Understanding Trump’s Iran Leadership Failures

sub-basement of the Ministry of Snark in Washington, D.C. and from other undisclosed locations

across America and around the world. Hello and welcome to Deep State Radio, I'm David Rothkoff your host and this week we have a special episode of Deep State Radio because we're going to talk about breaking news that's of great consequence with a great expert and friend general Mark Hertling former Commander of US Army in Europe and also the author of a really moving and compelling new book called

"If I Don't Return," a father's wartime journal, which actually resonates with the news

“in some important ways, so first of all Mark, welcome and congratulations on the book.”

Thank you, David, it's good to be back with you and I hope you say hello to your wife as well, with the chocolate chip cookies, my wife has been helping with. Yeah, yeah, well that's that I will pass that on although the cookie baker is my sister, it's not my wife, my wife is more, she cuts them off of the role of cookies from the either way, from the supermarket, but in any event very, very grateful that you could take

the time to join us, I know you're very busy. We're recording this on a Wednesday afternoon following a just extraordinary Tuesday here in the United States, which began a little after a day, I'm yesterday with the president of the United States threatening to wipe Iranian civilization, which has existed for something in excess of 7,000 years off the face of the earth, and then with the world holding its

breath until the very last minute, when last night, a so-called deal between the United States and Iran to produce a two-week ceasefire was announced and then almost immediately began to unravel, and as somebody has spent a lot of your life in this part of the world, and dealing with situations like this, I just before I get into any sort of pithy questions,

“I'd just like to ask, what was your reaction to yesterday?”

Yeah, David, I think a lot of people were sitting on their hand just today and anticipating what might happen. There were quite a few questions that I was asked to answer and truthfully didn't have the answer to of whether or not some of the president and the secretary of defense orders would be executed fully based on what he had said in several true social posts and what

the secretary had reinforced in terms of destroying civilian infrastructure and bombing critical

energy supplies and desalination plants and the light that would certainly harm the citizens of Iran and were not military targets. You add to those the question about the capability of the size of the force that the president had dispatched through the secretary of defense to the region and what could they possibly do in terms of any kind of a land conflict associated with the missile strikes and the

naval strikes against targets, against targets using kinetic means from above.

So there were several things that I was watching very closely, first of all, the most important

thing to me was would military commanders execute what many would consider unlawful orders.

“I mean, I think we can all agree whether you're left or right, Republican or Democrat.”

I think we should all agree, although it hasn't seem to be this way, that what the president was suggesting was genocide against the Persian people and a complete destruction of a culture and a nation and that's a war crime. There's no doubt about it. You can take legal scholars from all over and they will all tell you that it's a war crime.

Whether or not he was going to do that and whether or not the military would execute those plants. As the day went on, I was starting to get information from some sources that said that

been asked to strike and if that was truly the case, if that did happen, I don't know if

“that was part of the calculation that created the path toward cessation of hostilities.”

I'm not going to call it a ceasefire because it isn't, but the potential for a cessation of hostilities, I don't know. But certainly, even up to, I guess it was about an hour and a half before the eight o'clock time frame that we were relieved to hear that a peace process had started and that there was going to be hesitation and conducting the strikes, although even as part of that, there

were a lot of photos displayed around the internet and social media, B-52 bombers taking

off from England, heading with F-16, escort fighters toward the nations of the Middle East. So even that was a little bit concerning because it seemed like it was full speed ahead

“for all the things that were going to happen.”

So I'll wrap there, David, I've talked too much already, but it was a very interesting day for a lot of us who were tracking what was going on. Now I'm sure parts of America had no concern at all and what was happening, some wanted it to happen.

I'm sure some of the presidents followers, but truthfully, when you know the implications

of going to war, full-scale war where there's going to be potentially soldiers and Marines on the ground and a massive bombing campaign even more than had been conducted over the past month, it was troubling to see all that come to a conclusion. When we still didn't know what this strategic objectives are of this conflict.

“First of all, you can't talk too much here, you're the guest and that's why that's”

why we're having this conversation. But let me dig a little deeper into your reactions to yesterday and then I want to talk about your reactions to the so-called deal because you know, you've been involved in conflicts in this part of the world, but you've also been closely involved in relations with our allies. When our allies were uncomfortable with this war from the beginning, whether it's regional

allies or NATO allies, but no US ally had ever seen an American presidency, I'm going to wipe a civilization away and I would point out by the way for those of you who are not familiar with the letter and law of the Geneva Convention, that it's a violation of the Geneva Convention even to threaten to do what he did in order to spread terror among a populace. So you know, he had already violated the Convention simply with his true social posts.

But it has to shake, I mean, some of the people in, for example, in NATO, they've been like trying to get along with Trump, you know, in the Secretary General of NATO is here today and he's been sort of the lead cheerleader, let's find a way to get along with Trump, but it has to shake them to their very core, I would imagine, when he's willing to sort of throw out decades and decades of international law and the lessons of the past century.

Well, I'll go beyond that, David, because yes, that certainly has, has stymied our European partners to be sure it also probably has confused some of our Middle Eastern partners as well as partners in the Far East, the way Japan and South Korea have reacted to this are also fascinating, but it goes beyond that to me because what he's not only saying is what he's asking other people to do and it's, it's harming in my view, it's harming the institutions

of our country and when we have our allies and partners questioning the kind of, I don't know, if I want to use the word sanity of the leader of the free world in terms of these kind of pronouncements, it goes beyond just questioning him. I've talked to allies and partners from my old stomping grounds in Europe who have said, "Hey look, for a while this was just President Trump that we thought was going a little bit off skew." But now we're thinking

be going along with this and just waiting to see what happens next, why aren't you stopping

him? And that's truthfully a question I can't answer. I don't understand why the Congress of the United States is not stopping some of these actions or at the minimum standing up and saying you've just suggested the United States commit massive genocide. Like you said, that in and of itself is somewhat of a terrorist act and against the law. So that's where I think some of our allies are truly questioning not just President Trump, but all of the

“Americans. To stay up to date on all the news that you need to know, there's no better”

place than right here on the DSR network. And there's no better way to enjoy the DSR network

than by becoming a member. Members enjoying ad-free listening experience access to our discord community, exclusive content, early episode access and more. Use code DSR 26 for a 25% off discount on sign up at the DSR network.com. That's code DSR 26 at the DSR network.com/by. Thank you and enjoy the show. Yeah, so let me pick up on another thing that you said because I find it interesting and

we had another conversation here yesterday that touched upon it as well. And that's how do you look at it as a professional military officer? You know, there's been a lot in the paper and a lot in the news the past few months about purges within the Pentagon about the number of senior generals and admirals who've been relieved from duty because or pushed out because either a, they were women or people of color, or b, they were resisting orders.

They thought we're illegal, including Admiral Hose who was the commander of Southcom who apparently objected to some of the orders to go after and destroy a small craft in the

“Caribbean. And so, you know, the question I think there was on a lot of minds was, who stands”

up, how do they stand up? And you implied that some people were beginning to push back and we've seen some reports about the Admiral who's the commander of Sentcom doing that. And I'm just wondering how deep-seated this is and whether, you know, Pete Heggseth can throw people out the window fast enough to offset the training and the oaths of the senior officers the U.S. military? Well, you know, I'm going to take that and take it in a new direction

because I firmly believe that military officers will not disobey what they know or definitely illegal orders, unlawful orders. But that's one category. The other thing is what we're seeing in terms of the reporting about General George, the Chief of Staff of the Army, who was asked

“to put in his retirement papers, and the reporting suggests that there was heated discussions”

about just simply removing four officers from a Brigadier General promotion list. Now, I don't know if that was the last straw, if there were other things that he pushed back on, I don't know. But that's a relatively minor thing when a Chief of an Army goes to the Secretary of Defense and saying, "Why are you pulling these guys off a list? What the heck is going on? Why are you doing this?" That's just questioning. And, you know, I've been taught

through my four decades career that disagreements should not be disrespect. You're trying to provide another point of view to your senior commanders or senior civilian leaders.

And I've never seen, during my time in the military, even in my one year in the Pentagon,

or my two years in the Pentagon under Secretary Runsfeld, where anyone considered someone speaking up as being grounds for dismissal or telling them to tender their resignation. You know, they may have had a little bit of anger at the time and clash with behind-close doors, but it's never resulted in the kind of, you know, I'm going to use the word you used a minute ago, "Purch," that we're seeing, where more four-star generals have

been told the retire or resign, and additionally, a lot of three-star generals who were

I think, you know, questioning of our institution of the military. So there have been it appears to me a lot of people who have stood up. Now, the one that struck me as long as we mentioned, I wrote an article about the moral high ground that was in the old work the other day, and it had to do with one of the individuals of the three that were asked to resign last Friday. There was the Chief of Staff of the Army, General George, the Chief

of Training and Transformation Command, a four-star general Dave Hodney, but the third one

was Chaplain Bill Green, who I know, two-star general. Now, I mean, you could say a lot of that, and I don't know what went on behind the scenes or what caused Secretary Higgs that to ask for this guy's retirement one year into a four-year assignment as the Chief of Chaplains. But, you know, you got to be doing something really bizarre to have a chaplain relieved within the Army. That to me is unfortunate. The other thing I'd say too, I mean,

we're monitoring what Pope Leo, and I'm a Catholic. I'll admit that that Pope Leo is also standing up to President Trump. And boy, David, when you piss off the Pope, that's a unique

“day, I think. And we're seeing a lot of that happening.”

Well, also, as I know that, you know, I know you a little bit, and I know that you have taught leadership and written and spoken about it. And, you know, it's a pretty strange strategy that Higgs at this following, when you consider that about a third of the U.S. military

is not Christian, and he is waging this kind of Christian more. And of the 70 percent who

are Christian, big chunk of them are Catholics, so they're not in the evangelical group that he is favoring. About 35 percent of the military are people of color, 20 or 25 percent of the military are women. Other words, do the math. The majority of people in the military are groups that he is alienating. That doesn't seem to me a way to run the biggest, most complex organization in the world. Yeah. And what I'd say is that was one of the considerations

when Mr. Higgs-Seth was recommended for the Secretary of Defense, would he be an individual who could not only manage and lead one of the two largest departments in our U.S. government,

“but could he also understand the other implications of the kinds of things he had to do?”

And, and truthfully, as I said at the beginning of his tenure as the Secretary of Defense, there's no one in the world completely prepared to take on the role of Secretary of Defense. Anyone that takes that role on is going to have a high learning curve because it is not only a huge business, but it's a worldwide multinational, if you will, company that you have to control 24 hours a day that unlike other multinational companies deals in life and death.

So you've got to be pretty on your game to run that kind of organization, and it seems to me that a lot of the bravado and the swagger that the Secretary is exhibiting doesn't comport with the kind of gravitas that one shouldn't should exhibit when they're running such a department. I'm Teresa and my experience in all entrepreneurs started a choppy fire erfolgreich through it.

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Yeah, absolutely great. Let me switch the focus here a little bit to your book, which is, again, it's called,

“if I don't return a father's wartime journal, and I think, you know, for all the”

wrong reasons, the timing of the book is exquisite, right? Because I don't know that you intended to put it out just as a new war and the region was breaking out, but, you know, it's quite striking to me that here you wrote this book about a journal that you put together when you were a major on the front line of what we

who was, you know, on the front line in a conflict like that might have about your own

“fate and your family's fate after that and everything.”

And I want to get to that in a second, but the other thing that strikes me is, you know,

you're putting this book out now and we're still fighting there, and you've gone back a couple of times in the course of your career and been involved in the battles associated with what we called the global war on terror. We can't seem to get out of this region, but it also seems to me that our approach is radically different.

I mean, whether you thought that the first Gulf War was a good idea or a bad idea, you know, there was this sense that we were acting and response to international law, that we were seeking coalitions, that we were seeking to convey what was happening to the public in a clear

way in order to maintain public support for it, it's just, it's not just, you know, whatever

it is 35 years ago, it seems like a light years ago in terms of attitude and approach. And I was just wondering if you might reflect on that. Yeah. Well, I'll set the context, David, and thanks for asking about it, but this was not a book I intended to write, and it was certainly not a book I intended to write during this period,

but it was something that it was based on a journal I wrote, as you said, in 1991, because we were told the unit I was with was told during Desert Storm, that we would suffer 50% casualties. And when you think about that as a young major, and you've got two small boys, like we have at the time, seven and 10 years old, you start thinking to yourself, what can I teach them if I don't come home?

“What can I leave for them as a method of bringing them into manhood?”

So I started writing this journal during the Desert Storm. 35, well, 34 years later, our youngest son, and our oldest son, we're both soldiers and who went back to fight in that same war you were talking about in the Middle East in Iraq. Our youngest son had gave me a gift of taking that journal unbeknownst to me, and typing it up into a word document, and putting pictures in it, and he presented it to me in Christmas

of 24, and he said, "Hey, Dad, he said, my brother and I knew what you were trying to do when we read this journal, you were trying to prepare us if you didn't come home." He said, "But you've since lived 35 more years, you've had more experiences, you've gone

back to war, we have gone to war, even though you hoped that we would never have to back

when we were seven and 10."

“So he said, "Continue on with the story for your grandchildren and talk about leadership”

and culture and religion and fear and emotions and combat." If you talk about just the combat piece of this, David, and I try and reflect on all those things after the journal entries. And by the way, it was pretty easy to write this book because I had the outline in the original journal entries. I just took the original journal entries and added more content to each one of them based

on what I had learned over the years. If you looked at 1991 Desert Storm, that was a conventional kind of war fight. Tanks against tanks, soldiers, uniform soldiers against uniform soldiers. The next time I went to Iraq was in 2003 and it was a complex counter insurgency after the initial run-up to Baghdad.

And for 15 months, we fought that complex counter insurgency. I went back again in 2007 and the war had changed to a counter terrorism and stabilization nation building fight. So in three different times through Iraq, and then the times that occurred after I left for the last time in 2008, the war continued to change.

And to your point of what you were saying just a minute ago, it continues to change. I mean, who would have thought that there would have been a, you know, one month-long plus air campaign, devastating air campaign against the neighboring country of Iraq with no ground incursions, other than perhaps special operations in a recovery operation. And very little strategic objectives issued by the president and much smaller numbers of coalition

forces that are part of our allies contributing, and in fact this time, instead of like in 1991, where we were attempting to free a nation that had been invaded that was Kuwait.

No matter how much we despise Iran and their leadership, but we were invading a sovereign country without help or without approval of Congress. So I could continue to write that particular section of the book, but I haven't. And I'm not going to based on the last month of activity. Yeah.

Well, and of course we don't know where that last month of activity is going to go.

“But I think one of the things that I found most chilling about Trump's statement yesterday,”

and the way Trump behaves with regard to war is that, you know, it almost seems like, you know, his familiarity with conflict has nothing to do. It's nothing like yours, right? He was a draft Dodger. His familiarity with conflict is from the movies.

He's always saying this person looks like they're from central casting or that person looks

like they're from central casting. He's very caught up in the branding and the terminology of the wars and he tries to look and sound like he thinks a tough leader sounds.

“And one of the consequences of that is that is incredibly dehumanizing that you just”

don't appreciate the individual human beings who are involved, whether they're fighting for your aside or whether they're the victims on the other side or their civilians. And some of the bits I've read of your book, you know, I don't want us playing volleyball with the other ones Iraqi defectors or veterans or barring people who are left, rotting in the desert, you know, when you're fighting the way you fought, the human side of war

is apparent. And when you're fighting a war from Washington via 35,000 feet level bombing runs, the humans,

and that critical component comes out of the picture.

And to me, this is kind of where we've come to at this point.

“And if he doesn't talk actually to military leaders who have had the experiences that”

you've had, he's just not going to understand the real consequences of what he's doing. I'm wondering if that kind of thing ever crosses your mind as well. It most certainly does, and what I've concluded, David, is that he is very enamored with the U.S. military, because he has seen during his time in the presidency how effective and efficient, first of all, special operations forces are, and how effective air campaigns

are, but he's not as understanding, like you just said, of the hell that is true combat, where your coffee breath close to your enemy, as opposed to shooting them from 30,000 feet or dropping bombs on them. And he doesn't see the implications of citizens and their children being harmed when a bomb misses a target and destroys a school with over 100 young women in it.

He doesn't understand the implications of people who are part of a society suddenly finding themselves under attack and not understanding what they did to deserve it. Now, truthfully, I've been involved in those kinds of conflict, and they are painful. And I try to address those kinds of things in the book, as you know. So that's the part he doesn't understand.

He sees how great America's military is because it's been built to be that way over the last, I don't know, 40 years, post Vietnam. But now he's thinking he can use that as his own personal tool to bring death and destruction. I mean, just the kinds of words he uses in the truth, social posts that he puts out there are just anathema to any military leader that has had to face combat on the ground when you're

dealing with fellow human beings. You can't disregard the spirit even within your enemy. So yeah, it's somewhat depressing to me to see an individual who doesn't know warfare at all, yet believes he can impose the force and the power on another nation so haphazardly.

Yeah, you know, it reminds me of something that always struck me, it was before my time

and before your type, but you know, we talk about, you talk about leadership, you've taught

You've been a great example of what it is to lead.

And when we talk about leadership, we talk about vision or strength or training or inspiration and, you know, those kinds of things. But it seems to me that in many of the really best military leaders, there's something else that Trump is missing and that has led to a kind of leadership failure. And that doesn't get talked about as much, although I sense it and what I read from your

book. And that's empathy and and one of the things, you know, I, there's this image that lives

“with me of Eisenhower when he was president, I think he was speaking to some airborne”

veterans about D Day. And he started thinking about the cost of that, which obviously was a hugely fraught moment in consequential decision in his law online. And he started to weep, here's the president, the former Supreme Allied Commander, thinking of the human loss on the day.

And he went, and to me that was always a sign of, you know, this is true leadership.

It's not, it's not acting something out, it's about what's really happening inside of him. And I just, I thought I'd conclude with, yeah, if you, if you can put it in the character istic, not only of empathy, but also humility, there's a great scene in the movie Patton, where Patton and Bradley are having a conversation.

“And Bradley is kind of pissed off at Patton at the time, and he says to him, "George,”

the difference between you and me is you," he said, "I do this job because I have to for the nation. I'll add that for the nation." He says, "You do it because you love it." Now there are some military leaders that need to have that, that kind of passion, and that

kind of single-mindedness of attacking the enemy, but truthfully, when a nation goes to war, we're asking young men and women to put aside their humanity to do things that humans shouldn't have to do. And we better understand that as military leaders. And I talk a lot about that in the book.

And for those of us who have been in combat, who have experienced death and killing, whether

“it be from 30,000 feet or the range of a Bradley fighting vehicle of 1,500 meters or up close”

in personal, like I described, one experience I had in the book where I killed a man. When you are knowing that you're taking another person's life, much less hundreds or thousands of lives, you better have your head straight and know why you're doing it, as opposed to going into it, willy-nilly. So yeah, I would emphasize what you just said about empathy, but I'd also add a little

bit of humility to it as well. And we're not seeing a whole lot of humility on many of the press conferences. We're seeing from our civilian leaders. No question about it, you know, I, of course, haven't had that kind of experience that you have.

And so I'm limited to literary references, historical references, or also movie references. And when I read the section in which you talk about killing that person, I thought of a scene in the television series, Band of Brothers, where Dick Lenders, who's kind of the lead of the story, Damian Lewis, is runs over a little hill and looks down into a field, and there's one German soldier there, there was a young guy.

And they both have their rifles out, but it's good one or the other's going to kill the other, and they look each other in the eye. And they really lingered on the face of Damian Lewis, because it was very clear that killing this guy was something he knew he had to do, but he was deeply ambivalent about. And later on, you learn that that was his last combat contact in the course of the war,

direct personal combat contact. And I just, I don't know, I'm just, I'm just telling you, it's just sort of resonated with me, because that one on one issue, I don't know how you lead troops if you'd haven't had that experience. Yeah.

Well, it's, there's something that I was always wary of as a commander in multiple tours

You don't want them around, because those are the most undisciplined soldiers you will

have in a democratic army.

“You don't want people with bloodlessed in your organization.”

You're not referring to our Secretary of Defense, sorry.

I'm not, just as a general statement.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

“Well, I heard that you may not have been referring to him, but I sure hear that in his tone”

a lot of the time. We'll look Mark.

I am incredibly grateful to you for taking the time.

“It's a very busy moment, and you are very busy and doing great work on the air elsewhere.”

The book is called If I Don't Return, Others War Time Journal. I really could not recommend it more strongly. And again, congratulations on it, and I hope again, we'll see you soon here, hopefully to talk about happier subjects. You got it.

Thank you, David. Appreciate you having me. Thanks. Thanks, Mark. Bye-bye.