Scott talks with Danny Sjursen about President Biden’s foreign policy moves during his first few weeks in office. Most notably, the administration has announced an end to all support for “offensive operations” in Yemen. Sjursen agrees that this is great news, but urges some caution so that we don’t too readily accept a declaration that could still allow loopholes. The news isn’t all good: the Biden administration has also hinted that they will cancel the Afghanistan withdrawal deal that was made with the Taliban under Trump. Sjursen suspects that Biden will escalate the war a little at first, put it on the back burner, withdraw some troops and then leave the war in basically the same state for the next administration. In other words, he will do what all presidents have done since the start of the war 20 years ago.

Discussed on the show:

• “Biden’s Bolt From Yemen?: Symbolic Step, Systemic Limits, and Linguistic Gymnastics” (Antiwar.com Original)
• “2/5/21 Hassan El-Tayyab on Biden’s Big Step Toward Peace in Yemen” (The Scott Horton Show)

Danny Sjursen is a retired U.S. army major and former history instructor at West Point. He is the author of Ghost Riders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge and Patriotic Dissent: America in the Age of Endless War. Follow him on Twitter @SkepticalVet.

This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: The War State, by Mike Swanson; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; Photo IQ; Green Mill Supercritical; Zippix Toothpicks; and Listen and Think Audio.

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