Dennis Kucinich’s cogent interview about the war in Ukraine and U.S. foreign policy

Dennis Kucinich’s extended interview with Aaron Mate’ is cogent: Dennis Kucinich: where are the pro-peace Democrats?. He speaks well. Kucinich sounds clear-headed, informed, and inspiring. He discusses what the proxy war with Russia says about the U.S. attempts to maintain a unipolar world. Here’s my summary of his interview, with quotations.

“Once the United States conjures an enemy — and I saw this first-hand in Iraq with Sadaam Hussein, in Libya with Qadaffi, in Syria with Assad, and on and on and on — when you make that enemies of the year club, all hell breaks loose and the goal is then to wipe you out. Now, the blowback, nobody thinks about. I mean you can look at the U.S. sanctions and how they have actually resulted in ” natural gas shortages in Europe and in increased inflation in the U.S.

Kucinich says not just that the U.S. aided the 2014 coup but that it orchestrated it. (There is incontrovertible evidence that the U.S. aided the coup, but I myself don’t have evidence to support the stronger claim that the U.S. orchestrated it, but it seems likely.)

He also believes the allegations that in April Boris Johnson and the U.S. (Austin?) squashed the peace deal between Ukraine and Russia.

Kucinich ridicules the oft-repeated claim that the U.S. needs to let Ukraine decide, because of the high levels of U.S. involvement both prior to the invasion and afterwards.

The war and its devastation weren’t necessary. “It could have been and should have been avoided. And it is just another sorry chapter in the failure of leadership and the failure of diplomacy, in twisted thinking that invites the virus megalomania. We need to take a totally different direction in the world. And we really need to pay attention that biblical injunction Blessed are the Peacemakers. ” The American Imperium doesn’t work anymore.

Speaking of the Progressive Caucus’s withdrawal of its letter calling for negotiations, Kucinich said: “What is happening with the Democratic that it tries to squeeze out people of good will, people who want to see an end to a war that has killed” so many people. “What’s wrong with a simple request” for negotiations?

In U.S. cities you can find poverty, homelessness, begging, crime, and mass shootings. Yet “We want to go around the world, telling other people how they should live, spending our money in pursuit of some kind of chimerical dream of global omnipotence. Give me a break! I mean, really. This is a ‘get real moment’ here in America. It’s a moment to start taking care of things at home.”

Mate’ asks Kucinich about Al Qaeda’s domination of the anti-Assad insurgency. Only Tulsi Gabbard and Kucinich cared about that. “There’s a black hole, and there’s a memory hole.” “Al Qadea was involved in 9/11, OK? And we blamed Iraq. Then we turned around and funded these terrorists to attack another country. There’s a dirty game being played here, by our own government, with own tax dollars.”

“We’re playing in the flash of WWIII right now, and it’s totally unnecessary.”

Senator Patrick Leahy was told by intelligence operatives that Dick Cheney’s claims about Iraq were false, so Leahy voted against the war. But he didn’t tell others til recently. Kucinich points out that because of secrecy rules, lawmakers can’t discuss what they know to be true. Kucinich said he never signed the papers Congress members are asked to sign where they promise secrecy if they go to intelligence briefings, and he never went to such briefings, because he knew that the briefings were mostly lies. Often intelligence was leaked to the NY Times and then you heard it repeated in committee, but you weren’t allowed to talk about it because you heard it in committee. The intelligence agencies handcuff members of Congress.

Mate’ points out that the antiwar movement is feeling pretty “decimated.” How can we revive the antiwar movement? Kucinich says we need to stop calling a demand for peace as “antiwar.” War expresses polarized thinking. Our goal should be unity, not in the sense that we agree on everything. But we need to respect others and create human and ecological security. (I’m not sure I understand Kucinich’s point.)

“War is ecocide… .. We are at an inflection point right now…. we have an opportunity now to create anew the world. … We are enjoined by the scriptures to make peace with our brothers and our sisters. Good time to start thinking about that.”