Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 7/24/26 Joseph Solis-Mullen: How America’s War on Terror Ruined Africa

Episode Date: July 31, 2026

Joseph Solis-Mullen comes on the show to discuss several articles he’s written recently that delve into the mess US intervention has created in several African countries. Discussed on the show: ... “How Washington’s Interventions Fuel Somalia’s Cycle of Chaos” (Libertarian Institute) “Mission Creep: Lake Chad Basin As America’s Next Forever War?” (Libertarian Institute) Joseph Solis-Mullen is a political scientist and economist at The Libertarian Institute and a professor of politics and history at SAU. He is the author of The National Debt and You and The Fake China Threat and Its Very Real Danger. Follow him on Twitter @solis_mullen and find his work at his website. Sign up for the Scott Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom at scotthortonacademy.com For more on Scott's work: Check out The Libertarian Institute: https://www.libertarianinstitute.org Check out Scott's other show, Provoked, with Darryl Cooper https://youtube.com/@Provoked_Show Read Scott's books: Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine https://amzn.to/43D82oY (The audiobook of Provoked is being published in sections at https://scotthortonshow.com) Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism: https://amzn.to/4eMQblu Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan https://amzn.to/4a5fKvx Follow Scott on X @scotthortonshow And check out Scott’s full interview archives: https://scotthorton.org/all-interviews This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Tax Attorney Matt Sercely https://agoristtaxadvice.com; Moon Does Artisan Coffee https://scotthorton.org/coffee; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom https://www.libertyclassroom.com/dap/a/?a=1616 and Dissident Media https://dissidentmedia.com; Expat Money https://expatmoney.com/scott; and Crowdhealth https://www.joincrowdhealth.com/ (use promocode Horton) You can also support Scott’s work by making a one-time or recurring donation at https://scotthorton.org/donate/https://scotthortonshow.com or https://patreon.com/scotthortonshow Audio cleaned up with the Podsworth app: https://podsworth.com Use code HORTON50 for 50% off your first order at Podsworth.com to clean up your voice recordings, sound like a pro, and also support the Scott Horton Show! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 All right, guys, let me take a second to tell you about expat money at expatmoney.com slash Scott. It's a guy named Mikkel Thorup. He's a great guy. I've met him. And he's been an expat for many years and knows the rules and regulations all around the world about buying property and or other investments, how to protect your neck, even get citizenships and passports from other countries and everything you need to know
Starting point is 00:00:24 to be an expat, whether you're afraid of the coming collapse or just fighting. modern day price inflation, find out what you need to know about how to protect your neck at expatmoney.com slash Scott. Ladies and gentlemen of the press have been less than honest, reporting to the American people what's going on in this country? We're dealing with Hitler revisited. This is the Scott Horton show, libertarian foreign policy, mostly. When the president visited, that means that it is not only...
Starting point is 00:01:03 We're going to take out seven countries. They don't know what the fuck. Stand doing. Negotiate now. End this war. And now here's your host, Scott Horton. All right, you guys, welcome back. Introducing Joseph Solis Mullin.
Starting point is 00:01:24 He's a professor over there at the college or something, and he is a fellow at the Libertarian Institute where we're very happy to have him. And we have published two or three of your books now, right? Three of your books. Oh, yeah. the fake China threat, the national debt and you, and the end of liberalism. And so here are, look, you can see if I click on the thing, it'll say, and show you our books.
Starting point is 00:01:53 Classical liberalism, the rise and future of an idea. No, the rise, fall and future of an idea. I need my glasses on. The national debt and you. See, you can just tell by the cover. Judge a book by its cover. The national debt in you. But today we're talking about the wars in Africa there, man.
Starting point is 00:02:13 And I got some news. U.S. launches airstrike in Somalia for 76th time this year. And I thought, huh, I bet you there's some background of that. And yeah, I know. I wrote a chapter about it enough already. But oops, I didn't want to talk about that yet. But so did you write about the wars in Africa recently, a few different pieces about this.
Starting point is 00:02:40 And here's the one I mean, how Washington's interventions fuel Somalia's cycle of chaos. And what's great about this article is that it starts way back really before the story of the way I tell it in my book. I basically say, you know, yada, yada, the communists and Black Hawk down.
Starting point is 00:03:01 But anyway, our story begins in 2001. But you did a much, better service to your readers, I would say here, by going really back to the communist era when America was on the side of the Reds in the Cold War. What? In Somalia, and then how that all broke down in the aftermath and, you know, in the lead-up to really
Starting point is 00:03:26 what is America's longest war begun by George W. Bush in December of 2001 when he sent the Delta Force there. He pulled them out of Afghanistan, or at least, there are different teams. But while the Delta Force in Afghanistan was begging for reinforcements, Bush was sending their counterparts off to fight in Somalia. So take us back to the era when America, of course, was on the side of the Reds in the Cold War.
Starting point is 00:03:54 And how does that make sense? Well, sorry, I was muted there. You can sympathize, I know. So, yeah. So, yes, thank you, first of all, Scott, for having me think for that wonderful reduction. So, yes, that basically had to do with kind of some of the similar reasoning you see that's compelling people to say, well, we need to re-engage or get more engaged. You have to love those euphemisms. Because if we don't get more engaged in places like Mali, for example, the Russians will expand their influence there.
Starting point is 00:04:28 The Chinese will expand their influence there. And so that's basically how they wound up on the side of the Reds there. And it was simply because the Soviets had been allied with the previous regime. And so that's just kind of how that all worked out. Enemy of my enemy is my friend type of thing. But no, I just wanted to fill in that bit of background there because your chapters are imminently accessible and detailed. And as you said, they start in the 1990s.
Starting point is 00:04:54 And so I just wanted to kind of give them, okay, how did we get there? And so I essentially tried to do that very quickly by showing how the interplay of things that were happening between them and between Ethiopia, really drove that. And that's something that's continuing to this very day. And that's why I've been writing so many pieces about Africa recently. Africa has always been a pet interest of mine going all the way back to my undergrad. My professor, my advisor was Dr. David P. Rosson, who was the U.S. ambassador to Rwanda during the
Starting point is 00:05:29 genocide. And he actually was one of the lead negotiators of the Arusha process that broke down before. then. So he was always talking about the stuff. So I was always interested in it. And of course, the U.S. government sees nothing but endless opportunities in Africa. And that's why I wrote about it being the literal perfect forever war. There are armed insurgencies everywhere you want to look. Tons of them just happen to be Islamic, whether they have an ideology that's, you know, Islamic or solofy or something like that, irrespective. You know, the Pentagon can do anything with that kind of stuff.
Starting point is 00:06:02 And I think it was Nick Ters, who all the way back, God, this must have been 10 years ago now, had said that his guys were telling them that Afriqam has more named commands and missions than any other place, and that it is just endless makework for the military. So it's really important that people focus on this. And so I'm doing a series of articles showing how these are all connected, going from Somalia to Sudan.
Starting point is 00:06:24 Well, I skipped Ethiopia. But Ethiopia, I have some of those. And then Nigeria and the Lake Chad Basin and Mollah. Molly is coming this week. Great. Yeah, Molly's another one. I got a chapter on and enough already too. So I like that approach because especially with that book,
Starting point is 00:06:43 I was trying so hard to keep it at 300 pages, even where I was like, man, I really should dive into the backstory here. I was like, oh, I can't. So I'll just have to save that for another day or whatever. You're another day. Let you do it. So good. It was actually funny in doing the research for a lot of these pieces.
Starting point is 00:07:01 It was like, oh my God, Scott's going to be like, that guy, he's still around? Answer Al-Deen, those dudes? All right. Kleepe, Hafthar's army running around southern Algeria. Clashing with Chadian separatists? Right. Yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 00:07:16 I knew that guy from somewhere. Yeah, it's just, it's wild. Well, let me know if you're reading along and figure out that I didn't know what I was talking about. I need a good update, but all solid so far, so. Yeah, that's no surprise. Okay. So who is CED? How am I saying it? Sayad Bari? Tell us about him in America. And what happened to him? Well, what was Roosevelt's line about it? He may be a bastard, but he's our bastard. He was talking about some other random El Presente down in Central America.
Starting point is 00:07:51 Was it Samoza? Okay. It's what he's our son of him. Yeah, that's the one. That's basically what we have going on here. and, you know, he switched to the U.S. side. He had been initially aligned with the Soviets, just as most post-colonial independence groups were. There was just, there was this war, this very spectacular failure of war called the Ogaden War. And this is actually funny because there's still clashes in this region today.
Starting point is 00:08:23 And Barre's regime did absolutely terrible job against the rival Ethiopian government. And this is how the Dird wound up coming to, power. And yeah, so Washington was really seeking a foothold in that area, and they stepped in, because what had happened was the Ethiopians were variously getting annoyed because the Soviets were seeing an opportunity to expand their foothold in the region as well. And so they were kind of withholding arms. And so Washington was able to step in and say, hey, you know, the Soviet Union is not a reliable ally, but we'll be your Huckleberry.
Starting point is 00:09:01 And here we are, many, many, many years later. So the Somalia situation is just incredible. It's, because, you know, your brain kind of has trouble sometimes being like, that was 25 years ago, that we just started first randomly bombing and putting special forces in there. And the situation, this is what's so strange about revisiting all these cases because, you know, there are so many jihadi groups in Africa now, and you did a great job giving everyone a primer on that.
Starting point is 00:09:32 I understand your page constraints were made that difficult, but just looking and seeing how many of these have continued and how these situations in all of these countries, from Mali to Niger to Somalia to Ethiopia, name a country. We're not even in the Middle East. All the countries that were the subjects of, you know, U.S. war on terror efforts are, I think, uniformly worse off than they were,
Starting point is 00:09:54 25 years ago, which is just incredible, been doing this for 25 years in these countries. If you're like me, you consider Ron Paul to be the greatest American who ever lived. I mean, after all, who taught more people about liberty than Dr. Paul? Right. Nobody. He's the greatest. That's why I got this statue behind him right here. And that's why you could get one for your desk or your shelf, too, if you want, at
Starting point is 00:10:19 Rick Casale.com slash store slash Ron Paul. and you can get your great bust of Dr. Paul. It's the same one you see on the Tom Woods show as well. And they're really of the finest quality and they make great gifts. And use promo code Scott or Horton or just follow the link in the right hand margin at Scotthorton.org. All right, guys, let me take a second to tell you about expat money at expatmoney.com slash Scott.
Starting point is 00:10:48 It's a guy named Mikhail Thorup. He's a great guy. I've met him. And he's been an expat for many years and knows the rule. and regulations all around the world about buying property and or other investments, how to protect your neck, even get citizenships and passports from other countries and everything you need to know to be an expat, whether you're afraid of the coming collapse or just fighting modern day price inflation, find out what you need to know about how to protect your neck at expatmoney.com
Starting point is 00:11:18 slash Scott. What it is is Google, man, they pissed me off because I asked him to fetch up this article by Justin Romando, and it didn't. It found me a different one. But he had a piece where he said, Somalia is the entire war on terrorism writ small. And how is, you know, essentially all just blow back in each consequence, self-licking ice cream cone onto the next stage of the intervention.
Starting point is 00:11:44 And, you know, you tell the story a lot of the same way. Well, first what happened was this. And then that led to that. And it's just, you know, not to fast forward, but here we are as Dave DeCamp, you know, we had a good laugh in a bad way about this at anti-war.com last week where Dave DeCamp posted a headline
Starting point is 00:12:07 that was U.S. launches airstrike in Somalia for, it was 74th or 75th. But when he published it, oh, time this year. But when he published it, the URL put a little two at the end. So it's like, oh, that's weird. So, but if you erase the two, it's the same headline, but from last year. Wow. Seventy fourth time this year, you know, and only it was later in the year last year.
Starting point is 00:12:36 It's much earlier in the year this year that we get to 75. Here we are at 76. It's so funny because you think about it, like going back to your book and President Trump saying, can't we just pull out of Somalia and the generals were digging in their heels and basically sabotaging him in the media. and he just realized, you know what, the safe calculation is, just let the Pentagon do whatever it wants, because I'm going to get more bad press ending these pointless things.
Starting point is 00:13:02 Remember he bombed, I think it was Syria, and then the Washington Post was like, now he's our president. Right. Like, doing senseless crap like that, we just can't think of what they're doing in these places as like accomplishing some grand strategic vision. It's just the interest. It's just public choice theory and the interests.
Starting point is 00:13:21 That's all it is. People ask me about like a coherent theory of what's going on here. And it's like, and that's really, it's just everyone pursuing their own narrow little self-interest. And the national interest is not really a real thing. Not in America's case. We're invulnerable over here. The government is meddling around. Yeah, if you ask me, it's very weak and feminine how much these Marine Corps generals love their little ribbons.
Starting point is 00:13:46 You know, it was James Mattis who told Trump that, no, we can't leave. and then lied to him the most idiot lie, that the reason where there is to prevent another Times Square bombing. But anyone who knows anything about the Times Square bombing knows that it was a Pakistani American who had an advanced degree and a wife and a job and a house and was living the dream and everything was fine until he went home to Pakistan and he saw literally with his own eyes and smelled with his own nose the results of Barack Obama doing a drone strike on a house
Starting point is 00:14:22 and killing a bunch of innocent people in his family's hometown. And so then he volunteered for the Tariqi Taliban, the Pakistani Taliban, that had never had beef with us before and had never attacked America before. And they recruited him and taught him how to make a bomb. And he's the one who tried to blow up Times Square in May of 2010.
Starting point is 00:14:43 And then, so what the hell do you mean? And we're drone striking people to prevent time square bombings that's how you cause time square bombings absolutely and it's so so you know blackly funny that you read so many things about like for example what's going on in the in the in the sahel right with Islamic state in the in the greater sahel they talk about grievance based recruitment they go to someone whose mom got killed or whose brother got killed or whose home got burned down or whatever the case may be and that's how they get him to pick up a gun it's that simple most of the time.
Starting point is 00:15:19 They're not a ton of, you know, super, you know, ideologically inspired. It's mostly grievance. It's mostly grievance, you know. And so I actually, I think it's really helpful for people to have kind of an understanding of how all this stuff links together in a make-work project for the military. Because if you take even one case like Somalia, or not Somalia, I'm sorry, a simple case, one case like Nigeria. and just show people how insanely complicated it is on the ground
Starting point is 00:15:52 in terms of religious divisions, ethnic divisions, socioeconomic divisions, by which I mean things like, you know, urban rural divide, pastoral people versus like settled agriculture, actually fighting physically over land resources, and then all the different jihadi groups who are fighting for influence in various parts of the country there.
Starting point is 00:16:14 It's like, how are U.S. bombs and intelligence sharing, going to solve what is essentially a domestic political problem. Nigeria is a made-up state full of people who don't like each other, and the state lacks the capacity to effectively exercise a monopoly of violence over its territory. And that is the story all across the Sahel. That's the story in Mali, in Niger, in Chad, in Cameroon, in Sudan, in South Sudan, in Ethiopia, and in Somalia. And no amount of U.S.
Starting point is 00:16:50 bomb. This is an area the size of the continental United States. Yeah. That's how big an area we're talking about here. Yeah, think of how unjust it is, too, that, like, what is this presumption that whichever regime
Starting point is 00:17:04 rules whichever state in Africa is the best and most legitimate government for those people, and it deserves, all of them, apparently, deserve to be armed by us, to have a better and more stable monopoly on violence and the ability to crush any insurrection against them, unless that is if we're backing the insurrection against them to replace them with
Starting point is 00:17:27 some, you know, replace the current regime with someone more compliant. And then we back them against whoever. But what about all the innocent civilians caught in the middle who maybe don't want their government to be propped up by us? Maybe it's going to commit worse crimes against them if they do. Maybe their meager vote if they have one at all will become worth even less when America comes to their country and starts throwing its weight around. And these are questions. I remember we talked about this in the 1990s, about the Army Special Operations Command
Starting point is 00:17:58 looking to Africa. I actually have an old clip of an Army Ranger General saying, or whatever, Army General, I guess the Special Operations Command is some kind. I don't want to get it wrong. But he goes, yep, this is going to be our job in the New World Order. we're just going to go from place to place helping these governments crush these insurrections. And he's talking about in Africa.
Starting point is 00:18:18 And it's like, who are you? Just without even having ever heard of Frederick Hayek. Like how could you possibly know that you're doing the right thing in a place like that, you know? Yeah, Africa is so humbling. You start looking into a single country like Chad. Chad's one of the countries that I've been writing about
Starting point is 00:18:39 because of the contest between, you know, know, Boko Aram and Iswap for territory there and increasing U.S. security engagement, people who are not watching this, can't see my scare quotes there, but like more engagement in this region. Okay, there are 200 different ethnic groups in Chad. There's a bunch of different rebel separatist groups.
Starting point is 00:18:59 There was a massive civil war about 30 years ago where the North tried to break away from the South. There's tons of transnational arms shipments and rebel groups flying around between eastern Niger and southern Algeria. and coming in refugees coming from Sudan next door. Like, the idea that the United States government can even fix it, forget should. Like, you know, is it right for the, let's just imagine for a second that they could possibly, that they had a right to do it.
Starting point is 00:19:29 Let's just pretend for a second that they do have a right to do it. They can't do it. They can't possibly do it. This is not solvable with bullets. And that's all the U.S. That's what U.S. diplomacy, unfortunately, has. kind of been replaced with in our unipolar lifetimes is just, just bomb something or, you know, send in the special operations units or, you know,
Starting point is 00:19:53 just pour some funding in there. Yeah. It's pretty hopeless. Hey, guys, look, I own Liberty Stickers.com again. Yeah, that was my business. This is a long time ago, but I sold it to Rick McGinnis, but then he gave it back to me for a song. And now it's mine again.
Starting point is 00:20:08 So get all your great bumper stickers about how much you hate the government. and the war and the sick and tired of the Israelis and yeah liberty stickers.com. Everyone else's stickers suck. My mom always told me you keep drinking that much coffee. You're going to turn into some. Well, look, it's true. Now I'm a coffee. Scott Horton's show flavored coffee.
Starting point is 00:20:29 It tastes just like my show. It's great. Sort of. Well, no, it's Ethiopian and Sumatran coffees blended for your mornings. It's the first thing I do when I get up is for myself a pot of coffee. coffee and then I drink it. See, that's why this mug is almost empty. And the deal is, it's so good.
Starting point is 00:20:50 You never go back to your grocery store coffee again. And it's Mundo's artisan coffees. Get it because they hate Starbucks because Starbucks supports the war party. But Mundo's artisan coffees, like, they support peace. And all you got to do to get some is go to Scott Horton.org slash coffee. That's scothorton.org slash coffee. Yeah, you know, I have some good quotes in the book from military generals saying, well, now that we're leaving Afghanistan, we're looking for work.
Starting point is 00:21:19 So we're trying, we're going to go to Africa and see if we can find something to do there. We got to stay globally engaged. I remember someone got so mad at me and said, oh, you're so shocked by that. But I didn't say I was shocked by that. I mean, it's trying to shock you with that a little bit, but like, you see how it works? people make this job accusations and criticisms on the internet sometimes but anyway point being that like yeah
Starting point is 00:21:46 as you said this is make work right like what do you think the Navy's more interested in containing China and so calm is more concerned about terrorism in Africa because that's their jab yeah exactly that's where their budgets come from yeah I mean this is as old this is as old as the Pentagon itself right they created it to try and stop the branches
Starting point is 00:22:06 from fighting with each other over funding right Yeah, you get this part of the world. We'll get that one. Yeah. Now, here's the other thing, too. History begins when I say so. And in this case, when Barack Obama did what Hillary Clinton wanted
Starting point is 00:22:22 and launched an aggressive war against Libya. And yes, there were other people who already existed in the world and were doing things and things. But that's my point. That's why they shouldn't have done that. But it's clearly just a massive unforced error. It was the kind of thing, just like with the recent war. war with Iran, just like with marching into Iraq, where if you didn't have to invade yesterday,
Starting point is 00:22:45 why do you have to invade today? You don't. And did it anyway. Barack Obama, in fact, said himself, well, it was a 51 to 49 percent decision. In other words, he did it on a whim. In other words, it was an illegal aggressive war against a country that wasn't threatening us at all. What do you mean? 51, 49. And by destroying Libya, it's now something like three different countries. Again, it was only unified after World War II, not even after World War I. So take that for what you will. But, and what happened was, yeah, is what happened, though, was the Tuaregs, there were some Tuareg Merks who fought on Qadopi's side.
Starting point is 00:23:23 And when they lost the war, they fled back home to Mali. But they brought a bunch of their guns with them, and they reignited their secessionist movement from the national government in the south. But then they were quickly followed by Libyan Jihadis, who just come home from Iraq. and Obama had just taken their side and overthrowing Gaddafi, and they chased these Tuaregs into Mali and marginalized them and hijacked their whole thing revolution.
Starting point is 00:23:47 And then there was a coup and all this stuff. We're all talking in 2000, you know, the aftermath of the 2011 war. So this all takes place into 2012 and 13. And then there's a coup down in the capital city of, I forgot the name of it now. But, and then, you know, the Tuaregs and the jihadis ended up sort of making a somewhat of alliance
Starting point is 00:24:10 or different kind of patchwork, I guess, of alliances and armed militias there. And they've been essentially, you know, they've created a lawless insurgent Northern Mali, which is a land about the size of Texas, I think, maybe bigger. The ancient land of Timbuktu, yeah, that's a real place, this ancient trade route through here.
Starting point is 00:24:32 But then it was literally that jihadi war that, Hillary and Obama that had come home from Iraq War II, which was essentially invented by W. Bush in reaction to his invasion of Iraq, the Sunni insurgency. These guys came home, Obama took their side in Libya. Then they moved on down into Mali. And then they spread their jihad to Burkina Faso and Chad and Sierra Leone. And they met up with Boko Haram in Nigeria and said, what you guys need is some rifles and some real instruction in the war. the Quran.
Starting point is 00:25:07 And like, yeah, then just made them that much worse than they already were. And so, you know, it sucks because whatever, you know, enough already came out in 21, the beginning of 21. And then so you have, there's all these developments that have happened since then. But I've worn at the end of the book, I have two different Africa sections in the book, sort of midway, and then I touch on it again at the end that this is the future of the terror war. It's just chasing anybody calls himself ISIS anything, all through north and west Africa. like this.
Starting point is 00:25:38 And this is all. How can we can never talk about this. And neglect to mention the role of Barack Obama for kicking this all off in this massive unforced error. And just because we don't have, you know, 5,000 or 7,000 of our guys dying in the thing, still a hell of a lot of people have died in the thing and there's no end in sight. Oh, in terms of human suffering, Scott, it's totally staggering. I mean, just reading about all of the.
Starting point is 00:26:06 refugees, which are actually pretty well documented, even if killing is a little harder to estimate. And I think you're absolutely right. Because Libya oftentimes doesn't even really get a mention in terms of conflicts of the past, you know, 25 years. But in terms of its ill effects, it's right up there with the Rock War II. I think the problem is that the ill effects are being felt in sub-saharan Africa where no one, frankly, really cares at all. And, you know, Dave has brought this up on the show many times. Usually, when there's a of Airstrike in Somalia, he's the only one who covers it. There might, and usually it's just a press release from Afrika.
Starting point is 00:26:43 And so, yeah, people don't know about it, but it's absolutely horrifying. And it was a totally unforced error. And you're absolutely right. All of those jihadis came down through there. And the Tauri rebel groups, which, you know, they wanted a part of the Azawad and all those guys. And, yeah, Boko Aram, Boko Aram had been pretty effectively beaten down by the Nigerian central government when they initially broke out, which I think was in 2011.
Starting point is 00:27:13 I can't remember exactly. It was right around then. And they got pretty roundly roughed up there. But then like you said, here come all these unlimited weapons and jihadis rolling down from Libya and Mali. All these massive ungoverned spaces, like you said, you know, the size of Texas. Mali is one of the worst places to be now. I mean, Eastern Mali, Central Mali. Western Niger, Northwest, Nigeria, northern Burkina Faso.
Starting point is 00:27:43 You can't go there. You can't go there? Are you nuts? I mean, these places are literally taxed and run and administered by a competing factions of these terrorist groups. This is current day here. This is yesterday's news or two days ago's news. Oh, Molly.
Starting point is 00:28:02 Yeah. Trump's ready to go to Mali. Yeah. Rock Obama was too afraid to follow up on his disaster there. They tried to get Algeria. Eventually, they got the French to intervene there. And then the Russians came to intervene to try to protect against the jihadists there. But we can't have that.
Starting point is 00:28:20 So saddle up, boys. You're going to Timbuktu. All right, you guys, let's talk about crowdhealth at join crowdhealth.com slash Horton and or use the promo code Horton there to join crowd health, join crowd health. join crowdhealth.com. Essentially, the gangsters have priced us all out of health insurance. What are you going to do? Well, there's a solution. It's not insurance. It's crowdfunding. And what you do is you pay cash and then your friends and fellow members at Join CrowdHealth, help defer those costs and you help them when it's their turn. And it works really well.
Starting point is 00:28:56 It's really a great program to replace health insurance. Look at joincrowhealth.com slash Horton. All right, you guys, me here for tax attorney Matt Sersely at agaristtaxadvice.com. And he is just a real hawk. He serves small businesses and high income professionals who are on the run from the revenues. And his job is making sure that you don't have to pay those sons of bitches one penny more than you absolutely have to.
Starting point is 00:29:28 That's Matt Sersley, your new tax lawyer. He's at agoristtaxadvice.com. Yeah, and that's the thing. I remember you have a chapter in the right towards the end called Great Power, Great Power Competition, or Great Power Conflict. I can't remember the name of the chapters, but your point was, look, they'll use terrorism as an excuse all day long. If anything has the word Islamic in its name, they'll go after it, and you'll find plenty of groups with Islamic in its name. It's Central Africa. But the real point here is just to sit on this space and make sure China and Russia don't establish a foothold there for, you know, no actual reason.
Starting point is 00:30:03 other than that it protects their jobs and their budgets. There's absolutely nothing. You know, China's not hankering to like dive into the Congo and like get involved in the security situation there, right? They're more than happy to let the United States dink around and waste its money and resources there. So yeah, that's, so I've, that's what I've been working on and just trying to connect all these things and show people that, look,
Starting point is 00:30:30 all of this stuff traveled down, then it went around, And just that whole belt, the whole Sahel. Really, we're just kind of hoping now that Mauritania will hold up because so many of the refugees. I mean, there's over 300,000 refugees right now being hosted in Mauritania. It's really putting a lot of pressure on the country's resources in terms of its food, it's health care. You know, and you got like Al-Qaeda affiliates and ISIS affiliates duking it out right there trying to get in there. If they were successful here, they'd have access to many prime North Atlantic, like,
Starting point is 00:31:10 port, mid-Atlantic, like port cities. I mean, well, then is the Navy going to, like, come get involved and be more interested in the Terror Wars? Is that a bright side here for us, you know? No. Yeah, so, I don't know. There's no good, nothing Washington is going to do is going to help this situation. They've made things so bad, so much worse than they needed to be.
Starting point is 00:31:33 really starting with the Libya intervention. Of course, what's been going on in Somalia has been a terrible shame and a crime these last 25 years, and we have nothing to show for it at all. I wrote an article back in November of the costs of war in Somali, where I basically total up all the casualties, all the numbers, all the opportunity costs.
Starting point is 00:31:50 It's been completely ridiculous. It's been bad for the neighbors, too. They've had their bombings in Kenya and wherever. Yeah, in Kenya, yeah. And so, you know, just trying to do more to draw attention to these conflicts as Washington seems really eager to step further into those. And I still think we're at a moment where, you know,
Starting point is 00:32:09 certainly the younger generation is really disillusioned by and just not into the whole like, you know, global policemen, American-led international order that, you know, frankly, my grandparents' generation and my parents' generation were very fond of. That was the world they grew up in. They grew up in the World War II Cold War world. and you know it's good to see that younger people
Starting point is 00:32:33 even towards China there's a big generational gap in opinion about China younger people are just not interested in messing around with China it's the older generation really right not only my students who you know have the benefit of my tutelage to make sure they don't fall for any BS
Starting point is 00:32:52 but also just public opinion pulling responsible statecraft just had an article the other day that collected tons and tons of public opinion polling. And like, young people are just like, no, I don't want to, I don't care if China becomes powerful. Like, that's fine. Whereas it's older people like 45 and over who are like, no, the chai-coms can never be powerful to fight them.
Starting point is 00:33:15 Yeah. So I don't know. I think there's hope. I think there's hope with the younger generations. And, you know, the work that we're doing, I think, is, is impressing a lot of them, impressing upon their minds in a very positive way. Cool. So.
Starting point is 00:33:28 Good to hear. All right, well, look, man. Again, everybody, check out Joseph Solis Mullins' great archive at the Libertarian Institute, libertarian institute.org, and you'll find them, you know, on the front page there right now and all the time. He writes for us every week. And again, check out his books. The most recent is classical liberalism. And then before that is the national debt and you and the fake China threat.
Starting point is 00:33:55 And they are all for sale. I'll just click through the links at Libertarian Institute. dot org slash books and thank you so much again for your time on the show thanks god appreciate it this scott horton show is brought to you by the scott horton academy of foreign policy and freedom roberts and roberts brokerage ink moondos artisan coffee tom woods liberty classroom and a p s radio news subscribe in all the usual places and check out my books fools errand enough already and my latest provoked how washington started the new cold war with russia and the catastrophe in ukraine find all of the above at scott horton dot
Starting point is 00:34:28 and I'm serializing the audio book of Provoked at Scott Horton Show.com and patreon.com slash Scott Horton Show. Bumpers by Josh Langford Music, intro and outro videos by dissident media, audio mastering by Potsworth Media. See you all next time.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.