"He Doesn't Understand War"

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This is Radio Atlantic.

I'm Isaac Dover.

Well, this is what happens when we take a break.

We left for the holidays, and now it's the new year, and we're talking about maybe being at war with Iran.

We don't know what will happen next, and neither do many people in Washington who would normally know more.

So this week we decided to sit down with one of those people, someone who can give us some perspective not just on where the president is taking us, but also on the stakes on the ground.

Ruben Gallego is a congressman from Arizona who sits on the Armed Services Committee.

He's also a combat veteran who served as a Marine in Iraq.

We sat down in his office on Capitol Hill the morning after Iran's missile strikes, right before President Trump spoke and announced new sanctions.

As we got settled and turned on the mics, we were talking about the the missile attacks.

When Gallego was in Iraq, he often came under mortar fire.

The experience can be frightening, he said, but like so many things in life, it can be insane what a person can get used to.

We used to get so much mortar fire that we used to just play games with it.

Like, it's really ridiculous stuff.

Like, we'd be playing poker outside, and the first round hits, and there was a rule that whoever stuck around the longest got to win.

irrespective who had the best hand.

Later, he admitted he was usually the first one to run.

Sometimes he'd wait one round, but usually not more than that.

So you can understand why I wanted to sit down with him.

We talked about how the political debate filters down to the troops on the ground, or doesn't.

We're in a moment of potential escalation.

Gallego felt that impulse for revenge firsthand, seeing friends blown up and shot.

That's part of what makes him warn against being consumed by that cycle now.

Take a listen.

Congressman Ruben Gallego, thanks for being here on Radio Atlantic.

Thank you for having me.

Happy New Year.

So let's start with an easy one.

Are we at war?

No, but it doesn't mean that we're not in conflict.

And we don't know what kind of war we're looking at.

And we don't know how long it's going to take.

And there's a lot of levels to this, including, I think, some dark kind of war that may be happening for all we know.

So it's a very dangerous situation.

We're talking about Iraq again, which

I think for most Americans has just been part of the background of our lives for 30 years at this point,

for most of my life, for most of your life.

What

do you think, even with that, it's just always there, most people don't get about Iraq?

Because it's not just been the background for your life.

It was very much the foreground of your life.

It still is, unfortunately.

You still carry the war, even though you're not there anymore.

Look, I think what a lot of Americans don't understand about Iraq is that this place has been extremely volatile and that we have to be sensitive to what's happening there.

And

I have a lot of Republican friends that kind of just jumped on board with

the killing of Soleimani.

And

I'm not crying for the guy.

I'm like, the guy was a horrible human being.

I'm glad he's dead.

But it's not as easy as people think that we could just do these actions without their having severe adverse reactions.

If you think about it right now, two weeks ago, there's protests in the streets to try to get Iran out of Iraq, which would have been beneficial to us.

And instead, now you have protests in the streets against us, the United States.

I wonder if you had this experience of being there.

And before we get into more on this, just how is it that you end up in Iraq?

What's that pathway?

Because it's not.

How is it I end up in Iraq?

Yeah.

That you personally, not the United States.

Well, I mean, it's not...

It's not a very linear way to do it, but basically, I got kicked out of Harvard.

So when I joined the Marine Corps, finished my training, went back to school.

Why'd you kicked out of Harvard?

Oh, I may have gone to a little too many fraternity parties.

Went, joined the Marine Corps for

a year, not a year, for becoming a reservist.

So I went and did my boot camp, did my school infantry training, reapplied to Harvard, and they sent me back.

And then was in the reserves at Harvard, got activated once, sent to Japan,

eventually got moved to New Mexico and joined a unit there.

And as soon as I signed in, they said, hey, by the way,

come January, you're going to to Iraq and that was it so I ended up meeting up with a group of guys from Ohio actually and that's how I ended up in Iraq when you signed up for the Marines was that

to get through that bump in the road at Harvard or was that

with the thought that you actually might end up in combat well both I had always wanted to be in the Marine Corps and I should have actually gone to the Marine Corps first and then to college but you know I got a scholarship and it was you know once you accepted Harvard and you have a scholarship it's gonna be very very hard to tell your family like, hey, I'm going to go join the Marine Corps first.

And that was, my mom would have killed me.

And so that's why when I enlisted, I enlisted first, then called her, because that way I couldn't back out at that point.

And I joined the infantry, so I always assumed at some point that I would be in combat or some form of combat.

I mean, that's what the Marine Corps infantry does.

And that was it.

When I was

starting out in college, my mother wanted me to do ROTC because she thought that would be a good way to pay the bills.

And I remember saying, this is in the late 90s, well, what if something goes wrong and I get sent to fight?

And she said, nothing's going to happen.

That's it's contemporaneous with what you were going through, but you were ready to go fight.

Yeah,

I was, I just want to be clear, I was not.

If you're going to join the Marine Corps and if you're going to join be an infantryman, you have to have that mentality that's going to happen.

You don't want it to happen, though, either.

Like, I never wanted to see combat.

I never, you know,

I would have been glad to never have fired a bullet at all.

And unfortunately, it is what it is.

The day-by-day experience of consuming what was happening in the news,

were there times where you would see something that was being talked about, something like this, that's a big event,

and then knowing that that's going to affect your day-to-day experience?

It's difficult to say.

We were fairly shut off.

We weren't on a base that had

radio, like any type of satellite TV.

And most of the time was actually patrolling out in the towns.

I do remember one time

I was in a house.

We were clearing this town of insurgents.

And what happens back in the day when you were done for the night, it's called going firm.

You'd go take over a house, offer money to the

occupants.

tell them they can stay or they can go.

It's their call.

And then you basically barricade yourself in.

So that way you you don't get uh infiltrated at night by the insurgents and uh this one family had satellite tv and so we turned it on and uh you know we were watching uh i can't remember what it was but it was like bbc or something like that and i think it was rumsville was talking about how the war was going great and i'm like surrounded by eight dudes 10 10 iraqi ing

and we had just had like a you know a hard day of fighting and i literally like threw my shoe at the tv it was just like come on, couldn't this be any crazier?

And then we switched to what is that rate, the amazing race, you know, that contest.

And I actually saw one of my freaking college friends on that show, and he was crying because he's having such a hard day.

And then I threw my other shoe at the TV.

It was just like, this is just not going well.

And so, what year is that?

2005.

Yeah, so really at the

height of what is Donald Runsfeld doing.

This is

post-Fallujah, but pre-the surge so my area actually was north of fallujah so that when they pushed out all the insurgents out of fallujah they pushed them into my area yeah fun times

there's a day that obviously stands out for uh

the worst reasons when your your friend uh your best friend was killed yep uh his name is jonathan grant yep

what what do you remember about him what kind of guy was he oh man you're gonna make me cry uh he was a great guy i mean he was the most amazing human being and kindest human being in the world.

When I joined the unit in New Mexico, I was actually not in the best shape.

I had messed up my knee

and

was not, I would say, was not in the best shape to even go to war, but I was not also going to not go to war, like when you get your order to go.

So Jonathan actually lived fairly near me.

And so prior to our activation,

knowing that we're going to wreck, he would come by and we'd work out together and he'd help me get ready, you know, to be in the shape shape that I needed to do to go to war.

Why did he decide to look out for you like that?

Well, because I had no friends.

Like I had just moved to New Mexico.

I was alone.

There was nobody,

no one else to, you know, that could go work out with or anything else like that.

And, you know, I think he,

you know, I think we just got along great.

You know, this is my, my son's named after him.

His middle name is Grant.

And, you know, even throughout the war, when things started getting really heavy, he always had this smile on his face.

He's always just a kind-hearted guy.

He used to always steal my

nanopods.

I don't know what the heck they were called.

Back in the old MP3 players, loved my music.

Guy can eat anything.

And

just one of those good human beings that you are very lucky to meet.

He was killed by an IED.

Yeah.

How did you find out what happened?

Well, I was right next to him.

I was in a vehicle in front of him, and my vehicle rolled over the IED.

And by protocol, if you're the vehicle behind you, you're supposed to follow our tracks.

And so

for some reason, it was a triggered IED by plates.

So it wasn't manned.

It wasn't a manned IED.

It was basically a landmine, a huge landmine.

Also, for some reason,

the IED didn't go off on me.

It went off on him.

And my vehicle was in front, so I heard it all.

You heard it, but you didn't see it because you were facing the other way, right?

Yeah, I only saw the after effect because we were in the hole of our vehicle, and then I heard the pop and then the explosion, and then that's when we got out.

And do you know right away?

I mean, when the vehicle goes off, yeah.

Where he was sitting,

it was instantaneous.

And I knew at that point.

And what happens then is you, I mean, I would imagine it's hard enough to be at war.

It's hard enough to have your friend killed, but to be in that position where you knew

it by a split second, essentially, it could have been you instead.

Well, we had just gotten, I mean, prior to that, two days earlier, we had just gotten through a full day of combat where I also lost

two other platoon members, and I think six men were injured.

I was actually in a different part of town fighting insurgents

where these guys were.

And over the radio, I had heard actually that Grant had died in that situation.

And until I fought my way back to base and I saw him, you know, I was so happy to see he was alive.

And then two days later, he's dead.

It's very difficult.

I mean,

it is, I think, so

important to hear these stories, and I know it's difficult,

but I think as we go into

what could be more combat operations to think about the reality of this,

it seems like it is distant in people's minds to really think that these are lives, these are friendships, these are

people who are there who

continue to be killed.

And

right?

Yeah.

I mean, these are.

I mean, yeah, you're how old at this point?

Well, I was considered old.

I was 25.

Right.

And that's only because you didn't go right and then you got yourself kicked out of harbor.

Yeah, but I had, I mean, I had one guy named Dixon in my platoon that wasn't even shaving yet.

He was barely 18.

And he died in,

I think he died in the ID.

Yeah, he died in the ID hit.

There was something over the weekend after the Silamani strike that you tweeted about,

which caught me.

You're talking about revenge.

And And I would imagine in that immediate aftermath of

Grant being killed and of all these other people, that

it catches you.

You want to have revenge.

You do.

So how do you process that?

Well, I mean, first you have to understand why we even think that way.

I mean, so after

those two days where

I lost about one-third of my platoon,

then we go back to our base and then we go back out.

They give us a couple of days break, then we start going back out.

And then every day, someone else, every other day, it

felt like someone was either shooting at us or somebody died or somebody got hit

or somebody was always trying to take, you know, trying to take my life.

And you'd see these IEDs that go off in the middle of like streets and surrounded by these houses.

Like clearly somebody saw this.

Clearly, you know, these Iraqi villagers could have told us or they could have like given us a warning.

We had all these ways for them to actually call and anonymously and give us tips.

You know, I remember when I, one of the first firefights I got into, I was

going through this

road along the river and all of a sudden everyone just disappeared.

And as soon as that happened, they hit us with RPG and machine gun fire.

And, you know, they had clearly set this up for quite a while.

And, you know, they basically let us go into an ambush.

So the way you think about this is like, you know, they're not, they're not innocent.

They're now part of the enemy because they're helping out the enemy.

And you just, you know, when you're going through these crowds and I used to patrol through these like crowded marketplace marketplaces, you know, at any point, you know,

they could be there and the surgeons could be among those people.

And then, you know,

you're going to get taken or taken out by one of these guys.

And these people aren't going to help you at all.

And you feel angry.

You feel, you start thinking of them as the enemy.

And the way that I kind of got myself out of it is just I try to give myself some rules.

And the two rules was that I was going to

survive.

And when I didn't think I was going to be able to survive, that I was going to

go honorably.

And

that's how I did.

I think that

it's the natural human inclination to want revenge.

It's such a, and like the basic, the stupidest way, you think about it is like the way that road rage happens.

Somebody cuts you off and you want to, like, oh, I'm going to get in front of them.

But in that situation, and it feels like that's what we're dealing with here, right?

That's what escalation really is, right?

You got us, we're going to get you back.

Okay, now we're going to get, right?

Is there a way that you can think of like breaking that cycle now that we're in it?

Because that's what de-escalation is, is figuring out how to break that cycle.

Well, I mean, partly, you know, one of the other things that helped me think about this is that, you know, if as a as a Marine, if I committed a war crime,

it would give me personal satisfaction, but only make the jobs more difficult for the rest of the men in my unit.

And, you know, if you're a Marine, the first thing they teach you is mission objective, right?

And it's, you know, a war crime is by nature horrible because you're targeting innocent civilians and,

basically going against basic rules of humanity.

But it also will endanger your mission, endanger your men.

And I think if you're someone like the Iranians or President Trump, you really need to think about that.

What is the mission here, right?

The mission of Iran is pretty simple.

Get the United States out of Iraq, make Iraq a proxy state, so that way Iran can control from Tehran all the way to the Mediterranean, a swath of land that they've always wanted to control.

Our

objective should be to have a stable secular Iraq that is a buffer to Iran.

Right now, if President Trump is smart,

and we'll find out pretty soon,

our goal is to make sure that we have an ally in Iraq

and not seek revenge and not allow the Iranians to have their goals met.

And if they keep that in mind instead of the idea of like revenge on a revenge, I think, you know,

we could, we as the United States could probably be in a better position.

We're going to take a quick break and be back with more with Ribbon Gago in a minute.

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So, I want to pick this up a little bit and talk about where we were leading into this situation

because,

again, this talk of revenge and what you had to do on the field and come back at it, war crimes, was making me think about Eddie Gallagher, the Navy SEAL who the president pardoned.

Yeah,

that has to land on your ears.

It pissed me off.

Yeah.

Especially because he was a commander.

You know,

he was supposed to set a higher bar for himself and for his men.

And, you know, he targeted innocent people.

He shot at a girl

that, according to some of his steel mates, and it got so bad that they turned him over, you know, and

You know, we in the military, there was mistakes that are made in combat all the time.

You know, one of my friends accidentally shot somebody.

It was something that it was a last-minute decision, but that happens.

But when you purposely target innocent people, you're just a monster.

And

the fact that this president allowed that to happen

and only encouraged it more than anything else is ridiculous.

I mean,

what struck me about it,

even beyond what happened with the pardon, is what came in that New York Times article that was about the testimony that was offered by all the other SEALs.

It just seems like to get to the point where they are offering that testimony.

It's bad.

Yeah, it's really bad.

And for the President of the United States to basically let it be swept under the rug, it only encourages more types of

dishonorable actions like that.

And look,

I don't know where it came from.

I don't know why you'd want to kill innocent people,

but that's not what the military is about.

I think it's a sad statement on our society that he is somehow made a hero because of this.

It's not where we want to be as a country.

It seems like it's on a continuum in the presence mind where he talks about

that being okay, pardoned Gallagher, obviously, and then talks about targeting cultural sites in Iran.

Yeah.

I mean, he just

doesn't understand war.

He doesn't understand war.

And I think he, I don't think he actually has like any type of moral code.

And if you have no moral code and you don't understand war, this is you know a perfect playing ground for you.

If you were out in the field and you got the order to

target, you would refuse.

I would refuse.

Do you think most of your

target innocent civilians in cultural sites?

I think most would.

We are trained to understand what war crimes are and have been trained to understand what war crimes are.

And I think most of them, given that order, would not do it.

I was talking to somebody yesterday who is not

in politics,

but not in government, and is trying to make sense of what's going on, who said,

what is this?

What are we doing here?

And I said, well, I'm not sure that I have the answer to that.

You are a congressman.

You are a veteran.

You are a member of the Armed Services Committee.

Do you know what's happening here?

I think, unfortunately, we're slowly, potentially escalating into a war that is unnecessary and one that only benefits Iran and in the long term, China and Russia, unfortunately.

I think you have a lifelong goal of a bunch of neocons that have been able to get themselves into the Trump White House that are trying to fulfill their fatalistic view of what the Middle East should be.

And you have somebody who's dumb enough and

being able to be manipulated by all types of people that Trump is the person that's going to fulfill that.

When you think that that person who you feel that way as a veteran about is the commander-in-chief.

Yeah, it's scary.

It's scary.

Look, these men and women are going to, they will do whatever I think is lawful

for this president.

The problem is that this president, I don't think, sees them as

America's forces.

He sees them as his forces and he is going to use them for whatever he believes is best for him, not for this country.

All of this takes place inevitably within within the political forum

because we're now in an election year.

Presidential race is going on.

And beyond that, it just

was amazing to me that when the solemn money strike happened,

within minutes, of course, on Twitter, people are sounding off on what they thought happened or what they think happens now.

That continues to be.

That's when the base was attacked.

What does that level of noise do to what's happening here?

here?

In some senses, I think it's actually good.

You know, if you think about what was happening around the Iraq war, there was this whole rush to basically make everyone that was anti-Iraq war like the

bad person, the other, the Saddam sympathizer.

And because communication was being controlled by, you know, basically four networks and a couple of newspapers, you know, it was pretty easy to do that.

Now, I think, especially because everything's 24 hours and everyone can communicate with each other for 24 hours you have people actually having direct discussions about the consequences of war and you know what we need to be having that um i'd rather have people discussing this the pros and cons of doing this than just like the ignorance uh that has been occurring for the last 18 years that has basically kept us in these endless wars i'd rather have people talking about it having strong debate about it uh so that way we don't end up just kind of you know fighting each other, banning the Dixie chicks and, you know, getting rid of, you know, French fries from cafeterias.

Remember all that stupid stuff?

It was the House cafeteria.

The House cafeteria.

That's not a vote that's coming up on the House floor.

But we literally did that.

And so I'm glad that we're having

this conversation.

I'm glad that both sides are having this conversation.

And

conservatives are just as engaged in the idea of limiting the power of the presidency when it comes to war

as Democrats

or as liberals.

So I'm glad to see that we're having this conversation.

So

I'm not mad that people automatically got in and started talking about it.

I think that's a good thing.

Have you heard from Republican colleagues that feel like there is an inclination to put a break on what's going on here?

Because it seems like a lot of the public discourse is very supportive of the president and what he's doing from Republicans to Congress.

You know, there was prior to the bombing.

You know, we're all just getting back in session, so we'll have to talk to them.

But

I think they'd be willing to help us curtail this power, but they're certainly not going at the same time trash the president.

Um, so you'll see like the good thing he did this, but

curta stuff.

Yeah,

there was a thing that went around, these memes of uh World War III, and all these people saying, oh, right.

Yeah,

what would you say to people who are doing those?

Calm down.

This is not

number one, you have to prepare yourself.

A war with Iran will be a totally different world war that we know.

I mean, we could basically destroy their navy, destroy

every air, you know, piece of aircraft platform they have, and we would still be at war, right?

What would it mean to be at war?

Like,

because we're not there now,

but you think we could get there.

What's the trigger?

The trigger?

Yeah.

I mean,

traditionally, the triggers for the United States are our basic principles that we've always kind of held, which is, you know, back our allies up, freedom of navigation of the water system.

So if they try to close a Strait of Hormuz is a good good example.

There's a lot of things.

It won't be Congress voting a declaration of war.

I don't believe so.

But war, you know, whenever one country tries to kill another country

men with the intent, that's war.

And

so a base being fired on is not war?

Of course.

I mean, it's a hard situation we're talking about.

So a base being fired on

with no intent to kill anybody is probably

an opportunity for us to de-escalate this.

So as I was telling you, Al-Assad, it's a massive base, and we're pretty sure that there was a heads up that this was coming.

And hopefully this is a time to de-escalate.

But what I'm trying to say is if we go to war with Iran, it's not going to be a bunch of men and women facing off on a line.

The way Iran is going to hurt us is they're just going to use their proxies all over the world, terrorist actions to basically put such a terror and fear, as well as just

cyber attacks, all these other things that are just basically going to harm us in ways that we are not going to be able to stop.

And that's why people, in my opinion,

aren't getting this idea of World War III.

That's just, it's overboard.

But doesn't mean that our war with Iran wouldn't be painful.

Aaron Powell, Jr.: But cyber attacks, is that a war?

That's the tricky thing here.

At some point,

we could be in a war if we're not there now.

There are people who are calling this a war already.

What is it?

Well, I think what you have to figure out is not what it is, but how to get out of it.

So let's say we can't define what war is, but you know things are bad.

Let's get out of it.

And the way to do that is through de-escalation.

And so how does that occur?

Well, you have the president through back channels convey to Iran, like, hey, we're all going back to our corners.

You know, no, no more funny business back and forth, and then we'll move from there.

The focus should be on trying to bring this down, not necessarily just to define it.

It's January 2020.

When do you think that we would see the end of this?

What is this?

That's what I keep asking you.

Look, I wish I could tell you.

I mean, if you would have asked me two weeks ago, I thought that we were in a situation that we were going to be fairly,

I was fairly confident that we were going to be able to pull out of Iraq sooner.

You had the Iraqi civilians that were out there protesting, trying to get rid of Iran influence.

They They were asking for, you know, more transparency and less corruption.

Government.

If you do those two things,

you know, we basically can pull out of there.

And now, I don't know.

So let's close with this.

I'll ask it again.

You are a member of the House Armed Services Committee.

Do you feel

any less confused and uncertain than Americans at large feel at this point?

I guess, you know, for me, this is kind of normal.

I mean, if you are ever in war, like I was, like, you were just, you just get so used to chaos and ambiguity.

Chaos like this?

I mean, when you saw that letter that was released by the Iraqi parliament, that then the American military says is a draft letter, doesn't that,

as a former

Marine, I guess you're never a former Marine.

Good, good.

as someone who was in combat and is no longer.

How about that?

But carries it with you.

As someone who is on the Armed Services Committee making decisions that relate to when you see the military doing that.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, it's scary, but let me tell you, like,

there were dumb asses in the war when I was there, too.

I mean, I

can't tell you how many times I ended up clearing the same village four times, you know, because somehow one general decided to move us from one place and didn't secure that place.

I mean,

we have some of the best minds that are in the Pentagon, but we also have some of the dumbest minds in the Pentagon.

And the question is, who's in charge that day?

My job is to do the best I can for my constituents and to protect definitely our armed services.

And

while it may be chaotic,

I need to keep going, need to do my job and recognize that,

especially under this administration,

this will happen a lot more often.

So, of between the best minds and the dumbest minds of the Pentagon, who seems to be in charge right now?

Well, at this point, that's the biggest problem.

I can't tell you who's in charge.

I don't know who the president's talking to.

I don't know who the president's giving advice.

And I think that's very, very scary.

I think I would rather have a president that has a definitive circle of friends that could give them advice.

But, you know, the problem at the end of the day is that you have a president that is just not ready for this job.

You know, President Trump's not ready to do this, and he's not intellectually or emotionally equipped to really be the president of the United States and deal with war in a way that separates his personal feelings from what is the best interest of this country and our armed services.

All right.

Well, we'll leave it on that happy note.

Happy note, yes.

Happy New Year.

Congressman Ruben Gallego, thank you for being here.

I'm ready to pick me up.

Thank you for having me.

That'll do it for this week of Radio Atlantic.

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