Cable News Military Experts Criticizing Afghanistan Withdrawal Are on the Defense Industry Dole

Retired four-star Gen. Jack Keane has been making the cable news rounds, offering scathing criticism of the White House in wake of the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan. On Wednesday, he appeared on Fox News, where he told host Harris Faulkner that the administration “made a terrible mistake in pulling our troops out and giving the Taliban the opportunity to take the country over.”

“It’s going to become a more dangerous place, threatening America,” he warned. “And the world’s going to be a more dangerous place.”

On another Fox News program earlier in the week, Keane attacked President Joe Biden’s withdrawal plan as “embarrassing” and “ill-conceived,” suggesting that the administration should have delayed until “sometime next year.”

What neither Keane nor the host in either of these segments mentioned is that he has more than merely a patriotic interest in the continued occupation. Keane, a former board member at weapons maker General Dynamics, is chair of AM General, the company that makes Humvees. He also sits on the boards of Cyalume Technologies Inc., which manufactures military chemical lights and other technology deployed on the battlefield in Afghanistan, and the Institute for the Study of War, a think tank that publishes defense policy proposals with the aim of “developing the next generation of national security leaders” and is backed by CACI International Inc., General Dynamics, and other defense contractors.

Keane was just one of a parade of ex-military and ex-public officials who appeared on cable news this week to castigate the Biden administration for its withdrawal or for the way it was carried out. Among the other talking heads who took to cable news segments or op-ed pages without disclosing their defense industry ties were retired Gen. David Petraeus; Richard Haass, who worked as an adviser to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell; and former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta.

Cable hosts described these guests by their military credentials — not their current jobs as representatives of the defense industry, a sector that has seen extraordinary profits from the 20-year occupation of Afghanistan.

Read the full story: https://interc.pt/3k21rgs
Subscribe to our channel: https://interc.pt/subscribe

Видео Cable News Military Experts Criticizing Afghanistan Withdrawal Are on the Defense Industry Dole канала The Intercept