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We're joined by John Dolan aka The War Nerd to learn why war is not about weapons or strategy, but people.  We get a brief history of the Syrian conflict to date, discuss the use of chemical weapons, recent US airstrikes and another short history lesson on Hezbollah. We then ask the War Nerd to War Game out a possible US Civil War and close with a reading from Dolan's new translation of The Iliad, arguably the greatest war of all time.

Buy The War Nerd Illiad :

https://www.amazon.com/War-Nerd-Iliad-John-Dolan/dp/1627310509

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Comments

Kevin Hickey

The ultimate crossover 🤗🇸🇾😤

Lo

Inject this into my veins

Matt Brotchie

Fuck yeah, War Nerd Radio is the fucking best

Dmthompson360

I’m so fucking excited for this.

Matt Brotchie

Chapo's two most supposedly problematic shows that they get shit for associating with are the actually the best. Dialectic: War Nerd Radio (profound) Cumtown (retarded). Synthesis (profoundly retarded)

Lotto Graves

The War Nerd Iliad: it’s good, folks.

A Children's Day Breakfast

As someone who's read War Nerd since high school this is the god damn GameMasterAnthony's party of podcast episodes

Scott H

Oh my god, I've been waiting for this, the most ambitious crossover event of all-time.

Andy Cassidy

Huge Venn overlap on this one

Twitch Hunt!

You just keep topping yourselves.

Oskaras Funk

Awesome! Big RWN fan here too. You guys should get Mark Ames or Yasha Levine on as well.

John Williams

Damn it! This totally ruins the ace up my sleeve in podcast recommendations that wouldn't immediately out me as a lefty white guy who got into Chapo at some point during the Bernie campaign. Now all of my favorites have been dragged into the Chapo-verse. They might as well start target advertising on Patreon because my tastes are totally predictable and cliche.

Robert D

The problem with this sectarian narrative is that the majority of the Syrian Army is Sunni. The 30 year war was sectarian, but as important it was a geopolitical struggle between the Habsburgs in Austria, Spain and what is now the Netherlands (formerly an outpost of the Spanish empire),and France. So you had Catholic France financing Lutheran Sweden to fight the Catholic Habsburgs. So the mistake is to paint the conflict as due to some historic animus between Sunni and Shi’a. What was completely ignored in the discussion was the historic opposition of the west to Ba’athist Arab nationalism supported by Sunni Shi’a alike. This disaster is principally down to the US, Israel, Saudi’s, UAE, Turkey, and UK. As far as the Khan Sheikhoun chemical attack, the OPCW-JIM blamed Assad. One problem; the OPCW never visited the site and relied on samples provides by the anti-Assad forces via Turkey.

Michael Clifford

yous should make this public there aren't a lot of coherent discussions like this out there

Alex Villa

Fantastic episode!!

Phil Hostak

Dimitry Orlov's 2009 talk, "Social Collapse Best Practices", develops quite well some of the themes raised in the civil war discussion. Perennially good reading: <a href="http://cluborlov.blogspot.com.es/2009/02/social-collapse-best-practices.html" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://cluborlov.blogspot.com.es/2009/02/social-collapse-best-practices.html</a>

KC

🦉🐳🦔🌸✨

Igor Igorsson

Oh hell yes! Dolan on Chapo is something I have wanted for quite some time. Looking forward to listening.

Carson Stones

Easily a top 5 episode. Up there with the Noid, Adam Curtis, and Matt's Drunk History of the Port Huron Statement.

Oskaras Funk

Also, on the subject of a second American civil war scenario: I remember enjoying Brian Woods DMZ alot. He basically just took what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan and transplanted it to Manhattan, which worked surprisingly well

James Kellner

I bought the book without even listening to the episode first. Still haven't pre-ordered the Chapo book though so fuck you guys.

Gijs van Niftrik

One of the best episodes yet. However! AN 94 is Russian, not Chinese

Alex Davis

One of my advisors worked with VDH in his UCSC days—I brought it up a while back and it seemed to be a sore subject.

Matt Brotchie

Taking satire from The Exile as proof they are pieces of shit. Ironically this was started by Jim Goad and fucking Gavin Mcinnes after Mark Ames trashed them.

jason

y’all should make this public

Jimothy Realname

It finally happened! John Dolan went on Chapo! And all because I posted "GARY BRECHER GO ON CHAPO" on this site 2 months ago!

Kindrid Parker

Okay, this is one of my favorite Chapo eps ever. You've got your knowledgeable Middle East politics, your US Civil War 2.0 game theory (Maronites: brilliant!), and your lit covered, with the Illiad. Hell yeah, dude.

ggmacd

will menaker also played menelaus in netflix's Troy

Phil S Stein

Saul Berenson was a great guest

Bradley Meek

Please release this episode to everyone. John’s explanation of the Syrian Civil War should be heard by more people.

Daniel Boeckner

One of the best episodes hands down. Also...have Yasha Levine on.

Otto Wicks-Green

There’s something very funny about the sentence ‘all they had left was his weak brother, Amine’

Arthur Fretheim

Sing in me, O muse, and through me tell the truth about Syria...

Nicholas Kiersey

Make this one free for the Irish fans!

Max

This was so long overdue that I was wondering if it was John’s fault or yours.

Richard Davenport

This shit bangs, unlock it for the people

generic.hybridity

Best episode yet. Interesting Syria civil war stuff that non grey wolves could benefit from

Ed Irwin

If you listen carefully at 33:10 you can hear Felix cream his pants when John says "War has changed".

Dennis C.

Long time War Nerd fan. Chapo/War Nerd collab long overdue.

John Morrissey

I knew this would happen eventually, thank you. John Dolan is one of the greatest of all time

GFY

Really great episode

ballsssse

this should be public! very important info

Daniel Miller

Unbelievably good episode folks

Jared

It was a British White helmets false flag operation. Russia already capture their spies down there.

AR

The War Nerd himself is fine, it's his association with Ames that is a problem, given that Ames has been repeatedly accused of being an abuser (the one that sticks in my mind is from Moe Tkacik).

realm lich

please get norman finkelstein on your show.

JAH

reza negarestani predicted all of this in cyclonopedia

V

"marvel infinity war is the most ambitious crossover of all time".mem

Carter Gunn

Really excellent show.

S.L.

Hoo boy, that relationship fell apart with flame and fury, at least on Tkacik's part; I don't recall Ames saying anything about it publicly, though I'm only on Twitter, so he could have piped up elsewhere. I usually avoid citing that personal relationship in my evaluation of Ames, but based on the rage links Tkacik provided back then, Ames ain't exactly a lovable dude. (It's none of my business, but hopefully he's a decent and contented partner and parent these days; hope the same for Tkacik.) My conclusion about Ames is that he's a (usually) good reporter, but was/is a shitty human being, that "satire" he put out with Taibbi being a primary piece of evidence. But his shittiness notwithstanding, he helped out Dolan during some very bad moments, and anyone who is on the Protect Dolan Squad gets a few points from me, even if grudgingly so.

S.L.

BTW, Tkacik called him a misogynist, but don't recall any specific charges of physical abuse. Could have happened, I just don't remember Moe T. claiming that. Now, psychological abuse, THAT I could easily believe happened.

S.L.

So glad you were able to get John Dolan on; he's truly a one-of-a-kind intellectual. I recently re-read his accounts of being an ESL teacher in southwest KSA -- part 1: <a href="https://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/shia-me/," rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/shia-me/,</a> and part 2: <a href="https://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/holiday-inn-surrection/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/holiday-inn-surrection/</a> -- and he only identified the town as Najran several years later (<a href="https://pando.com/2015/03/28/the-war-nerd-a-brief-history-of-the-yemen-clusterfck/)" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://pando.com/2015/03/28/the-war-nerd-a-brief-history-of-the-yemen-clusterfck/)</a> when he was sufficiently confident that he wasn't putting at risk anyone he had dealt with there.

Chris McCarthy

Honestly guys, this episode is a top fiver. I’d be so intimidated trying to interview Dolan, he’s so brilliant, but it was endlessly enthralling. Cheers.

lazy millennial

Haven't listened to this podcast in ages. Resubscribed just for this episode. John Dolan is a legend.

Phillip Davis

This episode should be made available to the public

Wilson Sihlis

Great episode, two of my faves coming together. Make it a recurring episode, make it public, whatever it takes.

MShark

Best episode ever. ...helps to have a brilliant guest.

Dael Morris

brilliant brilliant show. more like this, always. genuinely good.

Doug Cartel

Listen motherfucker government, if you dont accede to my demands I'm gonna use this jumanji game to UNLEASH THE BEAST That was my favorite quote from the chilcot report

Michael Kelly

Thank you Felix for "the Marc Maronites"

Lo

yo John Dolan is our Abimael Guzman

Christopher Rao

Dolan is the best guest I've heard yet on CTH. Dry humor, stunning insight, encyclopedic knowledge of both wars and pop culture. Bravo.

putzen

felix leverage your chicago connections to get this done

Ellen Harold

I agree. Best show yet.

Angelo

how do i lower the volume for this?

Doug Cartel

One thing I'd like to hear more about is that there seems to be a consistent cops vs army split in a lot of middle east instability and I wonder how PDs and army would shake out I think it's safe to say most police would run with trump, but there's definitely a regional split where certain regions have way more aggressive police than others (a friend of mine compared southern cops to stormtroopers for example vs new England cops which he thinks are more lenient) But also I have to wonder how many federal army/national guard guys would fuck off to, say, Oregon to do their weird little secessionist project and stay away from the main theaters of conflict.

Nick Thomson

I had the War Nerd Iliad in my pile since it came out, and after this ep, i finally started it. It's really good. Really really good. Somehow my ancient Greek epic poetry education was Odyssey-exclusive, so other than Dan Simmons's "Ilium," i wasn't really familiar with any of the specifics. Makes Dolan's version even better. Ideally, high school teachers would assign his version as reading either concurrent with or immediately before (or instead of) a more traditionally poetic translation. Also re "Ilium," there are a couple of cool science-fictional elements in Dolan's telling of the sequences in which the gods Do Their Thing. (Dan Simmons readers, feel free to honk off in the comments. I have some Opinions about the Voynix. Also, War Nerd episode 64 was about right-wing sci-fi authors, and it's a good 'un. I don't know if it's been made a free episode yet, but it's really worth a listen. Got me into Gene Wolfe, who I'm super-glad to have learned about)

Michael Bloomer

speaking from experience cops in the Northeast (central NH in my example) can be pretty stormtroopy, love too see cops with glans-shaped heads driving cruisers with the punisher logo

feddydost

New patron, what's the RSS feed? I usually listen to my podcasts on 1.5x speed in my podcast app so it's very offputting to try listening in regular speed.

Ellen Harold

People should learn poetry. Also Greek.

Ellen Harold

Or at least try to.

Pete Scully

Felix go on War Nerd

Angelica

Oh man, wish this would’ve waited just a bit so he could do Korea!

Ian Renfro

please have Dolan on again

Mina

This episode made all the senseless, shitty patreon malfunctions worth it.

Yairo Martis

Marc Maronites!!😂😂😂😂