Related
Guests
- Josephine Guilbeaumilitary veteran and fellow at the Eisenhower Media Network.
- Greg Stokermilitary veteran, antiwar activist and analyst with MintPress News.
The Senate confirmation hearing for Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s pick to be defense secretary, was repeatedly disrupted Tuesday by protesters who denounced the nominee’s history of hateful remarks against women, LGBTQ people and others, as well as to demand an end to U.S. support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza. We speak with two of those protesters, military veterans Josephine Guilbeau and Greg Stoker, who say they were motivated to speak out against the “war machine” that hurts people who serve in the military as well as people around the world who are victims of U.S. militarism. “They use us as pawns to go to these wars and ultimately kill innocent people,” says Guilbeau.
Transcript
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, “War, Peace and the Presidency.” I’m Amy Goodman.
We’re continuing to look at Pete Hegseth’s confirmation hearing to become defense secretary before the Senate Armed Forces Committee. Three U.S. veterans were arrested for disrupting the hearing. This is former merchant marine Al Glatkowski with Veterans for Peace.
AL GLATKOWSKI: Pete, Pete, you are a misogynist. Not only that, you are a Christian Zionist, and you support the war in Gaza!
AMY GOODMAN: Former military intelligence analyst Josephine Guilbeau was also removed and arrested Tuesday after interrupting Hegseth’s confirmation hearing. She served in the military from 2006 to 2023.
PETE HEGSETH: War fighting, accountability —
JOSEPHINE GUILBEAU: Hey, corrupt senators! When are you going to stop bombing babies in Gaza? Veterans are committing suicide and are homeless! My father, a veteran, committed suicide! And you’re sending money to bomb babies!
CAPITOL POLICE 1: Sit down.
CAPITOL POLICE 2: You’ve got to sit down.
PROTESTER: I’m leaving, man.
JOSEPHINE GUILBEAU: We need money. We need money for veterans committing suicide! Veterans are homeless. We need money here, not to bomb babies in Gaza! Shame on all of you! My father, a veteran, committed suicide! We need money to help veterans who have PTSD, not money to send to bomb babies! My father was a veteran who committed suicide, yet we send our money to bomb babies in Gaza! What are we doing? Shame on all of you who don’t speak up against the genocide!
AMY GOODMAN: We’ll be joined by Josephine Guilbeau in a minute, but this is former U.S. Army Ranger Greg Stoker, who was carried out of Tuesday’s hearing. Stoker served four combat deployments in Afghanistan.
PETE HEGSETH: Retention crisis and readiness —
GREG STOKER: Twenty years of illegal war and genocide in Gaza! That’s your recruiting crisis!
CAPITOL POLICE 1: Come on. Come on. Come on.
GREG STOKER: No money for disasters! Only [inaudible]
CAPITOL POLICE 2: Sit down.
MEDEA BENJAMIN: I’m going to leave.
CAPITOL POLICE 2: Sit down.
MEDEA BENJAMIN: I’m going to leave.
CAPITOL POLICE 2: Let’s go. Let’s go.
MEDEA BENJAMIN: Can I leave?
CAPITOL POLICE 2: No. Let’s go.
GREG STOKER: That’s your recruiting crisis!
MEDEA BENJAMIN: Can I leave, please?
CAPITOL POLICE 2: Out this way.
AMY GOODMAN: That was former U.S. Army Ranger Greg Stoker, who joins us now in Washington, D.C., along with former military intelligence analyst Josephine Guilbeau. They were both arrested for protesting during Pete Hegseth’s confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Forces Committee.
We thank you both for being with us. Josephine, let’s begin with you. Talk about your service in the military, and then talk about why you were protesting and got arrested yesterday.
JOSEPHINE GUILBEAU: Thank you, Amy, for having me on.
I served 17 years in the military. I was a combat medic, and then I became an intelligence officer. And I have a background in working with, you know, combat units, infantry units.
And the reason that I am protesting, in this way specifically, is because I have used all other avenues to try and reach my leadership about what we are participating in and funding, which is the genocide inside of Gaza. For over 460 days, I have witnessed with my own eyes children getting bombed daily, indiscriminately. I understand what self-defense is. And what I’m witnessing is not self-defense.
And I do have a concern, especially as a Christian woman here in America, that someone like Pete is using his religion to try and approve of what we are witnessing. And so I look at the next four years of him serving in this position, which he is unqualified for, and it looks like we’re going to most likely see more death and destruction at the hands of the military-industrial complex.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about your own father? As you were being taken out, you were talking about military suicides.
JOSEPHINE GUILBEAU: Yes. So, something that I advocate a lot for is the fact that in America there are 22-plus veteran suicides a day, as well as a significant increase in veteran homelessness. Over the past year, so many veterans are waking up and coming to the reality of what we participated in. And basically, we were used as pawns for the rich, who have assets and interests. It’s not our country’s interests. It’s not the American people’s interests. It’s the elites’ interests. And they use as pawns to go to these wars and ultimately kill innocent people.
And so, for me, this is — obviously, my father was a veteran, and I stated he did commit suicide. This is something that I feel like our country lacks the ability or capacity to actually acknowledge. The reason why veterans are committing suicide and have PTSD is because they sacrifice their humanity and consciousness in order to carry out these horrific actions, and now that’s caught up to them. And there’s no healing that can be allowed in these communities until our government and leaders can actually acknowledge what veterans are experiencing.
AMY GOODMAN: Greg Stoker, we just watched you carried out of that hearing yesterday. You are a former U.S. Army Ranger with a background in special operations and human intelligence. You’re now an antiwar activist, an analyst with MintPress News. You had four combat deployments from 2009 to 2013 during the Afghanistan War surge. In fact, Pete Hegseth also was a military — was an infantry officer in the Army National Guard. He deployed to Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantánamo. Explain why you were out there yesterday getting arrested at the hearing.
GREG STOKER: Well, I felt like I had to do something to disrupt it. As an antiwar veteran activist, I take a lot of notes from the Vietnam backlash. And I don’t expect to really effect any sort of massive social change, but I do believe that, like, voting and protesting are some of the, like, least effective ways of enacting political change. However, my one goal was to visibly protest, disrupt the hearing, in order to, hopefully, like, inspire other veterans who may be on the fence about, like, getting involved, getting active in the movement, in an intersectional antiwar movement. And, you know, it’ll take years to normalize that, but, you know, just keep pushing the ball forward. That’s basically my one goal by disrupting the meeting. Didn’t expect it to change anything. Obviously, it won’t.
But again, normalizing this, I guess, activism within the veteran community is helpful, mostly because it’s harder rhetorically for the powers that be to dismiss us as terrorist sympathizers when we’ve actively engaged al-Qaeda and the Islamic State and stuff like that. And that’s kind of our goal within the antiwar movement, to just be there and make it rhetorically more challenging for, as you said, the elites to dismiss us and the movement in general.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, let me ask you about what Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas said when he asked Pete Hegseth about your protest.
SEN. TOM COTTON: We’ve got a big audience here. Many of them seem to be patriotic supporters of you, Mr. Hegseth. Some of them seem to be liberal critics of you. I would note that it’s only the liberal critics that have disrupted this hearing. As was my custom during the Biden administration, I want to give you a chance to respond to what they said about you. I think the first one accused you of being a Christian Zionist. I’m not really sure why that is a bad thing. I’m a Christian. I’m a Zionist. Zionism is that the Jewish people deserve a homeland in the ancient Holy Land where they’ve lived since the dawn of history. Do you consider yourself a Christian Zionist?
PETE HEGSETH: Senator, I support — I am a Christian, and I robustly support the state of Israel and its existential defense and the way America comes alongside them as their great ally.
SEN. TOM COTTON: Thank you. Because another — another protester, and I think this one was a member of CodePink, which, by the way, is a Chinese communist front group these days, said that you support Israel’s war in Gaza. I support Israel’s existential war in Gaza. I assume, like me and President Trump, you support that war, as well, don’t you?
PETE HEGSETH: Senator, I do. I support Israel destroying and killing every last member of Hamas.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Pete Hegseth being questioned by Arkansas Republican Senator Cotton. Greg Stoker, your response?
GREG STOKER: Well, it’s just a completely unviable operational goal to defeat Hamas. They’ve created a whole new acronym, “wounded child, no surviving family.” Blinken himself — I think you played the clip earlier, that Hamas is obviously bloodied and shook, but they’ve replenished their ranks, and they’re going to keep fighting. What we’ve learned from counterinsurgency operations during the unfortunately named “global war on terror” is that bombing campaigns and general counterinsurgency operations, especially the way Israel is running it, are completely ineffective. So, hopefully, there’s a ceasefire soon. But Hamas is not going to be defeated unless they literally kill everyone inside Gaza. And that’s something he should have learned doing COIN operations — excuse me, counterinsurgency operations — in Iraq and Afghanistan, but I don’t think he — it’s clear he didn’t learn anything from our 20 years of engagement in that theater.
AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask you, Josephine Guilbeau, about Pete Hegseth’s views of women. He wrote in his 2024 book that women are meant to be life givers and shouldn’t serve in combat roles. He said, “Dads push us to take risks. Moms put the training wheels on our bikes. We need moms. But not in the military, especially not in combat units.” Your response?
JOSEPHINE GUILBEAU: Well, Amy, I actually am a — was selected to be the first female intelligence officer inside of an infantry battalion, and so I am familiar with what it looks like to integrate with combat MOS’s and infantry. So, I can assure you that this narrative is just something that doesn’t actually exist among the ranks. If I went back and spoke directly with anyone that I served with inside of that infantry battalion, not one of them would say that I wasn’t a good member of the team. I did my job as an intelligence analyst, and I did it very well, and I was very much respected by all of the males that were infantry officers and infantry enlisted. So, it’s just a narrative that they’re using.
And I can assure you that things like what Pete says and Tom Cotton is not how the Christian conservative community feels. As someone who grew up in the Republican Christian conservative community, they do not represent how we feel. And Tom Cotton is a corrupt politician who is bought and paid for by corporations and AIPAC, and he does not actually represent the American people. And even his own constituents in Arkansas understand that.
AMY GOODMAN: During Tuesday’s hearing, Maine independent Senator Angus King asked Hegseth about the Geneva Conventions.
SEN. ANGUS KING: Are we going to abide by the Geneva Convention and the prohibitions on torture, or are we not? Is it going to —
PETE HEGSETH: Senator, as I’ve —
SEN. ANGUS KING: — depend on the circumstances?
PETE HEGSETH: As I’ve stated multiple times, the Geneva Conventions are what we base ours. But we’re — what an America First national security policy is not going to do is hand its prerogatives over to international bodies that make decisions about how our men and women make decisions on the battlefield.
AMY GOODMAN: Josephine Guilbeau, your response?
JOSEPHINE GUILBEAU: You know, what’s interesting is the fact of how blind they think the American people and the world are. Everything that they have done in order to support Israel in this unwavering way and unconditional way while they’re committing genocide has jeopardized our national security. You know, we heard earlier from former State Departments that speak directly to how far they’ve jeopardized our national security by, you know, violating international laws, violating the Geneva Conventions. We’re literally watching a huge shift in the global economy and alliances happening, from NATO over to BRICS, because the reality is the Global South has realized that we are hypocrites and we no longer are fit to be a global power, because we refuse to follow international laws and the Geneva Convention. And ultimately, the biggest victim of all of this are the children. And we cannot normalize, as American citizens, the bombing indiscriminately of children the way that we have for decades now in the Middle East.
AMY GOODMAN: I also wanted to ask you about the accusations that Pete Hegseth had sexually assaulted, had raped a woman in 2017. It’s been reported in many places that she has a nondisclosure agreement now and was paid off by Hegseth. During his confirmation hearing, he dismissed the allegations as, quote, “coordinated smear campaign.” Meanwhile, The New York Times reports Hegseth’s own mother once accused him of mistreating women. In 2018, Penelope Hegseth wrote him an email that read in part, “On behalf of all the women (and I know it’s many) you have abused in some way, I say … get some help and take an honest look at yourself.” The email was sent a year after that woman accused Hegseth of raping her at the California hotel at the Republican women’s convention. What concerns do you have about Pete Hegseth in relation to this issue, and also this issue of public drunkenness, everyone — those accusing him, from people working in his veterans’ organization, where he was accused of financial mismanagement, to those who work at Fox, who accused him of being drunk as he went on air, saying they smelled alcohol on his breath? Again, he repeatedly said, “Anonymous smears.”
JOSEPHINE GUILBEAU: Yeah, I think it’s shocking to me and disturbing how we are selecting this type of quality to be in these leadership positions for our country, and just how shameful and embarrassing it is as American citizens that there isn’t anyone else out there that is more qualified, number one, even if you don’t, you know, compile all these factors you just named about his behavior. If you just look directly at his résumé, this individual is not qualified to be in this position. And then you compound it with these other factors that you’re talking about, and you’re talking about normalizing someone that has these types of behaviors to be in leadership roles. What sort of precedents is that setting just, you know, in a worldview in our country, that you can be in positions of power and have been accused of doing these types of things to women?
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Greg Stoker, you served in the military for years. You were, what, four times deployed to Afghanistan. What changed your mind? I mean, your criticism was not only of Hegseth, both of you. You’re talking about Israel’s war on Gaza, which took place during the Biden administration, which continually has armed Israel throughout.
GREG STOKER: Yeah, I think what first started to get me to question the war machine, we could say, is I was in tactical operation centers actively watching — I was actually plugged into the synchronization process of kinetic drone strikes. And there just really wasn’t a huge standard of proof for everybody that was being dropped.
And then, I think what caused me to speak out early on was, about a few days after October 7th, when the bombing campaign really picked up in retaliation for October 7th, we were watching about 1,000-pound GBUs, guided bomb units, dropped on Gaza. And I think I was watching General Petraeus say, “Yes, we did that. We did that in Baghdad, and we did that in Afghanistan.” First of all, we did not. One of my best friends was in the fire control center in Baghdad during that time. You could not drop those ordnance. And I think watching these paid-for pundits on legacy media straight-up lie to the American people is kind of what got me started down this path. I had been following the Palestine issue for a long time, but I was not a public figure then.
So, yeah, we’ve — warfare is kind of like law, in that you need to be really careful about what precedents are set. And now we have set, for modern warfare going forward, things like the state policy of directly targeting and bombing hospitals. And because of what’s happened, the world is a less safe place, and this country is a less safe place.
AMY GOODMAN: Greg Stoker —
GREG STOKER: So, I encourage every veteran — yeah. Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: — and Josephine Guilbeau, I want to thank you both for being with us, two military veterans arrested by Capitol Police after protesting during Pete Hegseth’s confirmation hearing on Tuesday morning. They were working alongside CodePink, which was also protesting. Guilbeau is a former military intelligence analyst, now a fellow at the Eisenhower Media Network. And Greg Stoker is a former U.S. Army Ranger with a background in special operations and human intelligence collection, now antiwar activist, analyst with MintPress News. He served four combat deployments in Afghanistan.
Up next, “Surviving War and HIV: Queer, HIV-Positive, and Running Out of Medication in Gaza.” Back in 20 seconds.
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