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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The full archive is also available at youtube.com slash scotthorton show.
You guys on the line, I've got Danny Sherston.
He was a major in the U.S. Army.
He was in the Iraq War II surge and the Afghanistan surge, and he wrote the books Ghost Riders of Baghdad and Patriotic Dissent, and he is a contributing editor at antiwar.com.
The very best thing about him because look at this goddang thing.
You know what?
You do such great work.
This is just incredible.
This reminds me of Raimondo at his absolute best.
This is just, it began with 12.
How will it end?
Mozambique, AFRICOM's newest adventure.
So the war on terrorism is now in Mozambique.
True story here.
I was looking at my map on the wall, and I was like, where's Mozambique again?
Because I'm thinking if there's a kernel of truth to this thing, it must be blowback and backdraft from America's war in Libya, which spread into Mali and which has spread into Burkina Faso and Sierra Leone and Niger and Nigeria since then, and you know, the Americans go shooting at anybody with a rifle and claiming they're a member of Al-Qaeda or whatever it is.
But then I was looking around and I thought, why don't I see it?
There's Senegal and Guinea and Ghana and where is Mozambique again?
I'm looking around and oh, it's over there adjacent to Madagascar on the southeastern coast in what used to be part of Rhodesia, I guess, or something back then in the old British empire.
Is that right?
And then, yeah, I got the geography right.
But then is it right that this was formerly part of the British empire?
And then what in the hell does this have to do with Al-Qaeda or ISIS or anything like that, Danny?
Well, I mean, it was Mozambique's one of these interesting countries that was Portuguese, right?
So that means it was the first to be colonized, like the Portuguese empire was the first to go into Africa.
We're talking like 1498, like 1505, right?
And then they don't.
And then the last to leave, you know, so everyone remembers the British empire and the French empire because they were larger, right?
And they were maybe a little more influential.
But the Portuguese get there first and they don't leave till 75.
But Mozambique is one of these other weird countries that they didn't want to be affiliated with Portugal after they left, because Portugal was like this brutal repressor during, you know, the 10 year war for independence from like 64 to 75.
So they actually joined the British Commonwealth.
And so Mozambique is interesting in terms of backstory, because what you've got is you got the Portuguese story because Portugal was the colonial power for 470 years, right?
You've got the British element from the Commonwealth and you've got the French element because even though the French don't traditionally play in East Africa, that was kind of the British sphere.
They own the national, they have the liquid natural gas facility, which is like the largest in Africa.
We're talking like a $60 billion, you know, entity, this project.
So the interesting thing about Mozambique is that what you really have is every player from like the high age of imperialism is there.
And I think that backstory is missed.
And one of the things I hope to highlight in the article, you know, when I when I when I started to write this piece on Mozambique, my goal was really just to say, look, 12 Green Berets going to Mozambique is a big deal because the American army traditionally, the American military traditionally doesn't go south of the Congo.
There's really no precedent for this.
I mean, that was the one area of Africa we really never went into.
We would support apartheid South Africa.
We would sort of enable Rhodesia and then we wouldn't.
We never really put troops down there.
We had CIA and all that, of course, in Angola.
But that was it.
I mentioned, guys, that Danny was a professor of history at West Point.
Sorry.
Go ahead.
Yeah.
I mean, and when I look at a thing like this and I understand it can sometimes be a little bit insufferable.
But when I look at it, I want to know the backstory and I see the backstory, you know, and I just think if you look at most of the mainstream reporting on this, I quoted The New York Times at one point in the piece.
They refer to this as like a a mission that is modest in scope and size.
And it struck me, I was like, well, but there was no mention of, you know, this will who are the different imperial powers that are in play and what's going on with the economics and what does a Green Beret a team actually mean?
Right.
They always mention this 12 man thing because that's a way of saying, oh, it's not a big deal.
And, you know, that was what I started with as I wanted to break down what a Green Beret a team really is.
And then the piece kind of expanded into the backstory and then the mercenaries and all this.
Well, you know, I don't know much about the Green Beret a teams other than Colonel Mulholland refusing to help the Delta Force and CIA kill Osama bin Laden in December 2001.
And our recent secretary of defense, Christopher Miller, was part of that back then.
But oh, and I guess in the book I do have there was a Green Beret a team that was credibly accused.
I think they were prosecuted for war crimes in Afghanistan as well.
But a 12 man team, that doesn't sound too big.
So let's let's go with that.
The New York Times says, don't worry, because it's small, right, and modest in scope and size.
But it's spread very offhandedly.
And it's interesting to me because I wonder if they asked anybody who's ever worked with the Green Berets, right, or has ever been in them.
And the answer is probably no, because one of the you know, I have personal experience with the Green Berets.
I mean, I wasn't in the Special Forces, but a number of my fellow classmates, my best friend was a Green Beret, but I had a team.
I have a couple of friends from Green Berets, but we don't talk about it.
Right.
Yeah.
So they tend to have like a bit of a more professional vibe than some of the others.
I mean, they're effective guys and they're interesting and they're not what people think.
You know, one of the things about the Green Berets that's interesting is I think when you hear special forces, a lot of civilians assume that like everyone's Navy SEAL or Delta Force.
But that's direct action stuff.
In other words, raids and killing the actual primary mission of the Green Berets is to either foment a rebellion against a state we don't like or to advise the local security forces on counterinsurgency.
So they actually have a dual mission.
It's called FID, foreign internal.
I guess they were training jihadis for the CIA in Jordan there for a while.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
They got shot.
It's often in the wrong cause.
But like so they're but they're considered sort of the more cerebral types.
I mean, they're fit and, you know, it's a tough program or all that.
But when I was in Afghanistan, I got a Green Beret team and a team sent to me for about three or four months towards the end.
We had started this Afghan local police program, which, you know, a lot about was basically like a warlord program that we just made it sound like it was official.
And so they were like in tandem with me.
So I didn't command these guys because like that was a captain and like I'm a captain.
But it was very much a situation of we work together, you know, and and I really got to know these guys.
And one of the things that stood out to me is, yeah, like I wrote in the article, sometimes they were like commandos.
They know how to do that, you know, but like for the most part, what they brought to the table was they had all these enablers like they could get money like they could get money faster than I could.
They could get air support faster than I could.
I had 10 times as many soldiers as they did, but they had more access to these things.
And so when a Green Beret team goes in, the idea that it's just 12 guys is kind of a misnomer because they have a B team that is like their headquarters, that is like a bunch of enablers.
And then they call on all these assets in a way that a conventional infantry squad of, you know, nine guys can't.
And what I'm trying to say with the piece is like, it's a misunderstanding to think that 12 guys coming in is just going to be 12 guys.
Right.
Because as soon as they need support, they're going to get it.
And look, Vietnam started with Green Beret teams basically.
Right.
And Nicaragua and Guatemala, like it never really ends there is the point.
And I think that the reporting on this in the mainstream media has been really uncritical and hasn't dug into any of like the questions about what does it mean to send 12 Green Berets into an area of Africa we've never been in because we've been all over Africa except there.
Well, who are they killing?
Well, you know, the group that they're fighting is, I mean, the, the, the title of the group is instructive in itself, like Islamic state in the central African province.
And then there's a subset of that.
That is ISIS Mozambique is what they call them.
Can you tell me, is there any local journalism that says that that's true at all or is this all just cooked up in the State Department or what?
All cooked up in the State Department.
It's a nightmare.
Like the, I actually kind of did like a verbatim transcript of this press conference in the article.
You know, there's like an economist, I think his name is like John Mulholland or something.
Right.
There's a, an economist, a reporter who's actually stationed, I think down in South Africa and he asked like the most flip question and it was just dead on.
He was like, no, I enjoyed that part.
Go ahead.
You can read the quotes if you want.
This is really important.
I think it, it was one of the most instructive like press conference questions I've ever seen.
And it's not because it was like great dry British humor, but because he basically got to the rub of it.
He was like, wait, like what's the connection besides the franchise?
And then the, the, the, the official John Godfrey goes, well, the only connection is that we're telling you there's a connection.
Like we can't tell you, I mean, he literally says, well, the problem with these sorts of operations is, is that we have to keep it all secret.
But trust us.
I mean, he literally says this, like the, the ties are strong, but we can't tell you that that's true.
And then the, the great thing is that the economist reporter kind of like fights back and he's like, well, you didn't answer my first question, so I don't expect much from you at my second.
And everyone laughs, but it's not funny because it's a catch 22 that creates a formula for forever war.
And all of this, by the way, is being rolled up onto the post nine 11, a UMF of September 14, 2001, which by its language does not authorize this.
I mean, unless president Biden really wants to make the argument that I scap, right.
I S C a P right.
The, the, the Islamic state affiliate, which is just a name in Mozambique had something to do with nine 11, which isn't possible because they weren't informed 2017 and they, and even their like Genesis, like before they got violent, it was about 2007 that what happened was there were preachers that had been trained in Saudi Arabia, right?
Same old story all over.
And they were kind of firing up the youth in this Northern portion of Mozambique, which is Muslim in a, in a mainly Catholic country.
And they didn't like the state run preachers who were too close to like the free limo party, which is like a leftist party that had like fought against the Portuguese.
It's basically a one party state.
And what ended up happening with that was there was like a state, um, there was basically like a state backed clergy sort of, I mean, I don't know if that's the right word for like Islam, but they, the youth were like, no, like these guys are corrupt.
They're in on the free limo party, which is basically making sure we don't get any resources and making sure that all the natural gas that's under our soil or under our seas isn't coming to us.
And they got radicalized.
So, but even if you go back to 2007, when this first starts, it's six years after 9 11.
So I just want someone to explain to me what the, how they're justifying this.
I guess they'll say it's not combat.
Well, you know what they do is I think they made this one up in the Obama years was they pretended that the words associated forces were in the AUMF when they're not, but then associated forces means just like this.
Well, it's secret, but trust me, one guy knows the guy who knows the guy and they're soonies with rifles and that's good enough.
And, you know, most makes another one of those interesting places.
Like, I mean, you know, your book kind of gets into some of this, like the way that we just tied everything together.
Most of a lot of these countries, if you go back, especially pre 1979, but often even after that, these are like sync credit, Sufi sort of like moderate Muslim areas.
Like in other words, pre 1979, but in a lot of cases, even pre nine 11 places like Northern Mozambique were not known for Islamism.
I mean, whoever even knew that, I mean, how many people do you, I mean, first of all, probably 90% of Americans can't find Mozambique on a map.
That's understandable.
I'm not judging that.
But I mean, even the people who know that, how many even knew that there were Muslims that far South in Africa?
I think one of the reasons it wasn't on our radar is because there was no Islamism or like Islamist terrorism to speak of.
And there are still isn't, I mean, what they're doing is terrorism by the strict definition because they're like beheading people and they're, they're, I mean, they're doing horrible atrocities on the ground.
But what I don't understand is why the state department, when they designate these guys, especially designated terrorists, right?
I mean, official designation of terrorism, they don't even bother to mention any threat to the United States.
I mean, I, I mean, I read the whole statement, I've read all of it.
There's no mention.
They don't say like, Oh, these guys are bad and they might come to America.
Yeah.
They threaten American interests in Madagascar, which are legendary around the Cape of good hope and like, you know, grab alien Gonzales and Florida.
Like it's, it's, I mean, there's none, they don't even try.
And that's, what's fascinating to me is the nine of the post nine 11 AMF or whatever, like the imperial presidency has expanded to such a logical conclusion that they don't even feel the need to justify it any longer.
I mean, in other words, if you can send special forces to Mozambique, you can do anything.
That's why I think this is an important story that's not getting covered enough.
Hey, I'll check it out.
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I mean, who are the American journalists on this beat?
I can think of Nick Turse in terms of doing original reporting on America's SOCOM and AFRICOM footprint throughout Africa, which from time to time they admit is really all about China and somehow keeping this stuff out of their hands.
You know, and I think that's the, the sort of rub why Mozambique, right?
I mean like there's three main reasons I can think of, um, none of which have to do with Mozambicans, but that's typical, right?
Cause we all know AFRICOM is not about Africans, which is like one of the fun paradoxes of American military power.
But I mean, one is I think more symptom than cause, which is if we say they're ISIS, then what we'll do is we'll allude to the images of orange jumpsuits and Jordanian pilots being, you know, burned to death.
Like ISIS is still a, it's to some extent still an effective fear tool, right?
Cause ISIS, you know, there was horrible things.
There was lots of videos, you know, so if we could associate them with ISIS, then that matters to some people.
But I don't think that's the motive.
I think the real motives are, okay, there's resources, liquid liquefied, national, natural gas, LNG.
I mean, it's big, it's, it's among the, depending on who you ask right in the study and maybe the biggest deposit in the world, but it's up there either way, uh, multinationals from three United States oil companies, one French, one Italian, one British, one Japanese, one Malaysian and wait for one Chinese, right?
Are all there.
The French have the biggest one French total energy company and they've got the big $60 billion one.
So I think what gets misunderstood in Africa in particular is, uh, especially on the left, I think on the far left, the idea is that everything in Africa is about economic determinism.
Like it's all about blood diamonds, you know?
I mean, that is a factor and I'm, and I'm certainly not minimizing it, but I think what gets missed here is the Marxist view of history or motives.
I think sometimes misses out on the fact that they're all connected.
So the liquefied natural gas is important, but it's important in, in large extent to the extent that it represents a broader decision to do great power competition the world over with a specific emphasis in Africa.
And it, it's not the LNG, right?
It's not the gas per se.
It's the perception of who's got the influence there when it comes to resources and security.
And, you know, the Russian Wagner group mercenaries were there, um, there, there was a lot of alarmism about that, which is fascinating to me.
I mean, just to go on a quick diversion, like, so Russia sends the Wagner group or the Wagner group was down there, right?
There's a lot of questions about like to the extent to which Putin controls them, but like, let's put a pin in that the wider group goes down there and they kind of get beat up in late 2020 I think like several of them are killed like in forest, like gunfights, like deep, like it was, it was intense.
They kind of retreat the, the dyke, uh, advisory group DAG goes in there, they're run by straight up blood diamond style and ex Rhodesian colonel, right?
Like who even talks about Rhodesia anymore?
You know, it stopped being Rhodesia in 1980, but he's like 74, 76 years old, you know, he's an ex colonel in the Rhodesian armed forces.
It's just one of the, you know, it's, it's one of these, it's executive outcomes all over again.
Right.
It's like, there's always a rebranded South African, like white apartheid veteran organization.
Now they're not all white apartheid veterans that they probably do have, you know, a demobilized soldiers that were, that were, that were African, you know, they were black African, but it's, it's run by this, you know, South Africa is like a soldier of fortune factory, at least for now.
You know what I mean?
I guess eventually there'll be too old.
There's very little critical reporting on them in American mainstream media.
Like I did a quick search and I really should have counted and put in the article, but I'm going to give a vague estimate.
If you do a basic search of like a Wagner group, Mozambique, the Russian group, and then DAG, the Dyke advisory group, what you'll find is that in the American relatively mainstream press, you'll have like a four to five to one ratio of articles that analyze and are critical of the, the Wagner group versus DAG, which is interesting because DAG has been credibly accused like and conclusions and reports by say like amnesty international and others of throwing hand grenades into crowds like, like massacres, you know what I mean?
They've really done like the, there was never as much credible evidence or reports about the Wagner group being as brutal, but the alarmism in America because they happen to be Russian is interesting.
So here we are again, like almost apologizing for like these apartheid veterans.
And I feel like we're back in the early eighties or something.
It's a bizarre fight guys, what I'm saying, you know, it's, it's a, there's so much going on.
I, I, when I dug into it, I just, the connections were everywhere and I want to write more about it actually.
Yeah.
You know, here's the thing, man, you know, it's meaningful, right?
That the Brits had been in Helmand before and that there was a legacy of payback and revenge and precedent that Afghans can defeat Brits done it before would do it again.
It mattered that they had been there before and it mattered that the CIA had been running around in the seventies and eighties intervening in Afghanistan.
Am I too PC to say that it seems kind of extra meaningful that we're talking about America might as well be Brazil invading and killing people in Africa where, yeah, you have to go back a ways, but depends on how long your memory is.
And that's very subjective, but the Americans have a legacy of mass kidnapping of human beings from the continent of Africa and you know, our society's greatest historical legacy of shame.
And then, so we're running around shooting them.
Is that a thing that that matters kind of that there's this historical backdrop to that we're going back to Africa this time?
We're not kidnapping laborers, but we're killing them.
I think it absolutely matters.
You know, the, it doesn't matter that the slave trade that, you know, came to North and, you know, Central and South America mostly came from the interior, like Central Africa and then West Africa.
That's not relevant.
Like some people might say, like, well, no, Mozambique, they weren't really sending the slaves.
You know, it was more like Angola, which is why I like the prison in Louisiana.
They left that.
Yeah.
Mozambique's on the other coast.
But yes.
But here's why I think it still does matter, though.
My point is, I think it does because in the, I start the article by like with a flip comment about like, oh, good white faces and fatigues.
I'm sure they'll be thrilled.
It's the same game because the Portuguese show up in 1505.
That's when they that's when they officially declared a colony.
And even at that point, they really only controlled the coast.
But nothing has ended well for them when white faces show up with guns.
And it's not a point that there's no reason really for them to differentiate between the Americans and the Portuguese, other than in a political sense that we would play, as you were saying, playing the British against the Portuguese to, you know, in self-defense, that kind of thing.
But in terms of how foreign we all are messing with them and intervening in their country, we couldn't be from further away.
You know, I always say, like, it's amazing how Americans have these like short memories.
But in my experience, at least, you know, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan, like the people don't there doesn't mean that their historical sense is always sophisticated or is exactly accurate, but they they tend to have like a longer memory of grievance.
And I think part of that is that we're like the triumphalist nation that's been like a hegemon for a bit, whereas like those countries have been victims.
But let's take a real look at what Mozambique has been put through by the West.
OK, so there's the 470 years of Portuguese colonization.
That's a problem, of course.
Right.
And then the last 10 years of that, you know, about 50,000 civilians die in a pretty significant war of independence that the Portuguese were fighting against.
But it doesn't stop there.
You know, they get their independence in 75 and then South Africa and Rhodesia, right, which is now Zimbabwe, white, another white apartheid state, even more minority was like a tiny, tiny percent.
They're white.
But they run the place.
And so they both exist.
The two of them, specifically the CIO, which I believe is like the Central Intelligence Agency of Rhodesia, works with the South African version of that.
And they basically like form, arm and infiltrate this African, like Mozambican rebel group known as RENAMO.
They're kind of like the Contras.
That's the best way.
I think that's the best analogy.
And that war goes from the moment they're independent, basically, like they never really got to be independent peacefully.
The idea was that if Mozambique is independent, South Africa panicked because then they thought like Mandela and all his like ANC, you know, the armed wing of the ANC, like the UW, they'd be able to now have safe haven in Mozambique.
And so they were like, what we need to do is overthrow this new, like leftist, independent nationalist government, which is the FRELIMO party.
Still in power.
It's basically a one party state.
Very corrupt, by the way.
So they put RENAMO in there and it's a civil war from 1975.
It doesn't end until 1991.
In other words, you don't even have to have a long memory in Mozambique because people who were alive and adult then aren't even that old.
You know what I mean?
How many people we know who were adults in 91?
Plenty, right?
It's not even that old of an history.
So in other words, 1505 is when Portugal says you're a colony.
But really, white faces don't stop.
I mean, about how many people died in this civil war?
Like about a million.
I mean, it's one of these, Mozambique is one of these weird places where it gets no attention and yet it's a big story.
And I really do put this in the category of like big story no one's reporting on.
It bothers me that they're reporting the Green Berets as the story.
I do think that's a story.
That's one of the subheadings.
Like, what does it really mean to bring Green Berets in?
I just want them to, why is the New York Times, the Washington Post, I've read all the stuff they have on it.
Why are they not telling us what kind of context those Green Berets are going into?
And I think the context is that white armed faces, whether they're mercenary or uniformed, especially if they're from the former colonial power, Portugal's sending 60 special forces there.
That's a big story.
Portugal is one of the most hated of the imperial powers in Africa because they were one of the most brutal.
They were the one of the most neglectful.
And yet we're just like, oh yeah, I guess Portugal's going to send some special forces to help us out.
But like, to help us, but like, that's crazy because they like, this doesn't get enough attention.
You know?
I mean, the French thing does a little and I bang the drum on that, but it's kind of unprecedented for Portugal to be sending special forces back to their three colonies.
You know, they had Angola, they had Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique.
I think this is the first instance of them sending like actual combat troops back.
And you know, you make an important point in here about how the definition of the mission is broad enough that there's no exit strategy either.
They can just keep finding people to fight wherever they go to fight them, right?
I mean, I would love for someone to take the bet with me that they're there more than 60 days.
As far as, basically it's like via tweet is what we have, you know, I'm sure there was probably some sort of press conference, but basically AFRICOM like tweeted, we're going to send this ODA, this special forces A team, they're going to train the Mozambican Marines for two months.
And like, that's the mission.
It's a J, a J set, like, you know, J C E T is basically just like a joint training exercise.
I would love someone to take the bet with me that they're there on day 61.
I mean, there's so little precedent for it being less, and it's not just the Americans.
One of the ways I know they're going to be there, or I think they're going to be there for day 60 is because the British might go in, the South Africans are talking about going in, the EU is talking about going in, the Portuguese are going in.
I mean, they're just waiting for like transport.
I mean, they're, they said the first half of April, I think they're like signing the agreement with Mozambique.
And the thing is, like, Mozambique is agreeing to all this because they're a corrupt, desperate government.
Okay.
But I'm sorry, man, because I really dropped the ball on this line of questioning earlier here.
We talked a lot about the supposed to non-existent connection to the corpse of Baghdadi or whatever is supposed to be the argument here, but just how big is this militia that we're even talking about at all?
The estimates have varied, but actually we're only talking about, I'm going to give a high estimate of a couple thousand fighters.
They're, they're very brutal and like the Islamic state, right?
Like, like ISIS classic of their heyday and, you know, Syria and Iraq, they do spectacular attacks.
You know, they, they do things like the head nine year olds, you know, they're not good guys, but the, and, and they've, and they also seized the port in Cabo Delgado, which is the Northern province.
And then they seized, I think the provincial capital, which is only about six miles.
This was recent.
They just take it back.
The Mozambican security forces take it back with help from that Rhodesian led blood diamonds, you know, mercenary org.
But they did just take it back, but they, they, they took the provincial capital and then I think at least once, maybe twice they took that like main port, but this is not quite the same as saying that they have like Boko Haram style volumes of fighters.
And it certainly has nothing to do with ISIS classic, whatever that is.
I mean, United States other than us making it our business, but see, you know what?
We've all been so brainwashed from birth with this stuff.
I know you more than me, buddy.
That there's even a part of me that's like, gee, they're cutting the head off a nine year old.
I mean, we should shoot them and we just, like they used to say back in 2003, we'll go in there and get Saddam and get out.
Right.
We just go in there and shoot these bad guys to death until they're dead and then that'll solve that problem.
And then everything would be great.
I think you're raising an important question.
I mean, an important point, because like, I don't really usually like caveats, but at the same time, like it is horrifying.
Some of the human rights abuses they've been doing.
I mean, these, you know, civil wars go and rebellions, they go off the rails, like by definition.
We all know that, right?
Like your society falls apart, whether it's in the whole country or in like a sector and the worst kind of like sociopaths come to the fore and are empowered.
It's like Mad Max.
The question I think that I've finally come to on this is like, well, how is a U.S. military intervention going to meaningfully change this?
And I think two things are at work here.
These are my two big fears, and I'm pretty sure I'm right.
Just based on the track record recently.
Number one, by officially designating Islamic State, Mozambique, which is a subaffiliate of Islamic State, Central African province, which is weird because it's not even Central Africa, it's South Africa, but whatever, Southern Africa.
By doing that, we're actually justifying and like officializing ISIS.
I mean, it's very interesting to me that, okay, so like ISIS Central, right?
Islamic State Central, you know, they're kind of done, right?
Or at least they don't own territory anymore.
Yeah, we're talking about a few hundred fighters left in Western Iraq and that's it.
Well, I guess Syria too, they seized a police station in Syria yesterday.
These guys built their credibility on tearing down Sykes-Picot.
In other words, they built their credibility on tearing down the synthetic borders and lumping that the Europeans did with their pencils, right?
Isn't it interesting that ISIS Central, once they're kind of broken down and they're not doing so well and needs to expand their brand to their affiliates, will take a lesson or two from Churchill and they'll designate these far flung, vaguely Islamist movements all the way down in Mozambique as ISIS.
And then the State Department, instead of being a little savvy, you know what I would do if I was the government?
I would say, we're just not going to say a word about it.
Like we're going to refuse to give credence to the myth.
Yeah, we're better.
These losers, these criminals, scumbags, they're not even terrorists.
They're just criminals.
They should be arrested and put in prison like criminals.
They're nobody.
Instead, it's like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed down at Guantanamo.
They let him wear a camouflage hunting jacket like he's some kind of army officer.
Give him all this credibility.
Now, look, this is all deliberate, right?
In the military, when you say self-licking ice cream cone, it's kind of supposed to be that way, right?
Oh, absolutely.
So, I mean, I think there's a bureaucratic function, which is important because it's symbolic and we're justifying, we're officializing ISIS's myth, which is that their franchises are affiliated with them.
It's really interesting that the only two people who believe the farce are Washington and like, I don't know, Raqqa in exile, as I called it.
I mean, that's fascinating to me, right?
Like that there's paradoxically or maybe it's not even paradoxically like the U.S. government and ISIS's leadership, whatever it is, basically agree that Mozambique is a theater in the ISIS war.
But the experts don't.
I mean, if you look at like the independent experts, like they all say there's no real evidence for this, that there's a connection of any sort.
And nobody has mentioned, not even once to my knowledge, and I read a lot, that there's any credible threat to the United States.
And but that's the that's the bureaucratic function, right?
That's the symbolic.
Here's what I'm worried about, too.
If you put white faces and it's not just race, it's it's backstory of like European type imperialists, right?
If you put those soldiers in Cabo Delgado, these these insurgents, the ones who are cutting off kids' heads, are going to be able to say, look, you're justifying our narrative, that it's all about imperialism, burnish our nationalist credentials.
We've seen this movie before.
And none of this, none of the military response, even dreams of handling the core causes of this insurgency.
I mean, one of the one of the experts, I think, at the International Crisis Group said this is not a global jihad.
Well, no, this is not an Islamic jihad, she said.
And I actually didn't include that in the article.
I just ran out of space and time.
And her point isn't that they're not like Islamist inflected, but in other words, this is not part of like some sort of globalized caliphate.
It's local grievances that picked up an Islamist inflection and then got off the rails, no doubt.
And I'm sure that some people are, some of the fighters are probably real believers in this extremist version of Islamism.
But these are local contexts, local causes, local grievances.
And only ISIS and the U.S. government believes the myth.
And it's beyond a myth, it's a delusion that there's any connection.
And uncritically, for the most part, maybe a sentence caveat, the mainstream media is just bought this.
And I and no one's talking about let's reload.
I mean, there are there is discussion of relooking the AUMF, but I haven't really seen an article that said.
Mozambique is the breaking point, like Mozambique is the logical absurdity, like the logical conclusion, absurdity of like how far we've gone.
That's a great way to put it.
I mean, right.
I mean, if it's not Mozambique, Scott, what's it going to be?
Are we going to have to go to are we going to are we going to have to go to Bhutan, which is like one of the three countries we don't have diplomatic relations with, like in the in the in the Hindu Kush, like I mean, the Himalayas, like if it's not Mozambique, what is it?
Because this group does not attack a police station until 2017.
How in the world can we be involved in this in any way?
All right.
Let me ask you this.
What can you tell us about the Eisenhower Media Network?
You know, we're really kind of picking up steam.
So, yeah, man, the Eisenhower Media Network is there's a dozen right now we're expanding.
These are mostly military veterans that range from basically sergeant to two star general.
Most are in like the major lieutenant colonel field.
Some of these names, you know, is Major General Dennis Leitch, who is really big on the All-Volunteer Force Forum, pretty critical of sort of the professionalized military.
And let me get him in touch with Dan McKnight at Bring Our Troops Home, you think?
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah, absolutely.
Great.
Sorry.
Sorry.
Of course, we know.
Yeah, we've got a colonel like, you know, everyone knows Larry Wilkerson.
He's one of our hot people, you know, but the basic idea here is this is something that, you know, me and Ben Cohen kind of like talked about years ago in a very vague sense.
You know, what resources can we bring to bear to get some of the people who are credible?
Like you always talk about, right.
Fighting the right from the right and stuff.
And some of them are liberals.
But like, how do we get credible national security veterans who don't have to agree on everything, but basically agree that the foreign policy of the United States is off the rails and are willing to criticize the military industrial complex and all of the indecency?
How do we try to place their pieces and get them on shows?
And, you know, that's our main focus.
And we've started to have some success.
You know, we have a guy named Dan Brzezinski, who is a retired captain, but he's retired because he lost both his legs in Kandahar in the same one district over from mine as a lieutenant, right.
West Point grad.
And he writes, you know, he's got a piece coming out in USA Today next week that says we need to end the Afghan war and, you know, kind of short op ed.
But it's takes it down and it's, you know, you'll see the photo, right.
And it's it's not all about the fact that he lost his legs or something like that's he's a smart and like credible voice.
But so we're just trying to kind of get those voices out there.
We're expanding our recruitment.
You know, we talk to producers, we talk to, you know, different publications and we're going to we need to our big point is these are independent, nonpartisan experts, you know, national security veteran experts.
We have like libertarians, you know, Karen Kutowsky sort of is kind of in that general zone.
You know, I mean, I know it's all complicated.
You know, we're going to try to go even more in that direction a bit because we don't want to just be like a group of like, look, we're not cutting off the sleeves on our class A uniforms, you know, and growing ZZ Top beards and, you know, putting peace buttons on our baseball caps, per se.
You know, it's a it's a more professional thing that it's a little bit more bipartisan or at least transpartisan, because if you're critical of militarism and like all the indecency inherent in that and you're a veteran of either the national security agencies like CIA or FBI and then mostly military, you know, we just we're just trying to gather these people into a network.
And one of the men I'll end with this.
One of the main reasons it came up was a conversation I had had with Ben where he said like, well, are there other critical veterans, you know, like like you basically he was saying.
And I said, well, yeah, there are.
But I have all their numbers in my cell phone.
And that's a little bit of hyperbole, but not totally.
When we had that conversation, it was kind of true.
It's like the publicly active, like writer, speaker, veterans.
Yeah, it's not that many.
And so when we when I said that, he was kind of like, well, what's connecting them?
Like, is there or are they connected?
Are they affiliated?
Are they working towards the same cause?
And the answer was not really.
I mean, I may be working towards the same like vague mission, but no affiliation.
So that's kind of what we're trying to do.
And I think it's going to really build up.
You know, we've been getting our pieces into more mainstream sources.
It's going to take time before we're hitting the New York Times and CNN stuff with anyone besides Larry.
But we're getting there for sure.
Well, apparently I don't know how to break down any statistics or anything, but it seems like there's, you know, a pretty substantial minority of listeners to this show are anti-war veterans.
And so I always like to try to point them to things like this where they can get involved.
And of course, there's Concerned Veterans of America and Bring Our Troops Home.us and, of course, Veterans for Peace and all the groups on the progressive left and all of that, too.
So there's plenty to be done for those who want to chip in.
Not everybody's a writer, fair enough, right?
Well, yeah, I would encourage any listeners, you know, like if you go to SkepticalVet.com or if you go to EisenhowerMediaNetwork.com or .org, you know, you can contact me directly.
And like, you know, if you have a recommendation of a person or you're just interested in knowing what we're doing or, you know, or you personally are like, hey, maybe I'd be like a good voice.
Like, you know, the books are kind of open, you know, and there are like there are, you know, we're looking at people who can write and speak fairly effectively, but there's just a lot of roles.
And even if it's just a note of, hey, look, I'm, you know, I'm a veteran, I'm into that, you know, I mean, I answer all that.
And I think that sometimes, you know, you can even tie somebody in with one of our other people besides me.
You know, I've got these other people, but I'm totally if EMN can do anything, I hope it's speak to people.
And maybe like gather them in some sort of like vague, magnetic way, like just even if it's just sort of like interpersonally, the veterans who feel the way we do that have some desire to be public or thinking about it, even, you know, it's just a network.
And that's why we call it network.
You know, it's like it gets misunderstood, like we're going to be CNN, like, no, that's not it.
Like, it's more like an actual network.
Yeah.
Great.
Thanks for having me.
This is great.
I'm glad you want to talk about this.
Yeah, man.
Hell yeah.
So this is Danny Sherston.
Where all do you write except for Antiwar.com other than Antiwar.com I mean?
You know, these days it's it's like Tom Dispatch, like every other month and then like I'll occasionally get solicited to like some other site like in these times or something like that.
But these days I've been pretty busy with, you know, doing EMN and then also writing some books.
So generally it's the you know, it's the Thursday column at Antiwar.com.
But, you know, SkepticalVet.com, everything I do ends up there because I do a lot of speaking.
Say that again.
SkepticalVet.com is my website.
And that's your handle on Twitter, too, right?
That's right.
At SkepticalVet.com.
SkepticalVet.com.
OK, great.
And by the way, so again, the article at Antiwar.com is it began with 12, How Will It End, Mozambique, AFRICOM's Newest Adventure.
And then before that, two absolutely killer articles about Mali and before that about Afghanistan and all the way back, of course, and more to come.
So thank you again so much, Danny.
Appreciate it.
Thanks.
This is great.
Thanks.
The Scott Horton Show, Antiwar Radio, can be heard on KPFK 90.7 FM in L.A.
APSradio.com, Antiwar.com, ScottHorton.org and LibertarianInstitute.org.
