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Summary
In this episode, I sit down with retired Marine Corps Corps Col. David Gergen to discuss the Iran situation and his thoughts on it. We talk about his views on the use of force in Afghanistan, the impact of Midnight Hammer, and what he thinks about the current situation with Iran.
Transcript
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Let me talk to you. As a military guy, Afghanistan, what do you think about what's going on with Iran?
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I'm actually curious. What's your opinion? Because that's more of a foreign, you know, do you think that could have been prevented?
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Are you somebody that's saying, you know, you support the president? What is doing? What's your position on that?
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It absolutely could have been prevented. And the problem with the. So I have a few different issues with it.
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One is, for example, I was actually a fan publicly and I know some people got on me about it, about Midnight Hammer.
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I think there was enough international consensus and coalition about a need to be able to address it.
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And at least from what we heard from the initial reports, it accomplished the set out established mission, right?
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I think that's necessary and required for military operations, right?
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That we're clear about what is the consensus and the goal.
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that regime posed to the world. The truth is, probably both for you and myself, we lost people
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because of the Iranian regime, right? So I'm very clear on that. There's a difference between
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Midnight Hammer and what we're doing right now. Because Midnight Hammer, I understood
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risk calculation and understood like, what was it that we're looking to accomplish? And once the
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mission accomplishment was laid out, then the operation is complete. No mission creeps.
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because there's nothing that worries me as a military guy more than mission creep.
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Know what to accomplish, and then once it's accomplished,
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if you have something else, that's a secondary operation.
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With this mission, I feel like there's three things we should know
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every time you decide to deploy military personnel.
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One, was military force and kinetic force the last option?
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Two, what is the end state and the mission that people can understand
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and that you're able to bring the American people along for it as well
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because the American people are paying for this.
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I mean, we saw testimony today indicating that, you know,
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where they're talking about this has cost around $25 billion so far.
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Have we really explained to the American people
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And the third thing is that what is the international coalition
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Now, I'm not saying there needs to be an international coalition
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the U.S. military is one on one. If the U.S. military is coming after you, there's nothing
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you can do. We're that good. We're that good, right? We are one of one. However, it takes a
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coalition not to fight the war, but to build the peace, right? Because one side can start a war.
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Generally, one side cannot end it. That's where we need to have a sense and a consensus of what
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this thing is going to look like. You're referencing NATO. Is that a NATO message?
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And first of all, I actually think it starts more with the regional partners, right?
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Because I think, is NATO going to be important in it?
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But I think NATO also has its hands full in other things.
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I'm like, are we making sure that we're getting the UAE involved?
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Are we making sure what has been the conversations with Pakistan?
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What has been the conversations with Saudi Arabia?
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What has been the conversations with Egypt and all the other part of Israel?
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All these other partners that are going to have to be involved in this.
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And I feel like when you're thinking about all those three criteria, was kinetic operation the last option?
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Was there a stated end goal and a stated, you know, real mission accomplishment of what this is going to look like?
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And did you do the work to be able to build out the intercoal coalitions?
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I think the answer in all three of those is no.
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And that's what makes me so bothered about where we are right now, where I think there is no one who wants this war to end more.
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That was like a ridiculous operation, the way they did it.
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I think the thing that society can't confuse, though,
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is, again, our military can kind of do anything.
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I don't think our military should do everything.
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And I would actually put that in the same category, right?
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Where if you say, listen, the job is to go take out Maduro
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and the job is to make sure that you are securing the capital
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and the jobs, our military can do that all day long
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that is then being had about basic measurements of stability,
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about what does this thing look like in six months, in 12 months, in 18 months?
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And if the answer is simply that, well, you're still looking at the same type of abuses
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and maybe what now we've gotten some more barrels of oil out of it,
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is that worth that potential risk and cost analysis?
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Oh, buddy, if you think about, like, go to the other side of the argument,
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because I do think there's a lot of uncertainty with this.
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fair enough that's that's not undisputable the 13 lives cost you know 25 billion dollars i even
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think it's more than 25 billion but let's just say low numbers 25 i thought it's like 51 billion but
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let's say 50 because that's probably yeah so uh uh if i think about the way he did it
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so he whispers greenland people lose their minds okay why did he say greenland well we need the
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resources from there because of china okay so he goes gets venezuela and he's doing all the boats
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and everyone's getting upset, and all of a sudden, boom, we got Maduro.
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Venezuela's, I think, their number seven for the most production out of everybody.
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And then he gets the Panamanian president to tell China, C.K. Hutchinson,
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So now China cannot bully us with Panama Canal, and China needs Venezuela.
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Now Venezuela is under control of U.S. pretty much, if you think about it.
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The VP reports to him, and he goes and does this to Iran.
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If he's able to pull this off, we're now with the blockade.
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Every day Iran is bleeding $450 million, $12 to $13 billion per month.
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One million jobs lost directly, another million lost indirectly.
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All the people that have been gone, the leader when I met with Putin a couple days ago, taking a picture together, a conversation, make sure Putin's like, I got your back.
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If he's able to get the IRGC to be gone, where now Gulf states are supporting what he's doing, UAE now left OPEC.
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You better believe UAE's got a relationship with Trump that they're talking offline and saying, hey, don't worry about it.
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I'm going to get you a bunch of business. Leave it. You're going to be fine.
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because OPEC is Iran, Iraq, all these other guys
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and get rid of IRGC, let's say in the next
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give them the credit on this if that ends up happening?
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But if it happens, I actually don't think it's five to 10 percent.
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Listen, if all of those variables are in place, then that would be extraordinary.
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But here is but here's what we know right now is right now we have a total blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, which is having very real consequences.
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I mean, people say, yeah, it's having huge impact on gas prices in the U.S.
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Yes, I mean, gas prices, what's over, $420 now on national average.
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This is having huge international implications.
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That we still have military personnel that are being deployed to include my old unit,
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Like, every time our units move, the American people are paying for this.
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But we also know that we're talking about a regime that at the start of the year, right,
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when we had an uprising and there were, what, 20, 25,000 people that this regime just mowed down and massacred.
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What we haven't seen in the past 60, 70 days is the same type of uprising.
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Well, the Internet is still not there, so we still can't see anything.
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But we haven't seen that same, and you're right, the Internet's not there,
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so we'd so, but, and I don't know if you believe that that energy is happening right now.
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No, they have, the challenge they have with that, which is to give you credit on the argument,
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is they thought the military would flip on them and decide to go and say,
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look, I'm not with you, IRGC, whatever you guys are doing, I'm out.
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And the weapons that we try to give the Kurds, they kept it.
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And then Reza Pallavi is doing a pretty good job, you know, going out there speaking.
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But quite frankly, mobilizing military hasn't happened.
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But the mobilizing part with the military side hasn't happened.
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And unfortunately, you know, as we find in these situations, the guys with the guns generally have the bigger voice.
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And that's the issue that we're facing right now is that, you know, when people talk about, well, what is going to be the regime change?
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It's like you could have a regime change of people, but do conditions change for the people?
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Take the Cuban example after Fidel died, right?
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And I think we have to really think critically about what that means and about what the goal then becomes and what it looks like.
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Because the same type of energy that we were seeing at the start of the year when it comes to people really uprising, and that's when I think there was a hope for people that the United States and others would come up and support that.
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You're probably right that the chances are slim.
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But that's even more of a thing that if he does pull it off,
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I am so curious to know how the critics are going to come out
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and say, Mr. President, credit to you for pulling it off.
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I'm curious to know what's going to happen there.
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I'm talking about the guys that there's nothing that anybody can do right.
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I still think, though, that there needs to be a bigger conversation in Congress
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Because, and again, to be clear, this is not a Trump thing.
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So you're trying to tell me the United States has not been in conflicts since World War II?
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We've been in conflicts every year since World War II.
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But the president has the flexibility to be able to do it.
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Now, do I think there needs to be a bigger—do I think a president needs flexibility?
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Because a president is dealing with more information than anyone in Congress.
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So a president needs to have a measure of flexibility.
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However, when we're talking about large-scale, long-term conflicts, for there not to be an ability for other bodies to have a say as to what's going on, the fact that we were in Afghanistan for 20 years and never had to go and explain what was happening in Afghanistan.
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And, again, I think about this from a very personal perspective.
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We were there for 20 years, spent over $2.4 trillion, lost over 2,400 service people, and never had qualified as a war.
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Say that to the fact that our treasury lost over $2 trillion.
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So there's got to be, there has to be a different type of conversation about where does jurisdictional prudence for a commander-in-chief start?
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And when does authorizing ability for presidents of the United States begin?
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Because I do think those things have gotten very, very muddied over the years.
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By the way, you have the support with that message of a lot of people who are with you on that.
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You wasted wars, money for no reason, weapons of mass destruction, all this stuff that we fell for.
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You've got a guy over there, Vincent Oshana, that's probably listened to this podcast.
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If he hasn't already left, he's sitting down right now.
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He was the airman of the year in the Air Force right there.
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He's looking at the glasses, him right there.
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He, for that specific reason, Afghanistan wasted time.
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