Two Democratic voices, speaking about the leak of a huge number of documents, showing profound corruption in the Afghanistan war:
Barack Obama: “I’m concerned about the disclosure of sensitive information from the battlefield that could potentially jeopardize individuals or operations.”
Dennis Kucinich: “We can no longer look the other way, or pretend that the war is something that is it not. Occupying Afghanistan does not help further the freedom of the Afghan people. It is not the leak of documents that endangers the lives of American troops and our allies, it is the belief that occupying Afghanistan will make us safer. Congress must say no to war funding, bring our troops home, and invest in the American recovery.”
Should we have worked to elect Dennis Kucinich President in 2008? Should we work to encourage him to challenge Barack Obama in 2012?
Kucinich already ran twice and lost. Work to keep him in Congress or even put him in the Senate. But being fixated on the presidency will help no one in this situation (or in most situations).
That’s a good point, as far as it goes. But, the question is really whether Kucinich SHOULD have lost, and whether anti-war liberals were wrong to place their trust in Obama rather than Kucinich.
Beyond Kucinich, given that there WILL be a presidential election starting in about half a year from now, and given that the Executive Branch has effectively wrested war powers away from Congress, what should people do about this issue in 2012?
i said the same thing about Nader. It doesn’t matter any more who we elect, they’ll turn out to be corporate spokespeople once in office. It will never be guys like Kucinich or Nader – the two party tyranny will see to that. “The people” haven’t been overly concerned with politics, the massive fraud on Wall Street or the fact that their standard of living is declining rapidly, so why should they worry about the environment being trashed by corporations (with the help of our government)? Not very many people protest the wars any more (probably out of fatigue and their being ignored by the government for 8 yrs under GW), so we can’t expect that to change much – even though it’s our young being lead to the slaughter for hegemony, oil or other resources. The military/industrial people will get their funding (as will the CIA, NSA and FBI). The prison nation (planet?) continues on oblivious to the big changes coming with the on-going environmental degradation. We’re driving over a cliff, pedal to the metal.