“Guns-a-Blazing” in Nigeria? Retired Lt-Gen. Ben Hodges Tells CNN Why the Plan Is “Strategically Bankrupt”.

Abu Dhabi, 7 November 2025 – President Donald Trump’s weekend vow to send U.S. troops into Nigeria “guns-a-blazing” has triggered a rare public slap-down from one of America’s most seasoned armour commanders.

Speaking to Erin Burnett on CNN Tuesday night, Lieutenant-General Ben Hodges (ret.)—who led U.S. Army Europe and oversaw NATO land forces from 2014-2018—called the idea “a sound-bite in search of a strategy” that would almost certainly back-fire.

“You don’t defeat diffuse, adaptive terror groups by parachuting a brigade into a country twice the size of Texas, most of which we can’t find on a map,” Hodges said. “That’s not deterrence; that’s fireworks.”

What Trump Actually Ordered

The president’s flare-up began Friday after a Fox News segment on Christian fatalities in Nigeria’s Middle Belt. By Saturday he had posted on Truth Social that the U.S. would “wipe out Islamic Terrorists” if Abuja failed to do so, and instructed the Pentagon to “prepare for possible action.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth tweeted a one-word reply—“Yes, sir”—and AFRICOM staff were abruptly recalled to Stuttgart to draft contingency packages.

Hodges’ Three-Point Rebuttal

1. Intelligence Black Hole

“We don’t even have reliable human intel south of Kaduna,” Hodges told Burnett. “ISIS-West Africa and Boko Haram swap allegiances faster than we can issue press releases. You can’t target what you can’t tag.”

2. Force Ratio Fantasy

The Pentagon is reportedly looking at a 2,000-to-5,000-man advise-and-assist package. Hodges scoffs: “That’s the size of the New York Police Department’s counter-terror bureau policing one city. Nigeria has 36 states and 200 million people.”

3. Diplomatic Suicide

Any unilateral action, he warns, would shatter the fragile trust Washington has rebuilt with Abuja since the 2020 EndSARS fallout and push the continent’s largest democracy toward Moscow or Beijing for hard security guarantees. “We spent 20 years cultivating AFRICOM partnerships. We can burn that down in 20 days.”

What the Swamp Is Whispering

Off-camera, a current J-5 planner (speaking without attribution) confirmed to CNN that three draft options exist:
- Option A: Precision drone strikes on known ISIS-WA camps in Borno.
- Option B: 800-man Special Forces advisory cell embedded inside Nigerian Army HQ.
- Option C—the one Hodges calls “the Netflix trailer option”—a 30-day shock-and-awe raid culminating in hostage-rescue footage for prime-time.

All three, the planner admits, assume Abuja’s consent that almost certainly will not come. Nigeria’s Foreign Ministry has already labelled Trump’s rhetoric “deeply disturbing and an affront to sovereignty.”

Echoes of 2014—and of 2021

Hodges sees déjà vu. “In 2014 we sent 300 advisers to hunt Kony; in 2021 we left Syria after a tweet. African partners watch that movie. They know the sequel ends with Americans boarding a C-17 while their cities burn.”

The Political Math Back Home

Evangelical groups, a core Trump constituency, have lobbied hard for a Nigeria intervention, citing what they call “Christian genocide.” Hodges doesn’t dispute the atrocities but says conflating them with a single-faith campaign is “propaganda that plays in Peoria but gets people killed on the ground.”

Bottom Line

Trump may still pull the trigger—he told reporters Sunday he “envisages a lot of things”—yet Hodges predicts the Pentagon will stall until the news cycle moves on. “Contingency plans are like fire drills: they let you look busy without lighting the match.”

For now, the only boots moving are the ones walking back statements inside the E-Ring.

This has been The Red Hot Report from Pepper-Room. The news that bears it all.

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