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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Here's one way to think about the Afghanistan war. We've been there so long that some who were deployed to the country 19 years ago, when the war started, are now seeing their children sent off to the same war. Earlier this year, a United Nations report said that more than 100,000 civilians have been killed or hurt in Afghanistan in just the last 10 years.

Now the US military is anticipating that President Trump in his lame duck session will order thousands of troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq. It's also been reported that he's considering a lame duck bombing of Iran. Some unlikely voices have expressed concerns about what a sudden troop reduction in Afghanistan or Iraq would mean.

Mitch McConnel: A rapid withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan now would hurt our allies and delight the people who wish us harm.

Brian: Yes, that was Mitch McConnell. What is the immediate future of the US presence in Afghanistan and Iraq? What is legitimate for a lame duck president to do? What would he leave President Joe Biden with taking a very controversial measure without coordinating with the incoming administration? We know that Trump accused President Obama of allowing ISIS to get its foothold in Iraq, by getting the US out to completely in 2011.

We also know, however, Republicans tend to be more hawkish, Democrats, more dovish. Is there a peace camp that might be rooting for President Trump to disengage more from these Bush and Cheney started wars? If so, they're being awfully quiet. To make sense of things now I'm joined by Missy Ryan, Washington Post reporter covering the Pentagon military issues and national security. Hi, Missy. Thanks for coming on. Welcome back to WNYC.

Missy Ryan: Thanks for having me.

Brian: What has the President made formal about his Afghanistan or Iraq plans?

Missy: Sure. The Pentagon this week, just a few days ago, made a formal announcement that by January 15th, the number of troops in Afghanistan, which now stands around 5,000 would go to 2,500, and in Iraq it would go from just under 3000 to 2,500 as well, so a less significant reduction in Iraq, but really the big focus here has been Afghanistan because of this very fragile moment that we're at in the war and the potential for a peace process to really get going.

There's a stark contrast between the way that the Pentagon is depicting this decision. You'll remember that just last week, it seems like a long time ago now, Trump fired his defense secretary Mark Esper, who had warned against troop reductions in Afghanistan, and installed the new acting secretary. There's a stark contrast between the new active secretary's depiction of what is happening in Afghanistan as a fulfillment of the promise to all the troops who have fought in Afghanistan and a step forward between that and then the concerns of critics, including many senior military officials who have warned that it's a precipitous decision and it could endanger the security of the United States, and certainly that of Afghanistan, unnecessarily, basically to score political points for the President.

Brian: The worries that we heard there for Mitch McConnell and that others in the military establishment and the political establishment are making is that accelerating a withdrawal will lead to further instability in Iraq and Afghanistan, as you say, especially Afghanistan that would come back to haunt us later. Even if the President won't acknowledge that he's a lame duck, let's say the military does go through with this withdrawal, what would the outgoing administration be leaving for the next one as far as can be ascertained?

Missy: The situation in Afghanistan, it's something unprecedented and you mentioned the 19 years of war there, America's longest war. People were really excited earlier this year in February, the United States signed a peace deal with the Taliban, and under that deal the United States committed to pulling out all troops by May, 2021, if and only if the Taliban fulfilled a number of conditions, which included a reduction in violence, breaking with Al-Qaeda and then moving ahead with this peace process with the Afghan government.

What many officials that we talked to say is that the Taliban is just not fulfilling its end of the deal, that violence is surging in Afghanistan. Although the Taliban is not attacking American and NATO troops directly, they are going all out in their attacks against Afghan forces that have seized a lot of territory in recent months. There are also a lot of questions about whether they have or really intend to break with Al-Qaeda.

What President-elect Biden will probably face is a smaller US force that is less able to help the Afghan forces push back against this Taliban offensive that we're seeing and also a Taliban that is less incentivized to make concessions at the negotiating table with the Afghans in these peace talks that are occurring in Doha, because why would they want to make concessions when they feel like they have a good chance of winning on the battlefield and they know very well that the Afghan forces require ongoing assistance from the United States. If they think the US is leaving, then why should they strike a deal?

Brian: Right but of course, we've been saying the same thing for 18 of the 19 years that we've been involved in that war. By the scenario you just laid out, we'd have to be in Afghanistan forever to continue to suppress the Taliban if the Afghan army can't do it by itself, then it really is an endless war.

Missy: You're right, of course, that we've seen a corner being turned many, many times over many different years but what makes the current situation different is the negotiations which are unprecedented between the Taliban and the Afghan government and those have only been happening since September.

Brian: Where's the peace camp? Is there a peace camp? Is anybody left to say from the left? "Yes, finally bring those boys and girls home and US hands-off the Middle East."

Missy: It's been interesting to see the political response to the announcement this week and it's been all over the map and definitely has not fallen along partisan lines. You had everything from, as you saw Mitch McConnell, [inaudible 00:07:29]

Missy: Oops, I think Missy's line just blanked out. Can we get her back? Yes, we're calling her right back. Sorry about that. A little glitch, folks. Listeners, we invite your calls on this. We got so many calls over the years of the Iraq and Afghanistan war from some of you who just wanted the United States to get out already and end Bush-Cheney era of endless wars and were frustrated with Barack Obama after he was given the Nobel Peace Prize on the way into office, continuing these wars.

Did we forget that? How about any of you want to call in and say, "Okay, we don't like Donald Trump, but at least maybe he'll try to keep this promise on his way out of office," or is it more complicated than that? 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280 or tweet @BrianLehrer. We'll also get into, with Washington Post Pentagon correspondent Missy Ryan, this other report that while he's trying to get out of those wars or at least draw down the number of troops there, that he was considering a lame duck season strike on Iran.

How does that fit into the same picture baffling? 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280. Missy is back with us now and sorry about whatever the technical problem was there, but you were starting to say where the peace camp, if any such thing exists anymore is.

Missy: Yes, I was saying that that some Democrats like Adam Smith, the Democrat Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee have expressed approval of the troop reduction. I think you'll see this among more of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Other Democrats like Senator Jack Reed, who's the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee say, "Well, yes, everybody wants to bring the troops home, but let's not do it in this unnecessarily risky way. We can wait a few months and just see how things go."

I think there is going to be a reckoning among the Democrats in the new Congress. I think also within the Biden administration when they are seated and have to I think reconcile what we know to be President Biden's long-time desire now to have a very small counter-terrorism force in Afghanistan with these other [unintelligible 00:10:11] at the Pentagon.

Brian: Yes, has Biden said anything about this? While some of his colleagues say, "Look at the mess that President Trump is getting prepared to leave poor Joe Biden?" As I recall the Obama administration, correct me if I'm wrong, there were camps in the Obama administration that were more hawkish and more dovish. Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State was more of a hawk. Robert Gates, a Secretary of Defense was more of a hawk. Joe Biden was the head of the dove camp. Is that accurate?

Missy: Biden on Afghanistan was on a one end of the extreme during the Afghan surge debates that he was advocating for a very small presence in Afghanistan that would have been focused on counter-terrorism instead of doing a much larger troop deployment that would be able to support efforts to do counterinsurgency and nation-building. He was definitely seen as antagonistic towards the Pentagon during that period.

Now, we know as a candidate, he advocated taking out most troops from Afghanistan and keeping a small counter-terrorism force. It's actually a pretty consistent position, but you never know how that's going to go once he's actually in office and how that will interact with the peace talks. The fact is if he's left with 2,500 troops, it's very unlikely that he would have any significant troop increase in Afghanistan.

Brian: Josh in Brentwood, you're on WNYC with Missy Ryan, Pentagon correspondent for The Washington Post. Hi, Josh.

Josh: Hey, it's a pleasure to be on the show. It's my first time on the show. Just want to talk about, we always talk about our veterans fighting and military forces fighting for our freedom, but at the end of the day, what freedom is being fought for over there? It feels like it's been decades and decades on decades mainly due to the breakup of all these nations by the Western civilization.

At the end of the day, what freedom is being fought for? I think we better fight go back [unintelligible 00:12:25] which is a splitter for all these different Middle Eastern nations, South Asia, all these people were just split on ethnicity. Then we threw our troops there for freedom, our "freedom", they're fighting for our liberty, but what liberties? What [unintelligible 00:12:40] protect over there?

Brian: Josh, thank you very much. There was a lot in that question, Missy. Let me try to focus it this way. Are we fighting for American freedom and security anymore 19 years after 9/11 or is the biggest argument that we have a responsibility to the people of Afghanistan after going in there and basically taking over the country to now leave it for them in a way that doesn't just let the Taliban fill a vacuum?

Missy: What most government officials will tell you, whether it's in the White House or in the Pentagon, is that the United States still does, setting aside what you hope Afghanistan--over decades, the United States has hoped Afghanistan would become, in terms of its economy, its system of [inaudible 00:13:40] the social conditions, the United States has an abiding security interest in Afghanistan because we know that if the government in Afghanistan collapsed, that it would be very likely to lead to a situation where there could be safe havens for terrorist groups that might want to launch renewed attacks on the United States.

There's broad agreement on that idea and then less agreement on what do you need to do in response to that fact? Do you need a large military presence that would support continued attempts to develop the capabilities of Afghan forces? Do you need a small military presence that can do things like drone surveillance and drone strikes like we do in places like Syria fairly successfully in recent years, or can you just have a presence from outside of the country and launch occasional drone strikes like we do in places like Yemen? There is consensus, I think, on the first idea that there is a counter-terrorism interest in Afghanistan and more disagreement on how you deal with that.

Brian: [unintelligible 00:14:53] in Long Branch, you're on WYC. Hello, [unintelligible 00:14:57]?

Caller: Hi. I wanted to say that when United States moves out of Afghanistan, China will move in and will do what it's doing now in Xinjiang and Hong Kong to the people in Afghanistan. I'm a Democrat and I don't think we should move out. We moved in there, we should keep on with the mission as long as it has taken. We should try to bring the Afghan people up to a point where they'll be able to defend themselves.

Brian: [unintelligible 00:15:40] Thank you very much for that. To his point, I don't hear China referenced very much with respect to the threat to freedom in Afghanistan if the US withdraws. I usually hear the Taliban itself, which at least indigenous to Afghanistan or maybe forces from Pakistan that are militant, but is there a China factor here?

Missy: Yes. China has had a pretty limited role in post-2001 Afghanistan. In recent years, there has been some commercial activity including the mining sector. I think there are hopes from the Afghan government to develop commercial and trade opportunities with China. It's a good point to consider what the great power impact of the US departure from central Asia would be.

We've heard a lot more about Russia's role in Afghanistan in recent months, including reports that it may have paid elements of the Taliban to attack American forces, but because the Pentagon has been focused increasingly on China and the competition that occurs with China, not just in Asia, but in elsewhere in other places, I do expect that topic to get more attention in coming years, especially if Beijing would see an opportunity there.

Brian: I want to make sure we get to the Iran piece of this. I think this is considered less likely to actually happen, but there has been some reporting that suggested that even as President Trump wants to draw down forces from Afghanistan and Iraq and say, "See, I'm the president who ended the endless wars," he's been considering a military strike against Iran, which would, of course, start a whole new war. What can you confirm about that?

Missy: We've heard a lot of concern from our sources at the Pentagon, certainly in the last few weeks because of the people at the Pentagon, which we discussed earlier about the potential for preemptive military action against Iran. Over the past almost four years now, the Pentagon has repeatedly tried to stymie attempt by the hawks in the White House to promote or advance the potential of preemptive action against Iran, whether it's because of the proxy activity that Iran sponsors throughout the Middle East or because of its nuclear program.

Our sources are telling us that despite the increased concerns in the past few days and weeks, that President Trump is really unlikely to launch preemptive action against Iran right now. It will be a complicating factor. He has actually himself pulled back from planned military action against Iran several times. He just doesn't seem to have an appetite for it as much as some of the people around him. That is providing relief for the people in the Pentagon who might be worried about that.

I do think another thing to note is that what could happen and which I think is much more likely is that if there were any other Iranian action resulting in the interior deaths of Americans as we saw in Iraq in recent years in terms of rocket attacks on US bases that, if you'll remember last December killed an American contractor and that resulted in the tit for tat action that included the killing of Qasem Soleimani.

If something like that occurred, that the Trump administration's response would be big, it would be escalatory, and then that raises the potential for an unintended escalation. The overall arching message is that the people we're talking to are saying that Trump doesn't intend, as far as they can discern, to launch anything preemptive, but that there's always a potential for miscalculation on one side or the other.

Brian: People don't believe the military. It's funny because on the one hand, there's sense during the Trump administration that the generals are some of the adults in the room and some of the ex-generals, John Kelly, Mattis, and others, and yet, your newspaper, The Washington Post, reported last year that senior US officials misled the public about the war in Afghanistan and misled the public about the military's progress in the war.

One of the officials quoted, three-star Army General Douglas Lute said, "We were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan. We didn't know what we were doing--" all that stuff. There may be credibility issues that go round and around here. Before we run out of time, Biden hasn't named his cabinet yet, but it's being reported that his top candidate for Secretary of Defense is Michèle Flournoy. I wonder if you can say anything about her. I do understand that Hillary Clinton was also considering her as a top candidate for defense secretary, if Clinton had been elected in 2016. Is that your reporting as well, Michèle Flournoy, and what should we know about her?

Missy: Yes, she is one of the top candidates that we're hearing about. There's a couple of other people. She certainly is seen as a favorite, because I think there's a feeling that the Biden administration would potentially want to name the first female Defense Secretary, which obviously would send a message about diversity and elevating the women in national security. She is a centrist, she's very experienced, she had served in senior defense department roles in the past. She may receive some resistance from the progressive among the Democratic Party because of her ties to the defense industry.

She was on-- in some ways on the opposite side of Biden in some of the major foreign policy debates. She was I think in line with the Pentagon, supporting a larger presence in Afghanistan back in the day, she advocated, she was in favor of the US military action in Libya. I think if she was selected, you'd see a more traditional, centrist, national security establishment approach to leading the Pentagon. One of the things that whoever is Biden's Defense Secretary will try to do is to restore predictability and normal ways of decision making at the Pentagon and the way it interacts with the rest of the national security apparatus.

Brian: Missy Ryan, reporter for The Washington Post, covering military issues and national security. Thank you so much for your reporting and thank you for joining us today with it.

Missy: Thank you

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