Al Gore Speaks on Iraq MoveOn PAC

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Photograph from Jan. 20th speech at NYU


Al Gore Speaks on Iraq


Monday, October 18 , 2004 at 12:30pm
Gaston Hall, Georgetown University
Washington, D.C.


Text of the speech, as prepared:


I have made a series of speeches about the policies of the Bush-Cheney 
administration – with regard to Iraq, the war on terror, civil 
liberties, the environment and other issues – beginning more than two 
years ago with a speech at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco prior 
to the administration’s decision to invade Iraq. During this series of 
speeches, I have tried to understand what it is that gives so many 
Americans the uneasy feeling that something very basic has gone wrong 
with our democracy.


There are many people in both parties who have the uneasy feeling that 
there is something deeply troubling about President Bush’s relationship 
to reason, his disdain for facts, an incuriosity about new information 
that might produce a deeper understanding of the problems and policies 
that he wrestles with on behalf of the country. One group maligns the 
President as not being intelligent, or at least, not being smart enough 
to have a normal curiosity about separating fact from myth. A second 
group is convinced that his religious conversion experience was so 
profound that he relies on religious faith in place of logical 
analysis. But I disagree with both of those groups. I think he is 
plenty smart. And while I have no doubt that his religious belief is 
genuine, and that it is an important motivation for many things that he 
does in life, as it is for me and for many of you, most of the 
President’s frequent departures from fact-based analysis have much more 
to do with right-wing political and economic ideology than with the 
Bible. But it is crucially important to be precise in describing what 
it is he believes in so strongly and insulates from any logical 
challenge or even debate. It is ideology – and not his religious faith 
– that is the source of his inflexibility. Most of the problems he has 
caused for this country stem not from his belief in God, but from his 
belief in the infallibility of the right-wing Republican ideology that 
exalts the interests of the wealthy and of large corporations over the 
interests of the American people. Love of power for its own sake is the 
original sin of this presidency.


The surprising dominance of American politics by right-wing politicians 
whose core beliefs are often wildly at odds with the opinions of the 
majority of Americans has resulted from the careful building of a 
coalition of interests that have little in common with each other 
besides a desire for power devoted to the achievement of a narrow 
agenda. The two most important blocks of this coalition are the 
economic royalists, those corporate leaders and high net worth families 
with vast fortunes at their disposal who are primarily interested in an 
economic agenda that eliminates as much of their own taxation as 
possible, and an agenda that removes regulatory obstacles and 
competition in the marketplace. They provide the bulk of the resources 
that have financed the now extensive network of foundations, think 
tanks, political action committees, media companies and front groups 
capable of simulating grassroots activism. The second of the two 
pillars of this coalition are social conservatives who want to roll 
back most of the progressive social changes of the 20 th century, 
including women’s rights, social integration, the social safety net, 
the government social programs of the progressive era, the New Deal, 
the Great Society and others. Their coalition includes a number of 
powerful special interest groups such as the National Rifle 
Association, the anti-abortion coalition, and other groups that have 
agreed to support each other’s agendas in order to obtain their own. 
You could call it the three hundred musketeers – one for all and all 
for one. Those who raise more than one hundred thousand dollars are 
called not musketeers but pioneers.

<snip>

<http://moveonpac.org/gore5/>

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