Well, as Russia surges forward in Ukraine,
there is no stopping Israel either,
as Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu makes it very clear that
his war won't end until he completely destroys Hamas.
Now, three top military leaders here in the US spoke
to the Washington Post about what they see as Israel's
failure to learn from the past,
specifically the mistakes the US made in Iraq.
Retired Lieutenant Colonel Doctor John
Nagle is one of those quoted in the op-ed.
He says that Israel's Gaza strategy against the terrorist organization
Hamas is just simply not working.
John joins me from Carlisle,
PA, where he now teaches at the Army War College.
John, good to see you.
You know, President Biden, Secretary of State Blinken,
Secretary of Defense Austin, just to name a few of
the heavy hitters,
have told Netanyahu to not only back off from the
bombing,
but don't invade Rafa. From your experience,
this is Netanyahu and his right wing coalition allies,
even his senior IDF officers,
even respect our U.S. military advice.
Well, to be fair to them,
our track record in fighting insurgencies isn't all that it
might be.
But in this case, we're really hoping they will learn
from the mistakes the United States made,
the mistakes that I saw
when I was fighting in that war early in Iraq.
And we're afraid that Israel is making a bunch of
the same mistakes that we made.
We'd really like him to learn from our mistakes.
You literally wrote the textbook for a counter insurgency.
You say that Israel needs to learn from our mistakes,
particularly in Iraq. We all know that the US went
in there to take down Saddam,
to wipe out terrorism. You were there.
I was there. At the same time,
it all blew up in our face.
You can't just come into a country and clear out
the bad guys and then take off.
You have to clear, hold,
build. That's something that you teach and and I and
I witnessed you do it.
Do you think Israel is,
what do you think specifically that Israel is doing wrong
here.
So Israel is making the same mistake that we made
early in the Iraq war.
They're clearing and leaving and
and I did my doctor work on the Vietnam War
and we made the same mistake there.
And it's it's just heartbreaking to read the reports of
American soldiers in Vietnam clearing A sector and then six
months later having to clear it again because after they
departed, the insurgents moved back in.
We saw that again in Iraq.
You saw it happening there.
And now the Israelis are seeing it happen and the
Israeli generals are complaining to their government
that they are clearing A sector and then months later
being sent back to clear it again.
So if you the only purpose of a war is
to build a better peace and to to build a
better peace,
when you're fighting terrorists, you can't just chase them out
of the neighborhood.
You've got to stay there to keep them from moving
back in.
You've got to protect the population and then you've got
to build some of the resources that will get the
people to,
over the long term, support the government instead of the
insurgency.
It took us years to relearn that lesson in Iraq.
So how do you wipe out Hamas for good?
Could the Palestinians ever have their own security force?
Because that's exactly what the US tried to do in
Iraq,
build up Iraqi forces so they could protect themselves,
and we failed miserably at that.
How do you go into a place like like Gaza,
the West Bank
and and create a Palestinian security force?
So Gaza and the West Bank are two different places.
I wouldn't recommend trying to build it in Gaza right
now,
but I do think that the Israelis are are very
late in working to build a Palestinian security force.
Ultimately, in any counterinsurgency campaign,
you don't want to keep your own troops there forever.
You want local forces to take over.
That's what what we ultimately did in Iraq.
We trained Iraqi security forces who are now tenuously holding
control of that country.
In Afghanistan We got involved in that effort too late
in the Afghan security forces couldn't hold without American advisors.
The in the short term we need
a two state solution so that Arab countries so that
Jordan,
so that Egypt, probably with Saudi funding will provide Arab
security forces to police Gaza after Hamas has been defeated
there.
And then over the long term,
Israel has to build its own security forces out of
the Palestinians who will provide long term security for that
area so that the Israelis don't have to do it
indefinitely.
Doctor John Nagle, it was great to talk to you.
Appreciate the op-ed. Appreciate you joining us.
Hope we can talk again,
John. Thank you. I'd like that.
Thank you.