American voices: Dennis Kucinich
Al Jazeera gauges the mood in the US towards the war in Iraq five years on.
Dennis Kucinich is a member of the US house of representatives and was an unsuccess ful candidate for the Democratic nomination for the US presidency in 2004 and 2008.
“There is a great concern across the US that our president and vice president have violated their constitutional oath of office.
A feeling that America has been sent into a war based on lies and that America is preparing for another war based on lies.
This administration took us on a warpath that has separated us from the international community.
And in the US they have created such fear, irrational fear, that people will give up their rights, and people are afraid to speak out.
I think that fear has had a dampening effect on a mass movement [of protest], but that will change.
You see a lot of loss of our troops and it [the war] is a destruction of our entire social agenda.
Oil motive
We have people that are homesless, we have schools that are falling apart, we have about 100 million people out of a population of 300 million people who either do not have health insurance or who are uninsured – we have people who are unemployed.
| The War in America | ||
|
Now many us is believe that all along the war is all about oil. I said that early on and I do believe that.
Since Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and was not involved in 9/11 then what was it? It was about oil.
It would be a mistake to characterise everything that happened as just president Bush and just the Republicans.
The Democrats have to bear some responsibility here.
The Democrats controlled the house and the senate in 2002, they could have stopped the war but they didn’t. The Democrats control the house and the senate now, we could stop the war now by telling the president “no more money”.
I would like to believe that simply getting the Bush administration out of office will change things – it may not.
We have a moral obligation to find a way – monetary and otherwise – to heal this tremendous damage that has been done to the people of Iraq.“
The special documentary the War In America shows on Al Jazeera from March 15. Click here for more information.