Kucinich calls for pull-out from Iraq
Originally published in the Stanford Daily
Kucinich calls for pull-out from Iraq
By Vauhini Vara
Staff Writer
Monday, November 10, 2003
last updated November 10, 2003 12:54 PM
The United States should resolve conflicts through international cooperation instead of war, said presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, a Democrat, in a speech on Saturday that focused on last spring"s war on Iraq.
"The idea that conflict is inevitable, that war is inevitable, needs to be inspected deeply," said the Ohio congressman, arguing that the United States should not have waged war on Iraq and should remove its troops from the country immediately.
Kucinich, the only presidential candidate who voted against the controversial USA Patriot Act, is considered one of the most left-wing of the Democratic candidates " "so far to the left that he makes Howard Dean look like Barry Goldwater," according to a Time magazine profile published in October.
He has been largely ignored by the mainstream media, barely registers in most polls of primary voters and gets little support from the Democratic Party. But by pouring the modest $4 million raised by his campaign into grassroots efforts, Kucinich has garnered a loyal, though small, support base.
"He"s the only candidate that I truly believe in," said Bill Barrows, a Lake County resident who came to Stanford to hear Kucinich"s speech, sponsored by the Aurora Forum.
Kucinich's most daring proposals for the presidency including cutting the Pentagon's budget, creating a universal health care system and withdrawing the United States from the North American Free Trade Agreement and the World Trade Organization. He also hopes to repeal the Patriot Act, which expanded police investigative and surveillance powers, and establish a Department of Peace, which would handle issues ranging from domestic abuse to nuclear non-proliferation, aiming to "create the day when war itself becomes archaic."
The war on Iraq, Kucinich said, has brought about "moral, political, economic and cultural disaster."
He proposed that the United States hand the United Nations control of Iraq, including its oil resources and contracts for rebuilding.
"The motivating factor of the war is oil and the privatization of Iraqi people's assets," he said, claiming that the Bush administration used Sept. 11, 2001, as a pretext for waging war on a country that had nothing to do with the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
"Very little of it was cognitive; it was visceral," he said.
Kucinich's political career began in 1977, when he became the youngest mayor of Cleveland at the age of 31. But after Kucinich refused to sell the public municipal power company to a private utility, the city defaulted on loans. For the next 15 years, Kucinich lost every election, until he won a seat in the Ohio Senate in 1994 and became a congressman in 1996.
While polls suggest that Kucinich is unlikely to be the next U.S. president, the candidate cautioned the audience against prematurely convicting him as a dud, after a student working on his campaign asked if he really has a chance.
"I am ready, after 26 years in politics, to be an overnight success," he said.
Barring that, he said, he hopes to add more diversity to the opinions expressed among the most prominent Democratic candidates for president.
"My presence in the debate keeps the other candidates honest," he said.
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