Independent journalist Dahr Jamail discusses the Ft. Hood massacre, repeated deployments that are breaking military morale, high veteran suicide rates, the blowback from waging a civilizational war against Islam and how the political value of dead soldiers decreases in relation to their distance from home.

MP3 here. (23:49)

Dahr Jamail, an independent journalist, is the author of The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches From an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq. Jamail reported from occupied Iraq for nine months as well as from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Turkey over the last five years.

Kelley B. Vlahos, contributing editor at The American Conservative magazine, discusses the indirect U.S. and NATO funding of the Taliban, David Kilcullen’s mixed bag of Afghanistan policy assessments, Obama’s lack of allies in the State Department, the military’s seizing of initiative from the indecisive Obama administration and how the U.S. embrace of India prompts Pakistan to increase support for the Taliban.

MP3 here. (46:50)

Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, a Washington, D.C.-based freelance writer, is a longtime political reporter for FoxNews.com and a contributing editor at The American Conservative. She is a featured Antiwar.com columnist and Washington correspondent for Homeland Security Today magazine.

Aaron Emery, member of the Campaign for Liberty, discusses the war-weary recalled soldiers who must choose redeployment or jail, how stop-loss acts as a backdoor draft, recruiting campaigns that play on a “coming of age” mythology and how an indoctrinated culture of combat defines a soldier’s self-worth.

MP3 here. (25:17)

Aaron Emery is a Volunteer Campaign Advisor and Administrator for Jake Towne for US Congress (PA-15th District). He is published on several sites and is an active member of the Campaign for Liberty. Aaron is passionate about keeping government within the bounds of the Constitution and from interfering with citizens’ lives. Most of his writing deals with government, politics, economics, and money.

Winslow T. Wheeler, Director of the Straus Military Reform Project, discusses the just-passed Defense Appropriations bill, the calculations that make the real defense budget close to $1 trillion, the accounting black hole at the un-auditable Pentagon and how a post WWII peak in spending only buys a small military with old equipment.

MP3 here. (28:24)

Winslow T. Wheeler writes regularly for Counterpunch.org. He spent 31 years working on Capitol Hill with senators from both political parties and the Government Accountability Office, specializing in national security affairs. Currently, he directs the Straus Military Reform Project of the Center for Defense Information in Washington. He is author of The Wastrels of Defense and the editor of a new anthology: America’s Defense Meltdown: Pentagon Reform for President Obama and the New Congress.

Independent journalist Dahr Jamail discuses the mistreatment of conscientious objectors on U.S. military bases, systemic “warehousing” of AWOL and injured soldiers, the redeployment pressure faced by soldiers with serious brain injuries or PTSD and the support network available for those seeking conscientious objector status.

MP3 here. (18:51)

Dahr Jamail, an independent journalist, is the author of The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches From an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq. Jamail reported from occupied Iraq for nine months as well as from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Turkey over the last five years.

Daniel Lakemacher, founder of the website WarIsImmoral.com, discusses his conscientious objector (CO) discharge from the U.S. Navy, how the experience of working at Guantanamo and (independently) learning about the libertarian “non-aggression principle” changed his mind about war and justice, the process of becoming a CO and how the military defines morality in terms of obedience/disobedience.

MP3 here. (25:03)

Daniel Lakemacher was discharged as a conscientious objector from the U.S. Navy on 09/11/09. He is the founder of the website WarIsImmoral.com

Adam Szyper-Seibert, counselor and office manager at Courage to Resist, discusses Lt. Ehren Watada’s successful resistance to an Iraq deployment, the year-long waiting list for treatment at the VA, the fraternal bonds that keep reenlistment rates high, increased military success (since WWII) in training soldiers to be hate-driven killers and the “Ft. Bragg 50″ who are held without charges in degrading conditions.

MP3 here. (38:01)

Adam Szyper-Seibert is a counselor and office manager at Courage to Resist, an organization that provides support to military resisters.

Regular Antiwar.com columnist Jeff Huber discusses Bob Dole’s cheerleading for a 2012 Gen. Petraeus presidential candidacy, the constantly shifting Pentagon war slogans that distract attention from policy failures, why Obama can’t back down in Afghanistan after eschewing the Iraq war, how civilian-led nation building creates more targets for “insurgents” and Gen. McChrystal’s tough transition from assassination squad leader to civilian casualty handwringer.

MP3 here. (50:51)

Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes at Aviation Week, Antiwar.com and Pen and Sword. His novel Bathtub Admirals, a lampoon on America’s rise to global dominance, is on sale now.

Robert Higgs, senior fellow at the Independent Institute and author of Depression, War and Cold War, discusses the archaic concept of demobilizing the military after a war, the end of staunch U.S. anti-interventionism, how the Korean War budget was partly diverted to a general cold-war buildup and the resemblance of U.S. defense spending to a politically untouchable welfare program.

MP3 here. (27:33)

Robert Higgs is Senior Fellow in Political Economy for The Independent Institute and Editor of the Institute’s quarterly journal The Independent Review. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Johns Hopkins University, and he has taught at the University of Washington, Lafayette College, Seattle University, and the University of Economics, Prague. He has been a visiting scholar at Oxford University and Stanford University, and a fellow for the Hoover Institution and the National Science Foundation. Dr. Higgs is the editor of The Independent Institute books Opposing the Crusader State, The Challenge of Liberty, Re-Thinking Green, Hazardous to Our Health? and Arms, Politics, and the Economy, plus the volume Emergence of the Modern Political Economy.

His authored books include Neither Liberty Nor Safety, Depression, War, and Cold War, Politická ekonomie strachu (The Political Economy of Fear, in Czech), Resurgence of the Warfare State, Against Leviathan, The Transformation of the American Economy 1865-1914, Competition and Coercion, and Crisis and Leviathan. A contributor to numerous scholarly volumes, he is the author of more than 100 articles and reviews in academic journals.

Eric Stoner, freelance journalist based in New York, discusses the use of nonviolence to force political changes, the decline in the antiwar movement after Obama’s election, the need for more creative and assertive protests, the replacement of soldiers with remote controlled robots and why there is no such thing as a humanitarian war.

MP3 here. (30:25)

Eric Stoner is a freelance journalist based in New York, and a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus. He is an editor of the Waging Nonviolence website. His articles have appeared in The Guardian, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Mother Jones, The Nation, In These Times, The Huffington Post, NACLA Report on the Americas, The Indypendent and in newspapers across the country. He has worked as a researcher for the Center for International Policy, The Nation, Rolling Stone, and most recently Jeremy Scahill’s New York Times bestseller, Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army.