Since today is a holiday, there will be no original post today. Instead, here are some video clips.

One is of the late Frank Zappa of the group Mothers of Invention on Crossfire talking about the right of free speech.

It is always fun when someone appears on these idiotic talk/yell shows and simply says what he thinks. In this clip from 1986, Zappa drives the person from the Washington Times crazy with his quick-witted defense of free speech and his sardonic sense of humor.

Also, here is an interview of Dennis Kucinich on David Letterman’s show. Kucinich is the only candidate for president who takes the correct stands on the two most fundamental issues facing the US: The Iraq war and the need for single-payer universal health care.

If anyone had any doubts that the US is ruled by a single pro-war, pro-business party, recent Congressional action should dispel them. It is clear that the wheels are already being oiled for starting a war with Iran, and the Democrats are complicit in this pre-war demagoguery, just as they were before the war with Iraq, when many voted for the Iraq war authorization resolution.
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That was the question asked by the perky young female TV news reporter holding the microphone near my face.

I must admit that I was surprised by the question. It seemed like such a non sequitur.

Perhaps I should back up a bit and explain how it got to that point. This happened to me four years ago but I was reminded of it during the recent discussions in congress concerning the supplemental appropriations for funding the war in Iraq when those who opposed it were accused, as usual, of not supporting the troops.

Back in 2003, just before the invasion of Iraq was launched, a group of students, faculty and staff at Case Western Reserve University opposed to the war had been holding weekly public vigils in Cleveland, Ohio. March 5th, 2003 was the day of the worldwide student moratorium against the war and on that bitterly cold, windy, dreary day, we were standing at a busy intersection holding up signs and urging people to honk their horns to show opposition to the war, which many obligingly did. The media news crews were present, looking for sound bites.

My colleague and I were holding a “Not in my name” banner as the reporter and her cameraman approached and asked me why I opposed the war. That was an easy question. Although not too media savvy, I knew enough not to try and give a lengthy, complex, or subtle answer.

“Because I believe a war is justified only in self defense or in the case of imminent threat and neither condition holds with respect to Iraq” I replied.

I waited for the next question, expecting a follow-up, maybe asking for clarification or elaboration or justification or even challenging my assertion. All those would have been natural continuations of the dialogue.

Instead I got the “So, do you support the troops?” question.

I paused. “What do you mean?” I eventually asked, looking into her eyes to see if I could decipher the train of thought that had caused her to ask a question that had little relationship to my response. All my years of teaching has helped me realize that behind the seemingly random questions and comments that a student would sometimes make, there usually lay some complicated but relevant train of that that could, under careful questioning, be brought to the surface. The student and I both learned something from that process of intellectual excavation.

So my question to the TV reporter was the first step in that process of deeper understanding. But she looked blankly at me, as if my question made no sense to her.

It then dawned on me what was going on. This was not the kind of dialogue I was used to with students. She already had in her mind a set of questions that, to her, represented journalism. And in that fixed mental template, to be against the war was to undermine the troops.

Just a little reflection (and comparative analysis) should persuade anyone that this is just plain silly. Suppose that we had been protesting the President’s tax policies. Would anyone think to ask us “So, do you support the government’s accountants?” If we were protesting the government’s welfare policies, would the media ask us “So, do you support the administrators in the welfare departments?” The “Do you support the troops?” question has the same lack of logic. Troops are just the agents that the government uses to implement its war policy. Opposing the policy has nothing to do with one’s attitude towards the agents who have no choice concerning it.

But it is too much to expect the media to appreciate this. They will continue to ask the question and those of us opposed to the slaughter in Iraq had better be prepared to answer it.

So this is the answer that I gave the TV reporter then. “I don’t want the troops to die and I don’t want them to be made into killers in an unjustified war. I would like them to be brought home.”

Is this a good answer? I don’t know. Did it make it into the five-second clip that would be shown on the evening news? I don’t know that either because I long ago gave up watching TV news, especially the local ones. The encounter with the reporter reminded me why.

POST SCRIPT: Ron Paul interviewed by Bill Maher

Rudy Giuliani may have done congressman Ron Paul a big favor when, during the first Republican candidates debate, he tried to bully Paul into withdrawing his statement that the attacks of 9/11 were a consequence of resentment over US foreign policies. As a result of that exchange, Paul has gone from being an obscure congressman to receiving a lot of media attention, most recently being interviewed by Bill Maher.

In this interview, Paul comes across as a soft-spoken, thoughtful, and well-read person who actually knows history. He says that the goal of the US should not be to be loved or hated around the world but to be respected, and that would be achieved if it sets its own house in order by restoring liberties at home and avoiding interfering in other countries.

Is the Republican party ready for such a person as its presidential nominee?

It has been some time since I wrote about John Rawl’s ideas in his book The Theory of Justice but the more I see how political developments are evolving both in the US and in the world, the greater the value of implementing his ideas.

The key idea that he proposed was that when creating a system or structure for anything, we should work under a ‘veil of ignorance’ in which we do not know which particular individual or group characteristic we ourselves will have once the system is underway. What this insures is that we will try and create a system that is as fair as possible for everyone.
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In the Republican and Democratic primaries, Reps. Ron Paul (R-Texas) and Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) are the only ones who opposed the Iraq war authorization act in 2002 and both have been calling for US troops to be withdrawn and closing of the bases.

In the latest debate amongst the Republican presidential candidates on May 16, Paul was asked about his position.

MR. WALLACE: Congressman Paul, you’re one of six House Republicans who back in 2002 voted against authorizing President Bush to use force in Iraq.

REP. PAUL: Right.

MR. WALLACE: Now you say we should pull our troops out. A recent poll found that 77 percent of Republicans disapprove of the idea of setting a timetable for withdrawal. Are you running for the nomination of the wrong party? (Scattered laughter.)

REP. PAUL: But you have to realize that the base of the Republican Party shrunk last year because of the war issue. So that percentage represents less people. If you look at 65 to 70 percent of the American people, they want us out of there. They want the war over.

In 19- — 2002, I offered an amendment to International Relations to declare war, up or down, and it was — nobody voted for the war. And my argument there was, if we want to go to war, and if we should go to war, the Congress should declare it. We don’t go to war like we did in Vietnam and Korea, because the wars never end. And I argued the case and made the point that it would be a quagmire if we go in.

Ronald Reagan in 1983 sent Marines into Lebanon, and he said he would never turn tail and run. A few months later, the Marines were killed, 241 were killed, and the Marines were taken out. And Reagan addressed this subject in his memoirs. And he says, “I said I would never turn tail and run.” He says, “But I never realized the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics,” and he changed his policy there.

We need the courage of a Ronald Reagan.

Later, he took on the myth that the reason for the 9/11 attacks was that “they hate us for our freedoms” and in the a subsequent exchange refused to bow down to Giuliani’s grandstanding on this issue. (You can see the video of that clip here.)

MR. GOLER: Congressman Paul, I believe you are the only man on the stage who opposes the war in Iraq, who would bring the troops home as quickly as — almost immediately, sir. Are you out of step with your party? Is your party out of step with the rest of the world? If either of those is the case, why are you seeking its nomination?

REP. PAUL: Well, I think the party has lost its way, because the conservative wing of the Republican Party always advocated a noninterventionist foreign policy.

Senator Robert Taft didn’t even want to be in NATO. George Bush won the election in the year 2000 campaigning on a humble foreign policy — no nation-building, no policing of the world. Republicans were elected to end the Korean War. The Republicans were elected to end the Vietnam War. There’s a strong tradition of being anti-war in the Republican party. It is the constitutional position. It is the advice of the Founders to follow a non-interventionist foreign policy, stay out of entangling alliances, be friends with countries, negotiate and talk with them and trade with them.

Just think of the tremendous improvement — relationships with Vietnam. We lost 60,000 men. We came home in defeat. Now we go over there and invest in Vietnam. So there’s a lot of merit to the advice of the Founders and following the Constitution.

And my argument is that we shouldn’t go to war so carelessly. (Bell rings.) When we do, the wars don’t end.

MR. GOLER: Congressman, you don’t think that changed with the 9/11 attacks, sir?

REP. PAUL: What changed?

MR. GOLER: The non-interventionist policies.

REP. PAUL: No. Non-intervention was a major contributing factor. Have you ever read the reasons they attacked us? They attack us because we’ve been over there; we’ve been bombing Iraq for 10 years. We’ve been in the Middle East — I think Reagan was right.

We don’t understand the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics. So right now we’re building an embassy in Iraq that’s bigger than the Vatican. We’re building 14 permanent bases. What would we say here if China was doing this in our country or in the Gulf of Mexico? We would be objecting. We need to look at what we do from the perspective of what would happen if somebody else did it to us. (Applause.)

MR. GOLER: Are you suggesting we invited the 9/11 attack, sir?

REP. PAUL: I’m suggesting that we listen to the people who attacked us and the reason they did it, and they are delighted that we’re over there because Osama bin Laden has said, “I am glad you’re over on our sand because we can target you so much easier.” They have already now since that time — (bell rings) — have killed 3,400 of our men, and I don’t think it was necessary.

MR. GIULIANI: Wendell, may I comment on that? That’s really an extraordinary statement. That’s an extraordinary statement, as someone who lived through the attack of September 11, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq. I don’t think I’ve heard that before, and I’ve heard some pretty absurd explanations for September 11th. (Applause, cheers.)

And I would ask the congressman to withdraw that comment and tell us that he didn’t really mean that. (Applause.)

MR. GOLER: Congressman?

REP. PAUL: I believe very sincerely that the CIA is correct when they teach and talk about blowback. When we went into Iran in 1953 and installed the shah, yes, there was blowback. A reaction to that was the taking of our hostages and that persists. And if we ignore that, we ignore that at our own risk. If we think that we can do what we want around the world and not incite hatred, then we have a problem.

They don’t come here to attack us because we’re rich and we’re free. They come and they attack us because we’re over there. I mean, what would we think if we were — if other foreign countries were doing that to us?

Paul is quite right on the facts about the reasons for the attacks. Bin Laden published a fatwa in 1996 outlining his reasons for ‘declaring war’ on America. The pundits were surprised when in an (unscientific) Fox News poll on who won held immediately after the debate, Paul polled second (with 25%) to Romney’s 29%, after having even led at one point.

What was appalling was the enthusiastic response that some in the crowd gave when Giuliani and Sam Brownback and Mitt Romney and Duncan Hunter implicitly but enthusiastically supported torture and the denial of due process.

You can see Dennis Kucinich express his views on Bill Maher’s show and also see former Alaska governor Mike Gravel (also seeking the Democratic nomination) challenge strongly the bipartisan consensus on the war.

There have been rumors that Paul and Gravel may not be invited to future debates. That would be a travesty because it is only people like them who are really challenging the banalities uttered by the so-called leading candidates, since the media has abandoned that role.

If you missed the excellent special episode of Bill Moyer’s journal Buying the War: How did the mainstream press get it so wrong? that was broadcast on PBS on Wednesday, April 25, 2007, you can see the 90-minute program online.

I would strongly urge that you watch the program. Those of us who followed the run-up to the war closely will not find any startling new revelations in the program but by assembling the information into one narrative, Moyers shows dramatically how the administration and Congress and the media colluded in misleading the country into the disastrous Iraq war. (See Justin Raimondo’s review of the program which adds useful information.)
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One cannot view the reaction of the British and US governments and media to the capture of 15 British naval personnel by Iran without feeling even more cynical about the double standards that are now taken for granted.

It is being simply assumed here that the British government’s claim that their people were not in Iranian waters is true, without any further discussion. Bush, itching for a reason to bomb Iran, has even called them ‘hostages.’ He says this with a straight face even as the fate of five Iranian officials captured by the US January 11, 2007 remain unknown:
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After calling David Hicks one of the worst of the worst of terrorists and keeping him in solitary confinement for over five years, in a lightning turn of events, he was suddenly sentenced to just nine months imprisonment, to be served in Australia. This was the first case under the so-called ‘military commissions’ system which has been strongly criticized for their rules of operation which violate the kinds of basic judicial protections designed to provide fair hearings.
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