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If Trump isn't planning to draw down US intervention in Somalia He should be.
Welcome to the show.
How are you doing?
Good.
Thanks so much for having me Alyssa I've been a big fan of your writing for a long time and link to it all the time at Antiwar.com And I'm not sure why I haven't had you on the show before but happy to have the chance to Thanks.
Yeah, I'm glad to be here Also, I owe you thanks because I had missed the NBC article that you caught and wrote about here very important stuff So tell us about that first.
Oh Yeah, well, so it was it was super interesting Basically NBC reported that The the Trump administration was planning to Draw down this escalation in Somalia that started at the very tail end of the Obama administration and then really kicked into high gear During the the first two years of the Trump administration.
And so we had quotes From from unnamed officials saying, you know, not every nasty character out.
There is a threat to the u.s Do we want to do the Somali government's job for it?
And then another one said that the al-shabaab militants who are the primary target in Somalia Are really a parochial issue and not a direct threat to the United States and so That seemed to suggest that there was going to be this sort of de-escalation drawdown Maybe an American exit from Somalia and that came out I believe on a Friday and then by the following Monday The Pentagon has a statement pushing back saying, you know, there's no policy changes and we're gonna stay and continue Supporting the Somali government's efforts against al-shabaab And I guess nobody ever got a quote out of Trump himself about this so far, huh?
Yeah, I don't believe there was anything from Trump or any of the you know, sort of big-name defense or security officials no one that we would really Recognize ever went on the record about it.
It was just sort of the these unnamed officials speaking to NBC and then this Generic statement for the Pentagon saying no, nothing has changed Mm-hmm.
Well, I think it was last summer That the Washington Post had a story should be easy enough to find because it ends with Mattis telling Trump you have no choice When Trump is complaining about Somalia and saying why are we even in Somalia?
You could just imagine him going.
Where's Somalia who cares about how could a local insurgency in Somalia possibly be of Concern to me, you know that kind of attitude and they told him in fact I think the quote was well We're doing it to prevent a bomb going off in Times Square or a nuclear bomb even or something like that like yeah Okay, it doesn't quite add up.
In fact, the only time there was an attack on Times Square.
Luckily.
It was a failed one But it was in direct reaction to the drone war in Pakistan You know, otherwise Haven't had too many of those Yeah, and I believe And I'd want to check to make sure I'm getting the numbers, right?
But I believe it's the case that it's either it's either three decades or I want to say it's four decades that Since there's been an attack on American soil by anyone any Somali born Terrorist so it's the this idea that these Unnamed officials were saying that this is a something of a local parochial issue Really is borne out by the last several decades of our interactions with Somalia Yeah well And it seemed like if it was an experiment to see if you could provoke a Somali American into committing a terrorist attack in the name of You know Whatever the the war going on in the Middle East and this kind of intervention would be the way to Provoke that rather than the way to prevent that kind of thing.
Otherwise, how's al-shabaab supposed to hit, Minnesota unless?
It's a citizen already living there Yeah, I mean, it's certainly the case that I think with any Intervention like this That the risk of unintended consequences is real and is something that Is too often ignored or downplayed With this sort of we have to fight them over there so we don't fight them over here argument It would be you know, maybe nice if it was that tidy if fighting over there I guaranteed that there would be nothing bad happening over here.
But the reality is often much messier Yeah, now I'm not sure if it's just public relations I guess it's more like the two faces of Donald Trump here where you know, he knows better but at the same time he has that whole ethic of just being tough and kicking butt and and Unleashing the military if for no other reason so that politically speaking no one can ever accuse him of tying their hands Right.
He wants to delegate to them enough power to win any battle so that no one can blame him for their defeats What of which they have plenty?
But it's like he'd just as soon double down.
In fact, he sent Infantry to Somalia because you said he's escalated Obama's war while really Bush and then Obama's war there before there were Special Operations Command and CIA now there's Actual infantry on the ground.
I don't know if they're fighting or well, they must be not just training, right?
That would be the Rangers or whoever training Yeah, my understanding is So sort of the modern intervention in Somalia starts in 2007 But it's pretty low-key like two or three airstrikes a year up until 2016 2017 And so then Trump comes into office and in early 2017, he designates parts of Somalia these areas of active hostility, which means that military operations proceed with less oversight and with less care for avoiding civilian casualties And so it's in I want to say like as of the beginning of 2017 You still only have about 50 American boots on the ground there And then that quickly increases to about the 500 that there are today and the airstrikes increase as well So in 2017, I want to say there were about 25 or 30 airstrikes and then last year around 50 So it's escalated considerably under Trump, and I think you're right.
It's it's pretty typical of This sort of Internal division and how he approaches foreign policy so inconsistently where he does have at times these good impulses of saying You know, we shouldn't police the world Why are we in these places that I don't care about that?
I haven't heard of We should come home from there.
But at the same time he has this very militaristic very like gleeful approach to the idea of bombing places and deploying the military and he loves the The Excitement and the military show and so it makes for a lot of inconsistency and then when you add in Advisors who do tend to be on the interventionist side I think any of those better impulses toward peace just get totally smothered Yeah, he's just frustrated that there's never an end with a parade It's always this ongoing quagmire here there and everywhere else and he kind of I think Tom Englehart Wrote one time about how they're just of the same generation and they just grew up on World War two in a way that you can tell he stuck in that kind of thinking that the leader of the bad guys should sign the piece of paper saying he quits and then that should be the end of it and Then we move on from there and we can have peacetime again or something like that.
And so instead it's just More troops more troops pull some out put some back in and it goes on forever Yeah It's difficult because I think it's it's Just because of how much of this is sort of seems to be sort of his unconscious mindset and you know what he enjoys as opposed to like anything really carefully thought out or any Systematic idea of how American foreign policy should work or the purpose of the military.
It just ends up very messy and inconsistent and a continuation of sort of the last the two previous administration's policies of just Intervening, you know here there and everywhere and never really ending anything Hey guys, check out Tom Woods Liberty classroom.
It's everything you need to be an educated libertarian You may be long out of college and you have a family and a job, but you really want to know this stuff Well, they got all of these classes on history economics and libertarian theory and all of these things great professors and Wonderful credentialed libertarians essentially teaching college level classes about everything you need to know Tom Woods is Liberty classroom Check it out at Liberty classroom comm follow through from the link in the right-hand margin on my page at Scott Horton org.
I Wonder too whether James Mattis ever told him I mean the Washington Post version is protect us from terrorist attack, but I wonder if Mattis ever said that You know, this is as George W Bush would have said about strategery We got to make sure we're there so that we can keep China out or less relevant in the area And it's the gates of the Bob Almond Ebb straight there the opening of the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden there, so It's you know Somehow it wasn't necessary before but now it's necessary and forever that we have a beachhead there, right?
But I wonder if they ever even told him that or if they still they just threatened him with something exploding somewhere Yeah, it's hard to say Somalia is Interesting in this regard because of course, it's you know long been extremely poor extremely chaotic Frequently used as like a punchline for libertarians like, you know, if you want less government, why don't you go live in Somalia?
But they have you know, this very long strategically important coastline.
They also have these these probable untapped oil reserves And they're not, you know a key place in the world.
So yeah, it's it's you know, certainly we can't know but It's it's not hard to see sort of the more interventionist Washington foreign policy establishment thinking this is a good place for us to have a long-term troop presence for strategic purposes Of course, you know not going to bring up all of the attendant risks and ways that that could draw us into a much Broader war Much broader conflicts that we do not need or want Yeah, well, and you know, it's worth mentioning too.
You talked about how the war broke out really at the beginning of 2007 Ended 2006 there with the Ethiopian invasion Which the Americans sponsored and and helped plan and and the CIA and Special Operations Command helped with the attack and everything at the beginning there But that was all in reaction to this Islamic Courts Union That al-shabaab was the smallest and least influential member of And which itself had grown up in reaction to American support for various warlords Including the son of adid the bad guy from Blackhawk down He was in the CIA's employ and it was really in reaction to that that the Islamic Courts Union Kind of federal government in a sense came into being there at all And then it was only the war and the invasion of 2000 the Christmas 2006 at the beginning of o7 there by Ethiopia The USA Ethiopia invasion there that even made al-shabaab into something Important because at that point they were you know, al-shabaab means the youth, right?
So they were the ones who were doing the fighting the rest of the Islamic Courts Union were you know?
Essentially marginalized and they became the leaders of the resistance against the foreign invasion.
So that was what?
Inflated all of their power was right there, you know in the middle of the George W Bush years It wasn't like he came because of that he created that Yeah, and I mean you can even I think look further back and and look at the Cold War era where you know Both the United States and the Soviet Union are sending in Weapons to try to keep for the military dictatorships actions which of course Contributes to the chaos and then when the Cold War ends and the dictatorship breaks down Then we get into that intervention that leads to the Black Hawk down situation and so it's just at this point decades of Intervention that's had in many cases these negative consequences and that has contributed to The situation we find today but of course we tend to You know ignore or at least not bother to sort through and understand that recent history And so then it just becomes well, there's these bad guys in Somalia, you know They're they're doing bad things and they are doing I mean al-shabaab does these terrible, you know Suicide bombings that kill hundreds of civilians at a time And so it says so we say well, let's go in there and try to fix this But the track record of us going into Somalia and trying to fix things is is not good and has not been good for a long time Yeah now so back to the NBC story It sort of makes sense that somewhere inside the White House some small group of people on the National Security Council somewhere Or maybe just Donald Trump himself has the idea that hey, we could close down Syria Afghanistan and then Why not go for a third one and that you know, they floated this this was some kind of trial balloon I guess to NBC by you know, I don't know which faction or if the NBC story really implied if this was Jared Kushner or if this was John Bolton or where this came from probably not the latter there, but It's interesting that they even brought this up right that I mean assuming NBC didn't just make the story about a whole cloth Yeah, I mean it's really difficult to say and I mentioned this in the reason article like what exactly is going on here Where was this really something that was being seriously considered?
Was it you know, maybe there was some tentative discussions that some people misinterpreted as this is definitely happening Did NBC just get it wrong?but I think because of the pattern that we've seen with Syrian Afghanistan, which you mentioned where there's sort of this move to withdraw Frequently from Trump himself, though, of course not in this case and then there's this Rather quick backtracking where it becomes a slow withdrawal or it becomes We're only going to leave Syria if we get this very unlikely promise from Turkey or you know If we take troops out of Syria, they're not going to come home.
They're gonna go to Iraq It seems like that there's a strong chance that was happening with the Somalia story is is similar where there there was a Real move by the president or possibly by some of his advisors to say let's leave Somalia and then that that reported and then it very quickly got overpowered by You know other voices in the administration who do not want to leave Yeah, you know, it's funny to see Even much lower down the chain of command type generals like in Afghanistan Refute the president essentially and tell the newspaper on the record that I ain't got no orders We're not leaving.
We just that's just rumors in the news and this kind of thing Pretty brave of them.
I mean even assuming that's true, which it sounds unfortunately true Seems like they could kind of say no comment or be a little bit more diplomatic They're in the chain of command under the president after all But they just seem perfectly comfortable to contradict him and say we're not leaving Somalia I don't know who told you that but it ain't true in this kind of reaction.
I Mean in practice it it's sort of understandable why they would Feel comfortable speaking that way right because of the pattern that they've seen with Syria and Afghanistan You know as much as Trump does sometimes talk a good talk about leaving he seems very easily persuaded To not follow through with that and so just given that pattern at this point I would say, you know, if you're in that position Perhaps it doesn't feel like a huge risk to come out and say, you know, no to our knowledge.
We're not leaving Whatever you've heard That those rumors may be going around but it's it's probably not gonna happen.
Yeah You know, the problem is he really needs the political advice That this would be a great way to get reelected that we have so many wars that he could end a war every few months from now until election day and He'd be Trump the great by then and then and he would You know in the perfect Judo maneuver would force the Democrats to attack him from the Dick Cheney ite position that no you can never withdraw from anywhere That's what the people want and that's not what the people want yeah, I hope that would be true that if that if he left with you know ended these wars that that would be a election winning thing The more cynical side of me though wants to say that because there's so much in the background Especially things like Somalia where it doesn't have the prominence of an Afghanistan Syria or Iraq It that is it's just so little on people's minds and has So little effect on our daily lives that it it might not be met with as much enthusiasm as we'd want for those wars to be ended Like I said, I this is the more cynical side of me and I hope that it would it would produce sort of the Reaction that you're you're describing but at this point, I'm not confident it would I'm sorry.
Hang on just one second.
Hey y'all I was talking with Derek sheriff from listen and think audiobooks and he agrees with me that it's so important that the Trump White House hears from large numbers of Americans who support his efforts to end the wars in Syrian Afghanistan Especially from combat veterans like himself The president must hear voices of support from out here in the real world to counteract the cries of the war party in DC and on TV now the phone lines are jammed, but they have a pretty good email system there at White House gov Email me Scott at Scott Horton org when you do and Derek sheriff at listen and think audiobooks will give you two free ones for Well, there's no question that it's already a full court press by TV to discredit any of this and of course All the major newspapers and everything too, but they're just decided To tune in to the Jake Tapper show for just a few minutes is to get a taste of this where essentially any withdrawal from anywhere is Extremely reckless and bordering on treasonous because it's all a present to Vladimir Putin because that's what he wants and this kind of thing But on the other hand, I don't think the American people really feel that way So I think Trump if he was smart, maybe a little bit smarter than he is he could end those wars and then he could play it as Him and the American people and the soldiers and their families who want to end these wars versus the media who never been a fight in their life and Want this thing to continue forever and ever for nobody knows why and if he framed it that way, you know Because he's already pits himself against the media in every context anyway So you could just add that to it That the worst thing about the media is they keep listening to Bill Kristol after all this time when they should have quit by now And this kind of thing, you know Yeah, I hope so The the Russia argument, of course is really interesting given you know this idea that if we get out Russia will get in there and become so powerful and it's it's so difficult to See how that argument makes sense given what a drain Responsibility for these conflicts has been on the United States over the past almost two decades the idea that if Russia wants to get into these places it's going to make them more powerful is is hard to To see if that's responsibility Russia wants to take on it.
It seems Like a real possibility that in relatively short order It would equally become a drain on Moscow in the way right, and actually in with the loss of life and Just sort of the stretching thin of military commitments Right.
That was part of how they defeated the Soviet Union was after Vietnam They backed off containment and in fact encouraged Soviet over expansion in various ways and especially in Afghanistan to give them their own Vietnam and bog them down and bleed their Treasury dry and all of that and So, why would we replicate their same failure?
And why would they replicate our replication of their same failure the Russians this time around?
Yeah Good question It is it is and it's a question that I think is not addressed often enough and it's and it's very related to what we were discussing about, you know, Somalia in particular just as Whether willful or unintentional Ignorance of the recent history and of how things have played out, you know, not that long ago and and on this Inability, it seems to learn from that and to actually, you know, do something better and different that does not have these same outcomes Yep All right.
Well, listen, do you have any other more recent articles after this Somalia thing that I missed?
About Somalia in particular.
Oh, no about anything.
Oh I mean about anything foreign policy read, you know, anti-war commish.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, let's see When was the Somalia this was a list because I know you write for so many different places Yeah, I do technically have an email list.
It's Deeply inactive, so I wouldn't really recommend that But yeah, I I write usually one to two articles through defense priorities each week that are placed In various outlets like reason and elsewhere This month has been a little slow as I've been sick and traveling but I just had a piece come out This is real sad that I have to look at my own Twitter to remember what I wrote.
Um On the spot I just had a piece come out with defense news about Afghanistan and the Possibility of withdrawal there in light of this these recent new Negotiations in the United States and the Taliban they announced.
I think it was Was it this Monday?
Yeah this Monday that they've developed this draft for a framework that it like it's all very Details a lot of details still need to be worked out, but they've reached sort of tentative like overarching framework that would trade Among other things us withdrawal for the Taliban's pledge to keep Afghanistan from becoming You know a haven for terrorists so that's I think a Really positive development and I wrote an article for through defense priorities that was published at defense news Basically arguing, you know, these negotiations are great and should be supported But even if they fail, you know It's still time for us to be leaving Afghanistan and that should be sort of the higher-order priority Regardless of what happens with the talks Great.
Yeah, I totally agree with you about that.
And you know, I saw a thing which was I blogged at the Libertarian Institute site Where Trump it was I think Voice of America where Trump says Trump himself and they said it was in a statement But they didn't make it very clear if he said it to a reporter or whether it was a piece of paper They put out or something, but he said the report said that he said from you know right now he's absolutely willing to withdraw all troops, which is You know essentially all carrot and not much stick which is fine with me But he really it's kind of amazing to me you think about all of the the inertia behind staying there, but he seems to have told Khalil Zod Zalmay Khalil Zod the Negotiator here that we are leaving your job is to save as much face as you can between now and then but this thing is over because I Mean, it's just amazing actually to see this is one where he apparently is sticking to his guns Although as I say they say he hasn't given the orders yet But if he's got Khalil Zod agreeing to what the Taliban had promised for more than 10 years now that of course We'll keep al-qaeda out.
That's not a problem, and that's their only condition They're gonna even drop the condition of staying at the Bagram air base That that has to be the president really putting his foot down against the Pentagon If they're willing to do that because they want to keep that base so bad Yeah, and I would I mean I would say that you know, certainly it's it's early days yet with this deal, but it's it's very Far in a way one of the most optimistic things happening in foreign policy right now.
I think It's it's fantastic and the Trump administration does deserve credit for it for you know, certainly there have been Negotiations with the Taliban previously started in the Obama years, but for appointing Khalil Zod to this position because it really does seem to have been a Breakthrough in the talks and and we've gotten into new territory with this that we have not seen previously So I forget which story was I read that said that I guess they were going to insist But this was really kind of face-saving Where they were going to insist on the way out as not as a condition or sort of as like a half a condition That the Taliban negotiate with the Afghan government such as it is That they've refused to negotiate all this time They didn't sound like they were insisting on it quote-unquote, but that it wasn't necessarily a condition of withdrawal But you know, it's funny to me is I haven't seen anyone say that Maybe they had off ought to offer a deal for kind of a very strong federalism where the Taliban get to rule the whole south and east and And but just as long as they promised to not sack Kabul and take over Kabul Something like that because it seems like inviting them into the capital city in Numbers that way is just gonna lead to right back to civil war the way it was before It seems kind of surprising that no one's saying hey, what if we kind of?
Drew soft borders where we all where everybody is right now and just let you keep what you got and have You know what I mean, you have to break up Afghanistan into pieces But just but no one seems to be offering that everything seems to still be a question of who's gonna rule the capital city And then attempt to rule the rest of the country from there, which seems to be the recipe for far more violence Yeah, I think it'll be very interesting to see Where that requirement of including the Afghan government in the talks where that comes in at what stage?
Because you know that the Afghan government in the United States are both very insistent that that happens the Taliban Still at least publicly is saying they don't want it but also the question of you know, is the Taliban going to like participate in the government like in like Are they gonna function like a political party?
I?
It's it's been that's certainly been a subject of speculation like that there are you know these elements within the Taliban that are tired of violence and are ready to participate politically, but Yeah, I don't know.
I think to a large extent it may simply end up being You know, let's see what happens and how those things shake out As much as they may try to to work things out one way or another in the deal once we've actually left You know, it could end up looking very differently From what's agreed to?right Okay.
Well, thanks again for coming on the show.
I really appreciate it.
Yeah.
Thank you so much All right, you guys that's Bonnie Christian she's a fellow at defense priorities and weekend editor at the week and She's written for all kinds of things including the American conservative magazine And here she is at reason magazine with if Trump isn't planning to draw down u.s.
Intervention in Somalia He should be and at defense news Calm u.s.
Forces should leave Afghanistan even if a deal with the Taliban fails All right, y'all.
Thanks find me at libertarian institute org at Scott Horton org anti-war calm and reddit.com Scott Horton show.
Oh, yeah and read my book fools errand timed and the war in Afghanistan at fools errand us
