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US & Iran Restart Attacks, Trump Threatens War Crimes, Army Helicopter Downed | Command Post
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- [00:00]
A
Oh, there we go. We're live. Welcome to Command Post. I am Ben Parker from the Bulwark.
- [00:05]
B
And I'm Mark Herling from the Bulwark. Sorry I'm all dressed up, but I wanted to outshine Ben this morning.
- [00:11]
A
Not hard to do. We're going to talk about a bunch of things this morning. First, we have to talk about Iran because ceasefire over. Ceasefire still on. Is there a war? Is there not a war? We still don't know. We're going to get into all the details of that. But stick around after the Iran discussion because we're going to talk more about Ukraine and more good news out of Ukraine, which we don't talk enough about. And then we're going to get really 30 at the end. So stick around for some civil military relations talk in relation to one of the pieces, General, that you just wrote for the Bulwark recently. But let's start out. There's this Army Apache attack helicopter that was shot down over the Strait of Hormuz and the pilots were rescued. And so now we are back in active combat with Iran, which we already had been kind of. Anyway. What happened?
- [00:59]
B
Yeah, let's break down the shoot down first or the crash. Not sure exactly what. What happened. The headline event this morning is the age 64 Apache helicopter near the Strait of Hormuz which was downed. Let's just put it in that category. The crew members were rescued, but here's the important fact. They were rescued about two hours after the shoot down or the crash by a naval unmanned drone. First, a naval unmanned surface weapon system. And it's fascinating. That's a remarkable technological story in and in its own right. But CENTCOM initially stated the cause was under investigation. Then the president subsequently said Iran shot down the aircraft and declared the United States must respond. We're now hearing more from the President where he's saying that it was a drone that didn't blow up that hit the aircraft. There's a lot of things going on here, Ben, and I think for our listeners we ought to explain it. First of all, the Apache aircraft has something that pilots call soft kill defenses. That means they can't shoot at other targets. But if they know that an incoming missile or manpad, a man portable air defense system, has been shot at them or they have been lased, which is preparatory for shooting a missile. They're equipped with systems that can detect the radar threats. Radar, what's called radar warning indicators. They can detect someone painting them with lasers. It's a warning receiver for lasers. It's like being lased by someone on the ground or by another aircraft. They can detect against incoming missiles automatically, which announces in the cockpit that there's a missile inbound to the location of the aircraft. And when that missile approaches, the aircraft does a soft kill. And what I'm talking about there, it dispenses flares which are white. How white? Hot pieces of. Let's just say they're very hot devices that are ejected from the airplane, kind of like a flare that you would see going up in the air. And they dispense chaff, which is like aluminum strips, and that will redirect the missile somewhere else other than hitting the helicopter. Now, those things are all important. One thing that we don't know, that I don't know because I don't have security clearance anymore. Is there anything that Apache has that can counter a drone other than a direct fire system? And I don't think we do. So this attack occurred at night, as I understand the reports. And for that it takes pilot situational awareness to see a drone flying around your area. And smaller drones like FPV drones and quadcopters present a really difficult challenge as they often have a very small radar signature and Iran uses them all the time. So they can attack from different angles. They can run into an aircraft, affect the tail boom, which would cause the helicopter to spin out of control. I once saw a helicopter that was downed in Iraq by 150 caliber round, which went through the rotor blade at the pivot point. So there's a lot of ways to make an airplane crash, especially a helicopter. But what I think is interesting is both of these pilots survived. If this was an attack where an aircraft was trying to be attacked with explosive devices or missiles, you hit a helicopter, it's going to blow up in midair. So the pilots were able to probably auto rotate, which means they use the energy of the blade to get down. And if they landed in the sea, they can escape. But it took two hours to find them. So all of those are factors with a helicopter going down. And it's why CENTCOM said, hey, the, the downing of this aircraft is under investigation. But the President immediately came out and said it was shot down. We don't know which one it is right now.
- [05:06]
A
Yeah, it's an interesting question of sort of how do you characterize this incident? Because we immediately went into retaliation mode, you know, not totally unreasonable. If we were supposed to be in a cease fire, which we actually had already been in, only been in a cease fire for like six days since the Last time we bombed Iran on Kesham island, but nominally we're in a ceasefire. So if they did shoot down a helicopter, then retaliation might be the thing to do. But I think, I think how quickly we went there and how we chose to do it is interesting. The President on the one hand said this is no big deal because the pilots survived. But then immediately, and I think we have a clip here or an image here, Matt immediately started threatening again to attack Iran's civilian infrastructure as a, as a method of retaliation for this helicopter crash, slash, maybe quasi shoot down. Yeah,
- [06:08]
B
here's what I'd say to this, Ben. You know, the President's announcement was, okay, Iran shot down an American helicopter and America must respond. Okay, that's good. But he also continues to say a diplomatic agreement with Iran is only days away. So these two positions create a whole lot of tension in the government. If you're truly on the verge of a peace agreement, you generally avoid taking action. That makes diplomacy impossible. But here's what he actually did do. When you're confronted with that, you take a course of action of a proportional strike. It's limited retaliation against preplanned targets. And I can guarantee you that the military has all kinds of preplanned targets. And we heard this morning that what they hit was radar sites, air defense systems, missile launchers, Revolutionary Guard facilities, maritime surveillance mode near the Strait of Hormuz. But then the President later said, we're now going to go back after the infrastructure,
- [07:07]
A
the desalinization plants and the power plants, things like that.
- [07:10]
B
Civilian, civilian infrastructure, which creates a war crime situation. Now you can respond quickly without dramatically starting the spiral of escalation which would bring about a larger war. What he could also have done, and which appears to have already occurred, is after pulling the reins on Prime Minister Netanyahu two days ago, he's now allowed Israel greater freedom of action in Lebanon. So more strikes this morning in the Christian settlement of Tyre T Y R e in the southern part of Lebanon. It seems like Israel has now been given free reign again. The rains are now off. So this now brings about Iran saying, you're not serious about this. Maybe two days ago, pulling in on Bibi would have been something that the Iranians could have been used against. The Iranians saying, see, we're trying to reduce the inflation of this war. So the question now becomes, does Washington continue to restrain Israeli operations or does it remove those restraints after the Apache issue? Or what are we next going to strike? And for months, the administration is trying to achieve two somewhat contradictory goals. Pressure Iran militarily and secondly, reach a diplomatic settlement. It seems to me it's. It's not a good way to make a deal.
- [08:43]
A
It also, some of the questions I have about this are like, how many people are we really negotiating with here? Because it is possible that it's just an accident that this helicopter happened to crash into an Iranian drone. It's also possible that this was an order from on high. Someone up, way up in the Iranian government, which is probably still pretty disorganized, said, no, no, no, go ahead. We don't want the cease fire anymore. Go ahead and, you know, try to kill some Americans that we can keep fighting because one faction for us to keep fighting. It's also possible that, you know, we don't know how good the command and control is in the Iranian military right now. It's possible this is like some decision made by some, you know, captain or major equivalent somewhere. So, you know, it's. We, we would do the clip of J.D. vance saying just earlier this week that there was a deal two to three days away. Matt, we can play that if we do. But, you know, it seems like neither side is really sure how they get from fighting to peace. And you can ask situations like at the end of World War I, where you're fighting right up until the armistice. Right. Or, you know, in Korea, where you're right up until you decide you're not fighting anymore. But we don't even seem to be sure that that's what we want. So we're stuck in this. Well, you wrote it. You wrote an article for the Bulwark a few years ago about all the frozen conflicts in and around Europe you dealt with when you were commander of army forces there. And this is starting to feel a little bit like that, where it's sort of neither peace nor war. It's sort of just perpetual, every now and again, shooting at each other.
- [10:19]
B
Yeah, well, it hadn't gotten to the point where it's frozen yet.
- [10:22]
A
Yeah, that's right.
- [10:23]
B
You know, it could eventually turn into a frozen conflict where there's still tension on both sides because we haven't come to an agreement like the five areas in Europe that currently exist. But, you know, we are just so far apart in terms of what Iran wants and what we want. And for them, it's an existential threat to us. This is an economic downturn and an economic threat that the president wants to get out of. I mean, I don't think we could say what's going on now in Iran is an existential threat to us. But it certainly is painful. I mean, there's a lot of pain going on in terms of the economy, the shipping lanes, how our allies are seeing us. But for Iran, they want to survive. They want their institutions of the Ayatollah and the IRGC to survive this. And they're fighting tooth and nail to get there.
- [11:21]
A
Yeah, and I think it's worth, as this topic we return to, it feels like every week. What's the plan here? What are our ultimate goals?
- [11:29]
B
Right.
- [11:30]
A
If the ultimate goal is the Iran, the Iranians can't have a nuclear weapon, then we should just continue to destroy their ability to have a nuclear weapon and kind of ignore everything else. If, I mean, that's probably overstated, but we should focus on our goals. Right. If the goal is we want to destroy the irgc, then we should focus on doing that and not trying to negotiate a ceasefire, because the IRGC is still there. I also have to ask, you mentioned this a bit ago, but the Central Command said that our, our retaliatory strike for this helicopter incident was against IRGC facilities, anti aircraft capabilities, radar capabilities. Why do the Iranians still have anti aircraft and radar capabilities? I mean, we have destroyed so many of those. Are they importing more of them? Do we know, like, why? I thought the whole point was that the first thing we did was suppression of enemy air defenses. And those were all destroyed in like the first week of the bombing campaign.
- [12:26]
B
I think the destruction of enemy air defenses are the big radars and the big capabilities to shoot very large missiles at aircraft and missile systems coming in. That is when you're talking about what the military calls seed suppression of enemy air defense. When you've got guys with manpads and the man portable air defense systems, the things that you fire off your shoulder, which Iran has a lot of those. I mean, lots of those. And they're probably hidden in mountainsides and supply depots and facilities that we don't know about. In fact, one of the strikes against the girls school at the very beginning of this operation was allegedly a strike against an ammo cache, an ammo supply depot. And it's a good strike if that's what was there. But it wasn't there. It was moved. So we don't know where everything is. Ben, I got to tell you, and again, maybe I'm relying too much on experiences here, but over a couple of tours in Iraq, you know, even my last tour in 2007 and 8, we were still finding massive, massive arms caches where there were literally thousands of Artillery pieces and shoulder fired weapons, they were everywhere. So I think Iran has kind of done the same thing Iraq used to do under Saddam Hussein and that is, hey, the best way to conduct political intercourse is by having a whole lot of weapon systems to shoot. And no matter how many bombs we dropped, we didn't get all of them. The other thing I would say, and I thought you were going here, but you didn't go there. We're hitting air defense sites and missile launch sites. Have we hit any drone launch sites? I don't know if that was on the target list or not, but this drone that may have affected the crash of this age 64 may have been a surveillance drone. Maybe they were just doing it with reconnaissance. If it didn't explode, that's an indicator. Either that or it's just a bad drone. So did we hit any drone launch sites? Do we know where those are? Those are relatively easy to hide. I mean, they can be launched off the back of a truck. I mean, to my Iraq experience, you know, we had Secretary of Defense, or it was Deputy Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz in Baghdad one day trying to tell him that things were getting better. And in the hotel he was in, it was hit by a rocket that was launched from the back of a donkey. I mean, how do you figure that out?
- [15:05]
A
You know, so, okay, there's one other pattern that I'm seeing here that because it does seem like Iran is, is getting some of these, you know, these man portable air defenses and these manpads you talked about from China. That was the suspicion that they shot down one of the previous American jets with a Chinese system. And you know, we talk a lot about the Strait of Hormuz, that Iran is cut off from international shipping. But Iran has other borders. Iran has a border to the north of the Caspian Sea that connects it to all of Eurasia. And of course it's got borders with, you know, a bunch of other countries. It's not just on the Strait of Hormuz. And you know, I know from your experience you will be very familiar with, in Iraq, not only, you know, arms and supplies for the insurgency and the enemies coming from over the border, including from Iran, but also from other places, but also foreign fighters. Right from the very beginning of that war, we saw people coming in, well, this guy's from Jordan, this guy's from Yemen. Why are they in Iraq? They were coming to fight the war. And you can go back and say the same thing. I mean, obviously the same thing happened in Afghanistan. Afghanistan, across the Pakistan border You can say the same thing about Vietnam with Cambodia and Laos. You can say the same thing about Korea with the Chinese border. It is a recurring theme in our wars that, you know, we like to keep it and imagine that it can be contained to just these neat sort of political outlines on a map. And we sort of forget that those aren't actually painted on the ground in real life. And that seems to be maybe a developing problem here, too, is that we imagine we've cut Iran off. The President likes to talk about how much we've cut Iran off by our blockade, of their blockade in the street of Hormuz. But if there's still, if they still have radar systems and they still have air defense systems, they're coming from somewhere and it's probably the north, right?
- [16:49]
B
Yeah. And you're right in terms of their capability to bring other things across the border. You know, I could, I could bore you in the audience with a whole lot of Iraq stories, but I'll just tell one in that we once stopped by coincidence a fuel tanker coming down a highway in the Northern Province. And when one of the soldiers tapped on the side, it was hollow. It sounded, there was an echo inside. When we looked in the tank, there was fuel, but only at the top. There was a pool right under the place where you open up the lid and say, okay, they've got oil in here. But inside the truck, it was a transfer, it was an arms transfer, cargo truck. So inside were all kinds of missiles and MANPADs and things like that. And we got lucky. So those are the kind of things that you see in combat that not unlike the Russian, Ukrainian war where Russia had long supply lines coming into Ukraine. A lot of countries don't do that. They manipulate the supply chain in a very unique and innovative way.
- [17:56]
A
We're going to talk about Russian supply lines in the next part of the show. Do you have any final thoughts on where we are with Iran that you wanted to share before we move on to our next topic?
- [18:04]
B
Yeah, I just keep going back to the fact that we have, we have two different countries, the U.S. well, we have three different countries, the U.S, iran and Israel, that all have very different end state objectives, which I think we're going to talk about at the end. And you know, we're suggesting that they shouldn't, they, Iran, should not fight back. And that's just a ludicrous approach to take when you've invaded another country and bombed them, as we have, and threatened them as we've had, even though they have repeatedly said over the last 50 years that we and Israel are the great Satan, We've done some things to them, too. If you were to turn the table on some of the things we have done to them and say, well, somebody would do that to us, how would we react? It would probably be the same reaction that Iran has given. And they're fighting for their institutions, no matter how bad we think those institutions are.
- [19:02]
A
Yeah. I think one of the big ironies here is that it appears that part of the reason this war started is that the Iranians were once again, as they have done many times in recent years, rising up against their government. And I sort of wonder if we have made the relationship of the government to the people stronger or weaker. Or I should rather say weaker or stronger, because I. I have a sneaking suspicion that we haven't helped them actually change their government. We have killed a large number of people, including a large number of civilians. You know, it's going to happen anytime you bomb a country thousands of times. We are now threatening to destroy their civilian infrastructure and further immiserate the people while also just negotiating with the government. That hasn't actually changed. So we're immiserating the people without helping them become free. I don't think this is going to be very good for the Iranian people and probably not good for the people's view of America.
- [20:01]
B
Well, from a historical perspective, Ben, and you're a student of history, most wars where you attack another nation and you threaten its civilian population, they tend to bind together. I mean, our most recent example is 911 when people attacked two towers in the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania. It brought the nation together despite many of our differences. So Iran seems to be in that same category. And I would suggest you're probably onto something that is making their ability to defend themselves a little bit stronger.
- [20:39]
A
Okay, we're going to go talk about Ukraine next, but first we have a quick message.
- [20:46]
C
This is brought to you by Seoul and I decided to bring the trio in on this because we've been talking about a lot of topics that make me want to turn to the sold gummies or for me, you guys, that I prefer the soul beverages. But Will, since you spend the most time on this, is that how you tend to take in this information?
- [21:07]
D
Yeah, I'm relatively new to the world of soul gummies. Sarah brought one on our trip to Las Vegas, and it certainly helped me unwind. And I know Sam talks about enjoying them before bed or when putting the kids down, just kind of chilling out. There is so much going on that I certainly see the appeal of the soul gummy. When I'm locked in so much, sometimes you gotta unwind.
- [21:29]
C
Oh, yeah. What about you, Sam?
- [21:30]
E
See, I take a soul gummy every time before I edit Will's false Flag newsletter, which is why it's such a hot mess. Soul helps me focus and edit at the same time. No, I do it before bedtime when I'm parenting, man, because you got your kids, they're driving you a little bit nuts. Let's be honest. That's what they do. They try to extend the bedtime over and over. They want to read. You get frustrated. You got things to do. You got to get on YouTube and be with the trio. And then, you know, I just do a pop in a soul. Everything's kind of smooth, and it helps me get through that critical hour to hour and a half where they're just asking for one more chapter. Just one more chapter, dad. Thank you, Soul.
- [22:05]
C
Least your children want to read. That's nice. Well, here's the good news. Soul's mood gummies have precise dosing, clean ingredients and formulations desired for predictable effects. You don't want a maury down situation, and so you know how to feel good while staying in control, whether that's, you know, the nighttime mood dummy or the daytime. Kind of want a party mood gummy.
- [22:24]
D
Okay, so what I'm hearing is that Soul is a wellness brand that makes delicious hemp derived CBD and THC products designed to make feeling good simple and that the mood gummies are worth a try.
- [22:33]
E
Yeah, that's right. Well, you can make today a good day and get yourself some soul gummies. Right now, Soul is offering our audience 30% off your entire order. Go to getsoul.com and use the code bulwarktakes. That's getsoul.com promo code bulwarktakes for 30% off.
- [22:51]
A
I know, and I know these ads aren't. Aren't popular. No one likes watching ads, but I cherish these because I learned so much about my colleagues every time we get a new sponsor.
- [23:00]
B
Yeah, I actually bought one of those hoses that Sam was talking about, and it's actually very good. But I don't think I'm gonna go down the gummy route. I don't know about you, Beth.
- [23:12]
A
No, it's not for me. But I do now see the pocket hose everywhere. Just ever since Sam started doing those ads, I see them all over the place.
- [23:19]
B
Okay, maybe it was just Sam's salesmanship ability as opposed to the quality of the Roads, Yeah.
- [23:25]
A
Oh, no question. Yeah, yeah, totally. That's exactly what it is. Okay. We talked a little bit about Ukraine last week because they were blowing things up in St. Petersburg with drones right before the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Putin's big sort of Davos competitor, where he tries to pretend that he's, you know, a major first world, serious country kind of guy, which he isn't, which is why he got people like Kansas Owens to show up. And as she's, as her plane is landing, it's billowing smoke from, from the Russian naval base there. We wanted to talk today about something that's happening in Ukraine itself, which is the Ukrainians have announced that they are. They're calling it a logistics lockdown on the Russian forces in the southeastern part of Ukraine. We don't have a map here, but if you look at a map of Ukraine, it's the part Russia controls. It's the strip that leads from the eastern part of Ukraine down to the, down to Crimea down to the Crimean Peninsula. And this is a key logistics route for the Russians because that's how they keep all of their soldiers and everyone in Crimea supplied with food and energy and medicine and all that stuff. And the Ukrainians have said, basically, you can't use this anymore. You can't use this highway. We will prevent you. You know, we've said this multiple times the show, we've quoted that old line that amateurs talk strategy, your professional stock logistics, and you're the professional. So tell us about the logistics.
- [24:50]
B
Oh, man, I gotta tell you, this is fascinating to me because Ukraine now has the capability to do the things that their commanders are smart enough to do. And, you know, there's a lot of folks that will look at a map and say, how much territory has Ukraine retaken? And they're thinking the typical offensive assaults where soldiers are running across ground followed by tanks. That's actually the wrong question. Over the last two weeks, specifically, Ukraine has continued a campaign which we in the United States military would call a deep strike interdiction effort rather than a traditional offensive maneuver. They've repeatedly attacked airfields, logistics hubs, ammunition storage sites, rail nodes, military infrastructure, all deep inside of Russia. Not the front lines, but deep inside of Russia. So that's the deep strike. The biggest one, as you've said, has been the biggest strikes have been conducted against oil facilities because it makes a lot of smoke and it also messages the fact that they are being extremely successful. So if you look at what the operational objective is of the Ukrainian force, it's not necessarily to seize large amount of ground. It's to make Russian operations harder to sustain. And from the beginning of this war, Russia has been spread out and their command and control has always been terrible. You know, we've talked about that multiple times. Their ability to communicate is bad. Their ability of the Russians to link their strategic objectives with their operational campaigns, with their tactical fights just has not worked from the very beginning. So in plain language, as you just said, you said, well, we should show you a map. We don't need to show a map because it's visible in terms of what Russia is experiencing. And it's their logistics, planning of fuel availability, ammunition distribution, even getting new people to the front lines. All of those things have been affected just catastrophically by some masterful deep strikes by the Ukrainian military. And what I'd say, Ben, I mean, Ukraine kind of has the history of being associated with the Soviet Union and the Soviet military was always geared toward long range artillery strikes. Well, what Ukraine has done is taken it to the next level with new technologies, with the drone, with targeting methodologies, with the things they are getting from the west in terms of advanced equipment. And while Russia continues to strike places like Kharkiv and Kyiv and devastating strikes against civilian infrastructure, Ukraine is bleeding them dry from a logistics perspective. And it is awesome and brilliant.
- [27:58]
A
Now, I want to make this connection because I think it's important, not only from a moral point of view, but from a strategic point of view. The Russians keep on attacking Ukrainian civilian infrastructure as they have been for years, because they're out of ideas, the Ukrainians are. We had a great article. I'd recommend people go read at the Bulb by Bryn Tannehill about what a Russian army collapse might look like, with examples from history of what it looks like when an army just breaks. Like the organization just its back breaks. It snaps in. It goes from being combat effective to a bunch of guys who don't know what they're doing. And it can happen really fast under the right conditions. And that's what the Ukrainians are trying to do. The Russians don't have a plan to do that. They don't have a plan to take more territory. They're out of ideas. So they're just saying, like, okay, well, we're going to make you miserable until something like, we're going to make you miserable until you give up. Which are clearly not going to do. Which, by the way, I think is President Trump's plan with Iran.
- [28:55]
B
Yeah, well, I was just going to say that because remember a couple of weeks ago I wrote an article about Will vs. Will Times Resources in power. Well, Russia continues to try and affect the Ukrainian civilians will by bombing civilian infrastructure. And it has had the exact opposite effect. The will has actually increased in terms of countering these demons that are attacking hospitals and schools and apartment buildings. On the other hand, Ukraine has taken the ability to affect resources by their own resource capability. So building more drones, having more long range fires and attacking the resources of Russia from the military perspective, it's really a will versus resource battle. And I think will and resources are on the sides of Ukraine and resources are depleted on the side of Russia right now.
- [29:56]
A
Yeah, it wasn't a coincidence. I think that right before this big economic forum in Russia, the, the chair of Russia's central bank was apparently uninvited. She was on this. She is considered very capable and very smart by people who follow such things. I'm sure our colleague Catherine Rampel would know more about it than I do. But basically the fact that the Russian economy is doing as well as it is doing is largely due to her canniness and good economic management. But she was apparently on the schedule. And then a few days before or just before the forum started, she was just mysteriously away. Some people said she was at a funeral, some people said she was sick. Sick. And apparently it was because she wasn't willing to say, things are great, the Russian economy is doing so well. So. Nope, just she's gone. Oops.
- [30:41]
B
Well, you know, isn't there. There's an echo here, I think. Ben, I don't know if you meant this, but when you keep saying the economy is doing so well and it's not, and people are feeling that it's not, maybe that's a problem. And maybe people who talk about the economy should shut up because they're not telling the truth to the citizens of Russia or perhaps another country that shall remain unnamed.
- [31:07]
A
Oh, yeah, just whatever country. Yeah. No, I couldn't agree more. You know, I'm smiling and laughing because the parallel here is. Parallels here are so stupid. But it's also really sad. I mean, and again, it's sad morally because the United States should not be a country that threatens other countries with war crimes like that is that makes me deeply ashamed that I think our country is better than that and I think we should behave better than that. But also, it is just so strategically stupid. Right, right. As. As you said, there's no. Putin began the war thinking the Ukrainians will surrender. Most of them want to be Russian anyway. And his theory now is maybe if I bomb Enough hospitals, then they'll really want to be Russian. And like, you know, Trump said. Trump began the war in Iran by saying, help is on the way to the protesting Iranian people. And now he's thinking, I'll help them by getting rid of their fresh water and turning off their power.
- [31:58]
B
And in the interim of that beginning and the end that you described, there were a couple of key areas where the administration said they were going to totally annihilate the entire Persian civilization.
- [32:11]
A
Civilization. That's right.
- [32:13]
B
And isn't that something that Russia has said about Ukraine? There is no Ukrainian culture. There is no civilian citizenry that believes in Ukraine. They're all Russians anyway, so let's just bring them back. Yeah. You got to consider what the other side is doing right?
- [32:31]
A
Always. Okay. I promised we would get really nerdy at the end. And you wrote a really deep and important piece for us that I wanted to spend some time talking about. Tell me how the Iran war ends. And it's not just about what we constantly talk about, which is choosing the end state you want to, but it's also the process of how that end state is chosen and by whom and how it's communicated. And it really all gets down to civil military relations. So what inspired you to write this piece? And why should we all care about relations between the military and the rest of society?
- [33:11]
B
Well, I could go back, Ben, and talk about the commercial we just showed and said that I'd had a couple of gummies before. I. That's not true. It was when I sent this to you as my faithful editor. I thought, oh, Ben's not going to like this piece because it's. It's a little bit wacky. But you came back, said you really liked it, so. And what I tried to point out is there. There are a lot of people, a lot of really smart people that talk about civilian military relations and say there's a disconnect between what the civilians want to do and what the military want. Wants to do. I'm not sure that's accurate. It can be in some cases, but what I said in this is if you're only using the military to destroy things and not realizing that they can be a force for good, because, as in the military, the United States, we recruit people and then train them to be parts of teams and help them understand that their oath is to the Constitution, which really is all about ideas about how to transform a nation to be more aspirational and to meet the goals and objectives that you have as a society. It struck me Because I was reading well, it's back there. But I was thumbing through a book that we gave to all our Iraqi counterparts when we left in 2008. And it struck me that at the end of the book, we purposely put pictures of young Iraqi children who are now probably in their twenties, and saying that what we had done was really for them to give them a society that didn't have Saddam Hussein, that had more freedom of action and things like that. And that's what the US Military, along with the State Department and others, were trying to provide inside of Iraq. So, yes, the military can be a force for destruction, but it's destruction for a purpose. And I think what I tried to bring about in this article is there may not be as much of a civilian milit divide as there is a divide between those who understand the complexity of combat and what it's all about versus those that just want to destroy things. So that was, I mean, I think that was my attempted thesis. And you helped bring it about when we published that article.
- [35:35]
A
Well, I, I, I think it, I think you make some really important points in that piece. One of them, and it's, you talk about civil military relations in sort of two different ways, and they're both important. One of them is at the very highest levels of command where you have the guys like you were with lots of stars in their shoulders and the guys wearing business suits. You have the politicians who are ultimately in charge, like the secretary of defense, like the president in a lot of cases, like the, like the, the committee chairs and the powerful members of Congress. And then you have the professional, the professional soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, guardians. Right. And that is a tricky relationship because the politics and the strategy kind of bleed into one another. And a lot of people have written about how that's supposed to work. And there are different theor. But that's sort of a separate relationship than just the relationship the military has to society directly. Right. And you talk about how important it is to recruit people into a force where they think they're doing something that's worth doing. You also talked about this a lot. I should have mentioned this earlier at the book club you did for the inaugural Bulwark Book Club that you did. People can go watch it. It was just Monday, it was a few days ago, that people want to do things that are serving a greater purpose. Right. They, they, when I was, when I was younger, I remember the Navy ads joined the Navy. Can't believe I'm saying this to a West Point grad, a global force for good. And that was what they said, like, come join the Navy and do things that are good. And that was at the height of the war on terror. You know, I wonder, I don't know, we've talked about this before, but I wonder, I wonder if we're recruiting the right kind of people who want to go do good things right now. Because the message we're sending is. And you talk about, I mean, you talk about this in the Beast, so. Well, the message we're sending now, the explicit message that the military is sending out is what we do is this video of a bomb blowing something up. And we get tons of that and we get bored.
- [37:33]
B
Yeah, and that's what I was talking about with the lack of understanding. Yeah, it's war porn, is the phrase I used in the article of seeing things blow up and not understanding, you know, the implications of blowing things up. I'm sorry, I interrupted you.
- [37:47]
A
No, no, no, it's exactly right. And not understanding A, that that's part of a bigger process. And not understanding B, that, okay, you've blown something up. That's, that is not a strategic objective. That is not winning the war. That is a piece of a much bigger, you know, plan to win the war. But just blowing something up, just saying you've blown something up doesn't mean we've now achieved that end state where the country is. And look, this brings us back to Iran right at the top. Okay, so there was a, maybe a possible attack on an American Apache helicopter. So we responded by blowing some things up in Iran, which, you know, may be the normal and, you know, more or less, you know, the right directionally thing to do to, you know, make sure that the can attack us with impunity. But like, what are we trying to achieve? What are we fighting for?
- [38:41]
B
Yeah, yeah. The use of a proportional response is to not just destroy things, is to get people to stop doing what they're doing. And if it isn't working, then you look for something else. And so far our proportional responses or our actions against Iran have not been working. So maybe it's time to think of something else. And I'm going to go back to something else you just said, though, Ben, that I think is important. I used to talk to a lot of soldiers and ask them why they joined the army. It was always an interesting topic of discussion because usually they'd come back with, oh, you know, my father told me I needed to do it or I wasn't good in academics, so I joined the army. But it really boiled down to they wanted to be something. They wanted to be a part of something that was bigger than this, them. And, and I'm convinced of that. No one can convince me otherwise. I had I talk about a young soldier I met in, in the book that I wrote who was a male model and was going down a hedonistic lifestyle until he realized he had to do something better with his life. So he went to the recruiting station and joined the Army. It's a funny story, but when he talked about the values that, that the military had imbued in him and what he then started to do with his teammates, his brothers and sisters, it was a fascinating dynamic of he wanted to be a force for good. And sometimes that force for good is asked to do horrific things, fight for our country, kill other people, but it's for something else. It's for something bigger. It's to stop tyranny. It's to stop, stop people taking away freedom. It's to hold the line in our liberal ideas. Yeah, so that may be the real civil military divide as part of the article that we have a whole lot of people who want to be vet bros and wear flags on their shoulders and think the purpose of a military is just to kill things. And it's not. It's something bigger than that. It's connected with what our nation is all about.
- [40:53]
A
Couldn't have said it better myself. General, any closing thoughts before we say goodbye to this episode of Command Post?
- [40:59]
B
Yeah, well, you know, I would like to say here's what we're going to talk about next week, but we don't have a clue right now, which seems to be what happens every week. But Ben, it's always good to be on with you on Wednesday morning. I hope our listeners maybe send us some emails and say here's what we'd like you to talk about for a change. And if it's a good subject, we'll try and put it into a show.
- [41:21]
A
Yeah, that's right. We haven't taken questions in a bit. Command post at the Bulwark. Com. You can email us sometimes. I'll just email back sometimes. If it relates to the news of the week, we'll talk about it. Answer it on air. General, thank you so much for another Command Post.
- [41:35]
B
Thanks, Ben. Always good to be with you.