The Case for Mandatory National Service

Hi, I'm Juliet from New York Times Games and I'm here talking to fans about our games. So you play New York Times Games? Yes. Do you have a favorite? Connections. It just scratches an itch in my brain. It's really out of the box thinking with that game. I play with my husband every night. I refuse to let him play it without me. He will always get the purple first. And I always get like the fun ones that he doesn't think about. I love that it's like a real life connection while you guys play connections. Very sweet. I promised I didn't play that. You can play all New York Times Games at nytimes.com slash games or on our app . Hey, it's Natalie. There's no episode of the interview this week, so I wanted to share something else with you . An interview with General Stanley McChrystal from our colleagues in opinion . He's the former commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan and ran special operations during the war in Iraq. McChrystal recently appeared on an episode of the Opinions Podcast with the columnist David French. It's a thoughtful conversation between two veterans about the war in Iran, the challenge for American forces there , and the future of the conflict. To hear more conversations from our opinion colleagues, you can subscribe to the opinions wherever you get your podcasts. This podcast is supported by NRDC, the Natural Resources Defense Council. The Trump administration just carried out the largest environmental rollback in American history. They eliminated the endangerment finding, a core scientific and legal foundation for tackling climate pollution. This is illegal, and NRDC is suing to stop them. For a short time, listeners of the daily will have their gift matched to support their legal challenge. Go to NRDC.org /slash daily. My name is Dan Powell . I'm Marion Lozano . We are composers at the New York Times. And we write a lot of music for the daily. I'm currently working on a piece called Geometry . It's a musical moment of reflection to help the listener digest the story. This piece is for a space episode . I want to put the listener right into the deep darkness of space. For this cue, the producers wanted us to write something that would evoke the late 70s. I started with a bass line and then I added some drums to it. You said, can you like add twenty or thirty percent more funk to this? Yeah. We write music to highlight a moment, to draw you into the story without telling you how to feel. Yeah, it's always the puzzle to solve. So if you love the daily and you want us to keep making reflective, cosmic, sometimes groovy, but always subtle music for the show, support us by subscribing to the New York Times . I'm David French. I'm a columnist at the New York Times and I'm also a veteran . When I was thinking about who I could talk to about Trump's strategy in the world with an impact And one of them is General Stan McChristal. General McChristal is the former commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. He's the former head of Joint Special Operations Command. He served in Iraq when I was in Iraq. He has been called by former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates as perhaps the finest warrior and leader of men in combat I have ever met. And he's got a lot of interesting things to say about this conflict, including observations about the origin of the conflict, the challenge American forces face, the nature of the enemy that the United States is confronting, whether Israel and the United States have similar interests and goals in this conflict . And then we're gonna end with a discussion of leadership and service that I think that you will find very interesting. So without further ado, here is my conversation with General McChrystal Well General, thank you so much for joining us. All right, David, please call me Stan. Even though you're a former JAG officer, we gotta set the table at the beginning It's gonna be hard for me. It's gonna be hard for me. We served together in very different capacities. Uh I was a JAG officer for an armored cavalry squadron in eastern Diala province during 2007, 2008 . You were orchestrating one of the most effective and efficient special operations missions our nation's ever seen that really helped turn the tide of the war . And I want to actually begin our discussion of current events there , because there is something that I have seen since this most recent conflict with Iran broke out, and that is the veterans' perspective on this conflict, I think, is different than the perspective that a lot of the folks who didn't serve, especially in Iraq, have. And so even if someone is uh maybe objects to the way that this conflict began or has some questions about its prudence, there's a lot of feelings about Iran and Iran's role in the Iraq war and the losses and damage it inflicted upon us. And and so when I was in Eastern Diala , we lost guys to explosively formed penetrators, planted by Iranian-backed militias. So, General, if you could table set what has been the recent American experience and our sort of long-running conflict with Iran. Yeah. I think if we go back to the American experience starting in 1979, I was a young special forces officer, and I remember that the American embassy in Tehran was seized and there were people chanting death to America. And that was upsetting. And that was only a few years after Vietnam. And so I think America was vulnerable emotionally. And then suddenly you have this country that had been our ally, at least in the minds of most Americans, during the the peacock regime of the Shah from 53 to seventy eight. We'd felt comfortable with that. They were the bulwark of stability. And then suddenly in seventy nine we see these the Ayatollah Homani and he he doesn't want to negotiate. And then we watched a war break out between Iraq and Iran. And most of us were far enough away to say, wow, good, somebody's taking on the Iranians. They don't like Americans, so it's somebody taking 'em on. And then in nineteen eighty eight, the US Vincen z mistook an Iranian airliner for an attacking F fourteen they thought it was and they killed two hundred and ninety civilians. So if you take that period, Iran seemed like a recalcitrant enemy that hated us for some reason that we couldn't really under stand. Right. And then we get into two thousand seven when you were in Diala , and I'm leading a counterterrorist task force, we had to stand up an entirely new task force focused on the Shia militia that were supported by Iran, so the explosively formed projectiles, and all of the things that Iran did to to give them capability and it became a bitter fight. in the minds of someone like me and my force, of course they were the enemy. They were killing us and and we were killing them. And it looked as though they were also a threat not just to the mission in Iraq, but the stability across the region. So it becomes an emotional feels like our lifelong enemies. Now I I'll stop there but tell you I think that's only part of the story. Well, I mean of course if you're gonna say if that's only part of the story we have to keep going because , you know, if you wind it down when say the surge started to wind down around 08, 2009, 2010, there was a real sense that we had won in many ways that we had really turned the tide by the time I left in late oh eight. Uh I remember the statistics when uh when we got there it was about a twenty five percent chance if you if you drove out of the front gate of our base. It's about twenty a-five percent chance of enemy contact, whether it's an IED, sniper fire, rockets, mortars, whatever. By the time we left, it was less than one percent chance. But the story doesn't end there, of course, in general. The story keeps going, and Iranian supported militias have been a thorn in our side, really, in Iraq ever since. So let let's pick it up after the surge. What happens next? Aaron Ross Powell that's really pick it up before that, because I think it's important. We have a tendency in America to view things in very short periods. Our year in Iraq, or in my case, five years in Iraq. Right. But it really starts in nineteen fifty-three when the U.S. and British intelligence services overthrew the constitutionally elected prime minister and put back into power the Peacock regime of the Shah . They oppressed the people tremendously through So when the Iranian revolution erupts in 1978, we may be surprised. The Iranian people are not surprised. Right. And when they suddenly say death to America, most Americans are say, what's your problem? What why why are you angry at us? And then of course we we spoke earlier about the Iran-Iraq war, which was for eight years, it was this brutal bloodletting. And so Iran survives this eight-year extraordinary experience , twice as long as the First World War, and it sets a a mark upon the Iranian population that we shouldn't forget to this day because the baby boomers are veterans of that experience. And the clerics get a lot of support from them. So then after 200 2, when George W. Bush names Iran to the axis of evil, reportedly to their surprise, you start to continue this set of grievances. So I I try to remind people, whenever we think of what's happening now, if we don't understand that journey to this point, we don't understand the attitudes that are gonna drive decisions people make. So I I'm I'm so glad we have dived into this from the Iranian perspective, because I think understanding the Iranian perspective it really helps us maybe understand how the rest of this war might go. What kind of staying power, for example, the Iranians might have. And there have been comparisons, for example, to the lightning quick raid to get Maduro out of Venezuela, that was there some expectation that you could do something very rapid, very fast to decapitation strike and really alter the behavior and composition of the regime in a substantial way. And my perception of that from the beginning was that that was a bit of a vain hope because you have a very different composition of the enemy when you're talking about say a South American strongman versus a Islamic revolutionary regime, that the level of commitment that exists within the regime is just something it's theological, sometimes it's apocalyptic. When we were in Iraq taking on Shia militias, the level of their commitment was such that, you know, for example, the medics who were treating wounded Shia fighter s would sometimes report that the Shia fighters, even gravely wounded, would try to bite them or harm them in some way, even though they were gravely wounded. That was the level of commitment. So we hear a lot about that the Iranian people are ready to rise up, that they're ready to overthrow this government, but at the same time, we have seen extreme levels of commitment, even to the point of a million plus casual ties. How are you judging sort of the state of the Iranian opposition at this moment? Is it brittle? Is it fragile? Or are you seeing that 47-year-long commitment continuing? Yeah. Uh I really want to go two lines on this. The first is that question. I don't know because the Iranian opposition is not really evident. We saw in 2009 they came in the streets and they were sort of beaten back into submission, and then reportedly thousands of Iranians protesting were killed by the regime in recent months. But I couldn't name the opposition leader. Right. I couldn't tell you the liber ation front of Iran . And I know that the Shah's son is going around, but I don't think he's a legitimate alternative. I think that we can't gauge the actual strength of the desire of Iranian people to change. And of course, a war will often cause people to coalesce around their government, to coalesce around in your in your really well written article today you said something I really believe in. You said I'm an American I want our side to win. I feel the same way. Even though I disagree with many of the things my government 's doing, I'm unequivocal on this side. And that may be the case. The other thing I want to talk about though is, because you brought up the Maduro rate, there are three great seductions that happen to American administ rations and to military. The first is the idea of covert action. And a new president comes in and he's told by the intelligence community, we can create this great effect and it will be covert. No one will ever know who did it and it'll just be a good outcome. And in my experience, it never stays covert and it rarely works. But it's seductive because it seems like an easy approach to a naughty problem. The second seduction is , which I lived as a part of is the surgical special oper ations raid. And that that is probably epitomized by the Maduro raid. And I would argue that we demonstrated extraordinary competence that night, but not much changed. I don't think that we actually demonstrated the ability to change the facts on the ground to any extent, which gets to the third great seduction, and that's air power. And you know, we all love air power. Um in World War II, we went into the war with the Duhay theories that air power, the bomber will always get through, and therefore air power will be dominant. And it was certainly very, very uh contributory, but it was never dominant. When we got into Vietnam, which was the classic case, and we developed a strategy that said for North Vietnam, we will have a reestat and an escalation strategy, and we will raise the pressure on them until we hit the point at which they're willing to quit. It's not worth it anymore. What we didn't perceive is like the Shia wounded that your medics ran into, there was no point for North Vietnam. They were asymmetrically committed to the outcome. And so we've entered Iraq in two thousand three was shock and awe, and then we spent a decade there fighting after it. Um I think that we fell for the seduction that if we bomb key targets that we will produce the outcome we want, but the outcomes in the minds of the people. And unless you're going to kill all the people , you may not affect that outcome. So we may be at a point, you use the word in your article, Quagmire, but we may be in a point where we've run into a country that has an extraordinary capacity to be bombed. Right. General, let me let me make the case to you that has been made to me about air power in this current war. And that is, David, everything that you've walked through from the daylight bombing raids in 1943 to the air war over Kuwait, you know, during Desert Storm, all of those things, we just weren't as capable then as we are now. We have loitering drones, we have high visibility over the battlefield, we have in connection with the Israelis, we have deep penetration into the Iranian regime. This time it is different. This time we have more capability. What's your response to that argument? Yeah, I since I've retired from the military, I've been involved in some investing and I love that line. This time it's different. And yeah, I go, okay. I agree. The capability is so much more. And I have to keep an open mind that it is possible that the dynamic has changed so much that we finally hit a tipping point where it will be uh decisive. But I'm not seeing that and I don't feel that. And the other part that I would bring out is we thought really early in Afghanistan that the people on the ground who we were targeting would be awed and intimidated by the bombing, and that they would respect our capability. In many ways, what we found, particularly with the tribal members, they were disdainful of it. They they knew you could bomb 'em, but they said if you're not willing to get down on the ground, look me in the eye and fight me mono womano , then you are not morally on my uh level. And I think that we can't forget that people fight because of their passions. It's not a geopolitical uh calculation that's going to drive what Iran does eventually. It will be what's in their hearts. And so this idea of decapitating the regime, and we've got this current leader. Well, we killed his father, we killed his wife. We apparently banged him up pretty good. And then we say, well, that will make him more willing to negotiate. Right. It wouldn't have that effect on me. No. And it's 100% opposite of my own experience in dealing with Al-Qaeda. Right. So, you know, one of the things that I I you just sort of see this when you've been in the military and you're out of the military. One thing I'm very grateful for is that the military is still the most highly respected public institution in the United States. And I think there are a lot of good reasons for that. But it has also sort of led to a sense that we're supermen, that that the military can accomplish almost the impossible. And so we look at a situation like the Strait of Hormuz is closed, and we think, we can open that. Of course, we can open that . So just give us some perspective on as a practical realistic matter, why is it hard? Why would it be hard to force open the Strait of Ormuz? Or would it be hard? Yeah. It would be hard to keep it open. And so it is like what we found in Iraq. We could bomb Iraq pretty easily. We could even take Baghdad with relative ease. We could get rid of the existing government. But once we wanted to change the reality on the ground, who actually controlled things, how things worked, now you're not at 30,000 feet , you're at six feet and you're the same height as your potential opponent. And I tell people about this war, if you like this war, enjoy this first part because this is the best part. Where we've got ships potentially facing mines or even autonomous surface and under surface aircraft, all the different threats that they can bring out just to make it lousy, and it's not not they're all coming after US warships. They don't have to. They only have to shoot a civilian tanker or uh cargo vessel, you know, once a week. Right. And then then people go, Well, I I don't know what day they're gonna strike somebody, so I'm not gonna let my ships go now. And so they can have an effect with a fairly low level of effectiveness. And the insurers won't insure the ships in that circumstance. The financial risk becomes unacceptable, which renders it virtually impossible to transit the strait. Because nobody's doing that with no insurance, with total financial exposure. So, General, when we're talking about the risks of the current war, there's been such an emphasis on the econom ic risk. In other words, that if the Strait of Hormos remain closed or nearly closed, that we're going to talk about higher gas prices, rippling economic problems across the globe. We've been hearing about budgetary risks. The administration is seeking 200 billion or more dollars. But there's also another risk, which is above these, the risk to the human lives of the soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines who are out there. And so how are you seeing the risk here to human life? What kind of escalating risks would we be facing to our own service members in this conflict. Yeah, I think it's great to bring up because we've fortunately suffered few casualties to date, but every casualty has a family and carries a loss, and we need to remember that. But if the war were to drag on, and for example, if it gets grittier, if we get forces on the ground, whether they're inside Iran or in in neighboring areas, casualties will go up. Frustration will go up. Now we have a volunteer military now, so it's largely limited to people who self-selected in. But the reality is there is part of our society that goes in the military, and there's a lot of our society that does not. And there starts to be a divide that comes from that and a resentment. And those are dynamics that you don't see early in a war, but over time come home. So General, one thing that concerns me is this sort of civilian military divide that we do have a only a very small percentage of people who serve. The greatest, I believe it's still the case that the greatest indicator of of service for you is that you had a family member serve. So it's a small self-perpetuating part of our culture. And I'm not sure that's necessarily healthy for us over the long term that we essentially have a soldier caste or a warrior class that defends this democracy, but is increasingly separate from the rest of our society and culture. One of the questions I have is do you see that yourself also? And do you think that that could result potentially in a too great a willingness to use force? Obviously, we have an extremely respected military, very trusted military, but do you see warning signs in that kind of divide? Aaron Powell Well I do on several ways. One, I agree with you. largely professional and apolitical and all the good things. But if you think about it, the propensity to go to war, at the end of the day, people who are professional soldiers, they have a reason to want conflict. I mean, the reality is it gives you a chance to work your craft and promotions. I mean, so they wouldn't even really think about it directly, but you become incentivized for the kinds of military actions that give that opportunity. Plus, it increases defense budgets and whatnot. And then the other great danger is the more insulated the force is, the more uh potential for polit ization. Particularly you have in the current environment where there have been generals fired simply because they don't fit in politically to the current administration , you start to shape that military and it starts to maybe align with a certain political leaning. When I was in the service, you never knew what your peers felt politically. You never talked about it. Right. And I think that that's under pressure. And so I think the danger of having this separate entity is that after a while it starts to think of itself as as we've seen in some countries sort of the the guardians of the republic or of the nation. Right. So let's even get a little bit bigger picture for a moment . How do you see this conflict fitting in with a more global grand American strategy? Or does it fit in with a particular grand American strategy? Because we've had a lot of debates over the 10 years of the Trump era. Is the isolationist? And I think that that has sort of people have turned the page on that. Is he a guy who is interested in spheres of influence? Where are you seeing the Trump sort of, for lack of a better term, grand strategy in Trump 2.0. Yeah, I think the first thing we saw that was obvious is the America first idea economically. The tariffs were designed to encourage ons horing, things like that , the direct confrontation economically with China, same thing. But then you step back from that and you say, okay, what really provides security in a world that's interconnected? We can onshore things , but the reality it's still interconnected and it's gonna stay that way. We're not gonna undo that . Well, in my view, it is credibility in the world. It is alliances , it is relationships you can trust on, it is the rule of law writ large, international norms and rules and things like that. And I think President Trump took most of those on and said they're unfair to America . Uh you allies don't carry your weight or any number of things. And so he weakened institutions , he challenged norms , he in many cases elimin ated relationships that we had under the idea that that was going to uh advantage the strongest dog left on the on the block, which would be us. And I think that's proven not to be true. You can't be that strong to do that. I think the recent um adventurism, I'll call it, I think it it comes from this idea that there was a fair amount of success in threatening people early. I could threaten Canada. I could threaten Greenland. And there was no cost to it. Now there was no military action taken, but there was no cost to it. And then shooting at the drug boats in the Caribbean was sort of a muscular way to do something. I don't think it had any effect, but but to do something. The Maduro raid, I think , crossed a point in which the president got seduced by one of the things I mentioned, the idea that you can do something on the cheap if you're clever enough. And And you can pull it off. The thing about special oper ations missions is they are high risk. And we say, well, they're high risk, but they always work. No, they don't. That's what makes them high risk. Right. So I think he got emboldened by that. And then I think that the other uh dynamic was of course Israel. The October seventh attacks created a dynamic in Israel and then that the operations in Gaza. And then there has been a dynamic driven by Prime Minister Netanyahu largely to expand Israel's security, expand Israel's power, expand all of the things that he would like, and to do away with the boogeyman, which was Iran . Those became just absolutely defin ing objectives that President Trump had always been in sympathy with, and now I think he sort of got caught up in the current of. You know, it it starts moving that way. Know there is a phrase used before October 7th, mowing the lawn or mowing the grass, where essentially periodically you have conflict with Hamas or Hezbollah, and you knock them back. You knock them back on their heels and it takes them months or years to recover. And you just can sort of cycle, rinse, repeat, and just keep doing that. But I think October 7th, in my view, should have blown up that idea that that they had quote unquote mowed the grass time and time again, and then Hamas , far from being cowed, was plotting this horrific, horrific, purely evil massacre. And so that creates this situation , you have threatening enemies, you have enemies who wish you harm, but you have no real capacity, you have an enormous capacity to damage them, but you have no real capacity to eliminate Aaron Powell It is. And we've seen it around the world. You see it in the West Bank now. You see the reality that all of the resentment you create through what you do now at some point comes back to you. I think that for everyone we kill in bombing Iran, they have a brother, sister, father, mother and they are unlikely to go, oh yeah, it's okay. You killed my father, but yeah, it was geopolitical necessity on your part. That's not the way we respond. And so it's sometimes it's necessary. I don't deny that some wars are just and required , but no wars that I'm familiar with are neat, clean, or produce the kind of outcome we actually want. They produce this messy thing that might be better than before the war, but it's not a lot better. So let's move on to some other issues. So one of the things that I am often asked about is leadership and leadership within the military. And you know, you have been described as one of the finest leaders of men in combat in the modern American military. And what we are seeing right now in the current Secretary of Defense is a very an enormous amount of bravado. Sort of a we are lethal. We we will kill you. We will destroy you. You've got the you know the bench pressing and the push-ups and the all of the everything. And I get a a lot of questions. How does this land with soldiers? And my perspective of it has been, well, with some soldiers it lands, they really like it. You know, uh uh they like it when a senior leader will get their hands dirty. They like it when a senior leader is fit and that they can share, like they can do the same things that the the guys on the line do. But at the same time, in my experience, bravado is not necessarily really appreciated. Um, it's a more of a show-don't tell culture in the military. Uh, you've led men in combat for much of your life. Talk to me a bit about sort of that line between sort of bravado and cool, calm professionalism. How do you see all of that? Um I'm disappointed by the current atmosphere that is communicated from the top. I had the honor and opportunity to serve with some of the most elite forces, people who really did some extraordinary things, but they didn't beat their chest about it. Right. And they weren't braggadocious and they didn't talk about, yeah, we love killing people . Now the danger though of some of that verbiage now is much of the force is 18 years old. Right. And and it's influenza ble. And they see that and they go, wow, that's the way we ought to think, that's the way we ought to be. We are superior. And there's another reality that even in particular in today's military , you know, the number of people who really need to have big bice ps and be able to kick open the door is is minuscule. Right. Because most of the force is intelligence, communications, logistics, all the enab lers that allow you to with great accuracy put that very small number of operators. So when you say all people should look like me, that would be a disaster. Mm-hmm. You know, I think people ought to look like whatever they look like so that they are capable in their jobs. I think, you know, the idea that we wouldn't want gay or transgender service members to serve if they're good is preposterous. I want who's ever good to serve. And you also get different perspectives. And what we found in the counterterrorist force when I was young, it was sort of homogeneous, it was sort of white males with, you know, good posture . And by the time you got to Iraq 2007, as we had matured, it had become a meritocracy of older men and women, young people, all this different because they had proven they were contributory to the fight. So your ticket to being accepted was no longer just your bench press. It was now are you smart? Are you committed? Will you be a good colleague? And and that became a much healthier force. If we would think that way, I think it's a healthier way for for military service to be. And I even have a problem with the word warrior. And it's not because you can't say well, the warrior ethos is bad, but traditionally warriors were separate from soldiers. And the difference between an army and a mob is discipline and leadershi p and the uniform code of military justice. It's why we operate in a certain controlled way. Because when you give young people the ability to carry weapons that can take life, you have to have a level of discipline, part of which is values and culture, and part of it is just military prescribed discipline. It's essential. Yeah. You know, if uh I think of it like this, big brains are more important than big biceps. And if any military force in the world is teaching us that right now, it's Ukraine, which has used innovation, especially in drone warfare. That's right. They're still surprising us. It feels like I don't know, you know, you may be less surprised than me, General, but it Ukraine is consistently surprising me every six to nine months with its extraordinary resilience. And you know, uh just to switch gears a tiny bit from Iran, it feels to me as if one of the outcomes, if we are able to achieve a satisfactory resolution in the fight against and Ukraine's fight against Russia, that at the end of the day we will have added to the Western Alliance one of the most capable militar ies and most potent militaries in the world at the end of this conflict. Yeah. I mean you there is no way to take away the value of on the ground experience and that experience of having to innovate. Armies don't innovate well in peacetime. Too many limitations. In wartime, particularly to survive, Ukraine has been just a hotbed of constant innovation. And so if we're not going to school on that, and if we're not trying to replicate that energy to innovate in our force, then we're missing a requirement. Well, General, you've been very generous with your time, but I wanted to end because I want you to give you a chance to tell me how wrong I am about something. And that is uh you've been an advocate for national service, uh a mandatory national service for young people. And I'm a huge believer in service. Uh one of my greatest regrets in my life is I didn't join the military until I was in my mid-30s. I wish I had done it when I was much younger. General, I can tell you a mid-thir a 36 year old lawyer in in officer basic is not the greatest sight in the world, I have to say. But I'm I made it through. So I'm I'm a huge believer in service, whether it's joining the military, teach for America, Peace Corps, you name it, but that sort of libertarian side of me is saying it's too much to make people do it. It's we should urge them, we should not make them. But my understanding is you're an advocate of sort of a mandatory national service, not a conscription into the military necessarily, but national service. Tell me your perspective on that. Why is my voluntary emphasis going to be ultimately wrong? Yeah, it's funny because when I first thought about national service, I thought mandatory and, then they talked me off the ledge and they said no, it needs to be voluntary. And so for a decade, I hewed to the line that it should be voluntary, but expected, culturally expected. I'm back to mandatory now. And so I I go back to why did thirty-six-year-old David French go into the military and go to serve? Because he was not the same person that he was at 17 or 18. If you had been as mature then, you'd have done service then. Maybe teach for America something. The point is, my life choices at 17 or 18 weren't the best. And they're on record as having been very problematic. But the point is I think if we wait for everybody to arrive at the right answer, just way too many, and they're you are affected by your peers and whatnot. I think if we just said the heck with it, it's mandatory. And give a range of different options. But what I think it would do is it would be a great leveler in American society. It would be something that every