Hope Hodge Seck, a reporter for Military.com, discusses the Obama administration’s last-minute deployment of a 300-Marine team of advisors to Helmand province in Afghanistan, where the Taliban is resurgent and no reliable opposition exists.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Hey y'all, Scott Horton here.
Are you a libertarian and or a peacenik?
Live in North America?
If you want, you can hire me to come and give a speech to your group.
I'm good on the terror war and intervention, civil liberty stuff, blaming Woodrow Wilson for everything bad in the world, Iran, central banking, political realignment, and well, you know, everything.
I can teach markets to liberals and peace to the right.
Just watch me.
Check out scotthorton.org slash speeches for some examples and email me, scott at scotthorton.org for more information.
See you there.
All right, y'all Scott Horton show.
Check out the archives at scotthorton.org more than 4,000 interviews now going back to 2003 and check out all the new archives at libertarian institute.org slash Scott Horton show.
I'll see you follow me on Twitter at Scott Horton show introducing Hope Hodge SEC.
She is a reporter for military.com.
Welcome to show hope.
How are you?
I'm great.
Thanks for having me on.
I really appreciate you joining us as an extremely important story here.
And just so everybody gets it straight.
This is being recorded on January 11th, 2017.
Now, just so nobody thinks this is a rerun, 300 Marines will deploy to Helmand province this spring.
The Marine Corps confirms to military.com.
Tell us all about it.
Please.
Absolutely.
So you're right.
This is big news.
This is big news.
The Marines left Helmand province, which is in the Southwest Afghanistan.
It's a very violent, very kinetic area in late 2014.
And they did so very deliberately.
They even brought out reporters at the time, you know, as the final planes were leaving.
And they've essentially been gone from the region ever since.
And the troop presence there has been very minimal.
So they're coming back now amidst sort of a resurgence of Taliban forces.
And after a two-year hiatus.
All right.
And now, how many are going and what's the nature of the mission, at least, declared?
The declared nature of the mission is advise and assist.
This is something that has been essentially the core mission ever since the majority of the combat forces ostensibly left, you know, right before the start of 2015.
So this is something that they were doing in Helmand as the troops were packing up bases and leaving.
They had colonels, you know, at the police headquarters in Lashkar Gah in Helmand province and working with the top military leaders, saying, kind of grooming them, you know, helping them develop strategies, just kind of providing background assistance.
And then can you clarify, is it MARSOC and Force Recon Special Forces Marines or it's the regular corps?
These are the regular guys.
This is an element from 6th Marine Regiment, which is part of the 2nd Marine Division.
These are guys out of Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.
I think you said it's about 300 troops.
But you know, as far as we know, these are rank and file infantry Marines who are going.
I see.
And then, so now, I'm not sure how up to date you are on this, if you can comment about the strength of Taliban forces in the Helmand province at this point.
This is the very largely agricultural region, rural region, a huge province, right?
Absolutely.
It's a huge province that has contained several really key Taliban strongholds.
One of the most costly and deadly battles for the Marine Corps was a protracted fight over Sangin, which is a district that was very prominent with poppy and opium farming, of course, and had a very strong Taliban presence.
So when the Marines left in 2014, they were celebrating the fact that the entire region was much more peaceful, that they had kind of pushed insurgents to the edges.
That's no longer the case.
The week that they announced they were going back, there was news out of Helmand province that the same key districts Sangin and another one Marja, the Taliban forces were really running the local Afghan National Army ragged and in fighting in the winter, which is uncommon.
Usually they kind of take a break in the winter, come back in the spring for their quote unquote fighting season.
Marja, that was a Stanley McChrystal set piece there.
That's right.
The run up to the Kandahar City surge that never happened.
All right.
Well, and then so now Lashkar Gah, I guess I read a thing, but it was so very brief.
It wasn't by you.
It was some other thing that just kind of implied that Lashkar Gah is the only place in the Helmand province that the Taliban don't control.
And basically, they're about to finish overrunning it.
And is that really why we're seeing the Marines?
This is like a last ditch thing to hold on, to try to hold on to that city.
That is hard to say.
Marine officials are not talking about Lashkar Gah specifically.
But again, it's the population hub.
You know, it's kind of the capital city for Helmand province.
And it's one of the last places that Marines had a contingent before pulling out.
And I think a major key there is is going to be finding trustworthy Afghan leaders that they can work with as much, you know, as keeping the the Taliban and insurgents at bay.
That's something that has in the past been a challenge is just, you know, finding people who will A, be trustworthy and B, stick around, you know, and maintain a level of stability going forward.
All right, now, I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but there's another headline that came out that said some Italian led troops, some NATO troops are announcing another deployment in the Farah province, which is, I forget, I think it's just one to the west of to the north and to the west of Helmand.
Maybe it's right for you.
Yeah, it's I guess I want.
Oh, and then there's there's one more headline here.
I'll go ahead and throw in CENTCOM data.
U.S. airstrikes rose 40 percent in Afghanistan in 2016 over 2015.
And I wonder if that sort of how many more stories like this do we have out there that add up to there's another major escalation of this war coming or else they can either cut and run or they can try another surge.
And here we are at the dawn of a brand new presidential era.
And in fact, we have Stanley McChrystal's right hand man, Mike Flynn, as the National Security Advisor and Marine Corps General James Mattis from the original Afghan war as the secretary of defense here.
Is I wonder if you in your journalism sense a big change coming?
It does seem like a lot of deja vu, doesn't it?
I mean, at this point, it would be speculative, but we can definitely say that things are bad again.
Like in in Helmand, you know, it seems like things are getting to the point that they were before the Marines kind of showed up in the first place.
And second, there's there's another element, which is Islamic State militants have claimed strongholds in these areas as well and have sort of infiltrated.
So we've got the the old fight and the new fight in this old familiar location.
Well, as far as Islamic State stuff, I mean, I've seen those reports, too, but I wonder what that means.
Is that just another faction of the Pashtun resistance?
Or these are Iraqis, you know, veterans of Iraq War Two who've come now back to Afghanistan or some kind of thing?
You know, I really don't want to speculate too much on that because I haven't been out there since 2014.
But, you know, clearly nature abhors a vacuum.
And, you know, these areas without, you know, strong governance and a stable presence, I think, are increasingly open to to these sort of actors, you know, no matter what affiliation they claim.
All right.
Well, listen, I really appreciate you coming on the show to let us know the bad news.
Thanks for having me.
Yep.
All right, y'all.
That is Hope Hodge-Seck.
She is a reporter for Military.com on the Marine and the Navy.
And here she is at Military.com with 300 Marines will deploy to Helmand this spring.
The Corps confirms.
That's Scott Horton Show.
Check out the archives at ScottHorton.org and LibertarianInstitute.org slash Scott Horton Show.
And follow me on Twitter at Scott Horton Show.
Thanks, y'all.
All right, y'all.
Scott Horton here.
And I got a great deal for you.
Anyone who helps support this show with a $50 donation or more gets a copy of the brand new Rothbard book, Murray N.
Rothbard book of long lost essays from 1967 and 68.
It's entitled Never a Dull Moment.
A Libertarian Looks at the 60s.
Murray N.
Rothbard, really Mr.
Libertarian himself on Vietnam, conscription, civil rights, LBJ and Nixon and all kinds of great stuff from back during those times.
Never a dull moment.
And it's an exclusive.
It's not available on Amazon yet.
It's an exclusive so far, at least for listeners of this show.
So be the first to get it.
Help support this show at the same time.
Just go to Scott Horton.org slash donate.
And again, anyone who sends $50 on this way, along with a mailing address, and I will get this book right to you.
Thanks.
Hey, all Scott here.
On average, how much do you think these interviews are worth to you?
Of course, I've never charged for my archives in a dozen years of doing this, and I'm not about to start.
But at Patreon.com slash Scott Horton Show, you can name your own prize to help support and make sure there's still new interviews to give away.
So what do you think?
Two bits, a buck and a half?
They're usually about 80 interviews per month, I guess.
So take that into account.
You can also cap the amount you'd be willing to spend in case things get out of hand around here.
That's Patreon.com slash Scott Horton Show.
And thanks, y'all.
