Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 140 - Operation Kitona

Episode Date: February 1, 2021

Rwanda invades Congo using a fleet of hijacked planes to spark the Second Congo War. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Sources: https://warisboring.com/bomb-the-other-side-of-the-runway/ https://www.economist.com/international/1998/09/03/heading-for-an-african-war https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1998/08/25/angola-sends-thousands-of-troops-to-back-kabila/c5da7c99-0f4a-469a-8a32-a74d46b79a0d/ https://www.nytimes.com/1998/08/10/world/pilot-s-account-seems-to-confirm-rwanda-role-in-congo-strife.html

I am recording. Three, two, one. Hello, and welcome to yet another episode of the Lines Led by Donkeys podcast. I am very tired Joe, and with me today is Mike McGinnis, host of You Don't Know History. Yeah, man. What up, dude? What's up, man? Thanks for having me on. I'm always excited to be on anything you're associated with.

We're starting to hit the same streams, man. Like I've been on Left-Lank Vets a few times now. I do Socialist Sabbath with them on Sundays, which is really cool. You know, and now I get to come back on where I'm not talking about war crimes. So that's always cool. Well, hopefully not too many war crimes. How about that?

Well, you can't go on this show without talking about war crimes. It will just be war crimes we are not directly related to. I'm very happy to hear that. People might remember Mike from the bonus episode we did two years ago. Yeah, roughly. A year and a half ago. From the S.T.A.R.S. documentary, from the Annie Jacobson book. He's kind. A year and a half ago. From the Stars documentary, from the Annie Jacobson book.

He's got kind of a fucking rock star these days. Yeah. Yeah. From the Washington Post and California Weekly articles. Yeah. Yeah. I was the war crimes adjacent guy,

and I have been since 2012. So thank you, Clint Lowrance, for that, dickhead. Yeah, you have Clint Lowrance to thank for that. And I have Robert Bales to thank for the press calling me, which is not something that I like. Yeah, no one wants to hear from anybody that has anything to do with either of those two assholes. No, I can comfortably say I do not um unless i have a book coming out in which case i have no choice yeah i mean it's like bails dude you and i kind of talked about it but like i was i was like i was half expecting that like the day before uh you

know the big the big wet cheeto left office that he was going to sign that pardon for bails and i was i was cringing and then it never happened 100 you know 100 it didn't happen and i was like holy shit i was shocked uh you know uh that mildly optimistic for about three and a half minutes before that built-in pessimism you know came back out yeah uh like i had uh lieutenants who uh like well formerly i think he's like a captain or a major now that i hadn't spoken to since deployment like talking to me and the lead up to that like is that my phone number hasn't changed and uh like bro you think he's gonna parted bales because like we were you know a couple like a dozen miles away from that whole thing yeah and you know we were all fucking having nightmares about it and i was so happy that like uh and like i'm sure that like realistically donald trump had just no idea who

robert bails is but they're like the concept of pardoning robert bails was so beyond the pale of of the people that slid him clint lawrence uh like file you know even they were like no i can't do that one which says a lot um for that particular piece of shit yeah yeah man it's just i think it had more to do with it was the same talking heads that were trying to slide the bales file across room probably yeah and honestly i think if it would have happened a year before, it'd probably get signed. But I think he was just like, fuck it, man.

I can't stay in the White House, and I got to go incite another fucking QAnon, you know, a fueled riot march. So I got to get down to Florida for a little bit. Now, Mike, you majored in history if you as as i did if you were to say that there's one thing in in uh american mainstream american history education that's kind of a blind spot what do you think it would be like southeast asia russia africa africa and latin america definitely well good news we're talking about africa today uh which

you already knew because you picked this script i absolutely did i was trying to be slick with the transition i just can't lie to anybody uh also this is the earliest i've ever i think i've ever fucking recorded and i'm still kind of asleep because we're on opposite sides of the country. Yeah, that Carolina to Hawaii difference will get you, man. Yeah. So I've talked about this before, about the kind of blind spot that African military history gets. There's a lot of reasons for this, obviously, in my opinion. People having trouble or just unwilling to confront their colonial past

and how it affects the present day. Hello, Belgium, the UK, france um if you're listening yeah and uk i know you're listening because you're third after canada when it comes to my ratings um so uh or maybe just like a just unwillingness to learn about conflicts that are always much more complicated uh than and than most things Europeans find themselves in. It's never just like country A invaded country B. There's always much more at play. Yeah, I mean, and you and I both know as well, especially in Africa,

you had nominally supposed allies that were working against each other behind the scenes in a lot of these conflicts, you know, on the African continent. So that just added to the unknown. And obviously there's always, you know, the U.S., the USSR at some point, Cuba at some point, France, Belgium, the U.K. Everybody has their hands in this shit.

And then plus the actors in actual Africa. There's always layers you know uh and they're they're like a lot of it breaks down into tribal levels that people honestly in the west just don't care about um i'll let you assume why probably racism yeah uh i'm gonna go ahead and say definitely racism yeah yeah oh well what i learned at journalism school excuse me allegedly we can't alleged racism okay it's alleged racism unless you're belgian i'm coming down hard on the belgians this time because we're talking about congo yeah and also fuck you guys yeah definitely seriously look what you did yeah you fucking monsters um uh now uh this is one of the reasons why there's no real mainstream understanding of things like the First and Second Congo Wars.

They're some of the most destructive wars in human history and certain of modern human history. In the post-World War II era, nothing has been more destructive than the Congolese Wars, though Syria is certainly trying. And certainly since we've been alive uh there's probably been uh no bigger flashpoint obviously the middle east jumps to mind immediately but you don't see the the sheer amount of human misery that you see in african conflicts um and i think the reason for that is they're just allowed to spiral out of control like you i mean the un gets involved a lot but they don't do much uh The African Union is trying, bless their hearts. They're not doing great either. And at the beginning of one of those wars

is what we're talking about today. And that's going to be the second Congolese war. And that is the beginning of that known as Operation Katona. Have you ever heard of that? No, I have not. I can honestly say I have not heard much about Congo outside of Katanga, and that was because it's related to Irish history, which is what I'm really into. Yeah, and it's also just very weird that this... It was a platoon or a company? It was a company of Irish infantry fighting French mercenaries in a former Belgian apartheid state.

Great stuff. Yeah. I mean, it checks off all the marks for Netflix movies, you know, apparently. Yeah. You know, which is nice considering that they were ignored for, you know, 55, 60 years in Ireland before that, you know, the Irish government's like, well, maybe we should do something for them. What do you think? We'll spot them a low-budget Netflix film. Yeah.

I mean, if someone would give me that, I wouldn't complain. But I also get a low bar. I get a low bar. Yeah, that's how I look at it, man. Dude, I'm a freelance journalist and writer. Come on, dude. If you gave me... It could be like a D movie with Kathy Griffin in it.

All right? I'm going to be in it, man. Hell yeah. Now, like we always do, in order to understand this operation, you do need to understand a little bit about the First Congo War, otherwise known as Africa's First World War. It was both a civil and an international conflict in the dying days of the state that had once been

named Zaire. At the time, the nation was led by a dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko, a man put in power and supported by the U.S. due to the fact he hated communists because, you know, why else? And, you know, the U.S., as always, were willing to overlook just how many

fucking people he killed also we almost certainly had a hand along with belgium and france maybe also the uk to kill patrice lumumba the first prime minister of the congo oh dude if you if you read uh othon's book christopher othon's book katanga yeah it opens up with one of the men that were was there on the ground one of the people that actually pulled the trigger to kill lumumba and he had some of his teeth that he kept in a little bag on like a coffee table in his house to this day a party favor you know you come over for some drinks we throw you some patrice teeth yeah you know i mean let's face, what is the actual American pastime? It is keeping horrible

dictators in power with high body counts. That's what America truly is. All the way until it circles back around and we have to kill them for some other reason. Oh, yeah. I talked a little bit about La Mumba during our Siege of Jadaville episode.

He's an all-around good dude, though pretty much set up for failure due to Belgium's complete and utter despondency of taking care of this nation or colony or personal property, depending on the point of Congolese history. Now, Mobutu clung to power since the 1960s, but it was now the 1990s.

He'd promised reforms in order to hold on to power for just a little bit longer. However, Zaire was a weak state. Mobutu had virtually no control over the massive expanses of Congo. And honestly, the size of the Congo is lost on most people. It is fucking huge. And at no point has there been a functioning government that's controlled at all that wasn't through genocide like the Belgians. Yeah. And even then, you can't even really say that that's a functioning government. That's just... It was a murder state. That's exactly what it was. Because what do you think government at least provides some service, even if it's shitty? The Belgians in Congo were not providing a service. They were just murdering millions of people for rubber yeah they're just extracting rubber and hands yeah um yeah and uh in that expanse for the most part were roving rebel groups um or sometimes bandits you know not all of them had a political purpose some of them are just there to steal shit um as well as units of the Zairean military,

who also acted as bandits and rebels from time to time, robbing and raiding towns because Mobutu had stopped paying them. He just stole their entire payroll for himself. Huh. Huh. Shocker. Yeah. Weird how that happens.

So they're like, well, if we don't have a paycheck, we're going to go do stuff with these guns that you gave us. Wait a minute, wait a minute. We're posted in an army base with weapons and ammo? Okay, cool. You don't pay us. Well, here's our new base of operations. Yeah, exactly.

And it was hardly a police state. People call Mobutu a tyrant, and he was, but not in the traditional sense. He didn't have the power to have a police state. of distinct tribal entities within the borders of Congo. And we just saw that initial flare up in the 60s. I think if I remember correctly, it was like five or six secession movements. There's quite a few, yeah. Yeah, just during the period of the 60s. And then as we get into this new period of nationalism

that really came about after the fall of the wall in the Soviet Union. Everybody wants their own chunk. Everybody. And that really became apparent at Congo. Yeah. And that's something that's going to be pretty common. All of these different groups have different problems with different people, most of them with government, some of them with other tribes so it's like it's very hard to say at any point mabutu uh heavily oppressed everyone but it was if if you weren't being oppressed it was extreme neglect yeah um he might as well have not existed so people did not like him uh now right next door door to Congo is a country where nothing bad has ever happened called Rwanda.

Now, the Rwandan genocide began in 1994. And through 100 days of psychopathic mass murder, nearly a million Tutsis were killed, while another 1.5 million fled across the Congolese border, which was, as it still is, pretty much wide open and unguarded. It's an impossible expanse to guard for the Congolese government or their security services. Well, maybe they should just build a wall? Don't give them any ideas. I heard that worked. Yeah, yeah, it worked great um yeah if they had someone like mabutu and he was sitting on a like a giant stolen payroll he's like what can i spend

all this money yeah i'm gonna build this wall uh but you know i'm gonna build about 25 feet of it and then quit yeah yeah it's it got really hard to contract people out to go build this fucker. But like Rwanda, there's just yet another thing. The Belgians fucked up in Central Africa. A lot of people like to point out that Germans were heavily influenced there. The Belgians were the first Euro group that put – I alluded to the Eddie Izzard skit where they just threw a flag in the ground. They're like, hey, it's Belgian. And they're and they're like no bitch what about me like we live here and they're like no no no no you know i mean it's the you know the whole hootie tootsie split

was really started by the belgians and just everybody else added to it it's pretty much bureaucratic yeah um it's like that's something that's always kind of blown my mind especially as like um uh you know a white passing individual growing up and learning history in the united states like oh who discovered north america like motherfucking nobody's good like there's already people here like how the fuck it's like you kicking open my front door like i've discovered joe's house i mean this is this is my pad no it's not i'm sitting right here on the couch no man get out of my house you know like some asshole portuguese guy just kicked open my door um now uh the the rwandans that fled into the congo uh we're not like taking care of it anyway i mean

like like we said this zaire congo i'm gonna use those words interchangeably because it's the same place um the government didn't take care of its own people they didn't care about these guys either The Zaire Congo, I'm going to use those words interchangeably because it's the same place. The government did take care of its own people. They didn't care about these guys either. They were allowed to expand into camps. These camps are also armed. There was the Rwandan Patriotic Front that went back and forth, which is how the genocide ended. which is how the genocide ended. The Rwandan Patriotic Front ran into the Congo and then re-invaded Rwanda

due to international powers not giving a fuck when Africans are being genocided. The Rwandans had to do it themselves. And also, there's a hell of a lot of information and evidence that points to the point that France kind of helped the genocide. Oh, God. You know what?

I'm not surprised. I'm not surprised. It's not irrefutable. I will say it's not good. It's a bad look, France. It's a bad look. At any point a genocide occurs and you can say, I think you might have helped. You had to help a fair amount.

Yeah. I mean, this, you know, we've talked about it. You're a little more, I wouldn't say into, that's the wrong word. But you know what I mean? You're a little more savvy. I'm really into the genocides. But you're a little more savvy to the information that a lot of these genocides are very well monitored and documented and kept track of by the people perpetrating them.

This one's kind of unique in that it wasn't. Because it was organized. People think it was like the spur of the moment thing. It absolutely wasn't. But also, they weren't keeping a lot of paperwork. Yeah. But eventually, we're going gonna have a series covering that because my my cambodian genocide series did not make enough people sad oh my god dude i i needed you to hit

the animal facts more during that one man hey blame nick it was his job to save the safe for it also like that's the joke now is that series fucked nick's head up so much he hasn't been on the show in a month that's not why but i'm gonna go with it yeah i mean just play it up and then you can have like a big uh special episode when nick gets you know comes back to sanity it'll be great it's gonna be like uh you ever watch the wwf when you're a kid we're about the same age oh yeah dude definitely like i going to be recording with someone else and the glass is going to break. Stone cold song. Theme music.

My God, is that Nick? Even though he's the other side of the country too. We'll make it work. All you got to do is practice it once or twice, then hit record. It'll be good to go. Our first ever bit. The Rwandan patriotic front invaded Rwanda and overthrew the Hutu-dominated government. Now, hundreds of thousands of Hutus reversed and also fled to the Congo.

Now, a lot of the Tutsis did not go back to Rwanda. They're like, why the fuck am I going to go back there? I'm staying here in the Congo. So you now have groups of hutus who were just killing them fleeing into the same areas as the tootsies yeah it's not great that had to end well right yeah it's not it's not great i mean it's kind of like the end effect of whenever you have uh this is not the the the actual uh historical word for it but like a homegrown genocide when someone genocides someone

within their own borders, is that you always end up living next to people who probably killed your family members. Yeah. And that's like something that Rwandans are still dealing with to this day and Cambodia, for that matter. But these Hutu elements, both former Rwandan military

and members of the Inter-Homwe militias, the Inter-Homwe militias. The Inter-Homwe militias were generally speaking the ones doing most of the killing during the genocide. Both of these groups rearmed themselves and began attacking Tutsis again within the Congo. They were also

not happy about being kicked out of power back home and also began raiding over the border into Rwanda to attack the new government led by Paul Kagame. Kagame asked Mobutu to force the militias to disarm, which it's hard to say Mobutu had the power to do that. But Kagame, assuming that Mobutu was kind of helping them, told them to disarm or at least stop them from attacking Rwanda over the border. There's a combination of

Butu not quite having the power to flex on these militias because his organized army of what was considered one was pretty much a joke. And it was only informally under anything that we could recognize under a central command.

It was almost like a really widespread warlordism where garrisons would have a commander who kind of commanded their military district like a fiefdom. Okay. We see that pretty often in not organized militaries. I mean, you saw that with the Khmer Rouge as well. Yeah. I mean, it's a way to keep expenditures low as well. You keep lying in your pockets that way if you're not paying anybody. Yeah.

I mean, the Afghan military kind of functions the same way, but to a lesser extreme. There's also the fact that many of these military men and inter-Homway militias, when they ran away from Rwanda, they looted the country like you know like you're looting copper they pulled it down to its very fibers uh so mabutu decided if he couldn't stop them he should just sell them a bunch of weapons and take all that genocide booty off their hands oh wow that's uh i did not see that coming yeah if you haven't picked up on it, Mabutu's kind of an asshole. Yeah. Wow, that's... Hmm.

I've got a country next door in the midst of a genocide, heavy fighting. I've got heavy fighting within my own borders. Wait a minute, Rwanda's heavy fighting is now spilling over into Congo. Wait, you know what? I know a great way to fix this here guys mabutu is just the original disruptor you know he's an entrepreneur of being a fucking asshole listen

the only the only entrepreneurs we recognize right now are the you know the those asshole redditors that are somehow tearing down uh hedge funds I appreciate them, even though they're gross capitalists. It's incredible. Yeah, it's definitely a let them fight moment. Now, Kagame wasn't dumb. He kind of understood that either A, Mobutu isn't going to do anything, or B, Mobutu is behind this.

But it was definitely a happy medium of C, where all of the above. So Kagame and Ugandan President Yare Museveni armed and trained their own militias within the Congo. Wow. So everybody's there. You and I could have had a militia in the Congo. Oh, 100%.

Okay, well, all right. Wow. I mean, no, we would have worked for USAID yeah that's true you know but like that's that's kind of crazy that everybody like it's a very fractious country but I didn't realize everybody was involved in the you know kind of the militia game there that's kind of how these wars go um there and and the first and the second congo war you had like angolan troops you had congolese troops you had ugandan troops all these things but you also had like you ever watch always something in philadelphia with charlie day and the giant

fucking threads you had something that looked like that of militias and all of them are paid for by someone there is some straight up like native uh political movement based militias but they also have benefactors who are paying them uh it's a proxy war within a proxy war within a proxy war within an international war with actual international powers being involved as well they're very very confusing and you don't see very many large battles which is why this episode is very interesting because you do see that you see a small scale rating um you know you see uh you know anywhere from a couple squads to maybe a company size element burning down a town you don't see like you know divisions maneuvering because they simply don't have

that ability. It's very unique. Now, when Museveni and Kagame trained and paid these proxy fighters, that was the straw that broke the camel's back of the socio-political ties that the Congo

had with Mobutu. And it sparked a massive uprising all across the country. And then soldiers, not militias this time, from Rwanda, Uganda, Angola, Burundi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, and Eritrea, all got directly involved ending Mobutu and deposing him in 1997. Sorry. ending Mobutu and deposing him in 1997. That is when Laurent Kabila,

a man directly picked by Rwanda, took his place. Yeah, I was going to say, who chose this guy? It's going to become a point of contention. He also changed the name of the country from Zaire

to the Democratic Republic Of the Congo because Sure everybody knows when you add Words like Democratic and Republic to it The country becomes a free And safe place like The Democratic Republic or the People's Democratic Republic of North Korea

Or whatever the fuck it's called Oh man You mean that perfect's paradise from what yeah from what i've heard on twitter i mean i can't wait to go there and then mysteriously be murdered uh like auto warm beer it's gonna be great yeah or or wait a minute just be held prisoner and forced at hard labor for 12 or 15 years i mean what's the's the big deal? Yeah, it's my fault. I shouldn't have, I don't know, wanted to eat. Now, Kabila learned pretty quickly

that, shockingly, all of these African powers that put him in power did not, in fact, have Congo's best interests in mind when they lent him massive military and financial support in order for him to take power.

He asked them to kindly leave, and they refused because that's how that works yeah oh man you know it never works well when you third party country is like hey you're gonna lead your country and then that leader's like dude uh you know i'm from here and i'm going to tell you to fuck off and you know that never ends well between the the person that put him on the you know on the throne so to speak uh yeah and especially because you had so many hands in the cookie jar you know i mean like all these countries like you know angola and rwanda uh historically don't actually like one another and you know you could say the same for Zimbabwe and like they're all attempting to manipulate

the Congolese government and like even if Kabila was like yeah fine let's do everything that you want eventually they're all going to start fighting over you anyway so like this is never a situation that was going to work now they refused to leave and soon most positions

within the Congolese government were taken up by Rwandans who didn't even bother to move into the country. Those include the chief of staff and head of military. Holy shit! Wow! Just imagine Kabila sitting in his office like, yes, I have them right where I want them, controlling everything. Everything. That's a flex right there though man you know like yeah you know i'm gonna i'm gonna run everything here you just sit over there and look pretty like i could get it like you know um ahmed chalabi is like a good example like we put into power when we invaded iraq he was at

least iraqi yeah like imagine invading and obviously we did this with like the transitional authority but like the first election of iraq like we we elected dave from california i mean the thing is i wouldn't put it past the u.s to have done something like that honestly like hey jim right yeah jim jim from indiana come on over. You're going to run for Prime Minister of Iraq. We'd like to welcome the head of the Afghan Shura, Tommy Tuberville.

Hey, listen, I was a great football coach and I can make peace in Afghanistan. I'd like to thank everybody for making me the head of this lawyer, Jerga. I really hope that we could take these peace talks and really drive them across the goal line I can't do an Alabama accent and also I don't know if I've ever heard Tommy Tuberville speak Dude, all that comes out of his mouth are the Charlie Brown teacher's words That's it, man

That guy's a fucking idiot Now, once these guys were in office that wasn't it obviously uh for people who are aware congo is incredibly rich in minerals it's something they call the resource curse uh if if uh if congo's infrastructure was to modernize and they you know be given the tools to uh function their own internal growth, Congo would be the richest country in Africa and be significantly richer than several European ones. Yeah. I mean, dude, it was the feather in the Cold War cap for Africa because of all the minerals

that were required to make nuclear arms. Yes. You know, like, I mean, the Russians, the Soviets, and the Western powers are like, we got to have Congo no matter what. And then we see everything that happened during the 60s and into the 70s. You know, like, it's fucking ridiculous.

Most of, most if not all, I don't want to say all because there's someone that's going to correct me on it, of the radioactive material that we used for the bombs in World War II were harvested via slave labor from Belgian Congo so we did it Great America fly the banner

mission accomplished baby we defeated Japanese fascism with Conggolese slavery god this fucking country man yeah no and like obviously this is something that europeans have been fighting over for ages but also this is something that african nations really really want and that's something that uh all of these governments with their hands at the cookie jar wanted to siphon off the wealth from Congo. All of them wanted these huge deposits of minerals, most of which are used for technology now, lesser extent nuclear weapons, I hope.

I think like Colton for cell phones and stuff. Yeah. Very, very, very important things. Now, the problem has always been late stage capitalism, colonialism and foreign intervention. And this is kind of like somehow that that meme of the two hands shaking. But there's like eight now and they're all shaking different parts of the arms and shit for fucking over the Congo. Now, eventually, Kabila realized that he had seriously fucked up and he could no longer control the Rwandans.

He never could. He's kind of an idiot. And he fired all the Rwandans in his government. He also followed this with a demand that all foreign militaries leave the country within 24 hours. Yeah, we know how well that's going to be listened to. Yeah.

Well, Rwanda had a bit of a trump card here, and it wasn't just like, fuck you, I'm going to roll tanks across the border. Remember all the Hutus and Tutsis that still live within Congo? Rwanda used them as kind of a secret army. It's like sleeper cell.

Yeah, and they did it in the most fucked up way possible instead of just like sliding like i don't know money across the table like hey go shoot a cop or something uh they paid off parts of the tootsie side and parts of the hutu side to just turn things into an orgy of violence. They killed each other. They killed Congolese. They killed Congolese military civilians, attacked infrastructure. And soon, like, most of the Tutsis living in Rwanda, or living in the Congo, were rebelling.

So then the governments of Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi all openly gave them aid oh my gosh dude wow like i can't maybe it's just uh you know i i just don't know much you know much of anything about congo and a lot of the you know we'll say central african conflicts right like i just can't wrap my head around everybody like you said having their hands in that cookie jar and at any one time one of those powers can be like you know what fuck this let's upset everything here's a couple bucks you guys go start fucking everything up and then next thing you know you have this thing just blow up you know yeah and they like didn't even try to hide it uh that they were like that's

the thing that um that kind of shocked me is that they're all openly helping the tootsies now the reason for this was because uh rwanda who is i guess you could say in the in the lead of all of these international assholes on the border is like look what we did we will make it worse give us back our positions in government and we'll pretend this didn't happen. Okay. Yeah. Like, we'll make you, like, throw the Rwandan government mafia.

It's their protection. Like, would it be a shame if something happened on your border? And Kabila didn't buy it. He's like, no. Like, get the fuck out of my country. So, Paul Kagame in Rwanda realized, hmm, Kabila isn't going to play ball. So Kagame, along with all of these other nations, began planning an operation to replace Kabila, the leader of the Congo, with someone more agreeable to them.

Again. Again, yeah. Hey, you know, maybe we should start doing that here in the States. the leader of the Congo was someone more agreeable to them. Again. Again, yeah. Hey, you know, maybe we should start doing that here in the States. Just like, hey, you know, Ohio and Virginia said the president sucks, so we're just going to pick some other cat to put in there. And, you know, what's the worst that could happen, right? Clearly not. There'll be a sectarian violence between Michiganders and Ohioans.

Well, I don't know if you saw what I posted you on Twitter after I heard that Portman's not running again and that they're floating Jim Jordan or the asshole that wrote Hillbilly Elegy to run as a Republican in Ohio. I will no longer be defending it. It deserves all the hate in the world. And Ohio, you have hurt me so much. I will tell you this now. Go fuck yourself. Anyway, welcome to the Fuck Ohio podcast. Yeah, there we go.

I used to give Ohio a much harder time being a guy obviously from Michigan. But then I looked at Michigan and be like, I don't know why you hate it. We both suck. We're both terrible states. Yeah. We're fucking awful. I mean, honestly.

Your river catches on fire and our water is undrinkable. Yeah. The U.S. would be better off if they just traded Ohio, Michigan, straight up for Quebec. Like a free agency? Yeah. The U.S. is like, we Quebec, and we're releasing Ohio and Michigan. That's actually been Michigan's plan for years.

We've been tanking for 10 seasons, so we get the number one draft pick, and we're going to hope that we get drafted by the EU or something. So we have healthcare. Yeah. Now, like we pointed out before, Congo's a big fucking country. So like, traditional military operations simply are not going to work.

Now, it's seven times larger than Germany. Or since we're a show based in the US, we're at the fringes of the US at this point. It's four times larger than Texas. Yeah. Congo's a big fucking place. And there's a lot of space to cover, you know, to do anything. And there's no infrastructure.

Like, you're not going to jump on, like, the H1 and drive across, like, I say H1 like anybody's familiar with Hawaiian roads. You're not going to get on a fucking highway and drive to the capital, you know? Yeah. I mean, if you watch Parts Unknown with Anthony Bourdain, he went to Congo. Yeah. you know yeah i mean if you watch parts unknown with anthony bourdain he went to congo uh and he had to travel at the old-fashioned way down the congo river because they literally have a ministry of like transportation that was supposed to like deal with the trains and stuff but it hasn't been funded honestly probably since uh uh kabila was in power like in the late probably not you know but they have like a bunch of people that literally volunteer to keep like the one train through like these three provinces running um

and it's it's crazy dude uh and like the roads uh like he went to a couple of the refugee camps like in the eastern part of the country they're still there and he's like dude we had to fly in on this puddle jumper and it was like held together with like duct tape and a prayer you know and and they had to be driven around in like uh you know four by four suvs because that's the roads they're literally just big you know uh you know essentially cut out from the terrain and they can't be improved on because of the constant fighting and like i know um it's like dirt tracks like we have some here and it rains and they completely turn into... They'll eat your car.

Yeah. Yeah, effectively. So you can't just drive down them. So obviously, when Rwanda is playing this military operation against a state that is honestly so much bigger than Rwanda, pull up both of them side by side on the map. It's kind of hilarious that Rwanda is dominating so severely. How is rwanda being the bully here man it's kind of incredible it's it's truly an underdog tale like we started from the bottom being genocide and now we're here doing an imperialism yeah like it's very fast turnaround yeah um so while rwanda and the and the congo border one another uh the congolese

capital is actually on the other side of the congo so like just storming in and taking the congolese capital is not going to fucking happen it is thousands of miles away um and not to mention neither nation congo or rw, had anything that could be considered a functioning air force. So loading up 101st Rwandan Airborne and dropping them on Kinshasa is just not going to happen. It's out of the question. Those guys would have been air assault, Joe. We all know if you're going to be jumping out of the aircraft, it's going to be the 82nd. Actually, it'd be the... Both of them be the 82nd okay actually actually it'd be the

both of them equally useless yes actually actually it'd be the 173rd who are we really fucking kidding here but uh the ones that would talk about it the most would be like the 82nd congolese airborne division i love that you were airborne and i was a tanker and both of our jobs are completely pointless in the 21st century so stupid how many combat jumps did you do and i'll tell you how many tank battles i was in uh it's it's a nice it's a nice donut all right um yup the the one thing i wanted from the military which was a mustard stain you know i wanted that combat jump and i couldn't even get it i got everything else you know except the one thing i wanted it's like when i was in tank school or like everybody's talking

about like training for tank battles the drill starts like what the fuck y'all talking about you're all gonna go to iraq or afghanistan shut the fuck up like oh hey man and he was right yeah hey man world war ii is not happening again uh just uh get your shit off your tank and start fucking walking that way yep and he right. Now, there's one way you can get an Air Force if you don't have one, Mike. You fucking steal it. Or I guess the correct term would

be hijack it. I like where this is going. I gotta give credit where credit's due for Rwanda. Think it outside the box. Yeah, because I was going to say you contract it, but like you said, Kabila's taken all that

war booty for weapons, so I get that. Hijacking, I'm interested in this. Yeah, you get an Air Force for the low, low price of nothing. Kagame and his chief of staff, James Karabiri, came up with a plan

that is kind of straight out of a bad Michael Bay film. They would instigate a Congolese military mutiny, which was easy enough. They were mostly still unpaid, so Rwandan agents just would have to bribe them. Their whole plan was based on

bribes. It's bribes all the way down, but it worked. They would go to the border, the Rwandan-Congolese border, where there was an airport. But in order to get there, they'd bribe the Congolese military. They eventually took over the town of Goma

and its airport with no real resistance because they bought everyone off. They then hijacked six different airliners. So they didn't have an air force, but they did have something of a civilian air infrastructure. So they just stole those instead. Okay. All right.

I mean, like you said, give credit where credit's due, man. When in doubt, figure it out. That's what they always told us in the army. You know, if I was writing this for a staff college or something, I would say the Rwandan military adapted and overcame. Oh, yeah. The Rwandan military identified a key shortage and then found a way to reduce that shortage. That's exactly what they did. Found a way to reduce that shortage. That's exactly what they did.

That's how I get around all of my problems is I hijacked airliners. Now, they packed these six different airlines with full of soldiers and then forced the pilots to fly them at gunpoint to a different airport on the other side of the country in Katona, a few hundred miles away from the Congolese capital of Kinshasa. Now, you're probably thinking that using an unescorted and unprotected airliner for a military invasion is stupid and insane. And you would be right. But Congo lacked any kind of functioning air defense that could shoot them down or an interceptor. There was no way these airliners... Unless they just fell out of the sky. There's no way they were coming down. So once the Rwandans landed in Katona, the hijacked airliners, unless they just fell out of the sky. There's no way they were coming down. So once the Rwandans landed in Katona, the hijacked airliners then went back and forth to Goma

for days, ferrying more and more soldiers over to Katona to reinforce their positions. This is great. This is like, this seems like it's so on brand for just the entire shit show that is this whole conflict.

Now once there, the Rwandans also brought this local Congolese army garrison to rebel and that happened as well. This happened to include dozens of tanks. Mostly T-62s and T-55s. There's also a hilarious side story here where the story would come because like you know

these these pilots are going to land eventually and they're going to tell like yo we just got fucking hijacked by the rwandan goddamn military and that's exactly what happened but the rwandans refused to admit they had anything to do with this instead blaming the hijackings on congolese rebels and saying that they had nothing to do with it. This is all internal beef. This is immediately proven very obviously wrong with the hijacked pilots point out that one of the men on board were, uh, were, were sorry.

All of the men on board were wearing Rwandan military uniforms. Uh, and when they had to, you know, like, you know, planes going back and forth, they're going to burn through a lot of fuel.

Yeah. Uh, where do you think they landed to refuel? Rwanda? The capital of Rwanda. And they were then refueled by the Rwandan military. Like, no, we had nothing to do with this. This wasn't us.

Hey, listen. It's just like it was Antifa that stormed the capital. Okay? It was Antifa. All right. They were just doing a they were deep state infiltrators joe yeah the the schrodinger's antifa yeah um now confronted with this information rwanda just kind of shrugged and said uh and then just went on with it

la la la not listening to you that looked like anything to me uh now this might surprise you but rwanda wasn't very slick about all of this and congo had no sense the beginning that they are involved in all of this unrest at the border and then now over in katona uh probably because they already did this a couple of times before um now like we already pointed out, the Congo really had no military cohesion. And that's why Rwanda was able to install Kabila so easily. And Kabila never really had a chance to rebuild the weird collection of militias and personal armies that made up Mobutu's army. I think probably part of that is because the guy that headed his army was Rwandan. But he didn't have a chance in hell in stopping this invasion.

So he reached out to who else but Robert Mugabe, the dictator of Zimbabwe. Oh, man. Now, we talked a little bit about Mugabe during our Rhodesia episode. And up until very recently, he was the only leader in independent Zimbabwe's history. After a collective force of black communists and nationalists owned the shit out of some racist shitheads and sent them raging into our comments section

decades later. Eat shit, Rhodesians. Yes, absolutely eat shit, Rhodesians. And talk about a weird story arc. Mugabe went from a base commie, somebody I could really just have a couple beers with, to a dude who just, oh

man. Well, he was never supposed to take charge. He was, in the Zanu, he was more of a trigger puller that worked his way up the ranks and then the Rhodesians actually assassinated the leader of the Zanu PF. Leading to him kind of accidentally.

Now there's like a lot of theories that it was an eternal beef. And then the Zanu and the Rhodesian government actually worked together to kill the leader. And then Robert Mugabe floated to the surface. But yeah, fuck him. Mugabe's bad. Yeah. It's one of those situations that you live long enough. You either die a hero,

live long enough to see yourself become the villain. Yeah. I had a, I had a soldier who was like a fuck. Like he was an economics dude before he joined the army. No idea what the hell he joined the infantry for, but I digress. But he and his dad both did business in Zimbabwe,

in Zimbabwe. That's sus but they were there as part of some western investment effort before he devalued the currency for the third time in the 2000s so he actually brought me back like a 2 billion

like a 2 billion Zimbabwean dollar note those things are so cool he's like you know how much this is worth? And I said, no. He's like, not even worth the ink. It's like they printed the bill with. You know?

He's like, no. One of my favorite stories... Honestly, this podcast has peaked. And the reason why I've said that is we did our Rhodesia episode almost a year ago now. Maybe a little... Maybe a year ago.

Which led to it getting popular in Zimbabwe. And a Zimbabwean dude did not realize that there was like a literal American neo-Nazi buried very nearby his hometown. And he went and he pissed on the grave. Good for him. Fuck yeah, man. And sent me confirmation for it.

I am endlessly proud of that. And it's like one of the things that like Rhodesians, and I say Rhodesians as in dudes who back Rhodesians or like the concept of Rhodesia because like Rhodesians don't exist anymore. Zimbabweans made sure of that. We'll always post memes saying like Rhodesians never die. And I have this picture of a whole bunch of Zanu fighters

holding up the head of a dead Rhodesian soldier I'm like I have photographic evidence that says otherwise now now outside of South Africa at the time Zimbabwe managed to retain one of the best and most competent militaries

on the continent. They, unlike most players in this clusterfuck, also had an air force and a pretty good one. And they actually, ironically enough, had been one of the main sources of Rwandan officer training. So Zimbabwe accidentally pulled an America here. Yeah, they did. They trained the people they'd eventually fight. Yeah. You know what?

You got to have some consistency, right? There's always got to be that person. But Mugabe, a liberation hero that he is, was not interested in deploying his forces out of the goodness of his heart. So Kabila offered him unfettered access to several mines in Congo in exchange for military support.

Turns out that is all it took to have Zimbabwean soldiers and equipment all streaming into the capital. And they managed to get there before the Rwandan airlift to Katona was complete. Because that is how a decent and well-organized military functions, Rwanda.

Yeah, yeah. It's like... They had their own airlift capability without having to hijack civilian airliners. And like Robert Mugabe could be like, deploy the military. And they'll be like, okay. And then the military gets deployed.

Yeah. Now, none of this would have mattered, though, if Rwanda had cared enough about their invasion plan to maybe, just possibly, scout out the area they intended to use as a path towards the Congolese capital of Kinshasa. Because when they landed in Katona, they discovered that despite

it was only a few hundred miles away from the capital not too bad of a of a distance for like even the most moderately mechanized military with like cars or technicals or whatever they'd actually kind of fucked themselves there was only one road that led from the capital to katona and it was a single dirt track that would continuously become flooded every time it rained just a little bit. And do I have some news for you about the weather in Congo? It rains a lot. Oh, yeah. We're equator level with some dense, lush rainforests.

It gets muggy there, guys. It gets muggy. Rwanda's like if only we would have known from that last war that we fought here thankfully the US didn't do that and say Iraq despite all of this they

ran into virtually no resistance because they bought it all off and they marched towards the capital I bet that march was constantly slowed down as their vehicles got stuck in the mud or the roads collapsed under them um when that would occur they would just leave behind whatever they got whatever got stuck um like you know tanks lose track and mud like crazy yeah i could i can attest to this um and you know you have to have some modicum of equipment and training to fix it which these guys did not have

so if they pop track or whatever happens, like, oh, tank's dead and they just leave it behind I mean, and this is the fucking killer here, man it's like, you're gonna need that to actually fight the good army, you know, like you're gonna need that to actually fight the

good arm you know like you know the well-trained army in this one they attempted an invasion with no logistical capability uh which is something that like even napoleon kind of had figured out and he didn't have a phone yet yeah um now i think a lot of this is because again bad reconnaissance and they did not think that there was gonna be any resistance to them whatsoever so like who So I think a lot of this is because, again, bad reconnaissance. And they did not think that there was going to be any resistance to them whatsoever. So like, who fucking cares? We're going to walk right into the cap. It was Rwandan blitzkrieg.

Invasion through bribery. Yeah. And also, here comes another problem with logistics. Say you're running tanks and technicals and whatever else has an engine. You know what else you need? Gasoline. Oh, not to mention other lubricants and oils and things like that. You know what they didn't bring? Gasoline.

Any of that. Yeah, awesome. And soon everything began running out of gas, which they also then ditched. So essentially, this entire column heading towards the capital looks like a panoramic shot from the stand you just have abandoned vehicles everywhere like you can just imagine being the guy who's like looking down at his fuel gauge like come on we're almost there i want to fucking walk out there god damn it um so eventually though they realized like we're gonna need some of these

tanks right like a case that because like the congolese military isn't cohesive but there is like there's some of them are gonna stick around and fight for kabila in the capital so like they want some arbor support so they had to stop wait for somebody to go all the way back to katona to get gas and then come all the way back so they created a giant parking lot in the middle of the one road going to the capital and that is when the zimbabwean air force appeared oh like imagine you like you're the the because they're all fighter bombers i think they're like hunter hawks or something like that uh and they like look out the window they're like you gotta be fucking kidding like this is a trap right

so they begin bombing and strafing them with impunity oh man can you imagine being those pilots though like command's gotta be fucking with us like they're just sitting there wait a minute wait a minute oh oh no oh guys this is gonna be so easy this is 10 15 minutes of work tops then we go home like even um cause like a lot of

um militia type movements when they get their hands on mechanized equipment like they still will include like rudimentary anti-air guns that they just used to fire at infantry. They did not even have those, or they had broken down. So the bombers who were then bombing the shit

out of the Rwandan collection there then radioed back to the Zimbabwean SAS. For people unaware, that is the Zimbabwean Special Air Services, their special forces. Who then melted into the jungle and began setting a several mile long ambush for the Rwandans. So after they got done getting bombed, they would just run through one continuous ambush. Oh my God.

Which is chef's kiss beautiful. Jesus, man. Because remember, there's one road. There's nowhere else you could go yeah like you can go back and get bombed or go forward and get ambushed by zimbabwe and special forces you know i'm just like as an infantry dude who like went to rc east and rc south in afghanistan like just getting into like a a four or- or five-hour firefight was bad. But can you imagine, like, just the sheer amount of shit if you're going through a multiple-mile ambush? Imagine a multiple-mile ambush that the people ambushing you are some of the most highly trained soldiers on the continent, and they can call in close air support.

Yeah. You're fucked. You're fucked. And that's exactly what the sas did uh the rwandans pushed forward and uh their congolese rebel allies stuck with them the ones that they bribed uh but for three days they pushed through a constant airstrike uh and ambush clusterfuck uh and by the time that their army made it to the outskirts of the Congolese capital, virtually all of their tanks had been knocked out, which was bad because that was a very important part of their entire plan for taking the capital in the first place.

Naturally, yeah. And then Angola appeared. Now, remember, Angola was previously the ally of Rwanda, but they invaded Congo on the side of Kabila's government. What the fuck? Surprise, motherfuckers! Oh, man. And the thing is, you got to think, these Angolan troops are going to be ready to fight because they just finished up the bush wars you know not too long you know prior to this with south africa and the civil war yeah jesus man it's it's something that absolutely

nobody saw coming angola invaded congo on the side of of kabila's government and like this is also weird for other reasons as congo had sheltered an insurgent group known as unita who was at war with the angolan government ever since they'd won independence from portugal but the portuguese but the angolan president jose eduardo dos santos was a close personal friend with kabila and was willing to overlook that whole thing and in case you're not looking at a map uh you i mean this is one of those episodes that like maybe it should just come with a map but uh angola borders the region where Rwanda and Uganda had been landing their thousands of soldiers in Katona, which they had turned into their base of operations. So Rwanda's invasion of the Congo accidentally turned into a two-front war against themselves.

Ooh, DJ Khaled, man. Sorry, you played yourself. So with the force of just 2,500 Angolan soldiers supported by tanks, they steamrolled into Rwandan and Ugandan rear guard and marched through that one Congolese street towards the Congolese capital as well. Now, I don't want to gloss over a lot

of the horrible details of this because Rwandans came through with their Congolese allies that they had bought off. They are raping and murdering people and so were the Angolans. So, I don't want to dwell on that too much because that's not what

this episode is about. Everybody's committing war crimes while all this is happening as well see we circle back everybody I felt like I have Michael McGinnis on I got to bring up war crimes it's like I told shocks next time he is on next time

it probably won't have anything to do with war crimes but also probably will yeah I mean that's the thing with these kind of conflicts though we've seen that like you know these, these, these groups use rape and, and, you know, child murder and other atrocities like that. It's just things they can do during the course of military operations, you know? So it was like, Hey, you're, you're going to go, you know, I'm sure, I'm sure it was probably part of an op order, you know, like, this is just what you're going to do with,

this is what's expected. Um, you know, so it's, I mean, there mean there was also some uh militia groups that use like aids for biological warfare yeah um effectively uh it's disgusting uh but now this is where if you're uh karabire or any of the congolese or any of the any of the rwandan commanders or the congolese militants who switch sides, I think it might be time to call off the attack. We're surrounded now. We have Angolans behind us.

We have Zimbabweans in front of us. Even if we took the capital, we're fucked. But this is where numbers come into play. Remember, the Angolans only invaded with about 2,500 guys, which was admittedly enough. They weren't exactly fighting the cream of the crop. The Zimbabweans didn't have that many people either.

And Karabire was actually under the command of around 15,000 soldiers. Now, soldiers of varying quality, but soldiers nonetheless. So he ordered the attack on the congolese capital anyway so as the rwandans made it into the city the congolese defenders of the capital had all but abandoned the city of itself there had been no real organization or leadership in place to keep them there so they looted the hell out of their own capital and ran this left the zimbabweans only about a couple hundred special forces. And they had some armored cars as well.

Like nothing heavy outside of fighter bombers. Yeah. And I believe some very small helicopters at this point. Maybe something akin to a little bird. And the Zimbabweans took one look at this and realized, well, we can't defend the entire city. But we can defend the airport. It's our lifelink.

As long as the airport remains open, we can land and refuel our jets. We can get supplies. And it's much smaller and easier to defend. It's easier to defend micro terrain than it is macro terrain. Yeah. Now, the first attack against the airport was a surprise attack that showed that Karabure still had some tricks up his sleeve after the old hijack shuffle. But he was also kind of an asshole. Now, he dressed up his lead units as retreating members of the Congolese military, something that had been very easy since he had bribed so many of them to join him anyway. As he got close to the airport,

the Zimbabweans saw the Congolese military and did not shoot at them at first because they thought they were treating allies. But then several hundred of them were in the open and only about 100 or so yards away from the gate of the airport, the crew of those armored cars, they were kind of using the armored cars as like a gate,

saw something they didn't like. And they, nobody's really sure what it was, but they saw something they like, that rubbed them the wrong way and immediately opened fire into them. And I'm at that point, I'm assuming that Gunner really hoped he was right.

Yeah. He said they're talking to his TC, like uh what do i do i'm just gonna i'm gonna shoot beg for forgiveness later i'm gonna use a gut feeling and machine gun several hundred people um and you know there's a lot of contagious firing nobody's really sure what was going on but uh the other uh armored car opened up as well as other sas soldiers uh and remember because the plan was just kind of like oh yeah we're surrendering and then walk into the air there there was no cover if they the the zimbabweans that did something very smart and created a kill zone in front of their gate yep there's nowhere to go uh and they were right

there was a hundred percent caribbean's, but also there was no backup plan. Like, well, you know, if they see through your ruse, you're just going to get fucking shot. There's nowhere to run. And they just got gunned down in the open. But before they could high five each other for not accidentally killing their friends on a hunch, the Rwandans launched a human wave attack by the thousands against the defenses again and again. Now, the SAS numbering only about 600 men, give or take. launched a human wave attack by the thousands against the defenses again and again. Now, the SAS numbering only about 600 men,

give or take. The Zimbabweans are very open with their numbers about this. They began pumping murderous fire into the oncoming attackers, because remember, there's nowhere to hide. And no matter what they did, they still couldn't force back the tide of Congolese and Rwandan soldiers.

So they fell back to the main terminal of the airport now the zimbabweans knew that at this rate they're going to lose the runways and not be able to um continue putting out airplanes and helicopters and stuff so all helicopters and jets were scrambled to get off the ground as fast as they could well control of the airport became split in half between the two sides uh like there was two runways the zimbabweans kept control of one for the most part uh it occasionally went back and forth okay the rwandans and their allies took over the other part of the runway so rapidly that as fighter bombers took off they were forced to circle back around and open fire on the same runway

they had just launched from. Holy shit. Just to clear another jet so it could take off. Damn. That's some, like, Battlefield... Fucking Battlefield 3 shit. Yeah. Like, bombing your own airport.

And, like, jets were held back in reserve. Another jet would take off, fucking flip a bitch in the air, bomb the runway or machine gun the runway so the other jet could then take off fucking flip a bitch in the air bomb the runway or machine gun the runway so the other jet could then take off god damn i mean can you that's just so hectic you know like any any kind of battle can be hectic but like when you've got you know a human wave attack uh you know that eventually eventually overwhelms you. You fall back to the Alamo. You're trying to get all your air assets out.

God damn, man. It's crazy. And this would happen constantly. The SAS is held up on the northern side of the airport. Every once in a while, they would send out teams to clear the airport out themselves. They quickly learned that they could send out

about a squad of SAS troopers and chase off about a company's worth of Congolese rebels, which, sure, that tracks. Yeah. They held up in a few buildings with oncoming frontal assaults being blown to shit by close air support when they got too close. There is one account of SAS soldiers beating a Ugandan soldier to death with a brick when they managed to breach into the defense.

Wow, man. What do I have? Rifle out of ammo. I can hit him with the rifle. I got this brick. I got this brick, yeah. Motherfucker, you come into this building, you're going to catch these hands.

Oh, play stupid games, right? The zimbabwean brick of liberation i'm surprised that brick hasn't been like uh you know dipped in gold and like put on a fucking plaque you know man if it if that's not what hell of like an ets or pcs award it's just like the gilded brick that you brained a guy with. Imagine you're on the other side and like, yo, have you seen Jeff? Oh, he got brained with a brick when he went in there. I wouldn't go in there. Like, oh, fuck. Some dickhead with no ammo that's just killing us with bricks, dude. No.

It's like the ends of a fury. He's like, bring me more pigs to kill he's out of ammo oh my god dude yeah i mean honestly if i would have found out anybody like if if i would have found out taliban was like murking us with an e-tool at that at that point i'm like going back to the fob and and I'm looking at my PL like, dude, fuck you. I'm not going out there again, man. I put one in my own foot at that point. I'm just like, no, dude, he's getting us with an E-tool, man. Fuck you.

McGinnis, Kasabian, are you cowards? Yes. Yes, I am. Did you see what happened to that guy? A brick. Are you catching this, sir? He got bricked. I'm staying my ass inside uh now using this uh like taking a hole like the sas would go out carve a little hole in like a building and then hold it and slowly move forward

piece at a time and using that they managed to carve out a big enough slice of the military runway and while under constant attack that jets and helicopters could reland refuel and rearm so fast and so quickly they could not or didn't turn off their engines and then take off again circle back around and then blow up the other side of the airport again uh and one case a helicopter pilot while uh getting so he was getting like a ration from a cook who was also refueling the helicopter um and like rearming the machine gun like he was eating and then saw a congolese guy uh run across the airport coming at them pulled out his side arm and shot him while eating it's like motherfuckers coming for my beans and rice yeah yo man i just got chili mac back the fuck up you're not coming for my pound cake motherfucker now the average

turnaround time i couldn't find how fast it was supposed to be so any ground crew for aircraft uh slide in my dms tell me how fast this is supposed to be uh but through this they managed an average turnaround of a combat jet while under fire in only five minutes so i could immediately take off and bomb them again yeah and you gotta think i i doubt they have actual like whole crews on the ground this is probably just like slapdash like hey hey you're not doing anything right now get your ass out on the ground this is probably just like slapdash like hey hey you're not doing anything right now get your ass out on the flight line you know reload fucking machine gun rounds or whatever you know what whatever the proper nomenclature is for you fucking air

wing nerds okay i don't know what it is i don't know i have no idea yeah you know uh you're you're lucky i remembered the nomenclature for my fucking m4 okay like it's tbi is a hell of a thing no but like i mean yeah but you know i imagine that's what it was so i mean that's you can't fucking shake your dick at that you know and like a lot of the air crew that were there like the sorry the ground crew or whatever were like wounded because you know they're trying to refuel and rearm jets in the middle of a several thousand manned firefight. There's tens of thousands of people fighting and trying to kill them all around them. Like I said, there was cooks and a tailor.

Why the SAS brought a fucking tailor, I have no idea. That harkens back to some colonial era bullshit, I think. You've got to have nice swag going when you're fucking murking a bunch of people that you know are trying to kill you like that's how i look at it that pilot who was eating his pound cake and like uh getting his helicopter refueled probably had some shiny ass buttons on his uniform or whatever oh yeah but you know they they were using cooks they were using tailors anybody like to include like infantry or you know sas troopers like if they had a like a free hand they were helping because the jets were keeping them alive

they could shoot as many rwandans or congolese as they wanted the jets were doing all the damage they're their casualty producing weapon here so they're like well i got five seconds of downtime time to like go fuel up the helicopter or run ammo out to the air crew who's murking people from the window yeah you know I mean that's and that's the I mean I don't want to say that's good because like all wars fucking shit but you know when you realize that it's going to take

a collective effort to make sure everybody you know to keep as many people alive as you can yeah you're going to do that yeah exactly now by the end of um this battle pretty much anybody who wasn't wounded to the point that they couldn't move or work or fight was wheeling bombs and ammunition out to these airframes uh and there's actually a couple times that a pilot left his jet running and he jumped out and helped which i wasn't aware was something you could do.

I don't know enough about jets, but they said they did it. Now, the Air Force remained at this tempo for 20 hours with only three helicopters being taken out of service because they had been shot literally thousands of times, but nothing was

completely lost and nothing was shot out of the air. That's legit, man. This helicopter's more bullet holes than a helicopter at this point. I should probably bring her down. And then when that happened, the helicopter pilots jumped out, grabbed a rifle, and then started shooting with the SAS. The next

morning, the Zimbabweans decided to launch a counterattack, despite being outnumbered by thousands. But after being machine-gunned and bombed for the entire last 20 hours the rwandans and their collective allies did not want any more of that smoke and quickly retreated back to the outskirts of the capital city now the rwandans were gambling they assumed that the sas couldn't possibly keep up an offensive being so badly outnumbered and keep up a counterattack. This is apparently strange because they had just spent the last

20 hours fighting the Zimbabwean SAS and should not have underestimated them anymore. Yeah. The retreating attackers dug trench lines and defenses to prepare themselves for it, but it didn't do any good because the SAS dove right into the trench line and kept on fucking killing them until they got the point.

Everybody's out of ammo, so they went in there with some bricks, dude. Just affixing a brick to the end of your rifle. After being chased out of the trench system, Karabiri made no more attempts on the capital and retreated south into the jungle. This gave him one hell of a problem, though. There was no allied force for a thousand miles in any direction because the Angolans were quickly at their heels. They had become surrounded on three sides. So they did something that was as insane as their first plan.

They invaded Angola. Oh, my God, dude. What the fuck? Angola. Oh my god, dude. What the fuck? Hey, Angola, we see your surprise invasion, and we raise you a surprise invasion. Oh, man. You know, at this point,

the Rwandan generals probably just got this group of... I mean, they're leftovers. Oh, yeah. So many people have died. He's sitting there in the command tent just like, you know what?

You know what will catch these guys off guard? We're going to invade Angola. And his staff's like, oh, no, sir, please. Let's not do this. This is a horrible idea. Can we just go home?

Well, that was the... This is actually their plan. Karabiri realized he was straight up fucked, but there was no good way to get home. He could not pull back to Katona. It was controlled by Angolans. He couldn't take over the capital.

He just got his shit kicked in by the Zimbabweans. He needed to find a way home. So he invaded Angola. And this is where the Ugandans and the Rwandans completely abandoned their Congolese army allies in the jungle, where they were almost immediately killed in chaotic fighting with the SAS. Now, the Rwandans and the Ugandans abandoned these guys to be something of like a forlorn hope rear guard so they can make a mad dash across the Angolan border. rearguard so they can make a mad dash across the angolan border uh once across the angolan border they assaulted a local airport with around 3 000 men which was all they have left at this point uh the angolans not expecting an invasion only had about 400 dudes hanging out most of them

security guards and not soldiers so they were quickly taken out. Now, this was the plan. They take over an airport, and they're going to get some planes, right? They're going to hijack them again. They're going to hijack some more planes. I get it. Okay. But, bad news. The Angolans had moved the planes to a different airport. So they had taken over

an empty airport. So they're like, okay, we'll call home. We can get Rwandan airlines in here to pick us up. Problem. The airport wasn't big enough for commercial airliners. So they had to quickly start lengthening the airport with hand tools, something none of them knew how to do.

So they did a really bad job and it took them two months to dig out an extra 400 meters of airstrip uh during which because like now the angolan military not expecting this had a hard time you know finding forces to counter-attack this airport also because they just invaded another country their logistic system is tied up uh so they're like oh fuck we need to whip up a up a quick reaction force to retake this airport. And they tried, but they were able to be held off because there's thousands of soldiers in there. Okay, now before we go forward, I was told that I had to fill up like three sections of HESCO with a fucking E-tool. I can't imagine leveling out 400 feet of airstrip, dude. Like, oh.

I would do such a bad job. That pilot's fucked. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? You're done, man. No planes getting off the ground here. No planes landing here. This whole thing's just going to be a shit show.

There's a 0% chance that this plane might land. I'll give them that much. But it's probably not taking off it's going to be what you call an emergency landing okay like it's not going to be pretty now this worked though

oh yeah which is wild Rwandan planes eventually did touch down I assume they were also hijacked i don't know at this at this rate it can't be confirmed or denied that any aircraft in rwanda at this time wasn't taken from some other country of origin we didn't even need to do this we have our own jets it's the principle of the matter it's sop we we get near an aircraft we we hijack it. It's just... So planes started landing, but there's 3,000 people. So it took 30 overnight flights.

And the Ugandans and the Rwandans finally escaped the Congo, leaving an entire country on fire behind them. This is the beginning of the Second Congo War. And it would end in incredible failure. And the war wouldn't end. The war had been started and it wasn't like just because the Rwandan military failed. It didn't mean that the war was going to be over.

It would continue for five more years and claim more lives than any other conflict since world war two. Somehow James Karabiri would become a national hero in Rwanda despite being the commander of a hilarious fuck-up. You know, it makes sense. He's a general that failed up, right? Yeah, and this operation would become commonly studied in military academies around the world, for example, at a total failure at every level. Also, Kabila would get killed eventually anyway.

Three years after the failure of their operation to depose him, he was shot by his cousin, who was a colonel in the army. And then Joseph Kabila, Kabila's son, became president, a position he held until 2019. Oh, oh. Yeah, nepotism's great, folks. Yeah, I mean, it's really the straw that stirs the drink in the world, you know. God, I just I mean, the Congo conflicts have always been horribly bloody and I didn't realize that it it was that bloody, you know, that it had killed more people in any conflict since World War Two.

in any conflict since World War II. Yeah, the level of destruction is kind of incredible. And it's to the point that you almost kind of have to accept that... I mean, we're still seeing the blowback from it. There's still militias that are fighting in corners of the Congo that could be loosely tied to one or two of these countries or their seeds in this war i mean there's still people suffering horribly from the after effects of it and the international community does not seem to fucking care uh but yeah that's that's par for the course though we've seen that with this

you know uh you know the post-colonial going into neo-colonialism is that unless there is a direct financial payoff, the Western powers are just like, hey, we're going to stay out of it. But if there was a financial payoff, like say open access to mines, or I don't know, in a current time, the Chinese are going in there, so now obviously we have to get involved. Of course, we would have something to to say then but not when it actually counts now Mike thank you

for joining me on the show we do a little thing to close out here called questions from the Legion where you'd like to ask us a question from the Legion you can donate a dollar to the Patreon slide in my DMs email or discord and you can ask us some random question that has nothing

to do with anything we just talked about. And today's question from the Legion is, and this is actually pretty good because you're much more of a sports guy than I am. Yeah. What historical figure would make a good Little League coach? Oh, man. I got nothing. I never played Little League. I don't like baseball.

I got nothing. Okay. Well, even if you don't like baseball, you know, essentially the fundamentals you need to coach little league it's just being able to to speak to the dumbest people uh and teach them the fundamentals of something right and let's face it i have two kids i'm a father uh they're both pretty smart but they're both idiots okay because that's what kids are they're stupid they're gross and they smell bad um but if we're talking a historic a historical figure to be a great little league coach you know what dick winters probably would have made a great one uh solid yeah because like he would just like he knew how to get the best out of people i mean even if you didn't go by the the

the mini series kind of fluffed up version of Dick Winters, he wrote enough and enough was written about him to where you knew that this guy just knew what he's talking about. Now, if we're talking somebody fun, that would like verbally berate the children and make them feel awful about themselves. This would be my choice, obviously. choice obviously um you know i'm gonna go with a guy like andrew jackson who oh god who would who would tell them how stupid they were and then challenge a four-year-old to a duel okay like did he also beat people with a cane uh he or am i getting him and someone else mixed up he brandished his cane remember the caning uh on the Senate floor was in 1859,

and it was Preston beating Charles Sumner on the Senate floor, to which, if you'd like to hear more about that, I have a history podcast as well, and we discussed it. I was about to say, plug your show. This is how we close out, if we remember, is plug our guest show. Yes, but I host the You Don't Know History podcast where we take a look at maybe parts of history that aren't talked about quite a bit. And I've lucked out and I've had great guests. Joe

was my first guest and we talked about the Artsoc conflict that wrapped up in December. Well, I wouldn't say wrapped up. It just made me cool. Hit the pause. Yeah. Called timeout to get a drink of water before they get back into it.

Um, you know, I had Dr. Rob Thompson. He was on and talked about the Vietnam war. Um, you know, I had John leg come on and talk about the U S Dakota war,

you know, and, it episode eight just hit today, everybody, where we talk about late Imperial Russia. So get out there, subscribe and listen. I really appreciate it. And I'm also a co-host of a sports ball podcast called Hometown Crowd. I also have a sub stack. So if you would like to read my words you'll find it at underpaid

freelancer because that's what I am he has words the best words Mike thanks for coming on the show again and everybody thanks for tuning in until next time don't hijack a Congolese airliner no don't do that