Author: Matthew Hoh

As I said to Judge Napolitano earlier today, I am so happy I might cry, and so angry at what they did to Julian and his family I might put a fist through a wall in my house. I think most of us are heavy with emotion while trying to understand what comes next. Here’s a rough attempt at that:

Today is a day to celebrate the end of the cruel and unjust punishment, prosecution, and persecution of Julian Assange. His release and the relief for his family should be first and primary in our thoughts.

Continue reading “A Family’s Torment, A Dying Empire’s Rage”

The ice age is coming, the sun’s zooming in
Engines stop running, the wheat is growing thin
A nuclear era, but I have no fear
‘Cause London is drowning, and I live by the river
~ The Clash

Two weeks ago, in London, I took part in a panel discussion on the Ukraine-Russia war at the House of Lords before an audience of 100 MPs and business leaders. It was a unique opportunity to address men and women who don’t necessarily hear points of view like mine.

The panel included my good friend, Danny Davis, who is probably the best American commentator on the Ukraine-Russia war, a senior economist from Rand, and the former head of the Royal Navy. It was moderated by a very successful American businessman. While we disagreed on details, we were, to my surprise, all agreed upon the urgent need for negotiations to end the war in Ukraine. That point was met with acceptance by some in the audience, curiosity by others and outright hostility by the rest – a hostility reminiscent of Francis Bacon’s Idols of the Tribe.

Continue reading “London Calling: Matthew Hoh at the House of Lords”

I gave a Saint Patrick’s Day speech at a rally for Palestine yesterday. Last year, I spent Saint Patrick’s Day standing in a bar with a fellow Marine veteran. In 2010, he had been a mortar man with Third Battalion, Fifth Marines, in Sangin, Helmand Province, Afghanistan. In a few months, more than one in five of those Marines and sailors were casualties. Thirteen years later, he still didn’t know what it was for.

We stood there and medicated and punished ourselves with beer and whiskey. At some point, our ire and anger over the wars turned to ire and anger over the band in the bar. It was Saint Patrick’s Day, and we were in an Irish bar, with the band playing pop songs rather than Irish music. There certainly was none of the Irish rebel music we wanted, and at some point, we sang it ourselves. I remember us spending quite a while on Grace; it was one of those nights.

Continue reading “Their Time Will Come”

I was asked to answer some questions by a Polish author, Michael Krupka, for a book he is publishing later this year. The questions required me to provide my thoughts in a manner that came out resembling predictions. I’ve long been a fan of Yogi Berra’s maxim: predictions are hard, especially about the future. That said, read on if you’d like to know what I think will happen with regards to the Middle East, NATO and Russia, the role of Gaza in the 2024 elections, and what a Trump foreign policy might look like.

Please let me know your thoughts and responses in the comments. I can also elaborate further on my responses as some of what I write below is quite broad.

Can it be said that the War in Gaza has already changed the balance of power in the Middle East, i.e., that Joe Biden was, in essence, correct when he stated a few weeks back that there will be no going back to the status quo before Oct 7th?

Continue reading “Matthew Hoh: Channeling Carnac the Magnificent”

Matthew Hoh is the Associate Director of the Eisenhower Media Network. Matt is a former Marine Corps captain, a former Afghanistan State Department officer, a disabled Iraq War veteran, and a Senior Fellow Emeritus with the Center for International Policy.

Dear Antiwar.com Reader,

I suppose many of you have noticed something about American public opinion. Previously, US wars would sustain public support for at least a few years until the weight of a war’s accumulated lies, moral and physical atrocities, costs, strategic failures, and counterproductive outcomes caused a collapse of public support. This has been the case for most of our lives, ranging from Vietnam through Central America to Afghanistan and Iraq. But in the last 15 years, we’ve seen a change. No longer can Washington, DC, count on a sizable majority of the US public cheering on American boys and girls to go overseas to kill and be killed. Starting with Obama’s surge in Afghanistan, through the wars in Libya and Syria, and now with the proxy war in Ukraine and the ethnic cleansing in Gaza, both Democratic and Republican administrations bent on war are limited by an American public increasingly set against war. There is no longer enthusiasm, let alone a benefit of the doubt, given to war-making by a large part of the American public, despite the best attempts of the legacy corporate media.

Antiwar.com has been at the vanguard of this shift in public understanding of war and militarism.

The breadth and depth of Antiwar.com’s news and commentary outdo those of any similar resource I know of. That’s why many former colleagues of mine still in the military and government read Antiwar.com every day. It is indispensable, not just for those of us in the anti-war community, but also for anyone who wants a well-balanced and informed understanding of the world.

We still have a long way to go in our fight against war and militarism. While the ability of the US to put troops on the ground has been severely constrained by a public informed because of the likes of Antiwar.com, we are still confronted with the great horrors of proxy wars, the ever-present danger of nuclear annihilation, and an economy hollowed out by a one trillion dollar a year military-industrial complex.

It is through a public that understands the reality of war, its true costs and consequences, that we will put an end to US war-making and militarism. We are seeing this in younger generations. Unique in its mission and purpose, Antiwar.com is at the forefront of this change in the public perception of war. What it provides for our community is irreplaceable. It is invaluable to me, and I believe it is likely the same for you.

Please donate today to Antiwar.com.

Matthew Hoh
USMC 1998-2008

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These CIA teams in Afghanistan are not just reminiscent of the Operation Phoenix program in Vietnam, the death squads of Central America and the Shia torture and murder militias of Baghdad, they are the direct descendants of them. The CIA is continuing a long tradition of utilizing savage violence by indigenous government forces, in this case along sectarian/ethnic lines, in an attempt to demoralize and ultimately defeat local populations.

The results will assuredly be the same: war crimes, mass murder, torture and the terrorization of entire communities of men, women and children in their own homes. This will lead to more support for the Taliban and a deepening of the war in Afghanistan. The CIA should ask itself, where has this worked before?

Continue reading “CIA in Afghanistan: Operation Phoenix Redux?”