MSNBC Hardball w/ CHRIS MATTHEWS - 24 November 2009: Chris Matthews interviews Rep. Dennis Kucinich on Afghanistan escalation.
MATTHEWS: "Well, you heard the preview there from the President... what do you make of it?"
KUCINICH: "Well, you can't be in and out at the same time. It's clearly an escalation. And when the President is talking about 'finish the job,' the President should be aware that the jobs that the people are worried about in the United States are getting people back to work - we have 15 million people out of work. Our priorities are skewed here. We've got things to take care of at home. Why in the world are we escalating in Afghanistan, there's no... it's not defensible, it's not connected to our national security, and it really raises questions about the extent of the Pentagon's influence on the administration...
- snip -
Well, I think it's going to be a tough point to defend. And you're right about the... we've seen the limits of U.S. coercion. And this government in Afghanistan is a corrupt government. Everyone knows that. Sooner or later, the kind of consensus government which Afghanistan has had historically in the Loya jirga is going to have to be re-instituted so people in Afghanistan will have central control over their own destiny. We're seen as occupiers there. The occupation fuels an insurgency. As long as we're there, they're going to fight back even if they don't like each other. The tribes are going to join together and fight the U.S. We've got to get out of there, we can't afford it, we cannot risk what's happening with the destruction of our economy, because, frankly, Chris, we can't afford this war.
How are we going to pay for it? We're being told we don't have money to put the highway program on an accelerated course. We're being told that we have to accept cutbacks to have health care for all Americans. What are we doing in this country? We've got to start focusing on things that matter to people here and what matters to people in the United States is not expanding a war in Afghanistan."
MATTHEWS: "Let me go to Rick Hertzberg for a second... Rick, I loved your column this week, because you raised a very interesting argument, which is: if the President sends in, say, 40,000 troops, or something like it, in addition to the 68,000 we already have in Afghanistan, that would constitute a new war. Explain."
HERTZBERG: "Well, the President has said that this is the 'right war, the good war.' But the quality of it changes when the size of our commitment doubles..."
- snip -
MATTHEWS: "Well, I have two questions for both of you which I think gets to the question of what your thinking is about the war. We know it's going to be expensive - a trillion dollars over ten years. I guess it comes down to this question: What of you think of the 'enemy' over there? Is it a state of mind, an Islamic extremism, if you will, of people who decide, sometimes later in life, they're going to fight the West with all they've got, even with their own suicide involved in it? Or is it a group of people, like a 'Hole-In-The-Wall' gang, where there's 5,000 of them, or 1,500, or whatever - you simply track them down, check their names off the list like a wanted list, and then come home? Is the President getting sucked into the idea, Congressman, that it's like a 'Hole-In-The-Wall' gang? You go chase them down like Butch Cassidy, you catch any number of them, and then you say, well, I've killed enough of them, I'm coming home.
Or is it a state of mind, of people who resent the West and our involvement in that part of the world. And if it's that, could it be that the more troops the more enemies we're creating? Your thoughts on which it is. Congressman."
KUCINICH: "Well, it's a little bit of both. And it's absolutely true, Chris, that the more troops we send, the more enemies we're creating. People are uniting against the United States. They do not want a foreign occupier. This has been the history of Afghanistan. You know, Russia tried, and their effort collapsed. And Queen Victoria found she couldn't do it. You can go back through history, you cannot conquer Afghanistan. And then the next question is, what are you going to do when you conquer it?
I think that, uh, there is one other point I want to mention here, Chris. And that is the role of Congress, because that's not being discussed at all."
MATTHEWS: "Yes, sir. I want to hear that."
KUCINICH: "Under Article 1 Section 8, Congress makes the decision as to whether we go to war, and Congress makes the decision, as courts have decided, whether they're going to continue, whether we continue or not to fund a war. We cannot just put this only on President Obama's shoulders. Congress was asked a few months ago to authorize $130 billion for next year for Iraq and Afghanistan. There is speculation that we are going to be asked for another $50 billion supplemental. It's Congress that has to take a stand here, as well. And Congress should say it's time to end the war. Unfortunately, when the Democrats took control in 2006 we promised an end to the Iraq War and we immediately reneged on that promise and kept the war going. We've got to start standing up for the American people on these issues, and we can't simply leave it to the White House to make the final decisions, because the Constitution makes it clear that we have a responsibility, too."
MATTHEWS: "Rick, what do you think will be the reaction of the country and your readership out there, if the President decides to fight this war with Republican votes in Congress, that he recognizes that there is a plurality, even, of people who think like Congressman Kucinich on the Democratic side, so he goes over to the Republican side... and says, o.k... I'll put together a majority that way. Will that sell with the American people, a Republican war backing a Democratic President?"
HERTZBERG: "So much depends on what the troops actually do when they get there. We've been told this over and over again: Don't focus so much on the numbers. What we've been talking about all these four months in these meetings is what they are going to do there. A lot depends on that. So I'm not convinced that we're going to end up in the situation that you describe, where it's essentially a Republican war, a repeat, essentially, of what happened to Lyndon Johnson over Vietnam. Of course, that's the ghost that haunts this discussion, that's the dread that so many of us feel about this."
- snip -
KUCINICH: "I want to share something with you. We have a moment of silence in Congress every so often for our troops who are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. I think we should stop being silent and say that it's time to bring them home. You look at the psychological problems the troops are having, the number of suicides that have increased. I mean, if we really care about our troops, really love these men and women, we will evaluate whether we should stay there based on how the war is affecting them, not on how it is affecting tribal communities. We have an obligation to the Afghan people, at some point, to help them rebuild what we've destroyed, but I will tell you something, Chris. Going deeper and deeper into this war is a grave mistake. It's a mistake for our troops, it's a mistake for our budget, it's a mistake for America's power and it's a mistake to keep a war going because there's always a chance it will run into another war."
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