Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 12/2/21 John Dolan (The War Nerd) on the Tigray-Ethiopia War

Episode Date: December 3, 2021

Scott is joined by John Dolan who used to write under the names Gary Brecher and The War Nerd. The two discuss a recent article Dolan wrote that lays out the big picture causes and developments in the Tigray-Ethiopia war. Dolan explains the necessary Ethiopian history to set the stage for the war and does his best to piece together what’s happened since it began a year ago. Scott and Dolan also discuss the end of the war in Afghanistan and what a modern American civil war would look like.   Discussed on the show: “The War Nerd: The Tigray-Ethiopia War” (Naked Capitalism) Wore Negari by Mohamed Yimam John Dolan is a poet, novelist, essayist and former academic. He now works with Mark Ames (of eXile fame) to produce the Radio War Nerd weekly podcast on military matters.  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; EasyShip; Free Range Feeder; Thc Hemp Spot; Green Mill Supercritical; Bug-A-Salt; Lorenzotti Coffee and Listen and Think Audio. 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 guys, check it out December 8th in New York City. The Soho Forum is hosting a debate on the resolution. While vaccine mandates are an infringement on freedom, some are justified due to their big payoff in Livesaved. For the affirmative will be George Mason Law Professor Ila Soman, and for the negative, our friend Angela McArdle, chair of the Libertarian Party of Los Angeles County, and declared candidate for national chair of the Libertarian Party. The live debate will be at the Sheen Center, and of course, yes, they do have the vaccine restrictions at the Sheen Center, but they do not at Gene Epstein's apartment. They're going to have a live viewing party at Jean's House so people who oppose the mandates can watch the debate about the mandates. And so find out everything you need to know all about it at the Soho Forum.org. That's this December the 8th in New York.

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 all right everybody introducing the war nerd john dolan aka gary brecher and host of radio war nerd and he's the author of dispatches which i've read

which is excellent and also the war nerd ilion. which I take it is your retelling of the Iliad is that right welcome back to the show John how you doing thanks I'm glad to be here the Iliad is a project I'm really fond of and I'm uncharacteristically pleased about I figured you know everybody gets a taste of the Iliad and it's enough for most people because the people who translated into English or any of the modern languages have tried to retain the meter or some sense of the meter, which is so difficult that you end up not noticing that it's an amazing tale. So what I did was just to a prose version in contemporary colloquial English that gets at the story because it's an incredible story, and people should know that. That sounds like a lot of fun. Oh, it was. It was a lot of fun to write. I mean, we ended up in a cheap Macedonian hotel in Greece where there were fights in the hallway every night. Well, just at the base of the Olympic range. And I was just so happy just to be there writing the Iliad in the shadow of the Olympic range. Well, Mount Olympus, rather. I guess the Olympic range sounds like northern Washington state. No, I got you. Man, that's awesome.

maybe one day I'll get a chance to read it, although with this pile of books, I'm looking to attempt to surmount here. It's probably higher than any of those Greek mountains, but anyway. It's true. We do a podcast, too, and the strain of reading a half dozen books for every podcast is pretty much your life. Yeah, it's crazy. I'm way behind to say the least. All right. Anyway, so I'm really happy to have you on the show for this subject matter. I've had a couple of people, but only a couple, but very insistent that I get on this and cover this issue of the war in Ethiopia. And really, I didn't know where to turn because I've been trying to keep up with the news. And, you know, Jason and Dave do a great job at anti-war.com and keeping up with the latest.

But context is everything. And who has the context? And then finally, I got a hold of this piece that you have written here, the Warner, the Tigray Ethiopia War, that's really. printed at naked capitalism and uh well first of all thank you for setting me straight i'm pretty sure i think that now i understand uh essentially who's who on who's on whose side and the chain of events here but yeah it's uh it's it can be done but you know it helps that that i've been writing about about the wars in in this area for 25 years i mean you need to you need to have a a sense of precedent here because this is this is an old pattern right um so i mean a lot of people might not

have much of an idea where ethiopia is other than somewhere in east africa but um we're uh talking about the very northern portion of ethiopia here the tegray region is it its own kind of state or province or something or it's just an ethnic region as you'd characterize it yeah yeah well it's an ethnic region, but that's where it gets complicated because people know maybe that there's Eritrea just to the north of Tigray. Tigray is basically a sort of, if you took a capital L and turned it down, it would look sort of like the shape of Tigray province. But Tigray and people and Tigrinia speaking people dominate Eritrea as well.

That doesn't mean they're friendly. on the contrary. And for that matter, Eritrea used to be part of Ethiopia until it won independence in a bloody war. And that means that Ethiopia is now a landlocked state. And Tigray is now a landlocked province in a landlocked state with Eritrea now an independent country and its bitter enemy just to the north of it. And Ethiopia, it's bitter enemy to the south. So it's in a pretty bad position.

Now, the previous leader, Melis Zanaway, George W. Bush's guy, he was Tigrayan, correct? Oh, yes. He was a really impressive person. It was, yeah, he's, you get these guys in movements like that who are extraordinary. He was the product of the student rebellions of the 1970s. And his TPLF, the Tigray and People's Liberation Front, walked out of Adis Ababa University in the mid-1970s and said, we're making a Maoist war, we're taking it to the people.

And they did that. And in fact, if there are progressive readers out there who, want to know how student movements matter in places where they really do matter and how nasty it can get when you get involved in serious politics. There's a book called Wore Negare, N-O-O-R-E-N-E-G-A-R-I, by someone who was there, who saw Meles-Zanawi and the Tigrayans walk out of these university cat chewing, you know, and just. drinking sessions where they were forming the basic political parties. And Zanawi's TPLF became the most effective ethnic militia in a country full of ethnic

militias. And they were allies with the Eritreans for a while in the 1980s when the Eritrean EPLF, a sort of parallel organization, Eritrean People's Liberation Front, defeated the Ethiopian military, which was trying to force Eritrea back into the country. Most dramatically at the Battle of Afabat in 1988, they wiped out the best divisions of the Ethiopian army. And in three years, the derg, the weird nominally communist dictatorship of Ethiopia fell.

And Zanaway then became the leader, of Ethiopia, in fact, for a while, and in reality, straight till his death. He didn't die until, I think, 2012. And he had a very mixed reputation in Ethiopian circles, but he was not an American puppet. I mean, there's this weird ultra-left move now to say, aha, the Ethiopians are the good guys here. Well, first of all, that doesn't have to be a good guy in the story. So now he did some good things. He had this slogan that he did straight through, which was Ethiopian should eat three meals a day.

And he made great progress on that. He didn't bring democracy to the country, but I don't know quite what that would mean in an ethnically divided empire that was made by conquest only in the late 19th century for the most part. he uh he had an extraordinary talent and when he died the tigreans were still in charge but they didn't have the the brains to control the whole country as effectively well i guess when i say he's w bush's guy i'm just thinking of when he invaded somalia for america in 2006 and stayed yeah yeah well america is so desperate to find somebody to do its work over there after uh the debacle at mogadishu that they brought in Kenya, they brought in Ethiopia. Yeah, they brought in anybody they can find.

But in some ways, Abiy Ahmed is very much America's idea of a leader, too. I mean, you don't win the Nobel Peace Prize if you get an American veto. That's given to people they consider safe, like Kissinger. And that's the current leader that came. Is he the guy that came to power directly after Zinnah? Not directly because Zanawi died and then, you know, a few other leaders took over, but Abiy Ahmed came to power 2018, and what he did looked really good. He made a deal with Eritrea, which is now independent on the Red Sea, run by a very scary

guy, the leader of that guerrilla movement called Iseus Afewerki. and nobody had talked to Afewarki for a long time. And he was running a state that gets compared to North Korea, which might be a little exaggerated, but it's a pretty grim place and totally isolated. And as Alex Deval, one of the best writers on the Horn of Africa, wrote, Abbey Ahmed, who looked good,

He ran something called the Prosperity Party, he was all shiny and new, made this deal with the very grim Isseus Afewerki and got the Nobel Prize, but they never revealed what was in the treaty, and they signed it in Saudi Arabia, and it all went very quiet. I am almost certain that what was in that deal, the reason that Afwerki signed it, is let's do it. pincher movement against Tigray, Eritrea from the north, Ethiopia from the south. And let's crush that place because those Tigrayans have gotten disproportionately powerful. They're always butting into everything. And we both hate them. Let's get rid of them. And importantly, as you say here, the current leader, Abiy Ahmed, is an ethnic Amhara, which makes him opposed to the Tigray, I guess. Yeah, well, yeah. I think there's a lot of resentment against Tigrayans for disproportionate power. I mean, Ahmed now says he's fully Oromo, not Amhara. His father was definitely Oramo. His mother was either an Oromo Christian or an Amhara Christian. Nobody seems to be sure. But the first people he cracked down on were the Oramo, who are the biggest ethnic group. in Ethiopia. And that was why when we first started looking at this war and Radio Warnard,

I mean, you go to the maps first. The maps always matter. And you can see that the plan was, okay, we'll crush Tigray, Eritrea from the north, Amhara from the south. But then what's to the south of the Amhara? The Orimo, the biggest ethnic group in the country, who have been getting more and more pissed off at being excluded from power. And now he has to face Oromo revolts. There is an official alliance between the Tigrayans and the Oromo. All right. Now, so we're skipping ahead.

Let's go back to a year ago when they launched this Pinscher strategy. And again, so this is the national government in its army invading the northern province in alliance with the state to the north, Eritrea. And now, did the Eritreans invade at the exact same time? Yes. Okay. Yes. It was definitely coordinated attack.

And there was backing from a lot of places. I mean, the reason that there was this early success for the invasion, because, you know, a year ago, a little over a year ago, when the invasion started, it looked like the Tigranes were going to be wiped out. And literally, like there was a kind of genocidal feeling in the air. But what made the Ethiopian Eritrean force effective was the drones. They had lots and lots of shiny new drones. And drones are very, very effective on the battlefield. That's what the war between Nagorno-Kara, well, Arzac and Azerbaijan showed. The Armenians tried to fortify hilltops.

They tried to use armor, and the drones just sort of floated overhead because drones can stay up there for hours. And then they found a target and just wiped it out. And that happened in Tigray, too. The Tigrayans are very, very good fighters. They made up 90% of the army that wiped out the Ethiopian dictatorship in the 1980s. but they're very poor and they don't have any drones and it makes a real difference

so it looked like they were defeated but they were not well and as you say here that's because all of the best guys in the national government's army also are Tigray and switch sides right away yeah yeah yeah they did half of the Tigrayan officers stationed

in Tigray just went over to the what was the TPLF and it's now the TDF you know how it is with these insurgent movements. You get a lot of initials, a lot of name changes. I'm glad I read your article twice. It helped me to keep it straight. Yeah.

Yeah. So, yeah, they went over, and the Tigrayans, what I've discovered, and I didn't really know this before, is it's pretty clear that Tigrayans are the combat strength of most things that happen in this part of the world. Tigranes are the strength of the Eritrean army, too. That's the weird part.

They have no problem in killing other Tigrayans, But, you know, Iseus Afaericchi, the dictator of Eritrea, he's to grand. He doesn't say it very loudly, but he is. And most of his officers are, too. Hold on just one second. Be right back. So you're constantly buying things from Amazon.com. Well, that makes sense.

They bring it right to your house. So what you do, though, is click through from the link in the right-hand margin at Scott Horton.org. And I'll get a little bit of a kickback from Amazon's end of the sale. It won't cost you a thing. Nice little way to help support the show. again that's right there in the margin at scott horton dot org hey you want to know what industry is recession proof yes you're right of course pot

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you should check out Tom Woods' Liberty Classroom. Tom and a really great group of professors and experts have put together an entire education of everything they didn't teach you in school but should have. Follow through from the link in the margin at Scott Wharton.org for Tom Woods' Liberty Classroom. And then you were saying that the national government almost immediately resorted, I think, as you put it, out of necessity, at least quote-unquote necessity from their point of view, of using their ethnic Amhara militias to commit war crimes against the civilians of Tigray, too. Oh, yes, absolutely, especially in the west of Tigray.

These are, yeah, they're called Fano, and they're probably not very good as combat units. but, you know, this ain't Gettysburg, this is a very common form of warfare, too. You use your combat units to push up the main road toward the Tigrayan capital, and you unleash the ethnic militias basically to terrorize people, Tigrayan villagers, because a lot of people don't realize, if you really want to wipe up people out, You don't usually go through shooting everybody. You commit a few atrocities so awful that whole villages flee. And when poor people in a poor country flee, they die.

And children die first. Children die within a few days. So you're wiping out the next generation already. So, yeah, that was a big part of the plan. And then so you said, I'm sure this is right. You said, well, back when this all happened a year ago over at Radio War Nerd, we said, hold your horses because, one, these guys like to fight, or at least they know how to. And two, we're talking some bad lands, too, where they have the capability of retreating

and coming back to fight in an insurgent fashion. And I think we even mentioned we have the perfect examples of Iraq and Afghanistan of how well this can work if you're willing to try it. laying out in front of us here. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I don't know if the big conventional armies realize this yet, but, you know, the news is out. It's like there's an old far side cartoon with an alien stumbling off a flying saucer flat on its face, and the punchline is so much for instilling them with a sense of awe.

And that goes for shock and awe, too. The shock and awe is over. You may bomb the capital, as the Ethiopian Air Force did. You may roll up the road with your main battle tanks. That's not going to scare anybody. They're dead, but they're not impressed. No, they're dead, but they're not impressed because their cousins have gone off to the mountains, and they will never forgive you.

And, you know, this is an area of poor people with big families. They're not going to forgive. Mm-hmm. And you talk about how they know what they're doing in terms of not just, oh, no, we better run away and fight another day, but they were planning for this. I think you said they knew the war was coming, so they started it with stink attacks on national government forces in the Tigray province to get it kicked off. And then they really were planning on running away, you know, as a deliberate strategy, you know, thought of beforehand. And then they really deployed that strategy, I think. you say in June of this year, correct? Yeah, when they took back McKella to the total shock of everyone, myself included. I mean, as I said in the article, I didn't completely dismiss their claims that, you know, we're a Maoist outfit, we go to the country, and then we strangle the cities. But I also have heard that a lot of times, and it's sort of like, you know, I'm an old Raiders fan,

and it had the sound of a Raiders thing, you know, wait till next year. But as it turned out, they meant it. And, yeah, it's pretty easy to do if the population is with you. And the Ethiopian army, and especially the Eritrean army, were so brutal in Tigray that they created unanimous support for the resistance for the TDF within Tigray. When you got that kind of support, you can move easily. People tell you, you know, oh, yeah, they do those patrols. They try to stagger them, but they always go out at the same time.

Or, you know, the night shift over there is really lazy. You could go in around 2 a.m. You know what's going on. And then you take your time. You wait for them to get slack and then you strike. Yeah. I guess the whole shock and on commit all the atrocities and intimidate and cleanse the area and all that stuff. It works real well if it works real well right away.

But if not, then it's only extremely counterprivile. productive because you've just made sure that there's not going to be any compromise here. Yeah, that's, yeah, it's, that's over with, I think it can work sometimes if you're dealing with a top heavy regime with their little popular support. So, to an extent, it worked against Saddam Hussein because he was, you know, he wasn't as universally hated as they claim, but he wasn't really popular with a lot of the people either. But if you're dealing with a genuinely popular ethnic movement, it's probably not going to work. I mean, there are a lot of U.S. Army officers saying, hey, you know, the counterinsurgency thing doesn't work.

Sure. Well, there are a lot of people who said that before they tried it in Iraq and Afghanistan and then said, told you so after it didn't work in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yeah. Yeah. It's true. I told them that. Of course he did. Yeah, there was a moment 20 years ago when I actually thought, you know, I could go with this Iraq thing and I could make a million but no and it wasn't that I was virtuous it was more like snobbery like no these are amateurs no yeah there's no way that was going to work and then it did so yeah all right now so all right catch us up then since what's happened since last June they turn everything around I mean when I put it in Google they say that the momentum is

with government forces now but I don't know if that's right or current well it's really hard to No, because one of the things the Ethiopian government did right when they started, very effectively, was to cut communications to dig great. Turns out, you know, people think their cell phones make them more plugged in, but not if somebody turns off the towers. Not if somebody turns off the whole system. And that's what the Ethiopian government did. A lot of the people in charge here on both sides have an electronic warfare background. Abiy Ahmed has that background, and so does the leader of the leader of. the TPLF or TDF, Debrezion, Gebra Mikhail.

He was a famous hacker back against the Ethiopian dictatorship. So these guys know what they're doing with turning off the cell phones. When you do that, you can black out the whole area, and they did. So it's hard to know what's going on. It wasn't until they actually published photos of thousands of Ethiopian prisoners of war being marched through McKella, the Tigrayan capital, that people realized, whoa, they weren't just woofing. It was real.

So by now, yes, they have definitely the TDF, the armed wing of the TPLF, now allied with the Oromo Liberation Army, they have moved way down the main road toward Adis Ababa into an ethnically Oromo area of Amhara state. and they look pretty unstoppable until recently. It looks like the Ethiopian army, the ENDF, has been pushing back. Abiy Ahmed made a big grandstand move. I'm going to the front in Afar State because the road from Afar State, which is to the east of Tigray, is the road from Djibouti to Addis Ababa.

And if you're a landlocked state, you know, Djibouti is the only, port you can access. They can't get goods from Eritrea, God knows. So the TDF and Oromo Liberation Army have cut that road. So Obie has gone there to inspire the troops, or at least to do a publicity stunt. If they can cut off the advance, then that would be a big blow to the TDF. Just today, they bombed a big dam power plant inside Tigray. That's the kind of vengeful war that they can wage right now. They do have the Air Force, and much more importantly, they do have the drones, because drones are a lot more effective than piloted aircraft.

And so they can definitely inflict a lot of casualties. Whether they can stop the advance, I don't know. And now, in this war that started a year. ago with this pincher maneuver, they've now got themselves trapped in one now that the Tigrayans have this new alliance with the

aromo, but now in your article, you say the aromo don't really have much to bring to bear here, but what do you think exactly about that? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, they don't have, you know, all I can do is find

what information there is and make my best guess. And when you look, for example, at Ethiopian nationalist Twitter, which is a fascinating field. You see they talk very differently about the TDF, the Tigrayans, and the Ormo Liberation Army, the OLA. They hate the TDF, but they also fear it. They don't seem to fear the OLA. In fact, they sneer at it. But that's a tricky thing to do, too. The Tigrayans are only 6% of the Ethiopian population. The Oromo are at least 30%. That's a huge pool to draw from, and they have a grudge that goes back a long time, because basically, you know, power in Ethiopia has been passed between the Habesha, the Highland peoples, basically the Tigrayans and the Amhara.

It was just a duel between those two, and everybody else was just seen as, you know, a potential slave. and that's changing. The Ormo say, you know, if we're citizens, we've got to have some rights too. So if they ever do get organized, that would be it for Abiy Ahmed's government, I think. I mean, there are things the government is doing now that are really scary and mean a lot of suffering, but also they're the things that get done by people who are in deep trouble, like organizing vigilante groups in the capital, in Adis, Ababa. encouraging a bunch of paranoid civilians to, you know, arm themselves with clubs or axes or

whatever and go around looking for traitors and spies. Not a good way to catch traitor and spies, but a good way to do pogroms on any two grains you can find. Not going to change the war, though. It seems like flailing. If anything saves them, the drones will save them. And naturally, they're getting a new supply of the BT2 drone from Turkey. which is basically what won the war for Azerbaijan. And, you know, the Turkish, one of the weirdest things about American policy is the Turkish state can do anything at once. And it's been using these drones to kill Kurdish people in Eastern Turkey. Francis Fukuyama actually spoke out in favor of that, like, isn't this wonderful, Turkey now has its own murder drones.

and it is now exporting them to Eritrea and Ethiopia and they'll be used to blow up, maybe guerrillas, maybe villagers going to market, whatever. That might make a difference, but I don't see the Tigranes going back in their box easily. Well, hadn't you heard, history's over. They can do whatever they want. All right, now, so obviously the big question here, John,

is what's the CIA's role? Yeah. I think the CIA was totally on board with Abiyahmed, and they were waiting to see if he won. I mean, I think it's pretty much that simple. The U.S. invested a whole lot in making Ethiopia its biggest and most powerful proxy in the early 21st century. and that wasn't because they particularly loved the people who ruled it at the time. They just thought there are a lot of educated people who want to learn tech, want to be part of the global economy. We can use that, and they did.

But the problem is he didn't win. And I would think the CIA at this point is watching and trying to. trying to find out who wins and then probably doing as much harm as it can in the meantime. They may be farming it out, you know, to the UAE and to Turkey. Because the big fight now is, you know, who's going to supply the Ethiopian government with drones? Because those are the pivotal weapons at the moment. China is trying to supply Ethiopia with drones and at the moment because, you know, the whole

Russophobia thing failed, you can drum up a lot of phobia about China, so it'll be like, we have to give them drones so that China doesn't give them drones. And I can see this leading to the whole Cold War thing, like, you know, let's give these guys horrible mass murder weapons because if we don't, the other guys will. But I don't think the CIA knew this would happen, and I don't think they have a very good plan. And I don't think they're exactly backing one side or the other. I think they're kind of out of it and maybe farming out to the Turks.

Hey, y'all, check out my new book, Enough Already. Time to end the war on terrorism at enough already book.net. Early reviews are that people either think it's hilarious or they get so angry that they put it down. But it's the Iranian Revolution, the 80s

Afghan War, the Iran-Iraq War Iraq War I, Iraq War I and a half, and then Afghanistan, Iraq War II, Somalia, Pakistan, Libya, Syria, Iraq War III, Yemen, and all the special operations wars throughout Africa in the aftermath of the war in Libya. It's all there for you. It might change your friend's mind. Enough already. Time to end the war on terrorism at enough already book.net. Hey guys, Scott Horton here for Expanddesigns.com.

Harley Abbott and his crew do an outstanding job designing, building, and maintaining my sites, and they'll do great work for you. You need a new website? Go to expanddesigns.com slash Scott and save 500 bucks. Hey guys, check out listen and think audio books. They're at listen and think.com and of course on audible.com.

And they feature my book, Fools Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, as well as brand new out inside Syria by our friend Reese Erlick and a lot of other great books mostly by libertarians there. Reese might be one except. but essentially they're all libertarian audio books

and here's how you can get a lifetime subscription to listen and think audio books just donate $100 to the Scott Horton show at scothorton.org slash donate I did see where the Chinese foreign minister went to visit and show support for the current leader so I can see what you mean about and they say this about Saudi Arabia right

that if we don't keep helping them carpet bomb the poor Yemenis then the Russians or the Chinese might come in and start selling them stuff instead. Yeah, yeah. So I, you know, and this is a country that doesn't even have oil or the very long corrupt relationship with the U.S. that, uh, that the, uh, Saudis have, Ethiopia was seen as a rogue leftist state in the late 20th century until basically

early 90s when the, the, the Marxist dictatorship was overthrown. and then things changed fast, but they'll probably change again. I mean, basically you've got to figure out that there's going to be a deal made somewhere. Like maybe, okay, we'll get rid of Abbey and we'll go back to a really federal system where you can do what you want up in Tigray,

you leave us alone. I can see Army officers making a deal like that, but I can't claim to know what's going to happen. Yeah. Well, you know, in reading this, It sort of seems like reading the past and future history of this whole continent where mostly European empires, but not entirely European ones, sometimes just African ones, have drawn these borders in crazy places where people are either, you know, divided and conquered or grouped together and conquered or whatever in strange ways where you probably don't have a border where it really would belong if, you know, Kang and Kodos came and from above tried to make. it fair and make it, you know, more or less ethnic states, you know, wherever they are kind of thing. And so it's just going to continue to be like this all over the damn place

from now on. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's been going on for a long time. I mean, yeah, there have been a lot of great battles in this era, in this area, rather, that are now battle sites again, like Adwa, the great victory of an Ethiopian army over an Italian army. Basically, they defeated 15,000 Ethiopian, sorry, Italian and Eritrean troops, basically cut them to pieces. People talk about the Russo-Japanese War as a big morale-building movement for non-European nations, but so is Adwa. Adwa.

Adwa meant a lot to a lot of people. So, you know, that, but yeah, but that was the victory of a state that was colonial in its own right because Ethiopia expanded like three times over in the 19th century because the Ethiopian emperors pushed south and east into areas that were not ethnically related to them at all. So, yeah, it's a rough neighborhood. All right, real quick, a couple Somalia questions for you. First of all, you talk about Somalian troops came to Ethiopia to help fight against the Tigrayans. But I thought that the Somali government really only existed with the explicit and substantial support of Ethiopian forces in their country.

So who the hell is keeping al-Shabaab out of Mogadishu if what counts as a national army in Somalia is off-running errands in Ethiopia. I mean, yeah, in Ethiopia. And then secondly, you also mentioned Turkey's substantial role in Somalia, and I was wondering whose side they're on there. Because I really can flip a coin. I'm not sure. I think it'll be selling drones to either side as far as I know. Yeah. Well, I think Turkey is doing a very effective job in Somalia. And as far as I know, they're pretty popular with most people in Somalia. They have advisors and merchants and people on the ground all through Somalia, as far as I know, and nobody is attacking them. They're making a big deal out of being fellow Muslims, and they're expending money to help the place,

and it's working very well. So they're on the side of the American-supported government in Mogadishu, then? Maybe. I mean, there's on their own side. Yeah, yeah. Turkey is an independent power at this. point it's weird how people won't admit that there like when michael flynn you know finally went down i i couldn't believe how nobody noticed that he'd had to register as a paid lobbyist for the

turkish government that was his first public corruption but because the turkish government gets a pass in the u.s every single time nobody even noticed that and they were busy falsely accusing him of treason with the kremlin so that was more important yeah yeah it has to be the kremlin it can't Don't get me started. But anyway, as far as where these Turkish mercenaries came from, I don't know where they came from. They were definitely mercenaries. They were sort of rented, maybe from the Somali land government, I'm not really sure. Maybe it wasn't from Mogadishu, but they were rented like Hessians.

You know, you can have a thousand of our guys if you pay me, you know, $2 million right now. And they were told they were going to, because there are no jobs, you know, Somalis are this highly dynamic people and they got no economy to speak of at the moment. They were told they could go to the UAE and work there, you know, sounded good. Rich country probably won't have to do too much. It's not a very effective warlike country. Next thing they know, they end up fighting in Tigray against people who know the ground and we'll fight to the death.

So that, you know, that's what happens to cannon fodder. It's always a really depressing story. Yeah. All right. Sorry, before I let you go, I've got to ask you one more, which is, what's your take on the end of the war in Afghanistan? Well, it was, you know, like 15 years late, but it had to be done. It was more sensible than any other move the U.S. could make. The size of the U.S. debacle, the scale of the debacle, is extraordinary.

And as far as I can tell, it's gone into silence. now because basically within American discourse right now, you're either saying yay Trump or you're saying yay Biden, which is just so unbelievably lame. But that's the way it works. So if the Trump people are angry about Biden leaving Afghanistan, the Biden people can't bear to think that maybe we should look back on 20 years of extraordinary corruption, trillions of dollars wasted with with zero return. Nothing. I mean, people compare this to the fall of South Vietnam. South Vietnam held out a lot harder than the so-called Afghan government and the fictional Afghan army ever did. The U.S. now specializes in creating ghost armies, like the one that was supposedly

holding Mosul in 2014, when Islamic State took the place with basically 500, Toyota pickup trucks, because, as it turned out, there was no Iraqi army. There was just American tax money buying a lot of villas in Switzerland. And that's basically what happened in Afghanistan, too. Yep. Hey, for 20 years only, so could have been worse, maybe. Yeah, slow learners. These things happen.

Over and over and over again, they happen. Yeah, but it's the silence now. It's like, is anybody still mad about, I mean, if you're mad about what we did in Afghanistan, I guess that makes you're Trumpy now. And I keep running into that. Well, there's one lady from Human Rights Watch who just keeps harping on how bad the Taliban are. But yeah, I'm sorry. You're just kind of sore losing now. The question is really, I mean, the whole country obviously is facing a great depression after the massive bubble of international aid is broken. And so who's going to feed him is the only real question, helping the,

population survive and and then I think the same silence that you're talking about from the shame of the humiliation of defeat there then means that you know they're just going to there's no pressure on them really or certainly there's much less pressure than they have come in the other direction about the shame of holding on to all that money that belongs to the afghan national government whoever rules it now and yeah and the you know shipping a grain over there and whatever people get through the winter at least you know what i mean we have to put them on welfare forever but be nice to just ship them some wheat to eat maybe it would be nice but you know i'm i mean i'm sold i remember vietnam and younger people have this idea that you know vietnam became cool

pretty quick it didn't uh there were many years where nobody talked about vietnam they were after you know after that shot of the helicopter on the roof in sagon nobody wanted to hear about it and I can see something like that happening with Afghanistan. All right. Okay, sorry, one more question. If you got a minute? Sure. Okay.

So I read your book a long time ago about where you just cover every war in the world. I want to reread that one one time. I remember the Colombian knife fights and all that. There's a bunch of great shit in there. But so, you know, you got a really good perspective on a lot of these things all over the place. And one of the things I was thinking about when I was reading this was, what do you think are the chances for or the danger of some kind of really bad dirty war breaking out in America with the fall of our empire here and possibly the next economic crash

and such division between left and right and racial issues and all these things and a hell of an armed population yep and the constitution it ain't magic i think we all know that so no no i've thought about this a lot but i can't say i've i've I know for sure what's going to happen. I think you can't look for a parallel to the civil war because despite all the cliches about brother against brother, it wasn't usually that. It was north against south.

It pretty much was that. I know there are a lot of exceptions. But basically, that's how it was. You can't get that now. What you could have maybe is sort of city against country, which would be more like Paris versus the countryside in 19th century. France and that was an ugly war and I can see something like that happening but a lot of things that people don't think about would be like where you get your water from and what's the

organizing principle of militia is going to be and I would think people have kind of underestimated the churches in that regard I can see armed militia. is aligned with certain faiths becoming very powerful. I can see a big die-off if that happens because there are too many people to feed if the interstates get closed, and it's really easy to close an interstate. You know, you burn a few tires in an oil can and stand around with AR-15s, and that's a roadblock. and you start charging toll and pretty soon they don't want to come through there anymore

and some city is going to starve. And then you start making a deal and it's easy to see that army units might split and different factions of the National Guard, which is organized by state, they might split too. If there's a fight between the Army and the National Guard, It's not hard to figure out how that would end. But, you know, there would be a lot of warlords, a lot of shifting alliances, and a lot of corporate money.

I don't think it would even need foreign involvement. But if you were running a foreign country, it would be hard to resist. Yeah, I think it is a possibility, but I just have trouble with the geography. It's very annoying in a way. You can't draw any good lines. Basically, you could draw a line, which was the old Confederacy plus where its people moved to in the inland west. Yeah, that could be an entity. But I don't know that it would be allowed to exist without interruptions.

Well, you're right that it would be, you know, the town and country split is where it's, you know, Dallas, I don't think is quite as liberal as Austin. but these are two pretty democratic cities. In Dallas, one of the most important and biggest cities in the country in a very red state. Well, formerly a very red state, I don't know. There's another major ethnic divide where, hey, right now we all get along. But you could see that change here between Anglos and Hispanics, you know, in the worst case scenario, I'm just saying. Absolutely.

Absolutely. Oh, they would be. I mean, I remember one of the biggest surprises of my life when I moved to British Columbia was, whoa, they have inter-ethnic gangs here. And they really did. Not all of them. But, you know, you'd see some gang gets rounded up and it's like, you know, O'Reilly, Chang, Vladimir. And you don't get that in the U.S. I mean, wars have always been pretty much ethnic in the U.S.

And it would be interesting to see if that held or what the ethnic lines would be. They might not be as simple as people think. I don't know. And that would overlap with the religious stuff because a lot of the more militant evangelical churches are pretty mixed ethnically. Not all ethnic groups, but several ethnic groups in them. well so in all of this i mean i'm not really asking you percentages for all this like how likely you think this is to all break out or whatever but say if you had to compare between chaos and a lot of peaceful secession what do you think the chances are that you just figure out a way

to go back to the articles of confederation or better and had that strong federalism like you were talking about for ethiopia maybe live and let live a little bit more Well, you know, I'm no expert, but somehow I don't see that happening at all. The Constitution, that, you know, that document you mentioned, it's pretty conservative about such things. I mean, there's always somebody wanting to succeed. They're parts of California and Oregon that want to succeed now. But I don't know. I don't think that would happen peacefully.

We're not a peaceful people. Yeah. that could be the dark cloud on the silver lining there as far as bringing all the troops home from the world empire well they got to shoot at somebody don't they yeah yeah yeah

then the tactics might actually work better in the US than they have in those other at least they'd speak the language you know that's a big help and they do have landing strips already kind of available yeah i80 big landing strip yeah all right well John Dolan with the bad news I really appreciate it man

you write great stuff and sorry we haven't talked in a very long time but I've been reading you more or less all along here and always love your stuff so thank you very much. Thank you I appreciate it. It was fun. Bye bye. All right you guys that's John Dolan aka Gary Brecher

The War Nerd and here he is this one's reprinted at Naked Capitalism, The War Nerd The Tigray Ethiopia War 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.