My heart hurts about so many things. Included is a corporate funded American mainstream media that has consistently deprived we the people of the facts, the truth, the reality of larger pictures which have always been so essential to know. We need to know that Joe Biden was the longest supporter of the Iraq War. We need to know Biden's true history. These are life and death issues that we all need to care about.
Without consistently turning to independent media which bring us the voices of true investigative journalists, we’re tragically left in the dark and are poisoned with polarizing propaganda which divides us up with its lies rather than empowering us to unite behind the truth.
Our belief systems, perceptions, and whether or not we’re aware and informed or misinformed and unaware will fluctuate widely depending on who we’re listening to and what we’re hearing — whether or not we’re tuning into CNN, MSNBC, FOX, NPR/PBS and other corporate funded mouthpieces for the powerful or independent resources and voices like Democracy Now!, The Intercept, Truthout, Common Dreams, Chris Hedges, Dahr Jamail, Jeremy Scahill, Naomi Klein, Glen Greenwald, Noam Chomsky, Henry Giroux, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, David Korten, Riane Eisler, Joanna Macy, Vandana Shiva, and countless other truth-tellers and wisdom-keepers.
Tragically, again and again we the American people are systematically convinced to back politicians whose ideology, whose record, whose corporate donors, whose lack of integrity and courage and commitment to fight for the highest good for our nation and the planet is severely impaired and a danger to the well-being of us all.
We haven’t come to this place we’re at today overnight. Both major political parties, a complicit corporate media, and the insatiable greed of the most wealthy have brought us the catastrophic devastation of the climate and ecological crises, endless wars and worldwide militarism, NAFTA and other trade deals which have shipped jobs overseas and served to only further enrich the powerful, crime bills that result in the incarceration of millions — mostly people of color, other racist and economic policies which fuel pervasive inequality and crushing poverty, a healthcare system based on profit and greed that results in 30,000+ deaths and 500,000 bankruptcies every year (all of which will now increase exponentially with the coronavirus), 43% of Americans living at or below the poverty line and 500,000 Americans — including 30,000 veterans — living on the streets, 78% of Americans having no deep understanding of the greatest crisis humankind has ever faced — the climate crisis — and therefore backing candidates and politicians who either call man made climate change a hoax or state that we cannot afford the Green New Deal... And the list goes on.
If we Americans were informed, Trump would never have been elected, and candidates like Joe Biden and other corporate democrats would never have had a chance of being nominated or elected. But we’re largely not informed. And we’re instead tragically indoctrinated into shooting the messengers who attempt to bring us the truth. So sadly, and this makes my heart hurt, we so often turn on each other rather than unite within movements devoted to radical change and transformation and economic, racial, social, and environmental justice.
This must change. Truth-tellers such as those found in this interview are essential if there’s to be any chance of dismantling the deadly status quo that has long been tragically devastating and destroying our nation, other nations, and the planet. Truth, justice, and love are vital to not just to defeating Trump, who is but a horrifying symptom of late stage predatory capitalism and its ideology of domination, but also to the revolutionary changes that are crucial to creating a just and caring society and sustaining a livable planet.
We’re all needed in this great struggle for a New Story, a New World, a paradigm shift and evolutionary leap that our children and grandchildren and all the children of all the species are counting on us to unite behind. We’re all needed. We’re all in this together. ― Molly
Following
former Vice President Joe Biden’s Super Tuesday wins, we continue
our extended interview with Branko Marcetic, author of “Yesterday’s
Man: The Case Against Joe Biden.”
AMY GOODMAN: This
is Democracy
Now!,
democracynow.org, The
War and Peace Report.
I’m Amy Goodman, as we continue our look at the comeback candidate
of Super Tuesday. Yes, former Vice President Joe Biden, who won nine
states, including delegate-rich Texas, while the AP reports Senator
Bernie Sanders won the largest prize of the night, California.
Sanders used his speech in his home state of Vermont Super Tuesday
night to emphasize his difference with Joe Biden.
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: One
of us in this race led the opposition to the War in Iraq. You’re
looking at him. Another candidate voted for the War in Iraq. One of
us has spent his entire life fighting against cuts in Social Security
and wanting to expand Social Security. Another candidate has been on
the floor of the Senate calling for cuts to Social Security,
Medicare, Medicaid and veterans’ programs.
AMY GOODMAN: For
more, we’re joined for Part 2 of our interview with Branko
Marcetic, staff writer at Jacobin magazine,
reporter at In
These Times,
author of the new book Yesterday’s
Man: The Case Against Joe Biden.
Welcome
back to Democracy
Now! Let’s
continue with Sanders’ point around the Iraq War. Now, many people
who have supported Joe Biden might say, well, he, like Hillary
Clinton, and a number of other Democrats did support the Iraq War.
They voted for it. Your point in your book is that he didn’t just
vote for it. He was a leader. He was George W. Bush’s partner in
pushing others to support, especially Democrats, of course — to
support the war. Can you explain what he did? He then now says it’s
a mistake. So, what are your thoughts on that, as well?
BRANKO MARCETIC: Well,
you know, 2001, September 11 happened. The country was angry. It was
hurt. It was scared. The Bush administration, and really in concert
with the media, was really pushing this kind of feeling of vengeance
and anger. And Biden was facing reelection in 2002. He had fought
that opponent in 1996. He was the first opponent, really, in his
career up to that point that could rival him in fundraising. And his
opponent made clear he was going to go after Biden for not being
supportive enough of Bush on the Iraq War. And Biden did what he
always did in elections, you know, since 1978 up to then, which was
just to basically try and extinguish his opponent’s attack line by
adopting his platform.
So,
you’re right. Biden had this choice. And the Wilmington
News,
at the time, actually talked about this. You know, Biden could either
try and be a block on Bush’s agenda and block on Bush’s plans for
Iraq — which he actually ended up doing about 2005, 2006, when it
was way too late and the winds had shifted — or he could go
along with him and get behind him and basically just let him do what
he wanted. And Biden at the time was the chair of the Foreign
Relations Committee. And Biden elected to do the latter. He said, you
know, the 90% of the country that was supporting Bush — that was
his approval rating, it had gone skyrocketing upwards — he
said, “Count me in the 90%. I’m fully behind him.” Biden’s
aides told the press that he had privately told Bush that he was OK
with the Iraq War, as long as it met certain conditions.
For
the next months, many months, throughout 2002, Biden would go on the
Sunday shows and on news stations, basically saying that Saddam was a
danger, he had to be removed, whether it was now or later, that he
had weapons of mass destruction, that he was maybe even in cahoots
with terrorists. He praised a covert plan to get rid of Saddam. And
he said, “If this doesn’t work, we’re just going to have to go
for an overt strategy.” In around the middle of that year, as chair
of the Foreign Relations Committee, he held hearings on the Iraq War.
And he stacked the witness list with people who were overwhelmingly
pro-Iraq War. They were saying that Saddam had weapons of mass
destruction, who were saying that Saddam had ties to terrorists. And
actually, Biden even opened the hearings by saying, “We have to get
rid of Saddam at some point. Saddam must be removed from power.” He
then, after arranging that testimony and leaving out critics like
Scott Ritter, skeptics who were saying that Saddam probably did not
have weapons of mass destruction, he then went on those same shows,
on those Sunday shows, and he then used the testimony, the lopsided
testimony that he had arranged, to then argue in favor. He was
saying, “Well, look, the experts are saying that Saddam is a
threat, so we have to do something about this.”
Of
course, there’s the famous vote for the Iraq War, which Biden now
claims, “Well, that, you know, I didn’t think they were going to
go to war. I didn’t think this was really going to happen. This was
a way to give Bush bargaining power.” But that doesn’t explain
why a month after, a month or two months after, Biden actually went
on a tour — and by the way, he was saluted by the Delaware
Republican Party, who said, “Thank you for supporting George Bush,
Mr. Biden. We wish you a great trip.” And he went on this tour
around Europe and the Middle East to drum up support for the
impending Iraq War. He went to Jordan. He went to Israel. I believe
he may have gone to Qatar, if memory serves me right. And he also
went to the Kurdish Parliament, and he said — you know, he did
this speech to the Kurdish Parliament basically saying that the
United States will be with you, basically signaling that if the Kurds
join them in the war against Saddam, the United States will back
them.
And
then, contrary to his claims now — and, you know, I know
there’s a lot of debate about is Biden lying, is he legitimately
confused about his own record. And I think, with the Biden of 2020,
it’s fair to not know which one to say. But I think in this case,
the record is clear enough. It’s been fact-checked many times, and
Biden keeps saying the same line. So I think he knows he’s being
dishonest. But Biden says that he supported — he opposed, I’m
sorry, the Iraq War. Immediately after it began, he knew it was a
mistake. Completely untrue. Biden was probably one of the
longest-running supporters of the Iraq War. Even as the Democratic
Party and even the public began to sour on the war, Biden was all in
favor of it. He went on Fox, and he said that the — when asked
if the position of the Democratic Party should be the position that
was being advanced by Howard Dean, who was then sort of, you know,
launching into his own sort of progressive insurgent run and famously
was very antiwar, Biden flatly said no. By August of 2003, he was
calling for something like 40,000 to 60,000 more troops to be pumped
into Iraq. His entire case wasn’t that the Iraq War had been a
mistake, but actually that Bush was a poor manager of the war, that
he had managed a strategy badly, that the causes was good, but it was
just it hadn’t been done well.
To
continue the transcript, and for the full video, please go
here: https://www.democracynow.org/2020/3/5/joe_biden_s_history_of_selling
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