's been to his advantage, Iran to his interest when it's been to his advantage.
But certainly it's clear that, you know, the sort of regional neighbor that benefits from an Islamist, Shiite dominated government is clearly Iran.
And this committee that he's on, this De-Basification Committee, it's now called the Truth and Accountability Committee or something like that, they changed the name, essentially the result of what they're doing seems to favor Iran.
I'm not too familiar with the history you just stated, but I'm sure that none of that would would shock me.
I mean, really, I got to tell you, Michael, the fact that Chalabi has anything to do with this story of purging these candidate lists is it's too good to be true, too horrible to be true.
You couldn't put this in a TV show or this is too dumb even for 24 or something, right?
And in fact, I interviewed the other Scott Horton the other day, and he talked about how the DOJ lawyer in charge of covering up the murder of the three men at Guantanamo back in 2006.
Her name is on the torture memos that legalized all this torture and people to death in the first place.
And then she's the one in charge of shutting down the investigation of it later on.
And, you know, it's the same thing where if you put that in a TV show, come on, it's the same lawyer.
Don't you have more cast members you could put on your show?
Same thing here with Chalabi.
Are you serious?
Is it really Chalabi who's done this?
I almost don't want to believe it.
It's just too silly to be true.
I mean, it is.
It's sort of jaw-droppingly awesome in a horrible way.
Yeah.
Well put.
I mean, the thing with Chalabi, and I'll, you know, not that Chalabi needs me to defend him, but essentially, you know, Chalabi, you know, he's stuck in the game, you know, he's stuck in his game.
He's pursued his own interests.
He's pursued his own vision for what he wants Iraq to become.
That's just not the vision, certainly, that the U.S. has for it.
And the Americans don't like him anymore.
I mean, I think that should be, at least for now, who knows, maybe they'll have to cut a deal with him eventually.
But essentially, yeah, I mean, you wouldn't believe it.
The guy who sort of spins our intelligence community up, you know, has a warrant out for his arrest in Jordan for 15 years for bank embezzlement, you know, convinced the neocons that, you know, going to war with Iraq was going to be a cakewalk, turns up seven years later as the major player in the new Iraqi government, and again, outfoxing the Americans, or at least for now.
But yeah, I mean, it's really, if it wasn't so true, it would be, it would be hilarious.
Yeah, well, you know, I hate to give these two guys such credit, but I think they really deserve it.
Kenneth M. Pollack and Michael E. O'Hanlon.
These two men have served to be the walking demarcation of what is a credible, serious, liberal policy intellectual, and what's not.
And what makes one a serious foreign policy liberal intellectual, whatever I just said again, is that you are an insane warmonger, and you feel just as comfortable writing joint articles with each other as you do with Robert Kagan.
And so here these guys are, again, kind of the definition of serious democratic foreign policy, whatever they propose.
In the New York Times, talking about this same crisis that you're referring to here in Iraq, Iraq's ban on democracy, and what is it that these most serious democratic policy intellectual guys would have President Obama do about the crisis in Iraq right now?
Well, it's interesting.
They want more American involvement, and essentially, and they're getting their wish, Vice President Biden's on the way to Baghdad tomorrow to try to intervene in this political crisis.
So actually, what they called for, I think it's in the last paragraph of that op-ed, essentially is happening.
High-level U.S. intervention is going on to try to sort of resolve this crisis in advance of the March 7th election.
Geez, they even tell Biden to do it.
Are they speaking for someone else or something?
Well, Pollack was just over in Baghdad in October as part of a sort of a think tank tour that General Ray Ogierno commissioned.
It was about, I think about, geez, it must have been about 50 sort of think tank, you know, liberal, the usual suspects, Kimberly Kagan, Pollack, a bunch of other people came over to put together sort of a report on, a report about, you know, the state of Iraq, the future of Iraq, how our withdrawal is going, these kinds of things for the military.
And I know they talked to a lot of embassy people.
I ran into them there back in October.
So essentially, yeah, they still have a major hand in foreign policy.
And this gets to sort of two really important questions, because say Biden does resolve this problem and save the day for Iraqi democracy for the time being.
The question is, it took the vice president to do it.
And as we withdraw, we're going to have even less and less and less influence to be able to do these kinds of things.
And as we've seen, once the Iraqi government starts to act in the way it views its own interest, it's going to be doing, it's going to do things like this.
You know, it's not going, it's not, we've learned that Maliki's government or whatever sort of Shiite-dominated government comes into power after the next elections is eventually going to just keep on consolidating its power, and they're not going to be interested in reconciliation.
So the question is, how much influence does the U.S. have left in Iraq, we'll see maybe if Biden can pull something out here and get some of these candidates back in the election.
But even if he does, the question will be, well, you know, will he be able to do that again?
Will he be able to continue to keep intervening in Iraq?
And that's where I think the Ken Pollack sort of debate lies, which is that Pollack and I believe folks like Michael Hanlon, they want the U.S. to continue to be very actively involved in Iraq, where there's a contingent at the U.S. embassy that wants the U.S. to sort of normalize relations with the country, where Pollack sort of represents, I guess you could call it the military sort of thinking, which is that the military does not want to let go of Iraq.
They do not want to see what they view as the progress and everything, you know, flushed down the toilet.
The problem is Iraq is supposed to be a sovereign country, right?
And eventually, you know, Iraq is going to be Iraq.
But there is this tension that's represented in, okay, you know, we keep saying Iraq's a sovereign country.
Well, are we going to actually treat it like a sovereign country, or are we going to treat it like a, you know, I don't like to use the word puppet, but some kind of pseudo colony to the American empire?
Well, if Biden can't pull it off, if Maliki tells Biden the same thing he told George Bush in 2008, when Bush was demanding 58 bases, and that is no, then how would you expect the Sunnis to react?
I mean, they've been basically waiting, the former insurgent leaders have said, all right, everybody go home and chill out until I say so.
Well, how long can we expect that to last?
Well, I think that's an interesting question.
I don't think you'd see, this is just my prediction, but I don't think you're going to see an immediate spike in violence.
But what this does, because the Sunni insurgency is tremendously weakened, I think that's true.
So still, they're still capable of doing some serious, serious damage, if need be.
But I think what this will do is lay the groundwork for when the U.S. does withdraw finally, for sort of laying the groundwork for a significant amount of future violence that will be persistent, essentially ensuring that the insurgency is not going to go away for years and years and years to come.
And I think that's what the story is going to be.
As the U.S. leaves, the war is going to end for the United States for all intents and purposes, but it's going to continue on for Iraq for years to come.
Well, now, one thing I haven't ever really been able to resolve in my own mind is whether the bipartisan foreign policy consensus such as it is really has leaving Iraq in mind.
I mean, Obama still at this point has two years before he's a liar on this issue.
And, you know, I guess Odierno says that the plan is to, as soon as the March elections are over, to begin taking troops out to where we're down to 50,000 combat forces by this coming August, and then they will only stay for a year and a half, and then it's out by the end of 2011.
The thing is, when Obama announced in his Camp Lejeune speech almost a year ago now that he was going to go along with the Status of Forces Agreement as Bush had signed it at the end of his term, there was no mention of that embassy that you referred to and the force protection required to protect that embassy.
It's not like a couple of Marine guards out front like the embassy in Australia or something there.
And he made no mention of air power.
He made no mention of the mercenaries and other contractors inside the country.
And in fact, he put Robert Gates on TV.
I don't know if he told him to say this or not, but when Gates was on the Sunday morning news shows, you know where the golfers and serious people get their news, he said, look, we're going to rename forces whatever we want so that they're not combat forces anymore.
And on one hand, I see where Patrick Coburn says, hey, look, Maliki won.
He's got the majority behind him, and he can stick by his guns and kick us out, and he means to.
But I can also see where Obama left some pretty deliberately large loopholes in his policy of withdrawal, it sounded like, as well.
How can you help me reconcile these things?
Well, I think it is hard to believe that the U.S. is actually leaving Iraq.
I think that's certainly something that's been difficult for me as an individual to get my mind around.
But I think the withdrawal schedule is going to go as planned, barring something, because I don't think Obama wants to be involved in Iraq.
I think he just wants to, you know, everyone close their eyes and get out of there as quickly as possible, and sort of with your fingers crossed that it doesn't flare up into some sort of major violent incident before 2011.
But here's where the wiggle room comes in.
Even now, after 2011, after December 2011, they're already negotiating and talking about what kind of presence the U.S. is going to have in Iraq for years and years to come.
It's going to be a small, most likely, it's going to be something like 20-30,000 U.S. troops, plus various contractors.
The embassy there is still going to be the largest embassy in the world.
In fact, I believe, I don't think this has been reported yet, but the embassy is already doubling the size of its staff, the Baghdad embassy there.
And so already you see this sort of, and it's going to be, and the question is, is the embassy's mission going to be sort of a normalized mission, or is there going to be sort of a military element to the mission?
But essentially, you can be sure that there will be American soldiers in Iraq, American forces, I'll use the word forces, in Iraq for years to come.
It will probably be lower than 50,000, but, because here's why.
The Iraqi government, it's in the Iraqi government's interest to still have us there for their own purposes.
They can get a lot of military aid, they can get weapons, we're selling them tons of weapons, we're going to sell them new airplanes, we're going to sell them new Humvees, all these sorts of things.
Yeah, but Maliki's got to keep Muqtada al-Sadr and the Nationalists happy too, doesn't he?
It's true, but I think as they, the one advantage is going to be, once the Americans are kind of out of the way, already, you know, in December there were no American casualties in Iraq, any battle casualties, and why that's significant is because it shows the Americans are sort of staying out of the way, and I think what we've seen is that if the Americans stay out of the way, and stay sort of out of sight, out of mind, that's okay.
The Iraqi government can live with that.
And also, though there's a lot of Iranian influence within the Iraqi government, as we talked about before, it's not always as clear-cut as we make it sound, in that Maliki, or whoever the Prime Minister becomes after the election, is going to want something to be able to protect themselves against Iran, and having the U.S. there is sort of a guarantee against any large-scale Iranian action against Iraq.
So what I'm saying is basically, though the politicians are going to strike, the Iraqi politicians are going to always strike an anti-occupation, anti-American note, certainly in their public comments, I believe they will sign agreements to keep us around for years to come, because I think in the end they will see that there will be benefits for them to do that.
I could be wrong, but even if, but I'm pretty sure from everyone I talk to, that seems to be what they're suggesting, that we'll have a relationship with Iraq.
It's going to be unique, but something like Egypt, or even Israel, I mean we don't keep troops in Israel, but Egypt we have a significant sort of military-diplomatic presence there.
The Gulf states, we have significant diplomatic and military presence there.
So you'll see something like that in Iraq, is what I'd guess.
Well I guess the only, or the main countervailing force to that policy then would be the will of the Ayatollahs in Iran, right?
Sure, and I think they're going to put a lot of, I'm sure they'll put a lot of pressure to get the Americans out of there.
That being said, it will, you know, and it's going to be interesting to see how that plays out.
But the Iraqis are smart.
I mean they can play both sides, you know, they can get funding, and not only funding but also investment from Iran, and while they can still rely on the U.S. as sort of a guarantee of their safety until they realize, until they're independent enough where they can tell the U.S., you know, okay, you guys have been here long enough.
We don't need you, you know, looking over our shoulders anymore.
Get the hell out.
But I don't think they actually will be able to do that for a few, for at least, I mean it's hard to put a number on it, but like I said, I would see that even after December 2011 there's going to be a sizable U.S. presence there, it's just going to be sort of hidden on the bases and at the U.S. Embassy.
But I would guess it would be maybe 30,000, 20,000, but all that stuff's being worked out right now.
Well, all right, tell me this, this is really the most important part of this, what's it like to be an Iraqi these days?
Electricity, sewage, are the refugees coming home from Syria and Jordan?
What's going on over there?
Is it still worse than Somalia and Congo combined?
You know, what's sad is that almost every, they're very tired.
I mean, in general, almost every interview I do, most, certainly middle-class Iraqis, they still want to leave, you know, and people who are coming back are usually coming back because they don't have a choice, that they can't afford to live overseas or in neighboring countries anymore.
Most are not coming back willingly.
Electricity and things like that, well, you know, they're better, there are still food shortages and whatnot, but life, the quality of life in Iraq has certainly improved dramatically over the last two years.
That being said, most people I talk to would leave if they had the choice, and in fact are trying to actively leave.
They're not excited about, despite the U.S. military saying Iraqis are excited about the upcoming election, they are not excited about the upcoming election at all, and, you know, we sort of say, oh, there's only 15 attacks a day in Iraq, oh, only seven attacks a day in Baghdad.
That's a pretty significant level of violence to live with still.
I mean, if every three months, you know, 150 people are being blown up going to work, that does not exactly make one want to make a home in the city still.
There's still a crime, it's a significant problem still, corruption is a significant problem still.
So there's still a large scale, so I would still say there's an unease and sort of a grimness to life in Iraq that has not lifted.
Coburn says it's the most dangerous city in the world after Mogadishu.
I wouldn't be surprised if it still is, and I'm not trying to...
So maybe Port-au-Prince, but that's different.
Yeah.
I mean, Coburn might be right, maybe they will end up kicking all the Americans out after 2011, so that's always possible.
From the reporting I've been getting, it seems that they're already trying to negotiate.
There's just too much money involved for them to kick the Americans out right away.
But yeah, you know, look, there are major attacks in Baghdad every day.
Just, you know, my hotel that I was staying at, right outside the hotel, a sticky bomb, that's the new fad, these bombs you place on the car, you know, was put in, this was in one of the safest neighborhoods in Baghdad, and it was put on a car, you know, 30 meters from the hotel that, you know, we were staying at.
And you know, you go down the list of Iraqi election officials, some who live in the safest neighborhood, being assassinated.
Anyone who lives in Anbar who is an intellectual, a professor, a politician, is at the risk of being assassinated.
You know, there's been something like over 40 assassination attempts in Anbar province in the past 60 days.
You know, this is, this is, it's not safe.
I mean, we, you know, personally, look, I covered the war mostly from 05 to the beginning of 07, and it's night and day from that.
You know, it's much safer than it used to be.
But that being said, if there were 15 major attacks going off in any country, any other country in the world, most people would consider that a war that's still going on.
And essentially, and that's the thing, and that's the, though it's ending for the US, the war is certainly still going on for Iraq, and certainly the repercussions of the war are going to be felt for decades long in that country.
Well, you know, when Coburn does compare Baghdad and Mogadishu, the other, the other city that he would compare it to on the list there is Kabul in Afghanistan.
And here's the three worst cities to live in in the world, and all of them the result of America's wars there.
And that's really saying something.
It is.
And Kabul, I think, is climbing, must be climbing the list.
I haven't been there.
I was there a year ago.
And I even remember after the building next to my hotel was double suicide bombed.
You know, that's what, going to the scene and running into this great photographer, the Guardian, who was actually there.
And he said, you know, this reminds me of Baghdad in 2004.
And I think, you know, you had the overrunning of the UN Guest House.
You had open fighting on the streets just the other day.
So yeah, I think, clearly, Kabul is fast becoming, you know, a more dangerous place to be than Baghdad.
And especially if you're, if you actually have to live there, you know, as journalists, we're very privileged that we can, we can go to these places and leave.
But unfortunately, a lot of the people who are the people who bear the brunt of the, of the war are the Afghans and the Iraqis.
Yeah.
Oh, and I'm sorry, because this is kind of skipping back around.
But I wanted to mention one more thing, which was right before Barack Obama's speech at Camp Lejeune last February, where he, you know, described his getting out of Iraq policy, right before NBC aired the speech, you know, it was on all the channels or whatever.
But on NBC, they had a report by Jim Michalczewski, their, you know, longtime Pentagon reporter, who said that, well, I'm over here at the Pentagon talking to the generals, and they're saying we're going to be there for another 20 to 50 years.
And this is the, you know, the coin doctrine, folks who say the only way to win a counter insurgency is to just completely, you know, as you kind of described it before, neocolonialize these countries.
And basically, you know, the Korean model that George Bush talked about.
And I guess I can see why the people in the military would have their policy.
And I don't want to, you know, play naive or anything, because it's not like I ever believed in the guy.
But it does seem kind of like, you know, other of what you said, there is also true that Obama doesn't really want to stay there.
He'd like to declare some sort of victory and go.
But it really looks more and more to you like the Pentagon's winning out on this argument.
Well, they're going to say the war is over.
I mean, I mean, the military is already basically saying the war is over.
They're putting that message out there, though, though, though, caveat and nuance it is, you know, if you talk to the top generals.
But but yes, I think I think they're going to declare the war over.
And then they're going to continue to have a U.S. military presence there for years to come.
But it's just going to be it's going to be significantly smaller than it has been.
And as long as Americans aren't being killed, then we can declare victory.
You know, a friend of mine described the other day, you know, as sort of, you know, we're walking out of the country backwards, closing our eyes and saying, hey, everything looks great.
See you later.
You know, last one out, turn off the lights.
And so I think as we as we withdraw officially and the war sort of officially comes to an end, that's not going to mean our involvement with Iraq ends anytime soon.
And as you write the coin, guys, the counter-insurgency guys, I think are going to be pushing hard, you know, to have the sort of official presence be a little more militarized than what would be a normal presence.
And plus, you always have to remember, you know, all the special forces operations that we're going to be running out of there and these kinds of things.
So there's always going to be and always, you know, for the foreseeable future, it will be whether you call it, they're not going to be combat troops, but, you know, assistant advisor, whatever you want to call them.
I think they're going to be there for a while.
But Obama will be able to say, I got the I got everybody home, except those 30,000 who are staying there.
But essentially, he'll be able to declare victory.
But that does not mean that that our relationship with Iraq is going to end, I don't think.
Awesome.
So it really is just like the George Bush and John McCain policy of stay indefinitely for generations and generations.
This will be for five presidents from now or 10 presidents from now to decide whether to go or not.
I wouldn't be surprised.
I mean, you know, we gave up our bases in Saudi Arabia.
So one one would think, you know, maybe it's possible.
So you have to, you know, from the military's point of view, you know, this is what they say.
They say, look, you know, we we lost four thousand five hundred men about we've had tens of thousands of wounded.
We sacrificed years of our life for this.
We're just going to give it up.
You're asking us to give this stuff up.
Yeah.
We saw this land and all these people fair and square and they belong to us now.
That's exact.
I mean, they don't they use a different they use a different euphemism.
But but yeah, but they're saying, you know, we're not going to just give this up.
I mean, we need to keep a presence here.
What's the point if we're just going to have done this and then leave?
And but that's going to manifest itself, not in kind of an active occupation, as we've seen in the past, but in, you know, what they're going to call a military relationship with the country, you know, a bilateral relationship with two sovereign nations getting together to work out, you know, economic agreements, trade agreements, military agreements.
That's what it's going to it's going to fall away from the headlines and continue to fall away from the headlines.
But but certainly, I mean, you know, we have we have troops in Qatar and in Kuwait, you know, you name name a name a country and yet, you know, and your listeners know, you know, we probably have troops there.
So I would not be surprised if that's the case in Iraq as well.
All right, everybody.
This is Michael Hastings.
You can find him at trueslant.com.
He's the author of I Lost My Love in Baghdad, A Modern War Story.
And you can also find him in The Washington Post, The Daily Beast, Slate, Salon, Foreign Policy, The L.A.
Times and all over the place.
Hey, thanks a lot.
I really appreciate your insight on the show today, Michael.
Thanks for having me, man.