10/22/10 – Nick Turse – The Scott Horton Show

Now, as promised, we go to Nick Turse.
He's the author of the book, The Complex, which I highly recommend, how the military invades our everyday lives.
And the new one is, I believe, Nick, you're the editor of this is a compilation of articles by others, correct?
The case for withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Welcome to the show.
That's right.
Thanks.
Thanks so much for having me back.
Well, I appreciate you joining us very much.
And in question today is an article that you've written for Tom Dispatch, which, of course, also ran under Tom's name, or I think is running today under Tom Englehardt's name at Antiwar dot com.
That can also be found at Tom Dispatch dot com.
And it's probably been reprinted all over the place.
Tom Graham, Nick Turse, base desires in Afghanistan.
So your article begins basically reminding us that Barack Obama said that the beginning of the end of this war will be in July 2011.
Just what?
Nine months from now.
That's right.
That's what we've been told.
But, you know, what I what I lay out in the piece is that no matter what President Obama says about a 2011 drawdown, you know, I advise people to to look to the bases in Afghanistan.
It's been a building boom there for the last two years.
And there seems to be no end in sight.
There's solicitations for bids for base building and base expansions that are appearing all the time.
And these new facilities won't be built until, you know, at least late next year, the earliest that's beyond the date where the drawdown is supposed to begin.
Yeah.
But how is Burger King supposed to turn a profit if we are not expanding the bases in Afghanistan?
That's that's a very good question.
I mean, you see, we've got these these big multimillion dollar contracts there that the Pentagon is definitely digging in.
They're not they're not pulling out.
Well, now, let me let me ask you this.
I mean, it's the Pentagon is basically just a big government bureaucracy.
And, of course, every branch of the Air Force, the Army, Marines or whatever, have their close friends in industry that, you know, they have relationships with their contractors that get things done for them and they want to help them make money.
But couldn't it be that Barack Obama really does mean to get us out of there that that the Pentagon knows it and they're just trying to, you know, make as much money for their friends as they can building bases that then will turn around and leave?
Look what happened in Iraq.
They built 58 bases and Bush said, I want 58 bases.
And Nouri al-Maliki told him, no, man, you can't have them.
Yeah, I mean, well, anything's possible.
You're you're dealing, however, in in Afghanistan with, I think, a more pliable client who's not, you know, in Iraq right now.
It looks like Muqtada al-Sadr been a major beneficiary of the U.S. invasion.
And because of that, Iran.
So, you know, more than anything, I think I think those forces are pulling the strings there.
Now, you know, with with Karzai, you have a much more dependent client government who I think will extend the U.S. military any courtesy that it asked for for the foreseeable future.
He is only the mayor of Kabul, as they say.
You know, it's one thing with these bases.
The military does build and disassemble bases all the time.
There's a lot of small bases.
You know, they call them cops or combat outposts out there.
There's a lot being built and disassembled.
They move around all the time.
But but a lot of these bases, I mean, they have the look of permanency.
And then when you, you know, you look back on history and see in the bases that are still still in Germany and Japan and Korea definitely have to give you pause.
Yeah, certainly.
Well, you're right that to point out that in Iraq, basically, we fought a war for people who don't need us in order to maintain their power.
Muqtada al-Sadr, as you say, he's got the run of the place.
He's got the most popular support among any leader among the majority that we help make sure that they won the Civil War and took the capital city for themselves and all that here in Afghanistan.
We're fighting on the side of the Northern Alliance, the guys who were the puppet Vichy Quizzlings of the Soviet Union who've been losing a civil war for 30 years and could never win it.
And so the I guess the excuse to stay is there.
We can't just let the Taliban win.
They could say that for the next 30 years, huh?
Well, I mean, it it sure looks like at the moment that that the military is playing for time.
You know, this is just speculation on my part.
But one thing one thing that that's definitely not speculation, you can see that Petraeus is trying to, you know, at least push this mission down the road past the the 2012 presidential election.
And you could you could guess that maybe he's hoping for a change of president with someone who is more amenable to not even having drawdown dates, no matter how how useless they might be.
And, you know, just just recently, Petraeus was interviewed by Martha Raddatz of ABC News.
And she asked him, you know, he kept saying, you know, you know, just just now are we getting, you know, all the he calls them the inputs, the the inputs just right.
All right.
Now we finally have everything in place.
So, you know, a decade in, it's as if we're just starting.
And Raddatz asked him, you know, are you saying that that we're we're restarting the the counterinsurgency clock, that this could take another nine or 10 years?
And the first word out of Petraeus's mouth was, yeah.
So it's obvious that that he's looking long term and he's looking to dig in whatever whatever they're saying in Washington.
That's funny, because, you know, just over the last week, we've had a few interviews where I see Kelly Vallejos and Gareth Porter.
I think they both said that their understanding was that in Washington, D.C., everybody's over the counterinsurgency strategy.
Everybody recognized that.
No, you don't eat soup with a knife, dummy.
And this isn't going to work and that the American people are not going to accept a decades long attempt to turn Afghanistan into some Western European nation state.
And so, you know, I just wonder at the same time, everybody's over this counterinsurgency doctrine in the capital.
Apparently, you're telling me that it seems like Petraeus is willing is is at least trying to spin it as though we're just getting started.
Never mind the last 10 years.
Now, the real saving of the war by Petraeus is to begin only here wrapping up 2010.
Yeah, you know, Petraeus uses even the term counterinsurgency in different ways for different audiences.
You know, I think, you know, Gareth and others are, you know, the right on track thing that what's being fought there now is not a classic counterinsurgency.
Over the last month or so, you know what we've seen there are a lot more airstrikes, a lot more night raids by special ops forces.
They're they're putting a lot more firepower out there than then.
Yeah, it doesn't sound like the coin doctrine to me.
I actually read that stupid thing.
All right.
Hold it right there.
But it's Nick Turse.
He's got a new piece at Tom Dispatch and a new book called The Case for Withdrawal from Afghanistan.
We'll be right back.
All right, so looking back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton, I'm talking with Nick Turse.
He's the author of the book, The Complex.
And the editor of the book, The Case for Withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Now, we're talking about the counterinsurgency strategy there as it pertains to staying forever and also the abandoning of it.
This is some we're talking about with Kelly Vallejos the other day, about how this is looking much more like the Nixon doctrine of, well, let's just bomb the hell out of them and then bring them to the table.
The counterinsurgency is over.
So, well, I don't know.
Is is General Petraeus just insubordinate here or is Barack Obama only pretending like he wants to begin getting out in 2011?
Anyway, Nick, what do you think?
Well, you know, yeah, I was talking to to Seymour Hersh, actually, last night.
And and what he said, and I think he's right about this, is that Obama's really abdicated his commander in chief responsibility to a great extent when it comes to the war in Afghanistan.
He's pushed it off on on his general.
So Petraeus is calling the shots.
And, you know, he has this vague timeline in place.
But all the rumbles that you hear coming out of out of the civilians at the Pentagon and from the the military brass or that there, you know, they're they're looking, you know, down the road that, yes, they they they'll accept that there's there's should be some sort of drawdown beginning in 2011, but nothing serious.
But this is, you know, it's really a throwaway date.
And I think Obama's content, at least for the moment, to to just roll with that and hope for the best.
And Petraeus is supposed to sit down in December.
And, you know, we've already been told in the papers that that he's going to come in with signs of progress.
So I think he's he's looking to buy more time for the war.
And, you know, Obama's content to to let him do that.
Well, so what's going to happen next July, then?
But it's a real good question.
I think that, you know, there there might be some sort of, you know, cursory withdrawal of a few troops.
And then I wouldn't be surprised to see them, you know, replaced, you know, a couple of months later.
You know, and as we go forward from there, I wouldn't I wouldn't be surprised to see, you know, more and more troops sent over.
And there might be a play to to try and bring in more more NATO forces.
I know they're going to try and put more more Afghans into the field.
That's supposed to be the that's that's the point of all this.
They're going to be standing up the Afghan forces and there'll be more and more of them.
The problem is that, you know, it's like a revolving door.
Afghans come in, get trained, get a weapon, get clothes.
They leave.
They never come back.
Or sometimes they just do this again and again to pick up a paycheck, a weapon and and some more, you know, new clothing.
Yeah.
Well, and there are also there have been these reports about the CIA creating these death squads, these kind of local tribal militias.
Although I guess maybe it's a stretch to think that any of them would stay together and independent, you know, after the occupation ends.
But, you know, as long as everybody's making the Vietnam analogies or whatever, you look back to the Hmong tribesmen in Laos, right?
Right.
And, you know, these guys still live kind of in exile up there and unable to, you know, participate in local commerce or or whatever.
They're basically they're still live in the CIA's secret war up there in those highlands.
And I just wonder about the long term consequences of creating all these separate militias around the country to, you know, no matter who you are, as long as you'll fight with us against the Haqqanis or whatever, then you're cool.
Yeah.
I mean, this is yeah, this is a persistent part of U.S. warfare and it has been for decades.
You'd think that, you know, obviously the U.S. doesn't learn from its history, but you'd think that, you know, some of our allies would at least look at this history and say, you know, look at those tribesmen in Laos who are, you know, they're still living in the hills.
They're still waiting to get bailed out by the U.S.
They want to emigrate because they're a persona non grata in their own country.
The U.S. has a tendency of abandoning its allies when they're, you know, they no longer serve serve a purpose.
And I mean, and the consequence for the countries where the U.S. leaves these these groups is that they become power centers unto themselves.
You know, the whole idea of the enterprise in Afghanistan is to to build up a strong central government.
But then you're creating these these private militias.
And we know what that's that's done in Afghanistan before you have, you know, fracturing after the conflict with the Soviets and then, you know, break off factions who are for armed and and fight for for themselves.
Well, you know, I guess to take a step back from this whole thing, why is the American empire or those that run it think that they need to occupy Afghanistan anyway?
I mean, we have bases in every other state around there actually has a state pretty much.
And we have bases in all of those countries, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.
And so, OK, fine.
You want to continue your Cold War with Russia.
You want to have some bases to, I don't know, prevent China from moving westward or whatever for long term strategy.
But why Afghanistan?
Who cares about Afghanistan, Nick?
Well, there's the the million or billion or trillion dollar question.
I guess it's going to be trillion when when the war is all said and done.
You know, it's a good question.
You know, the garrison, the world anyway.
Why continue to to bleed in Afghanistan when when that question's asked in Washington, the answer is always, you know, 9-11 was was planned there.
But 9-11 was also planned in Berlin and Florida.
And, you know, while there are bases there, we're not fighting a war in in Germany.
And and as far as I know, there's no bombing going on in Florida.
Yeah, well, and in fact, you know, James Bamford reported that the 9-11 hijackers were making phone calls from the payphone at the grocery store there in Maryland where all the NSA people shop on the weekend.
So maybe we should just bomb that grocery store on the weekend when it's full of NSA employees, since that's the doctrine upon which we bomb people.
They happen to be nearby where something was planned a long time ago.
It's you know, this is this is the illogic that it that it all stems from.
You know, the argument that that we're trying to to kill off al Qaeda in Afghanistan, even even the CIA admits that there's, you know, maybe a hundred al Qaeda members still in Afghanistan.
That might be a you know, that might be a generous estimate.
But but, you know, even even if it even if that's legit, a hundred a hundred guerrillas tying down a force of, you know, 120,000, it's ludicrous.
I mean, well, and as we know from reading that interview in Rolling Stone with Osama bin Laden's son, this was exactly from his son's mouth.
Exactly.
This was my father's dream was to lure America into Afghanistan to be bled to death.
He couldn't believe they didn't invade after the embassy bombings in 98.
He couldn't believe they didn't react after the USS Cole.
But you know what?
We'll show them we'll hit them hard enough to bring them here and bleed their empire to death.
That's what his son told Rolling Stone magazine.
Yeah, there's a whole program in the first place.
So everybody says al Qaeda really works for the CIA.
Maybe the CIA works for al Qaeda.
Maybe Dick Cheney is Osama's agent instead of the other way around.
What do you think?
Well, it's, you know, sorry.
Anyway, we're out of time.
Thanks very much for yours, Nick.
I appreciate it.
Thanks a lot, Scott.