Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 9/26/25 Matthew Hoh on the Institutionalized War State and the Disgraceful David Petraeus

Episode Date: September 28, 2025

In his first video interview, Scott brings Matthew Hoh on to talk about his initial reluctance to associate with the antiwar movement, the institutional pressure to keep the war in Afghanistan going, the horrific legacy of General David Petraeus and more.  Discussed on the show: The Best and the Brightest by David Halberstam A Bright Shining Lie by Neil Sheehan Bodyguard of Lies (IMDb) 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 For more on Scott’s work: Check out The Libertarian Institute:  https://www.libertarianinstitute.org Check out Scott’s other show, Provoked, with Darryl Cooper https://youtube.com/@Provoked_Show Read Scott’s books: Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine https://amzn.to/47jMtg7 (The audiobook of Provoked is being published in sections at https://scotthortonshow.com) Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism: https://amzn.to/3tgMCdw Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan https://amzn.to/3HRufs0 Follow Scott on X @scotthortonshow And check out Scott’s full interview archives: https://scotthorton.org/all-interviews This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Roberts and Roberts Brokerage Incorporated https://rrbi.co Moon Does Artisan Coffee https://scotthorton.org/coffee; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom https://www.libertyclassroom.com/dap/a/?a=1616 and Dissident Media https://dissidentmedia.com You can also support Scott’s work by making a one-time or recurring donation at https://scotthorton.org/donate/https://scotthortonshow.com or https://patreon.com/scotthortonshow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ladies and gentlemen of the press have been less than honest reporting to the American people what's going on in this country. Because the babies are making this. We're dealing with Hitler Revisited. This is the Scott Horton Show. Libertarian foreign policy, mostly. When the president visited, that means that it is not illegal. We're going to take out seven countries in five years. They don't know what the fuck they're doing.

negotiate now end this war and now here's your host Scott Horton all right you guys welcome to the show it's the Scott Horton show

and now in video I'm catching up with the 21st century here check me out and my first guest on this new version of the same old show I've been doing for 22 years is the great Matthew Ho and you guys probably know that

I'm not sure you know or not Times change and times fly by. Matthew Ho is the great whistleblower of the Afghan war of 2009. He had previously been an officer in the Marine Corps. And then he went to work for the State Department and they sent him to Afghanistan. And in 2009, of course, Obama was inaugurated in January. And then that whole year saw this massive push by the Pentagon to escalate the Afghan war. Matthew Ho said, you know what?

I'm breaking ranks and I'm telling the truth. And in the summer, I believe it was in August of 2009, he spoke up and said, you don't have to do this, Mr. President, and it won't work and it'll only make matters worse. And then even, unbelievably, the ambassador who was the former general in charge Eichenberry backed him up. And that was all of the intellectual bodyguard, all the military officer bodyguard that Barack Obama needed to refuse the Pentagon and not escalate the war into the surge. that lasted through 2012 and instead of invoking matthew ho and general ikenberry ambassador ikenberry as he very well could have instead he gave into the war party and escalated that war and when we just before uh bringing you on matt here i was watching you on danny davis's show and of course danny davis is the bookend if you can call him that who wrote whistleblower of the afghan war

because three years later he blew the whistle and so david petraeus is lying he hasn't achieved a damn thing with this surge and i know it and matthew ho was right in the first place and so i know people watch the great danny davis deep dive or daniel davis deep dive um but they may not know that he shares that whistleblower hero on the afghan war title with you and you know of course i'm a huge admirer both of you guys and featured you both in my book and i'm happy to talk with you about lots of things all the time but especially now again the war in afghanistan because it's so important and it's back in the news for a very important reason so welcome back to the show matthew american hero oh okay thanks scott it's good to see you uh my how we've uh come i remember doing

Skype with you probably in 2010 uh yeah to record these things and to complete that circle that you're just ascribing of personalities there it was gareth porter that put me in touch with danny and i started here's his lieutenant colonel working for the joint staff and the pentagon we'd have lunch once a week, you know, in 2009, 2010, before Danny went back to Afghanistan. But I'm also pretty certain that it was Gareth Porter that told me to go on your show for the first time. Oh, I bet. I was skeptical of anything anti-war. I thought the anti-war community were well-meaning, well-intentioned folks, but their knowledge and their reasons, their rationale, their arguments were all just simply ideologically based.

right like that they didn't really know what they're talking about although they were correct about it and and so i'm quite certain i would have asked gareth hey this scott horton guy on antivore com how is he and he would have given me a thumbs up and that's probably why i came on but then as i learned though that you guys know more than anybody else you medea benjamin other folks in the anti-war movement are the most knowledgeable on this stuff uh than anyone i've come across in the last, you know, however many decades, I've been doing this. So, but yeah, it's great to be on video. Like I said, I would have, I would have dressed a little nicer, maybe put a tie on to make it,

you know, I mean, you know, but congratulations on achieving this next level in podcasting. Well, and look, I mean, you guys, you and Danny Davis, and a lot of you anti-war veterans are no slouches either, and our whole movement benefits, so much from y'all's experience and authority when you speak about these things. So, you know, me and the boys at antiwar.com, I mean, other than Thomas Knapp, I don't think any of us have ever been in the service. You know, he was a Marine in a Rock War I, got poisoned by the detonation of the Camusia bunker and got go for illness out of it for his trouble. But other than that, I don't think anybody at antiwar.com's ever been in the military, although maybe some of

our regular columnists and so forth. But anyway, it's really important that we have guys like you, and Daniel Davis who can say like, hey, man, somebody blows the trumpet and it's actually worth answering, I'll be there, but this ain't that. That's what people need to hear, you know? And so, okay, go ahead. That's good to say, and for those guys and gals that are out there that are active duty or where you came out of the service or whatnot, you're listening to this, because I know a lot of you are. Write your stuffed out because Scott uses this phrase, and I use it now a lot of times too. I've got what Biden's got. You forget. You do. Like you don't think you're going to

forget stuff and you forget. I just spent 90 minutes on a phone with a guy I went through the basic school with the basic school is your initial officer training in the Marine Corps back in 1998. Great guy. We hadn't spoken in years and years. And it's amazing what we both couldn't remember. You know, I mean, it's just you get to a certain point, you know, and you're going to start forgetting stuff. And then let alone if you've got a TBI or you're dealing with PTSD or substance or any other things that came as a cost of these wars. So for those men and women that are out there who are in the military, your veterans, your family members of them, whatever,

write this stuff down so you don't forget it. So that years from now you can then put it forward as, you know, reasons to oppose the next war, whatever that's going to be. You know, we can wager on that too, I guess. Yeah. In fact, well, we got to talk about Afghanistan, but to double back to your point about your assumptions of what the anti-war movement must be, I can totally sympathize with that attitude.

And in fact, it's not an entirely unfair accusation in the sense that, like, there's a basis for the stereotype of like a pretty hippie girl in a sundress, singing, give piece a chance. And she's very sweet, but she doesn't really know anything about the Middle East or the Central Asia or national security priorities. And so that's very nice of her, but it's easy for a Marine Corps captain to say pat on the head, but I don't need to listen to you.

And I think that mostly that stereotype would be kind of a leftover of Vietnam. Always, just like with The Simpsons, whenever it was, I know nobody even watches the Simpsons anymore, but back when the Simpsons was a thing, whenever anybody was smoking weed, It was automatically 1967 and they'd be playing everybody get on the peace train and it's all day glow bubble letters and Janice Joplin giant sunglasses or whatever. But man, there's been a lot of pot smoking culture since then that has nothing to do with being a hippie in the summer of love, right?

Same thing with the anti-war movement. There's been a lot of opposition to war that doesn't have anything to do in 1967. I was born nine years later and I wouldn't a good anti-war guy until. the 90s. So, like, how come I got to get saddled with that? And you know what I mean? And you go to answer to your dot com. We're Rothbardian slash Buchananites. You know what I mean? We're right-wing libertarians, mostly. And, um, and hate all this stuff for reasons of attempting to preserve George Washington's constitution, uh, which is makes us quite a bit different than a hippie lady in a sundress who means well, but doesn't know. It's been very much in our interest to know.

Otherwise, why would anybody listen to us? We've got to know. So, yeah, just to posting the war in Afghanistan isn't enough. I got to be able to win a fight about the war in Afghanistan if I'm going to ever get anywhere on actually ending the dang thing. So that was always my priority was before I interviewed you in 2010, I'd interviewed 100 other guys, 100, you know, 300 other times about the war and knew enough about it that I was ready to ask you questions by the time I had you on.

I remember, well, first, it's funny in the Washington Post story about my resignation and one of the quotes in there that I say to Karen DeYoung, the author of that story, I say, look, I'm not some pot smoking hippie, you know, right? I mean, like I try to establish myself as not that, you know, and looking back now and everything I know on us. Well, yeah, we certainly can use a lot more pretty young women playing guitars singing about people. I mean, that's, I don't think anyone should argue against that. But I think, you know, we had, uh, yeah, no offense to pretty girls in sun dresses. I'm all about that. I'm not exactly. We need a lot more of those. Yeah, yeah, I'm just saying from the point of view of a Marine Corps officer, I can understand why you would pause to take notice of how pretty she is and disregard the rest. That's all I'm saying is it's understandable why you're only going to pay so much mind to that sort of opposition. Well, you know, and this is an indictment, I think, of our education system because I understood the linear nature, the continuous line of American

history. I didn't understand it. I understood our wars. I understood our misadventures overseas. I understood our imperialism. All as episodic as not connected, as not part of a continuous line, which was something I feel my education, the education here in this country failed me. You know, good public school, good private college.

And I wasn't able to connect those dots. So I remember coming out of meeting with Tony Blinken in 2009, after I had left Afghanistan, I came back at that time, Blinken, who was Biden's national security advisor, you know, went on, of course, become his secretary of state when he was president. And I remember coming out of the old executive building, and there was a protest against the war in front of the White House. And I walked through it. And I remember thinking the signs.

I mean, I think some of them were getting arrested that day, too. I remember seeing up the bus. I remember people having signs. The protesters having signs. And many of these folks I probably know, you know, people I know now, you know, but, and just thinking, look at the signs. Like, all they did with that sign was just like scratch out Nicaragua or scratch out Vietnam or scratched out Iraq and wrote in Afghanistan. It's all the same arguments that they're using. And I didn't understand it's because it's the same wars.

You know, it's the same wars. I remember getting caught up all the time in 09, 10 before I understood this, right? And thankfully, because of people like you, Wormadilla Benjamin, you know, who taught me these types of things, like how to look at this history as a continuous line rather than episodic. But I remember being asked,

okay, well, Matt, what's the difference between Iraq and Afghanistan? If it worked here, you know, and then getting into that whole list of like, well, the culture is different, the modern history, the way the religion is kind of different, the clothes they wear are different, you know, like that, all that nonsense. Instead of recognizing the one thing that was constant,

And the only important thing was the American military was occupying them. That's the only thing that mattered. Everything else was just noise and chatter and conversation. And, you know, until you have that understanding of what is actually moving these events, what is the great force that is causing these, that is putting these wars in motion and sustaining them, then then you're just really just engaged. and polite discourse for the sake of polite discourse well now so if we go back to 2009 matt the argument was that the surge worked in iraq and so that's why we're going to replicate it in afghanistan

now forgive me because i don't want to spend the rest of the time of the interview analyzing the surge in iraq but let's just suffice it to say and you can quibble with me all you'd like to but to get to the bottom of this, but I think bottom line is America fought Iraq War II for the supermajority Shiite Arab population and also help them cleanse the capital city of all their Sunni enemies. So yeah, that worked. And by the end of the surge of 07 into 08, they did accomplish that. And then what they did with the Sunnis who lost, the Sunni Arabs who lost that war, was say to them, listen, if you guys will marginalize, the foreign jihadis who've come to fight with you against us and get rid of them then we'll back

off of you and at that time the sunnis had too many enemies the sheites the kurds especially the americans and plus the egyptian and syrian and libyan bin ladenites Saudis that they didn't want to obey and bow down to anyway so they did that now to the degree that that worked i mean really and i give the local sunnis credit for turning on the bin ladenites much more than i give Petraeus credit for running out to the front of that parade. But anyway, that was the way that they understood it, right? And then he just made a bunch of promises to the Sunnis that he never could keep. And then the Shiites said, don't let the door hitching the ass on the way out,

didn't even thank us for fighting the war for them that whole time. Right. So that was a rock war too. But now, so try to transpose that over onto Afghanistan. And in Afghanistan, you have America foisting a coalition majority of 60%, but it's about 20% Tajik's Uzbek's and Hazas. Zaras. They're not a solid 60% majority of the country. They're a coalition of 20% up against the plurality of the country who are the poshtuns who are 40%. And even though Hamid Karzai was a posh

and some of the handpicked leaders in the government were posthunes, ultimately they were trying to voice the Northern Alliance on the South and the East of the country who were never going to accept that. And then even if you wanted to say make the parallel to what happened in Iraq, then the deal would be to do, God forgive me for putting it this way. But what Biden, Vice President Biden was saying, which was, in a way, silly, was let's just hunt down and kill the last Arab bin Ladenite terrorists in the country and ignore the Taliban because who cares about them? When in fact, there were no Arab bin Ladenites to hunt down and kill anymore. That was all fictitious. But what he was saying was, let's have a small escalation just for,

counterterrorism, in other words, foreign fighters, and at least ignore the Taliban, basically, accept their return. But then they did not do that. They did the whole counter-insurgency was against the Taliban, when what they could have done was actually what they ended up doing at the very end, not in the name of coin, was a lie with the Taliban against ISIS. The more marginal bin Ladenite terrorist revolutionaries of the resistance, a lie with the locals against those cooks, which is ultimately what they did on the way out the door for the last

two, three years of the war, right? Only that's not at all what they did in the surge. So I guess my question to you is just what an idiot is the great American fraud general David Petraeus. And what in the hell did he think that he was doing him and McChrystal and for that matter, Mike Mullen and Robert Gates with this absolute idiot plan to escalate this war? Because they had to have understood it on at least the level that I just explained it, right, which only took me a couple of minutes to say. Like, they understood it at least that well. No, come on.

The parallel didn't parallel. Well, I've been, you know, you do these interviews, right? And you get stuck on words. I'm sure this happens to you, right? You end up using the same word like eight times in an interview and you're feeling stupid at the end. But your brain is so locked in because it's the perfect word to describe them that you can't think of anything else and uh vanglory is what it is these are vanglorious men uh not just

but but the whole the whole cadre the whole cast of these generals um they saw their purpose as being uh what betrayers was able to accomplish in the summer of 2004 when he gets on the cover of newsweek you know with the title of is this the man who's going to win the war in iraq you know I mean, that becomes the purpose of these generals is to achieve their own individual victories to become the greatest general of because that title is up for grabs. Who's the greatest general of the modern era, right? Who's the next Eisenhower at Michael, right? I mean, so that title's up for grab, Scott.

So maybe you're going to be the guy who gets that. And so that means that your narrative is what, you know, you can talk to Danny about this because Danny was part of Petraeus's command in Afghanistan. But, I mean, certainly all the things you relayed there about the evolution of this. And I'm not quibbling with any of it. I could give you plenty of it because I saw it firsthand, both the surge and the escalation and why they chose to do what they did in Iraq by essentially giving the Sunnis their part of the country back.

That was a big part of it. And then as you said, that falls apart when we leave after 2011, you know, but why they didn't do that in Afghanistan or why are you not giving the postures back their population? their people, their land, their cities, their villages, right? You know, in Afghanistan, the A&A, the Afghan National Army, they were really the Army of the Northern Alliance. So the Northern Alliance, right, who were the non-Poshtun plurality represented by the various leftover holdover warlords

from the Soviet Afghan Wars and ones who have fought each other in the 90s, Taliban took out of power in 96. these men became the Afghan government when we put them in power in 2001, and they just continued the civil war. So at no point did the Afghan National Army be anything more than 95% non-Posh Tunes. So even though the United States swore up and down that the Afghan National Army is integrated and it's representative of all the people Afghanistan, no, at the most, the Afghan National Army had only four or five percent Pashtuns. That's it. I mean, when I was in Zawbo province in the southeast, we had seven Afghan battalion commanders down there.

Only two of them spoke Pashto, and this was in a province where it was about 100% Pashtun, right? I mean, so you had five out of seven Afghan battalion commanders plus the brigade commander, I assume, I should probably include in that count, couldn't speak the local language. They were just as illiterate there as I was. And they were just as much of an outsider as I was. And their fathers and grandfathers have fought the fathers and grandfathers are the people we have been fighting. I mean, we were continuing the civil war. And so the idea of doing what we had done in Iraq, where we essentially have pulled

the Shia out of the Sunni areas, that was a big part of the success in bringing down the violence from 07 to, you know, 2011, 2012, was getting the Shia out of the Sunni areas. And then, as you said, when we left, the Shia came back in those areas, that predatory government came back in. That's essentially what happened was happening in Afghanistan, why the people were supporting the Taliban. They didn't want foreign occupation and they didn't want to be repressed by a corrupt and predatory government. Not that hard to understand it. But that goes against the machinations of why you're going to put policies in place. So why did the U.S. get out of Iraq?

U.S. gets out of Iraq. It says we're going to get out of Iraq in the summer of 2008. Why? Because George W. Bush says, we've got to get Iraq out of the elections. If Iraq is in the elections, there's no way McCain is going to beat this Obama guy. Didn't it matter anyway. You know, the economy falls to hell, everything else. Worst financial crisis since the Depression. You know, other things, Republicans are corrupt as hell. You know, I mean, but you, but they're able to get Iraq kind of out of the election because we're getting out anyway, right? And that's Obama's brilliance to make sure that Afghanistan is not in the 2012 election. So when he escalates the war

in 09, he says what? We're going to be getting out by summer of 2011. We're going to begin to drawdown. So by a 2012 election, Afghanistan isn't a thing because we're getting out. Right. So, but what you have to have happen, though, for the Democrats is to have a military victory. They have to be victorious. They have to be better warfighter, be better. Obama be a better commander in chief and that by extension, the Democrats be better at war than the Republicans. So what they need then is to surge to victory in Afghanistan, the good war, right? Not the stupid war, as they described Iraq, which they aren't worrying about that, but not the stupid war, but win the good war. What happens is it doesn't work the way it, you know,

they had, they had hope for. The other thing that happens, too, that precludes all Obama's plans in all this is the Islamic State comes storming across the border into Iraq. And now if Obama starts pulling troops out of Afghanistan as the Islamic State is taking Western Iraq, taking Northern Iraq, takes Bolzol in the summer of 2014, which was when we were supposed to have ended our combat presence, according to Obama, he's going to get crucified. The Democrats are going to do worse in the midterms than they've been doing in the midterms kind of thing, right? You know, I mean, you also have what in the summer of 13 is when there's a group of Pakistani Taliban exiles living in Afghanistan, protected by the CIA and the NDS, that the Afghan intelligence service.

And they hoist the black flag and declare that they are part of ISIS now. Right. That's one of the great stories. Yeah, how the Islamic State and Kurasan comes about. Yeah, they're disaffected Pakistani Taliban guys who are not the same as the Afghan Taliban. Now, let me say there's a great footnote for that, which is a guy named Osnan, Or Osman Bornan. And it's at Afghananalyst.org on the birth of ISIS. Yep. Great article. That's the footnote in Fools, Aaron.

And that's a terrific. I don't even know if their site's still up what those guys are doing. But the Afghan analysis, Afghan analysis network or whatever they were called really was just an absolute gold mine of just people who are living. living in Afghanistan who understood the country and who explained things so well, including these guys that are calling themselves ISIS. It was just a smart marketing move on their behalf. But what they're doing here is that they were brought in by the Afghan intelligence and American intelligence services to try and cause dissension, try and cause a fracture within the Taliban ranks and cause the Taliban to start fighting with amongst themselves.

and that would bring down the Taliban. And, of course, that's not what happened. You know, but that so, yeah, I mean, the whole history of this is just one. You can't even say these that these were honest mistakes or sincere miscalculations. They knew exactly what they were doing. Look, when I resign and the site is still up, Afghan analysts. Okay, yeah, folks. It's Afghanistan dash analysts.

dot org, which I think is a change. I think it used to just be Afghan analysts. Yeah, I mean, so, so like, there are all these resources out there, but, you know, when I resign, I asked Karen at the Washington, put Karen DeYoung at the watch the post, why did you write this big story? It's a front page above the fold, you know, back when people actually read newspapers. And, you know, she said, well, I said, why did you do this? She put so much capital into me.

And she said, well, you know, I asked everyone. I knew at the State Department, at the Pentagon, at the White House, and nobody disagreed with what you were saying. You know, everyone understood what was going on there. Everyone knew was, you know, there was the guy named Sherrod Cooper Coles, who was the British equivalent to Richard Holdbrook. He was a British advisor for Afghanistan and Pakistan. And, you know, Coles, when he resigned in 2011 or 2012, you know, he said the biggest hurdle to peace in Afghanistan was the American military. And he described the great sadness he had in spending these years with otherwise bright, intelligent people who were so earnestly living a bright, shining line, you know, referencing, of course, Neil Shahan's raised towards Vietnam. And that's, you know, what this whole thing is.

You're talking earlier, we were talking earlier about the continuity of all these wars and how, you know, you can, you can make distinctions about their differences, but that doesn't really. matter because it's it's the one constant in all of this that is the only thing that matters. And that's what I would say, and I still say, if you want to understand their Iraq and Afghan wars, read David Halberstam's the best and the brightest and Neil Shaheen's a bright shining lie. And you will understand the American role in Iraq and Afghanistan. Not to mention fool's errand time and Afghanistan. Yeah, but that exactly. And that is, honestly, that is, you know, you're, and this is why people don't like coming on with you, Scott, because you know this stuff better than anybody.

I've talked to other guys who've been out on your show. You're like, I got to go on Scott's show. It's like, oh, man, man, I don't know as much as Scott does. I should be interviewed with you, you know, like that type of thing. So, but no, those books. And of course, you know, enough already, which covers the, you know, and then which covers the war on terror and then, you know, provoked these resources that you're putting out the the uh how authoritative they are uh it's really important i heard the other day you had

uh somebody in ramp and uh um parameters which is a big american oh is that great magazine yeah that's exactly the case i know plenty of people who who have read your stuff or yeah tell tell them more about how awesome that is what happened in ramparts well some american uh colonel uh wrote that this is a book provoked that every serious military officer in the U.S. should be reading to understand how things are, the history of the war in Ukraine, how our policy works, and how everything that comes before, you can't put all these things into separate, I'm paraphrasing, of course, you can't put all these different events and wars into separate boxes, that Syria doesn't get to go in a separate box from Libya or from Ukraine

or from Nicaragua, you know, I mean, like, it's, it's for one thing, the same people. I remember when John Negroponte took over at the U.S. Embassy in Iraq, and I didn't know his history that well. And I, again, I viewed these periods of time as separate and not conjoined, as not the continuous line. So the fact that the guy who was integral in the death squads in Central America, was now showing up in Iraq. And then what starts happening, Negropani took over what? They called it the El Salvador option.

Right, right. That was the El Salvador option. And that was the El Salvador option. It was, well, we're going to take this death squad and we're going to turn it into the army, but we're going to keep part of it a private death so that we can use it for torturing people to death. And this was the military, not the CIA.

And this was directly under David Petraeus. And he hired this guy named Steele was one of the, the Merks who help them implement it. And McChrystal and Petraeus both are implicated in torture here, where Petraeus was overseeing the torture of these men in their cells. And we know that McChrystal was in charge of what they called Camp Nama, which stood for nasty-ass military area, where they tortured their detainees and interrogatees there. Yeah.

And then what happens in Afghanistan, the torture regime comes into there. I forget the exact percentage off the top of my head, but I think it's 65. 70% or more of the detainees we had in Afghanistan reported being tortured. And a lot of that begins. I mean, certainly that was occurring before McChrystal and Petraeus take over in Afghanistan. But it becomes the military effort of it. It becomes part of our real policy. It's just not the CIA doing this.

This is now becomes like established part of, and it's all part of the counterterror campaign. These guys believe in that we're going to make things so horrible. we're going to make these people so afraid of us, they'll be frozen and won't support the Taliban out of fear of us. That was their idea. And they did that. This became then, of course, the night raids, right? The 20 to 25 commando raids every night into Afghan villages in cities by coalition forces along with Afghan commandos, every night landing helicopters, vehicle convoys coming in with their dogs and everything else, shooting lots of people, taking lots of young men and old men away, many of them never to be seen again.

Or when they come back, these people are so messed up from the torture they receive. They can't even talk. And they thought that was going to get people to break away from the Taliban, or at least be so scared of the Americans and the Afghan government that they wouldn't support the Taliban. And of course, what did they do? You know, it's just, it's the red dawn aspect, as if these people thought that in their hubris, in their vain glory, they thought we were. exceptional they really did it's it's it's we have to remember that what we're dealing with here

are a brand of psychopaths when you talk about people like petraeus and the crystal and onierno and alice mattis these people are psychopaths they are um and yeah hang on just one second for me hey you guys this october mckell thorup is once again hosting the free expat money online summit this october 10th through 12th Thorpe is a great dude. How do I know? Well, I toured ancient mine ruins with him in Mexico one time. It was rad. He's a serious expert in residency and citizenship laws and customs around the world. He knows it all, chapter and verse, where he can put your money and put yourself, anywhere in the world you might want to go. He can show you how to acquire second residencies, another real estate, get born citizenship, legally mitigate taxes, set up offshore banking, and more.

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at Libertarian Institute.org slash books. Well, those of you who listen to me tell you to listen to Mike Swanson at Wall Street Window and Tim Fry at Roberts & Roberts Brokerage, Inc. I bought a bunch of gold. Must be doing great right now. It should probably donate to the Libertarian Institute. Robertson Roberts is the best.

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That's rrbi.co. And listen, and especially there's, so stupid to Mattis and Petraeus and Petraeus and their counterinsurgency manual and doctrine and all of that is the most bankrupt pile of crap. I mean, on one hand, everything you just said, we're sending in the Delta Force in the middle of the night to kidnap men out of their beds and torture them to death. And at the same time, well, we're sending in our guys to clear hold and build and win the hearts and minds of the people and make them love us and make them want to be a West European democratic, you know, West Bayesian nation state and adopt American

soldiers and Marines as their security force instead of, you know, their own husbands and fathers and brothers and sons. Who would want to be protected by the male half of their own population, Matt, when they can have American Marines, the same ones, apparently that are dropping out of the sky in the middle of the night and torturing people to death and shooting them in beds. How could they resist accepting their gracious new? Oh, good. It's like the LAPD was just parachuted out of the sky. We're so thankful to have them because they're such angels, right? You imagine if in the movie Red Dawn, that's how it worked. The Russians came in and they protected the Americans from the bad Americans and they built a bunch of bridges and built a bunch

of schools and the Americans embraced the Russians. I think the Cubans were involved in that invasion to the Cubans. Everyone would have got up and walked out of the theater. You know, I mean, but there's also the aspect that it simply doesn't work, this idea of that you're going to kill your way through this insurgency, that we're going to win militarily. Before I left Zobel, before I quit and came home, the task force came through there. I think they were Delta.

They were always, you know, you couldn't tell who they were. I think they were Delta. I talked with these guys. And, you know, because we were like next up, they would kind of, to rotate through the provinces in terms of coming in with all their stuff, all their assets, and just doing a shitload of raids, taking out the top 30 people on our list, right, for our province. And I remember they came through and, like, talking with them about things and, you know, and then I left. And then about six months later, I saw a guy I had been there

with. And he brought up to me, he said, remember they came through? They came through and they killed a bunch of people and they they took out those 2530 whatever top one he said within three months the entire insurgency was back to where it was actually at levels higher than in terms of like you know bombs being put in all our metrics bombs being put in the side of the road and there times like our bases got rocketed whatever you know it was actually higher a few months after our commandos had come through killed all the people we want them to kill the insurgency actually or the i should say resistance because i think that's the more correct term to use the resistance was uh you know not just back where it was it was actually stronger you

know and they could never get that they even though we had all the metrics right even though we had all of our data Obama the person Obama says this you can read this in woodward's book Obama's wars where the generals are telling him the counterinsurgency sir this that the other thing and he says show me where it's worked you guys can't show me where it works because it has never worked you know and and look that whole year long I was doing a show man Robert A. Pape was on my show, and he's like, well, I'm a number crunching political scientist from the University of Chicago, and me and all my grad students research shows that you're just going to cause a bunch of suicide terrorism and you're just going to inspire

a whole new generation of insurgents to join the fight against you. And this whole thing is going to backfire and you shouldn't do that. I bet we'd have to check the record, but I bet that's the spring of 09 where, you know, good old Robert Pape is he's just checking his assumptions at the door as best he can and trying to say what is the data show the data shows that when we do this more people get killed and then we lose anyway that's what the data shows you know come on man

this whole thing and which of course coincides with common sense by the way you know we talk about this you mentioned red dawn and all that the best part of red dawn is when the air force pilot that gets shot down explains that the mexican and the Cubans. They just rolled right up through Texas to Colorado and doesn't mention how that happened. All right. Oh, they did, huh? Well, let me tell you something. There's a reason why Texas is a cliche for gigantic things. There's a reason it used to be its own sovereign nation state. It's gigantic. And it's, you know, bigger than France, bigger than Spain, bigger than Germany,

bigger than Poland, you know, about, you know, or right around there. And in Afghanistan, it's all mountains and deserts and badlands and, and, you know, deep, deep valleys and all of these things. Like, it's just, and it goes to the thing, you know, you mentioned the vanglory, but there's a lot of just willful lying by people. You know, I remember Andrew Bacevich, Colonel Bacevich gave a speech at a think tank.

It was one of these things where, you know, they'll allow one contrarian to get up there and give a speech to. Right. So he got up there and he talked about how we need to invade Mexico. And when we invade Mexico, we'll completely divorce them from their drug economy and we'll teach them to elect good men and we'll build, you know, this and that. And here are all the problems with Mexico and here are all the things that the U.S. Army can do to go down there and remake Mexican society closer to our liking and all.

And the whole place is groaning. Like, this is completely crazy. Oh, yeah, we're going to send all our Marines into the Sierra Madre. That's going to be great. What are you talking about? And then he goes, this is exactly what you guys are saying. We should be doing in Afghanistan, which is half a world away from here. But you think that it makes perfect sense there.

In fact, the only thing going on here is you know you're not going to have to suffer the consequences for advocating the policy. when you wouldn't dare be so insane to propose we try to do this right next door where our supply lines are essentially unlimited we still wouldn't try it in a million years not again anyway not since woodrow wilson and like about a quarter of our guys speak spanish you know i think like my my company in iraq i probably about third of my guys spoke spanish you know i mean like right i mean like all the we would never even consider i'm reminded just what you said there about these people who like the idea of it because there's no consequences. I reminded what George Orwell wrote like when he was over in Spain about,

because of Spanish Civil War, you know, 36 and 39, that was the first real for people who aren't familiar with it, the first real application of modern air warfare, particularly bombing and bombing of civilian, a concentrated, deliberate bombing of civilian targets, right? And Orwell wrote in whenever he was there 36, 37, he was there early, he was really he was he wasn't happy about it but he saw some he had he's optimistic about this idea of aerial bombardment because he thought that maybe the people who support the wars the most

who are always the ones farthest from the front lines would end up with some holes in them right and wouldn't that be the case if if if lindzy graham had to wake up every morning concerned you know or tom cotton or you know it had to wake up every morning concern that they would end up or their kids would end up with holes in them. I mean, that might change things a little bit. And I think that's one of the, you know, things about the American Empire, right? We've got, what Bismarck say about the U.S. We've got weak neighbors to our north and south and fish to our east and west. We have this security here that allows us to have these buffers, right? And that's what we saw last year when the Russians said, look, if there's a war, it's just not going to be limited

to Europe. You know, your idea of a buffer, we're not going to go by that. Something that the United States had, was our policy for decades. We'd have these buffers so that we would be at least like if a nuclear war happens between Russia and the Soviet Union and the U.S. and the Cold War, the idea was hopefully it would be contained to Europe, right? That it would stop before it spread to the United States proper. And now the Russians, of course, are like, no, that's not how we're going to do it. But this idea of safety, this safety that we have, This distance that we have allows people to talk tough in a way that they wouldn't if there were going to be consequences coming.

And I think a lot of us are surprised at the blowback that we've seen from these wars has been limited, that there have been more people wanting to take revenge. I think certainly, you know, watching this genocide in Gaza, the idea that at some point someone's not going to take revenge for the U.S. role in that Gaza. it's our in that genocide it's our genocide as much as it's israel's and i know if there's been some people out there who have done something maybe that guy who drove the truck into the crowd in new Orleans you know at last was it christmas or was it new year's new years yeah yeah right we had didn't hear older and in washington one guy that that that flamethrower attack in boulder somebody

died from that and then the two people were assassinated out in front of the israeli consulate and then just last weekend they say this guy um shot up a wedding and yelled free Palestine while shooting up a wedding at a country club that he used to work at. Like, it's marginal, but it ain't marginal if it's your dad that died in the thing. You know what I mean? And nobody speaks about this better than you do about the incident that gets us into Afghanistan, if you will, although I know that's a very sloppy way of describing that because we were finally involved in Afghanistan for decades before.

But the, you know, the idea of why did the hijackers do what they did? what was what was what was their rationale what were their reasons what was there what was their what were they trying to avenge you know and they laid those out very clearly you know and there are times too where the americans would admit it like you'd have i think there was like a a two-star general from the defense intelligence agency who told congress that well they were trying to provoke a cataclysmic war between the west and the muslim world so that they could you know benefit well bin laden And it's been like, hey, see, he said it right there.

Doesn't that make so much more sense than the Taliban did it because they hate your freedom or Dick Cheney and didn't even bother to put any Iraqis on the planes, you know? Yeah. It was 03 or 04 of bin Laden said something well in lines of all you need to do is send to Mujahideen with the, you know, you know, the far of the point on the planet with the flat, plant the flag of jihad and the American generals would come running and they always lost themselves. Send it to the first street east, he said. And they'll send all their generals racing. Right. And I think he said they'll exhaust the Americans will exhaust themselves economically and morally, I think he said. Like he was, yeah, I mean, and we certainly didn't.

Did I forget to use that quote in enough already? Now I'm wondering if I had spaced out on that one. But, you know, but you did bring up Petraeus. I'm afraid we're going to not talk about this. Great American fraud, David Petraeus, yes. You saw his interview with Ahmed al-Shara. the al-Qaeda boss in Syria earlier this week. You saw that, right?

Yeah, let me check my time here. Okay, yeah, we still got time. Let's talk about that for a minute. So because David Petraeus, he was the commander of Sentcom overseeing the Afghan war with McChrystal implementing it. McChrystal had already tried and failed in Marja before he got cashiered out of there due to the heroic reporting of Matthew, pardon me, Michael Hastings, my old buddy and reported for Rolling Stone. And then they brought him Petraeus. This was smart of Obama. He's like,

hey, guess what? You're demoted. Now you're in charge of the Afghan war, Mr. Counterinsurgency Doctrine. Let's see how you implement it, you know, Godfather of coin. And then so he finished failing there. And then they moved him to CIA, where hilariously, and the CIA put this in the Washington Post, but I believe them that he came and tried to do a coup over at CIA over the Afghan analysts and tried to make them interview all military officers. in Afghanistan for all their opinions. And they were like, no, we're not going to do that. And he tried to do that.

And instead they ratted on him to the post that he was trying to force the CIA to say that he'd done a good job in Afghanistan. When, of course, he completely failed, son of a bitch. But then he got in bed with Hillary Clinton on supporting al-Qaeda in Libya, otherwise known as the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group and Ansar al-Sharia, all of whom had just got home from Iraq War II, where they've been fighting you and your Marine Corps buddies there while you guys were on the side of the Shiites. And then they did what Hillary Clinton called the bank shot to Syria.

And we know that David Petraeus was in charge of this operation. We know this is how Ambassador Stevens got stung at Benghazi in 2012 was because he was overseeing a joint effort with Qatar to channel jihadis and guns off to Syria for the next war. and then but they killed shake yaya liby in pakistan and i'm an al-zawahari put out a podcast that said wouldn't it be funny if you guys killed some americans in bengazi since they think they're so clever they can just build an outpost right in the middle of our town and um so that's what happened there but then they continued on anyway and petraeus didn't get cashiered out of there until he got caught giving above top secret documents to a prostitute in exchange for her writing a book about what a great guy he was, and sexual favors. And then so he got, and by the way, we heard tell that that was the CIA that did that coup against him, too, that they turned him into the FBI because they hated him so damn much, which makes sense because everyone hates him so damn much. The great American fraud, David Petraeus, who belongs in prison for the rest of his life,

just for the leak alone, never the mind his gigantic failures in fighting for Iran in Iraq War two and his massive escalation and failure in Afghanistan. But then, so this goes right back up to then what you're mentioned in there with Al-Shara, aka Abu Mohammed al-Jalani, the new dictator of Syria and his appearance there with David Petraeus, that these guys go way back. David Petraeus had switched sides in the Afghan war, pardon me, in Iraq War II. I mean, supposedly remember the awakening of the Sunnis. were against bin Ladenites like this, but not, apparently he got along with them just fine

as long as they're on the other side of the line. And so now that's the background, right? This was Petraeus, CIA director Petraeus's operation to commit this highest treason in probably all of American history in post-September 11th, post-Iraq War II, backing Al-Qaeda in Libya and Syria. And now here he is on stage, bragging and boasting about it with his buddy. Right. And the two quotes that stand out for me, for people who haven't seen this, the two money quotes from that interview he did this week with what Shirar was, Petrae is saying to Sharra, I'm a big fan of yours. And then as well saying, your success is our success. Right. I mean, so take everything you just described there, Scott, that history and how many Americans died in Iraq and Afghanistan for the reason of al-Qaeda. I mean, you go. to the homes of the kids that were killed over there or like the homes with the widows or the children who grew up without their dads or some moms. You know, it's the, the reason is for Al Qaeda. We are preventing another 9-11.

You know, that was all, we could talk about all the nonsense involved in that. But, you know, that's what so many gold star families believe because it's all they have to hold on to. And I don't want to burst. I don't want to break into their home and tell them otherwise because that's all they've got. And I know what would come of them if they failed to hold out of that. If they had to embrace the reality is that their loved ones died for nothing, worse than nothing, for the dying for the vanglory of people like Petraeus and Allen and the crystal and O'Dierno and all these other ones, right? That that dissent, that abyss that would, they'd have to enter, you know, that blackness.

I don't want that for anyone so they can hold on to their beliefs, however false they are as to why their loved ones die. But, you know, I mean, the idea, though, that embracing al-Qaeda, thinking that we could utilize them, even though it has blown up over and over again. I remember in summer 2012, I met up with a friend of mine who was very senior on the DIA desk, the defense intelligence agency desk for Iraq. and normally a very cheerful, exuberant guy, and he is just, I mean, just long in the face and depressed.

And I say, what's going on? And he explains this. This would have been June or July of 2012. This is what we're doing. We're going to use these guys to try and take down the Assad. Or we are using these guys to try and take down the Assad government. And he said something along the lines. I always remember him saying this.

And we somehow believe that they won't turn around and go back into Iraq where most of them came from. you know, that they're going to, that they're going to honor what is literally many parts of the Iraq-Syrian border, an imaginary line in the sand. They're going to honor that line in the sand, you know. And so just not just the betrayal of, the betrayal of why these Americans died supposedly in Iraq, in Afghanistan, alone, 9-11, Cobar Towers, the embassy bombings, you know, et cetera, et cetera, the coal, all these things. Like, people who actually do want to fight us, like, these been, Not a lot of them, you know, not a lot of them, but we are doing everything we can now to utilize them and to grow their ranks for our purposes. So not just, again, the betrayal of the war, of the effort, of whatever you want to call that, right? But stupidity in thinking that was going to work. I'm not sure which is worse. You know, either the Machiavellian or the betrayal. I don't know it's maccvillian stupidity or the betrayal i don't know what's worse i really don't you know but this idea was and so now you have fast forward all these years later these men on the stage together

um you just see uh the reality of what the american empire uh looks like how it exists what it's what what what it and so from there where do you think that's going to go you know i mean but we had this before i mean anyway i'll stop there unless you go because i'm getting myself worked up Yeah. No, it's okay. No, you're exactly right. And then, look, it isn't just Washington did this or the Pentagon did this or Donald Rumsfeld did this. Literally, it was David H. Petraeus, who turned the Bada Brigade into the Iraqi army and fought this war for the Ayatollah Sistani and for that matter, Khamini. And now, why is it that Jolani's success is, our success in Syria. It's because it's half undoing that error that, well, if we put Iran up two pegs in Baghdad, at least we took them down a peg in Damascus. But who was it who put Iran up two pegs in Baghdad? Right. Not just America, but literally this guy, right? First he armed the Sunni insurgency in Mosul and then they just took all the money and guns and ran and started killing

Americans with them all. So then in his discreet, that was in 04. And then in his disgrace, he went down to Baghdad and then he started building up. You talk about the El Salvador option with Negroponte. That was all in part and parcel, hand in glove with David Petraeus and the job of turning the bottom brigade of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution into the Iraqi army, which it is to this day. And so the unlimited brazen, treason and hypocrisy and by just this, such a small cast of characters right like this is all just who gets to have thanksgiving over at the kagan's house these are the people who have ruined our entire everything here yeah and and for for self for self-gain for self-interest you know and all those that attach onto the petraeus types

that it becomes like a cult i mean these are the little fish swimming under the mouth of the shark type of deal and i mean so they go along i remember when i was leaving afghanistan and had a to go meet with McChrystal staff. And this was just the greatest bunch of sycophants you could ever assemble. I mean, and their arguments as to why I was wrong boiled down to, well, because General McChrystal doesn't think so.

Yeah. You know, like that type of, like that was it. I mean, I'm not exaggerating. That was it. You know,

there was like, no, Matt, you're missing this. No, but here in Nangahar, this just happened. And we really think that if we build it,

no, it was all really, you know, betray us just to continue to elaborate on us, because it's important. This is really, watch that clock. Okay. When he's in Mosul, he's sending report in the early years of the war, when he's got his command in Mosul, he's sending reports back to Baghdad, to the Corps and to the, you know, saying, you know, things are good here.

We're really progressing to the point that when his unit is replaced, they don't replace his unit with another division. They replace it with an armored cavalry regiment. So the troops we put up that are replaced McChrystal, because he's saying things are going so well, which he's lying about, we end up putting less troops up there than are needed. And then, of course, not long after third ACR gets there, it all completely blows up and goes to hell, Mosul, Talafar, other parts. You know, and that's just one example. It was like that. Then he goes to men sticky, the training command, sets up these desquads. They lose 300,000 weapons, or however many of the number was.

How, I mean, you have in the great, in the great adage about this is a general can lose a war, not get in trouble, a private can lose a rifle and end up in a stockade, that's exactly what happens here. You know, you have a general who gives away all these hundreds of thousands of weapons to create these death squads and there's no accountability. Not even on a basic level of like, where do weapons go, this guy, you know, lost all these weapons. I mean, and so it just, you know, you understand this and you see that, well, how then, how, how is this happening with Ukraine? How is this happening with, with Gaza? How is it going to happen with anything else? Because this is the way our system works. And it's people like betray us who understand it, who get to the top, who end up being able to conduct these catastrophes, end up aligning themselves and working with our enemies.

But then also, too, are the ones who get to go and flip the coin out of Super Bowl. yeah exactly and everybody gets to pretend like they never did anything wrong at all here he is on stage with an al Qaeda terrace and he was like yeah good old David Petraeus what do we know about him nothing I guess yeah and Shirar's guys it's not like they've really have them in their way

and they haven't been doing anything bad recently they just killed thousands of thousands of people they're doing it right now massacred them burning Christian villages this week as we're recording this is happening okay listen I'm sorry we got to go and we spent this whole interview we didn't talk about There's a new movie out and you're in it.

It's called Bodyguard of Lies. And I didn't neglect it this whole interview long just because I'm jealous that he didn't include me in the thing, even though I wrote the single best book about the war in Afghanistan. I told you did tell them you need to, I did tell them you need to interview Scott Horton. No one knows this better. I asked them, I told him if you interviewed Danny Davis, but they just. Anyway, it's okay. I'm sure it's great.

I saw a short clip of it where they're interviewing you and that's good enough for me. So give me a review copy as soon as you can. I'll still help promote it. I'm sure it's great. And I hate that war. And so I want people to know as much about it as possible so as to try to prevent future similar ones. So thank you again very much for your time and for everything, Matt. You're great.

Oh, absolutely, Scott. Right back at you, man. And, yeah, keep doing what you're doing. Oh, and by the way, are you still recording? If people haven't listened to your interview with Jason Jones from a couple weeks ago, go back and listen to that interview. One of the best you've ever done and one of the best explanations of war i think i've ever heard i was on the gym i was on the treadmill and i had a hold back

of tears at time because he really he really got to me you know what he was saying was true yeah yeah yeah that's really something else all right thank you again man appreciate all right the scott horton show is brought to you by roberts and roberts brokerage ink moondos artisan coffee tom woods liberty classroom a ps radio news and dissident media subscribe to the show at Scott Horton.org, Scott Horton Show.com, Libertarian Institute.org, YouTube.com slash Scott Horton Show,

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