Speaker 1: I don't know what's going on. I don't quite understand it.
Speaker 1: Um with the whole ISIS thing and troops in the
Speaker 1: Middle East and should we or shouldn't we and negotiations
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan. Of course, top commander says US will rely
Speaker 1: on allies to stop ISIS from researching in Syria. Is
Speaker 1: a story in the Washington Examiner today. We had some
Speaker 1: reports in the last week that if we if we
Speaker 1: pull out, ISIS will be back and strong within six months.
Speaker 1: We had um Liz Slide from the Washington Post on
Speaker 1: to say that ISIS was down to one square mile.
Speaker 1: I'm having trouble reading this story my clients. Longtime CBS
Speaker 1: News military analyst joins us to discuss the sand countries
Speaker 1: once again, and just I'm gonna throw him a two
Speaker 1: strike curve ball in a bit and talk about Venezuela.
Speaker 1: But Mike joins us. Now, Hello, Mike, how are you, sir?
Speaker 1: It's it's always a pleasure. If ISIS is indeed down
Speaker 1: to one square mile, how are they going to be
Speaker 1: back and strong in six months if we pull out? Yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of weightlifting and diets. I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 1: the bottom line is it's in it's in so many
Speaker 1: people's interests to prop up an enemy, to have it
Speaker 1: in the Middle East, and to keep propping it up
Speaker 1: because it just you know, it pays bills, It allows
Speaker 1: us to write stories on it, we can allocate military
Speaker 1: resource towards it. But if you look at the reality
Speaker 1: of the situation, um, it's not in America's interest to
Speaker 1: be inside of Syria. You saw the President over the
Speaker 1: weekends say to Margaret Brennan that we're going to stay
Speaker 1: in Iraq because we can keep an eye on Iran
Speaker 1: from there, and and that's what the generals are telling them,
Speaker 1: of course, because that's really what we're doing. But now
Speaker 1: it's it's taken the Iraqi government and throwing it into
Speaker 1: a flux because they're insulted that we're actually doing that
Speaker 1: inside of their country. So I still think the President's
Speaker 1: instinct is right top to bottom about getting troops out
Speaker 1: of these locations. If we don't have any long term
Speaker 1: strategy to be there, and if we're there just to
Speaker 1: be in the middle of things, Um, it's just it's
Speaker 1: just not in the interest of our youth of America
Speaker 1: that we're gonna ask to go give their lives for
Speaker 1: their country. Basically, well, I think you've described it beautifully.
Speaker 1: We're there to be in the middle of things, keep
Speaker 1: an eye on around, keep Iraq from becoming completely an
Speaker 1: Iranian client state and then having a semi occupation of Afghanistan.
Speaker 1: I guess to enforce whatever agreement the Afghan government and
Speaker 1: I'm using quotes there and the Taliban come up with.
Speaker 1: I think that is the strategy, right. My my friend
Speaker 1: Scott Miller was on the fourth Star that commands in Afghanistan.
Speaker 1: He was very sober about the situation there. Um, there's
Speaker 1: not a military solution at this point. We're going to
Speaker 1: have to negotiate. Um, it's a generational problem. You know.
Speaker 1: Report came out the other day that we still don't
Speaker 1: have trained enough Afghan pilots. We need a hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty Blackhawk pilots in order for the Afghan military to
Speaker 1: be considered successful. We still can't come up with a
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty of them in a country of three
Speaker 1: d and fifty million people. We can't get six hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty of them trained to fly a helicopter. So
Speaker 1: all all of the generational things had happened in Afghanistan
Speaker 1: haven't been fixed in the last twenty years plus. Um,
Speaker 1: negotiate with the Taliban, we'll be out of there. And
Speaker 1: if we see you know, guys and videos of guys
Speaker 1: jumped around on monkey bars in a K four sevens,
Speaker 1: will attack them with drones. But but Afghana is going
Speaker 1: to be turned over to the Afghan people. Do you
Speaker 1: think that point of view is going to hold sway? Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know a good question. It's gonna come down to,
Speaker 1: you know, in the past a lot of it. John
Speaker 1: mcain has such an influence when he was the chairman
Speaker 1: of the House House Arm Services Committee, there's no way
Speaker 1: he would approve us leaving out of there. And he
Speaker 1: in some cases the Senate and these politicians do have
Speaker 1: more power than the president. Uh. And I think it
Speaker 1: just gets back to whether Lindsay Graham and the folks
Speaker 1: on the on I guess on the House, on the
Speaker 1: Senate Services Committee will do the same thing as Um.
Speaker 1: The guy from Nebraska is the is the new chairman.
Speaker 1: I think he's gonna be well on line with what
Speaker 1: Trump wants to do. And I wouldn't be surprised if
Speaker 1: we cut the troops out of there by half at
Speaker 1: least before his reelection or his the re election back
Speaker 1: ISIS was one of the stories out of the the
Speaker 1: Intel chiefs when they reported to Congress last week, and
Speaker 1: the media making a big deal of Trump and disagreement
Speaker 1: with his intel chiefs or doesn't listen or doesn't read
Speaker 1: briefing books and all this different stuff attacking Trump because uh,
Speaker 1: you had people with the uniforms on saying ISIS is
Speaker 1: still a threat and they'll be back and tough. Um,
Speaker 1: so are you saying they just they just take that
Speaker 1: point of view because they want to continue the military
Speaker 1: machinery going that direction. Or what is what is the
Speaker 1: inertia of that? Well, it's it's in their best interest
Speaker 1: from a risk perspective, to align themselves with the least
Speaker 1: risk averse position there is, and that is status quo.
Speaker 1: Let's not do anything. Let's keep changing the way we are.
Speaker 1: Things are going fine. But Donald Trump is no different
Speaker 1: than any president in the past that takes intelligence information
Speaker 1: and uses it in the manner that he wants to,
Speaker 1: and in this case, he uses it in an opposite manner.
Speaker 1: You know. He brings up this great relationship we have
Speaker 1: with North Korea. He thinks things are going worse in
Speaker 1: Iran than they are. Um, he is again like the
Speaker 1: last two that have taken this intelligence information and used
Speaker 1: it for whatever benefit he's wanted to do. My client's
Speaker 1: military analysts down the line dropping bombs of plane spoken wisdom.
Speaker 1: You're talking about how UH military and intelligence executives, as
Speaker 1: it were, behave a lot like I don't know, entertainment
Speaker 1: executives or other executives. The smartest thing they do I
Speaker 1: I remember. I'll put it this way. David Letterman will
Speaker 1: once said that UH TV executives jobs is having their
Speaker 1: job at the end of the day. And so what
Speaker 1: you're saying is, if you advocate the status quo and
Speaker 1: it goes poorly, you're at much less risk career wise
Speaker 1: than if you advocate a change. Yeah, exactly. And you
Speaker 1: look at the Army, I still think, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: Army Green through and through, obviously, and I mean my
Speaker 1: son will go into the Navy. I've got to shift
Speaker 1: a little bit of loyalty there in some regards here shortly.
Speaker 1: But the bottom line is the Army struggles for a mission,
Speaker 1: and it's struggling. And right now, if we come out
Speaker 1: of the Middle East, like what the president wants to do.
Speaker 1: The armies really going to struggle for our mission. The
Speaker 1: Navy will continue to get funded because the Navy projects
Speaker 1: power in the South, trying to see the Air Force
Speaker 1: gets funded. It's a strategic weapon. But it's the army
Speaker 1: that endorses great hardship in the Middle East as the
Speaker 1: army that will have those casualties, and and and from
Speaker 1: my perspective, it's just time to come back and reinvent
Speaker 1: the whole process as to what we want our military
Speaker 1: to do. Well, that's interesting, that is tremendous, So a
Speaker 1: a shift, as I mentioned, Is there any role for
Speaker 1: the United States military beginning with providing humanitarian aid and
Speaker 1: ending with a land invasion in Venezuela. Well, let's hope
Speaker 1: it's the aid. It's humanitarian aid, and let's hope it's
Speaker 1: in a peaceful transition, because that's such a tinder box
Speaker 1: that could take place. I mean, we're we're really looking
Speaker 1: much like the ninety nineties right now. Afghanistan is going
Speaker 1: to return back to the Taliban and power, and you're
Speaker 1: gonna have these Central American revolutions that are taking place.
Speaker 1: What could happen there is all function of what the
Speaker 1: army does. If the army decides to turn against the citizens,
Speaker 1: you'll have a blood bath in the streets. As that
Speaker 1: military is well funded and is well prepared to do anything. Um,
Speaker 1: if if you can get a transition of power, if
Speaker 1: there's another election, if there's something, then perhaps it'll happen peacefully,
Speaker 1: but we've got to be especially careful. It's a good
Speaker 1: example of reallocating of resources. Maybe that that does become
Speaker 1: the mission for our army. Maybe we do not from
Speaker 1: an occupation perspective, but let's focus towards on our own hemisphere,
Speaker 1: clean up our backyard, and then maybe that's the goal
Speaker 1: for the next ten years. It would be something that
Speaker 1: I think people can get their arms around. Hey, do
Speaker 1: you have or are you going to write a book
Speaker 1: or do you have a blog or anything that we
Speaker 1: can turn people onto because this is really good stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't. I'm I'm gonna write a book someday. It's
Speaker 1: called You've got to write a letter, and it's going
Speaker 1: to be about that. Everything I've ever done in my
Speaker 1: life always happened because I wrote a letter to something
Speaker 1: or somebody, and I keep sitting down, I start to
Speaker 1: write it, but then I get But now I've got
Speaker 1: to get something good on TV. That is. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna write a bunch of I'm gonna write. You know,
Speaker 1: puberty changes everything that be about my coaching career, you know,
Speaker 1: with some little kids. Amen to that. I'm a master
Speaker 1: of the obvious, you know what. And it's funny, Mike,
Speaker 1: I've considered writing a book many times, and every time
Speaker 1: I have the same thought. There are plenty of books.
Speaker 1: No one's going to read it. No one's going to
Speaker 1: read it anyway, supply without demand. Uh, Mike Clients, CBS
Speaker 1: News Military Analysts, Mike, fabulous. As always. We can't thank
Speaker 1: you enough. Great guys, Thanks, thanks. Quite interesting. He's a
Speaker 1: lot closer to Rand Paul than he is to all
Speaker 1: of the main street media, who all of a sudden
Speaker 1: is in love with fighting endless wars because Trump's the president.
Speaker 1: Yeah but yeah, but he arrives at it through such
Speaker 1: an interesting, uh you know path as a major in
Speaker 1: the Army and an artillery commander and and Operation Desert
Speaker 1: Shield and Desert Storm awarded the Bronze Star, etcetera. He
Speaker 1: knows what he is talking about from that point of view,
Speaker 1: From a soldier's point of view, and he arrives at
Speaker 1: a lot of the same conclusions that you know Rand
Speaker 1: Paul does you know via his row. Yeah, I'm not
Speaker 1: discounting all of my lions experience, which is vast and
Speaker 1: all that sort of stuff, But some of it's pretty
Speaker 1: damned obvious, it seems to me, and has been for years.
Speaker 1: Afghanistan's gonna end up in the hand of the Taliban.
Speaker 1: We can't stop that, right in any agreement we forge
Speaker 1: with them will not be worth the goat skin it's
Speaker 1: printed on um unless we you know, there are certain
Speaker 1: boundaries which will not cannot be crossed, and and we
Speaker 1: are close enough to send something horrific from the sky
Speaker 1: to remind them of that. Some of our hanging around
Speaker 1: us keeping on our in Yeah, that's kind of what
Speaker 1: we thought for a long time. And now the Iraqis
Speaker 1: have their japanties in a wad. Sorry to hear that
Speaker 1: we can ship them some good American made panties which
Speaker 1: you're probably made in China.