Ms. Benjamin talks with Paul Jay about the founding of Code Pink and the need for a movement independent of the Democratic Party
Story Transcript
PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. Iām Paul Jay in Baltimore. This is Reality Asserts Itself.
~~~
DONALD RUMSFELD, U.S. SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: Is it the responsibility of free people to do something, to take steps to deal with such a threat before such an attack occurs?
MEDEA BENJAMIN, COFOUNDER, CODE PINK: Yes, Mr.Ā Rumsfeld. I think we need weapons inspections, not war. Why [incompr.] the inspections? Is this really about oil? How many civilians will be killed?
UNIDENTIFIED: Mr.Ā Secretary, would you suspend for a minute andā.
BENJAMIN: How many servicemen will be killed? Isnāt this really about oil? Why is it [incompr.]
UNIDENTIFIED: If we could ask the staff to see to it that our guests are escortedā.
BENJAMIN: We want inspections, not war. Inspections. Not war. Inspections. Not war.
~~~
JAY: So that was Medea Benjamin after the founding of Code Pink, having one or two things to say to Donald Rumsfeld.
Now joining us in the studio again is Medea Benjamin.
Thanks for joining us again.
BENJAMIN: Good to be here.
JAY: So Medea is cofounder of Code Pink with Jodie Evans, and sheās the author of the book Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control.
So talk a bit about what inspired and the early days of Code Pink.
BENJAMIN: It was after 9/11, and as the whole country was in mourning, so was I. I grew up in New York, have a lot of family there. But I saw, as the days went by, what direction this was going in, and that was going to be more killing of more people, more innocent people dying.
And at the time, when it was being talked about, invading Afghanistan, I reached out to the Afghan community. I was living in San Francisco, and there was a big Afghan community in Hayward there. And we organized a beautiful event with about 1,000 people coming together to say no to violence. And then Bush went ahead and invaded Afghanistan.
I went to Afghanistan a week after the invasion, saw that the story that was being told to the Americans was not true, that we were killing a lot of innocent people in our invasion, and came back to the U.S., tried to go to Washington and hold a press conference and say, why in the world, when weāre mourning the lives of innocent people, are we killing more innocent people? And nobody wanted to listen to it.
JAY: Now, I made a film in Afghanistan in the spring of 2002, and while there was certainly significant resentment about the kind of civilian deathsāand a lot of the American bombing seemed to beāthere was a certain point where the Northern Alliance was kind of sitting north of Kabul, and the Americans hadnāt quite decided whether theyāre going to let them come in or not, and theyāre just bombing anything so that it could look like they were still bombing.
But on the other hand, I found most people I talked to were so furious at the Taliban, so didnāt want to live under that regime, that they were more, I should say, accepting of the American overthrow of the Taliban. I think, you know, they thought something positive would come out of all this, other than years of war. But at the time, I donāt think it can be underestimated how much people wanted the Taliban gone.
BENJAMIN: Well, yes.
On the other hand, I think that what was concerning to me was people who were a part of the collateral damage who werenāt being acknowledged anymore. And if we allowed that to keep happening, it would keep happening. And so what we did is brought people fromāwho had direct family members killed on 9/11, brought them to Afghanistan, took them back to meet with their counterparts, whichāthere were many, unfortunately.
And they would say, yes, we hated the Taliban, but what did I have to do with that? And why was my family hurt? And why wonāt the U.S. government apologize for what they did to my family? And now how am I going to feed my kids? And my husdandās gone.
And so we did a campaign to get compensation for innocent victims. And it wasāactually ended up, after a couple of years, being a successful campaign. The first pot of money was a $40Ā million fund in the name of one of the women that we worked with, Marla Ruzicka, to compensate innocent family victims.
JAY: And this was all under the roof of Code Pink.
BENJAMIN: This was beforeāit started before Code Pink, when we had a group of women that gatheredāactually, it was a gathering around women concerned about the environment was when we had already invaded Afghanistan and there was talk about invading Iraq. And at that point we were saying, how can we allow the U.S. to go in and invade another country, this one that really had nothing to do with 9/11? Weāve got to do something about it.
And thatās when some of us were playing around with this color-coded alert system of George Bush. Remember? He had the yellow, orange, red. And we said that that was a very insidious thing, actually, because it was making people feel living in fear and that it was justifying more military intervention. And so we came up with this idea of Code Pink, almost kind of a lark. And we thought maybe weād go to Washington, D.C., do some action, and then go back to our other work, ācause we were all very involved in other things. But it didnāt work out that way.
JAY: Now, Code Pink has become one of the most known organizations on the left, as I said in one of the earlier segments, you know, one of the favorite targets on the list of evildoers of Glenn Beck. Youāre usually on the list there. But thereās so much we can talk about in terms of the history of Code Pink and this whole era, and I donāt think weāre going to get into all of it now.
So I want to kind of focus on one thing, which is, in the leadup to the Iraq War, there was a massive upsurge in opposition to the war, and tens of thousands of people hit the streets all across the United States, you know, in the end, millions of people around the world.
But what happened to that movement? You know. Some people suggest, although I donāt think itās directly timed, but thereās a suggestion that thereās aāyou know, you can get the antiwar movement going in the United States when itās against the Republicans, but once the Democrats are in power, you know, it takes the steam out of it. It wasnāt so true under Vietnam, but other issues, such as the draft and such. But in short, what happened to that upsurge?
BENJAMIN: Well, you said it. Itās a one-word answer. Obama. And it wasnāt Obama getting in; it was the leadup, it was the campaigning for Obama, when people were so desperate for an alternative to Bush that they said, Iām going to throw myself into this, Iām going to take off of work, students taking off of semesters, Iām going to put my life into getting this guy elected who said he was against the war in Iraq. And we put all our hopes and dreams into Obama, thinking that because he was against the war in Iraq and because he said Afghanistan was a good warāhe didnāt really mean that; you know, he was just saying that to get elected. But he was a smart guy, and he understood that war was not the answer, and he was going to get us out.
And so the steam was just taken out of the whole movement. And it was amazing to see, because you said tens of thousands. I mean, there were eight times, during the Bush administration, that we got over 100,000 people. And we had a huge movement. You just look at one group, like Code Pink: we came out of nowhere, and suddenly we had over 300,000 people on our mailing list, and we had over 300 groups around the country and, really, around the world. We werenāt even trying to set up chapters, and they were just springing up on university campuses, small towns, big towns, everywhere. (08:34) When Obama started to gain steam as a candidate, those started fizzling out. And when he won the election, we had half the numbers of people we had before on our mailing list. And most of the groups started to disintegrate.
So that was indicative of what was happening to the whole peace movement.
JAY: And had you drunk any of the Kool-Aid yourself?
BENJAMIN: I drank the Kool-Aid myself, in the sense that I voted for Obama the first time around and Iām usually a Green Party voter, always voting for something other than the Democrats and Republicans. I drank the Kool-Aid in that I was very, very anxious to vote for somebody who was going to win and have somebody who was going to be an alternative to those eight horrible years of Bush.
And I wasāwe immediately did up a list of Obamaās promises. That went from, you know, getting out of the war in Iraq to closing down Guantanamo and other things. And we started out right away: Obama, keep your promise.
And I physically moved from San Francisco, where Iād been living for 26 years, to Washington, D.C., to say, now is the time to be there to make sure Obama fulfills his promises like closing Guantanamo, getting out of Iraq.
And so I was full of hope, I would say. Yeah.
JAY: Now, if you actually read the speechesāand we covered this on The Real News. I mean, I have to say, we didnāt ever drink the Kool-Aid, ācause we actually used to read his speeches. In fact, the best thing to do with Obama is donāt listen to him, ācause he sells the speeches, usually, so well. But if you actually read them, you would come to a different conclusion. And the interviews he did about the Iraq War, it was always, this is just stupid, Iām not a pacifist, the Iraq War is a stupid war. But he certainly wasāin fact, what was stupid about it is, he said, it weakened Americaās ability to project power around the globe. But he certainly believed in projecting power around the globe.
BENJAMIN: Well, youāre smarter, perhaps, and perhaps itās becauseā.
JAY: Maybe ācause Iām Canadian.
BENJAMIN: Well, and maybe itās ācause youāre not an activist, because we were just so desperate. You know, we saw firsthand so much of the devastation of the Bush years. The choice was between Hillary and Obama in terms of who was going to win from the Democratic side, and we knew Hillary was a hawk. In fact, we had a campaign bird dogging Hillary everywhere she went. And so our only real option for somebody who was going to win was Obama, and we projected our hopes and dreams on him like so many others did.
And I rememberāyou know, you selectively listen, and I selectively listened to a lot of his campaign rhetoric, and also to the debates. And I remember one debate when he said that the role of a good leader is to talk to our adversaries and I will talk to our adversaries. And he got huge applause for that. And so I thought, alright, hereās a guy who really understands that talking, dialog, negotiations are much better than war.
JAY: And I have to say the one thing I had hope for in ā08 with Obamaāand I didnāt have a lot of high expectations, and I wasnāt disillusioned, ācause I didnāt have much illusionsābut I thought heād be rational on Iran when it was clear McCain wouldnāt be. And then, after that, it was clear Romney wouldnāt be. And, actually, so far it looks likeāI mean, from the point of view of the same thing, he wants to project American power, and he knows Iran, you know, is stupid, even from the point of view of empire building. But I donāt think you would get that from the Republican side. They seem much more willing to want to go for that kind of a fight. So I actually give him that. I think there is a rationality there.
BENJAMIN: Well, that, you know, jumps us fast-forward into today, and Iām not sure if thatās where you want to go, butā.
JAY: [crosstalk] We can jump around. Itās okay.
BENJAMIN: Yeah? Okay. But Iām amazed at the fact that after 12 years of war, Obama would be so stupid as to do the thing with Syria and say, oh, hereās my red line, and actually even contemplate U.S. physical military involvement in Syria. And that was one of my most exciting moments as an antiwar activist in recent years was to see this spontaneous uprising from left, right, Republicans, Democrats, libertarians, you name it, saying no way.
And I think that you could say, yeah, Obama wants to have a rational approach to Iran, but I also think itās the mood of the country right now, and that itās forcing Obama to untether himself so much from AIPAC, the lobbyists that were gunning for war in Syria and Iran, and to take a more rational approach. I think itās a reflection of where we are as a nation. And I think there are a number of Republicansāand some of them are Tea Party Republicansāwho really do not want to see the U.S. involved in another war.
JAY: I think thatās true. But if you go back to the Iraq War, there are a lot of people against the Iraq War, and it happens anyway. I think it hadā.
BENJAMIN: But that wasnāt under Obama. That was under Bush.
JAY: No, but Iām sayingāyeah, but itās not just about public pressure. What Iām saying isā.
BENJAMIN: But I think that Obama is more sensitive to public pressure than Bush was.
JAY: Yeah.
BENJAMIN: And itās his own party.
JAY: Yeah. My but is is he was sayingā. I think this is hilarious, me defending Obama, ācause if you watch The Real News, we spend most of our time rather critical. But in the debates in ā08, or, you know, leading into ā08, he was saying things like, if you didnāt want Iran to become such a dominant power in the region, you shouldnāt have overthrown Saddam Hussein. You know, he was giving rational arguments back then.
But I guess what Iām really getting at hereāand this ties together with the antiwar movement question: itās not about him. He represents a section of the American elite. He represents probably the predominant opinion of the American professional foreign policy establishment. He represents the more professional Pentagon establishment. And all of them, you know, when they look at their grand chessboard, a war with Iranās not in American interest. And the same people were actually opposed to the war in Iraq on the whole. But Bush wouldnāt listen to them.
But what Iām getting at is that, when you drink the Kool-Aid, somehow you have to say to yourself that itās not a class thatās in power, itās not a section of the American elite thatās in power. Itās, like, this guy, Obama. And if you start thinking that, then you can project things into this guy as an individual. But he never could have gotten where he was if he didnāt represent a whole section of the American elite. And that section of the American elite seems awfully good at taking the legs out ofāwhether itās the antiwar movement or whether it was the upsurge in Wisconsin, of kind of turning the movement to become an appendage of the Democratic Party.
BENJAMIN: Well, exactly right. And thatāsāyou know, when I made the decision to come to Washington, it wasnāt because I thought Obama was just going to follow this nice antiwar path. I knew he was going to be confronted with this tremendous military-industrial complex that was going to push him on the militaristic path, and that we had to keep the momentum up.
And we turned around as Code Pink and said, you know, where are our forces? Well, our forces had dwindled away, as we said. And even then, looking at Congress at the people that we had worked so much with under the Bush years, the Progressive Caucus, it was hard to get them to speak out, to say anything.
And thatās been tremendous frustration over these years is to see that the people who we were allied with and working closely with under the Bush years had suddenlyāeither they were part of the Democratic establishment and they were going to go with their guy, or they were willing to let down their guard and waited now for years for Obama to do the right thing.
So I donāt want toāI mean, when I say drank the Kool-Aid, I drank the Kool-Aid excited that things were going to change under Obama. But I was assuming that we were going to still have a movement, which we didnāt have.
JAY: One of the first things Obama did is not charge Bush and Cheney. I mean, there was a lot of talk about charging them on torture issues. But I always thought, if youāre going to charge them, it should have been on war crimes of launching an illegal war, of which hundreds of thousands of people died.
BENJAMIN: Totally. And to this day, we at Code Pink are one of the few who follow these guys around, whether itās on a book tour or theyāre in a speaking engagement. We try and go whenever we can and bust into the room and saying, arrest that guy for war crimes, because we donāt forget.
JAY: And clearly President Obamaāand for those of you that are going to write in the comments section, oh, thereās Paul defending Obama on Iran, I only say this from the point of view of clearly itās to strengthen the empire. He doesnāt want to get embroiled in Iran, but he has no problem. Weāre going to talk more about drones and such later. Heāsāclearly has no problem launching wars in the defense of that empire.
BENJAMIN: Yeah, and killing a lot of innocent people.
JAY: So you were in touch with large numbers of people at the height of the movement and when Code Pink had lots of forces. What do they say? How can they, by this point, not get that Obamaās essentially continuing Bush-Cheney policies?
BENJAMIN: Well, in the first years of Obama, people got very angry at us and say, how could you be criticizing Obama? How could you be protesting what Obamaās doing? And so we lost a lot of people from that end of things. Itās funny, ācause some of the people from the right who hated us so much under the Bush years were saying, well, at least we have to give them credit that thereās equal-opportunity protesters. But we were small, ācause we had lost so many people.
And then, over the years, weāve started to grow again, because people have seen that Obama is just continuing so many of the policies of the Bush administration.
And sure there are people whoālots of people who will continue to defend Obamaās foreign policy and try to make it as very differentiated from the Bush years, but we donāt do that. And we would love to have the numbers that we had under the Bush administration. We donāt have that.
So weāve tried to compensate through doing different things, like going into press conferences and speaking out when you know the national mediaās already there.
But we certainly and unfortunately canāt get tens of thousands of people out anymore. Weāre lucky if we can get 1,000 people out.
JAY: Part of it is the complexity of the situation, is that, you know, as much as one can critique Obama and his administration and his section of the eliteāand I keep saying it that way ācause I donāt want it to be about this one guy, ācause it clearly isnāt. That being said, the other section of the elite, the far right of the elite, are thoroughly sociopathicānot to say anyone that can, you know, send drones doesnāt have a good dose of sociopathy themselves, but the otherāyou know, itās very likely, I would think, that if it had been a President Romney, for example, we might have been more directly heading towards war with Iran. And thatās still not, quote-unquote, off the table with the Obama administration. Not to have illusions about them, but right now we donāt seem to be headed there. You know, McCain, his war, he wanted to have a new Cold War with Russia. Who knows what the hell he would have started in terms of provocations against Russia? So itās complicated, because itās not that thereās no difference between these two sections.
BENJAMIN: Right. And I think itās very interesting to see Kerry and how he has been acting as secretary of state. I was recently in Geneva when the talks around Syria started. And on the one hand, itās kind of schizophrenic, ācause you see him with the foreign minister of Russia and shaking hands and trying to show to the media that weāre good friends. And they actually are working together for the Syria talks. On the other hand, itās that American arrogance thatās, you know, we will not contemplate any future of Syria that includes Saddam Hussein [sic]. Well is that up to you, John Kerry? Or is that up to the Syrian people? And the U.S. continuing to be funding the rebels while they are organizing these peace talks. So itāsā.
JAY: And the Russians doing the same thing on the other side.
BENJAMIN: And the Russians doing the same thing.
JAY: And the other thing about this whole thing is the absoluteāwhatās the word?āmarginalization, ignoring the refugee crisis in Syria, which is on an apocalyptic levels, and both in terms of the media and the politicians. Itās like, oh, just, oh, yes, there are some refugees.
BENJAMIN: A couple of million refugees. Thatās right.
And the other thing ignoring is civil society, ignoringā. We were there to push women being at the table, women who had not taken up arms on either side, but who had huge constituencies ācause they were working with refugees, they were working with displaced people, they were risking their lives to try to get humanitarian aid to people. And we could not get any kind of formal representation for women at these talks. So you have peace talks where the guys with the guns are sitting around a table and barely even talking to each other. Theyāre only talking through the UN envoy, and the peacemakers are not at the table. And it was very profound to be there with many of these Syrian women who had been trying for months to get their voices heard and ignored at all levels from the U.S., the Russian side, and the UN side.
JAY: Okay. Weāre going to do one more segment. Weāre going to talk a little bit more about the American antiwar movement and its ups and downs.
Please join us with Medea Benjamin on Reality Asserts Itself on The Real News.
End
DISCLAIMER: Please note that transcripts for The Real News Network are typed from a recording of the program. TRNN cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.