The Dishonesty of Admiral Cooper Will Get Even More People Killed

Edited by Sam Thielman

THE CLICHE GOES that the first casualty of war is the truth, but in the case of the Iran War, the first casualties were something like 168 schoolchildren in Minab. In a disgraceful round of testimony last week, the U.S. officer responsible for their deaths kinda-sorta-conceded that his forces killed them, while maintaining that if U.S. bombs did fall on the school, those children and their teachers were the only civilian deaths the U.S. caused. 

Adm. Brad Cooper's line has zero credibility. On March 27—that is, with more than a week of war to go before the ceasefire—Airwars and its partner organizations assessed that the U.S.-Israeli coalition killed at least 1,443 civilians, "including at least 217 children." The Minab girls' school attack, Airwars wrote, stands as the "largest civilian death toll of any single U.S. attack since 1991," which is a sobering statement about decadence within the U.S. military after a full generation of war. The attack, the watchdog group continued, "signalled an emerging pattern in which Iranian civilian lives are treated as increasingly expendable in the conduct of hostilities." 

An honorable officer, the sort the U.S. military portrays itself as producing and promoting, would have resigned after the Minab school strike, let alone after killing so many innocent people. Not only didn’t Cooper resign, declaiming responsibility for civilian deaths wasn't even the only risible lie told by the Central Command (CENTCOM) leader and war commander. One in particular seems likely to set up more civilian deaths—and, if so, inevitable further declamations of U.S. responsibility.

During testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday, Cooper maintained that the U.S. military can reopen the Strait of Hormuz by force. That's a wildly irresponsible thing to say, for it will encourage the U.S. to attempt exactly that disaster. Here's Cooper fielding a question from Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.)—himself a dishonest figure—about the aborted U.S. plan to break the Iranian throttling of the Strait through Navy escorts, known as Project Freedom: 

COOPER: The situation in the Strait of Hormuz is rather complex these days, and I would offer just these quick points. First and foremost, the United States controls, via our blockade, which I'd be happy to talk about, the overall flow of commerce going into and out of Iran. The Iranian capability to stop commerce has been dramatically degraded through the Straits, but their voice is very loud, and those threats are clearly heard by the merchant industry and the insurance industry. Those are factors. There's certainly factors in energy. And on top of all that…

BLUMENTHAL: But (inaudible) Project—and I apologize for interrupting, but I'm going to run out of time, as you understand. I think the point that I want to make here is that Project Freedom could be started again, and the voices of the Iranians, large as they are, could be contradicted or reduced in impact if Project Freedom were ongoing and the world could see that shipping was going through the Straits. Am I off base in that view?

COOPER: Senator, there's a wide range of contingencies that we are prepared to execute, and I would defer to the policymakers on anything having to do specifically with the Strait of Hormuz, particularly during this time of sensitive negotiations where it's front and center in the negotiations.

The typical mode of lying in politics is to say something technically true and substantively misleading. "There's a wide range of contingencies that we are prepared to execute" is firmly within that category. Sure. There's been military planning for a forcible reopening of the Strait since at least the early 2010s. It's just not borne any resemblance to reality. The version back then boiled down to: get a partner military to do the hard work.

But Cooper's bullshit about a "range of contingencies" obscures the central issue of what opening the Strait will require and what their prospects of success are. Executing those contingencies will exchange large quantities of blood for little chance of success. Navy ships carrying hundreds if not thousands of sailors will come in range of Iran's considerable remaining missile and drone arsenals. Are the American public and the global insurance markets ready to see a nearly $1 billion destroyer burning, listing and sinking in a narrow waterway halfway around the world? Will they be prepared for Marines to attempt an amphibious landing to take Iranian territory away from missile batteries (which are mobile, per U.S. intelligence, so that's going to be a wide-ranging operation) and then having to hold that territory while resupplying its invading force? Winston Churchill also had a wide range of contingencies to take Gallipoli.  

Further, the typical mode of uniformed officers lying about war is to present policymakers with unrealistic military options before saying the choice—and the responsibility—is theirs. This happened so frequently in the Afghanistan War that Craig Whitlock wrote a whole book about it. Before that, it happened so frequently in the Vietnam War that H.R. McMaster wrote a whole book about it. It is undoubtedly true that the final responsibility for any order to reopen the Strait lies with the policymakers, who in this case are Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump. But that doesn't let Cooper off the hook for portraying a forced reopening of the Strait as an achievable goal at an acceptable cost. 

Now that Trump has returned from China without any Xi-us ex machina (sorry), there are credible fears that he will end the ceasefire and resume bombing Iran. Cooper's blithe portrayal of an openable Strait will undoubtedly tempt a Trump already inclined to believe in his own omnipotence. Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), the committee chairman, asked Cooper if the military could indeed open the Strait. "We just did it last week," Cooper replied. He was talking about two escorts that happened in the context of a ceasefire – a strategic condition that will not hold once the U.S. goes for a full reopening – that one that panicked the Saudis, Kuwaitis and Emiratis. 

Such is the dynamic of a forever war, no matter how much Hegseth wants to deny that's what Iran is. Assume unlimited costs, unlimited tolerance for carnage and unlimited time, all while underestimating enemy responses and ignoring—tolerating—civilian deaths.  

Then there's Cooper's record. This is an officer who already lost a war to reopen a waterway to a far weaker foe, very recently; a war that Cooper marveled was the Navy's most sustained conflict since World War II. As has been the case for so many officers in the post-9/11 era, Cooper's failure was rewarded with a promotion, one that came, glaringly, amidst  Hegseth's military purge. Once Cooper was on the threshold of running CENTCOM, the admiral told Congress that should Iran go nuclear, it would achieve global hegemony. That's simply a stupid assessment. In retrospect, it looks a whole lot like a clue about this guy and this war. 

WANT TO READ THE TORTURED REASONING of a guy who's edging understanding but can't let himself get there because it cuts against his institution's interests? Check out Matthew Levitt of the respectable warmongers at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy as he tries to explain why the Islamic Republic of Iran, under attack by their premiere enemies with at least an early goal of destroying their regime, haven't attacked the United States at home. He can't entertain the obvious: Iran doesn't have the ability to do so. And he can't concede that because the place where he works is devoted to inflating any threat from Iran and posturing the U.S. for war against it. A week after Levitt's piece, the U.S. indicted a Kataib Hezbollah commander for allegedly seeking to attack targets in the U.S. and Europe—which is likely still a threat inflation, but concerns an allegation that wouldn't be necessary if the Iranians currently possess the infrastructure in the United States for such attacks. 

REMEMBER WHAT I WROTE in my last column about Trump's counterterrorism strategy targeting the left? It's crucial to keep that in mind as the administration and the Security State allies in both parties seek to reauthorize the bulk surveillance powers of Section 702. Unsurprisingly, the administration ignored a Friday deadline to release a currently-secret surveillance-court opinion that Ron Wyden has indicated reveals yet another series of abuses of those authorities. Here's a Wyden statement from Saturday: 

"The executive branch has ignored a request from the chair and vice-chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee for basic transparency about FISA surveillance. I'll have more to say about this next week," Wyden said. “It's clear that this administration cannot be trusted with unfettered, warrantless surveillance of Americans. Every member of Congress should keep this in mind when we consider FISA 702 in a few weeks.”

The opinion, which was issued on March 17, reveals compliance issues with federal surveillance that are directly related to Americans’ Constitutional rights, and must be made public before Congress debates reauthorizing FISA Section 702, Wyden has said. The executive branch is already required to declassify the opinion under federal law, within 180 days. 

Section 702 should never have existed in the first place, and it simply cannot be permitted to continue.