11/7/19 Matthew Hoh on the Unwinnable War in Afghanistan

Matthew Hoh discusses the extraordinary difficulties in resolving the complex political and ethnic tensions in Afghanistan, something that the U.S. military has been trying to do for going on 20 years. Hoh says that during his time there he saw lots of practices by the Kabul government that clearly weren’t any better than tribal or Taliban rule, like bribery, extrajudicial killings, and women treated as second-class citizens. It’s no wonder that the Afghan people, particularly Pashtuns, are less than thrilled with the American-backed central government. Hoh also shares some of the difficulties in attracting a coalition of principled antiwar activists across left and right in America.

Discussed on the show:

Life under the Taliban shadow government
“The Shattered Afghan Dream of Peace” (The New Yorker)
Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction

Matthew Hoh is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and formerly worked for the U.S. State Department. Hoh received the Ridenhour Prize Recipient for Truth Telling in 2010. Hoh is a member of the Board of Directors for Council for a Livable World and is an Advisory Board Member for Expose Facts. He writes on issues of war, peace and post-traumatic stress disorder recovery at matthewhoh.com.

This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: NoDev NoOps NoIT, by Hussein Badakhchani; The War State, by Mike Swanson; WallStreetWindow.com; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; Washinton Babylon; Liberty Under Attack Publications; Listen and Think Audio; TheBumperSticker.com; and LibertyStickers.com.

Donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal, or Bitcoin: 1Ct2FmcGrAGX56RnDtN9HncYghXfvF2GAh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5RDrNwbpPs

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Following is a computer-generated transcript of the episode.

All right shall welcome Scott Horton Show. I am the director of the Libertarian Institute editorial director off anti war dot Com author of the book Fool's Errand. Time to End the War in Afghanistan and I recorded more than 5000 interviews going back to 2003 all of which are available at Scott horton dot or you can also sign up for the podcast feed. Full archive is also available at youtube dot com slash scott Horton Shoah. All right, you guys introducing Matthew Ho. He was a captain in the Marine Corps in Iraq, War two and then in Afghanistan. He worked for the State Department, and he blew the whistle and broke the chain of command in 2009 in a heroic attempt to stop Obama's surge there. And he's been a great critic of especially the war in Afghanistan ever since then.

Read More So, uh, welcome back to the show, Matthew. How are you doing? Good. Good. Scott, how are you? I'm doing great. Happy to have here, So listen, um well, this is kind of a weird way to have the conversation. I was just talking with this Afghan reporter, and, um, he's there, and he's the one who knows. Um, and I'm just here. And what the hell do I know? Um, And now you're, like, split the difference for me a little bit, I guess because you've been there. But you're still just a white guy. American like me. So what do you know to? But anyway, me and him kind of gotten a little bit of Ah, And the thing is, he wanted to make a different point, so he didn't really didn't really hash this out all the way. Um but I was saying that listen, instead of bringing the Taliban into Kabul, why not just call timeout where everyone is now? Since the Taliban are really dominant in all of the south and the east, in the predominately Pashtun areas of the country. And since the Tajiks Uzbeki alliance is dominant in the north and the land around Kabul that maybe just kind of called time out there he was more interested in the idea of Kabul and the Taliban working out an agreement and integrating them into the parliamentary government instead, I guess, but the point I'm trying to get to here,