Scott Horton Week on the Tom Woods Show

Libertarian author and podcaster Tom Woods hosted Antiwar.com editorial director Scott Horton on his show all week this week as a fundraiser to support the writing of Scott’s upcoming book on the terror wars.

Listen to the interviews here:

Day One: Current War on Terrorism Overview

Day Two: Somalia

Day Three: Iraq War II

Day Four: Iraq War III and Syria

Day Five: Yemen

Was it the promise or was it the SOFA?

On Friday, October 21, 2011, Mr. Obama, invoking one of his campaign promises, announced the complete withdrawal of all U.S. Troops from Iraq by "the [Christian] holidays." Over the weekend, he and his media arm further spun the story, claiming the deadline had been negotiated by G.W. Bush.

Behind the scenes — later paragraphs — we discover that the Pentagon wanted to keep at least 3,000 to 5,000 troops on Iraqi soil. The true number was significantly larger. But they’re all leaving. Why?

It was almost certainly the S.O.F.A., the acronym for "Status Of Forces Agreement."

Obama’s announcement signals that US officials have been unable to negotiate with Iraq’s leaders a renewal of the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) governing the stationing and mission of American troops on Iraqi soil. Pentagon officials in particular, backed by a number of congressional leaders, had called for leaving a force of between 3,000 and 5,000 in Iraq for an extended period. –Iraq withdrawal: With US troops set to exit, 9-year war draws to close – CSMonitor.com

A key provision of any SOFA is exempting occupying soldiers from the laws of the country being occupied. It was this provision that Iraqi negotiators refused to renew. Thus, for example, once the old SOFA expired, U.S. soldiers who killed an Iraqi could be tried for murder under Iraqi law.

The Iraqis, it seems, found the back door to get rid of occupying U.S. troops.

This would likely work in other countries as well.

But that still leaves the drones.

OOPS! Again.

…allegedly "hacked" software, in the case of the CIA, is now being used to guide killer drones to their targets, according to IISI’s legal pleadings, despite the fact that the modified software doesn’t function properly… –CIA Drone-Code Scandal Now Has A Big Blue Hue

Somalia Ruined: Intervention Fails Again

I predicted when the Ethiopians rode into Mogadishu in January, 2007, that the minute they fled with their tails between their legs, the Islamists would swarm back in to retake their place of power. I was right, but the time period was off — only because the occupiers, and the “Transitional National Government” they propped up, stayed far longer than anyone expected.

It’s been barely two years, but in that time span, Somalia’s economy and civil society has been gutted as if by fire — and in many cases, the literal sense applies. Of course, many things have changed since early 2007. Some of the more radical Islamists have gained strength after hardening as an armed insurgency. Half of Mogadishu’s population has been displaced by the fighting between the “transitional government” and the Islamist factions.

The tragedy is even more bitter because this is not par for the course in Somalia. Over the 15 years from 1991 after the end of the civil war, Somalia went from famine to having a functioning economy. Somalis enjoyed services such as schools, hospitals, multiple competing electricity, phone and internet companies and even a Coca-Cola bottling plant. It wasn’t Belgium by any stretch, but Somalis did for themselves what decades of foreign intervention never accomplished in any other country. All this despite the United States’ funding and arming of warlords — to “fight al-Qaeda,” of course — who continually threw off any peaceful equilibrium that might have been reached through economic stability. Those warlords now make up much of the foundering “government.”

The pirates that the world has been sweating lately do not exist in a vacuum — Somalia’s slide back down into the pit of poverty at the hands of its UN-installed “government” has forced the toughest among them to make a living where they can. Most of them would surely rather return to making money in another, less dangerous trade.

The Islamist groups have been fighting each other in recent weeks, but even this hasn’t kept one faction or another from snapping up bits of former “government” property and power. It seems the more moderate factions and tribal militias are fed up with the brutal tactics of the al-Shabaab group and are trying to finish them off before the “transitional” regime is officially routed.

I don’t know how this situation will end, except that it’s clear that forcing a state on authority-averse Somalis didn’t work the first 15 times, and likely won’t again in the future. The big question is, why wasn’t that obvious to “the international community”? Or — don your tin foil — maybe it was all along.