http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/blumcspan01282006/
Houston, Texas: Yes, good morning. I’d like to ask Mr. Blum where he was born and a brief background on his upbringing and education and how he became such an expert on this field.
Blum: I was born in New York City, in Brooklyn. And I went to City College of New York. And in the 1960s I was working at the State Department as a computer systems analyst and programmer. But my ambition at the time was to become a foreign service officer. I was a good, loyal anticommunist and I wanted to join the cause. But then a thing called Vietnam came along and that changed my mind completely and my life.
Host: How do you document the sources in your book?
Blum: The book is very well documented. All the sources are listed. And if you look through the back section, you’ll see that most of my sources are from the mass media. The Washington Post and the New York Times are all over the place, plus books by foreign president and former diplomats.
Host: The previous caller had asked about the media’s role in reporting this. What’s your take on that?
Blum: Well, the media has changed along with the American public, or maybe vice versa. The basis of the war is still not questioned as much as I would like it to be. But it’s improved a lot. The last couple of years I’ve noticed the press asking much tougher questions of the President. And when he gives them a slippery answer, they repeat the question and they are more insistent. And I think that’s a very good change.
East Albany, Georgia: Good morning gentleman. I guess the boy from Texas, his hunch didn’t play out. He was trying to insinuate that maybe you weren’t a native born citizen, Mr. Blum. I love New York and I’m glad you’re from New York. And New York took the brunt of this 9/11 excuse that they use. Speaking of excuses, if you were riding a public transportation bus and the driver had a bad wreck and hurt everybody on the bus, who would you blame? The driver who was driving it last week or the driver who caused the wreck? That’s what they’re doing. They’re blaming the Clinton administration for the attack on Sept. 11. And they always say that we haven’t been attacked since Sept. 11. And I ask what about this mailing of anthrax when all they used was simple postage stamps to shut down effectively Washington, D.C.? I’m going to quit yakking and listen.
Blum: It’s fallacious to say we haven’t been attacked since 9/11. Because of our invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, American targets have been hit scores of times all over the Middle East, South Asia and even in the Pacific area. Dozens and dozens of attacks. So we have not actually made any headway in being safer than we were before.
Bella Vista, Arkansas: Good morning. I’m kind of results-oriented person and I look at the footprints that the United States has left, where they’ve been and I’m just kind of curious. Do you want to live in North Korea or do you want to live in South Korea? Do you want to live Japan, Taiwan or do you want to live in Vietnam and Cambodia? Western Europe or Eastern Europe? Everywhere that the United States has been, they have left a footprint of freedom and let the people decide their own country. Now you have your freedom. Why wouldn’t you allow other people to have theirs? Also, a repressive nation that you or other people keep saying can’t be too repressive if you and Noam Chomsky and others like you can voice your opinion. I really don’t understand you.
Blum: My being able to voice my opinion is no excuse for the 60 years of American war crimes. You cannot argue that the U.S. has the right to bomb people into oblivion because I have the right to sit here in this studio and say a few words. It doesn’t follow at all. And as far as us leaving footprints, to name one example of many I could give, in Afghanistan the U.S. in the 1980s overthrew a secular government there that was giving full rights to women and other civil liberties. We overthrew that government which led directly to the Taliban taking power. That’s one example of the kind of footprint that we have left all over. And I give many examples of the same kind of fallacy in your thinking.
Las Vegas: With what that gentleman just said about you speaking and Noam Chomsky, the problem is you don’t get the platform that the others get. So you rarely get heard. The only reason you’re getting heard today is because of the incident that happened. I was just wondering about Iran because we are talking about the past but we have something impending in the future. Not many people know about the Senate passing these mini-nukes. A lot of people are saying that they are going to be using those because the Senate passing, that’s okay to use and they plan to use them in conjunction with Israel and Turkey in a plan to hit Iran’s so-called nuclear thing. I was wondering if you could comment on that if you know about it.
Blum: For us to invade Iran would be just as much of a violation of international law as our invasion and bombing of Iraq. I suspect what might happen is not so much a land invasion because we don’t have the armed forces for that anymore. But we will bomb them, I think, with or without the help of Israel. And that I’m very much opposed to. Iran has as much a right to nuclear weapons as other nations do. I would like to see all nations not have such weapons, but as long as some have it—and Iran is surrounded by nations which have those weapons—you can’t blame them for wanting to have them.
Cockeysville, Maryland: I just wanted to say first of all I think it’s unfortunate you’re giving this man a format today. I guess next we can give Osama bin Laden a format to defend his writings and maybe his tapes. I just wanted to ask you sir, do you realize that in this country, which you say it’s just the foreign policy that you dislike, but we all know that that essentially means are opposed to the country and the things that it stands for as far as its freedom and liberties. Do you realize that in this country where you’ve written this book and you’re making all the money that I assume you’re going to make off of it with all the sales across the Middle East that you’re going to get, if you did this in one of those countries, you would not be allowed to live? They would cut your head off or throw you in jail. I just wanted to make sure that you were aware of that and isn’t that a little hypocritical of you?
Blum: I just replied to that question a few minutes ago. If the caller is implying that because I can sit here and say what I’m saying, that therefore it’s okay, it’s humanitarian and legal, for the U.S. to go around the world dropping napalm and missiles and white phosphorous and all kinds of other horrible weapons, it’s okay then. Is that what he means to say?
Host: How do you stand to make financially on this book?
Blum: I have no idea. The figures that we hear about on Amazon are not sales figures. Those are ranking figures. And I have no idea how that is arrived at. For all I know, if 50 people call Amazon on the same day about the same book, the ranking of that book would shoot all the way up. So, I have no expectation of making much money out of this. And certainly it wasn’t any motivation for my doing it.
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: I’m an independent so I basically don’t choose one side or another. But I do do a little reading. And it says—tell me if you agree with this or not—how close is the United States to becoming what would be considered an empire vs. a secular state. And is it not true that we have 800 bases in a 130 countries like that last guy was talking about that we gave freedom to Korea? But we leave bases back there to keep our country involved. Another question I had is if our country went into Iraq and Iraq decides to run their country as a Shiite country like they do in Iran, would we still consider it a democracy over there? Would it be considered something we have to change and control because a new leader might come in and now that leader would be the one we would have to take out? If you could answer some of those, I would appreciate that.
Blum: It would be very ironic indeed if Iraq became any kind of Islamic state. Because under Saddam Hussein—I’m not a fan of his—under him there was full religious freedom. Jews and Christians were safe there. Not now, though. So that would be very ironic.
Springfield, Missouri: My question for you Mr. Blum is that you stated you’re independent and all that. I have a couple questions. One, do you feel like you’re a true American?
Blum: I have no idea what you mean by a true American.
Springfield, Missouri: I mean, we have soldiers over in Iraq and Afghanistan and fighting with their lives on the line. And you want to sit here and give basis to the terrorists and the ones over there that are attacking us.
Blum: I support our armed forces by calling for them to be sent home immediately before they lose an arm or a leg or their eyesight. That’s how I support them.
Springfield, Missouri: Some of your comments may have some basis to it. But when you just made a statement that Iran has a right to have nuclear weapons like any other state after the [Iranian] President has made the comments that he’s made recently about wiping Israel off the face of the Earth. What do you feel about that?
Blum: Every leader in the Middle East is obliged at some point or another to make very tough statements concerning Israel. That’s part of being accepted as legitimate. I don’t place much faith in those statements. I think that’s an excuse used to condemn the leader of Iran, although I’m not any fan of his, I assure you.
Long Branch, New Jersey: Thank you for your intelligence and clarity. And I need to apologize for all of the stupid white men you’re going to hear from for the rest of the morning. But I understand that there were war plans on Bush’s desk long before Sept. 11 for Afghanistan and Iraq and can you speak about that with more clarity because I’d like to understand that a little more? Thank you so much sir.
Blum: There’s evidence that some of the neocons who surround Bush were pushing for an invasion of Iraq as early as 1998, I think. That’s well documented. There’s a letter signed by all the big names, Wolfowitz and Perle and all the others. This letter was sent to Clinton and to other leaders, calling for an invasion of Iraq in 1998, that early.
Evanston, Illinois: I am calling on the Republican line, but I have a quick question and an equally quick follow-up if I may. The question being, do you think President Bush and his actions in Iraq would qualify him to be classified as a war criminal?
Blum: Yes, I do. The invasion of Iraq, without any provocation at all, without any invasion of us by Iraq, that is what the Nuremberg tribunal called the ultimate crime. A war of aggression is what they called it. And that’s what this is, a war of aggression. If we have a world where any nation can invade any other nation because they don’t like their leader or for any other reason like, what kind of world would it be?
Evanston, Illinois: In regard to it then, I really am interested in picking up a copy of your book because it is an anthology of 60 years of this type of behavior. The question I have is because I’m having difficulty finding this information, what is the total death total that occurred in Iraq due to American bombing—military as well as civilian—that occurred during the eight years of the Clinton administration?
Blum: I don’t know all the figures. But there is one famous figure. The UN determined that the embargo upon Iraq had caused the deaths of 500,000 children. To that figure, you have to add the adult deaths caused by the embargo. And that’s independent of the bombing and what have you. It’s quite a huge number we’re talking about.
Mansfield, Texas: I’m just simply amazed at how short-sighted we as a country have become. I’ll use the analogy that the earlier caller used with regard to footprints and his insistence that wherever we’ve stepped, we’ve left freedom and democracy in its wake. But if we take a critical, objective look at wherever we’ve been, we’ve propped up these regimes—repressive regimes I would call them—and I think to borrow an old phrase, the chickens have just come home to roost. George Bush has said they hate us because of our freedom. People are making a choice. They’re making a choice that for centuries that they’ve been exploited. And there’s one other point I’d like to make. Earlier we talked about the failings of the Fourth Estate, the press. I think they defer to not wanting to give aid and comfort and support the President in his endeavor to fight the actual perpetrators of the 9/11.
Blum: One point I will comment about, the idea that our foreign policy leaves freedom in its wake. It would be very difficult to name any brutal dictatorship of the second half of the 20th century which was not supported by U.S. foreign policy. And more than just supported, these men were put into power and kept in power. That is the record. I touch upon that in my books. We have been the champion of dictatorships, much more the champion of any kind of freedom or democracy.
Host: We have this email. It says: The stated goal of radical Islamic fundamentalism is to assimilate or destroy all non-Islamic infidel peoples. How would your organization or movement prevent this from happening if we allow them to continue to spread across the world?
Blum: As I mentioned, we are encouraging the spread of Islamic fundamentalism and so-called terrorism by our foreign policy. We are not doing anything to stop that spread with our policies. It’s just the opposite.
New York City: I seem to get the impression that you are somewhat naïve in terms of foreign policy. We are in competition in the global need for resources and we’ve had the Russians in the same geopolitical state that we have been trying to attain control. And I just wonder how you perceive the competition for natural resources in terms of your thinking and whether or not we should conducting our foreign policy unilaterally without any regard for what other people are trying to do to get these resources. I believe you’re very altruistic and I can appreciate that. But I just don’t understand how the United States secures oil resources and other natural resources that we need.
Blum: Before we invaded Iraq, we had no problem in getting oil. Every country in the Middle East was selling us oil. There was no barrier to us buying oil. We didn’t have to invade them for that kind of resource. So I’m not sure what you’re speaking of. You’re speaking of a point of view of which I’m not dealing with anyhow at the moment. I’m approaching our foreign policy from a rather moral point of view. You can call that naïve if you want. But I’m just appalled at the harm and suffering that our foreign has caused for the past 60 years. And that’s where I’m coming from.
Knoxville, Tennessee: Mr. Blum, can you tell us why we bombed Iraq instead of Saudi Arabia, seeing that that was where most of the hijackers supposedly came from?
Blum: That shows that our bombing and invasion of Iraq had no connections at all to 9/11. It certainly had no connections to freedom or democracy because Saudi Arabia is not exactly a free society. That points out two of the flaws in the arguments put forth by the White House.
http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/blumcspan01282006/
Message Board by American Patriot Friends Network [APFN]