In an engaging, wide-ranging interview with Peter Z. Scheer at Truthdig, RPI Advisory Board Member Dennis Kucinich expanded on his statement earlier this month on Democracy Now that “interventionism is not the wave of the future,” by explaining in the new interview that Americans “have to break the war culture.”
Kucinich elaborates:
We have to break the war culture. We have to stop believing that we have a hammer for every nail that is out there. We’ve got to come to an understanding that our role in the world should be not a nation above nations but a nation among nations.
Kucinich proceeds to comment that “the rise of the strength of the security state, which has pulverized privacy, which is a right guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment…has occurred apace with America’s increased interventions,” with the pace of change accelerating since September 11, 2001.
Kucinich continues his examination of the matter by offering a stark choice:
We have to decide who we are as a nation. And, if all we are going to be is a war machine — a juggernaut — we will not survive as a nation, we will not survive as a free country, we will disintegrate.
In the 20 minute interview, Kucinich also addresses several other subjects including Cleveland’s selection as the location for the 2016 Republican Party national convention, the lies used to justify the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, and Kucinich’s thoughts regarding the Republican and Democrat Parties.
Kucinich, whose roots run deep in Cleveland, says the selection of the Ohio city as the location of the Republican convention is “a smart move politically, and it should be good for Cleveland as well.”
Expanding on his June article “Stop Calling the Iraq War a ‘Mistake’” Kucinich states in the Truthdig interview:
The war was contrived, and it was contrived by ideologues who were part of this Project for the New American Century who had basically been spoiling for a war against Iraq before 9/11, who used 9/11 as an excuse to launch an attack against Iraq — which had nothing to do with 9/11, which had nothing to do with al-Quaeda’s role in 9/11. Iraq didn’t have the intention or capability of attacking the United States. Iraq didn’t have weapons of mass destruction, which were ready to be used against the United States. There were no WMDs.
So, what was this all about? It was a deliberate lie that was told to drag the American people into a war… At least a million Iraqi people met untimely deaths as a result of this war…. About 4,500 Americans were killed and tens of thousands had life-altering injuries. And the wars will cost, by the time all the bills are all in, upwards of $5 trillion dollars, if not more. And for what? For a lie.
Regarding the Republican and Democrat Parties, Kucinich offers an extensive indictment of both parties that begins with the observation, “let’s get real, both parties have failed the American people.” Listen to the complete interview here.
