Mike Gravel

Talk is Cheap, Even with Enemies, and By the Way, Rivals Aren't Enemies

dlindorff — Fri, 30 May 2008 10:41:02 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

What the hell is Barack Obama talking about?

He says that America should be talking with leaders in Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, Korea, Syria. Fine. But he calls this “talking with our enemies.”

What enemies?

Let’s get something straight. Enemies are people who are fighting against you, who are trying to destroy you. Is Cuba fighting against America? Is Iran fighting against America? Is Venezuela fighting against America? Syria? China? No. These countries may be rivals, but they are not enemies.

The closest we come to having an actual enemy in today’s world is North Korea, where we are technically still in some kind of truce following a hot war, but of course that war itself has been over for half a frigging century, and nobody has been killing anyone on the Korean Peninsula in decades.

The truth is, America doesn’t have any real enemies, except for the ones it has made for itself in Iraq and Afghanistan, and of course the Al Qaeda organization. But Al Qaeda is a gang of terrorists, not a country, and in Afghanistan it is movement, the Taliban, once the government of that country, which we overthrew. And even there, where we have enemies, talk is better than war. It is obvious that at some point if we are ever to exit from Iraq and Afghanistan, there will have to be talks with the people we are fighting. Afghanistan’s leaders have said this—that there will have to be talks with the Taliban. And Bush’s own “Iraq Study Group,” headed by former Republican Secretary of State James Baker and former Democratic Congressman Lee Hamilton, concluded that the US will have to negotiate to settle the Iraq conflict. Both those processes should be begun immediately, not after more thousands have been killed.

By calling other countries “enemies,” Obama fell into a trap of his own making, though admittedly, he’s not the first to define all these rival nations as enemies. It’s a logical outcome of the Bush/Cheney position that “either you’re with us or you’re against us.”

Instead of buying into that nonsense, Obama should have questioned the premise. Then he wouldn’t be in the mess he’s in now, trying to fine-tune whom he would talk to and whom he wouldn’t talk to. Erstwhile Democratic presidential candidate and former Alaskan Senator Mike Gravel had it right when, during an early TV “debate” before the media decided to black him out, he replied to the moderator’s stupid question to all the candidates of “Who, after Iran, are America’s biggest enemies?” He challenged the premise, asking, “Iran’s not our enemy. Who are we afraid of? We don’t have any enemies.” He got one of the biggest applauses of the evening for that.

As for the basic point—talking with people we have disagreements or rivalries with—it is obvious that not talking is idiotic, and gets you nowhere—or worse, into a war.

Let’s take Cuba. For exactly half a century since its Communist revolution, we have treated Cuba like a mortal enemy, blockading the country, forcing other countries to join us in an embargo (an act of war, by the way), plotting and attempting to assassinate the country’s leader, Fidel Castro, and financing and supporting an obsessed group of dispossessed rich Cubans who want to return the island to its mob-infested, neo-colonial days. In those 50 years, the only thing not talking has accomplished has been the impoverishment of two generations of Cubans. Meanwhile, of course, the US has talked, conceded, caved in, given in, pandered and invested in China, another Communist country that, unlike Cuba, actually has fought against the US (in Korea, by proxy in Vietnam, and against an ally, Taiwan). There is clearly no logical reason for not talking with Cuba, and if we were talking with Cuba, life there would be better, and no doubt, things would be better here, too.

Iran is another example. It is known that when the US invaded Iraq, in 2003, Iran tried desperately to initiate talks with the US. The Bush/Cheney administration didn’t want to talk. It was calling Iran an “Axis of Evil” nation. Had talks begun, there might not even be a nuclear dispute today. Indeed, there might not even have been a rivalry. Instead, we now have the Bush/Cheney administration pushing forward for plans to attack Iran.

We could go back to Iraq, too, of course. Before the US launched its attack, Saddam Hussein was telling the Bush/Cheney administration he was willing to leave the country. All he wanted was a safe haven like Idi Amin got, and a billion dollars. We were not told about this offer until years later. Yet think how much cheaper that solution, arrived at through a little talking, would have been than what we got through not talking. Instead of letting Hussein run off with a billion of his own ill-gotten wealth, we’ve spent close to a trillion dollars, killed upwards of a million innocent Iraqis, destroyed a country, driven four million people in a nation of 24 million into exile, ruined America’s global reputation, and bankrupted the US treasury, not to mention running up the price of oil four-fold.

Talk is cheap, I’d say.

Obama should be more forthright and admit that America has no enemies, and that we can talk to anyone.
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DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and now available in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Richardson and Gravel Take on the Take Back America Conference

davidswanson — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 11:47:36 -0400

By David Swanson

Two presidential candidates, Bill Richardson and Mike Gravel, spoke Tuesday morning at the Take Back America Conference in Washington, D.C. Barack Obama and John Edwards were expected later in the day, and Hillary Clinton and Dennis Kucinich on Wednesday.

Richardson got loud applause. He focused on climate change, Kyoto treaty, a plan to reduce pollution by 20%, lower demand for oil by 50%, and raise fuel efficiency standards to 50 mpg, and require that 50% of our electricity come from renewable sources, and reduce greenhouse admissions by 80 percent. The crowd loved it. "If we can wage wars over weapons of mass destruction, we can find the will to stop the mass destruction of our planet."
Topic number 2 was Iraq: How many troops would each of us (candidates) leave behind? Other than the customary Marine contingent at the embassy, I would leave zero troops behind. [big applause] And if our embassy personnel aren't safe, then they're coming home too. With all due respect to my colleagues Clinton, Obama, Dodd, Biden, they all voted for legislation with loopholes that would leave an unlimited number of troops behind indefinitely (for training Iraqi security forces, and to protect other US troops). Troops protecting troops training other troops doesn't sound any different to me. Senator Clinton has told her military advisor that there might still be troops in Iraq at the end of her second term. At the rate we are losing American lives, over 1000 American troops will die in Iraq in this year alone. Over 60 percent of Iraqis think it's OK to kill Americans. There is not a single sign that Iraq is improving, and a smaller force will do nothing to change that. How many more Americans must die before we leave an Iraq that will be no better off than it is today. WE NEED TO BRING THEM ALL HOME [huge applause.]

We need to bring all our troops home in 6 months. Only then can dimplomacy begin. Leave troops in Kuwait. Hand security in Iraq over to an all-Muslim force. Organize a regional conference including Syria and Iran to help stabilize Iraq. Al Qaeda is tolerated in Iraq because they oppose Americans. Once Americans are gone, Iraqis will nto tolerate Al Qaeda.

Talking to your enemies can bring results. We need to bring back diplomacy. You don't make peace with your friends. You make peace with your enemies. This president broke Iraq. The next president needs to know how to use diplomacy to fix it.

STANDING OVATION.

Music: loud rock, no lyrics.

Gravel got a luke warm response after Ralph Nader received the same introducing him.

Gravel's music was "Power to the People." The loudest applause Gravel received came when he said that his proposed bill to make it a felony to continue the war would mean 5 years in prison for the President, Vice President, and Secretary of Defense. Gravel admitted that such a bill would be vetoed, but he urged endless cloture votes to pass it and endless votes to override the veto. Gravel urged action now, and suggested that the Democrats will lose in 18 months if they do no more in the meantime than they've done in the past 6. He said her wanted ALL troops home for Xmas. That got applause.

Gravel Ad on YouTube speaks volumes

Zoe Una — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 10:33:50 -0400

Moderator Hurls Mostly SPIT Balls In First Democratic Presidential Candidate Debate

thepen — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 00:13:32 -0400

After listening to the questions asked by Brian Williams in South Carolina at the first debate of announced Democratic presidential contenders, one has to wonder how much worse the moderation would have been if it had been on the Fox Network.

There was hardly an inane smear, knock, superficial or unfair attack made against any of these candidates that Williams did not go OUT of his way to highlight or demand that they defend themselves against. We had the price of haircuts, misquotes about positions on Palestine, ties to Walmart, not to mention an entire segment on Giuliani's despicable "die under Democrats" rhetoric from yesterday, instantly elevated to the status of accepted mainstream gospel and framed as such. If most of the questions had been prefaced with the words "Karl Rove says" their slant could not have been more obvious. Even the questions selected from viewer emails seemed to be selected with that criteria in mind.

When Williams was not doing that he left no stone unturned trying to dredge up a virtual laundry list of every possible divisive wedge issue he could work in, positions on abortion, guns, illegal immigration, and even the confederate flag. The few other actual issues touched on were exploited as an opportunity to hurl other accusations, for example on the health care issue one of stealth tax raising intentions. The energy issue he tried to turn into an Al Gore, how dare you own a light bulb witch hunt, and so on.

And in his grandstand play of the night Williams painted a grim scenario of two American cities wiped out by Al Qaeda and demanded to know how each of these candidates would retaliate. The question itself was custom designed to drive fear into the heart of what deserved to be a thoughtful debate on the issues, and to substitute blind ignorant rage for sound policy. It had to be TWO cities of course because we've ALREADY lost one and a half cities under George Bush. The question begged the answer of what kind of revenge would you take, as if revenge were a policy goal. How fitting from the mouthpiece of a company in the nuclear weapons business.

To their credit each of the candidates demonstrated in turn that they are infinitely more qualified to be president of the United States than Bush ever was, and managed for most part to say what they wanted to say, as opposed to what Williams was trying to bait them into saying. We only wish one of them had called him out directly on the slant of the questions, especially the Giuliani smear.

Williams made one huge mistake, trying to embarrass Kucinich about his Cheney impeachment stance, and Kucinich hit it out of the park with some of the best passion we've heard from him yet. Likewise with Gravel, where Williams practically chortled at the chance to pick a fight on stage between the candidates, but instead gave Gravel his own moment to shine as an uncompromising antiwar choice.

What we NEED to do is take the debates out of the hands of right wing spin kings and get some moderators who aren't so bent on warping the whole affair. It's hard to imagine as long as self-interested corporations are the sponsors. But at least tonight our candidates were able to hold their own.

Impeachment MN 3rd Congressional District Orgainizing

tginmn — Sun, 03 Dec 2006 12:00:48 -0500

Let get the ball rolling to at least investigate under oath what has happend to our country since the NEOCONs took over. Even when Bush is gone there will be alot of work to be done to undo the damage. The truth needs to get out or we might repeat this in 2008 election. We can't count on the Democratic congress to do it without bipartisan support. Our congressman claims to be a moderate and bipartisan. Let's put the pressure on him to show it.

Sunday December 10th, 1PM at Purgatory Creek Recreational area across the street from the SW transit station there will be an impeachment ralley to get the ball rolling.

Pentagon STILL spying on antiwar movement.

BushFlash — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 22:40:14 -0500

Click for video

This is one of those things that needs to be taken care of, in the first 100 hours of the new congress.

So much bullshit to clear up, so little time......