All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show.
I am the Director of the Libertarian Institute, Editorial Director of Antiwar.com, author of the book Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and I've recorded more than 5,000 interviews going back to 2003, all of which are available at scotthorton.org.
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All right, you guys introducing retired US Army Brigadier General Donald C. Baldick, and he is a former commander of US Special Operations Command in Africa, did 10 tours in Afghanistan, and now he is running for Senate in New Hampshire.
And interestingly to us, he gave a talk at the bringourtroopshome.us big meeting that they had in Washington DC a couple of weeks ago, the new right leaning antiwar veterans group run by Dan McKnight and those great guys at bringourtroopshome.us.
Welcome to the show, Don.
How are you doing?
Sir, I'm doing great.
Thank you for having me on.
I really appreciate it.
Happy to have you here.
10 tours in Afghanistan, huh?
Really?
Yes, yes, sir.
You know, total of total of 66 months.
I think 10 tours with the added number of months kind of, you know, kind of clarifies it for for everybody.
It was it was a long time I commanded at every level to include the general officer level.
So it was my honor to serve.
And then you went from Afghanistan to then help run AFRICOM and Special Operations Command in Africa.
I did.
I went I went to United States Africa Command.
I worked for General Rodriguez and General Waldhauser.
I did 20 months as the operations officer that initially the J3 and then then the deputy J3 and did that for about 20 months.
That was a great apprenticeship to learn the continent, learn what was going on.
And then I got the honor to do a division level command Special Operations Command Africa for an additional 26 months.
And that encompassed 2000 Special Operation troops, Navy SEALs, Air Force Special Operations, U.S. Special Forces, Marine Special Operations, and a number of civilians in 28 different countries in Africa, in 28 different countries.
Yeah, it was a landmass of two and a half times the size of the United States.
And we were specifically focused on countering violent extremist organization threats and building a capability and capacity in our African partners to do the same so that we could work through, with, and by them, transfer that mission over to them so that they could develop and sustain the security to help with local governance and development in the areas that the violent extremist organizations, the ungoverned areas they were using to conduct their operations across Africa.
And what was the timeframe on this?
This was from August of 2013 to June 29 of 2017.
Okay.
So then were you primarily focused on Mali and Niger and the consequences of the Libya war there, or something else altogether, chasing Joseph Kony around?
Yes.
So we were doing, let me start in East Africa.
So we had special operations forces in Somalia, in Kenya, conducting counter-violent extremist organizations against al-Shabaab and ISIS Somalia.
And we were also doing the Joseph Kony mission, countering the Lourdes Resistance Army in the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, and the Central African Republic.
And then we were supporting our partners in the Lake Chad Basin area, and that included Chad, Cameroon, Niger, and Nigeria, helping them combat Boko Haram and ISIS West Africa.
And then across the Sahel, with the Kinafaso, Mauritania, Senegal, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and down from Libya into Mali, and all those areas affected by al-Qaeda, ISIS, and all their affiliates.
So it was a huge undertaking, but we were doing it correctly, with small special operation footprints, working through, with, and by our partners, helping them develop the capabilities they needed to do it themselves, so that we could transition out of there and let them handle the security, and the development of governance, and local governance, and then development in those areas for the people in those countries that were suffering from, you know, lack of electricity, lack of food, lack of water, you know, all those things that are important for day-to-day living.
How many of the people that you were fighting in Mali were the people that America had fought for in the regime change in Libya in 2011?
You know, there were a lot of ISIS, al-Qaeda, and other affiliated groups that, you know, filtered down through southern Libya, not only in the Mali, but, you know, from Chad across to Niger, into Mali, northern Mauritania, eastern Senegal, that whole area there, and the tri-border area between Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger was the worst area.
And of course, that's where the ambush took place on October 3rd, 2017, where four of our service members were killed, eight members of our Nigerien military partners were killed, and so, you know, that was kind of the hornet's nest there.
Well, let me ask you, I mean, you sound pretty enthusiastic about hunting down the consequences of the Libya war, but how do you feel about the regime change wars that lead to these, I guess, I don't know, Sunnis with rifles that you've got to chase all over the entire continent?
Well, I've always been very skeptical and questioning of the, you know, policies and strategies of regime change, and, you know, those things are, you know, very concerning to me, because if we don't have a good policy and a good strategy in place, then we can't put a sustainable operational approach in place on the ground to support our partners.
And so, therefore, we end up doing the same things over and over again without being able to get our troops out and transition that problem over to the countries that are responsible for that, right?
And we do have a lot of international support as well, with our French partners and our British partners and our German partners and our Dutch partners.
So it is a complete international effort.
But the problem is policy and strategy that is not clear, either through our civilians or our senior military, that drives the appropriate operational approach, so that we're not doing these things forever.
Hold on just one second, be right back.
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Yeah, I mean, it sounds like kind of, in a way, a lot of times when we have these conversations, we're really begging the question about just what the policy is.
It should be a safe assumption, of course, that the job is killing Bin Ladenites, or at least protecting Americans from Bin Ladenites at all costs.
And yet, that has not been the agenda of the American government since probably December 2001.
They have every other agenda in the world, from fighting the Taliban, to fighting the Ba'athists, to fighting the Qaddafi, the Ba'athists in Syria, as well as in Iraq.
Fighting for al-Qaeda against their Houthi enemies in Yemen for the last almost five years now.
And so it sounds like what you and your guys are doing, hunting down the consequences of these actions, is sort of the marginal activity that amounts to public relations, to make it look like it's a war on terrorism, when it's not a war on terrorism at all, is it?
Yes, sir.
Well, you know, here's my position on that.
The policy and strategy has focused on a top-down solution, working at the national level in these countries, and trying to fix a problem up there that isn't going to fix the problem down in the local level, right?
And so the approach, if you want to have an effect to be able to disrupt, degrade and neutralize violent extremist organizations, you have to have strong local governance and strong support from the populace.
But if you're working top-down, if you're working from the national level down and you're creating big governments and you're creating big militaries and big police that can't be effective in the local areas, then this instability that's driven by regime change, that's driven by corruption, that's driven by other factors from the top-down, we're just going to be keeping our troops there on the ground, and we're not going to be having the effect that we need in order to peel those troops off, right?
Does that make sense to you?
Sure.
Well, I think the real question is about the bait and switch, right?
After September 11th, the American people gave the writ to the president and the military of the United States to find the terrorists and hurt them.
And instead, the idea was, and look, it's understandable, I've heard a lot of people explain it this way, the September 11th attack was on the scale of Pearl Harbor, 3,000 something dead, right around 3,000 dead, this massive surprise attack like this.
But there was no Japanese empire behind September 11th.
They had to hijack our planes to even launch the attack.
And as Cynthia Storer, the CIA officer explained on the show, there were only 400 al-Qaeda in Afghanistan at the time of September 11th.
It wasn't a mass movement.
It was a small special forces group, essentially.
America's former mercenaries turned against us.
And this whole war could have been over by Christmas 2001 if the target had been al-Qaeda.
But instead, it seems like the al-Qaeda guys essentially are the strategic allies of the United States.
Not in a truther way that I'm saying they work for the CIA all along or anything like that.
But they have the same goals as the United States, don't they?
In overthrowing Saddam, overthrowing Qaddafi, possibly even overthrowing the Ayatollah someday.
Yeah, so we're at a point right now where if we just take Afghanistan, for instance, where we have taken the Afghan government, the Afghan military and police as far as we can take them.
Our military has performed bravely in Afghanistan.
They've done everything that they've been asked to do.
They've done it very, very well.
They've accomplished all their missions.
Where we have not done well is the policy and strategy level.
We've been at a point for a long time where we should have just maintained a small counterterrorism capability to go after the leadership as it sprung up, right?
But what we have turned this into is an increase of ISIS, an increase of al-Qaeda, a foreign fighter draw from other countries to come to Afghanistan.
And it's time for us to transition out of Afghanistan, not do a peace deal.
That's not our business.
Not withdraw, but focus on the successes that our military has had and transition this to Afghanistan to let them figure it out.
And then focus on what is danger to our national security.
And that is ISIS, al-Qaeda, senior leadership that would drive attacks on our homeland or against any of our partners.
And that's what we need to do.
We are beyond troops on the ground in Afghanistan right now, and that's what we have to do.
And I believe the president has been calling for that for quite some time now, and he hasn't received a plan from the Department of Defense, Department of State, or the interagency to be able to do what he wants to do, and that is transition this and then make the best deal with however that stabilizes.
That make sense to you?
Yeah, I got to tell you, I'm really disappointed to hear you say that, you know, a minimalist approach is better than another surge, I guess.
But why hang on to the Bagram Air Base forever?
Because al-Qaeda is going to travel from Afghanistan to Boston Logan Airport by some magical portal somehow and the writ to stay at the Bagram Air Base will expire when?
In 2120?
I'm not saying that we have to stay in Afghanistan to do this.
Oh, I'm sorry that I misunderstood you.
Yeah, I'm not saying saying we have to stay in Afghanistan for this.
I'm not saying that at all.
I'm saying that we need we need to be able to protect the United States from ISIS and al-Qaeda, the real threat, and for them emerging anywhere.
We can do that from just about any place, right?
Without getting into anything, you know, classified on, you know, on this on the show here, we can do that.
We don't have to be in Afghanistan to do it.
It is time for us to leave Afghanistan.
It is time for us to focus on ISIS and al-Qaeda, the actual threat, and not have boots on the ground in the you know, in Afghanistan.
We don't need that anymore.
And we need to focus on regional stability there.
We need to focus on other problems, you know, India and Pakistan, China and Russia, you know, this, you know, Iran, the whole area there in a regional stability way, and not just focus on one country and keep ourselves bogged down there, you know, at the tactical level.
Yeah.
Well, that's good.
Is that clarified for you?
Yeah, sure.
I appreciate that.
I really did misunderstand you about the, I thought you did mean sort of the Biden plan of keeping a counterterrorism force in Afghanistan itself.
So I'm glad that- No, no, no, not at all, not at all.
And that's not, that's not where I'm coming from, right?
But now, so what about the rest of the Middle East?
And see, here's the thing that we're kind of leaving unsaid, right, is the overall strategy of dominance, let's say.
There are different euphemisms.
How about American primacy in the Middle East?
For that matter, in the world, the dividing of the world into these combatant commands and saying that America must, I don't know, lead the whole world in all times in all places, and all resistance must be crushed one way or the other.
So I think you could have that same policy, only, you know, call it offshore balancing and keep your, you know, your motorcycle guys on a carrier or a ship somewhere ready for use when you need them.
Or you could just renounce the policy altogether and say that actually global dominance is incompatible with having a limited constitutional republic here.
And after all, what right does the middle part of North America have to dominate any other part of the world than the borders of our own country?
Yes, so one of the reasons I'm running for the U.S. Senate is I have, you know, I've had quite an apprenticeship for the Senate Armed Services Committee and for Foreign Relations Committee, more so than anyone else running for it here in this state.
And I think I could, you know, I know I could very much challenge, you know, Jeanne Shaheen on this, because the policies that we're seeing aren't policies that allow us to protect the homeland without putting military forces on the ground to protect, you know, the Middle East, right, or to protect anywhere else.
Definitely, the military has a role, you know, in the different regions, but we're missing the mark.
And if we just look at what we just did in Syria, which, you know, I'm on the record for disagreeing with the whole approach there of, you know, of Syria, right?
You know, we've now increased our footprint there.
We've added 3,000 troops to guard Saudi Arabia.
I would question that vehemently.
That's not something we need to do.
We have supported Saudi Arabia with billions and billions of dollars for their infrastructure.
They should be able to do it themselves, right?
There's no reason to add 3,000 troops on the ground.
We didn't need to increase our footprint to guard oil fields in Syria, oil fields that produce less oil than Utah, right?
You need somebody in the Senate, you need somebody there that is actually familiar with the right way to employ our military so that we can have the desired effect that we want to, and that we're empowering the people that have the problem to own it, to have the will, and to do the fighting, and not us, right?
And the whole foreign aid concept and our whole foreign relations concept is broken, and it's allowed to be that way, you know, over the last 18 years because of poor strategic and policy approaches.
Well, I have to tell you, Don, I hope that you move further and further toward non-interventionism here and the recognition that essentially all of our, virtually all of our foreign problems, whether it's our problems with Russia and Eastern Europe, or our problems with terrorism, or the Iranians, or what have you in the Middle East, or any of these things, are all caused by American policy in the first place.
And you know, there's really, just to go one step further with that, there really are no such things anywhere in America as isolationists.
Like even Pat Buchanan isn't an isolationist, and there are conservative and right-leaning non-interventionists.
The more leadership we have from combat veterans of these wars, especially if we have a general like yourself, really, you know, bravely standing against all of this intervention, the better off we'll be.
We really are overdue for that.
And so I say, no point in being shy, you might as well just renounce global dominance altogether by this method or by that one, and in order to save the republic from the empire that's killing it.
Yeah.
You know, there is, what you're talking about is balance.
What you're talking about is a regional approach.
What you're talking about is a reasonable approach to how we protect America without getting ourselves involved in long-term problems that are other people's problems.
And we don't have people in place right now that are approaching it that way.
And we need to replace them.
And that's why I am running.
And I think if I get a coalition of other veterans behind this, we are going to bring the common sense necessary in order for us, you know, without becoming isolationist, because the world needs our leadership, but without becoming embroiled in these forever wars and these forever conflicts and these things that we can't get ourselves out of that we're spending billions and trillions of dollars on.
Yeah.
So elephant in the room then, Iran.
This is why America has been in the Obama years and now into the Trump years, well, certainly in Yemen in the Trump years, on the side of al-Qaeda actually, because they're fighting Iran's enemy, Assad, or Iran's ally, Assad, or Iran's ally, the Houthis.
And so actually, you know what, maybe AQAP ain't that bad after all, according to the calculations of the policymakers in D.C.
And so now there are more AQAP than there could have ever been before America took their side in their war against the Shiite power.
But that's the concern, as you know, in the Pentagon and in D.C. is it's not so much bin Ladenites.
Those guys don't have a state.
It's Iran.
They're the real enemy, the Shiites.
What do you think of that?
Well, that's a whole different conversation on its own.
And unfortunately, I got a whole group of folks waiting for me that I have to go into right now.
I'd love to discuss that question with you on a separate day, because we talked about Iran.
I need a little bit more time to be able to discuss that than I have right now.
And I apologize for that.
That's fair enough.
I appreciate it.
I appreciate your time on the show very much, Don.
And I hope you do work more and closer with bringourtroopshome.us.
That's a great group of guys there.
They're a great group of guys.
I have a tremendous amount of respect to Dan McKnight and that team.
And I enjoyed meeting them all.
And I believe in the tenets of their cause.
All right, you guys, that is General, retired U.S. Army General Don Baldick.
Thank you very much for your time, sir.
Appreciate it.
God bless you, sir.
And thank you.
And have a happy Thanksgiving and a happy Thanksgiving to everybody.
You too.
Thanks a lot.
All righty.
Bye-bye.
All right, y'all.
Thanks.
Find me at libertarianinstitute.org, at scotthorton.org, antiwar.com, and reddit.com slash scotthortonshow.
Oh, yeah.
And read my book, Fool's Errand, Timed and the War in Afghanistan at foolserrand.us.
