November
3, 2023
Israel’s
ongoing massacre in Gaza has stirred worldwide calls for a ceasefire to stop
the genocide unfolding. The United States has been no exception, which
countless demonstrators taking to the streets in recent weeks. That hasn’t
stopped the US government from backing Israel’s horrific campaign in Gaza to
the hilt. The White House has refused to heed calls for a ceasefire and even
deployed two aircraft carriers to the Mediterranean—not to defend Palestinians,
but to dissuade regional powers from joining the fray to defend Palestine. As
the possibility of a regional war looms with the entry of Yemen into the
conflict, many wonder how the US might respond to such a scenario. Former US
Congressperson Dennis Kucinich joins The Chris Hedges Report for a discussion
on the US war machine—what it is, how it works, and how it might respond should
the war in Palestine spiral into a wider conflagration.
An American soldier is seen during a visit on the US aircraft
carrier, USS George H. W. Bush, as it docks at the Haifa port, on July
3, 2017. RONEN ZVULUN/AFP via Getty Images
Transcript
Chris
Hedges: As a member of the US Congress
for 16 years, Dennis Kucinich gave over 500 speeches warning about the
consequences of US wars against Afghanistan, the Balkans, Iraq, Iran, Libya,
and Syria. He also spoke out for the imperative of peace in the Middle East on
behalf of Israelis and Palestinians. He met with leaders of many countries who
were grappling to keep their nations out of conflicts and came to understand
the role some in the US government have played to intentionally catalyze war,
fueling arms sales globally without regard for the consequences. Dennis warns
that we, in his words, are “cartwheeling towards a massive East versus West war
with religious and ethnic overtones. This seemingly inexorable march of nuclear
folly may,” he writes, “pit the US militarily against China, Russia, and their
allies.”
Joining
me to discuss how, as he writes, the polarization of US politics, the
cognitively impaired and failing executive branch, the instability of the
congressional leadership, the pure blind partisanship, and the ideologically
click-bait driven media has produced, a mad bloodlust for war against Iran and
perhaps China and Russia, is Dennis Kucinich. You have fought the war industry
with probably more consistency and courage than any US. politician. You’ve paid
the price for it. But let’s lay out globally the reach of the war industry, how
it functions, and why it seems to be beyond the control of either political
party.
Dennis
Kucinich: Thank you very much, Chris,
for that introduction, and thank you for the opportunity to be on your show. We
are in a moment of peril and the subtext of it, or maybe the context of it,
begins with the fact that the US has over 800 bases around the globe. This has
been part and parcel of an attempt by America to use its military power to be
able to control not only the politics of a country but the economics of a
country and to stop the rise of any counterforce in the world. Of course, we know
that was vainglorious. The efforts have failed, and notwithstanding the fact
that we have this archipelago of bases around the world, we have slipped from a
position of unipolar leadership moving to a multipolar world in which the US
has less and less influence, with the exception of certain economic moves that
can be made to try to hamstring the economies of various countries through
sanctions.
Now,
where this all begins is in the appropriations process. The military-industrial
complex that Eisenhower so famously warned us about in January of 1961 has…
Every district of the US, every congressional district has programs and
projects in it that require funding and are put into an appropriations bill.
Lobbyists confront members of Congress from their own community, saying we need
this for the jobs in our community. Together you have a defense production
establishment that is nationwide and it has enormous influence on individual
members. Beyond that, you have when members of Congress come in and they take
an oath to defend the Constitution, unfortunately, for many members of
Congress, that means signing on to any military action that the administration
recommends. So there’s very little deep thinking that goes on, especially where
the money’s going to come from. Because the 31 trillion-plus national debt,
which the US has a substantial part of, comes from the country putting wars on
a credit card.
Ingrained
into our system is the funding of wars and a perpetuation of conflict because
if you’re making all these arms materiel, you’ve got to use them. The more that
you use, the more you make. There’s a continuous loop here of money that pours
in. Right now we’re close to $1 trillion in this particular fiscal year of 2023
for the Pentagon plus the various intelligence services. That then is a
substantial part of discretionary spending of the US. Depending on who you’re
talking to and what math, it’s anywhere from about 40%-45%. We’re spending our
national treasure on war. We’re a war machine as a nation. We prefer war over
healthcare. We prefer war over housing. We prefer war over education. We prefer
war over the economic welfare of our own citizens. This is something that more
and more people are catching onto. Unfortunately, the last ones to catch on
appear to be members of the US Congress.
Chris
Hedges: How are decisions about war
made? We see the public shills for war, the same people, whether it’s Iraq or
Libya or Syria or Afghanistan, these neocons who are well-known who brought us
the war, 20 years of warfare in the Middle East. But they are spokespeople for
obviously the war industry. If we look back at the last two decades, it’s
fiasco after fiasco. Nobody can describe any of these wars as a success. Who’s
making these decisions, and why is it bipartisan?
Dennis
Kucinich: The decisions to go to war
ostensibly would be made at the administration level. However, there is a broad
network of public policy groups masquerading as independent voices, think
tanks, academic organizations, and people in the media who feed into any
narrative that would prompt the country to start to rattle the sabers or
determine, well, we need to go here in order to defend our national interest.
Once that appropriation process starts, let’s keep in mind, that they have
close to $1 trillion in all accounts. They’re on their own. That money’s
fungible. That money’s there, which enables the US at this very moment to send
two aircraft carrier units out into the area near Israel. Now you have to
wonder, what’s that all about? What it’s all about is that the US right now has
the money to be able to send troops anywhere they want in the world or to pay
for the ones that are already stationed, and they put the country at the
threshold of a war the minute they do that.
When
I say “of a war,” I mean of actual combat interactions. The people who are
pushing for this and we have to keep in mind that one of the things that drags
us into war is an ideological mindset. Today in the US, it’s sponsored by a
group famously known as neoconservatives, who see America as a force fighting
against evil all over the world. The Manichaen struggle that they invite is one
that is generally of their own making, the desire to be able to create wars and
to cash in. There are earnings reports coming out lately where some of the war
contractors or those who hold them in a portfolio, are citing what a great
thing it is for the profits that are going to come as a result of what’s
happening in the Middle East right now. It’s unconscionable but we’re in this
cycle where we have a war-dependent economy and the more that we spend on war
materiel, the more likely we are to go to war. The more people we have at
forward bases around the world, the more likely we are to go to war.
When
an international crisis develops, such as has developed after, most famously
signed on October 7, 2023, we then see things go into motion that will support
and justify the reason why we are there, to begin with. Then from there, you go
on to additional appropriations. One of the things that I want to point out, is
the over $14 billion which Congress will vote on perhaps at the beginning of
November, once Congress votes on that, forget declarations of war, Article One,
Section Eight, the role of Congress in balancing off the executive’s desire to
go to war. Forget all that. Once the money is there, we’re there. We’re stuck.
It’s like gamblers, in for a dime, in for a dollar. Once we put that money
down, we are at war, whether it’s declared or not.
This
is the danger of the moment that we’re in right now, because the American
people, unless they can convince their members of Congress, for whatever reason
– Whether it’s as one member of Congress, Tom Massey from Kentucky says, we
can’t afford it. That’s one way. Another way is to say don’t fuel the fire.
Another way is to say, stop killing the Gazans – There are so many different
reasons to avoid it but the American people have to be heard from. Immediately
call their members of Congress to say don’t fund the war. If they’re so intent
on spending money, spend it for diplomacy, spend it for humanitarian purposes,
spend it for food, shelter, clothing, electricity, water; anything to try to
relieve people from the veil of tears they’re in right now and the fears for
their life.
But
right now, our country, we are ready for war. It’s not about funding an effort
against the people of Gaza but it’s about getting ready for war against Iran
which would be catastrophic for the US and for Israel. We’re really at a
crossroads right here, Chris and the piece that I wrote in Substack outlines
the contours of it because this war has both. It’s not just geographical; it is
ethnic and it is religious.
Chris
Hedges: You have a situation where once
the money comes in, it’s not a congressional decision, it’s a unilateral
decision by the White House, for instance, to send these carriers. No, Biden
didn’t consult anybody except maybe Jake Sullivan who probably made the
decision for Biden. But all that power, that potential to essentially trigger a
war is in the hands of the presidency. Congress isn’t even part of the
decision.
Dennis
Kucinich: Once the money is there… This
is what I’d like your viewers to understand. You have the Constitution, Article
One, Section Eight, in which the Founders clearly put the power to make war in
the hands of the House because they didn’t want an executive roaming the world,
looking for enemies to slay, as Adams was famously warned about. But if
Congress approves an appropriation that the president then wants to take to
create a war, courts have held pretty consistently that Congress’s ultimate power
is the power of the purse. If Congress wants to stop a war, don’t fund it. If
Congress wants to start a war, fund it, but Congress cannot go back after it
funds a war and say, oh, we didn’t mean that. We didn’t mean for him to
escalate. Hey, once they have the money, the administration, the president as
commander-in-chief under the Constitution, is able to use that war material in
any way that he or in the future she would please.
Chris
Hedges: And yet we see no pushback. The
last budget Congress gave the Pentagon $40 billion more than they even
requested. In many ways, the Democratic Party is worse.
Dennis
Kucinich: Yeah, it’s become reflexive.
The inability to ask questions about why. Only after the fact will you see the
Inspector General’s reports come back and say, well, you misspent billions or
billions there. After a while, it adds up. You go back to Major General Smedley
Butler who won two medals of honor for his service to the country at the
beginning of the 20th century. He concluded famously, “War is a racket.” And
this is a racket. The members of Congress go along. Let’s face it, once Citizens
United became the law of the land, and money equaled free speech from the
corporate standpoint, this entire defense establishment was emboldened to pour
money into congressional races. And they do. They do it openly through $5,000
contributions or whatever they’re allowed right now and in addition to that,
Super PACs, which can make a difference in a congressional or Senate race.
We
have almost a closed-loop system that guarantees that we will continue to go to
war. There is no counterbalance for diplomacy or peace. That doesn’t exist. The
Department of State is there to rattle the saber, as the current Secretary of
State Blinken has proven. The National Security Advisor Sullivan, is there to
keep fulminating. Of course, we know about the gentle lady who is a deputy
secretary who has famously kept her neoconservative credentials alive since the
beginning of her service to the US as somebody who promotes war. We have an
entire phalanx of people at the administrative level who are promoting it every
day. They’re supported by the think tanks, academics, and the media. People
don’t question and so we get pulled into this maw of war. Then people wonder
why.
Watch
American troops, when their lives are put on the line – They’re already being
out there as bait, as far as I’m concerned. Our troops are in that region as
bait – If and when the troops start to die and you get reports, maybe some have
already, but if and when that starts to happen in large numbers, the American
people are going to be horrified. The money could go out this week unless
people call and object strongly. That’s the way you stop a war. Stop funding
it.
Chris
Hedges: What they’re playing with, as
you’ve written, is a very dangerous global conflagration. It’s like throwing
and tossing lit matches toward pools of gasoline, not only in Ukraine and not
only in the Middle East, but also in China. The consequences are potentially
catastrophic. In the case of China and Russia, we’re dealing of course with
nuclear powers. Then of course Israel has nuclear weapons. There’s nothing to
stop Israel from using a tactical nuclear weapon on Iran. Talk a little bit
about how this could all go bad.
Dennis
Kucinich: When we have these discussions
about the danger that we can sense lies ahead, we have to look at things not
out of fear, but out of a cold strategic analysis. The US and Israel are seen
as simultaneous in the actions in Gaza right now. That has created a furor,
particularly in the Arab and the Muslim world. The head of Turkey, Erdogan,
yesterday gave a speech to about a million people whom he warned about, he
invoked the image of the Crescent versus the Cross. We’re talking Crusades
here, folks. The idea that if the US and Israel are aimed at trying to wipe out
people who are Arabs and most of whom are Muslims, what does that say to the
rest of the Muslim world? Nine million people in Israel, maybe a million and a
half of them Palestinians, in the larger Arab world surrounding Israel,
hundreds of millions of Muslims and Arabs are watching people in Gaza being
slaughtered.
The
emotional turmoil that comes from that then is informed by a very deep
religious sentiment that is being provoked by the first week of October,
Ultranationalists marching from Temple Mount into Al-Aqsa and rearranging the
furniture, shall we say politely. It could be, depending on who you talk to,
that what we experienced on October 7, notwithstanding the apparently very
thorough planning that went on, that we had an Al-Aqsa intifada as a flash
point because the destruction or the desecration of anything at Al-Aqsa is
going to be responded to. There are those in the Ultranationalists who are all
ready to try to push the Palestinians out of Gaza, push them, kill them, and
then the Palestinians in the West Bank and to fulfill a dream that for them has
biblical authorization for the fulfillment of the land of Israel.
Then
to rebuild the third temple which of course would annihilate Al-Aqsa. When we
start to get into religious sentiments and beliefs that go back thousands of
years and we have people motivated by prophecy, it can become a self-fulfilling
prophecy. It can lead right to the Bible which talks about Armageddon, the
apocalypse. That’s why we have to take this seriously. We can’t pretend that’ll
never happen. Actually, it’s moving in that direction right now. The leader of
Turkey pronounced Crescent versus Cross, raising the issue. Are we coming to
that? I often talk about Barbara Tuchman’s book, The March of Folly, where she
writes as a historian, that it’s nothing new under humanity for leaders to
prepare a course of action and execute it that is totally antithetical to the
interests of their country. This is what Mr. Netanyahu is doing with support
from the right wing in Israel in enacting this biblical phraseology that he’s
quoting lately.
There’s
a game being played here that is so dangerous that could pull us all into not
only a regional war but a world war. So those are some of the antecedents that
we have to consider when we’re looking at an analysis of what we could be
facing.
Chris
Hedges: Why isn’t the Biden
administration offering any restraint? Canceling or vetoing the ceasefire
resolution at the UN, giving more military aid. It’s not that they’re passive
but they’re actively involved. Why?
Dennis
Kucinich: Well, first of all, you have
to look at President Biden himself. He has never really been anyone who has
said, whoa, wait a minute. Let’s not do this. He’s generally been congenial to
voting for the war as a senator and voting for certain defense or Pentagon
appropriations. That’s where it’s at. Then who surrounds him? The neocons are
his closest advisors. They’re spoiling for a war against Iran. This has been
going on since Bush was president. There’s no question. I gave about 150
speeches on Iran alone, where I saw the Bush Administration was actually
talking about a strike on a nuclear research lab at Bashir.
I
pointed out in the speech in Congress that if we go ahead and do that we’re
going to be creating a radioactive fallout around a good part of the globe. Is
that something we’re thinking about? Is there an intention to take us right to
the precipice here of a war? Absolutely. They can’t say they’re stumbling into
this. No, these people are not stupid. I might question the rationale, and I do
behind Biden’s decisions, but they’re ideologically driven. Some have said
let’s use this to go after Iran. Like the pronouncement was made after 9/11,
let’s use this to go after Iraq. It’s the declensions of war, Iraq, Iran, I run
to hell.
Chris
Hedges: Why Iran? You have oil in Iran,
you have more oil in Iraq. What is it? Do they think that… Is it this vision
that they’re going to remake the Middle East into their own image? What do you
think is driving this animus towards Iran? Of course, we have to be clear, Bibi
Netanyahu has been pushing for a strike on Iran for a long time. And it’s my
understanding that the Pentagon has essentially been very wary about carrying
out strikes against Iran.
Dennis
Kucinich: I had a chance to talk to Mr.
Netanyahu as a member of Congress on a committee that he testified to. At this
committee – Chris, this could have been 25 years ago – He said, well the US
should go after Iraq, Iran, and Syria. After the hearing, I met him in the
hall, and I said, Mr. Netanyahu, why don’t you do it? He said, oh, no, no, no,
no, you should do it. Leaders go to war for all reasons; Some reasons are that
they may be in political trouble and they think war is going to save them. That
can be part of Netanyahu’s calculus. It could also be part of Joe Biden’s
calculus. A wartime president, don’t change horse in the middle of the stream,
on and on and on.
Iran,
in its nuclear research, represented a threat to Israel that people who were
otherwise condign on the issue of Iran said, hey, wait a minute. We’ve got to
look at this. We don’t really see eye to eye. They could try to strike us. In
the dialectic of conflict that goes into the calculus of a nuclear exchange, if
you think the other guy’s going to hit you, you might hit him first. That’s one
thing. Iran has risen as a technological power. It’s not an Arab country, it is
Persian. It has developed a society that is advanced. It’s not well understood
by the US that the people of Iran, they’re not afraid of America. They don’t
expect to be attacked, but if they’re attacked, they will respond and they’ll
be ready. They’ve developed some very accurate missiles that can travel
thousands of miles.
The
thing that I’m concerned about is that in this dialectic of conflict that we’re
seeing move along in an escalatory fashion, this could mean the end of Israel.
I don’t know why that isn’t … I’m sure people in Israel are living with this
and are starting to get concerned. Where’s this headed? But we cannot create a
war with Iran without expecting a retaliatory strike with everything that Iran
has on Israel itself. It’s like, back off, stop it. Stop this forward momentum
towards a cataclysm.
Chris
Hedges: To what extent do you think
these neocons who have orchestrated these debacles in the Middle East
essentially are using Iran as a scapegoat? They made the mess but are they
trying to offload it onto Iran, and once we get rid of Iran, our utopian vision
of the Middle East will appear?
Dennis
Kucinich: That’s part of it. No question
about it. I’ve got a library here, a lot of the books recently in the last 20
years are about Iraq. It’s very interesting how you can see the parallels
between what we’re doing with respect to Iran right now. Now, the CIA reports
that I saw did not say that Iran was directly linked to what happened on
October 7 but there are those who want to create that connection now, in order
to blame Iran for that as we falsely blamed Iraq for 9/11. Iraq had nothing to
do with 9/11. According to our own intelligence agencies, Iran was not
connected to October 7. It really goes back to the Project for a New American
Century. We’re talking about, just as there are plans in Iraq that are driven
by history and ideology and politics, so too in the US there are plans that are
driven by similar metrics. It puts us in a position where we’re moving towards
a war against Iran and we’re not really thinking about where’s this going to
take us?
All
of the ships, the carriers, and the planes that we’ve already sent over
ostensibly to protect Israel, they’re really in a forward, ready position to be
able to deploy for an attack on Iran. We’re not fooling anyone, least of all
Iran on this. Iran’s been preparing for this for some time. Then one has to
ask, as war planners sometimes do, where does this lead? China’s already
standing with Iran. We are already opposed to Russia and the games that were
played with respect to Ukraine. Where do we go? We are looking at a conflict
that inevitably will take us against two other nuclear powers: China and
Russia.
Isn’t
anybody aware of how dangerous this situation is with respect to standing guard
for Israel while they go ahead and the government levels Gaza and kills
hundreds of thousands of people perhaps? Somebody has to say, look, we’re
playing in the flash of World War III here, and we ought to stop. It’s beyond a
ceasefire. There has to be a stand-down and stop it so that Israel can be
secured from destruction so that the Gazans can be protected from destruction,
so that those in the West Bank can be protected from destruction, so that our
nation and the nations of the world can be protected from destruction.
One
need only go back to the poetry of William Yeats when he famously wrote The
Second Coming, “Turning and turning in the widening gyre the falcon cannot hear
the falconer; Things fall apart; The center cannot hold.” What we’re seeing
here is the center of gravity that holds the world together right now is
starting to fracture. Once that happens, the potential for a very wide war is
introduced. Once it starts, it plays itself out as wars always do, depending on
what weapons are used.
Chris
Hedges: Those carrier groups are not
deployed in the Mediterranean. They’re deployed in the Persian Gulf off the
coast of Iran.
Dennis
Kucinich: Right, thank you. You’re right
about that.
Chris
Hedges: So it’s a very clear threat to
Iran.
Dennis
Kucinich: That’s why they’re there in
the Persian Gulf. Iran, Persian.
Chris
Hedges: Yeah. Great. We can find you at
denniskucinich.substack.com. Is that correct?
Dennis
Kucinich: Yes. That’s my Substack
address.
Chris
Hedges: Right. Okay. I’m a subscriber.
Everyone else should subscribe. That was –
Dennis
Kucinich: Thank you. Anybody who wants
to subscribe, your subscriptions are gratefully received.
Chris
Hedges: – That was Dennis Kucinich. I
want to thank The Real News Network and its production team; Cameron Granadino,
Adam Coley, David Hebden, and Kayla Rivara. You can find me at
chrishedges.substack.com.
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