For Antiwar.com and Chaos Radio 95.9 in Austin, Texas, I'm Scott Horton.
This is Antiwar Radio.
We're going to start off with some news right now.
You know what's in the news.
Cindy Sheehan, actually she's not a what, she's a who.
You know who's in the news.
Cindy Sheehan.
You know what's in the news.
Brand new antiwar protest that she's got going on in Washington, D.C. as we speak.
Welcome back to the show, Cindy.
How are you doing?
Hey, Scott.
It's really good to be on again.
Well, I sure appreciate you joining us, especially on short notice like this, this morning.
No problem.
All right, so you're camped out there near the Washington Monument.
Is that right?
We are.
We have our new peace camp called Camp Out Now, and we're right on Constitution Avenue.
So we're directly in line with the White House, and the Washington Monument is behind us.
So we have a large tent with big red tarps or whatever those things are called over the tent, and we have dozens of people, and more people are coming every day to come to the big protest or the big march in D.C. here on Saturday.
So it's really cool, and we have been getting a fair amount of media coverage about it.
Of course, not as much as when we were at Camp Casey in Crawford, but we can't really complain.
I think it was Justin Raimondo in one of his pieces that had two different quotes from Charlie Gibson from ABC News.
And the one quote was from 2005 where, wow, this Cindy Sheehan is really a hero, and she's really putting it on the line to make George Bush answer her question, what noble cause?
And then once Obama got elected, they asked him about you, and Charlie Gibson said, oh, who, Cindy Sheehan?
Yeah, we're tired of her.
Won't she go away?
Yeah, something like that, yeah.
So I used to always think that there was a neoconservative media bias, but I really think it's just an establishment media bias.
Yeah, I think the late Tim Russert really set the bar.
It's just power, right?
As long as you're a powerful person sitting at that table near him, he's so excited, he would never ask a follow-up question that might tee you off or something.
Exactly.
It is the state bias in the media.
All right, well, so I guess that's kind of what you're protesting, in a sense, too, right?
It's not just the media, but the entire kind of anti-war sentiment in this country and the degree to which it seems to have dissipated with the election of a Democrat.
Well, it was and it has been difficult to organize this in the age of Obama because we know that during the Bush administration when the same exact things were going on, except Obama in many cases has increased the hostilities, then it was very easy to organize because there was a Republican in office.
And it just makes me think that the anti-war movement wasn't really anti-war, they were just anti-Bush.
And so it's been super hard to organize and get people as excited about Camp Out Now as they were about Camp Casey, even though the wars are still going on.
So it's been frustrating, but we've been very, very excited that most of the people coming out are college students.
So we might have to build a new anti-war movement from scratch, but it's going to be different, but I think it's going to be better.
It's going to be more committed, it's going to be smaller, but the people who are in it have much bigger hearts and much bigger commitment than they did when George Bush, because they recognize that war is not a partisan issue and that it's a systemic problem.
It doesn't matter who's in office, it's a systemic problem.
So these people get it.
They're young, they're energetic, they're full of new ideas and new energy.
They believe they can change the world, and they make me believe again that we can change the world.
Well, I'm really happy to hear you say that.
I know that, well, after all, years go by, and every year some 14-year-old turns 15 and decides it's time to start paying attention to whether he's going to have to go to war or not and that kind of thing.
It's a brand-new show, it's a brand-new day every day out there for people, and especially I'm really glad to hear about the young people joining the movement.
And, of course, the people who get in on it, especially right now at the very beginning of the Obama years, well, he's had a full one so far, but the kids who get in on it now and grow up during Democrat days with bombs falling consistently, hopefully they'll be inoculated from now on about the peaceful nature of the Democrats, whereas so many people tend to buy into it when it flips back around.
No, this is great.
If we are going to learn anything from the Obama years, I hope it's that there is no difference between a Democrat and a Republican, and like you said, that these young people are getting an early education on this, and we're waiting for the anti-war right to come and join us.
So far we haven't really had that happen, even though I have a really good working relationship with anti-war people on the right and libertarians and antiwar.com, and I know Angela has been really trying to organize to get people out here, but I just want to let everybody know that we're just talking about bringing our troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan, and we're trying to build a movement that is broad-based, young people, people on the left, people on the right, people of color, just everybody who agrees that this empire is out of control.
Yeah, well, I agree with you.
It's absolutely imperative that the Young Americans for Liberty show up for this thing and prove to people, like you said, so much of the anti-war movement, it almost seems like all those people, all those hecklers back in 2005 at Camp Casey, Shindy, they were right.
They were saying, oh, you just don't like Bush, and they were right about apparently three-quarters of the crowd there or something.
They just didn't like Bush.
The same policies are perfectly okay now, it seems like, and so the onus is on us really to prove that, no, maybe for some of them they just didn't like Bush, but for us, we didn't like him because of the things he did, and so therefore those very same reasons make us not like Obama or his policy either.
Right, right.
And we've got to show that.
I don't like war.
I don't care who's making the war, but those same people, I don't see them out here heckling me now, saying that why are you doing this?
We support Obama.
So there's a lot of hypocrisy in their case also.
If they supported George Bush around these illegal wars, then they should be supporting Obama, and they should be out here still heckling me, saying that they support the wars and they support Obama.
Right.
Yeah, because of course their argument then was simply, well, he's the commander-in-chief, and you're supposed to just shut up and do what he says and believe in him or whatever.
Yeah, right.
So this is the Tea Party right now, I guess, or a big part of it anyway.
All right, well, so here's the thing, too, and I hate to say this, but I won't put a percentage on it because I'd be making one up anyway, but there's a large number of people somewhere in America that they don't even know that Barack Obama has blood on his hands.
I talked to a buddy of mine who somebody asked him whether he was an Obama supporter.
He said, no, of course not.
He's a politician.
But, geez, at least he is a lot better than Bush.
And I said, well, how's that?
He's up to his eyeballs in the blood of innocent people.
And he just was like that natural reaction.
He literally stepped back from me and was just like, hey, whoa, whoa.
Now, okay, so the guy's a politician and everything, but it's not like he's as bad as Bush.
And it took me going through the list of extraordinary rendition and all the secrecy and the final stamp on the end of the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments, et cetera, et cetera.
And so finally he was like, oh, geez, yeah, I guess you're right.
But his basic sentiment was, yeah, but isn't Obama trying to wind these things down?
Isn't Obama basically a good guy and he's just doing his best?
And this is that meme, that kind of narrative out there is still out there.
All the facts, all the actions and deaths that have taken place on a daily basis since he took power more than a year ago have not had an effect on that narrative really at all.
Well, and the other thing that I often get, even from people who are coming to camp, that kind of stood down for the last year, giving Obama a free pass, and now they're starting to think they better, for whatever reason, they better get back into the game, they are still saying, well, at least he's better than McCain-Palin.
And, of course, when I ask them for, give me an example, where Obama's done anything that McCain would have done differently or worse, they can't give me that example.
But I can give them an example of, if McCain was president right now, if Palin was vice president, we would have an anti-war movement.
And I wouldn't have to be working so hard and struggling so much to convince people to get out here.
They would be out here.
Yeah, absolutely true.
Partisanship is just the bane of all good peace and liberty movements in this country.
They just switch off that left-right back and forth on us, and almost everybody gets washed out of the movements.
Although I have at least, which, not to really argue your point, because in policy they're really the same, the only difference I would see in McCain and Obama is that I think McCain really has that George W. Bush-ian mix of arrogance and ignorance, maybe even worse than Bush.
To where, you know, for example, Bush overruled Cheney and refused to allow missile strikes on the Russians in Georgia in August of 2008 that Cheney was pushing for.
And that seems to me like the kind of thing that John McCain would proclaim as his destiny and get us into a war with Russia, you know, something crazy like that.
So, you know, put Obama against the average Republican, you know, there's no difference.
But McCain is particularly not so, I think.
Well, but, you know, Obama is surrounding Russia with missiles and, you know, increasing hostilities towards China and, you know, the increase in the presence in the Caribbean that, you know, I just don't see.
I don't see.
And I believe that Obama is very arrogant.
He might not be ignorant, he might be stupid, but he's still as arrogant as anybody else that's in that place.
Yeah.
Well, I certainly don't mean to argue that Obama's better than McCain, just maybe that McCain was worse.
But, you know, that is.
You know what?
Both of them are the candidates and the people of Wall Street and the military-industrial complex.
That's right.
I mean, that's really the key for people to understand, too, is to switch from one narrative to the other.
In one narrative, oh, yeah, we have this little American democracy and this two-party system and the best man wins and this and that.
And then you have the real truth, which is that the arms industries and the bankers control the Congress and the American people just don't.
Right.
And, you know, once you figure that out, then you know all their wars are not for your interest but for theirs instead.
During the campaign, I was calling them Goldman Sachs candidate A and Goldman Sachs candidate B.
And Obama was candidate A because he got more money from Goldman Sachs than McCain did.
Indeed, he did.
But whoever wins, Goldman Sachs wins.
Yeah.
Well, now, Cindy, this is kind of hard stuff and, you know, you can pass on this if you don't want to get into it.
But I saw where someone left a comment on an anti-war radio interview.
I think it was maybe an old Darja Mail interview or something like that where we were talking about winter soldiers and this kind of thing.
And the comment, I believe, was left by a mom.
It was from a really old interview, too, so I don't know how she figured anybody would see it.
But anyway, the comment basically said, listen, my son died over there in Iraq.
And when he came home, he said he was having a great time over there and that he loved the Iraqi people and he was doing good by them.
And then he went back and he got killed.
And I'm sorry.
I just, you know, all these things you people are saying in this interview and what I just I cannot believe that my son was anything but a hero because I just can't deal with it.
In a sense, like that's perfectly OK.
You don't want to argue with a lady like that, do you?
But obviously you have a different view.
Well, for one thing, what makes somebody a hero in this country?
And this is going to sound harsh also, but it's reality.
You know, I spent a lot of time in New York and there's a lot of flags with the list of everybody who died in the World Trade Tower.
And, of course, we mourn their deaths and their families.
And there's a lot of families from 9-11 who are pressing for the truth who said we don't want these insane wars because our loved ones were killed in 9-11.
But what makes somebody a hero that they went to work that day and an airplane flew into their building?
You know, that makes them a victim.
And what makes our soldiers in Iraq heroes?
You know, they're over there for lies.
It's a war based on deception.
Our kids are going into the military mostly right now because of economic constraints and concerns.
And they're not going in because they're rah, rah, rah.
They want to go kill them some Arabs.
You know, they're going in because they don't have health care, because they can't find a job, because education is so expensive.
And Casey was a hero his whole life.
Casey did everything right.
He had a core set of principles and he acted on those principles every time.
He chose from his highest principle values.
And the day he was killed, he refused to go on the mission.
He said, no, I'm not going to go.
He was a humvee mechanic and he was forced to go on the mission and minutes later he was dead.
Casey and our soldiers, you know, they can range from war criminals to victims.
You know, even if they do something heroic on the battlefield, what the hell are they doing there anyway?
You know, and they're actually, they're tools of this horrible corporate military empire that we have right now.
Do I like that reality?
No.
You know, but that's the truth and it's a reality.
And I can understand this mother's feelings, you know.
When Casey was killed, we had so many of his so-called fellow soldiers and his superiors and everything to tell us how he was such a hero and how he volunteered for that mission, which just turned out to just be a bunch of baloney.
That's what they want you to believe to soften the blow, I think.
Yeah.
Well, you know, one thing that just, you know, is kind of adds insult to injury here with this story is that that battle in April of 2004, your son Casey was killed, was within this, you know, evil and stupid war.
This is one of the stupidest fights that Paul Bremer and the military picked.
I mean, the headlines this week are that Muqtada al-Sadr has done better than ever and is taking over the United Iraqi Alliance and edging out the Supreme Islamic Council.
Well, this is what that battle was all about, was they put out an arrest warrant for Muqtada al-Sadr, like he was just some guy they were going to go arrest and then he wouldn't make trouble no more.
And I remember seeing Bob Dornan on TV saying, yes, we have to go and it's a good thing we're going to go and we're going to shut down this guy's newspapers because they're stirring up anti-American sentiment and it's going to save lives.
And, of course, all it did was start a rebellion in Sadr City and in Najaf.
And it spread and it actually was the beginning, I think, of the real committed Iraqi resistance.
And, you know, so people always tell me that I'm way far off base because an Iraqi killed my son.
George Bush in this country didn't kill my son.
But, you know, they have every right to resist an occupation, unfortunately, and we didn't have any right to be there.
So, you know, that's just the paradigm that we have to change in this country, that one soldier's life is not worth 100 or 1,000 innocent civilians' lives.
And that's what we're trying to do.
That's what we're trying to say, that everybody's life is precious and that Americans need to realize that.
Just because not so many soldiers are dying in Iraq, the people of Iraq are still dying.
2009 was the worst year for our soldiers and the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan and definitely Yemen.
So we just need to realize that it's the empire.
It wasn't about Bush and it's not about Obama, it's about empire.
And we need to organize around that fact, to have a movement that really has credibility and has strength and might actually get some true change, not just a facade, not just changing the facade, but changing the inside.
And, you know, can it be changed?
Do we have to have a revolution to accomplish that?
You know, that's just some of these issues that we need to struggle with and that we need to work on.
We might not ever be successful, but we can never give up.
Sansa, we're ready.
I'm talking with Cindy Sheehan.
She's in Washington, D.C., and your goal is to shut the thing down, am I right?
Yep, that's right.
We're going to start on Monday the 26th doing our acts of civil resistance, and we're not really publicizing those ahead of time so we can be more effective.
We've been threatened by the park police several times to shut our camp down, but we are, you know, claiming our First Amendment right together.
The other day a park policeman told us she takes pictures every day of what we're doing, and somebody said, what are you taking pictures of?
And she said, we just have to document what you're doing to our property.
And I said, are you kidding me, lady?
This is our property, you know, and we're going to be documenting what you're doing to our property.
She goes, well, this is national park land.
I said, well, we're national citizens, and you just expropriate this land to control it and to put these rules and regulations on it that actually this land belongs to the indigenous people who occupied it first.
So, you know, we're claiming our rights to be there.
And, you know, they want to take, like you said, they've gutted the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments.
The First Amendment was gutted with the Patriot Act and many of those other amendments, and we're there to claim our rights back.
And I think it will look extremely bad on the Obama administration if they shut our camp down.
Yeah, well, if anybody takes notice.
I'm sorry, Cindy, I should be there.
And you know what, there should be 10 million people there.
This should not be that hard.
You know, all the Tea Party people are angry.
Well, where'd all your money go?
They wasted it bombing Iraqis to death.
We should, everyone, left, right, you know, red state, blue state, as you said, all creeds and colors and religions.
We should all be in Washington, D.C., shutting that city down, maybe finding a way to just sink it into the Potomac forever.
That's what, you know, that's our goal.
That's our goal because I really believe that this system can't be reformed.
Because we're asking people who control the system to reform it.
So we just have to, and don't wait for me, don't wait for this group or that group.
You know, so many people put their hopes and, you know, their cash and their work into certain groups that turned out not to be anti-war but to be anti-Bush.
Do it, you know, just do it yourself.
You can say that this government, you know, this corrupt and criminal and murderous government does not have any authority over you.
And then, you know, you can join, come to Washington, D.C., get there any way you can.
You know, we have a community that will support you if you support the community.
Get there and help us because this is the time that we need to do it.
All right, especially those of you who live on the East Coast and can possibly get there to Washington, D.C.
There's some peace protesters who could use your support.
How long are you planning on being in town up there?
It's an indefinite thing.
So we said our camp was going to be a permanent encampment until the empire, until policies started to change.
But, you know, like I said, we are threatened on a daily basis with them just moving in like we're bonus marchers and taking our camp down.
But we're going to just stand up to that and say we're not moving.
Maybe you can lay down the gauntlet to Barack Obama and demand that he answer your question.
What noble cause?
We've already done that.
We're asking for Barack Obama to meet with members from the camp and to institute a peace council that would be in direct opposition to their war council.
And if people can't come, they can surely send, you know, a few dollars our way.
Everybody has a few dollars to send.
And our website is peaceoftheaction.org, P-E-A-C-E of the action.org.
And, you know, if you can't make it, give us a cup of coffee or a pack of cigarettes today or a six-pack of beer or whatever and just send us a few dollars.
And that really adds up, too, when a lot of people do that.
Indeed.
And, you know, I remember well at Camp Casey in 2005 with all the donated food and drink and everything else.
And when you close that thing down, all that extra food went to Katrina survivors who were being shuttled to the Astrodome and probably saved some lives right there.
Exactly.
We took five tons of supplies to Katrina when Camp Casey closed.
You know, that's just the thing.
You know, it's not being promoted on sites like the Daily Kos who are just, you know, fronts for the Democratic Party.
So we just, you know, really need people to start spreading the word about it.
Send our website around.
Go to our YouTube channel where we have videos of Camp up there.
That's Peace of the Action YouTube channel.
Our blog is Cindy Sheehan's Soapbox blog spot, you know, where we have blogs about it.
And just start passing the information around.
Be our own media about it.
Right on.
Well, you sure set a great example, you know, especially for your stick-to-itiveness and refusing to compromise after all these years staying at it.
And I wish you the best of luck, Cindy.
I'm not going to compromise with human life ever.
And that's what makes me sick, that our politicians sell human life out so cheaply.
All right.
You heard it.
Cindy Sheehan, if you're, you know, anywhere within hitchhiking range, get to Washington, D.C.
She'll meet you at the Washington Monument.
Thank you very much.
Thanks, Scott.
All right, y'all.
This is Antiwar Radio, chaos in Austin.
We'll be right back after this.
Hey, everybody.
Just wanted to make sure you know about the new time change for the live show.
It'll be at 11 to 1 Texas time on Chaos Radio Austin, 95.9 FM, chaosradioaustin.org.
And you can also find the archives of the whole show's there as well.
