Tom
Hayden Talk and Discussion at “Max und Moritz” in Berlin-Kreuzberg on Tuesday, May 17 2005
Part
II Discussion: Question and Answer Period after Tom
Hayden’s Formal Remarks
(Remarks in italics and emphasis with bold
face type or underlining are by Woody Williams)
QUESTION: I Just wonder, let’s say this happened… that
we managed for whatever reason and by whatever method to get out of Iraq. What do you think is going to happen within
Iraq, because for me it is a big question—what’s going to happen—it’s not going
to go easy?
TOM
HAYDEN: Well, if you want to negotiate
a withdrawal this means the United States would have a lot of influence over
what would happen in Iraq afterwards.
In other words you say…what the U.S. position now is, we may or may
not withdraw, but we certainly won’t withdraw until Iraq is stable, which means
until all you people are defeated, right?
I mean there’s nothing in that except an invitation to continue the
fight to see who wins. If you
say….uh,
Here’s what
the British did in Northern Ireland at one turning point—I know that Northern
Ireland situation very closely—they had to say something that the IRA was
willing to evaluate. Peter Bruck
said—he was the Northern Ireland secretary—he said the British have no
strategic, economic, or….some other (i.e.
cultural?)— interest in Northern Ireland.
In other words it was to say that “we are terminating our attempt to
impose colonial power on Northern Ireland by force.” He didn’t say “we are getting out.” But then came an agreement that nobody said was possible. And even though the agreement has been in
effect for seven years people still say “it’s not possible; they are out of
their minds.” You will never disarm the
IRA, and you’re not going to disarm the paramilitaries, but they are on
permanent cease-fire, because there has been an achievement called parity of esteem—I don’t know if
you have that terminology, it seem’s (to
be) a European terminology, but it means equal respect, rights and
resources for nationalists and loyalists, as an interim solution in a power
sharing arrangement in which both sides have veto power.
As somebody
who follows that and who is a republican—I mean I am very frustrated with it,
but the diminishment of violence has gone from a very high level to virtually
zero, which you could not get by calling for disarmament. This is a cold war, this is an armed
truce. You are not going to get
peace in Iraq either by asking all militias to turn in their weapons, but you could create a power sharing
arrangement in exchange for an American withdrawal.
Will there
still be blood? I suppose there
will. Do we have a right to stay there forever on the pretext that there will
always be blood? That is what the
British argued in Northern Ireland for 800 years: “those people are wild animals and unless we occupy them they
will kill each other.” So you had Irish
killing Irish and you had Irish killing British and British killing Irish and
it went on for centuries. Since the
Good Friday agreement happened, I wonder, where are all the people that said
the Irish are homicidal, drunken, violent by nature? The Irish have been at peace since the Good Friday
Agreement—sure, they still drink a lot, they’re the butt of every joke—but this
is a serious point. Don’t we say the
same thing about the Iraqis? You know
that they will kill each other? They’ve
always killed each other? Well, Iraq
wouldn’t have even been a country except for the British. There’s a lot undoing to deal with
here. The British created this
place. It was created in the classic
British way—they put group against
group, “divide and conquer” and gave a rationale for occupation: it was,
“they’ll kill each other, unless we occupy them.”
So don’t
blame people for having internalized a lot of violence through these 80 or 85
years in Iraq. But it seems to me the Irish example proves how quickly violence can be
ended, if there is respect.
But Condoleezza Rice is not talking about that. She has to respect the Association of Muslim
Scholars, which is pro-resistance; she has to respect Muqtada Al Sadr’s party
within a party—within the Shia. There
are all kinds of people she has to respect, whom she is not ready to
respect. And of course they have to
respect her, but I’ll bet they would be glad to sit down with her, if there was
something on the table. Anyway, I come
from Royal Oak, Michigan, we don’t think about our global obligation as
Americans. We say, “This is good money
after bad, wasting money on a lost cause and giving us a bad name in the world,
when we know we are good people, so get out.”
QUESTION: All of us didn’t want to go in the first
place, but how do you convince people who did want to go in the first place,
that they did something wrong?
TOM
HAYDEN: They will either be convinced
by your good argument or they will be convinced by the terrible realities on
the ground. Just like today, 80% of
Americans think that Vietnam was a mistake.
Where were they? It takes more
Iraqi and more American blood to move somebody from the position of “It was a
mistake, but give it more time” to “It was a mistake, I’ve had enough.”
You move them either by the logic of argument,
or you move them by the terrible calamities on the ground.
I am sure this week many more people have said, “OK, we’re done. We had the election; they all voted, and
look it didn’t do a damned thing. Now
the slaughter is even greater than before the election. So we’ve done enough. Now let’s get out.”
I wish that persuasion was more effective.
QUESTION: Going to your proposed demands: your last statement, I think contradicts
what you were saying about your first demand, which was to “get out now” plus
some other points, and I think that this is too many words for the average
American. I think that what you said at
the end is a good argument for just saying the demand should be to pull
out. How that gets done is something
that will come about later. It doesn’t
have to be incorporated into the demands that we are trying to publicize.
The
other demand doesn’t make a lot of sense, to say you are going to get out with
a timetable. You know, you say you are
going to get out within a year and then nobody has any incentive to negotiate
with us. That is the peak program argument that the
other side will give, and it is really hard for us to counter that
argument. It seems almost more
intelligent to say the simple thing, to say let’s pull out. But the trouble is that there are all
of these intricacies, we do have this situation where you three
different major ethnic-religious groupings that are fighting each other, where
the United States is facing this situation which isn’t comparable to Vietnam. Of course we tried that in Vietnam too, but
the problem is that there 75% of the people were Buddhist and Vietnamese, and
they were all against us. So in that
situation, it was exactly the opposite.
TOM HAYDEN:
Well, I am
anti-war but I am also trying to advise my friend Howard Dean on how to
position the Democratic Party: “get out
of silence. Do something.” “Taxes for Torture” is a good position for
them to hold hearings on. But with
respect to getting out, I can see how Howard Dean and the Democratic Party
Leadership cannot be persuaded for immediate withdrawal. It is just not going to persuade them. (It
would persuade) a wing of the party—30 or 40—yes, in Congress. So I wrote this letter to Dean and he
immediately categorized me as “out now!” and I said, “As far as I am concerned,
yes, but you are the leader of the party.
What I am saying is that you are collaborating with Bush and blood is
on your hands, and all of this money is being wasted with your support, so
what’s your position?” When you hit
the ball back to these guys, they don’t know what to say, because they know in
their heart of hearts that you are absolutely right. They are just trying to position themselves to not appear weak or
be blamed.
So I do
think that there are facts that you need to consider. I can put them on my website.
There is a long series of press articles that show—if you read them
backwards (laughter)—that the United States policy for the last year
has been to quash any effort by Iraqis to open talks with the insurgents. I told you 80% of the Iraqis are for
withdrawal and for setting a timetable, that hasn’t changed. But I haven’t told you that the leading Shia
party that won (the election)
campaigned on a platform whose second point was “a timetable for American
military withdrawal”. And there have been any number of efforts
to stimulate ceasefire talks with the resistance that have been crushed.
The
thing the United States is most afraid of is a withdrawal that is based on a
commitment by the U.S., as opposed to a withdrawal that comes after the U.S.
wins the war.
Well, Dean
saw that. You know … if the argument is
that our government is deliberately trying to undermine peace efforts among
Israelis… (Audience: You mean Iraqis…) No both!
The Israeli peace movement, the Iraqis, and then you can start thinking:
“there are some political possibilities here.”
QUESTION: I just wanted to say something to that. I hear, “Let’s get out now”. This shows how primitive the argumentation
of the Left in a way is. I think the
Right has two strategies. One is the
Neoconservative attempt to refashion the Middle East—which has not been as easy
as they had thought. The other one is
one which I think is a quagmire strategy, which is basically to
maintain the isolation of the United States, which is to keep terrorism in Iraq
(and not on the streets of America) as is often said. I know this seems a cynical point of view, but I think there is
something to it. The Left basically has
an argument, which is basically a 19th Century argument, which is
very much like the peoples’ opposition to the war against Mexico: “No we don’t want to go that road; we are a
republic. Don’t invade!” But that’s not the end of the story; there
is a lot of time, and the world is integrating—and the Left has to deal with
the fact that the world is integrating—so it should have been … pushing people
like Clinton—I mean Kerry isn’t even formulating anything like that—but maybe
it should have been more (i.e. would have
been better to have been) pushing
people like Clinton, who did have a vision of an integrated world—to make it a
more just one….it just seems…
TOM HAYDEN:
I think you are on the right path. My
argument politically would be: American
policy, Democratic Party policy, Peace Movement policy should be:
“We support the peace movement in Iraq. We support the right of Iraqis to reclaim
control over their own businesses, instead of having multi-nationals take them
over. We are for peace, democracy and a
globalization, if it is democratic and sustainable.
Many people
say, well, what is the Iraqi peace movement?
Well you can say: “the polls
show 80% of the Iraqis want the U.S. out by a date certain. And I can give you a dozen—like after the election, three or four
weeks after the election, there were a hundred thousand Iraqis—Shia!!—marching
for U.S. withdrawal in the streets of Baghdad.
Why didn’t we say—“we” in the larger sense—we have to support those
people? Are they not Iraqis? Are Chalabi and these foreign exiles who have
been on our payroll—out of the
country—are those the Iraqis? Who are the 100,000 people that went out on
the streets? And there was no
violence. Do they not stand for the
mainstream of Iraqi opinion? So why not say that? “We support the
Iraqi peace movement.” And then
wait for the response: “What Iraqi
peace movement!!!” Then you pull out
the article—100,000 Iraqis last month on the streets, demanding that we get
out. And they were from the party that won the election!
QUESTION:
We were all very surprised at the results of the elections (i.e. in the U.S.). I would say, but don’t you think that these
Mega-churches are having a better effect at creating more Republicans than
things like “MoveOn.org” and that we are going to have these Republican
governments for a while?
TOM
HAYDEN: We may. I don’t know; things change. Time spans that are called “eras” are so
quick in my political life of the last 45 years. They will seem to be moving in a liberal direction and then
suddenly in a conservative direction. So my view is that the only way to defeat the Republican
Neoconservatives is for them to defeat themselves. They will go too far.
This is a law of Tom Hayden’s theory of social movements (laughter); they have no incentive to
back off from their extreme urges—no internal incentive and no external
block—so Bush is down in the polls; his policies are all below 50%. We’re right back where we were 4 years
ago. The question is “why did he win
the election?” and “how is he going to win the next election?” (Question
from the audience about the possible effect of the Osama bin Laden video on the
election results.) No, but I do
think Kerry would have won if it wasn’t for 9-11, that’s the first thing. That’s from a macro-campaign strategy point
of view; that’s the big thing, the big elephant in the room—for the
Republicans’ elephants—and some say that it was stolen. I’ve seen elections stolen; and the way I
look at it is not so conspiratorial.
All campaign managers try to steal elections—legally—and by playing on
the borders. And this has always gone
on; so there were attempts by Democrats and Republicans to steal this election
(Hayden chuckles.). The Republicans were better thieves
probably; the issue of the lack of a
paper trail has got to go to the top of our list for political reform. “Why Republicans oppose a paper trail” is a
good issue, I think, to run on—and audits, sure—but I don’t know if it was
stolen. Because if you say it was
stolen definitively, you are telling me it couldn’t have been won. But I think it could have been won without
the Democrats stealing it.
As a
technician I would have advised Kerry to talk a little bit differently about
his Vietnam experience, a little more aggressively. I
would have—yeah, not prove that I am a man by killing a duck—I would have probably not taken John Edwards, who is a
good man, as the Vice Presidential
candidate, because we knew at the beginning that he could not add a state. And the first and foremost reason to put a
Vice President on your ticket is whether they can get a state. That’s why Kennedy took somebody that he
never liked, didn’t ever like, didn’t like him; but Johnson got him Texas. (Audience: and election cheating?) A little cheating, so I think, say, if this
is just a guess, a wild guess: if he
had taken Richardson, he would have won New Mexico, and probably Colorado,
because a Latino won the U.S. Senate race in Colorado. It might have gotten him closer somewhere
else—I’m not doing the math—but elections are lost for many reasons including
tactical and strategic choices, and so if you say it was stolen, you are
saying that it really couldn’t have been won, and what I find weird is that all
these people who say it was stolen then say in the next breath: “It would have been won if he (i.e. Kerry) had taken a different
position on Iraq. Well, it is one or
the other. I think the attempts at
stealing had some effect, but he still could have won it, if he had had a
different Vice President. And I would
have emphasized CAFTA more too; getting these Democrats back to the populist
economic issues is quite a strain. (Audience:
What is CAFTA?) CAFTA is the
extension of NAFTA to Latin America, to Central America. It is coming to a vote and the Democrats are
now all against it and I think the Republicans’ votes are not
there. Bush is going to have to renege
on his base closures or something to get the Republicans to vote. But
Kerry was not good on the Iraq issue and was not good on the populist economic
issues, so he did pretty well given his position on trade and war. So I think it could have been won and I also
think that efforts at stealing it were successful in some measure, but it could
have been won, and we wouldn’t be in this situation—I don’t know what situation
we would be in, but if the 2000 election hadn’t been stolen, we might not be in
this situation at all.
QUESTION: You have already said some things about
Howard Dean and the Democrats, that they are not really taking a position on
Iraq. In your open letter to Howard
Dean (i.e. About Withdrawal from Iraq)
you did say that you talked to him. Are
you continuing this dialogue with him?
HAYDEN: yes, I talked to him
yesterday.. QUESTION: Well, we are very curious to know how or
what kinds of steps he is taking, because he is in a position as the Chairman
of the Democratic Party—some say the he, you know, has to close his mouth
because he has taken that position, that he is not allowed to make any policy
statements, or is not supposed to, or whatever. Maybe he will, maybe he won’t.
But certainly there are a lot of people who were against that war, who
got mobilized, who got into that election campaign and supported Kerry because
of Howard Dean, I mean if he reneges on that I think it is going to be a little
bit dangerous for the Democratic Party.
I really appreciate your Open Letter in doing that, but I hope you keep
it up. And I would be very curious to
know how that is continuing.
TOM HAYDEN:
Well Howard
Dean is in a new situation. He is not
running for President, where you get to point out what distinguishes you from
other Democrats. Now he is the Chairman of the party and it is an open question whether
he reforms the party or the party reforms him. (Laughter).
According to the Hayden Theory of Social
Movements the outcome is foreknown; you know, no way can he reform the party. But now that he is a party man, he does need to
win; that’s all that matters. I was
trying to convince him—and I am still trying to convince him—that he can work
openly, but most of all behind the scenes,
to tell the Democratic shot-callers and money people that their position on
Iraq is a loosing position and that they have got to come up with a different
position. It is true that he said
that it was a mistake to get in, but we can’t just pull out. But if it is still going on next year and
two or three thousand Americans are dead, is that a viable position? To just keep saying we can’t get out? You are criticizing Bush, but you have no
alternative? I think they are very
uneasy about that. What they want—what the big-shots want—is the war to go away, which
means they want it won. Or, if it’s got
to be lost, they want it lost by Bush.
They don’t want Democratic fingerprints to be on it. My argument to him is that’s good Machiavellian thinking, but it is only
good for a short timeframe, like a few weeks, because we are already heading
into the next (election), like you
just can’t plan your strategy on the war being off the agenda next
year. What if the war is on the
agenda next year? And people are
deserting the Democratic Party and going to the Green Party and going to Nader,
or just not voting? Not giving
money. Don’t you have to come up with
something? Bingo! That argument, I know that argument
convinced him. I don’t mean I
convinced him, but that argument. He
knows as party chair you can’t keep saying year after year, “It was a mistake
to get in there.” So I hope that he can
create some dialogue that just challenges the Democratic Leadership to come up
with something better than
a.
Silence
or
b.
I had—what’s
his name—General Clarke tell me just the day before the election: I said “General, what are you
thinking about in Falluja? He said “Well”—you
know how they go—(laughter)—he said, “Well, you gotta take ‘em out.” So there are all these dead people in
Falluja, and so, that was their position, like, “Let’s not look too anti-war,
let’s advocate the slaughter in Falluja.”
(Now Hayden to Clark) “But
strategically, ok, now that you have killed all these people in Falluja and the
blood is on your hands, what is your plan for Falluja?” (Audience:
“Camping outside”). Hayden:
They are
holding them outside Falluja, so it is almost impossible for people to return,
because anybody who is young and male is considered a potential terrorist. The idea of making a “poster child” of
reconstruction—it’s not gonna happen.
So the Democratic Leadership has to get this out of their system and see
that another election is coming.
Currently,
I don’t think I have been this depressed in my life about the Democratic Party,
but I am impressed at the rank and
file of the Democratic Party their potential to raise hell and put pressure
on and change public opinion. And
candidates have to be responsive to that next year; and I think
Howard Dean can work behind the scenes to reposition the party, to give a green
light to anti-war voices in the party.
Is that the whole solution? NO!
but if the Democratic Party is collaborating with the Republican
Party over the Iraq policy, where do we go?
We’ve got to create a schism. If
“Out Now!” is not a plausible recommendation to Howard Dean, then give him a
plausible recommendation so that voters see that there is an antagonism here
over … the blood and the taxes and the rest of it. And I think that Howard Dean could convince
Ted Kennedy to say, “Let us support the Iraqi Peace Movement”. What’s so hard about that?
(AUDIENCE:
That means supporting the resistance, doesn’t it?)
TOM HAYDEN:
No, I would say that the vast majority of
Iraqis in every poll, including your secret polls, show that they want
the U.S. to set a timetable for military withdrawal and end the occupation. (Audience: and the vast majority of Americans.) Yes, the majority (of Americans), but not the vast majority
(i.e. as in Iraq). And that you have active groups (in Iraq) that supported the election and
then put 100,000 people on the street calling for U.S. withdrawal. You had a party—SCIRI—that won the election,
whose platform said, “American withdrawal timetable.” Why is the United
States trying to convince and pressure the Iraqis who want withdrawal to shut
their mouths? What unscrupulous
methods—what are they doing?
Election reform in America is one thing, that’s a big deal, but there is
something going on over there, and we
are sort of quashing Iraqis who want to settle…and who want us to get out. We should include them—if you want to be
inclusive you have to have something to say to the 75% or 80% who want us out.
I think
from a political point of view, is that not a reasonable rhetoric as opposed to
“well, we have to take ‘em out”? (laughter).
QUESTION: I’m from Northern California…(Banter from Tom Hayden about Northern
California’s environmental standards and about it’s becoming a part of the EU.)
TOM HAYDEN:
It’s not
funny, I am serious. There is a way
into this. You know, the EU
environmental standards which started with the environmental movement around
the world, are being imposed on American companies, regardless of whether they
are accepted by the American government.
So in that sense, the environmental cities, like San Francisco, Seattle
and others are signing up for Kyoto as municipalities and taking steps. And you will soon see them signing up for
observer status and a relationship with the EU, because EU standards are being
imposed on companies that do business in the Bay Area. The United States will kind of be left
behind here until it catches up with these standards, or obliterates these
standards. (more banter). That’s what
we mean when we say “another world”.
QUESTION: Basically,
the question I have is about the American media, because, as we are
noticing in Newsweek right now, (Here,
the reference is to the Newsweek report about the desecration of the Koran at
Guantanamo and elsewhere) the retraction has come now, “the story is false,
period”. In spite of the countless
reports from various sources over a long period of time, all of this is now
supposed to be false…..and I am concerned about the same kind of thing
happening with our movement. I really
appreciated what you just said about language; for example if you say
“Immediate withdrawal”, what is the media going to do to us? How are they going to twist it? I think that we as a group here should be
talking about: “how are we going to get our message across to the Media without
them turning it around—making it so clear, that they can’t turn it into
something evil?
TOM HAYDEN:
Well that’s
not possible. (laughter). I was using the
framing of the arguments, not towards the media, but towards our other
Americans. (Question: But if it’s going to
get anywhere, it is going to hit the media at some point.) I don’t think so. I think the only thing the
media are really good for is: given its
nature, it will televise blood.
This is the problem. They can’t
stop covering Iraq. If they could make
Iraq Afghanistan, it would be over.
They never have peace movement leaders on; they never will. However, their penchant for covering
bloodshed and car bombings forces them to continually remind us. This is a moment of illumination, and it
will only be a brief one—illumination in terms of enlightenment, but also this
war will only expose American policy on television as long as the war is going
on; then it will be over. Nobody
will ever remember it. Nobody ever
remembers Vietnam, except for the hundreds of thousands of families who lost
people there. So, no, I wasn’t
suggesting a media strategy, where we think that they would ever hear our
words. People should write op-eds, they
should do this and that, but they will not cover us. We need to have our own
media and we need to have our own conversations with each other, and we need to
get over this rift between “out now” and “negotiate now”. It’s not the time for that dispute. We are crippled because half the peace
movement is for “out now” and “end imperialism” and so on and the other half is
for “can’t we do something else in Iraq to make up for our mistake?” That can only be settled by persuasion and
thoughtful argument among us, not through the media. Or it will be settled on the ground,
because, if the war goes on, more and more people will shift from the moderate
position to the withdrawal position next year. What the media has to do is—the role of the media is to keep
covering the existence of violence.
QUESTION: But they did cover when you wrote to Dean.
TOM HAYDEN:
No, no
coverage. It was a private letter to
Dean and then it went around the Internet.
(mixed audience comments: it got around, but not in the papers.) It gets around. I don’t…I am saying this carefully. I’d like nothing better than to have a freer media, but I
don’t see, aside from—like five percent of the media maybe, will give accurate
reflection of our voice, but the rest won’t, not because they are against
us necessarily, although some are, but they don’t understand it. They just…they can’t imagine that the United
States should get out of Iraq. They just
can’t imagine it, so how could you persuade them?
On the PDA (i.e. Progressive Democrats of America)…you can affiliate with the
Progressive Democrats, and I would urge you to do that, I don’t know what
your constitution allows as Democrats Abroad, but they (PDA) came out of the Dean and Kucinich campaigns, and they are
very, very, anti-war and very active and doing a great job, and they are the
nucleus of any new movement within the party at the moment. You know how to find them on the web. But I think, there must be a way to
affiliate, where you get their daily updates.
(Information from the audience on affiliating
with PDA online.) Yeah, I think you
can do it, I wish you would do it, and I don’t think you have to give up any
other organizational identity to do it.
But part
of the strategy is to get the party leadership to see that the conservative (Democratic Party) base is being eroded
and more and more people are joining the Progressive Democrats.
In California, with the leadership of the Progressive Democratic core
we got on the 15th of last month, the State (Democratic) Party convention—2,500 people—voted for an Iraq
resolution, that the leadership tried to squash. We got it on the floor and it called for the complete end of the
occupation and military withdrawal at the earliest possible time. There was a big word fight over “immediate”,
“earliest possible”. Did “earliest
possible” mean “forever”. But it was
concluded that “earliest possible” could only have only one logical meaning to
most people, so we would claim it as a victory and move forward. Then the Massachusetts party last week
passed a similar one that was stronger.
So there are a couple of parties—and this is just sort of happening at
the grass roots level—but the party officials, you know, can’t take
resolution after resolution, calling for withdrawal, with an election coming
up. So your weighing in on this issue,
I think, does have an effect in the larger strategy.
QUESTION: (Summary) I appreciated your analysis of
conventional elections, and I think I agreed with most of it. My question is, why do the Democrats keep
hiring the same (old) people to run their elections? Regarding our (i.e. we, the Democrats) difficulties in framing the message I know
many young professional people with much closer contacts to the grass roots,
who get ignored. Dean did hire some,
but still the young professionals are not getting through to the top
politicians. So I think this is a
frustration which the party will have to deal with. It is very relevant to the problem of messaging.
You
raised only once tonight the issue of 9-11 and security; I was in Washington at that
time—the real post traumatic stress syndrome that all politicians went through,
and they continue to live in it.
Washington has become very much a war-type environment. You major evacuations happen every view
months (Hayden: it just happened last week).
The issue of 9-11 and security is—regardless of the constituency of
these politicians—a real presence in peoples’ lives. The fact that our party is not willing to discuss it and to do
something is a real factor. It has to
be taken into account in the balance of how we deal with the issue of the war.
TOM HAYDEN:
OK, Well I agree with you. Two responses.
On the messaging, I don’t
agree that people in Washington are different and freaked out, and we have to
understand that, as a result of 9-11. The
people who were really hurt by 9-11 all voted for Kerry, all of them. The people in New York, and the blacks of
Washington, they all voted for Kerry.
So I have no sympathy for people who say, “I was here in Washington”. But I
do think that the Democrats need to say with respect to 9-11 something more
coherent. They have almost allowed 9-11
to become an experience that supports the Republican narrative. …What
I would say on the message is—and I don’t know why they don’t say it, it is
a no-brainer—is that Bush and the
Republicans are threatening my five-year old son, because if you attack a
hornets nest, you expect to get stung, and that’s what they are doing. They are attacking Muslims all over the
world and they are getting stung. We’ve
given them (i.e. the government)
thirty billion dollars for intelligence and they couldn’t even figure out what
to do about the hijackings. Because they believe in de-regulation, they are
nowhere on airline safety. Why was it
possible on 9-10 to carry a six inch dagger on a plane? (It is)
because the Democratic leader’s wife was a lobbyist for the airline
industry. They sit in these hearings
and they debate, “Well, what kind of dagger can you be allowed to carry on a
plane?” They never debate, “How can we
close and seal the cockpits?” It’s all
about profits and about convenience of bureaucracy, so we really need to step
it up now, because I guarantee you, there is the possibility it will happen
again, because all these well paid intelligence experts tell us it is
inevitable. What the hell are they saying?
They don’t quit, they just say—with all of our money—it is inevitable;
we are going to be attacked again.
(Audience: We could change our foreign policy. Hayden laughs.) You can’t do that. So I think, if you are out just there
talking to voters: voters understand that there is something wrong with somebody that’s
got 30 billion dollars and tells you another attack is inevitable. We need to dump those people and find somebody
who says we’ve got a chance and here’s how to do it. Kerry tried this, but it was so weak. He said we should spend more money protecting our nuclear power
plants. Good idea! How about getting rid of nuclear power
plants! But they are not going there;
they are going to restore them. So I do
think 9-11 had…every Democratic speech,
every political speech to a large audience should include something about 9-11,
without falling into the trap of saying it was therefore justified to go
kill and attack a lot of people.
I don’t know why they (i.e. the
Democratic Party leadership) don’t do it.
You tell me! (Audience:
They are not listening to the people on the ground and they are not
listening to the people who speak for those people on the ground. There is a younger sub-generation of people
in the Democratic Party that is not being listened to, and this is a major
problem…)
QUESTION: (From
a German participant in the audience) we do have a problem about the
Democratic Party message. I can assure
you, that I knew what George Bush’s message was, but I didn’t know what John
Kerry’s message was really about. And I kind of think that is the same thing
that happened to a lot of U.S. voters…
Let me ask you another thing about Iraq.
I think that if you would ask people here in the German
government—probably also in a lot other European governments—what do you think
about setting a timetable to for getting out of Iraq. They would say “yes, that is what you should do.” But they would add another thing: “Please, this time around, consult with
us before you act.” For good
reasons, because one of the problems about the war in Iraq was not only that
you started the war, but that you did it without asking anyone else, what could
be the consequences—for us? For
example they should talk to (Iraq’s)
neighbors; they should ask the Turks, who would have to send most of the
troops, the Islamic troops, to substitute the U.S. troops; they would have to
ask the Iranians because of the effects of action on the stability of the
area. They subsidize all the political
parties in Iraq. Well, maybe they
should discuss with everyone the general framework of stability in the Middle
East, which has a lot to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And maybe they should discuss with the
United Nations how to pick up the pieces.
I don’t know if John Bolton is the right person to discuss these things
with the United Nations. But just
broadly speaking my message would be, that whatever kind of decision the U.S.
makes…these decisions should not be taken alone.
TOM HAYDEN:
Right, that’s two points.
The difference between
Kerry and Bush was multilateral versus unilateral. They didn’t know how to articulate it, but it goes back to empire
versus multipolar. And I agree with you that getting out of
Iraq involves a recognition that we live in a multipolar world, which this
administration will not admit. So it
will probably be a more miserable or bloody end. But when they come to it, yes, I am sure that they will be forced
to consult. And I would hope that no European government—no people in Europe
will allow its government to help the United States to occupy Iraq. (Audience: They (the European governments) are going to
help us build “stability”)). Well,
they say that, but I notice that they are not giving Bush what he really
wants. He wants troops; that’s
stability, right? (But isn’t one point that he wants the Iranians to help him?) Well, no, because they are on the short list
of the Axis of Evil. This is escalating into a focal point of
world history here. This is not going
to be over quickly. This becomes about
everything. And certainly this is going
to be a hard learning curve for Bush.
(laughter) This could be a long war. I don’t know how the Iraqi resistance
sustains itself. I have some ideas, I
don’t know how they do it, but I know that what they went through with Iran
just a short while ago indicates that they do have a capacity to suffer and a
capacity to fight that is fairly unbelievable.
So it could be quite a long war, to the surprise of people who haven’t
fought in wars (sic!!)
On the message, again I have this sociological
approach. I think the problem with the
Democratic Party is its internal interest groups. The rank and file
Democrats would want the party and Kerry to say “the war in Iraq was a mistake;
the war in Iraq is wrong and I will bend every effort to get out in the four
years that I am in office, and I don’t mean a military solution. I will find a political solution.” That’s the Democratic Party position at the
rank and file level.
Secondly, you could
say, in terms of message, it was a mistake to have the world organized for the
benefit of these multinational corporations through the WTO; we need Fair Trade, we need to protect
American jobs, and we need to address the 2 or 3 billion people in the world
who do not have the elements of survival; we need a global living wage, period.
We need to extend the great
tradition of our party, which is the New Deal, which tried to regulate
Capitalism, employ people and provide social insurance. That should be our foreign policy.
That’s what the Democratic Party would
say. And we need to add a new
generation’s agenda, which is to make growth sustainable by having
environmental policies, and anti-pollution policies and health policies that do
that. That is the Democratic Party’s
rank and file position, but then you get to the party’s funders, an
apparatus, and you get these groups that don’t agree with that, and they play
sabotage against the rank and file all the time. So it will never be a left wing party, but it could be a
center-liberal party, hanging on to the New Deal plus the environment as the
core democratic principles. It would need a more radical movement to
its left, to give it backbone and to hold it accountable. And those are the movements I am involved
with the anti-WTO and the ant-war movements. And I think they are quite
significant.
QUESTION:
Isn’t it possible that Howard Dean and other people higher up in the
Democratic Party are fully aware of the ability of Mr. Bush and his
associates—Karl Rove and others—to manipulate, to exploit the situation in Iraq
at the next election, or one of the next two elections, probably 2008, to the detriment of the Democratic Party? You seem to assume that you can persuade
voters by the force of reason. We know
now that there are many (?, inaudible)
higher up, who vote against their own interests—a lot of Democratic voters did—so
why do you think that reason can persuade people to vote the way they really
should vote—for their own interests?
Karl Rove can use his (inaudible)
to turn the war in Iraq to the advantage of the Republicans, because the
Americans are so (inaudible) or not?
TOM HAYDEN:
No I think the Karl Rove/George
Bush strategy on Iraq depends on getting it off television in the short
run. They didn’t expect the invasion to
go badly. They did find a way to gain
time, and that was to say, “We are creating sovereignty; it’s going to take
time. We’re going to have an
election—after the November election we will have an election in Iraq.” What are they going to say next year? If the war goes away, they are fine. But they are assuming the war is going to go
away. They are not assuming that
they need the war permanently in order to stay in power, because you have to at
least assume, that they know they made a mistake. Bush has even said it…so it is out of control—out of control from
the domestic political calendar. So I
am expecting, if they can’t make it go away, they will escalate. (Audience: and exploit that with the voters)
Yeah, it might work with the voters, but at the same time, they know that they
are dealing with voters who are 55% against, and who think they were lied to,
and who are dealing with emotional issues, not logic issues, like all these
dead bodies coming back to home towns in states that Bush carried, all this
money being drained out of those states that could go to college or health
care, and people who are continually being unnerved by the continual allegation
that we torture people. So Rove may be
superior in his resources, or intellect or savvy to these people that she’s (i.e. the person who asked the previous question) complaining about in
the Democratic Party quite properly.
But I sort of think he is playing with a losing hand, or a very
difficult hand. Because it is not the
hand he wanted.
(Audience: that’s the kind of hand the world loves in
poker. By the way as far as old people
in the Democratic Party, if I remember right the oldest man in the U.S. Senate
right now is Mr. Robert Byrd from West Virginia, and he had the loudest voice
in opposing the war in opposing the war in Iraq. So you don’t have to be young to be doing it… ((laughter)) ).
QUESTION:
I wanted to get at the micro-level, to ask two very specific
questions which are related to the resistance within the U.S. military at
the moment. One of them is whether
you think there will be any wider repercussions at the outcome of the
court-martial of Pablo Paredes, where the judge—the Navy judges—gave some
credence to the arguments of the defense that the Iraq war is illegal… (Just
briefly, Pablo Paredes was a sailor who had refused to get on a ship in San
Diego, which he argued was going to Iraq to participate in killing people in
something which he felt to be an illegal war.)
He was not given a prison sentence; he also was not acquitted, but he
was only convicted of not getting on the ship.
And the judge basically said—as far as I understand it—that he has a
viable argument the he did not have to participate in an illegal war. Any
soldier would have reasonable grounds for assuming that the war is
illegal. So what are the repercussions,
if any? And how has this been
reported in the general media?
That is one question, and the other is about
something which you addressed yourself tonight at the very beginning and that
is the counter-recruitment movement.
As I understand it young people are going to the schools and offices
where the recruiters are working and putting forth counter-propaganda about
what it really means: the promises as
opposed to the reality of military service.
And I am wondering—I have
just heard a little bit about that, that it is going on in minority
neighbourhoods around New York City, but obviously it must be going on in other
places. So I wonder if you could talk a
little bit about that.
TOM HAYDEN:
Well, I don’t know what to say; I already did. I think that the key to
ending the war in Iraq is the counter recruitment movement above all, because
the political stuff with the Democratic Party is going to be a long slog. But next to ending the coalition of the
willing, the Army stuff, which is—
Preventing the
return of the draft
Supporting the
dissenting GIs
Supporting the
deserters
Doing
counter-recruitment—
will drain the Army of
the capacity to carry out its mission, and they will be sending out
signals—they are already sending out signals!—that they are out of gas. Bush wants 30,000 troops home around
Christmas going into the election—I forgot to mention that—that is
preposterous, unless Iraqization works.
So the Army is already sending signals.
“Counter-recruitment” means that you take small
groups to picket recruitment centers, which are in every neighbourhood—ghetto
or barrio—and you put up posters and hand out leaflets saying this: “Get the
whole story before you die in Iraq” and you go to high schools and you go to
colleges and you do the same thing, just demand that anyone who is considering
going to Iraq first hear a debate between the recruiter and the anti-war
movement, and it gets through.
The recruiters themselves are catatonic with
stress. Thirty-seven of them have
already gone AWOL—they have disappeared—(laughter)—well
you wanted details. These are people
that are picked by the high command because of their positive personality
characteristics, that allow them to recruit, because remember, you are going to
get a hundred no’s before you get a yes; it is a hard job. So they are going AWOL. As of two months ago the figure was 37
military recruiters are AWOL. Over the
past three months the Army has not been able to reach its recruitment
levels—quotas. The New York Times
reported last week that they are now down to people that they would never want
in the Army—drug addicts, criminal records, mentally disturbed—people that
should be sent to treatment centers. So
they are really in bad shape. Now the question is, what are you doing
about it in Germany? You’ve got a
lot of troops in Germany, coming and going to Iraq, going to hospitals, (Discussion from audience about where the GIs
are, about deserters in all of Germany, but concentrated in certain areas,
about military counselling for GIs, about pressuring the German government to
offer asylum.) On Canada it is very
specific; the Emigration Appeal Board in Canada turned down Jeremy Hinzman’s
refugee case. It is very serious, very
critical. He argued that the war was
illegal. They are looking for another
argument. My argument is political. We went up with the mother of a dead GI and
we talked to the parties up there. And
they are going to try to set up a temporary political solution, allowing people
to have asylum for two or three years and then see if they are OK to be
integrated into Canada. There is a lot
of pressure from the other side: “send them back”. That’s because the
Canadians don’t understand that this is not a volunteer army. You know 40 % of the people over there are
National Guard or Reserves—fighting on the ground—they signed up for domestic
service in the United States. They are
locked into contracts they never imagined.
So you’ve got to make the argument that these are not volunteers, these
are contract mercenaries who have chosen to get out. Now in Germany—the people in Toronto are preparing an Underground
Railway—and the people in the U.S. — because when these young men are received,
they need shelter, they need housing, they need temporary assistance. That’s legal within Canada, is that legal
here? To welcome runaway GIs? (Mixed
answers from the audience). How many
GIs are underground in Germany? (One answer:
only a handful. If there were
such people, there would be a network.
Another answer: there are such
people. Another answer: many of these people are trying to stay
within the army. Another answer: there are GIs AWOL in Germany who get advice
and each works out his own solution, such as returning later to the states to
get a discharge.)
Do they have a website or an organisation or
front? Or is it just all everybody on
their own? (Well, there are some people in Heidelberg who are close to that—MCN
Military Counseling Network).
QUESTION:
After we withdraw from Iraq, who
then provides security for civilians, because rebuilding a country is a very
difficult process and it can only happen if there is a certain sense of
security there? Not even the United
Nations is there any more, because it was attacked by terrorists. And also if you look at Afghanistan, the
only really stable places are those places where troops are. Yes, there were some suggestions that
Iranian troops might go in, but how can you ask Iranian to support troops if
they are still an Axis of Evil. In Iraq
you have three rivalling groups—the Sunnis, Shia and Curds—who are not
necessarily the best friends. How can
you prevent them from going at each other and there has to be more than just
saying, “we have to get out” and wash our own hands clean, because if Iraq due
to the terror goes basically into a complete state of anarchy or civil war,
then the entire region is in danger—
TOM HAYDEN:
of what?
QUESTION:
—in danger of just collapsing.
We are strongly affected by what happens there, as we can see by the
strength of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Then there would be escalation probably all around the area (i.e. in the case of a sudden withdrawal). So how do you prevent that from happening
when you withdraw? There will be
obviously a power vacuum. What should
be done?
TOM HAYDEN:
On this point I go back to Irish-American Royal Oak, Michigan
roots. I am taking off my scholarly layers,
and I am telling you, I don’t have an
imperial instinct left in me. I’ve seen this with the British through the
Irish lens all my life. I saw it in
Vietnam. The master is always saying,
“If I leave they will kill each other.”
It may not bother you; it bothers me so profoundly, that I want nothing
to do with it. I am not an
isolationist. I just want nothing to do
with the British/American imperial creation of Iraq. (applause) Here’s my instinct. My instinct can be turned into an argument;
it is not a blind instinct. It is 1967
and I am in the slums of Newark, NJ, organizing. It is the time of the riots or insurrections or rebellions,
right? Cities are burning down. It comes to Newark, I see it start, I am in
the middle of it. Twenty-seven people
are killed in a few days; a thousand are arrested. I am dragged in the middle of the night with the head of a civil
rights group by State Troopers at high speeds with armoured vehicles to a
bunker, where the Governor of New Jersey is meeting with his military
advisors. Because I and this other guy
are the only two eye-witnesses in the middle of it, whose names they know. At this point I am on a list of “rational”
people. So let’s see what they have to
say. So we talk all night. And the Governor is making the same
argument. He is saying “My military
advisers tell me, if I withdraw from the South Ward of Newark, all hell will
break loose, and I can’t have that”—he is talking like a politician—I
understand politicians. He can’t do
that—“What assurances do I have, Mr. Hayden, that won’t happen. I am twenty-seven years old, what are you
talking about? You started this, and
now you are telling me you can’t end it, because it might go badly for you, so
what are you talking about.” Well we
tried to give him a rational argument, that we thought that the people had
rebelled for reasons that were very deep—long standing grievances and hatred,
that the point had been made. The whole
world knew about Neward (now); the
fires had been lit. People had died. And the people who had done this, and the
community, were exhausted—traumatized and exhausted. That if the chief irritation, which is the military occupation,
was not removed, their trauma would worsen and the bloodletting would become
even worse. We couldn’t be sure that
out of the disorder order and peace would come. We knew that the disorder would worsen, if the cause of the
disorder was not removed—the all white thousands of troopers—carrying guns
pointed at little kids. And so we said
“you should get out of the South Ward and see how it goes, and if it goes well,
and I believe it will, then you can get out of the rest of the city with your
reputation intact.” So at 6 in the
morning he signed me a little card—politician, Governor of New Jersey, Richard
Hughes: “Thanks Tom, for your advice”—and off I go with these troopers. I just knew it, the way I think somebody
knows Iraq that you should pose your question to. Anyway, nothing happened and life resumed.
So, I
have this instinct about disorder and riots and violence. And I have worked the last ten years with
….the gangs of LA, I have written a book about them, I have been in the prisons
with them, in Honduras. I have a feel
for violent people, who are traumatized, shamed and oppressed. I have never been to Iraq, so I am
generalizing from that. I just want you
to know that it is not a casual comment.
It comes from the core of my whole experience over the past 30 or 40
years. It is that the United States
presence is the chief cause of the traumatization of the Iraqi people. That does not mean that the United States
has to withdraw tonight, but the United States has t withdraw from the trauma.
How do you do that? Well, you have to behave in a way that sends a message of respect
to the people that you have been humiliating sexually, humiliating on their
village level, humiliating their families—and the only way I know is to say by
your message, your behavior: “We were
wrong, we have learned our lesson. We
want to get out of here, and we want to be helpful in the restoration of
Iraq. What do you suggest? Sit down with us. Come to the table. Look
at the table, Let’s do this.” That will
work.
(Audience: I don’t quite understand. If I look at the Curds, or if I look at
theChristian minority there. Why won’t
there be a scenario like in Dafur, where they just get slaughtered by the
stronger majority?)
Well, that is an argument for staying
forever. Then I would say, “Well, we
can’t afford this loss of life, the expenditure of these tens of billions of
dollars for ever.” You are talking
about maintaining the occupation of the region, because we know what is best
for them and otherwise they will kill each other. (Audience: I know we don’t want the occupation, because
that—as we can see—is not the solution, but I just think that withdrawing
without a concrete plan, without really making efforts to get the different
parties to sit down together to work more carefully together, without
installing them, because a lot of
installing is happening at the moment.)
Well, we just
disagree. I just feel, as long as we
don’t win the war, and crush them all and kill them all, that they will never
come to the table and sit down with whomever you want them to sit down with,
until there is a solid message that the military occupation is over.
Then they will come to the table, or they will not come. But as long as—I mean the United States is not winning this war, can I make it any
plainer? OK, if we are not winning
the war, why would the other side have an incentive to settle? If we are not winning the war how can we
control the peace? And how many people
like we have to learn this lesson over and over and over and over that we have
no business thinking that we know best for the world and that we can impose our
will by force. You know, I can paint it
over and make it sound more rational and polite, but bottom line I hate
imperialism. I never have seen evidence
that when imperialism ended it got worse.
But I am just Irish, and of course we don’t know what the f____ we are
talking about.
(Audience: Would you not say that there are areas in
the world, like the Balkans, where at the moment an outside force is preserving
the peace?)
I can understand Joschka Fischer and these
other people who argue for a military option as part of a strategy of pressure
etc.etc.etc., but my reading of the
Balkans is that the United States wanted to go to war for political reasons,
they wanted to revive NATO, they wanted to draw Germany out of pacifism—there
are multiple layers, but they did not want to put a proposal on the table that
the other side would sign off on, and now they will be there for 50 or 75 years. Look at the unemployment rates in
Kosovo. Look at the social situation in
Kosovo. What happened to all the promises
of redemption after the war? What
happened?
QUESTION: One of the things about this administration
that has been very disturbing to me is the religious “moral majority”. I am from Texas and have a nephew who was
working on the Kerry campaign and he was sent to Iowa. One of the things that he said to me after
the election was that the Democratic Party feels now that we did not deal with
this religious issue well enough and so we’ve got to address the religious
people of the country, because it turned into this ridiculous “Republicans
being the morality of the country” and Kerry… (Inaudible) looked absolutely ridiculous. So, I am wondering, if you have thoughts on some possible
strategies to deal with this, because I think it is a very real issue in America.
TOM HAYDEN:
Well two points. One is that I
think the war in Iraq is a modified crusade.
A case in point is Grainer—the guy in Iraq who got time for the torture
at Abu Ghraib—at his sentencing hearing, when they asked for clemency and
leniency, the chief argument put into evidence, was that, when he wasn’t
minding the prison, he was giving out Bibles to Iraqi children. I can give you 100 examples of the religious
presence in the military. Boykin,
General Boykin, who went out on endless speaking tours condemning Islam as a
fools religion and and inferior religion, was never fired. He remains—I think—Undersecretary for all
intelligence. So there is a lot of this
Christianity just beneath the surface, and if they didn’t put a Koran
down the toilet, it would surprise me.
But how to respond to this:
I can’t be in Germany without giving you my
little view of the Pope. (laughter) I’ve been following this man
for 30 years. This man alleges that all
of his disorders were aroused by the student protestors of my generation in
Germany. He heads the Congregation for
the Protection of the Faith—which used to be the Inquisition, yes—but he is personally responsible for
creating a situation that could unify progressives, even progressives that
can’t get their mind around God.
Because, he personally led the effort t0 dismantle Liberation Theology
in Central and Latin America. That was
quite a deal. It was he and the Pope
and Reagan. The Pope got Poland, and
Reagan in exchange got the Pope to order Ratzinger to dismantle Liberation
Theology, starting with Nicaragua. So
that was the first thing. Liberation
Theology is dismissed, so when you go to Chiapas, you see that the 1000
Cathechists that were there are gone.
Bishop Ruis (?), retired there, yes. But he is out of the picture, he is
gone. They put in an anti-Zapatista
Bishop.
Secondly, he went after the women. Anything having to do with the status of
women in the Church, having to do with the veneration of Mary, that went “a
little too far,” was condemned as a heresy of goddess worship, the revival of
goddess worship.
Third, Environment: He went after Boff on Liberation Theology in Brazil, but Boff was
also Eco-Spirituality.
Eco-Spirituality: Reverance for
Creation, Reverance for Nature, Reverance for the Universe, that is the return
of Paganism.
So, we can unite the Pagans, the women and the
poor people just around the world that Ratzinger has excluded us from. What’s amazing is, that I didn’t know that
the press was Catholic. You made your joke
about Jewish, but are they all Catholics here?
I mean they are like giving this guy a honeymoon! (Audience:
it’s nationalism, national pride).
The press: he’s going to be
moderate, he’s well-spoken, and he’s not going to be there very long. (Who says
he’s like this?) The press is
saying this, the American media, not the German media. “He just appointed the Bishop of San
Francisco, so how could be an extremist.”
Ratzinger was Bush’s guy; Bush got a majority
of the Catholic vote, an overwhelming majority of the white Catholic vote; he
lost the brown Catholic vote, so I think it is a racial issue more than a
religious one, but they go together. So
the Democrats are doing the usual thing, they are trying to position themselves
on God, which is like completely whacko, when you think about it, because you
can see right through it. Kerry starts
going to Church; Howard Dean mentions God, but I think that the Left has to
recognize the linkages with movements that are motivated by spiritual longings,
that we have always supported, but have always ignored the religious
component. Remember those nuns in El
Salvador who were murdered—everybody talks about Bishop Romero. Well, Bishop Romero was Liberation
Theology. It is almost like we
eliminate the religious component of the very religious movements and leaders
that we endorse. Cesar Chavez went to
mass practically every day of his life;
Martin Luther King was a minister; Malcolm X was a minister. Who wasn’t?
So Atheists have to, you know kind, of pay respects to spiritual
people. You don’t have to be an Atheist
to be on the left! And this Pope is
going to unify people because of his teachings, I think. It will do more for the Left than I think we
now are aware of, because you can’t really respond to this Pope without joining
counter-religious movements. (Audience:
We should write him a letter and wish him well.)
Well, I wouldn’t go that far. (Laughter) Which is: Pagans, Unite!
Look, I was raised in the Catholic Church, I
know about this stuff. But, look I feel
like a Black guy in the 60s watching White people fight. If there is going to be a civil war among
the religious, please, get it on!! The
way to respond to this Pope is not
to say, “Well, isn’t there some wee room in the chapel for me?” I mean, you know, “He is not really as bad.”
There are two choices. One is reform from within, which doesn’t
look like a viable choice. And the
other is a new reformation, which is entirely possible, because there are so
many millions of religious people who can’t fit into this structure. You’ve
gone—this is so much like Bush—from the special preference for the poor—you
know this doctrine?—to the special preference for Opus Dei. This is about Opus Dei. This is about a secret men’s fraternity in
the Catholic Church that increasingly has control. They fast tracked the Founder’s ascent to Sainthood under
Rathinger’s direction and that of the former Pope. So now you have
affirmative action—special dispensation or special priority or whatever
the phrase is out of the doctrine—for
the rich.
How does the Catholic Church sell that in Latin
America? I don’t see it. I think Latin America will continue becoming
more progressive. (Audience: doesn’t that explain the power of the evangelicals there?) You are starting to get more
evangelicals. They are not necessarily
political. But the people that formed
the base communities under Liberation Theology are still there. Like the Workers’ Party of Brazil was
propelled very much by Liberation Theology as well as the labor movment. And that would be true definitely in el
Salvador; that would be true in Nicaragua; there they even had Liberation
Theology priests in its government.
Cardinal. And they are still
there, so I think that this is going to be a very interesting battle.
QUESTION from
a visitor from Portugal:
Well I don’t know if it is a question, but
first of all I very much enjoyed your exposition tonight. I think it is very clear all around the
world that the United States is not going to win any war in Iraq. So, it is very good that many Americans
today recognize that this is a tremendous mistake. But just to recognize it is not enough. Every day, each day that is passing away, is too late to
recognize this mistake. So Americans
should start their withdrawal from Iraq:
I would say “progressive and quick withdrawal”. Progressive you said in the beginning cannot
be quick with all of this military equipment and paraphernalia that you have
there, so obviously you cannot do it in a few hours. But you can do it progressively and quickly. Some persons (in the audience here) are still convinced of a certain mission of
the United States that you have to protect the people because of possible
conflicts between the Sunnites, Shias, or Curds. You have to leave Iraq to itself. Iraq must recover its sovereignty. It was a member of the United Nations. So after the withdrawal of the Americans, if the United Nations,
backed by the whole family of nations, can help, in a very good sense of this
word, the Iraq people with the mess in its country which was caused by the
invasion and the American troops, all right.
But the Americans have nothing to look for there. Niether business—Haliburton, Cheney, and
others and oil—but if you are there to bring Democracy etc., you have failed,
totally. So get away!! You should have gotten away yesterday, the
day before yesterday. So don’t think
that you are going to win anything there.
Mind your own business at home!
Your racial problems, your poor people.
I have never been to America, but I know a lot about your country. Look at the distribution of wealth in your
own country. 3 % of all the Americans
possess 80 % of the means of production in your own country. Did you know about this? And you are only 6 % of mankind and you are
consuming 40% of the resources of this planet.
So think of these things and you as a Democratic Party. Try to be democratic in another way, because
in our time you are just swapping positions with the Republicans. What is the result? You have the result know. There or in Iraq, or in Afghanistan, or who
knows, somewhere else in the coming months.
I have no question sir, but I very much enjoyed
your exposition also about Liberation Theology. It is quite right, what you said. But I think that all Americans…I don’t want to provoke you here
as Americans, some might have an insurgence of chauvinism..No, I have nothing
against anybody here. But as Americans
abroad I think you have other opportunities to analyze the wealth of your
country. (Applause)
TOM HAYDEN:
You are talking on a level of morality that I agree with. But we don’t ever get everything we want in
this world, because we are divided. So
I want to return to the danger of escalation in Iraq, which is very real. The quagmire is very real. The least likely is U.S. withdrawal. But the Quagmire will be there. So there may be a compromise that reflects
the stalemate on the ground, and this is what I hope that you will think about
and keep the German government, German authorities focused on a positive
solution.
To go back
to Northern Ireland, what happened? The
IRA could not militarily expect to drive the British troops back to the
mainland. The British Army could not
defeat the guerrilla struggle, or could not defeat the nationalism in the
north. It went on for 30 years. Three thousand people were killed and 15 to
20 thousand were imprisoned, tortured, the rest of it. What you have today: there are British troops there. But they are in barracks. They are there as a concession to British
pride. The whole process would be a
failure if the British troops ever had to come out and fight again. If that happened they wouldn’t be able to
fight very well, because it has been a long time since they fought and things
have changed. The IRA has its weapons
and has its forces on the ground. They
have made a decision with the Loyalists—let’s say these are ethnic factions
that are similar to Iraq in some ways—they have made arrangements that people
get to keep their guns, but not use them.
It is called a cold truce, instead of a hot war. Maybe some day, with a new generation, the
guns will go. But they are not going to
go now, because nobody trusts anyone to defend them if somebody attacks. But they have given political space for the
Loyalists—right wing British loyalists—that are 50 %, 40 % of the population,
and the Nationalists, ranging from the radical nationalists to the moderate
nationalists, who are about 48 % of the population. They have come up with this political formula that I think could
be something that nobody particularly wants, but could perhaps be the end story
in Iraq, in which the American troops would stay in their barracks. The insurgents would be given respect. The occupation would be cancelled legally.
The contracts would be cancelled legally.
Elections would be held under Iraqis, or under some international body,
and there would be a focus on equilibrium based on the mutual respect between
opposites, that is necessary to end the killing. It would be improved by keeping the 18 billion in reconstruction
money there, but transferring determination of how it is used to the
Iraqis. But you would have to invest in
the areas of resistance also….
END OF TAPE Tom Hayden went on to emphasize how this
compromise would have to be completely fair respecting the political and
economic rights of all Iraqis, especially those who are now involved in the
armed resistance. Mutual human,
political and economic respect etc.
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