3/5/26 Robert Pape on the Limits of Air Power

Summary

Scott Horton Show – Just the Interviews

Guest: Robert A. Pape
Episode: 3/5/26 Robert Pape on the Limits of Air Power
Date: March 8, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode features a timely and incisive conversation between host Scott Horton and political scientist Robert A. Pape (University of Chicago), best known for his work on the strategic logic of air power and terrorism. Centered on the ongoing U.S. and Israeli military strategies in the Middle East, especially regarding Iran, the discussion critically examines the historic effectiveness and limitations of air power in achieving political objectives. Pape introduces the idea of the "smart bomb trap," warning that overreliance on technical prowess undermines necessary political strategy. The conversation ranges across historic U.S. wars (Vietnam, Iraq, Bosnia, Kosovo) and their legacies for present-day policy, offering stark lessons for current conflicts.

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Main Themes and Key Insights

The Myth and Limits of Air Power

• Tactical vs. Strategic Effectiveness
  Pape argues that, while U.S. air campaigns are tactically impressive in destroying targets (e.g., Vietnam, Iraq), they consistently fail to deliver decisive strategic or political outcomes.

  • "You can be really quite highly tactically effective and lose the war and be strategically ineffective." (03:47, Pape)

• Historical Case Studies

  • Vietnam War:
    U.S. air superiority destroyed nearly all critical North Vietnamese targets but failed to shift political outcomes.
    • “We destroyed all but a teeny number—five of those 242 targets… That did not stop us from losing that war big time.” (04:18, Pape)
  • First Gulf War (Iraq War I):
    Pape recounts extensive bombing and the belief it alone could induce regime change. The need for a ground war and postwar unrest disproved this.
    • "We bombed [Saddam Hussein's regime] viciously... and that did not stop the Scud missiles. That did not stop the need for that ground war. And it didn't stop even the Shia uprising…” (06:36, Pape)
  • Bosnia and Kosovo:
    The legend of “air power alone” ending conflicts is debunked. In reality, decisive outcomes relied on ground offensives and political deals.
    • “There was a Muslim-Croatian ground offensive that combined with American air power... Holbrooke kind of quietly downplayed that part…” (11:31, Pape)

• The 'Smart Bomb Trap'

  • Technological advances (precision-guided munitions) seduce policymakers into thinking military victory is easier or less politically costly than reality.
    • "The idea that the smart bombs are near 100% tactically effective is mesmerizing. And it gets decision makers to take their eye off the politics of the problem. And, and that is the trap." (05:36, Pape)
  • Air power, even at its most precise and destructive, cannot substitute for strategic, political solutions.

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Political Consequences and Recurring Mistakes

• Legend vs. Reality
  Official narratives often distort or ignore the real reasons for victory or failure, misleading future decision-making.

  • “PR battles here all the time because kiss-and-tell books are always trying to get the next bigger job.” (12:31, Pape)

• Learning (or Not) From History

  • Each new war revives old, failed assumptions. Examples include the belief that air campaigns in Bosnia and Kosovo alone forced capitulation, while the real impact of ground forces and prior negotiations is airbrushed out of history.
    • “In Kosovo they capitulated to Milosevic and... repealed and canceled the secret appendix... He was already willing to sign the deal without the appendix B.” (18:00, Horton)
  • The “escalation trap” repeats as policymakers ignore the fundamental role of political legitimacy and underestimate enemy resolve or adaptability.

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Iran, Present Conflict, and Regional Dynamics

• Iran’s ‘Horizontal Escalation’ Strategy

  • Pape describes Iran’s approach as “horizontal escalation,” borrowing the U.S. tactic of parallel (multi-pronged) attacks—using drone strikes and propaganda to pressure Sunni regimes as well as Israel.
    • “Iran... has actually got quite a smart... horizontal escalation strategy against the Sunni Muslim countries it's up against… This is planting the propaganda seeds for Sunnis bottom up to start putting pressure on their regimes.” (21:28, Pape)
  • The risk of a prolonged regional conflict, with Iran leveraging both military capability and political fissures among Sunnis and Shiites.

• Risks of Prolonged War and Political Blowback

  • The Pentagon reportedly anticipates the war could last through September, raising risks of public backlash and broader escalation.
    • "Already now we're in LBJ territory of Trump... you have the Vietnam War... and then what happens is the Tet Offensive in January 1968." (23:08, Pape)
  • Potential for the rise of terrorism, destabilization, and unintended consequences, particularly if Iranian domestic politics or influential clerics (e.g., Ayatollah Sistani) are provoked.

• U.S. and Israeli Long-Term Strategies

  • Horton speculates on the explicit aim of destabilizing Iran to trigger internal strife, undermining the region’s stability further.
    • "The Israeli strategy… is to destroy Iran and to cause a civil war between the Kurds, the Aeris, the Balukis and the Sunni Arabs and the Shiite Persians and make them all murder each other...” (25:13, Horton)
  • Pape warns of the “hornet’s nest of terrorism” such turmoil could create and notes Iran’s capabilities for asymmetric retaliation.

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Memorable Quotes and Moments (with Timestamps)

• On the illusion of air power’s supremacy:
  “We have others too. We never lost the battle, we just lost the war. And the problem is politics.” (05:05, Pape)

• Challenging the accepted narrative of historic air campaigns:
  “If you combine air and ground power together, now you have what I call… hammer and Anvil. That’s a different story." (09:06, Pape)

• On policymakers’ dangerous overconfidence:
  “The trap is now you're trapped in the politics and you can't like escalation dominance your way out of it.” (05:36, Pape)

• On PR and institutional self-interest:
  “Kiss-and-tell books are always trying to get the next bigger job.” (12:31, Pape)

• On repeating the mistakes of escalation wars:
  “In this Foreign Affairs piece… you have the Vietnam War… then what happens is the Tet offensive… we lost the political battle.” (23:08, Pape)

• On the risks of stoking sectarian strife:
  “Letting all these different actors now get at it, the idea of the Kurds, we're going to somehow win this with the Kurds… Oh, my goodness.” (28:10, Pape)

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Key Segments and Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment | |--------------:|-----------------------------------------------------------| | 00:39 | Welcome and Pape’s background; motivation for his air power research | | 03:04 | Why tactical bombing often fails to achieve strategic results | | 06:21 | First Gulf War: expectations vs. reality of air power | | 09:06 | The need for combined air and ground offensives (“hammer and anvil”) | | 10:56 | Bosnia and Kosovo air wars: separating myth from reality | | 14:03 | Influence of 90s air war narratives on 1999’s Kosovo strategy | | 15:01 | How faulty lessons from past wars led to disaster in Kosovo | | 18:00 | The reality behind the Kosovo peace agreement | | 20:07 | Turning points in U.S. Afghanistan/Iraq strategy; suicide terrorism | | 21:28 | Iran’s horizontal escalation against regional rivals | | 23:01 | Potential for a long war; historic echo of Vietnam and political risks | | 25:13 | Discussion on Israel’s destabilization strategy vs. Iran and risks of terrorism | | 27:11 | The wild card of Ayatollah Sistani in Iraq and potential for Shiite mobilization | | 28:10 | Dangers of unleashing multiple actors and sectarian conflict | | 30:08 | U.S. alliances with jihadist groups historically backfiring | | 31:52 | The value of international vs. U.S. media analysis | | 32:47 | Wrapping up; Pape on adapting to new communication platforms (“Substack, X”) |

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Additional Resources Mentioned

• Robert A. Pape’s books:

  • Bombing to Win (1996)
  • Dying to Win
  • Cutting the Fuse

• Pape’s Substack:

  • The Escalation Trap (TheEscalationTrap.substack.com)

• Upcoming article:

  • "Iran’s Horizontal Escalation Strategy" (Foreign Affairs, March 2026)

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Takeaways for Listeners

• Airpower alone remains a seductive but limited tool; successful strategy demands sober attention to political factors and adversary adaptation.
• Policymakers, the military, and media alike repeatedly misinterpret or misrepresent both the limits and successes of air campaigns, often for self-flattering or self-serving reasons.
• The present conflict with Iran threatens to repeat past mistakes, and may already be sliding into an open-ended, destabilizing cycle with grave regional and global repercussions.
• Understanding real war dynamics requires digging deeper than official press briefings, myths, or “PR level” narratives—critical thinking and engagement with genuine experts like Pape is essential.

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For more insights or references, listeners are encouraged to read Robert A. Pape’s work and follow his Substack, "The Escalation Trap".

Transcript

[Scott Horton]

You ladies and gentlemen of the press have been less than honest according to the American people.

[Robert A. Pape]

What's going on in this country? We're dealing with Hitler revisited. This is the Scott Horton Show. Libertarian foreign policy mostly.

[Scott Horton]

When the president does it, that means

[Robert A. Pape]

that it is not a liberty.

[Scott Horton]

We're gonna take out seven countries. They don't know what the they're doing. Negotiate now. End this war.

[Robert A. Pape]

And now here's your host, Scott Horton.

[Scott Horton]

All right, you guys on the line here. I've got Robert A. Pape. He is a professor at the University of Chicago, or at least last time I talked to him. Okay, good. Still there.

[Robert A. Pape]

Still there. Yep.

[Scott Horton]

And so we all know him because he's in my books, in. In Fool's Errand and enough already. And from his own great books, Dying to Win and Cutting the Fuse, about the strategic logic of suicide terrorism in the war on terrorism and all that. But before that, his scholarship was on air power and its efficacy or lack thereof. And the book is called Bombing to Win. Ah, you see where dying to win came from?

[Robert A. Pape]

There. That's exactly right. Uhhuh.

[Scott Horton]

So, boy, now that I think about it, we've been doing this about 20 years. So welcome back to the show, Bob.

[Robert A. Pape]

How are you? It's. Yes. Bringing the band back together and I'm sorry to say in your dual situation that we're heading south fast.

[Scott Horton]

Yeah, I know it so

[Robert A. Pape]

well.

[Scott Horton]

I think if the Pentagon's numbers are to be believed, they are extremely capable, the Air Force and the Navy of firing missiles from either, you know, ships or from planes and putting firepower on targets and destroying a lot of them in large numbers. And I think they're saying they've already dropped as many bombs as the first Gulf War on Iran here.

[Robert A. Pape]

Yeah, they're. By the day we go into the details, they. That was a 39 day war. But we'll get, we'll get to the details. Yeah, yeah.

[Scott Horton Show Announcer]

Okay.

[Scott Horton]

Well, anyway, at maybe the rate, whatever it was hopefully more smart bombs than dumb bombs then. I know it was like 92% dumb bombs. They dropped down and pretended they were all laser guided and whatever for the pr. Anyway, point being that if one were a Navy aviator commander or if one were an Air Force general, one might think that like hell yeah, we can do anything with our awesome jets and their awesome ability. Ability to put firepower on targets. So my question to you is, what's your problem? If you think that there's anything that they cannot do with these ultra sophisticated airplanes that they have and cruise missiles that they Fire.

[Robert A. Pape]

Well, see, this exactly was the puzzle that got me into studying air power in the first place. I had no military background. I was in the 1980s. And I want to know why we lost the Vietnam War with all the military power, gnp, all the technology, all the air power advantage. And in fact we've had air power advantages in every single conflict we have. We have, we have fought for so long, we can't even imagine a conflict where we don't have the air power advantage. And the bottom line is that that grossly misses the core issue. You see, it's when we look at talk about air power, we tend to talk about bombs destroying targets. That's the tactical effectiveness of air power. Well, what I discovered is that you can be really quite highly tactically effective and lose the war and be strategically ineffective. So in the case of the Vietnam War, I'll just pick. Since we started with that one, there was the two famous 242 Joint Chiefs target set. These are the most critical targets and going to destroy all the economic power, all the industrial power, all the military power in North Vietnam. We destroyed all but a teeny number five of those 242 targets here in a campaign called Rolling Thunder. We kind of rolled through them all. And that did not stop us from losing that war big time. We, the way I like to say is we have others too. We never lost the battle, we just lost the war. And the problem is politics. The problem is our enemies know they are weaker. They often don't want to go up and set peace battles against us because we're the big Goliath and they're always the David. So they're looking for a way, a different strategy of the week. Like David, they're looking for a way to beat us. And it's usually the long war that's usually the key thing. And so the issue is, how do they survive that opening? They plan for it, they expect it. And then what do they do? Well, this is what you're, what you saw in Vietnam. And now this is what you've seen in numerous precision guided air campaigns since that we haven't done so well in. And now what you're seeing is something quite similar just in the opening days. And Scott, I've got a new term for it. I put it on the escalation trap. I call it the smart bomb trap. And it's because the idea that the smart bombs are near 100% tactically effective is mesmerizing. And it gets decision makers to take their eye off the politics of the problem. And, and that is the trap. The trap is now you're trapped in the politics and you can't like escalation, dominance your way out of it, certainly not without a pretty long costly campaign you might ultimately win. It's not like you would get an L every time, but it ends up being a lot more costly and a lot more politically costly.

[Scott Horton]

Yeah, well, so in Iraq War one, they did really bomb the hell out of Saddam Hussein's army. I don't remember the exact, you know, famously the ground war was 100 hours. I think it was like two weeks

[Robert A. Pape]

of bombing, 39 days of bombing and four days of the ground war. This is got to remember Scott, this is what I live in, this stuff. So I, when I talked for the US Air Force, it was the pilots who had just bomb bagged that I was at Maxwell Air Force Base. I was, you know, buried in all the data and the sortie runs and everything. Watched all the videos from the gun camera video. So I know this like the back of my hand. And you're quite right. We bomb the bejesus out of Sodom Hussein's regime. And the original plan was called Instant Thunder. Supposed to be a six day air war, three days really, but a six day air war to defeat Saddam by regime change with air power alone. And the original plan was a 94 target set, remember? 242. They wanted 94 targets. Well, what we did in three days is we almost tripled the number of regime targets we hit from the original plan. You turn a US intel loose, they're going to find more targets. We bombed them viciously, those regime targets. And you know what? That did not stop the Scud missiles. That did not stop the need for that ground war. And it didn't stop even the Shia uprising we called for when we, after we took Kuwait. President Bush the first called for the Shia to rise up much like Trump did. And then he had to stand BY and in 24 hours Saddam piled the bodies in the streets. That's what happened to that Shia uprising. And that was after 39 days of bombing and four days of a ground war. So it's really pretty difficult to have air power redo regime change. This is really up against one of historically most difficult problems there is in military. I have to say though.

[Scott Horton]

I mean the, the legend of Iraq War one is different from your book, Bob. You know, the legend of Iraq War one is the air power went in there, just as I kind of repeated the air power went in there on the crap out of their armored divisions and whatever. And then they sent in Colonel McGregor and McMaster and Davis to go in there and clean up the remains with their tank divisions, which was such a short thing. And after all, like, it's easy for me to imagine anyway, because Iraq is a giant flat desert, that America had no problem locating their old Soviet tank divisions and, and blasting the crap out of. There must have been some damage done there.

[Robert A. Pape]

So, Scott, my book is not saying air power always fails. It fails alone, especially against leadership. If you combine air and ground power together, now you have what I call in my work, hammer and Anvil. That's a different story, you see. So that's the, that's what you're explaining, what you're explaining there. But I just want to also say that first Gulf War people may, may wonder, is it really worth paying that much attention to a 1991 war? Well, that still is where strategists cut their teeth fighting right?

[Scott Horton]

Now, you just mentioned the Shiite uprising then. I mean, this is the same. We've been bombing Iraq for 35 years now.

[Robert A. Pape]

So, yeah, it really is, Scott. So you're talking about what is the actual place to go to study the precision revolution. And at the time I was teaching for the US Air Force, I had a clearance and I was involved in these big debates on bombing strategy in Bosnia, you see. And if you look at that, the actual targets and what's called deliberate force in 95 that ended the Bosnian civil war, you'll see that's hammer and anvil, like I'm saying, not strategic bombing, Allah, leadership, targeting. That was a battle, classified battles here that you never, may never hear the light of day on Easter, no less. This was really of the first order battle at that time, because, as you're saying, there was not just the PR war, but there was a fair bit of confusion about what actually won the 91 war. And that mattered because it was going to matter. And could you actually end the Bosnian civil war? You see? So it wasn't just history then.

[Scott Horton]

They lied about Bosnia and Kosovo and the effect of that air war there. So I don't know what they, you know, you guys had at your classified briefings, but if you go and look, you can see where Milosevic was already determined to make a deal before they started their campaign. And then Richard Holbrook climbed down about 10 rungs on that ladder and gave the Bosnian Serbs way more than they were going to get under any of the previous deals. And they also sidelined the Bosnian Serbs and Let Milosevic deal on their behalf so they can give credit to air power all they want.

[Robert A. Pape]

I think you're right. But let me fill in a little bit of the blanks here. So you see the big, your listeners will see the picture which you probably know, which is what happened in 95 wasn't just air power. There was a Muslim Croatian ground offensive that combined with American air power. Now what happened when Holbrooke wrote his book the End of the War is he kind of quietly downplayed that part of the Muslims because you see this is what we do when we tell our stories. We often and this is why there's a real confusion for would be future general. So I was teaching that kind of folks here in the military and the problem is it's not good enough to have that BS level, PR level that's self serving. They're really the problem here as a future general will see it is they're on the hook and they will lose big time if they lose that war by getting the story wrong. So we, we actually spent a fair bit of time with that. But you're right, if you just go and try to get like the first level into this, you're going to run into the PR battles here all the time because kiss and tell books are always trying to get the next bigger job. And that is true and it's a problem. And fortunately I'm very happy at the University of Chicago. I don't want a bigger, better job. I've got the best job in the world at the University of Chicago and I've had that job for a long time now. I'm very happy.

[Scott Horton Show Announcer]

You know, they always said Scott, you keep drinking that much coffee you're going to turn into a cup of coffee. And then it finally happened. I am coffee now. And if you go to scott horton.org coffee you too can get Scott Horton show flavored coffee coffee branded coffee there it's Ethiopian mixed with Sumatran blended coffee. It's so good and I have some of it right here. In fact, I'm drinking my Libertarian Institute mug. You can see this is how I wake up in the morning and this is how I stay awake in the afternoon. And if I was a drunk it would be how I get home from the bar at night. So sound advice to you guys there. You know, take an uber Moondo Artisan coffee. Get it? They hate Starbucks because Starbucks, well first of all doesn't taste that great. And then also they support the war party. But Moondo Artisan coffees does not they support peace. So check us out@scott horton.org Coffee so

[Scott Horton]

tell me though, Bob, so is it then that sort of the myth of Iraq War one and the myth of, of Bosnia, they help inform the strategy in Kosovo which is we can win this war from 60,000ft and we'll just bomb a bunch of cardboard tank.

[Robert A. Pape]

That's exactly what happened, Scott. And I interviewed almost everybody related to that except, except Holbrooke, who wouldn't talk to me. But here's, here's the thing. Holbrook had a team, okay? So you know these names, Richard Holbrook. So, so your f. Your listeners can Google. He had a team around him in 95. They then said they won the war with air power alone, totally dissing the Muslim Croatian ground offensive, which in my reading, and I think what I hear from you too did 70% of the work. Okay? So I wouldn't give the capitulation to

[Scott Horton]

the Bosnian Serbs on 10 things that they had previously held out on too. I mean that's the biggest.

[Robert A. Pape]

Give you a little bit of a clue, right?

[Scott Horton]

Holbrook rolling over while he talks.

[Robert A. Pape]

Well, but then the price was paid in March 99 because they hoodwinked Bill Clinton. And I know I talked to. And what happened is Bill Clinton was told strike 51 targets in and around Belgrade in March 99. Holbrook met with Milosevic just before that bombing run, much like you had the negotiators here. And Holbrook said, you understand, Mr. President Milic, we will bomb you. And Milic said, yes, Ambassador Holbrooke, you're going to bomb me and I'm sure you'll bomb my house, which is what we did. So he was fully aware. No, none of this miscalculation stuff. Also that is totally about PR again is going on here. This is very, very clear eyed business. But the problem is that Bill Clinton was being told that they had won with air power alone. He's super smart guy, but he doesn't have time to do, you know, all the deep dives. And then what happens is they didn't prepare for the worst case. The worst case, and the worst case was after that three day air war they had no ability to stop Milosevic on the ground. Remember, there's no ground anything here. And Milosevic sends 30,000 ground troops into Kosovo, expels a million Kosovars from the province. That's 50% of the population. Thousands are killed. This goes on for three, almost three months. It's a disaster for NATO. This is where things go awry with Russia, which is still the case today. That was the breakpoint with Russia. So this was not just a minor little little thing. And so it's a. It really shows how you get these wars wrong. You're setting yourself up for failure in the next war. So the idea. Oh yeah, I'm just going to exaggerate a little bit what I did in the war. No, this is, this is the problem with we. We can't live in a world where we don't have at least debate. And that's what I was fortunate enough with the Air force in the 90s. I just got to give credit here. Chief of staff of the Air Force himself on an Easter with said we're going to have a classified trial on Pape's arguments here. And I guarantee you the two star generals that had to sit there in judgment give up their Easter with their families were not happy about this. So as much as I, I criticize the Air Force, it was. There was some real something I, I saw that when real lives were on the line, I saw some good there. So I, I'm not telling you about. That's true all the time. It was true in that case. Yeah. His name was. Oh, anyway. Okay. Yeah. Told you a lot of stories here. It's all right.

[Scott Horton]

No, I like this stuff. Yeah. I mean another thing is and. And this goes to the future lessons, you know all based on these three major wars of the 1990s was also in 1999 they capitulated to Milosevic and they repealed and canceled the secret appendix B where he would have to allow America to occupy NATO to occupy the entire Yugoslavia. And that's what ended the war. They did not win that war at all. He was already willing to sign the deal without the appendix B which they added as the poison pill.

[Robert A. Pape]

And so you have so much value here, Scott for well, I wrote a

[Scott Horton]

book about all this stuff.

[Robert A. Pape]

Yeah it's really important that we we this and by the way, that's why I had half of a book written called the Smart Bomb Trap which I've been so busy writing other stuff if you see in my work in the last 10 years. And so that's why I decided before this war started I saw a comment and I put that all out on X which a lot of people I could tell appreciated. And then what happened is I decided what am I sitting on all this material for? And so if you go to the substack you're going to see these are a lot of things that were portions of chapters and Things like that that I dusted off, you know, and now with Substack, which we didn't have 15 years ago, you can really communicate. It's like a, a better X. I mean you can actually communicate with substance in ways we could only imagine before. So anyway, that's what, that's what's on that, that's what's there. So there's big discussions of a lot of these cases, et cetera, et cetera.

[Scott Horton]

Yeah, yeah, it's really great. And what is your substack? Is it an easy address on there?

[Robert A. Pape]

It's called the Escalation Trap. The Escalation Trap. It's, it's. Right. That's why I put it, I had your folks put it on that banner there so that they would see it. So it's, the audience should be able, if I can see it, they can see it. And, and I think they'll go and they'll see there's, there's a lot of stuff there. It just are ready because I saw it coming. So I've been working like crazy to again take that old stuff and get it out.

[Scott Horton]

Yeah, yeah. You know, I remember in the beginning of 2009, you came on the show and you said, you know, Obama should not escalate the war in Afghanistan because he's just going to cause a campaign of suicide bombing. We just been doing this for so long. I can think of all these things you were right about over the times and all.

[Robert A. Pape]

It's, it is. But we get a chance when it does go south then to come in and explain it. And we don't always help forever, but we do help like with suicide terrorism. Notice that we manage for some time to keep it down, both parties. So that was quite a thing. Now unfortunately, you got President Trump saying, starting to talk about the idea of ground forces again here. And this is, this is just like I, it's like beyond belief that we could be doing this again, but it is the case. We did help for some time.

[Scott Horton Show Announcer]

Yeah.

[Scott Horton]

And you know, I think it's really important too. And I don't know everything about Shiite Islam, but I know that there's a lot more cohesiveness and it's sort of one single religious order compared to all the different kinds of Sunnis out there with all their own kind of hand community picked religious leaders and so forth. Jihad and a full fatwa that could be extremely disruptive far beyond the legions that Bin Laden was ever able to.

[Robert A. Pape]

Well, and one of the things that's really interesting to me, I Have a piece coming out in Foreign affairs on Iran's horizontal escalation strategy. It'll be out on, on Saturday. I was actually editing it just before we came on. And what's really interesting to me is that Iran, which is Shia, has actually got quite a smart, I don't know if it ultimately win, but quite a smart horizontal escalation strategy again against the Sunni Muslim countries it's up against. And what it's doing is it's taking a version of our parallel attack. These drones are precision guided drones and it's inflicting costs, but at the same time it's inflicting costs. It's calling attention to Israel and it's calling attention to how this is a war for Israel and Israeli hegemony. Now what that's doing is even though they're Shia, okay, this is really quite interesting. This is planting the propaganda seeds for Sunnis bottom up to start putting pressure on their regimes. You, you see what I mean? This is, we've not taken seriously enough Iran's approach here in the last five days. It's, I'm not telling you it's surely going to work, but it is, it's certainly going to produce, it could produce a long war, which may be good enough for Iraq. But it is really interesting to watch how they have smartly handled this.

[Scott Horton]

Yeah, well, you know, they're talking about, there's a leak to Politico, says the Pentagon is planning on the war lasting through September.

[Robert A. Pape]

So already now, now we're in LBJ territory of Trump. So in literally editing this, in this Foreign affairs piece, okay, which is you have the Vietnam War rolling Thunder, we just talked about 242 target set and then we hit all those targets, right. And LBJ was saying that's what we got to do. We got escalation dominance. We're going to do this. And then what happens is the Ted offensive in January 1968, and that is this giant uprising. Again, it's kind of like horizontal escalation spreading geographically through the south of Vietnam. And we don't actually lose a toe to toe battle in that situation. But it was so clear that it was going to cause this war to go on and on. We lost the political battle in the war. It became clear it was going to become a forever war. LBJ actually stepped down from running for reelection and of course his VP got smashed and Richard Nixon just rode in high on a, on, on the tide. And so you could really see that this thing's going to go on till September. What's going to happen in these midterms here. I think you might end up not just having Democrats get the Senate. I wouldn't. I don't, I don't. I'm not, I'm not David Axelrod. I let him speed the predictor. But, you know, 60 seats for Democrats. I mean, maybe. We'll see. I mean, this is really that bad?

[Scott Horton]

Well, look, we should. Hey, guys, you know I have another podcast now, right? Yeah, me and the great American historian Daryl Cooper that is Martyr Made. He's my co host and we host

[Scott Horton Show Announcer]

a show every Friday night.

[Scott Horton]

We might be switching to two days

[Scott Horton Show Announcer]

a week here sometime soon, but for

[Scott Horton]

right now, we're doing Friday nights live at 8 o' clock Eastern Time on the YouTubes. Checked out our Twitter handle provoked show. Well, look, we shouldn't, you know, be naive here or omit the real cynical, ugly truth behind this thing, which is that the Israeli strategy, as they've explicitly said in their own press and in the Financial Times, is to destroy Iran and to cause a civil war between the Kurds, the Aeris, the Balukis and the Sunni Arabs and the Shiite Persians and make them all murder each other, turn the place into what Syria was 15 years ago at America and Israel's.

[Robert A. Pape]

Well, turn it into a Lebanon, turn it into a Syria. And then the problem here for us, I'm talking to Canada tomorrow. The Canada is asking me about, like, what does this mean for them? And I said, well, the real issue is if it becomes this prolonged war, you're going to have a hornet's nest of terrorism. And Iran's got plenty of capability. Take down aircraft and you can already see they're, they're perfectly focused on, on, on aerial, you know, what you think of this man.

[Scott Horton]

And I'm sorry for my own audience, I'm a broken record about this and I hope that this is completely stupid and off base. I don't know, man. But the Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani, who is an Iranian but who lives in Iraq, in Najaf and is the most powerful he is, already outranked the Ayatollah Khamenee before his death, even though he's not the supreme leader of anything. But still he had a higher religious rank and he's very old and is very cautious. Right? He's not quick to anger or anything like that. However, he is the one who called George W. Bush out on the carpet in January 2004 and said, I want one man, one vote, and everybody who believes in God wants One man, one vote, right? Everybody. And they, all the Shiites, 60% of the population in the country went outside and said, that's right. We all want one man, one vote. And that's why they had a giant civil war and the Sunnis lost and a million people were killed. And we have a Shiite dominated Iraq today is because essentially he enslaved George W. Bush that day in January 2004. He said, you want to start this war all over again? And Bush said, no, sir, I am your humble servant. You know the history of Iraq War two there.

[Robert A. Pape]

Oh, my goodness. Opening this can of worms again. I can't believe I keep telling my wife this. I can't believe we're opening this can of worms.

[Scott Horton]

Wait, so one more. Now, Obama builds the caliphate for them in Syria, but instead of taking out Assad in Damascus, it rolls east into western Iraq and creates the caliphate and Sax Mosul and all that in the spring, in the early summer, 2014. And then the Ayatollah Sistani says, if you believe in God, I want you to grab a gun and go fight the caliphate. And in America took the Shiite side again, which they wish they hadn't in Iraq War two. They took it again in Iraq War III to destroy the caliphate that they built. And it was a little too big for their liking, I guess. So. But then my point being about this Ayatollah Sistani is that sometimes he'll say things like, look, if you believe in God, do what I say. And sometimes those things can be. There are people who need killing, including Baghdadi and his caliphate, for example. He could say the same thing about Americans.

[Robert A. Pape]

He could. The real. Yeah, it's a wild card. Just as you're. And I'm glad you're bringing it up, Scott. I don't care if it's a broken record. I think this is really important because I was really struck that on Monday, President Trump was asked about worst case scenarios in the Oval Office. And he, his, his answer, I thought was really, really stunning to me. I mean, the idea that the worst case is, it's, it just goes back to what it was. Yeah, no, this, this is not that. That's just not the case. There, there's real dangers here. And I'm going to have more to say about that on the sub stack over time. It is something that we really need to understand. And it's not that we can have crystal ball. We can't really exactly predict the future. It's not quite right. But we can do some risk assessment, we can do some Trajectory analysis. So we can do a lot. And that's why you, you say when you bring me on, it seems a little more prescient here. And if people go to the substack, they'll see I laid out the stages of the smart bomb trap before we even bombed. And then I have another one saying, my goodness, it's just right on schedule. And, and it's because we can, we can. We don't know everything in advance, of course, but we can know quite a bit. And I think this is a case where letting this thing fester, letting all these different actors now get at it, the idea of the Kurds, we're going to somehow win this with the Kurds. When you've got 18 million Kurds with Turkey, and Turkey's been going at it with the Kurds for so long, the kind of different genies were letting out of the bottle here. Oh, my goodness. Yeah.

[Scott Horton]

And including Al Qaeda and the Islamic State that are still not gone and are still not done killing Americans either. Even if we're taking their side against the Shiites. That has never bought their loyalty this whole time.

[Robert A. Pape]

Still. Yeah, yeah.

[Scott Horton]

Against the Serbs, and we helped them against the Russians. And that didn't prevent September 11th.

[Robert A. Pape]

In fact, it only helped cause it. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I, I think you just got your finger right on it here. And I think that it really is something that we've gotta. We've. It's, it's. It hasn't been a lot of time for the public, but it's becoming enough time, you see. So we, we, we didn't have any much discussion about this before. And I know because I was following this so closely. And then now that it's happened, it was also kind of a shock in the first couple of days here. I think you could see the news media. It's. They totally didn't know what to say. I mean, they're just in shock because it's totally blindsided everybody who in Washington thought they knew they had the fingers on the pulse, but now things are starting there, and you're starting to hear a little bit more actual analysis. And where it's really starting is. And this has often been true in London. So, so I was just on TRT here, and it was really impressive to see their coverage, you know, because just as you go on the programs, they put you on for like, 15 minutes to hear the run up to you, that kind of thing. And I just have to tell you, I, I. And this has happened in the other wars we've been involved in with Scott, where we've been talking. I'm really impressed here that there, there are international that start and then that tends to seep into the Americans slowly and slowly. It's too slow for me and you too, I'm sure. But it is, it is there. And I think this is now also. We're in the age of substack now. We're in the age of X and these things interact, which I'm learning. I mean, who would have thought I would do threads on X? You know, Seriously, my wife is looking at me like, what is a thread? Wow.

[Scott Horton]

I know. I've seen you on there in recent days and I'm like, all right, it's Bob Pape's big comeback, man.

[Robert A. Pape]

And I'm just telling you it's because of COVID You know, people don't. Well, we could do a whole show on it. Covid just put me more in tune with things online and you had to be right. Did a little bit before, like everybody else, I could kind of fumble a zoom here and there, but now we're on teams and zoom and this and that. And in fact, when I work with our research team at the center, I have the Chicago project on Security and threats. We now could be in the same room and we look at ourselves through the computers. Yeah. You see, it's like we're. It's stunning to me. But if I want to do research now, I just have to be. And my, and my, my. And it's a race between me and our. And our, my 40 and 50 year old researchers about who's going to learn the next this or that next.

[Scott Horton]

All right. Well, man, it's so great to have you back here and to see you out there in the public and spreading your wisdom around about this war. I'm sure I'll probably be begging you to come back on the show.

[Robert A. Pape]

Let's hope you don't because that'll mean it'll be good.

[Scott Horton]

Yeah.

[Robert A. Pape]

Yeah.

[Scott Horton]

The bad news is I expect to talk to you again soon.

[Robert A. Pape]

Exactly. But really, it's so great to talk to you and so congratulations to everything that's going with you. Thank you.

[Scott Horton]

All right, well, thanks very much, Bob, everybody. The book is Bombing to Win and the sub stack is the Escalation Trap.

[Scott Horton Show Announcer]

The Scott Horton show is brought to you by the Scott Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom, Robertson Roberts Week Brokerage Inc. Mundo's Artisan Coffee, Tom Woods, Liberty Classroom and APS Radio News. Subscribe in all the usual places and check out my books. Fool's errand. Enough already. And my latest Provoked How Washington Started the New Cold War With Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine. Find all of the above@scott Horton.org and I'm serializing the audiobook of Provoked at Scott Hortonshow.com and Patreon.com Scott Hortonshow Bumpers by Josh Langford Music intro and outro videos by Dissident Media Audio mastering by Podsworth Media. See y' all next time.