Retired Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis joins the show to talk about Trump’s apparent interest in getting U.S. troops out of Afghanistan. Trump has signaled that the coronavirus crisis might be an excuse to get out—after all if America is having trouble taking care of things at home, why should it wastefully expend resources abroad? For this fairly logical position, the media is doing everything it can to portray Trump as deranged and reckless. Davis and Scott support leaving Afghanistan by whatever means necessary, since the war has been a fool’s errand from the very beginning.

Discussed on the show:

The Center Holds: Obama and His Enemies

“U.S. officials misled the public about the war in Afghanistan, confidential documents reveal” (Washington Post)

Obama’s Wars

“Secret Annexes Can Khalilzad Deliver Afghan Peace for Trump?” (Time)

“Trump tells advisers U.S. should pull troops as Afghanistan COVID-19 outbreak looms” (NBC)

Daniel Davis did multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan during his time in the army. He writes a weekly column for National Interest and is the author of the reports “Dereliction of Duty II: Senior Military Leaders’ Loss of Integrity Wounds Afghan War Effort” and “Go Big or Go Deep: An Analysis of Strategy Options on Afghanistan.” Find him on Twitter @DanielLDavis1.

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The following is an automatically generated transcript.

Show TranscriptDaniel L. Davis 0:10

All right shall welcome it's Scott Horton shelf. I am the director of the libertarian Institute editorial director of anti war.com, author of the book fool's errand, time to end the war in Afghanistan. And I've recorded more than 5000 interviews going back to 2003, all of which are available at scotthorton.org dot org. We can also sign up to the podcast feed full archive is also [email protected]. Slash Scott Horton show. Aren't you guys online I've got retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Daniel L. Davis, an American hero, not for his military service, but for his great whistleblowing at the end of the Afghan surge in 2012. He broke ranks and went public Blick and announced David Petraeus for lying to the American people into the US Congress, about the state of that war, and what needed to happen. And he's been fighting for an end to it, and a rational foreign policy ever since then to welcome back to the show. How you doing, Danny?

Thanks, God, I love to be on your show. Thanks for having me.

Scott Horton 1:19

Very happy to have you here. So and I could have mentioned you were in Iraq War One iraq war to Afghanistan. And you know what, actually, let's talk about this a little bit your tour in Afghanistan, you had a especially kind of unique view of the war rather than being stationed just here. There. You are all over the country. On that last tour there, right.

Daniel L. Davis 1:42

Yeah, I was working for an organization called the rapid equipping force, which was basically a created offshoot under the Army's g three the operations department in the Pentagon, for the purpose of trying to shorten the amount of time from the the point where an organization You know, brigade says, Hey, we need this kind of equipment, we need this thing we didn't know we needed until we got on the ground, you know, the normal acquisition process would have taken longer than a than a tour last.