Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 8/17/26 Dave DeCamp on Palestine, Iran, Somalia and the Risk of an American Nuclear Strike

Episode Date: August 19, 2026

Dave DeCamp returns to the show to run through the latest foreign policy news. He and Scott discuss Israel’s ongoing, ceasefire-violating strikes in Gaza, the risks of another escalation between the US and Iran, the regional dynamic of the war, the risk of a nuclear strike on Iran and Washington’s never-ending air campaign in Somalia. Discussed on the show: “Iran’s Secret Plan to Escalate the War” (Wall Street Journal) “Another Failed 20-Year War: America vs. Somalia” (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  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; 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/ 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

Ladies and gentlemen of the press have been less than honest. Reporting to the American people, what's going on in this country? Because the babies are making this. We're dealing with Hitler Revisited. This is the Scott Horton Show. Libertarian Foreign Policy, mostly. When the president visit, that means that it is not illegal. We're going to take out seven countries in five years.

They don't know what the fuck they're doing. Negotiate now. End this war. And now, here's your host, Scott Porton. All right, y'all, introducing again, Dave DeCamp. He is our news editor at anti-war.com, and also he is the host of anti-war news

on all your podcast catchers and YouTube and everything. Welcome back, Dave, how's going? Good, Scott. Thanks for having me again. Good to have you here. Lots of bad news to talk about. Get your brain ready because I'm going about Somalia here in a minute. But first, let's talk about what's going on in Palestine.

Of course, it's taken a bit of a back burner since the pseudo ceasefire and since the war in Iran especially. But there's still a lot at play there, including, as you cover every day, plenty of people still being killed. But also, I know that there's a lot of politics there where they said they had a deal for Hamas to disarm. But then Hamas said, not so fast, only after the Israelis live up to their end. And then Net Yahoo said, I'm not living up to a damn thing. in what was a minor humiliation for Trump, but he's so used to being humiliated by Netanyahu that like the marginal utility of this humiliation made it not that big of a deal,

I guess, even though it seemed like it should have been huge. So see if he could give us like a rundown on the situation there on the ground as far as like who's how much of the strip is being taken, who else being killed and all that, and who's running the place. And also the state of all these negotiations and the Board of Peace and all of this stuff. Yeah, so as we discussed, I think the last time I was on here,

Israel completely violated that October 2025 ceasefire deal every single day, basically, with their constant attacks and they've taken more territory. That deal left them in control of about 53% of Gaza. They currently control between 60 and 70%. And the deal was explicit that if Hamas lived up to its end, which was releasing the hostages and, recovering the bodies of the deceased Israelis,

then Israel could not take any more territory and that they must halt all attacks and military operations. So things were kind of just going on, and Israel kind of escalated a bit in recent months with its attacks, and over 1,200 people have been killed there in the nine or 10 months since that deal was signed.

And then kind of unexpectedly, at the end of last month, Trump announces on truth social, that a deal has been reached, that Hamas has agreed to disarm. And the so-called Board of Peace also put it out, and they put out this, I believe it was 15 points of how the deal would work.

Essentially, Hamas would they call decommission their weapons and turn them over to this new Palestinian-led government that's going to take over, and it would all be done under the watch, basically, of the U.S. And this so-called international stabilization force of foreign troops would deploy to Gaza, and the IDF would withdraw as this process takes place, the decommissioning and the establishment of this new government.

And Netanyahu was quiet initially. There was all these kind of leaks to the Israeli media saying, you know, we're not going to follow this. And actually in the first few days after, they really escalated the bombing of Gaza and killed dozens of people. And then they did kind of de-escalate and reduce the attacks. and but then Netanyahu came out publicly and just said,

no, you know, we rejected the deal. We're not going to do this. And the Board of Peace already kind of walked back, kind of a key part of the deal. The deal said that this would take place simultaneously, the withdrawal and the disarmament. And they said, oh, actually, no withdrawal until Hamas fully disarms. But even with that, Netanyahu is still rejecting it.

Now where we're at today, Jared Kushner, Today's August 17th Monday, Jared Kushner was just in Egypt on Sunday and met with Hamas. And they told him, we are committed to this deal that President Trump released. You should see like Amos's statement

praising Trump for his efforts to bring peace to Gaza and saying that, you know, that they're totally committed to it and that they must put pressure on Israel to follow through on the deal. So Jared Kushner meets with Hamas. And then today,

he goes and meets with Netanyahu. And according to all the reports from Israeli media, the agreement, there was no breakthrough, basically. Netanyahu said, we can't do this until after elections. And now we're going to continue, you know, what they call targeted strikes in Gaza. And Kushner agreed to that. So things are basically still the same,

despite this big new announcement from Trump. There's been a reduction in attacks, but they haven't stopped. We're still seeing children get killed just over the weekend. A 14-year-old boy was killed last. week, a 13-year-old girl. And so it's kind of the same, you know, despite this big show from Trump. And he hasn't, I don't think he said anything about Netanyahu rejecting it.

Well, there you go. Oh, you, I don't hear you. Oh, that was my fault. It's not always my fault. That one was my. But, hey, at least you didn't have to listen to me, sneeze. But yes, so here you go. Yeah, Wall Street Journal, Trump says words, but.

Yeah, obviously with no real meaning behind them. I mean, I guess this is kind of, well, you tell me you're reading of this. You know, I know you're in it all dang day long. It seems like it's the same thing for Gaza and for Lebanon as it is for Iran that Trump can have his way here. He is the senior partner, even if they have their weird personal relationship, whatever their dynamic is. But America is the senior partner in the relationship with Israel. it seems like if he ever would put his foot down and insist on this, that, or the other thing,

he can have his way. And sometimes it's, you know, obviously they're just, you know, doing some pro wrestling stuff. But other times it seems like he is sincerely frustrated on Netanyahu's stepping on his toes or getting in the way of what he's trying to do. There's been a couple of quotes of Kushner expressing some frustration from time to time or whatever.

But I don't know. I guess ultimately we don't have any real example of him actually forcing them to stop doing anything, do we? No, and there's been multiple times now that he said, you know, Israel must stop the bombing in Gaza or in Lebanon, and they just don't. And in some cases, they kind of reduce attacks. But it seems like, I mean, based on what I've seen,

like when Trump says stuff like this, they usually escalate. Like, they bomb the place more. And then after a few days, then they scale it back. I don't know if that's some kind of message that, you know, we're not going to listen to you. You know, so we're just seeing this now. So Trump is saying that Israel should stop striking Gaza. And again, I mean, from just following this for the past almost two years, like, that basically doesn't mean anything to me.

You know, I think the reports from Israeli media are probably more accurate that they agreed, okay, you know, because they call them targeted strikes. And I think it's shown that when Trump says that, what he really means is like, all right, take it easy a little bit. With Lebanon, that was kind of the big thing, like stop knocking buildings down in Beirut. You know, but the war and occupation has continued in southern Lebanon. Mm-hmm. Scott Horton flavored coffee. I drink this stuff first thing in the morning, every morning and then right around 2 o'clock when the potential siesta starts to kick in. No siesta.

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And Tom Scott sent you. Let's get back to that in a second, but I want to ask you about the humanitarian situation in Gaza. I've read quite a bit about rats and whatever, but, you know, it's a few cities. I'm not going to say it's a big place, but. There are a lot of people there in maybe different circumstances in different places. So I wonder if you can give us like some kind of sketch of, you know, how much food is getting in and how well it's being distributed, whether anybody is going around, you know, trying to make sure to provide for some kind of sanitary, you know, toilet services and to hunt down and murder rats, maybe set loose a fleet of cats after them or some kind of thing. Is anybody doing anything or everybody's just living in a sewer pit over there because they're in a damn thing that's changing?

I mean, you know, I think the goal right now is basically to keep them in this state of misery. I mean, I'm sure that there's some efforts, you know, to clean things up there. But you have people, you know, living either intense or in just the bombed out rubble of homes. There's still some places in central Gaza like Darrell Bala where there's more buildings and like, you know, you could see some pictures and videos there that. they have markets with plenty of food and everything. And, you know, the food and aid has been getting in. It still hasn't been at like the level that Israel agreed to.

But you don't have people like starving at the moment. But it's just like the squat, it's just, they're still not allowing any kind of real reconstruction or any real effort here. And you see just like the garbage piled up and kids go through there looking for scraps or things they can burn for firewood, and it's just a miserable, miserable situation. Well, and you know, you read so much about rats. I mean, I'm no sanitation engineer or anything like that,

but those things spread disease, all different kinds of really bad ones and stuff like that. So you can imagine that without, I don't know the details, but there's got to be like all kinds of sickness going on and then very untreated because who's got to help? health care when they're, you know, busy cutting kids' limbs off without anesthesia still. Yeah, and I mean, you imagine living in a tent, like, with your kids, with rats, like, every night you hear them scurrying around.

It's just a nightmare. Crapping a hole in the ground. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we paid for it, so we got to bear witness. That's how it goes. That's right. And one thing that Trump can do a damn thing about it.

apparently. One thing that Trump's done with this whole thing he's constructed, the Board of Peace, is he's made the U.S. like more complicit. Like, the U.S. is more directly involved and like deciding with Israel that, yeah, no reconstruction can take place until this happens. And we've, they, they established like a small military base in southern Israel where the U.S. has been supposedly monitoring all of this. It just kind of makes it even more, you know, of a U.S. Israeli operation that's happening here. Any such cases? Okay, so well, and speaking of which, back to Lebanon then.

So I did talk to William Van Wagonin. He was in Lebanon. This is what, three weeks ago or something? Maybe four. And he was there and he went down to the front and everything and he said, you know, they do not control all the land up to the Zahari River and they don't even necessarily

control all the land. up to the Latani River, although they claim it all, but they're still fighting going on there and this and that. So that was a few weeks ago, but I don't guess there's been any major changes there. And certainly not in a political sense, right, where they have chosen or have been ordered by America to withdraw back to some certain line, which, and I'm sorry because I refresh my memory too. The MOU obviously addressed Lebanon and and demand on the end of the fighting, did it also expressly stipulate a full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon?

And I guess that will use dead anyway. Yeah, well, it didn't say that explicitly, but it said, I forget the language, but it was something about Lebanon's sovereignty and territorial integrity must be intact or something. So it heavily implied that, and that's what Iranian officials, you know, said that it meant. But it didn't explicitly say that Israel must withdraw,

but it called for a complete end to the conflict, which as long as they're continuing that occupation of these areas, I mean, you know, the bombing hasn't stopped at all. Yeah. Well, I mean, at all, are they still hitting Beirut and wherever they want throughout the country as they were? No, no. Yeah, no, they're not doing that.

But I mean, in the area that they're occupying, you know, there's been continued strikes and demolitions and little ground incursions, you know, things, just like that, that Iran would certainly not consider an end to the war. Yeah. Okay, before we switch to Somalia, let's stick with our Iran-related theme here. First of all, this is just, I just tweeted just a screenshot of it because I like it for the yuck.

You know, like Bill Hicks would say, it's your basic irony, but still, you can get a hoot. It's all right. the new Syria, the enemy of Israel's enemy. Oh yeah, for everybody listening to this in audio only form later, we're looking at a funny screenshot from the Wall Street Journal about how the new Syria ain't so bad because at least they hate Iran and his balls. And then, but the other point was,

that this thing's what I wanted to show you? Yeah. So, forgive me, Dave DeCam. I don't want to make too much of this. Obviously, there's some more propaganda. type hype in here. It's the Wall Street Journal after all. But there's also some solid reporting here. It says Iran's secret plan to escalate the war. And it seems to have some confirmation from Iranian officials, not just like expats spouting off. They even have some Iranian officials in here

saying that, you know, they're taking for granted that this war is not over and not by a long shot. And they're ready for the long haul that they've spun up again all of their missile production facilities. And they've, you know, reorganized their armed forces strengthen the role of the IRGC over control over the regular army and, you know, whatever. And anyway, I'm not saying it says they're looking forward to it, although, you know, they're trying to frame it. It's the Wall Street Journal, so they're trying to frame it like, oh, no, here come the

Iranians or whatever when, obviously what they're saying is, you know, well, I guess the worst case scenario interpretation of it would be they're not about to let our sorry ass off the hook for this yet and they're going to keep up the war for their end until we learn the message the hard way and there's a potential of that although seems like they could call well enough alone after already you know putting America in such a difficult position up to this point but of course they would have to have a sincere partner for peace as they say on this side and it's hard to imagine that they can imagine that they do. But anyway, I mean, are there any talks going on right now at all?

As far as I'm aware of, no, I mean, I think there's probably some messages being sent back and forth between, you know, through Pakistan or maybe other mediating countries. But, you know, what Trump and the administration are putting out is basically that they're happy with the status quo right now, keeping the sanctions on, the blockade on Iran and just basically sitting back and watching Iran, you know, feel the economic pain of that. And the message from Iran, from what Iranian officials are putting out publicly, which aligns with that Wall Street Journal report, is that we're not just going to sit back and let you do this.

You know, we might become more, you know, go on the offense. Or, you know, they have other ways, you know, we've really kind of seen, you know, I think Iran bombing Israel, you know, a few months ago now, in response to them bombing Beirut was kind of a big turning point where like we're seeing Iran and Hezbollah, the Iraqi Shia militias kind of acting more as like allies in a in a war together. So there's always a possibility of escalating in that way. But, you know, I wouldn't be surprised, you know, if we see some strikes on U.S. bases. I mean, they were really hitting the U.S. hard in Jordan, which is really what I think made Trump stop.

So, you know, they might take some other action, potentially in the Strait of Hormuz, but I don't think they're just going to sit back, especially if the U.S. starts actually getting ships out of the Strait of Hormuz, then I think we're definitely going to see Iran escalate because they don't want to lose that control. And then there's also the situation in Yemen. I mean, the Houthi's like, that war is back on.

that is kind of its own conflict. I mean, it's separate in a way, but it's also very much related as we're seeing a lot of attacks on Saudi oil infrastructure, Saudi ships. I mean, things are really popping off over there in a big way.

So that could be, you know, part of the strategy as well. Hey, guys, one thing you can do is sign up for my substack at Scott Horton's show.com. And if you do, you get this show without ads and a day before everybody else. so you get the chapters, the ones I posted already,

which is quite a few of the audiobook of Provoked. Scott Horton Show.com. Hey, look, Scott Horton Show and Scott Horton Academy swag. All you got to do is go to the YouTube and then look right underneath the YouTube there. There's swag for sale. Yeah. Well, it's such a crucial point as you say that the way Iran and Hezbollah, sorry Assad, but Iran, Hasbala, the Iraqi militias and the Houthis are tighter than ever.

operating in concert in a way they never have. Hezbollah has come to, you know, help fight in Iran's wars before, but Iran never hit Israel over Israel hitting Hezbollah before until recently here. And then you got the Shiite militias chipping in attacking American targets in Kuwait. He grumbles humorlessly. And yeah. And then so this is part of the case that they make in the journal piece as well is that you know, you could see from, they're very careful targeting of all our radar systems and everything here

that one way to interpret this is they're clearing a path for the future war. And one could imagine, and I'm no expert at this stuff, although I know one, but one could imagine a massive, offensive, medium-range missile onslaught with hundreds and hundreds of missiles coming out of Iran, which clearly they still possess. according to all journalism out of there recently and all journalism out of America's so-called Intel community leaking to the papers about it. And then completely decimating what's left of our bases

and or having their way with Tel Aviv and completely overwhelming their counterfire, et cetera. Since they've already done so much, obviously, to weaken the infrastructure of America's defensive systems, I'm sure they're rushing in replacement radars as best they can, But from what I understand, a lot of those are some pretty exquisite multi-billion-dollar systems that have been completely taken offline already. So I don't know.

What do you think of that? Yeah. No, I mean, all good points there. I mean, Iran, I think, really has, you know, the escalation dominance that Professor Pape is, you know, talks about. At the same time, I think they do need to be, I mean, I'm sure that they are aware of the risk of nuclear escalation. And, like, you know, if this war does escalate again into full-blown war and Iran is really hitting the U.S. hard, I think there is that risk. I mean, the U.S. is a nuclear armed power. Obviously, Israel is as well. Or just like kind of Trump following through on his threats to really just like do strategic bombing of all the cities and things. though they have problems with getting past Iran's air defenses

despite Hague Seth said over and over again during the war that oh you know we have complete air dominance over Iran but that clearly wasn't true we saw all those planes get shot down and they're still picking off MQ9s I know it's something you and Darrell talked about recently unprovoked but you know like we see there's been these reports about Elbridge Colby starting to craft a new nuclear strategy

about tactical nuclear weapons like giving the president more options to actually use them. And I think that's something he's been about for like over a decade. You know, I was looking back at the stuff. He's been writing. Yeah, I heard of a piece about that.

Yeah, a major proponent of that. But like kind of the timing of that is, and his work on it has kind of been in the context of like as the U.S. loses its edge to China, we should develop more tactical nuclear capabilities. So we always have that kind of in our back pocket. And I know it's like it might just sound crazy to even talk about

the risk of the U.S. using a nuke. But I don't really think it's that far-fetched. Again, if things really escalate and Trump is facing just a total defeat in the Middle East, I don't think it's out of the picture. Yeah. It was interesting in your piece. I read at EnterW.com about this,

where he's saying, and there is some reason in this, right, that the problem is when your arsenal is built around, you know, megatone-sized or high-kilotone strength, strategic thermonuclear weapons, then people start disbelieving that you would use those. They're too big and too horrible and too powerful. And so for a real credible deterrent, you need not just medium, but low-strength nukes, a battlefield nuke.

You know, like they dropped on Hiroshima, you know, one of those. But so that does make some sense, right? Like I said, well, I don't know. It would be fun to read a bunch of books and journals about nuclear warfare doctrine and whatever. I remember one time I was talking with Lyle Goldstein, was at defense priorities, formerly at the Naval War College. And I was saying, well, shouldn't we negotiate down to just a few atom bombs at least?

We don't have these giant city killers. And he's like, oh, no, the city killers is the whole point. You got to have those. That's what keeps the peace. Because you could convince the military guys that they could take a couple of hits from an atom bomb and still fight. It's the holding cities hostage with the H-bombs is what's the real deterrent. So you don't want to take that out of the equation.

It's just better hope you're failing. safe never fails because then you're killing cities full of people because you have to, you know, fulfill the doctrine or the deterrent is lost. So it's pretty ugly stuff. But yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I think this idea of like using tactical nukes and it not escalating into like full-blown nuclear catastrophe is like becoming more and more popular inside, you know, D.C. and probably in Europe. I mean, like if you, 10 years ago, could we have imagined the U.S. backing long-range drone attacks in Russia that are happening like every single day against Moscow?

Like, that's just something we probably wouldn't have been able to even fathom. You know, like, I think the attitude is, yeah, we can, you know, Russia's not going to do anything and we can keep doing this. That's what they keep saying. They haven't nuked us yet, Dave. I don't know what you're crying about. We'll know what's a problem once they've nuked us. then we'll be like, oh, man, you know what?

It turns out we did go a little too far that last time. Yeah, yeah. But I think, you know, they're thinking that they can fight a limited war with Russia and that it wouldn't escalate, you know, like a direct NATO-Russia battle. I'm glad you mentioned that. I was noticing and crabbing about this, but then I read a thing about this too, man, I should save this footnote to go back and find it about how there is this kind of changing conception of nuclear deterrence, where nuclear deterrence used to mean nuclear weapon states

can never fight because it could escalate to nuclear war. But now nuclear deterrence means nuclear weapon states can fight conventional wars and then go as far as they want because what are they going to do? Really use nukes? Because then we'd nuke them back if they did. So that means now it's a license to wage a conventional war against them instead of a reason why we never can. And it's that easy just in an idiot.

its conception to just flip the whole thing upside down and make everything that much more dangerous, you know? Yeah. And I think also from the other side, like this stuff about like Colby's whole thing about, oh, it's in foreign affairs that I read that. Sorry, go ahead. Yeah. Colby's whole thing about the tactical nukes, it's like, okay, so the U.S. is facing this kind of strategic defeat in the Middle East. The stockpiles are depleted. The idea of the U.S. defending Taiwan is kind of laughable right now. Oh, but, and, you know, things are escalating with Russia.

You know, what's a way that we can establish deterrence again against China and Russia? You know, show them that we're not afraid to use a nuke, to use a tactical nuke. You know, I believe that it's something that they might be discussing.

Yeah, well, and, I mean, it comes down to, like, if they're going to, I don't know, believe in or stand on their own lies and propaganda about the nuclear weapons threat in Iran, it could be, you know, they could argue themselves into the corner that, look, the only way to really be sure about Ford-O-Nat-Tonts and Pickax Mountain underground buried things is we've got to use nuclear bunker busters, you know, shape charges, atom bombs that

shoot straight down and we're going to make sure to collapse all of that stuff out of the way. And if they don't like gamma rays, that's their goddamn problem for being in our way and refuse. to obey. And I wasn't trying to rhyme and all that right there. Now, if some rapper wants to plagiarize me, go ahead. But my point being that they've argued themselves into a corner pretty much already. I mean, the good news is the president can just turn around and forget it today if he feels like it. But yeah, and I think it must have been briefed to them, right?

That like one option, sir, would be to use a nuclear bunker buster. that we designed for just this purpose, which they did. You know, I think I know that, don't I? Nuclear actually, nuclear ones? I'm not sure. I don't know. But I do. But I do think that... I need to go back and look.

You mentioned Pickax Mountain. Like, I think that would be, if they did it, they would make, you know, that would probably be the target. Yeah. And I know people think, you know, it's more likely that Israel would do it. But at the moment, I mean, the U.S. is leading this war.

I mean, Israel, when was the last time they, they bombed. Israel's going to nuke them. Israel's just going to, like, nuke civilians in their capital city, right? Because they don't have nuclear bunker busters. They'd have to get those from us. Yeah.

So. Well, that's, yeah, yeah, they do. The B-61-11. They've had it for a long time. Yeah, okay. The other point I was going to make that, as you said, if Israel said they were going to do it,

I could see Trump being like, well, let me do it. I'll take care of it. I mean, you know, it's Hooray, I own LibertyStickers.com again. It's my company. I invented it way back a long time ago. I used to write these things down,

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it at join crowdhealth.com slash Horton. The problem is, Dave, is we still got two years of this. And the same guy who shouldn't have done this is the same guy in charge of getting us out of it. And he's in a very difficult position. And it sucks because it's the same thing for months here now. Because we already lost. We got to get out.

But he doesn't know how to get out. If we just made you president right now, then you go, oh, general fly home, right? Admiral's sale home. We did it, right? Yeah. But it ain't you because you don't have to take responsibility for getting into this mess, but he does. And like I say, if anyone could do it, it'd be him, right?

Like tomorrow, it's like, why are you still talking about Iran? You know what I mean? Like you did the Epstein thing? Like, you're not that. Dude, that was in the first half of this year. That's over. Leave me alone. When they signed the MOU, you know, when that came out, it seemed like that's what

he was doing, that it was total 180. You know, they have Vance out there arguing against all the points that, that the administration was making like days before. And so it seemed like they were doing that, that they were going to cut and run. But then, you know, they just went back on all of that. I mean, it's just crazy. It's really, you know, it's just crazy to watch all this.

All right, man, I've got conflicting promises here. I promised to ask you about Somalia, but I promised also to let you go after half an hour. So you choose. I got time. I got time. Sebastian Gorka. I don't even remember his exact title,

right now, but I know that he's a big champion of this policy inside the government. I know that you cover it day after day at anti-war.com. So please, if you could break it down for us about American support for the national government, so-called in Mogadishu, support for whatever armed forces they have and or African Union forces, if they're still present. That's how out of date I am. I don't even know if they're still there or not. Versus al-Shabaab and or I hear rumors of at least claims of black flags of ISIS.

you know, loyalty, although maybe that's up in Somaliland and or punt land. And then also I know the Israelis are trying to make a deal to voluntarily emigrate all the Palestinians to Somaliland if they can. So there's a bunch of stuff in play there and they're slaughtering people every day. And George Obie Bush got this all kicked off in December of 2001. And here we still are. So now you say a bunch of things, please, sir. Yeah.

So I would recommend, you know, if people don't know any of this background, to go read your Somali chapter and enough already. We actually have it published at anti-war.com. If you just search Scott Horton, Somalia, anti-war.com, you'll find it. That's not a bad idea. Yeah. Yeah.

But essentially what, you know, the war that the U.S. has been waging in Somalia with the airstrikes against al-Shabaab, that is essentially still the same war that they've been fighting since 2006, when they installed the, what became the current federal government and then al-Shabaab was kind of the radical offshoot of the people they ousted, and they've been fighting them ever since. But Trump has escalated this war in like a very dramatic way.

This is something that he did in his first administration, really escalated the airstrikes. But in this administration, even more so, and you mentioned Sebastian Gorka, he was apparently the one behind this arguing to escalate. And so just numbers, just to throw some numbers at people, in 2025, the U.S. launched 124 air strikes in Somalia,

which was 12 times more than were launched in 2024. And this was the most, the U.S. ever bombed Somalia in a single year, according to Afrikaum's numbers. There's an organization called New America, which has tracked this air war for a while, and they have spreadsheets of all the airstrikes under George W. Bush, Obama, Biden.

And according to them, that was more air strikes than were launched in Somalia. under Biden, Obama, and George W. Bush combined. So just give you an idea of like, this is a big escalation. And this is mostly against al-Shabaab, but also against a small ISIS affiliate that is in Puntland in the Northeast. They're based in caves.

And, you know, it's one of those wars like they keep saying, all right, this is it. These guys are going to be wiped out in another month. And it's just, you know, the end never comes. So that has escalated. and this same thing this year there's been at least 78 air strikes. Again, this is just based on what Afriq has put out.

As far as I know, there hasn't been like CIA and JASAC air strikes there, though, you know, I follow Somali media and sometimes you see reports of airstrikes, nobody claims them. The UAE and Turkey also launched air strikes in support of the government, so it could be them. So the real number could be higher.

But so that's been happening, and it hasn't changed things. Al-Shabaab's still been, you know, making advances, you know, you'll see them beat back in some parts of Somalia and they're making advances elsewhere. There's just no sign that this is going to help, you know, defeat them in any way. Has there been any good long-form journalism out of there recently where someone is explaining, here's the ebb and flow of the conflict? Government forces control this town, but now they don't, but then they are going to again and then they went somewhere else and or whatever. You know what I mean?

It's been a little while since I've been paying very close. attention to this, but like, presumably there's something like a Somali army that America's built that they are, these drone strikes are in support of local government troops on the ground fighting al-Shabaab. So, like, I just wonder, like, how much of a picture do you have of what's actually happening beyond Centcom announcing their death count every day, you know, their body count every day? Yeah. Well, so there hasn't been much journalism out of there, like, in this sense. There's actually, it was a report recently, I forget the name of it from a, it's a think tank funded by the Pentagon, but they put out a whole thing basically saying that, you know,

it's a stalemate despite all the escalations and everything. Would you send me that later? I'd like to read that. Yeah, yeah, I'll try to find it. And detailing kind of how back in like 2022, the government made some advances. So you have the federal government that's based in Mogadish that the U.S. backs. But Somalia is kind of naturally a decentralized society. And the local governments and different clans, you know, are really in conflict right now with the federal government. But for a moment there, they had a lot of them on their side and they made some gains against al-Shabaab. But that kind of fell apart after Hassan Sheikh Mohammed, who's the president of the federal government, starting in 2024, I think, he started making these changes

to the Constitution. He's trying to implement universal suffrage, you know, one man, one vote. which is not how Somalia works. They have a clan-based system where the elders come and cast their vote. And these local governments strongly oppose that and a few of them have withdrawn from the federal system. So that really kind of set back the advances that they made and there's actually been clashes between the federal government

and multiple local governments a lot in Jubiland, which is the southernmost province, where there's a lot of al-Shabaab. So al-Shabaab has been able to take advantage of all that. So, you know, the whole thing's really a mess. And Puntland is another one. So the U.S., this is actually kind of big, big news that happened recently out of punt land.

So the U.S., the war against the ISIS affiliate, the U.S. backs the local puntland government, which they withdrew from the federal system again back in 2024 over the changes to the Constitution and everything and the election stuff. The federal government wasn't recognizing the local elections. but the U.S. has been kind of increasing its presence in Puntland. And they just signed a deal recently a few weeks ago for the U.S. to expand its military base there. And just after that, Puntland went on an offensive against the federal government. And they're taking these bases that were controlled by troops loyal to the federal government in Puntland and a little to the south.

So like the timing there is a little strange because the U.S. is still backing the federal government. But then they sign this deal with Puntland. and we see this kind of offensive that they launched. And so, you know, sorry if that was all very confusing, but that's essentially the picture is like, you know, they made some gains. And then because of this kind of political power struggle, that's falling apart.

And we see all this internal conflict now. And then you mentioned Israel. So they recognize Somaliland, which is to the west of Pontland, which has been a de facto independent state since like 1990. and but Israel is the first country to recognize them. And they're openly saying that they want to establish a military and intelligence base on the Gulf of Aden in Somaliland for war against the Houthis in Yemen.

And Somaliland officials are also saying, you know, we welcome it, which goes to show like their interest as a state supersedes, you know, their identity, I guess, as Muslims and everything, like, that they're just openly welcoming and embracing Israel. Israel. Money, weapons. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

And so I think the U.S. is involved in that, though Trump, I don't think is going to take the step to recognize Somaliland. But they're probably supporting whatever Israel's designs are. And I think the base in Puntland could also be, you know, the U.S. expanding its presence there could also be about preparing for supporting operations in Yemen. Because I remember a few years ago, I think when Biden was bombing the Houthis, the Djibouti said, you can't use. our base, you know, for operations against Yemen. So that could be part of it. So as we've always said, you can't destroy the Yemenis through air power. We tried that for seven years.

We, the U.S. government and their allies. But there's another way to finish that sentence, right? Which is that's why you have to send in the Marines and finish the job, you know? Yeah. Well, now you have, again, the ground battles are starting to happen again in Yemen. where you have the Saudi-backed factions. I mean, they're claiming like hundreds of casualties now. So this, and I, you know, that's I think exactly what Israel wanted

is for Saudi Arabia to restart that war. And, you know, they did that. The reporting is before, because this started with the Saudis bombing the Sanai International Airport because the plane was coming in from Iran. Right. And according to the reporting, MBS got the green light from Trump. Trump before that. So, you know, I think this could be, this is probably part of the U.S.

kind of Israeli plan that, you know, if we're going to have to deal with the Houthis, let's get the Saudis to do it again, you know, so it's just a mess. All right. Well, everybody, here is how you keep up with it all. You just follow Dave DeKamp. He's DeKamp Dave on the Twitter there, and he's the news editor at news. dot antiwar.com. Sign up for his great show,

anti-war news, where he goes through tomorrow's headlines every night, and you can wake up and watch it with your breakfast. And it's really good stuff. Always top of the line. The great Dave DeCamp.

Appreciate you, man. Thanks, Guy. The Scott Horton show is brought to you by the Scott Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom, Roberts & Roberts, Brokerage, Inc.,

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