Tracking America’s ‘shadow wars’
Angry Planet
Matthew Gault
4.3 • 882 Ratings
🗓️ 10 January 2017
⏱️ 36 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Right now, America is fighting a war in Afghanistan – the longest in its history – a war against the Islamic State in the Middle East, a war against Islamic radicals in Pakistan, several different operations in and around the Horn of Africa and – if you ask the Houthi rebels – a war in Yemen. That’s a short list. Today on War College, we sit down with freelance journalist and independent researcher Joseph Trevithick, who has spent the better part of the last year compiling a list of all the military operations America is fighting overseas. He uses the Freedom of Information Act and a spreadsheet to keep everything straight. As of this recording, his list of American military operations is up to 190. The nature of these conflicts is often small-scale and powered by special operations forces and drones. Trevithick says most of these operations aren’t secret, it’s just that they’re complicated and often, through legal loopholes, avoid Congressional oversight.
Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Love this podcast. |
| 0:02.0 | Support this show through the A-Cast supporter feature. |
| 0:05.0 | It's up to you how much you give and there's no regular commitment. |
| 0:09.0 | Just click the link in the show description to support now. |
| 0:19.0 | The opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the participants, not of Reuters News. For many years there was an ongoing counterterrorism effort in the Philippines for instance that was |
| 0:26.0 | very unpublicized it was not secret but it wasn't often talked about and it was part of the global |
| 0:32.2 | war on terror but it was seen as one of these |
| 0:35.6 | shadowy conflicts detached from what we sort of thought of as that war. |
| 0:56.0 | America's Shadow Wars. They may not be widely publicized, but they're happening. Today, comparing how the Pentagon talks about these far-flung conflicts to what Freedom of |
| 1:00.9 | Information Act documents tell us. |
| 1:04.0 | You're listening to Reuters War College, |
| 1:10.0 | a discussion of the world in conflict, |
| 1:12.0 | focusing on the stories behind the front lines. Hello and welcome to War College. I am your host Matthew Galt. With us today |
| 1:28.0 | is independent researcher and journalist Joseph Trevithic. Joe's work has appeared in Wars Boring. |
| 1:33.5 | We are mighty Reuters and Air Force magazine. |
| 1:36.4 | He's here to talk to us today about an aspect of the American military |
| 1:39.8 | we don't often talk about or hear about its Shadow Wars. Joe, thank you so much for joining us. |
| 1:46.5 | Thanks for having me. |
| 1:47.7 | All right, so Joe, I want to define some terms first. What exactly do we mean when we say Shadow War? This term is commonly used to describe |
| 1:57.6 | wars that people sort of feel are secret. You know, it's often synonymous with people talking about America's secret wars and, you know, the idea of a war in the shadow away from large conflicts that are readily acknowledged by the Pentagon. |
| 2:17.0 | People have even described what's going on currently in Iraq and Syria as another new shadow war. |
| 2:25.0 | I personally do my best to stay away from these terms |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Matthew Gault, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Matthew Gault and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.