Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 3/28/24 Matthew Hoh on his Speech to the UN Security Council

Episode Date: March 31, 2024

Scott brings Matthew Hoh back on to talk about a speech he gave to the UN Security Council earlier this month. They discuss the very real risk of the war in Ukraine going nuclear, the incompetency of America’s so-called national security “experts” and more. Discussed on the show: Matthew Hoh’s speech at the UN Security Council “VIPS MEMO: The French Road to Nuclear War” (Consortium News) “U.S. to Pull Out of ABM Treaty, Clearing Path for Antimissile Tests” (New York Times) Matthew Hoh is associate director at the Eisenhower Media Network and formerly worked for the U.S. State Department. Hoh received the Ridenhour Prize Recipient for Truth Telling in 2010. Subscribe to his Substack and follow him on Twitter @MatthewPHoh  This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Roberts and Robers Brokerage Incorporated; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; Libertas Bella; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, author of the book, Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and the brand new, enough already, time to end the war on terrorism. And I've recorded more the 5,500 interviews since 2000. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton.4 you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scott horton's show all right y'all on the line we've got matthew ho again as you know he was a marine in a rock war two and then he was a state department guy in afghanistan but then he blew the whistle tried to stop obama from doing the surge in 2009. It's such an important story. Read all about it in my book, Fools Aaron. And he's also great on everything. Welcome back to the show. How you doing, Matt?

Hey, Scott. Thanks for having you back on. Very happy to have you here. Very happy to see you testify at the UN Security Council of all things. Better you than me, man. I would never step foot in that place. But you gave a great little speech to those guys. And, It wasn't so little. It was a big deal. Thank you. Yeah. I don't think I'm getting invited back anytime soon, but... No, that's all right. I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to do so. And I knew that they were, you know, the Americans, the British, the French, those that are slavishly attached to them.

If you watch the recordings of the Security Council, you'll see countries like Japan and Malta, you know, doing everything they can to make sure that they're going to get invited. to the Americans happy hour, you know, on Friday afternoon kind of thing. But also, I knew the Russians weren't going to, you know, no matter what I said, the Russians weren't going to pay attention to it. It was going to matter. But so when I spoke, I was speaking towards the Chinese and the other non-permanent members security council who might be in agreement with what I had to say. And I found that many of them were, whether what they said in their comments,

representing what I said, or by just their, willingness to have eye contact with me while I was speaking, which, of course, great difference to say the French or the Americans. And actually, the American ambassador, it was the deputy ambassador, Ambassador Wood, he got up and walked out in the middle of my speech. So, you know, but that's that's more or less what I expected. But again, I'm grateful for the opportunity and was, yeah, I just very happy to be able to say some things that I've felt needed to be said. Democrats. That guy sitting there going, hey, this Matthew Ho might have been great back in 2009. But no, actually, he probably was against you then, too. I'm sure he was. If you go when you look up, Ambassador Wood, his biography, he is a career

foreign service officer, as is Linda Thomas Greenfield, the senior ambassador at the U.M. for the United States. But Wood, his background was as a public affairs officer. So I'm sure he didn't like me in 2009 when I was countering what the State Department was saying about the necessity of the war in Afghanistan, how there was only a military solution. We had to escalate that war, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. All right. Now, you know, something that was really important that you said in there was that the policy has already failed. We're having this conversation two years into the war. The high tide of the thing was a year and a half ago, and it's been all downhill for the Ukrainians here. America's played this terrible role in getting them into this

mess. But you said, they're not revising the policy. They're not stopping to say, okay, well, so that much didn't work. So where are we at now and what are we going to do now? We're still on the going to kick you out of Crimea, you just wait, we're going to take the whole Donbass when the facts on the ground are that that's not going to happen. So, you know, it's like they're deliberately setting up the stabbing the back by stabbing them in the back, you know? Yeah, exactly, Scott. And so for people who aren't familiar with my presentation there, my briefing there at the UN Security Council, it was a meeting on Ukraine. So I spoke about Ukraine and in particular the dangers of escalation in the war, particularly towards a nuclear

war between the United States and NATO and Russia. I also was able to speak at the end a bit about the genocide in Gaza as well. But certainly this idea that they have yet not revised their strategy in Ukraine. I'm talking about the Americans in NATO, even though it so clearly has been so ineffectual and catastrophic in many ways, but it's not just they haven't as revised it. They're doubling down on it. They're reinforcing it. So the idea is that we just need to do more of what we've tried before. You know, one of the first tenants you get taught in the military, if you're, you know, as an officer, is you don't reinforce defeat, right? So if you've launched an attack and the attack is going poorly, it's failing. You do not sing your reserves in into a failing

attack. And that's essentially what's being done and has been done for the last couple of years. The economic sanctions, of course, have been counterproductive. The Russians were well prepared for the sanctions. They knew what were coming. They already had been hit with some before 2022. But certainly as they observed how the American Empire operated, they understood what was going to come their way. And so they prepared for the war, you know, as well as they were have been given, I think, greater opportunities, maybe opportunities that were forced upon them by the closing of Western markets, but they've turned eastward and also southward. And it's debatable, and I'm one of those who agree with those who say this, that the Russians probably

won't turn back to the West, that they've found terrific markets in the East and the Global South. And they don't need the West the way that the West thought the Russians needed them. I mean, remember, you know, this idea that that Russia was just the, you know, the modern day version of Turkey, right? The poor sick man of Europe. And that's what predicated this whole mania, this hysteria on collapsing Russia through economic sanctions. And that, of course, follows on what, you know, Scott, with decades and decades of these sanctions that haven't worked anywhere, except in a few cases, right, like South Africa, where in South Africa, you had a majority of the population who was in support of the sanctions. being enacted against their country. You don't see sanctions working. But, you know, the other thing was in the military side of the NATO strategy, of the American strategy. And it has just proven

incredibly ineffectual. It has led to the decimation of tens of thousands, potentially hundreds of thousands of casualties, and offered nothing other than an unwinnable war, but also, too, the very real dangers of escalation, leading towards a nuclear-arm conflict between the Americans and NATO and Russia, a place that we should have left behind us 30 years ago. But here we sit in greater danger of nuclear war than at any time, and you're in my lifetime, right, but also, too, potentially at any time since the dawn of the atomic age. I mean, I think possibly, you know, you could point to examples 1962, 1983, but, you know, everything the experts say about this is that we are at as great as a danger as it's ever been

for nuclear war. And what do we have? We have a reinforcement of a failed military policy, a desire to win an unwinnable war. And in that desire, it's the fruition of that desire, the execution of desire, is to escalate to war, to send more, whether it's these wonder weapons with great. ranges and larger payloads that are somehow magically going to destroy the Russians, or it's actually putting forces into NATO combat forces into Ukraine that, of course, would accelerate that type of escalation.

And I'm a member of veteran intelligence professionals for sanity, and we just put out a memorandum this past week about the, as we call it, the, how this plan by the French to put a combat force of 60,000 NATO troops in Ukraine is a road to nuclear war. And in that memorandum, which you can find in consortium news, you can see just how very quickly and how rapidly that could escalate to nuclear war based upon both Russian and NATO doctrine that is clear and well established. And I think one last thing to end this, some of the folks that I'm in contact with, they have contacts in Russia. And what the Russians are saying, including generals, you know, I mean, so senior people, not just, not just people who are running

their mouths, but people who are in the position to comment on these types of things, the Russians are not bluffing. They are not bluffing about using nuclear weapons. I mean, you hear that over and over again from the American side, from the Council of Foreign Relations, from the State Department of the NSC, that we don't think their threats are real. They haven't, they haven't stood up and backed up any of their red lines before. We are just actually giving in to Putin and his imperial urges by backing away from his threats, all that nonsense. They are honest about it. They are being honest about their intention to use nuclear weapons if certain things are hit that meet their doctrine or requirements to use those weapons. And so we are in a

very, very dangerous place here. All right. Well, a couple of years ago, even a year and a half ago, I don't know, it was pretty obvious that that was as good as they were going to get when they got the great double sneak attack thing at Harkiv and Kurson there in September of 22. I think that was the last time that anyone was worried that Ukraine was going to do better than that, which was what might push the Russians to use nukes. If they thought they really were going to lose Crimea, then they might drop an atom bomb then. But you're saying now, just from the introduction of NATO ground forces, that that would be a red line and they'd start using atom bombs then? Well, it's the way that the introduction of NATO ground forces would there be an order of effects, right?

There would be second, third order effects. There'd be events that would follow one. another so if you put the ultimatums immediately is what they would be but but also too if you put 60 000 uh nato troops or say it's just a french say the french go through with that general send in lamand uh and they put in 20 000 ground troops in uh ukraine there is no way the french are putting their troops in without providing cover with their aircraft as long as with their long rate strike capabilities. So now you have NATO aircraft, French aircraft, that are engaging in long-range strikes along with the French's long-range missile capabilities into Russia in order to protect

the forces that they have put on the ground, right? Russia will have to respond to that. Those French aircraft will fly out of Romania, which is where they're based right now, actually. So what you have that is you have Russian strikes into Romania to remove those French aircraft. You can see how that just tip for tap one after another. And it reaches the point then where at a certain point, if NATO conventional munitions strike Russian command and control facilities, at that point, Russian doctrine allows for the utilization of nuclear weapons in response. So what you have is by the fact that you're going to have NATO troops there, and by just the requirement of what NATO looks like in combat, the use of aircraft as well as long range strikes against Russian

commanding control facilities. You have the recipe right there. You have the plan right there, the plot right there, to allow for Russia to utilize nuclear weapons in accordance with their doctrine. And a lot of the other thing, too, I think that we have to make clear to people is that we're not talking about the Russians using like tactical nuclear weapons. They don't even have tactical nuclear weapons. Tactical nuclear weapons in a sense of like we saw during the Cold War where you have artillery shells that are nuclear bombs, right? So, you know, God help you fire artillery show, right?

I mean, 10, 20 miles away and it, you know, big mushroom cloud comes up. But the thing is that they will use what we will refer to as strategic weapons. So the same nuclear weapons that they would in effect use against New York and Washington, D.C. in Los Angeles, or the same nuclear weapons that they would use. against NATO targets in Europe. That then leads the two things for me. The first is, I don't think our satellites can tell the difference between a Soviet, excuse me, a Russian missile launch that is meant for NATO headquarters or a NATO facility versus a Russian missile

launch that is headed towards an American target or American city. I mean, this is one of the whole things about this idea of having these low yield nuclear weapons on submarines or anywhere, this idea that you launch these things and that somehow your adversary, the Russians or the Chinese or whoever, are going to be to tell just from the launch where that missile is heading to. I don't believe they can. So, you know, you have that type of ambiguity, the chaos, the friction or fog of war that would occur, where are those missiles going to? And how would the Americans then have to respond to that? But then as well, just, you know, not even considering that, which is more of a, you know, practical aspect of all, but just theoretically, how would the Americans respond to this? But that even isn't even the question, because we have to remember the French have their own nuclear forces as well as the British. And so would the French and British, how would they not retaliate with nuclear weapons of their own if the Russians used them?

So, I mean, this is something that is very, very dangerous. And it's very easy to see how this could happen quite rapidly. And not two years from now, three years from now, but weeks within the introduction of NATO ground forces into Ukraine. Because, again, it wouldn't just be NATO ground forces. It would be with the capability to strike deep in Russia. And of course, that has been the thing that the Americans have at least had some sanity over these last two years, is the understanding that we cannot provide weapons that will strike deep into Russia because that will cause the Russians to retaliate in a manner that won't be confined to Ukraine because, you know, because they have to strike at the sources of, you know, where their adversary is getting their supplies from as well as where things are based, where things are commanding, the commanding control, et cetera. So, you know, not to belabor it, but we are in a very difficult, dangerous place and that's what i was trying to get across at the u.n. last week yeah well and the thing is too is nuclear war is the government program so like you're saying they're they got plans and they got

authorizations and all this stuff is basically pre-written so i guess if you had really strong leadership saying belay that order do not do that right now then maybe that would be nice but otherwise once it gets started then it's just you get the blue binder and the yellow binder off the shelf and start pushing buttons. And I know that it was a pretty big deal at the time. I'm not sure if you saw it, but they did a really great kind of computer simulation of what nuclear war would look like. I mean, not the day after since, but just on the map of how it would go. And it's, well, the Russians nuke NATO headquarters, and then NATO shoots a few nukes back.

and then Russia shoots a few nukes back, and then it's all just automatic from there. First, everybody blows up everybody's military bases, and next they blow up everybody's cities, and then everybody's dead. Right, and it's a mindset that's easily understandable. You get into a use-it-or-lose-it mindset, right? That's the whole fallacy of having these land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, right?

That third leg of the triad, which just, you know, you're going to have to use them or you're going to lose them. So might as well destroy the whole world and the problem. But you don't even need that much, Scott, because we know that less than 1% of the nuclear weapons in the world can bring about nuclear winner. So you're talking about roughly about 100 nuclear weapons of Hiroshima size, 15 kiloton, and most of our nuclear weapons are well above that, are in 150 to 350 kilotone range. Same with the Russians.

I think they maybe have some of the larger than that. But just a hundred of the Hiroshima-sized bombs, again, 15 kilotons, is enough to bring about a nuclear winner, where hundreds of millions, if not billions of us, would starve to death, particularly, I believe, in the northern hemisphere. You know, so the consequences of nuclear war for you in Texas, and for me here in North Carolina, and for everyone listening to this, is not that we would be evaporated, right? you know, or even die of long-term radiation poisoning, but that we would starve to death. We would get to watch the children in our family, the children in our neighborhoods all starve to death because nuclear winner would destroy our agriculture.

And as our human race, we would face extinction that way. Well, so a big part of your talk was about whose fault this was. And, of course, as George W. Bush started tearing up these treaties and kicked this whole pile of domino. knows over, right? Right. I did. I'm glad you pointed out. Most people haven't noticed that I spoke about that, the abrogation of the treaties, particularly the, you know, the withdrawal of the United States from these arms control treaties unilaterally, you know, and without merit. But then also, too, you know, the idea is that it wasn't just that we withdrew from the treaties. It would,

we withdrew from the whole process. There isn't a, a, a, a, a, ability now for these talks to go on. You know, I mean, there's the great mistrust between the nuclear powers. There's also the political unwillingness, but even just the mechanics of it. Right now, Scott, there's doubt as to whether or not they can even talk to each other in a crisis. We're not certain if they have the capability to pick up the red phone, as they once did, and talk to each other. it that's that's even if they have the political willingness the the integrity and courage to do so so uh certainly yes exactly the the destruction of those treaties beginning with george w bush pulling us out of

the anti-ballistic missile treaty uh you know 20 years ago more than 20 years ago now he announced that what in spring of 2001 i believe i mean and which was totally the whole purpose of it in my opinion was as a gift, of course, to the military industrial complex, you know, the opening up missile defense into tens and tens of billions that would come for that project, which of course is a spectacular failure. But yeah, exactly. You know, you look at the genesis of this and how it occurs. Where does this come about? And you see that part of it has to do with the great creation of mistrust by the bad faith efforts of the United States to remove itself unilaterally from these arms control treaties.

Hey, you guys, did you know that I don't just write books? I publish them. Well, the Institute does, and I'm the director, so yeah. 13 of them now, including my four. We published five more in 2023. Lori Calhoun and Tom Woods books about the COVID regime, Joe Solis Mullin on the fake China threat, Jim Bovard's latest last rights,

and our managing editor Keith Knight's domestic imperialism. And we've got more great titles coming in 2024. Check them out at Libertarian Institute.org slash books and help support our anti-government efforts at Libertarian Institute.org slash donate. And thank you. Hey, y'all, Scott here. Let me tell you about Roberts & Roberts Brokerage, Inc.

Who knew? Artificial bank credit expansion leads to price inflation and terribly distorted markets. If you've got any savings left at all, you need to protect them. You need to put some at least into precious metals. Well, Roberts and Roberts can set you up with the best deals on silver, gold, platinum, and palladium,

and they've been doing this since 1977. Hey, if you just need some sound advice about sound money, they're there for you, too. Call Tim Fry and the guys at 800, 8749760. That's 800, 8749760, or check them out at rrbi.com. That's rrbi.com. You'll be glad you did. Yeah. And, you know, in Putin's speech in February, he basically gave an update on his 2018 speech. It was the first one in 15. All these years are swimming around in my head. It was the big 2018 speech when he argued or whatever, debuted supposedly all his new generation of nukes. Right. He's got the torpedo that's going to vaporize New York City.

etc etc yeah yeah all that so he basically gave an update to that and he said the same thing again and you know anybody can argue that the guy's ruthless but he seems to say what he means about all this stuff and what he essentially says is well look i mean you guys tore up the anti-ballistic missile treaty so and then you know obviously with the uh installation of the missile defense systems in Poland and Romania and the radars in the Czech Republic and all that he says well what do you think we're going to do we got to build more nukes and

bigger ones and heavier ones and better ones otherwise what are going to do just let you you know destroy parity and mutually assured destruction and gain a first strike capability against us obviously we can't do that can we so what do we do we made a bunch of new

bigger and better and worse nukes so what a world we live in huh and you know Scott I came across it yeah I don't know he's got a point right you know what and no one knows is better than than Joe Biden himself you know there's a there's an article in in I think it was December of 2001 written by David Sanger in the New York Times talking about the you know the United States leaving the ABM treaty and no one other than no one less than Joe Biden says what a catastrophe is is when it's going to be what the consequences are going to be. And he says, pull us, you know, paraphrase them, us pulling out of the anti-ballistic missile

treaty is going to cause these other nations to accelerate, modernize, enlarge their own nuclear forces as a response. Biden actually says in that quote, he says that this is going to cause the Chinese to triple their nuclear forces. And what other Chinese done in the last few, 20 years, they've tripled their nuclear forces. So this is not, what you and I are talking about is not just a speculation of, you know, a libertarian and associate, you know, peace Nick Wacadoos, this is, this is the assessment that anyone who's objective and attached and reasonable comes to about the consequences of things like pulling out of the anti-ballistic missile treaty, as well as spurning offers to negotiate. Again, I'm not a fan of Putin or Russia. People want to listen to my speech

in my, or, you know, read through the presentation I gave. It's very clear that I do not support Russia, you know, multitude of ways I expressed that. But to be fair, in terms of the Ukraine war, they did attempt to negotiate continuously prior to the war at the beginning of the war. And even as Reuters reported last month, all throughout 2023, we see Putin now almost monthly, Probably more. I don't read his or pay attention to his stuff as much as others, but I see it. At least every month of this year, he's been offering to negotiate it. And of course, the response is, you know, there's only military victory. The Americans and NATO and the Ukrainians lie about the ability to negotiate. And actually, Scott, you know, I threw you on Afghanistan before, so let me circle back to that. I actually came across something I had never seen before. I don't know why. I had never seen it before, but it's an April 2009 story on, and in New York Times, a major story about the Taliban's willingness to negotiate in the spring of 2009. And it actually references two of the interlocutors I worked with for a couple of years

after leaving the State Department regarding Afghanistan, both a former Taliban minister and now an American citizen who has connections to the Taliban. But, you know, this whole thing that even in the spring of 09, as Obama was escalating this war, he was in the process of sending 20,000 troops there already, he would send 30,000 more later. Actually, my numbers are off because he sends about 70,000 total. But he, you know, you see this massive story in New York Times, spring of 09, which, again, I had never seen until now detailing how the Taliban want to negotiate, one of the reasons

why I resigned. And all through that time period, though, and even now, the Americans will say the Taliban refutes to negotiate, even though we have it clear as day, black and white, and that's the same with Ukraine. Even though you can point to articles in the Wall Street Journal, Reuters, the BBC, Financial Times, on and on, the Americans will still say that there is no ability to negotiate with the Russians. But these are the same people that are also saying that was occurring in Gaza is self-defense and not genocide. So we are just dealing with people who are psychopathic liars. Yeah, they certainly are a hell of a lot of the time. And the things that they convince themselves to is about a third of it. At least, I don't know. It's pretty crazy. You know,

something important that you said in your talk at the UN, Matthew, was that they do to escalate when we escalate. And they got this mythology. I swear, you hear these people, they all sound just like each other all the time. They go, well, a bully only responds to being tough. And they take kindness for weakness, and you got it. And it's just like these cliches. Are we even talking about America and Russia's relationship here? We're talking about their experience as a bullied kid in school and how they wish they had fought back. Or what are we talking about now? Right. You know, our mutual friend Danny Davis, he's on his way up today to New York to participate and debate at the Council of Foreign Relations on Ukraine.

And when he told me he was heading up there, my thoughts were better you than me, man, because I can't handle that. I couldn't handle sitting there and having to listen to exactly what you just described, Scott. These tired, broken, ridiculous analogies and tropes and myths, you know, all completely undone and belied by just so much evidence. and so much reality, but they repeat it. They repeat it ad nauseum. It's their statement of faith.

And it's a way that, you know, if you want to get into mechanics of how the system works, how the empire works, it's a way of proving your loyalty. No one can be in those positions who does not say those things, who whether or not they believe it or not, they recite it as an article of faith. It is a religious type obligation. It's dutiful. And as we saw this week, a lot of people continue to go on with it. But, you know, you just had the resignation from the State Department of Anel Sheeline

who, you know, clawed it out as a genocide and said, I can't continue to do this. And so she left her post with the State Department just as Josh Paul did in September. Craig McIber did with the U.N. as well in the fall, not September, but October. But, yeah, I mean, so there are some people who cannot go along with it. many others it's it's the article of faith to just recite that propaganda to prove that you are a necessary and uh necessary and honorable cog in the the great wheel of empire yeah well you know i thought about you the other day when a friend told me this anecdote about fat and egg fred kagan going to visit in afghanistan in o nine right when it was the big coin denista public relations

push to cause the escalation to happen there and um this guy he was my my buddy was talking to his friend who was an officer whatever rank over there and his job was taking fatneck fred around and showing him things and essentially trying to explain to him why this is not going to work and why if you take the analogy from the iraq war and you try to fit it here here's why it all falls apart and he says that after just a little while fat neck fred just starts saying why disagree with that i disagree with that i disagree with that and that was the conversation that they had okay the kagan's have decided that they're cashing in on this thing and it doesn't matter what the local officer who knows better tells him he ain't listening i saw that you know and i had that said to me

a number of times, both in Iraq and Afghanistan, but then, you know, after I dropped out of all that and, you know, started hanging out with guys like you, on the rare occurrences that I was able to talk to these people, you know, you were just basically told you didn't understand, you didn't get it. You know, it was a phrase that the coininistas used, the counterinsurgency folks used that we are doing graduate level warfare here, right? Oh, we're eating soup with a knife. It sounds pretty stupid to me. But that's what they would say.

So you, Matt Ho, you Scott Horton, you just don't get it. Yeah, you can, you can, you see the details and you can cite things, but you just don't understand how it all works in a big picture, right? Like that type of just, they acted like there are some type of Jedi war warriors, you know, and the whole thing, too. That's a type of thing that's so, I think that analogy right there is that they don't understand that they are the empire, right? They just refuse to accept the core base fundamental realities of what they're trying to affect or change or improve or whatever. And when you don't

that, when you don't even understand what the problem is, when it's anathema, when it's heretical to say that we are an occupying power. And these people will jump through hoops. They will contort themselves in ways that are astounding to claim that the United States, States wasn't an occupying power in Iraq or we weren't occupiers in Afghanistan, just as they do now where somehow Israel is not occupying Palestine, right? I mean, but so it is, but this is how it all works. There's no one in those positions who don't or who don't already believe that or who aren't malleable enough to accept it or gutless enough to go along with it. And one of the things I glad you brought up that about that tour that they did in Afghanistan, no nine, I was

there for that. That was part of General Stanley McChrystal's assessment of the war in Afghanistan. He brought over all these folks to go around the country and do this weeks-long assessment of the war, and they went all over the place. And they were not State Department CIA military officers, right? They were private contractors. So I think they even saw at that point that they weren't going to be able to get the war that they wanted, the escalation of the war, if they relied upon government officials, if they relied upon military officers. And we have thousands and thousands of men and women who go through graduate level of warfare. We have a whole national defense university. The State Department of CIA have their own academic institutions, right? I mean,

we have people who are well-trained in this. We spend billions of dollars a year making sure that we have officers who are competent. But when it came to the escalation of the war in Afghanistan and getting the plan that they wanted, getting the war that they wanted, what they do, they couldn't trust those people, so they brought in all these folks from these think tanks that are funded by the defense industry to guarantee that they got that escalation of the war. And it's just so corrupt. And I don't want to give too much credit to those in service, who those there with state and DOD and CIA, because so many of them went along with it, they were gutless as well. But you just saw the whole corruption of the wars, the whole corruption of the empire, all everything, you know, just in that one

episode of Stan the Crystal's assessment of the Afghan War where he relies upon defense industry think tank experts to approve his plan. Yeah, absolutely. And it's so important because it's our present and future too is that we're stuck forever now with the Institute for the Study of War, which is just Robert Kagan's sister-in-law, Kimberly Kagan, Fat-neck Fred Kagan's wife, Donald Kagan's daughter-in-law and how come we're supposed to believe her and her staff that they're somehow what these dispassioned

technocratic experts when that's Victoria Newland's sister-in-law right there dude why would we listen to her why would we pretend to believe that she doesn't have opinions and that what we found the one Kagan who

doesn't have an agenda to lie us into war and keep us there after all this time But they go, no, instead, it's like you're supposed to picture a bunch of people in white lab coats or something. Oh, it's the Institute for the Study of War. Right, right, exactly. And this is the brilliance of the military industrial complex. This is, this is, this really shows their competence.

Most people are familiar with how they influence policy by, you know, making sure the F-35, apart from the F-35 is produced in every congressional district in the U.S. or whatever that is, you know, and they give plenty of campaign contributions. particularly to the members of the armed service as committees about the House and Senate. You know, people understand that. But what also occurs is that the military industrial complex has created the entire ecosystem for both military and foreign policy thought in Washington, D.C. You look at what Quincy Institute put out last year. You know, the top 50 think tanks in Washington, D.C. are all funded by the weapons companies. many of them are also funded directly by the pentagon estate department cia etc oh they brag about it too

they don't even know to be ashamed or to think that this is some kind of conflict of interest to go to the center for the study of science and international security where go and look and they it's uh all it is is arms manufacturers and bankers and oil companies but mostly arms manufacturers yeah right and you also get some from the american government i mean so what you saw what you saw happen a number years ago as one example is, remember the New America Foundation, about 15 years ago. They were the great experts on AFPAC, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and they were the great experts on the drone wars. And they put out these reports that everybody repeated verbat, you know, just took them as again, as an article of faith. Oh, it's from the New America Foundation. This is Eric Schmidt

from Google's organization. They've got to be telling the truth. They're independent. Only smart people work there. And, you know, so it turns out what they say, oh, of course, United States is not killing innocent people with those drones. And then what do you find out a few years later? The New America Foundation was taking millions upon millions of dollars directly from the State Department. I had this experience Scott one time. You can cut this because if this goes too long. But I went on CNN and I was told we can't have you on by yourself because we don't, we, you know, basically you have an agenda. You're not independent. So we're bringing somebody on to balance you who is independent. And who did they bring on? Michael Handlin from the Brookings Institute.

man right i mean someone whose organization took millions of dollars directly from the pentagon who was famous for writing opeds with general officers who you know you could go and google and you'll see him eating dinner with he's a good friend of david petraeus as they describe each other right he according to cnm was independent so they they had these think tanks when he was partners with a guy named ken pollock and they were like the little dynamic duo of center left liberal wonk expert activists on iraq so they weren't exactly the mirror image counterparts of bill crystal but they essentially were holding that down for professional democrat types in the run up to iraq war two they wrote a book called the threatening storm and all

this that was very important especially for the right wingers to invoke well it really helped liberals listening to NPR news feel good about it. But right wingers would go, look, even these Democratic experts, Pollock and O'Hanlon say that we're right. That's who O'Hanlon is. He killed all those Iraqis. And so what they do, you know, is to continue on with the military industrial complex and again, the ecosystem, the swamp, if you will, that they've created in Washington, D.C., is they have, you know, so they do that. They have the experts that the national media relies upon on. These are the trusted people. These are the people in the white coats, right? So Institute from Study of War, just like you said, Scott, oh, they're probably going to show up

with a clipboard and a white coat on. We have to trust these guys. They're the Institute of Study of War. Plus, they have all this money. So they're able to do things in a way that, you know, you or I could only ever dream of. But then the other aspect is what these, what the defense industry does, the military industrial complex does, is it populates the entire executive and legislative branches. So if you go, people are familiar, of course, the revolving door. And most people, I think, think of the revolving door, spinning people out of government or military service into the corporations, right? So generals leave like Lloyd Austin, and he goes to Raytheon. And of course, he comes back. But a lot of the revolving door happens on lower levels. And it gets people from the defense

industry into the day-to-day worker bee sections of both the executive and the legislative branches. So if you go and you look at who staffs the congressional intelligence and armed services and foreign affairs committees, you will see many of those people have ties to the defense industry. They came out of think tanks. When the Republicans are out of power, they go back to a think tank. When the Democrats are a power, they go back to a think tank. Or they go to the defense industries or themselves, or they go to these other groups such as Boston Consulting Group or wherever, right? You know, all these things that are all connected to the military industrial complex. And of course, the same thing, too, with the executive branch. So the state

department, the CIA, the defense department, it's all entirely populated with people who come and go from the, you know, whether it is the industries directly themselves or their funded think tanks, who are the ones either appropriating or writing legislation, writing policy, or carrying it out, you know, at the Pentagon or state or wherever. So when you understand just how broad the military industrial complex is in terms of how it's able to have this Leviathan-like presence, you really understand how effective it is. And, you know, then, of course, you have no no no no questions as to why we have such a a militarized foreign policy i shouldn't even it's such a military foreign policy we have a militarized foreign policy we do not have a diplomatic

or an economic foreign policy yeah all right well i'm sorry man i'm out of time i got to edit this radio show and everything but um thank you so much for coming back on the show and uh i think you did a great job there at the u.n i doubt anybody really says a lot of true things in a row like that the way you did in that room so pretty good stuff um and i really appreciate coming on the show to talk about as well as always i thank so much scott i appreciate that oh yeah all right you guys that is the great matthewho the scott horton show anti-war radio can be heard on kpfk 90.7 fm in l a psradyo dot com antiwar dot com scott horton dot org and libertarian institute dot org Thank you.