Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 11/14/22 Dave Decamp: Biden Meets Xi, Milley Calls for Talks with Russia and Biden Escalates in Somalia

Episode Date: November 15, 2022

Dave DeCamp, the news editor at Antiwar.com, is back to run through some of the biggest foreign policy news of the day. He talks with Scott about Biden’s meeting with Chinese President Xi which appears to have been productive. Next they turn to Ukraine. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Mark Milley recently gave a talk where he voiced his support for negotiations with Russia. Scott and DeCamp talk about some other developments that may signal the potential for talks. Lastly, they turn to Somalia. The Biden Administration has been escalating the U.S. war in Somalia, and very few journalists are reporting on it. Scott and DeCamp discuss what’s happening there and reflect on how ridiculous it is that America is still waging this immoral and unnecessary war.  Discussed on the show: news.antiwar.com “Somalia Asks U.S. to Step Up Drone Strikes Against Qaeda-Linked Fighters” (New York Times) “Another Failed 20-Year War: America vs. Somalia” (Antiwar.com) “Yemeni Civil War Unleashes a Plague of Locusts” (Antiwar.com) Dave DeCamp is the news editor of Antiwar.com and the host of Antiwar News with Dave DeCamp. Follow him on Twitter @decampdave This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: The War State and Why The Vietnam War?, by Mike Swanson; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; and Thc Hemp Spot. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjYu5tZiG. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, y'all, you should sign up for my substack. It's Scott Horton's show.substack.com. And if you do that, you'll get the interviews a day before everybody else. But not only that, they'll be free of commercials. How do you like that? Pretty good, huh? Scotthortonshow.substack.com. All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show.

I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, author of the book, Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and the brand new, enough already. Time to end the war on terrorism. And I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2003, almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at Scott Horton.4. You can sign up the podcast feed there, and the full interview archive is also available at YouTube.com. slash Scott Horton's show. Aren't you guys introducing Dave DeCamp? He's our news editor at anti-war.com. Welcome back. How you doing, man? Good, Scott. Thanks for having me back.

Thanks for doing it. Listen, the biggest news, I think, is that Biden met with Chairman Xi of the dictatorship of the Communist Party of the Chinese world empire. This morning, last night, something like that, in Indonesia. So can you tell us everything you know about that? Yeah, well, details are just really coming out about their meeting. They met for about three hours in Indonesia ahead of the G20 summit that's being held there. And basically going into the meeting, you know, the expectations were pretty low

because really the backdrop is that U.S.-China relations are at their lowest point in decades, really, since they opened up. And Biden said that the meeting was about figuring out what each other's red lines are. And it was really, and it seems like from what information has come out after that, you know, it's really just about managing tensions. They didn't expect any kind of breakthrough or to resolve any big issues. It's more so about figuring out how to avoid a conflict, because that's how bad relations are at this point. The good news that has come out of it is that Blinken, although, I mean, he's not much of a diplomat as he's shown us, but it looks like the White House said that he's going to travel to China now. He's going to make a trip to China after this. So there's going to be some more diplomacy. But really, it seems like the main issue that they discussed was Taiwan because tensions are really high between the U.S. and China over Taiwan as the U.S. is looking to increase support with Taiwan in all sorts of different ways. I mean, the Biden administration just launched trade talks with Taiwan.

And just a quick background. I mean, this is a sensitive issue for China. The whole foundation of U.S.-China relations is based on what they agreed on over Taiwan. And this is something that she said in the meeting with Biden. You know, that's how he described it. Because to open up with China, the U.S. had to recognize Taiwan. Well, I had to recognize Beijing as China and sever formal relations with Taiwan and considerate part of China. but they have, you know, informal relations with the island.

But the Biden administration following Trump has taken all these steps to increase ties. And they just launched trade talks and stuff like that. And China is not happy about it. And of course, there's other things going on with Congress. As when Nancy Pelosi visited in the beginning of August, China responded by launching its largest military exercises ever around Taiwan. And they've kept up the military pressure. congressional delegations have gone there since, and other officials from other countries from the UK, their trade minister just went there.

So we're heading on a path of possible conflict over Taiwan, although a Chinese invasion is unlikely at least any time soon, but they're not going to sit back and let the U.S. keep doing this. And this meeting came as Congress is looking to give Taiwan. They want to give them $10 billion in military aid over the next five years. It's part of the Senate's National Defense Authorization Act, which is still being worked out. But that's unprecedented. It's going to be in foreign military financing, which is a State Department program that gives

foreign governments all this cash to buy American weapons with. So this is a huge change. And the U.S. keeps making these big changes, including President Biden saying that he's willing to defend Taiwan if China invades, breaking from the strategic ambiguity that the U.S. has followed on the issue. So all this is happening, but the U.S. is accusing China of trying to change the status quo. And really, it just really rings hollow to the Chinese, of course, but to anybody that pays attention that follows this issue. So anyway, the meeting, you know, that's the backdrop. And it looks like they really just discussed managing tensions, but they might have made some progress.

there's still details coming out about the meeting of restarting military communication channels that were suspended after Pelosi's visit. And that's for, you know, preventing a conflict in the South China Sea. It's for, because there is a lot of U.S. spy planes and warships around that area near the Chinese military. So shutting down those communication channels, you know, that makes the risk of an accident higher. and that could really turn into something with the state of these relations. And they also discussed trade.

President Biden recently imposed some pretty serious sanctions on China's chip industry that seems to be pretty major. A lot of American companies have to have to leave and stop doing business in China because of it. He's really ramped up, you know, Trump's trade war. And these are things you don't really hear about. You know, there's kind of this narrative that Biden is soft on China. but if you look at the policy, it's clear he's not. And also, the Pentagon recently reaffirmed in their national defense strategy that they view China as the top threat facing the U.S. Russia is second. So China is the priority. Every U.S. government agency has said that pretty much at this point.

And again. And that's a pretty big deal when they're in the middle of fighting a proxy war with Russia right now on the premise that it's the most dangerous thing in the world but no actually only second compared to the country we're not at war with yeah that's right and if uh you heard recently the head of u.s strategic command straccom who uh he is the head of you the u.s.s. nuclear forces but he said in a speech recently he described this is pretty concerning he described the war in time in uh ukraine as a warm up for what he called the big one that is coming and he what he's referring to there, I believe, is China, is a conflict with China. Any kind of military leader in the Pacific, the head of Indo-Pacific Command, the head of the U.S. Navy's 7th Fleet,

I mean, you hear the things they're saying. They expect to be fighting a war with China in the next few years, next decade at the most. So this is what they're preparing for. And in this meeting, it's clear that she told him, you know, Biden said going into the meeting, we were going to figure out each other's red lines. And she reiterated, as Chinese officials have been, for the past couple of years now, that Taiwan is a red line. And again, I know you've had Peter Van Buren on here a lot, and he makes a very strong case for why China won't invade, because a full-scale invasion would be such a huge operation, and they have so much trade with Taiwan. But again, China's not just going to sit back and let this all happen. Well, I don't know. I mean, it seemed

like their red line has been a declaration of independence by Taiwan, although that could change. I mean, was there something more specific? You mentioned that she said, well, Taiwan's a red line. Well, what about it? Well, I'm not sure exactly what she said in the meeting. This is just from the reports I've read. But what other Chinese officials have said over the past year, at least, and before that, is that Taiwan's independence, that's the red line. And, also U.S. and other foreign interference, foreign support for what they call Taiwan's independence is also a red line. And they say that that could lead to war in the region. So in other words, defining it more broadly as American support. See, it's the same thing we have in Ukraine, too.

Oh, no, we're not bringing them into NATO. We are making them a de facto member of NATO. Yeah. Yeah. Same thing here. Oh, no, they're not going to declare independence, but we're just going to make sure that they have an air force powerful enough to repel in a time. attack and assure independence, which we hadn't done before, that kind of thing. So I also want to point out from just what I saw on Twitter this morning, the American version of the notes of the meeting, it said that Biden and she agreed that a nuclear war should never be fought and cannot be won. but the original Reagan Gorbachev formulation there

was cannot be one and must never be fought and I wondered whether that was supposed to be I know you don't have an answer for this but is that supposed to be like some kind of deliberate dumbing down of Reagan and Gorbachev's agreement or they're just so stupid that they don't know that must and should are different and should is a lesser sort of

form of must and things like that or what are they talking about and just so everyone in the audience knows china's got about 300 nukes nuclear missiles and we can't shoot them down and we can't take them all out in a first strike so that means if we have a war with china american cities will be lost to age bombs guaranteed yeah that's a pretty concerning difference i didn't notice that that they said should instead of must. Yeah, what the hell is that? Okay, Joe Biden's just senile. Nobody pay attention to the written mutterings of his note takers, I guess.

I don't know. And I'm not trying to say that's ultra-meaningful, but it seems kind of meaningful, or at least potentially, like, if there was purpose behind that, then it's really stupid. And if there wasn't purpose behind it, then it's really stupid. You know?

Anyway, I got more things I need to ask you about. Let's talk about Russia for a minute. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs staff. People, you know, right-winger's got a bad reputation for Millie, and he's done a lot of things wrong in his career. I think they took out of context his talks with the Chinese over Trump. I think, you know, people kind of, well, I'll go ahead and talk about that for some. second because right wingers had a pretty false narrative about that that he was like undermining

trump there when what he was really doing was he was telling the chinese that you might hear kind of these narratives that were really coming from democratic party type officials at the time that oh we think trump could start a war with china in order to stay in office and milly was saying no you guys need to not worry about that i promise you that's not going to happen if there was a war between us, it would be as the result of a series of escalations on both of our parts over a period of time here. But if you think that the military establishment is going to let the president start a war just to stay in office, please sleep well tonight knowing that there's a zero percent chance of that happening. That was perfectly within, one, his

responsibility, and two, it was the right thing to do anyway, to make sure that they were not buying in and getting an itchy trigger finger based on this complete, absolute nonsense. These lies by these goddamn Democrats that they were pushing at that time. So, and then the other thing, of course, was, yeah, he botched the withdrawal from Afghanistan, but who gives a damn? We've been out of there for more than a year now, and that's good. So, anyway, now to the War Cabinet. You got Jake Sullivan, Hillary Clinton's bag boy, and then you have Anthony Blinken.

the worst diplomat since Mike Pompeo. And then he got Joe Biden, who's senile out of his mind. And then he got Millie, who presumably represents the opinions of the chiefs, too, not just himself. And so tell us, please, the important developments about what's going on in the war cabinet now in regards to the war in Ukraine, Dave. Yeah, so this is pretty significant. And it was last week that Millie delivered a speech.

speech at the Economic Club of New York where he really called for peace talks. I mean, he said that there's an opportunity for peace and there's an opportunity to negotiate and that it should be seized. And it was actually kind of buried initially in the media. The write-ups of his speech focused on his estimations of casualties in Russia. Sorry, in Ukraine. And, you know, the write-ups by AP and the New York Times. It was buried in there that he said. now there's an opportunity for negotiations. And then, you know, this is huge because just until very recently, you know, the idea of diplomacy got you labeled as, you know, a Putin apologist, you know, all the sorts of names you were called. And that was really demonstrated by that group of Progressive House Democrats who sent the letter to President Biden very meekly calling for peace talks, calling for negotiations, just calling for deployment.

diplomacy with Russia, and then they retracted it a day later because of all the pressure they came under. And then just a few weeks later, here's the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest ranking U.S. military officer saying that there should be negotiations. And he said- Such cowardice. I'm sorry to interrupt, but like we got to dwell on that point. It's an important one, and I know you have a lot of important ones to get to here. but man this is what passes for the leftists

inside the Democratic Party inside the House of Representatives and they all completely back down on a call for and they even specified in the thing I believe that they still favored

arming Ukraine as long as the war continues just they want talks too like this is the most mealy mouth just barely poking their head up kind of a thing at all. And then they all completely retreated from it and publicly

castigated themselves for their terrible mistake and all of this. I mean, that is like something I have a damn novel. It's just incredible to see. And so screw them, too. You know, how dare they? And then like you're saying, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff says it's okay, so now it's okay. But it always was. And just like it should have been the consensus of 350 million Americans on the day the war starts,

That will we better send Blinken to Geneva to stop the fighting right now? Not, oh, good. Now we have an opportunity to weaken Russia and break their budget and cost them lives. Send their sons home in coffins, as Biden and his men have all said. They're crazy, man. Anyway. Yeah. But, yeah, no, it is important to stress how, you know, pathetic that was.

Because if you read that letter, like you said, they open it with, oh, President, of Biden, you know, it's been so great how you're arming Ukraine, everything's awesome, but maybe, uh, you know, there is this chance of nuclear war that you warned about. So maybe we should explore the idea of diplomacy. And then they pulled it. But so here you have Millie. And I mean, again, it was really buried what he said because, uh, he referenced World War I. He's, you know, saying that it should have been ended much sooner and that, you know,

millions died in trench warfare. And, you know, when the battle lines barely. changed, because what he's saying, he's predicting that this winter, Russia's going to dig into its positions, and they just withdrew from Kurson, the southern, the city, the capital of the Kurson Oblast, which is north of Crimea, which is pretty significant that they made that withdrawal. So he's saying, you know, in the winter, they expected to be kind of a stalemate, although there are other, the other side of it, a lot of Russian media and analysts say that and Rush is preparing for a major offensive in the winter.

So who knows exactly what's going to happen this winter? But anyway, Millie, you know, he's really calling for peace talks. And then after the speech, there's multiple reports in the New York Times, CNN, the Wall Street Journal, that said behind the scenes, he's been pushing for diplomacy pretty majorly, it seems like. But this is according to a CNN report. And there is other reports similar to this. And we do have to keep in mind that they might be trying to, you know, seed a narrative here. But we have Millie publicly calling for peace talks. And just by Blinkin's what he's shown us, that he's shown us that he's not interested in diplomacy.

So this report says that Blinken, the Secretary of State and Jake Sullivan, the National Security Advisor, disagree with Millie and do not think now is the time to make a serious push for peace talks. and the CNN report, you know, the way that they put it, they said that the state department is on the opposite side of the poll from Millie. And they said this dynamic has led to a unique situation where military brass are fervently, fervently pushing for diplomacy more so than U.S. diplomats. And I know we've seen this pattern before where the secretary of state, the state department's more hawkish than the military. And the best example I could think of is Libya. Hillary Clinton was the one that convinced Obama to intervene in Libya when his Pentagon didn't want to do it. And in Syria, too, look, when John Kerry was demanding war over the first al-Qaeda, false flag,

sarin attack, it was the military and the rest of the intelligence agencies that were against it. And I was just rereading the one where this is years later, Obama tells Jeffrey Goldberg that the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, had told him the intelligence here is not a slam dunk. In other words, if you attack Syria and it doesn't go well, I'm going to blame it on you and tell everybody that I warned you that we don't have the intelligence to do that. Holy crap.

That should have been the, you know, general strike right then and there that they even almost had the war. But anyway, I was just rereading that piece, day before yesterday. And in there, they say at one point Obama, and by the way, Hillary had sided with the military against him on the Afghan search. But at one point, Obama made a new rule at the National Security Council meetings that no one other than the military is allowed to propose military action of any kind ever again. Looking at you, Secretary Kerry, shut your mouth. and because he wouldn't stop. So they had to make a new rule.

I don't want to hear the State Department talking about who we should kill. Your job is diplomacy. And for the mad bomber Barack Obama to have to resort to a rule like that is, you know, smacks of real desperation on his part there. But that's the same kind of situation here. It is. And we've seen it. You know what? In Iraq War II, Dick Cheney and David Petraeus conspired to try to spread the war

to Iran in 2007, Admiral Fallon, the commander of Centcom, said, no, over my dead body. And stop. So here we have our standing army, the most dangerous threat to liberty, is actually, you know, in this empire, the restraining force on the eggheads half the time, you know? Mm-hmm. It's just incredible. Sorry, hang on just one second. Hey, y'all, Scott Horton here for Tennessee hot sauce company.

Man, this stuff is so good. They get all different flavors. garlic habanero, honey habanero, pineapple habanero, Pabloano Halapeno, and the Blood Orange Ghost. They're all so good, I swear. And for a limited time, Tennessee hot sauce company is featuring official Scott Horton, hotter than the sun, thermonuclear hot sauce. It's full of Carolina Reapers, Scorpion Peppers,

Dr. Pepper, hydrogen isotopes, and all kinds of things that'll burn your tongue clean off. Seriously, it's really good. Get yourself a hot sauce subscription. Spend $40 or more and use promo code Scott to get a free bottle of hotter than the sun, hot sauce. That's tnhot sauceco.com. Hey, y'all got to check out these awesome busts of our hero, the great Ron Paul. They're made by the renowned sculptor Rick Casale, the 13 inches tall hand-painted bronze resin based on Casale's brilliant original.

You may have seen mine in the background on my bookshelf in some recent interviews. The thing is unbelievable. check out this incredible piece of art at rickasali dot com slash ron paul and you'll see what i mean use promo code horton and you'll save 25 bucks and this show will get a little kickback too that's rick casali dot com slash ron paul cassali is c a l i rick casali dot com slash ron paul and there's free shipping too yeah and uh so one thing to mention about sullivan so this says sullivan's not into the idea of diplomacy. But there has been recent talks, and he has held talks with his Russian counterpart, the head of the Russian Security Council, Nikolai Petrushev, and the White

House. They didn't confirm specifics about these talks, but they did say that there's been high-level communication with Russia, but that was more so about avoiding the war escalating outside of Ukraine. And Sullivan hinted at this back in September when there was all this talk of nuclear weapons being used, he said that they made clear to Russia at high levels what the consequences would be if they use a nuclear weapon in Ukraine. So there were some signs that he was talking. And also, he was just in Kiev recently and spoke with Zelensky and told him to soften his stance on negotiations. And there was also a few reports about this. And those reports said that the idea was not to actually make a real push for diplomacy.

was not to get Russia and Ukraine talking. It was more so for PR purposes to get... Because when you have Zelensky out there saying his position was that he ruled out talks with Russia as long as Putin was president. But he has dropped that position since talking with Sullivan, although he still is maintaining these demands. Russia must withdraw from Ukraine. They must pay reparations before talks could even happen.

But, you know, that's also a change at least. And now I also just read in the Wall Street Journal that apparently in this meeting, and again, you know, this is just piecing together. There's been a ton of media reports about this, but I thought this was significant. Sullivan raised the idea, it didn't say that he told Zelensky he should do this, but he raised the idea of maybe not making one of your goals to be driving Russia out of Crimea, which I thought that was significant that they're even discussing it. because that's been Zelensky and all of his advisors have been saying that they're going to kick Russia out of Crimea, and the U.S. has backed that. They've backed the idea of them attacking Crimea. But one thing, whenever they do any kind of attack inside Crimea, when they blew up the Kerch Bridge, which connects Crimea to the Russian mainland, when there was a big drone attack on Russia's Black Sea Fleet, Russia responded with its most intense air strikes and missile strikes and drone strikes and drone strikes. against civilian infrastructure.

So maybe they saw how Russia responds to attacks on Crimea, and they're thinking, maybe we shouldn't try to encourage them to take Crimea. I mean, Dave, for Millie to say, hey, geez, you know what, we've got some good progress here in Liberating Kursan, and that's pretty great. Winner's coming. Let's talk now is quite explicitly, implicitly,

saying that you're going to have to give up on Maripole that we're going to negotiation means Ukraine losing a major part of the Dombas and it means losing that so-called land bridge between southern Donetsk and

Crimea and you know I'm not saying he said that but I'm saying he said that obviously if he's saying all right great Kurson you got Kurson back? Perfect let's have some talks right now he's acknowledging that they're going to have to lose some of uh ukraine here and of course you know

as the washington post uh i guess it was you were the one who dug the headline out of the buried lead there a few weeks ago when the biden government said oh yeah no we know that there has to be a negotiated settlement at some point it's not like the ukrainians could win or anything well good yeah and then if they're saying yeah you know and maybe we could just drop crimea i mean that is obviously he's such a poison pill, deliberate deal killer to try to pretend that they're going to take the Crimean Peninsula back at this point and all of that. So if they're willing to drop that, some hopeful sign here, going to Thanksgiving, man, I'll take it.

All right, one more thing on Russia here real quick, Dave, is the new start negotiations. This is the last treaty standing, limiting overall numbers of strategic nuclear warheads on both sides. Yeah, and that treaty. expires in 2026. And actually, you know, one of President Biden's first foreign policy moves when he came into office at the end of January 2021, because the treaty was said to expire that February. One of the first things he did was got Putin on the phone and they agreed to extend it. So, you know, naively back then, I thought, hey, maybe that's a good sign that he won't be

too crazy on Russia, but clearly I was very wrong about that. But anyway, so. inspections under Newstart because there is an inspection regime to the treaty. It limits the deployment of warheads and bombers and missiles. And there's an inspection regime, but they've been suspended since March 2020 because of COVID. That's according to the State Department. That's what they've told me. And so the U.S. and Russia have just agreed to launch talks under the New Start Treaty, under this committee called the Bilateral Consultative Commission, the BCC, and that's the implementation body of the treaty. And they're going to hold talks on resuming these inspections. So they're expected to be held either late November or early December.

And the venue is interesting. They're just, they're saying that they're going to be held somewhere in the Middle East in an unnamed country. And that's because Geneva, the traditional venue for. such talks. Russia doesn't find Switzerland to be neutral anymore because they have joined in on some of the sanctions against Russia. Not all of them, but

enough to annoy Russia enough that they don't think that they're a neutral body anymore. So the talks are really going to be focused on resuming the inspections. Russia has kind of downplayed the idea that there's going to be much progress, but it's something in

the direction of arms control. So hopefully, you know, they get the inspections resumed and then they kick off talks on replacing the new start because before this there was a lot of signs that the U.S. had no interest in arms control with Russia. They were in talks on arms control separately from the talks that they were holding with Russia before the, you know, and Russia's security guarantees before the invasion. But they cut off the arms control talks after the invasion. Russia was saying they were ready to resume them.

And for a while the U.S. The State Department was saying, no, now, now. no, now's not the time for that. So this is another kind of change toward diplomacy. And another thing that I just saw actually is that William Burns, the head of the CIA, just met with his Russian counterpart in Turkey. So there's more talks there. And the White House was saying that the talks were focused on the consequences of the use of nuclear weapons and the issue of U.S. prisoners in Russia. They said it wasn't a negotiation about Ukraine, but I'm sure that it was discussed. So there are all these different avenues of diplomacy opening up between the U.S. and

Russia, which, you know, I think it's definitely a good sign. It's always, talks are always good, but we also do have to keep in mind that the U.S. and NATO still have big plans to keep army Ukraine. I mean, the U.S. just announced their opening a command in Germany that's going to oversee the training and arming of Ukraine. It's going to be headed by a three-star general. It's going to be manned by 300 military personnel. I mean, that's a command for a war that the U.S. plans to be involved with for a long time. So while all these diplomatic signs are good, I think we shouldn't get our hopes up too much that, you know, this is going to end anytime soon. And NATO also has a 10-year plan. This was according to a report in Politico. A 10-year plan to modernize

Ukraine's military and military industrial complex to make them interoperable with NATO weapons more so than they are now. So it's just we have to keep in mind, you know, they got big plans here. Lloyd Austin's pals at Raytheon are just really cashing in on this and they're going to want to keep it going. So just have to you know not get too optimistic here well um we're coming up on 21 years of war in somalia what's the latest there yeah well so this is an area where Biden is escalating in somalia one of the few bright spots of his presidency was when he first came in for the first year or so u.s. airstrikes in somalia really declined there he only launched a few in 2021

But since May, he ordered the redeployment of up to 500 troops to Somalia back in May. And since then, and more so recently, we've been seeing more U.S. airstrikes in Somalia. And part of that, the reason why is because the U.S. back government there based in Mogadishu, under this new president, has launched some offensives against al-Shabaab. the fighting seems to be mostly in central Somalia but Afrikaum U.S. Africa command has the average now it seems like two or three times a month they say that they launched an airstrike in Somalia and the latest is that they said they launched one on November 9th and they're saying that it killed 17 al-Shabaab fighters

that was the second one in November the other one was launched on November 3rd saying that they killed 15 al-Shabaab members and they say that their initial assessments you know in both cases they're claiming no civilians were harmed, but we have to keep in mind that the Pentagon is just notorious for undercounting civilian casualties. And there's virtually no accountability for what they're doing in Somalia right now because it gets so little media coverage. I mean, a lot of times when I write these stories up, I'm just basing it on an Africom press release because there's just no other information about it. This last one, the only place that I saw, you know,

I might have missed something that I saw have a write-up about it was CNN. And you know, theirs is just a regurgitation of the African press release. You know, I don't have too much information to work on, but I could at least mention, you know, the U.S. history of killing civilians in air strikes in Somalia. So, and according to the New York Times, this was actually a report from your pal, Charlie Savage. He was one of the authors on it. The U.S. He took a break from washing dishes at Pizza Hut to do another report? Okay. Yeah, yeah. But this was maybe a month ago, this report came out that the U.S. is considering escalating its role in the war in Somalia even further.

So right now, under Biden's drone strike policy, if strikes are outside of Iraq in Syria, they need to be signed off by the White House. But there's a big loophole. If they're justified in self-defense, then they don't need White House approval. And if you look at all the airstrikes, Afriqam has been reporting, they all say, oh, they were done in the collective self-defense of Somali forces. But the Somali government wants them to loosen these restrictions even more. And then that could really escalate the war. That's something Trump did when he first came in. He loosened the rules of engagement for Somalia.

drastically. Yeah. And Biden did tighten that back up, but it looks like, you know, they're considering loosening it even more and it's just really amazing to me how little attention this gets i mean right now somalia is the country that the u.s is bombing uh the most uh you know it's the war on the terror war is still going on there and um just nothing it doesn't seem like anybody cares and it was like that under trump too i mean he was bombing a lot of other countries um although it all scaled down towards the end of his presidency but not somalia that kept ramping up um

There's a couple things about it. I think one of them is it's not directly connected to the rest of the terror wars. You know, Iraq War II caused Libya and Syria in its way, and even Syria helped cause Yemen in its way and that kind of thing. Where this one is just across the Gulf over there, Ramondo years ago called it the whole terror war writ small. You have the entire chain of events of all the blowback and all the CIA and all the everything. in one small place.

And then it's kind of hard to escape, you know, just, I mean, basically the major media blackout on it and neglect covers, hardly anybody knows anything about it. And there's no real Somali, like, interest groups in America who are loud about it. And so, you know, it's just, you know, people know nothing about it. And frankly, maybe it's just a correlation without causation, but, They're the blackest victims of the terror war, and seem, have always seen, for 20 years of this, have seemed to be the most invisible victims of it all. You know, I think that is part of it, man, it has to be. Yeah.

Yeah, really, the only, like, reporter I could think of, and I'm sure that there's more, you know, I don't want to insult anybody, but is, you know, Nick Terse, he is the most thorough on the U.S. wars in Africa and Africom. And he's really the only one. I mean, he's in The Intercept. He's the only one I could think of, really, that reports critically on this stuff. Yeah, it's just total blackout. And something that I thought really was interesting is that I mentioned earlier about the new national defense strategy that names China as the top threat. You know, if you look at the order that they put everything in, China, Russia, they mention Iran, North Korea. And then what they call violent extremist organizations, which includes al-Qaeda and ISIS.

That's way down at the bottom. And Al-Shabaab, their Al-Qaeda affiliate, the best background on this is that people can read if they want a quick background on Somalia is your chapter from enough already that we published at anti-war.com. I always link to it in my articles about Somalia, if people want to check that out. Yeah, it's like the third or fourth article ago, if you just go to anti-war.com slash Scott, it'll for John. Yeah. But so, because I need to learn more about Somalia. I need to really kind of study up on it just because it doesn't seem like anybody else is going to do it. But just...

Justin was always great on it too. Yeah. Just with Al-Shabaab, I mean, because they are a big group and, you know, they pledged loyalty to Al-Qaeda, but as you give the proper context, you know, they were an offshoot of the Islamic Courts Union, which was in charge in Mogadishu before the U.S. backed. Ethiopian invasion of the country. They knocked out the Islamic Courts Union and then al-Shabaab, who are the more extremist ones, they, you know, that's when they first started, that's when they first showed up and started taking credit for attacks on Ethiopian troops occupying Mogadishu. And it wasn't until 2012, so six or five years after they first started making attacks

that they declared loyalty to al-Qaeda. So after years of fighting the U.S. and its proxies. so there's no reason to think that they're more than just a local threat in East Africa but what the national defense strategy it doesn't mention Somalia or al-Shabaab even by name I mean they're not even they don't even make the the paper and yet that's the country where we're launching the U.S. is launching the most air strikes yeah and look it's a situation it has been all along too where it's just an Afghanistan typed in the American attempt to create this phony government in Mogadishu cannot

outlast American attempts to prop it up with fire and money. As soon as they leave, al-Shabaab's going to win. Simple as that. They already lost. They lost a decade ago. It's just like in Afghanistan. Well, we can stay here. Nobody can kick Americans out.

You know, nobody has a power to make America go. But America does not have the power to create a government over the people of Southern Somalia that they are willing to accept. They've already failed. And the fact that we're even having this conversation in 2022 is itself an atrocity. You know, there's just the number of people who have died in this thing. And because it's war-inflicted famine. So, right, like when Stalin kills people with famine, you count that.

Well, when America kills people with famine, you got to count that too. It's got to be half a million. There's a quarter of a million by 2013. And this is the third famine they're kicking in now. And, of course, the locust plague came from Yemen, which is a direct consequence of Obama and Trump and Biden's war there, where the anti-grasshopper campaign of the university was suspended, and they turned into a giant locust plague. It's also at anti-war.com. Morgan Hunter wrote this great piece all about that, the locust plague that hit East Africa in the last few years, was a direct result of America's war in Yemen. and so if it counts when the commies do it it counts when we do it too when our government does it so yeah you might even think it matters you know hundreds of thousands of people starving to

death huh yeah and it seems like famine uh food wise in somalia things are going to get pretty bad uh get real bad again yeah um all right well listen thanks for all your great working coming back on the show sorry to leave it on such a bummer i don't have a joke or anything it's just screwed yeah uh yeah it's usually you know bad news that that i have for you but hey i mean i think the diplomacy front rush of ukraine they are talking a little bit right you're right yeah it's i mean again you know it's it's it's CIA now it's uh nuclear talks jake solvin and then mark milly so it's definitely significant something's changing there um but i also you know if people want to hear this bad news every day um i got to plug my new

show uh absolutely man i'm sorry i should have said that at the beginning oh no it's good uh anti war news with me dave de camp um you can listen to the audio version wherever you listen to podcasts and i also put a video up on youtube odyssey and rumble so you could go subscribe there and all that good stuff oh yeah all right man well thank you so much and it's great by the way everybody you know you don't have time to read anti-war.com every day. I want to just listen to anti-war.com every day on your way to work. The great Dave DeCamp, appreciate you, bud. Thanks, Scott.

The Scott Horton show, Anti-War Radio, can be heard on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. APSRadio.com, anti-war.com, Scotthorton.org, and Libertarian Institute.org.