Muslims For Kucinich

Q: The Democratic Party seems to have abandoned its core constituency. What has happened?

Kucinich: That's probably the most fundamental flaw in the two-party system today and that is that there isn't enough of a two-party system. It's more of a one-party system with two branches of a corporate party. When the Democratic Party started to take a lot of money from corporate interests, it began to change the whole meaning of the party. So it started with this reliance on a donor base that may not have a lot in common with the natural base of the party, the natural base being workers, advocates for social justice, for jobs, for healthcare, for education, for the environment. Those concerns are not considered . . . . So we have a problem where the party at the top stands for one thing and the party in the foothills stands for something else. So my candidacy is aimed at reminding the Democratic Party of the need to connect with people's practical aspirations for jobs, for education, for healthcare, for a clean environment, for peace. So that's what I'm out there doing.

Q: Is it working? You're talking to us, but what about the party leadership?

Kucinich: The disconnect is there; it's real. The party leaders have actually come to a place where they want to win elections. So there's something practical about standing for something. I mean, it's just practical to stand for healthcare for all, but it's difficult for the party to do that because its allegiance is still to insurance companies. So you ask, ‘Is it working?' Well as long as we keep working there's a chance that it might work, but we can't let up. We can't let politics just be run by party politicians. That's a mistake. So we have to keep organized, be relentless and work at the grassroots. That's what's important. That's why these primaries and caucuses that remain are so important. Because it gives people a chance to check off the direction of the party instead of saying, ‘Well, the whole thing's over; let's go on to November.' An election has to have some meaning for people to vote.

Q: The attack earlier this week in [Fallujah] Iraq in which four what were described as security contractors were killed has sort of brought out the number of private contractors involved in security who are now in Iraq. Is that a concern?

Kucinich: First of all, we shouldn't be in Iraq â€" public or private. Secondly, private business being what it is, you can make a lot of money off of war. The longer we're at war, the better it is for some businesses. So that's why you've got to be careful of joining private causes and public causes. In the public cause, war is bad. For people who make money off of war, for them it's good. The public should care about the bodies piling up. If war's your business, you don't care about the bodies piling up; it's just a cost of doing business. You have to be very careful asking people to send their companies in for the purposes of providing security services. It's a very dangerous thing, a very dangerous precedent. They're there in our name at the instance of the United States government. They couldn't be there except the U.S. let them go. That's bad, bad all the way around. We should get out of there.

Q: At this point, how could we get out?

Kucinich: We go to the UN and take a whole new approach and that involves letting go of the oil of Iraq. We need to ask the UN to handle the oil assets of Iraq on behalf of the Iraqi people until the Iraqi people are self-governing. The same with the contracts. We have to renounce privatization of Iraq. We have no right to steal their assets. We should ask the UN to help develop a new constitution and elections so we quit trying to pretend we're going to run Iraq by remote control. So we set the stage for international cooperation. When we do that we can get international involvement. Right now it's just the United States and we've got to figure out a way to hold things together in Iraq so we can hold a string on the financial interests. It's all about money.

Q: Any comments on the 9/11 commission and its activities? It's certainly been in the headlines in the last week or two.

Kucinich: Yeah, it's in the headlines, but you know what? How come we're still in Iraq? I mean, don't we know enough that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 and this administration tried to trick things up to make it appear they did? I mean, what more do we need to know? I'm serious. I'm not just asking a rhetorical question here, but what more do we need to know? Do we have to have more hearings? What do we have to do? What do we have to do to finally realize it was wrong to go in? We have to have more hearings to tell us that? We have to have some conclusion that says we need to take a new direction? We need a commission to tell us this? We know it was wrong. Now, we can't undo what was done on 9/11, but we can sure get out of Iraq. It may always be a question as to who should have done what when for 9/11, but there is no doubt about who is responsible for Iraq â€" none whatsoever. None.

Q: Why was the war resolution passed so enthusiastically?

Kucinich: People were afraid. They thought Iraq had something to do with 9/11.

Q: Who thought that?

Kucinich: The Congress was told that by the administration. You've got to read the Congressional resolution. Read that resolution. I've a copy of that resolution. I may have one with me.

Q: How come you voted against it?

Kucinich: Well, I knew it was coming. I spent the better part of that year challenging the administration's march towards war. I knew it was all fabrication. I knew Iraq didn't have anything to do with 9/11, with Al Qaeda's role in 9/11, with the anthrax attacks.

Q: How did you know and no one else did?

Kucinich: Because there was never any proof. They didn't offer any proof; they were just saying words. I mean, proof's proof. What do you have? They had nothing. They had no proof; they just said it was just conjecture. They kept saying, well, Saddam Hussein's a bad man. Well, OK, so what's that have to do with 9/11? They never made the case, so I didn't get swept up in all the misinformation. I just asked for proof and never saw it. And the more the proof was lacking, I just kept saying, ‘Hey, you don't have any proof. What are you talking about going to war against these people? You talk about bombing Iraq. There's no proof. And why didn't you keep the UN inspections going?' I kept asking that too. If the whole thing is weapons of mass destruction, well there's two things, one they said they had something to do with 9/11 and the other thing they said they're going to attack us. I said, ‘OK, well let the UN go and see if they have anything.' No, they were itching. They were itching for a fight. Bush wanted to go after Iraq. He was just in office ten days according to [former Treasury secretary] Paul O'Neill when they were talking about going after Iraq. The day after 9/11 at a meeting of the National Security Council [Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld with his push to war said let's go after Iraq even though Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. [Former counterterrorism chief Richard] Clarke's book, no big revelation, but he said they were wanting to go after Iraq. So it's wrong; it's all wrong. It was wrong from the beginning. It was wrong to go and it's wrong to stay. And it's the dumbest thinking that says well, you know, you made a mistake, killed a lot of people, it was a mistake but we'd better stay in and finish the job. What? Finish what job of doing what to whom? This kind of thinking just has to be challenged and that's what I continue to do. A lot of this is common sense which is a commodity that is not necessarily in great supply in Washington.

Q: When Senator [Robert] Byrd led the fight against that same war resolution on the Senate floor, he particularly addressed the question of the constitutionality. Was that a concern of yours as well?

Kucinich: Of course it is. You bet it is. But you know even if it was constitutional, it was wrong. Some things are constitutional and they're right. If they were to try to make a constitutional basis for this war â€" which they didn't â€" it would have been wrong. He's saying, look the Congress really didn't approve a war resolution. It's true. He's right. . . .

The whole idea is that we have all these problems here at home and we're going around wasting money blowing up things. We don't have money to build bridges in our own country, but we've got money to blow up bridges.

Q: How do we break the cycle? I can look back and we created Saddam Hussein to oppose the Iranians whose government we had overthrown. We go back and back. How do we break the cycle? How do we relate to the world in a more constructive way?

Kucinich: Put away the ambitions for empire. Move to a sustainable energy policy. Stop trying to covet our neighbor's goods. We have to look at our purpose as a nation. You know, we're not supposed to be the policemen of the world. Who died and left us the policemen of the world? We're not supposed to be the king of the world. We got rid of kings when we established this country. So what are we doing? I mean, somebody has to stop and say, ‘What are we doing? What is this about? Why are we doing this?' We need to work with the world community. We can't go it alone. There's no nation that's a threat to us. We're a threat to ourselves here. Spending all this money on a war and we can't even feed our people or provide decent housing or keep our kids in school, create jobs, take care of our veterans.

Q: Are you concerned the administration might try to expand the conflict in the Middle East to Syria or Iran in the foreseeable future?

Kucinich: They laid the groundwork to do that. Am I concerned? Yeah, they took us into one war that was wrong, why wouldn't they take us into another?

Q: They're running out of troops. Won't that be a problem?

Kucinich: Well, that's not a problem. They've got bills in to put a draft through. Look, when you have enough Americans who are complacent about the war at this point, why wouldn't the people in Washington think they can grab their children and take it to the next level? I mean, just think about it. You let them grab your tax dollars to fight a war that's unnecessary â€" that's what people are doing without a blink â€" well, next they're going to take your kids. They take your treasure; they take your blood too. Some of these kids have already died. Close to 600, the count now. Six hundred. That doesn't count all the dead Iraqis. They should count too; there's over 10,000 dead Iraqis. What did they do to deserve this? There's got to be justice on all sides here. Right now we're seeing some rough justice. It's very bad. We've got to get out of there. And the thing is, the reason why I'm staying in this race is that the Democratic Party isn't taking a position on this. . . . So what happens is that people then are asked to substitute a Democratic war for a Republican war â€" war under the Democrats, and then the Democrats won't be able to take care of housing and healthcare and job creation . . . . So it ends up all being a farce.

Q: How would you answer the charge that by pulling out and turning the situation over to the UN that we are going to be losing face, falling down on our responsibilities, becoming the laughingstock of the world and capitulating to terrorism â€" essentially the reaction to the vote in Spain?

Kucinich: This losing face is an aristocratic notion. We can't feed the hungry in this country. Does that cause a loss of face? We've got homeless people in America. Anybody lose any face over that? We've got people without jobs. That loses face? We've got 43 million people without healthcare. Is there any loss of face with that? Nine million people out of work. Any loss of face about that? Two hundred billion dollars on a war that's a lie. Any loss of face there? What is this thing about loss of face? I think we'd better worry about losing some other parts of our anatomy here. You know?

So here's the story. We have to cooperate with the world community. . . . What do they say? Pride goeth before the fall. First, if you're in there based on lies, you're going to be proud of the lies? . . . . Too proud to work with the world community and find a way out of the mess? When's enough going to be enough? One thousand people dead? Ten thousand Americans dead? Fifty thousand? Maybe one hundred thousand, maybe a million Americans dead â€" will that be enough? When is enough enough? We've got to kill a million Iraqi people? Is that going to be enough? When does the tide of blood rise so high that we finally realize it's enough?

We know the war is corrupt, totally corrupt, but it's also stupid. So we have to understand there's a point at which some people will say America's leaders are corrupt. OK, we understand that, but we shouldn't tolerate our leaders being stupid. And it's stupid to stay there. Corrupt we understand. Stupid â€" there's no accounting for being stupid. This is stupid.

Q: It sounds like we're falling into the mentality at least of Vietnam. We're there, we have to win it.

Kucinich: Once you get into a war, it's hard to get out because of that defective logic of pride. It's like somebody who's a compulsive gambler. . . . It's an awful thing to watch. In for a dime, in for a dollar; in for a dollar, in for a hundred; in for a hundred, in for a thousand. We're compulsively gambling with the future of this country. That's what our leaders are doing. They're acting like compulsive gamblers. They can't get away from the table. They don't know when it's time to just pick up and leave. You know what the song says, you've got to know when to fold ‘em, know when to walk away and know when to run. We don't know this yet. . . . It's very dangerous too because there's games going on everywhere. We have problems all over the world that are spinning out of control while we're messing around here in Iraq with something we could have avoided. And it can only get worse. This cannot get better. That thing that happened in Fallujah, that's a warning; that's not an endpoint. That is a warning of what is to come.