Matthew Hoh joins Eric Paul Erickson, host of The Open Highway podcast, to discuss his experience as a foreign policy strategist, disabled combat veteran and former State Department official who made worldwide headlines in 2009 when he resigned to protest the Obama administration’s escalation of the War in Afghanistan.
If I was to resign in protest now, I do not believe I would have nearly the same amount of media attention and I believe that is purposeful.
Today I saw a “support our troops” magnetic ribbon on a pickup truck. I used to see more of them, especially in the Bush/Cheney years of the Afghan and Iraq Wars.
Across recent administrations, one thing has remained consistent: deception about the Afghan War. Veteran Matthew Hoh joins host Chip Gibbons on episode eight of the podcast “Primary Sources” to discuss the decades of American intervention in Afghanistan and Hoh’s personal experience as a whistleblower—which was met with fierce pushback from the Pentagon.
The Military Industrial Complex, best defined as an insulated network consisting of the US military establishment, the corporations that market and sell goods and services to the U.S. military and allied governments, and Capitol Hill, creates a permanent warfare state which helps cause our endless wars.
Imagine you’re President Joe Biden. You need $2 trillion dollars to fund one of your stated priorities – infrastructure. You learn of a war plane, the F-35 Lightning II, that would cost as much as $1.7 trillion to buy, field and maintain over the next 50 years. It’s $200 billion over budget, and more than ten years behind schedule. What do you do?