the, the, the, there's an old saying war is hell. it is hell, it's full of death and destruction and the worst of human kind. in the meantime, war is more complicated than most people realize. there are legal and illegal ways to go about waging war and war crimes and crimes against humanity are all too frequent. perhaps more importantly, the effects of war on the human psyche can be devastating. just imagine the effects

work and have on the people fighting them when those people understand what's happening. and when they have an appreciation for the legal justification for war, it's called moral injury. i'm john kerry. ok, welcome to the whistle blowers the . 2 2 2 2 2 2 matthew, whoa, is a former soldier, a former diplomat and a whistleblower in 2007 after his 2nd deployment to iraq, post traumatic stress disorder. moral injury and severe depression took over his life and he began drinking heavily. thoughts of suicide became his constant companion. in 2012, he stopped drinking and sought to take care of his mental health. in 2016, he was diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury in addition to the moral injury and depression. and all of this came after his whistle blowing from 2002 to 2008. matthew worked on the

afghanistan and iraq moore's on police and operations issues at the pentagon and at the state department interspersed during that period. matthew was an active duty member of the us military. he took part in the american occupation of iraq 1st and so heading province with a state department, reconstruction and governance team. and then in unbar province, as a marine corps company commander in 2008. he was assigned to afghanistan, but in 2009 he resigned in protest of the american escalation of the war there. since then, he's been a senior fellow with a center for international policy. matthew, who is bravery in standing up to the might of the american military industrial complex has been recognized repeatedly by his peers. he's the recipient of the written our prize for truth telling. and he was named as a defender of liberty by the committee for the republic. matthew ho, welcome to the show. thanks so much for being with us. hi, john. it's good to see you. thank you for having me. i'm. i'm very happy to see you

matt. i, i want to begin by telling our viewers that you and i are friends and i am thrilled that you're here with us. your story is so important to tell. and at the same time, it's also very complicated. you are progressive politically. you are also a patriot. so let's begin with your career. tell us how you began in the military and then how you transitioned to the state department. sure, and yeah, it is complicated like most everyone's lives are complicated, not nothing is, are really straightforward. and even years afterwards and you look back, you wonder how does that happen? how do i get to that point? how am i here now? so um, but i graduated college, i work for a little bit in finance, so i was bored. this was the late ninety's. i want to do something bigger with my life. want to be part of something important or do something serious. want to challenge myself. i end up joining the marine corps and i went to officer candidate school on january of 1998. uh sir. uh, was it, uh, it was an open house. japan for

a number of years, was in the pentagon and then ended up going to the rock wars. and after being in iraq where it's twice moved over to the state department where i was appointed as a foreign service officer. and he was in my that 3rd deployment to where that time to afghanistan with the state department as a political officer, when i was, you know, morally and intellectually broken, the dishonest, these are the wars was, was, was crippling me. i was a, so you mentioned no suicide all at that point because of what i had done, what i had taken part in. and so seeing the escalation of that war and afghanistan by their obama ministration i chose to resign rather than they continue to take part in the wars. and when i did so i did so to quit, to walk away from it all, hoping i could leave it all behind. and here we are almost 14 years later, still talking about it because the reality is the wars are still going on. and even in afghanistan, where there's no more american troop presence,

the war goes on. yes. so the asking people, the suffering goes on, is just a different phase of that work. you're absolutely right. you and i are similar in that following the 911 attacks. we wanted to serve our country, we believed that we were the good guys and we were supportive, at least early on of us policy in the region. we both drew a line at iraq. however, i worked on the rock war from ca. ready headquarters, i was opposed to it from the beginning. you were on the ground in iraq. you were opposed to it from the beginning. tell us about that experience and about what you saw there. all right, so excuse me. so i left uh uh, from the secretary to navy's office to go to a rock. so i was a pretty junior officer in a very high level office. and so i had probably more than awareness of what had been occurring and the distance between what was officially being said about the war and what was actually occurring in a rock. so in that 1st year, so as,

as the white house, the pentagon and the major media reported that things were going ok, it wasn't so bad, it just took me to time to shake out. i had the intelligence in front of me as well as colleagues, friends of mine in the marine corps who were in iraq, who were, you know, saying this is not going well at all. so by the time i get to a rock my 1st time in spring of 2004, i had this idea that this war, of course, at that point we understood to be a lie. we understood. there were no weapons of mass destruction. there were no ties to apply to, etc, but also to that this war was a colossal era for american foreign policy. that what we had done was catastrophic, not just for the rocky people, but for the entire region in the repercussions. we're going to be something that the united states is going to have to deal with for years and years to come. so you look at it from that, that policy perspective of what we did and what resulted from that cause. so many

fires cause so much instability that you almost have to look at it and say ma'am, was planned. because how could anyone be someone comment in but i think is both you and i, john no, yes, that incompetency. certain that in competency certainly does exist in those on full display in the iraq war. i think one of the things that we think you would agree with this and this gets into this idea of moral injury, is that even though you disagree with it, you take part because you think you can do some good. you think that you can be a moral agent that you will retain your own moral agency. the reality is that in something like when or you cannot, you're, you're, you're, you're nothing compared to that leviathan to that sports of nature. and so you become subsumed by it and you become an agent of the war. so whatever, however you think you're going to do good, however, you're thinking your own bubble in your own spaces. you will do well that you will, you will not harm others that you will have a white hat on. the reality is, is this is by taking part in the war. you're wearing a black hat. oh,

you're absolutely right, matt. you were in the middle of a promising career in diplomacy and national security when you were assigned to afghanistan, but you took exception to us policy there in a big way. and you resign from government. what was happening at the time that like you to that decision? i love personally, i was, i was again, like i said before, intellectually morally broke and then i, i think that's the best way to describe it. i had just lied to myself for so long about these wars gone on with the war as betraying all kinds of principles and values that i held. and that is the essence of more injury that you transgress that . well, you're your core foundations of who you are and whether those be inspired by religious or ethical, or moral or historical or what have you. under paintings, you've transgressed those and it, and it's a darkness that is hard to describe unless you had experience it. and what i planed to people i ought to point out to people is go back to high school,

go back to macbeth and recall lady macbeth and having the blood on her hands and how she can get that blood off her hands. and she didn't even do the killing right sheets, but she was involved with it and that guilt assumes her anomaly destroys her. and i think when people reference an understanding the in the larger human sense, the largest and is larger idea of regret, guilt, shame, and how powerful those things are taking part in the worst. continuing to lie. and then getting to ask a lie to myself about what i was doing, and then getting to afghanistan and, and say, thinking okay, maybe this will be different than a rock. maybe this time where we'll have a purpose. maybe this and ministration will have some objective in terms of actually like bringing about stability, bringing about some end to the suffering, the asking people doing something that actually promotes american security rather than continuing to jeopardize it by have by, you know, conducting these occupations. and so seeing that the obama ministration was no

different than the bush administration, seeing that the escalation of that war, which was a mass of escalation of the war member when brock obama comes in the office. there's about 3035000 american troops in afghanistan about equivalent number of contractors and about 15000 nato troops. by 18 months later there is a quarter 1000000 man western the army composed of us troops, nato troops, and contractors and afghanistan. so it was a mass of escalation of the war, seeing that, that was just going to fuel the insurgency, give reason for the taliban, allow them to have that credibility as a national liberation army, which most afghans wouldn't agree with. but when you put a gun to their head and say, hey, let's take the foreigners or pick the taliban. unfortunately, main parts of afghanistan, they choose a top. it's a seeing all this understanding it, but then realizing that it was not at all different than our rock. right. knowing where i was, uh, that was uh at my point where i said i have to leave this and i did,

and resigned in protest. and, you know, since then i've gone to work with a lot of great people, including yourself, with tremendous professionals, people who love their country and who speak out against the wars against the machinations of, of a foreign policy a cobble, basically that's dictated by mega mania and read right, and we do this because we love our country and we don't want to see it committing the citizens that it has committed for so long. what was the fallout like for you when you made your decision? you you resigned and then went public with your objection to us policy? i know in the whistleblower community of course you were. you were hailed as a hero. what was it like for you on your former colleagues, colleagues, did you get any support? and i got a lot of support actually i had a tremendous amount of support from my, my state department colleagues at the time. so i was involved with problems with the state department in afghanistan and my colleagues who were in the other more

touring provinces. okay. i understand or agree with medium bassett or, and we actually had a deputy ambassador and cobble as well. they agree with me, the deputy ambassador said to me when i was resigned and you know, i have, i have children that are military age and i would not allow them to serve here in afghanistan. this was not worth it. you know, the bad bachelor ichenberry agree with me. bassett or holbrook who is the president special representative for afghanistan. pakistan said he agreed with me. you know, they gave, they gave the president my resignation letter in the present and read it. and, you know, mean, so there was the, in, among my colleagues from the marine corps, including uh, you know, men who were in afghanistan, nothing but support. where i receive, pushed back from, was from the senior levels of the pentagon leadership and the senior levels of the state department leadership. um, yeah, i could tell you that one of the things, the pentagon did through central command, which general day with the trash has been charged with the time they hire as cheated communications firm to discredit me. you know, and this is, you know,

so when you have a whistle blower, someone who's speaking out against, you know, they established the authority that established the authority uses all the resources, it has to clash them. so as i was speaking out and i was getting a lot of media attention, i was getting on cnn and i was being interviewed by, you know, big newspapers and so on, so forth. the seat of communication firm, hired by general, betray us would bad mouth me. and then they've got to the point where they would say things such as, look, if you're a type of journalist, your type of media organization that wants to work with someone like mount, how we don't think you're the type of organization that we want to work with so basically, uh too many, and i had this the path and were producers booker tankers, would show me these documents, where the pentagon was se to the media organizations. you can either talk to this guy who opposes the war, or you can go on helicopter rides with our generals. next time you come out and then we're speaking with state and defense department was the blower. matt ho about

his decision to resign from the us government in protest of the wars in iraq and afghanistan. we're gonna take a short break, stay tuned for more of our conversation. we'll be right back. 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 highly the, let's see, the, with the temporary charities 3 degree higher already from the neighboring down woods . you know, right? because i big down ships. haven't chucked the trees, but in tucker in the name of development. and he's our 1st to become a capital like a single or we are all going for, are the noisiest you then discovering all degrees to be gone. so when you distract nature, it takes every range of the

take a fresh look around his life. kaleidoscopic isn't just a shifted reality distortion by power to division with no real opinions. fixtures designed to simplify will confuse really one say better wills, and is it just as a chosen few fractured images presented as 1st? can you see through their illusion going underground? can the welcome back to the whistle blowers, i'm john terry. onto were speaking with whistle blower. matt. whoa about his decision to resign from government service in protest of the rock and afghanistan wars that thanks again for being with us. hey, thanks john. for help me with you. glad to have you, matt. you've paid

a higher price for your experience, and most whistle blowers have. besides the professional fall out for resigning your position, you suffered personally. you've spoken very publicly about p d. s. d. about depression and moral injury for example. those are 3 things that i was also diagnosed with in the past. tell us about your experience and how you dealt with these challenges and they really are difficult challenges. they are, they are and i of course i have to say, you know, my, my, uh the punishment was nothing compared to yours and you went to prison for speaking the truth. so uh, humbled to have you say that to me just think, why did the, the, you know, so you do you have post traumatic stress disorder? you have, i have dramatic brain injury and more of the injury i can tell you the, the traumatic brain injury which comes from explosive related blast. and this is something people are becoming more familiar with basically because of the body

armor of the vehicle armor. we had in the rock and ask them wars, we survive, things walked away from explosions that in any previous were, would have killed us. and this is why you see such as very high numbers of, of, of, of brain injuries. we, we have, i have marines and my command to on a 8 month deployment, 78 month deployment would have 10 explosions, hit their vehicles, you know, and they would block away. we dust ourselves off and then similar but different to what the football players and boxers and rugby players go through. there is a brain injury that develops over time is late and see to it. so for me, the symptoms of my brain injury didn't really manifest until around 20142015 or so . and but i could tell you as the bill of lading is, that was as painful as that was and manifested through just just terrible migraines . that would last as long as 18 hours of stream fatigue. i. cognitive dysfunction

where i couldn't use a computer, i, you know, as bad as that was that was nothing compared to the moral injury. that was nothing compared to that regret back deal. that shame, you know, his years i went uh wanting to kill myself, planning to kill myself. slowly try and do it throughout the whole, but also to always having a plan in place and coming close to carrying out that plan a number of times to kill myself. is that how to do with the guilt? the regret the shame to take important things in iraq. ok that you know to this day, i won't speak about that. so there are, there are, after so invisible wounds that have always been with warriors of every conflict. going back, we noticed, like a shakespeare wrote about this, the greeks and the romans wrote about this home or writes about this in the early. it means this idea that there is a moral components of war, devastation and ruinous aspect to the soul that comes from war. is something that

is not on known is something that should be surprising, surprised nobody. and that exists in every generation that goes to war regardless of how good or bad the war is. possibly it's. there's more of extent to this say in a war like a rock or vietnam where you don't understand the purposes where there are so many allies behind the war that it's quote bad war. but certainly we know that in the good moore's united states has had and put good quotes right. for the civil war world war 2, the veterans from those wars carried moral injury with them at, at levels where they were killing themselves at high high rates. similar to save veterans, so this is not anything that is new or unique to my generation, our generation of combat veterans. this is something that has always been with combat veterans as a consequence of war,

this invisible because more does kill your soul to catch you 2 things, no matter how you justify it, is simply on justifiable and look, i think the best way understand is, is that if killing came naturally to human beings, the united states army, united states marine corps, would not spend millions and millions of dollars training recruits to kill. you know, if you're a young man, you joined the marine corps. are you going into the infantry? i should say woman now, because when they can go in the imagery as well, you will spend 13 weeks and recruit training. then you'll go to advanced infantry training, which i believe now is about 10 weeks long. then you will go to your unit and you will spend the rest of your time on your contract with the marine corps training the kill because that's what they have to do to condition you to get to the point where you can go across the planet and kill a stranger in their homeland problem is when you come back, you're not dream washer condition. so when you come back, that conditioning where's off. and that's where the moral injury starts to set it.

and as you have to then rectify, you have to deal with what you took part in the what that means to whom you believe yourself to be as a person, missus, without transportation comes and met. you do a great deal of work now with groups like veterans for peace, veterans, veteran intelligence professionals for sanity the world beyond war. some of the more important piece groups here in the united states. what kind of reception have you had among former colleagues in government regarding the work that you're doing now toward piece uh, you know, it's really well accepted with the exception of those who have gone into the military industrial complex. the people who've gone to work for defense, contractors, weapons manufacturers. and even then among them there is uh, almost in the barrack nature, a lot of time and what they do when they will offer the site, the golden handcuffs. right. they will say i got 3 kids were going to college soon and what, what, you know, what, what else could i do? you know, i came out of marine corps. i came out of the navy,

it came out of the army. you know, what was i supposed to do this was, this was an opportunity for me to continue to provide for my family to the golden hancocks are very real. but i generally, um, you know, and it's hard to for me to, to think of a time where somebody has told me off because i'm now a peacenik or whatever. uh, so it's rare that that happens. and usually it comes with somebody who's still attached to the military. they're still in the pentagon, they're there, they've got a government, a, an eagle or stars on their shoulder as you know, or they work for the defense industry. so i think most people, if we know there's a tolling, we know that the majority of veterans of the rock and asked him worse, think those wars were a mistake, think they should not even slot a higher percentage of veterans. think that and do the general population in general population by ward my wide margin believes that so we will, you can, you can see, see that those of us who went there and saw and experienced it took part in it. and i think a lot of people don't speak out because there is a shame there is regret,

but there's also too of a false patriotism, a junior wisdom that exists in this country that does not allow for descent that does not allow for patriarch uh, descent uh you know, you go to a football game, you go to a hockey game and you know that the spectacle, the, the jingle isn't that exist there. but it makes people feel as if they can question. and i think that's a lot of what we do with our work. you know, i work with an organization called as an hour media network. and that's a lot of what we try and do is try and educate people about war trying to show that there are people who took part, who are military veterans who believe that we should be conducting war making throughout the globe, stopping around with 800000800 base is around the world. you know that we should have some restraint and we should be investing in our country as opposed to conducting military ventures across the globe. i think you're absolutely right. more recently, you're a candidate for office as the green parties nominated for the united states senate

from the state of north carolina in 2020. the democrats worked hard to keep you off the ballot. you were a threat to them apparently, but you went to court and you one. tell us about that experience. what was it that the democrats were so afraid of? to see there is an entitlement that both of the major political parties possess that they feel they own the process. and they've gone to great lengths over the decades to ensure that. and we see that width about access laws that make it very difficult for independent or 3rd party candidates to get on the ballot as well as gerrymandering. yeah. which makes it so that way, you know, and you see this where the parties were clued pro public. i just had a great story about jim cliburn, the, the venerated democratic congressman from south carolina to colluded with the republican party, to make sure that his seat was protected. he was willing to give the republican

some more c and the disenfranchised black voters. as long as he was taken care of it, i think that's what you see there is. there's a greed, there's an entitlement within the parties that also to a desire to protect their donor base. so for us, we got on about we got all signature that we needed. we far surpassed the number that we needed actually. and then we were hit with allegations of corruption of fraud. as they said, we turned in thousands of ford signatures, which we did not to and but we had to go to court because they have the lawyers, they have the money. they know they, this is what they do. they know how to put in all these obstacles almost as of as soon as we turned in our signatures to get on the ballot, they just went to the playbook and ok, this is what we do next. and we file a lawsuit. we file complaints of the state board of elections. we do a, b, c, d, and try and exhaust up. and fortunately, we were able to not be exhausted. we're able to persevere, hold on how to a great attorney who was pro bono. otherwise we wouldn't been able to do it cuz we

couldn't afford to do so. and we were able to stay on the ballot and we won twice. we want in federal court. the one in federal appeals. courtney was the one state court. so it was very serious and in the threat of what i mean, i, this was a, i was running in the us senate raise one was to try and get about the goals were to try and get valid access, try to trying freight independent political parties that was one of the goals, but then the other goals were to basically, you know, try and get certain issues into the race, medicare for all them rank control, especially as well as ending the war on drugs. because those are things dominate life in north carolina. and so, you know, insurance, we were never a threat. we would never would have been us right. uh, i raise the most amount of money for any non democratic or republican candidate in the country last year as one told. and i raised $200000.00. that's nothing, you know, in my race and my senate raise the 2 major candidates, the democratic public and they raised a $100000000.00. so we were never going to be a threat. but what it was is that we were stepping into their turf. we were,

we were broaching on we, we were encroaching on their entitlement. how dare we that type of thing. and so they thought the squash as they also know that they're there. right. and they know they're corrupt and they're afraid of, of anyone saying anything that might insult or hurt their donors, such as advocating reg, control, or for medicare for all you know, in, in a major race. i would like to thank our guest, matthew ho for joining us today and for sharing his experience in whistle blowing and thank you to our viewers for watching. sometimes the most profound sentiments are the simplest. my husband got the once told us to observe good faith and justice toward all cultivate peace and harmony. with all i appeal for a cessation of hostilities. he said, not because you are too exhausted to fight, but because war is bad and its essence, we will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children. candy was right, of course, even if we haven't yet learned our lesson. john,

curiously, when you've been watching the whistle blowers, thanks again for joining us until next time. 2 2 2 2 2 the the 1935 fast is easily led by dictator benito mussolini decided to expand its colonial empire in africa and take over ethiopia. by that time l. p. a was the only fully independent states on the continent. back in 1896, its inhabitants were able to veto young colonists and defend their independence.

since then, rome craved for revenge before the humiliating defeat. in the morning of october 3, 1935. without any announcement, the foxes attacked ethiopia, and bombarded it most severely. ethiopian armed forces bod, courageously. but the roots allergy of the italians knew no bounds. they use not only massive bombing attacks on civilians, but also chemical weapons, toxic gases. this change the course of the war. as a result of the occupation of ethiopia by the fascist 760000 people were killed. the capture of the african state was committed with europe's death and approval. britain and france recognize the annexation, giving the green light to a further fastest expansion in the world. and davy and the way for the outbreak of world war 2.

the the russian troops repel key of culture offensive attacks on the front lines and on bost best of the ukrainian president tours. nato member states with a fresh appeal for all that ammunition. also coming up on the program, the us treasury secretary takes aim at china as far as the foreign firms. she continues or visited aging and made inflamed economic tensions between the 2 of us. the united nation sends more emergency a to help record.