PAUL JAY: Welcome to The Real News Network.
I'm Paul Jay in Baltimore.
And welcome to Reality Asserts Itself.
We're continuing our series of interviews
with Chris Hedges.
And if you haven't watched the other parts,
you really should.
But we're going to in this segment do viewer
questions.
As we told our members, they could ask questions
and people could vote on the questions, and
we're going to ask the top four or five top-voted
questions.
And here we go.
Thanks for joining us again, Chris.
Alright.
So the first question is: to what extent are
the majority of the people in the United States
wittingly or unwittingly complicit in or responsible
for the many crimes committed across the globe
by their government in their name?
CHRIS HEDGES: I would say very few Americans--and
the exception would be probably those in the
Armed Forces and those who work for contractors
or the diplomatic service--actually grasp
the dirty work of empire.
Having spent 20 years of my life on the fringes
of empire and seen how empire works, Conrad
was right.
It's the horror, the horror.
What is it that drones and hellfire missiles
due to human bodies?
Those images are rigorously censored.
We never see them.
We don't understand what is done in our name.
Instead, we're fed this patriotic myth of
glory and service and sacrifice and honor
and heroism, terms that when you're actually
there on a battlefield become hollow if not
obscene.
JAY: And fighting for people's freedom around
the world.
HEDGES: There you go.
So, liberating the women of Afghanistan would
be another one.
So there's a kind of willful ignorance.
I think people on the one hand, they're not
told.
I think on the other, they don't want to know,
because it challenges our conceptions of ourself
as a virtuous and a good people who have a
right to use the 101st Airborne to impose
our, quote-unquote, virtues on everyone else.
So, yes, to that extent they're complicit.
On the other hand, if you're not there, haven't
been there, it's almost impossible to really
understand what it means, what it is.
JAY: Okay.
Question number two.
Is there any hope for Bradley Manning?
HEDGES: Well, Bradley Manning is being judicially
lynched in a military court.
He is not allowed to make the one defense
that would exonerate him in my eyes and a
defense which should see him acquitted, and
that is that he had not only a moral but a
legal duty to report the war crimes that he
witnessed, and that those who carried out
these war crimes, including those who carried
out the murders of Iraqi civilians in the
famous video "Collateral Murder", be prosecuted.
Did Bradley Manning commit a crime?
Yes, technically.
But set against the much more egregious and
major crimes of those who have committed numerous
war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, there's
no comparison.
Under the current system of power, there's
not much hope for Bradley Manning.
I think it's pretty--well, we know because
he's already pled out to the lesser charges
that he's at least going to jail for 20 years,
and the government, I think, is pretty intent
on railroading him into jail for the rest
of his life, as they also are with Julian
Assange, who has taken refuge in the Ecuadoran
Embassy in London, and Edward Snowden, because
these people have exposed the crimes of state.
And they're terrified of those with the technological
capacity to shine a light on the inner workings
of power, because it's so dirty, it's so corrupt,
it's so venal, and it's so immoral.
So under the current system there's not a
lot of hope for Bradley Manning, which I think
is a kind of window into how our system's
been utterly upended so that the criminals
are protected and those who expose the criminals
are persecuted.
JAY: To paraphrase something you wrote, it
depends how you define hope.
You wrote, I think quoting Socrates, I think
it was, if you don't want to live with a criminal
and you see what you're doing is criminal,
meaning you couldn't live with yourself if
you don't do something, well, in a sense Bradley
Manning--and if you listen to the speech he
made in court, a very political speech.
HEDGES: Yeah, I was there.
I was sitting right behind him.
Yeah.
JAY: So, I mean, in a sense he did the only
thing he could do.
So in a sense he created his own hope.
HEDGES: Yeah, he did.
No, he's an amazing figure.
JAY: Okay.
Question number three.
Do you believe the U.S. or Israel will attack
Iran militarily before the end of the Obama
administration?
HEDGES: No.
It's been pretty clear that the Pentagon does
not want to attack Iran.
The Israelis proposed that after the elections
of 2008 when Bush was still in office but
before Obama took power, and the Pentagon
said absolutely not.
The Iranians have made it very clear that
if they are attacked, even if it's only Israeli
warplanes, within a few minutes the Green
Zone will not exist.
I think that there's--.
JAY: This is the Green Zone in Baghdad.
HEDGES: In Baghdad.
And I think also there is a kind of understanding
that an attack on Iran would trigger a Shiite
uprising throughout the Middle East.
Most of Iraq is Shia.
Bahrain is Shia.
Two million Shiites in Saudi Arabia.
JAY: Where all the oil is.
HEDGES: Right.
Significant Shiite minority in Pakistan.
So Bibi Netanyahu, who I know and who's insane,
might like to do it, but up until now the
U.S. wants no part of this.
JAY: Yeah, I agree.
I wonder if even Bibi really wants to do it.
I think what he really wants is economic sanctions,
and he's got it.
HEDGES: Probably.
Right.
JAY: Alright.
Question number four.
In the past two presidential campaigns, '08
and 2012, the Green Party has chosen two presidential
candidates who were little-known nationally.
Who do you think might become a leader for
a third party that would be well known and
that you would like to see run?
And, actually, let me ask one more.
And would you consider running?
I should add that.
That was part of it.
HEDGES: The Green Party did talk to me about
running, which I don't want to do, because
I'm a writer and I really don't want to get
up into a room and do anything other than
speak what I think is the truth, even if that
room doesn't want to hear it.
JAY: Isn't that the kind of politician people
want?
HEDGES: Not really.
You know, I took on the Black Bloc within
the Occupy movement, which not only angered
the Black Bloc but angered many Occupy activists
who felt that I had betrayed them, even though
they weren't members of the Black Bloc.
And I said, you know, the moment I need your
adulation, I'm finished.
And politicians, even good ones, that is their
currency.
JAY: You don't want to lose the Black Bloc
vote.
HEDGES: Well, I just don't want to--I don't
want to get up and--you know, I'm quite--not
pleasant, but, I mean, I will get up in front
of a room and tell people what they don't
want to hear.
JAY: So is there someone you'd like to see?
HEDGES: Oh, you know, the Green Party's problem
is structural.
It's a pretty dysfunctional organization.
And you could get somebody who has a higher
profile.
But the problems of the Green Party are built
systemically within the Green Party itself,
and I'm not sure how to change that.
I'm not sure getting a higher--I mean, Ralph
Nader was pretty high-profile.
I'm not sure that the solution is getting
somebody who's high-profile.
I think it's beginning to create a party that--I
mean, my experience with the Green Party is
sort of everybody wants to be a chief.
You know, there's a lot of people who have
invested a lot of time and energy into running
for particular offices without doing the kind
of organizational work and grassroots organizational
work that is essential.
I mean, I think there are many, many problems
within the Green Party that won't be solved
by having a high-profile person run.
I mean, I still voted for Jill Stein.
I voted for the Green Party.
JAY: Okay.
And sometime we can talk more about this and
maybe get somebody from the Green Party to
come and discuss it with you.
But question number five.
Do you believe there may have been foul play
involved in a mysterious car crash that resulted
in the death of investigative journalist Michael
Hastings?
So just tell people that don't know who Michael
Hastings was.
HEDGES: He was the Rolling Stone reporter
who broke the story on McChrystal and all
the insane people around McChrystal.
And I've never met him but had great respect
for him as a reporter.
But I also say as a reporter that I would
never make any statement like that, because
it's purely conjecture.
I would have to go report the story myself
and smell it out.
So I'm very wary of conspiracy theories that
are not grounded in fact, and most conspiracy
theories are not.
JAY: But some are.
HEDGES: Right.
Well, then they're not conspiracy theories.
JAY: Well, it depends.
I mean, there's lots of conspiracies that
really happen, and there's lots that don't.
HEDGES: Right, there are conspiracies that
happen.
But, you know, when you lose trust in government
as I have seen in the many years that I was
a foreign correspondent, you just believe
that, you know, everything government does
is to your detriment.
I remember, you know, for instance, in Guatemala
they were dropping beetles or something to
clean up some kind of--eradicate some kind
of pest, and all the people, because everything
the Guatemalan government did, including genocide,
was sort of geared towards their subjugation
or extermination, thought that this was just
one more plan to sort of destroy their crop.
JAY: But stuff happens.
I mean, we know Nixon sabotaged Johnson's
peace talks with the North Vietnamese.
So it still happens.
HEDGES: No, no, no.
Well, didn't Kissinger do that?
JAY: Well, together.
HEDGES: Yeah.
JAY: In the Johnson tapes he blames Nixon,
at any rate.
HEDGES: I don't know, and I won't know until
I report it.
But notice that I didn't say no.
JAY: Right.
Okay.
Question number six.
Congress seems a wholly owned subsidiary of
the multinationals, Obama is pimping for GE
in Africa, the Koch brothers have made a down
payment on the Supreme Court, and money will
control the next federal election and most
of the state elections.
Is there any scenario you see that will return
this government to the people?
Now, we've been kind of talking a lot about
that in the previous segments, but that was
the next question.
HEDGES: Mass protests that begin to scare
the hell out of these people and begin to
disrupt systems that they care about, that
really is the only solution.
I think they're very fragile.
I think internally they know how corrupt they
are, which is why they passed the NDAA, because
they want to be able to pull the military
on the streets, because I think ultimately
they don't trust the police to protect them.
And those are the sentiments of a dying elite.
So I think when we begin to organize against
all the formal structures of power, I think
that they may crumble as the Stasi state in
East Germany, which when I was in East Germany
appeared monolithic, fell in about a week,
and it fell in a week because Honecker, Erich
Honecker, the dictator for 19 years, sent
an elite paratroop division down to Leipzig
to fire on 70,000 demonstrators, and they
refused to do it.
And after that, in the same way that the tsar
sent the Cossacks in to crush the Petrograd
bread riots and they fraternized with the
crowd, both Honecker and the tsar only lasted
another week in power.
And once the foot soldiers of the elite will
not protect the elite, they're done.
And that's why we have to be nonviolent, because
ultimately what we are doing is trying to
create a paralysis within systems of power,
whereby we speak truth, we appeal to conscience,
we expose corruption, fraud, lies by those
in power so that when those forces are called
into the street to stop us, they refuse to
do so.
That's how all revolutions happen.
And that's really in the end what I'm calling
for.
I'm calling for the overthrow of this system.
Let me say that again for Homeland Security.
I mean, that's what I'm doing.
And I'm calling for it through nonviolent
means, through mass protests, because as a
father of four children, I know that if we
don't stop these forces, they will kill us.
They will destroy the ecosystem on which the
human species and my children depend for their
life.
And that is really the stakes that lie before
us and why there is an imperative for all
of us to take risks.
And I don't like going to jail as I have.
Going to jail is more time than I care to
donate to my government.
But it really is the only option left, because
if we fail at this, then it's not just this
particular civilization that will be extinguished
but human habitation.
JAY: Okay.
Thanks very much.
HEDGES: Thank you.
JAY: And thank you for joining us on Reality
Asserts Itself on the Real News Network.
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