Today, the Trump administration released its National Security Strategy.

MATTHEW HOH, [in D.C. area] matthew_hoh at riseup.net, @MatthewPHoh
Available for a limited number of interviews, Matthew Hoh is a member of the advisory boards of Expose Facts, Veterans For Peace and World Beyond War. In 2009 he resigned his position with the State Department in Afghanistan in protest of the escalation of the Afghan War by the Obama administration. He previously had been in Iraq with a State Department team and with the U.S. Marines. He is a senior fellow with the Center for International Policy.

He said today: “There are two ways to look at Trump’s remarks on national security, noting, of course, that his language is both more Orwellian, and less polished than we have seen before from the White House.

“The first is that getting past his words, Trumps’ actions on people overseas have not been much different than any of his predecessors. His actions have been a military first, interventionist and hypocritical foreign policy not based on cooperation between nations and a respect for human rights and dignity, but rather a preservation of American hegemony and primacy that results in mass suffering and death for millions and millions of people outside of the United States.

“Secondly, Trump’s major concern is his domestic political base and keeping with their narrative and understanding of American Exceptionalism as well as a religious worldview that views the United States as inherently good and moral, despite the reality of the United States’ actions. This second part needs to be recognized as well to include that of the financial donor base of his political support, which applies as well to his predecessors, and includes foreign donors and backers such as Israel and Saudi Arabia.”