Belafonte on Bush, War and Wiretaps

[Guest guest]

http://www.alternet.org/story/31575/

 

Belafonte on Bush, War and Wiretaps

 

Democracy Now!. Posted February 4, 2006.

 

 

Renowned musician and activist Harry Belafonte speaks up about why

Bush and Co. are the world's worst terrorists -- and what we can do

about it.

 

 

Editor's Note: The following is an edited transcript from Amy

Goodman's syndicated radio show Democracy Now!

 

Amy Goodman: The son of Caribbean-born immigrants, Harry Belafonte

grew up on the streets of Harlem and Jamaica. After serving in World

War II, he returned to New York and began a successful acting and

singing career. Along with his rise to worldwide stardom, Belafonte

became deeply involved in the Civil Rights Movement and was close

friends with the Rev. Martin Luther King.

 

In the 1980's he helped initiate the " We Are the World " single which

helped raise millions of dollars in aid to Africa. He also hosted

former South African President Nelson Mandela on his triumphant visit

to the United States. Belafonte has been a longtime critic of U.S.

foreign policy, calling for an end to the embargo against Cuba, and

opposing policies of war and global oppression.Belafonte spoke at a

rally in Caracas, where he commented on President Bush:

 

" No matter what the greatest tyrant in the world, the greatest

terrorist in the world, George W. Bush, says, we're here to tell you:

Not hundreds, not thousands, but millions of the American people --

millions -- support your revolution, support your ideas, and yes,

expressing our solidarity with you. "

 

Amy Goodman: Harry Belafonte was standing next to President Chavez

when he made those comments, and he didn't let up…Harry Belafonte

joins us today in our Firehouse studio for the hour. Welcome to

Democracy Now!

 

Harry Belafonte: It's nice to be here.

 

Amy Goodman: It's good to have you with us. Well, let's go back for a

moment to Venezuela and your comments there, for which you got a lot

of attention in the United States. Talk about your views of President

Bush.

 

Harry Belafonte: When Katrina took place, there was a great sense of

tragic loss for many Americans who saw that terrible tragedy. What we

had not anticipated was that our government would have been so

negligent and so unresponsive to the plight of hundreds of thousands

of people in the region.

 

And in a dilemma that we all face as to what we could do as private

citizens to help the folks that were caught in that tragedy, we began

to listen to voices that were outside the boundaries of government,

the United States government. We listened to voices that came from as

far away as Denmark, who offered to send goods and services in

emergency, and we also heard the voices of people from Venezuela

through their leader, Hugo Chavez, who said that 'In this moment of

your great tragedy, we, the Venezuelan people, extend all the

resources we can summon up to help the plight of those people caught

in the Gulf region.

 

The United States very abruptly and very arrogantly rejected that

offer, while in its stead, we did nothing to bring immediate relief.

And as a matter of fact, I must tell you, we're still quite delinquent

in what the peoples of that region need, because we still failed to

fully mobilize and meet the needs of the people, particularly in New

Orleans, but other places within that region.

 

I and many other private citizens decided that we would listen very

carefully to what people outside of the government were saying,

because there was no immediate sense of relief and response to what we

were experiencing, the people in Katrina. And so, like others, I went

with a delegation of 15 people, at the invitation of the Venezuelan

government, to come and to meet with President Chavez and members of

his cabinet to talk about what we could do to help American people

caught in this tragedy.

 

While there, we were given the right and the permission and the

opportunity to visit barrios, villages, going into the schools, going

into the prisons of Venezuela. We went into the academic institutions,

in which Cornel West spoke. Tavis Smiley went to TeleSUR and other

television communications development taking place, to examine, to see

what was happening to, quote-unquote, " freedom of the press. "

 

As we've said, freedom of the press in Venezuela is vigorously denied.

There is no opposition noise. Yet it's interesting to note that

nothing in Venezuela has been nationalized. There's still a very

vigorous private sector, albeit that it's a little disgruntled that it

is not able to sustain the rather one-sided agreement that they drew

with that government a long time ago in contracts that were drawn for

oil and other resources.

 

Amy Goodman: Did you meet with the opposition as well?

 

Harry Belafonte: Yes. We met with the opposition, as a matter of fact,

the leader of the opposition. And for a little over two hours, we had

an exchange. I asked him questions that I thought were appropriate

about what he felt about Chavez and the program, why did he take an

opposition position. And he expressed his thoughts on the way things

were going. We found that there were some contradictions to what he

said, but that was not my purpose.

 

I didn't go down to be an investigative reporter. I went down to

ascertain facts and to make sure that if we got responses from the

Venezuelan government that would help the plight of poor people in

America, not just those caught in Katrina, but, as you well know,

already the South Bronx has received aid, oil at very favorable prices

for people who were not given any to be able to face this winter that

we're experiencing now, and it is expected that will become more

severe. Massachusetts received oil. They just recently negotiated with

Vermont and Maine and other places, about not only oil, but what other

goods and services can the Venezuelan government bring to take up the

slack for what the United States says it has no resources to fill.

 

It is quite curious that we can find billions and billions of dollars

to sustain an illegal and immoral war in the Middle East, invading a

country that did not provoke us and moving into this conflict

unconstitutionally, even though it had the approval of the Congress.

Even the Congress violated the statutes of the Constitution.

 

We were not invaded. There was no threat of an enemy. We unilaterally

walked into a country that had no threat to this country, and we

invaded it. That's against the Constitution.

 

Amy Goodman: You call President Bush a terrorist?

 

Harry Belafonte: I call President Bush a terrorist. I call those

around him terrorists, as well: Condoleeza Rice, Rumsfeld, Gonzales in

the Justice Department, and certainly Cheney. I think all of these men

sit -- and women -- sit in the midst of an enormous conspiracy that

has been unraveling America for the last six years. It is tragic that

the dubious way in which this president acquired power should have

begun to unravel the Constitution and the peoples of this country.

 

Yes, I say that there are people in this country who live in terror.

Poverty is terror. Having your Social Security threatened is terror.

Having your livelihood as an elderly person slowly disappearing with

no replenishment is terror. Students who are dropping out of school

because there are no resources to keep us in school is terror.

 

You find people in the streets, watching drugs permeate our

communities and destroy our young, it's a life of terror. And men who

sit in charge of that distribution mechanism, which can help the

American people overcome these problems and refuse to do so, while

giving the rich more money than they've ever dreamt of having, while

turning around our institutions and redirecting resources from those

who are truly in need to those who are already generously endowed, if

not hedonistically so, it's a great tragedy.

 

And I think most important is that we have words that attempt to give

us moral cleansing, so that somehow we hold those responsible for

crashing into the Twin Towers and killing over 2,000 Americans

citizens in cold blood, which is an act of terrorism -- people who

have done that should be sought out and brought to justice; there's no

question of that -- but when we do what we have done, illegal war,

going into the Middle East, bombing at will, and then hundreds of

thousands of people get caught, who are either maimed or over 100,000

have already been killed, who are innocent men, women and children,

and we chalk that off to a thing called " collateral damage, " as if

somehow that murderous thing that we're doing so cruelly and so

inhumanely has no judgment before world opinion, that we are somehow

righteous and above criticism and above the law. That is unacceptable.

And that's what I speak out against.

 

Amy Goodman: I wanted to ask you about the comments you made about

former Secretary of State Colin Powell. This is what you said about

him during a radio interview in Los Angeles in October 2002:

 

There's an old saying in the days of slavery, there are those

slaves who lived on the plantation, and there were those slaves who

lived in the house. You got the privilege of living in the house if

you served the master to exactly the way the master intended to have

you serve him. That gave you privilege. Colin Powell is permitted to

come into the house of the master, as long as he will serve the master

according to the master's dictates. Now, when Colin Powell dares to

suggest something other than what the master wants to hear, he will be

turned back out to pasture.

 

Amy Goodman: Your thoughts today about Colin Powell?

 

Harry Belafonte: I think I'm mostly saddened by the fact that now that

Colin Powell is no longer in office and enjoys the privileges of

private citizenship, that even in this aftermath, he is still not

repentant. And I'm not asking him to repent in some supercilious

commanding way. What I'm looking at is his soul, and I'm looking at

redemption from past grievances and transgressions.

 

He lied to the American people, as did his president, before the

United Nations. That led us into this war. We were told about weapons

of mass destruction -- there aren't any -- and all the things that you

and I'm sure your listeners already know. And I would imagine that now

that he's been removed from that responsibility, that he would have

taken a position that maybe would have said to us more clearly and

more humanely what his difficulties and problems were while he was in

service and that he now choose to look at all of this from another

perspective, especially in the wake of all that has been revealed by

intelligence reports that have been released, by the debate that we've

been having on what happened and how we did it, and what all the

subterfuges were and what has come out from the intelligence

communities in other nations around the world. But no, there has not

been such -- he still maintains that what he did was just and correct.

 

I find that sad. I mean, I remember John Kennedy, when he went into

Cuba and understood very quickly how ill-advised that was, that he had

the courage and the strength to say, I made a mistake, and that I'm

sorry that I listened to counsel that misled me, and that I accept all

responsibility for this act, and that I will not do that again. And he

apologized not only to the American people, but to the world at large,

and stepped forward. For that, he was greatly admired.

 

I don't think that we are a species or a people that can exist without

making mistakes somewhere along the line. Some make mistakes that are

greater than others. But I do believe that we should have the courage

and the ability to look at something that we did, even if in the first

instance we believed it, when in the wake of the aftermath and the

truth, you find out that that was not the case, to then say, 'Let me

go back and examine what led me to this conclusion. What gods was I

serving? What masters was I serving? What was it all about?' and then

try to be more instructive to people who will listen to you.

 

Amy Goodman: I wanted to ask you about the surveillance scandal;

President Bush wiretapping Americans without court warrant. This isn't

the first time, of course, and you were a victim of it. Can you, in

talking about that, also talk about your relationship with Dr. Martin

Luther King, how you met, the conversations you had, and then recently

learning about these wiretaps?

 

Harry Belafonte: When I was discharged from the United States Navy,

having served almost two years during the Second World War, I came

back, like millions of us did, with an expectation that those

principles for which we fought would be fully revealed and embraced by

the American government and the American people -- the war was about

democracy, the war was about ending white supremacy, the war was about

ending colonialism -- only to discover that the Allies, the British,

the French, the Dutch and the Americans, all who were the forefront of

the democratic charge, having victoriously won that war, did not upon

the celebration of victory do anything but go back to business as usual.

 

Segregation was more vigorously enforced in this country. Many

citizens in this country did not have the right to vote. Opportunities

were not on an equal level playing field. The peoples of Asia and

Africa and the colonial Caribbean were not experiencing any relief

from their colonial degradation. And many of us were very, very upset

and very angry with the fact that here was democracy, having been

fought for so vigorously, not reaching out to those of us who were the

victims of the absence of democracy. And in that context, rather than

submit, we joined and organized and did everything we could to have

the principles of democracy in our Constitution upheld. That meant we

went after voting, we went after ending the segregation laws. We did

everything.

 

For that act, we were looked upon as unpatriotic, we were looked upon

as people who were insurgents, that we were doing things to betray our

nation and the tranquility of our citizens, when nothing could have

been further from the truth. That engaged the F.B.I. That engaged the

House on American Activities Committee. Many of our leaders were

hounded and denied their livelihood. Their passports were taken away.

So vigorous was that campaign of oppression that even American

citizens committed suicide, and not by ones or twos, but by large

numbers. It was a cruel, oppressive period. But we stayed the course,

many of us. We resisted. And ultimately, we prevailed.

 

On the threshold of that experience came the Civil Rights Movement. As

a matter of fact, we were the forerunners to the movement. We

energized the spirit and people to make America live up to its code,

live up to its great promise. In that context, the Civil Rights

Movement began to do the same things that those before the movement

did to vigorously pursue the unjust laws of this country and to turn

them over.

 

J. Edgar Hoover and others in government began to put surveillance on

the citizens. I have no idea how many court permissions were given to

have our wires tapped, but nevertheless, we were. Everything we talked

about were tapped. As a matter of fact, as an artist, while I was

away, the innocence of my family and my children were invaded one

evening by the F.B.I. agents who came while I was away, knocked at the

door. My wife was very startled at the experience, and when she

queried them as to why they were there, they said they had come to

investigate me, because they felt that I was doing acts of treason

towards our country.

 

Amy Goodman: When was this?

 

Harry Belafonte: This was 1950, '51, '52, around that period. Although

we suspected that we were being surveilled, we didn't know the extent

of it until reports began to be revealed and came out in a number of

books that were written.

 

Perhaps the most detailed and one of the best-researched was a writer

by the name of Taylor Branch, who did a trilogy called Parting the

Waters and then Pillar of Fire, and the most recent, Canaan's Edge. In

Canaan's Edge, much of his research was drawn from wiretaps, from

surveillances, from conversations taped in the White House and the

Justice Department and through the F.B.I.

 

These revelations should say to the American people: such a mechanism

has been in place for a very, very long time. The essential difference

between then and now, in the face of the same horror, is that no

previous regime tried to subvert the Constitution. They may have done

illegal acts. They may have gone outside the law to do these, but they

did them clandestinely. No one stepped to the table as arrogantly as

George W. Bush and his friends have done and said, 'We legally want to

suspend the rights of citizens, the right to surveil, the right to

read your mail, the right to arrest you without charge. You do not

have the right to counsel if we so decide, and you can stay in prison

as long as we want you to, until we're satisfied that we have reached

the objectives that we want, despite the Constitution.'

 

I think that every person in the United States of America should be up

in arms, should be up in rebellion against the reality that we face,

that it is that fact that made me say that I think and I feel that we

are at the dawnings of a new Gestapo state here in the United States,

through the security -- Securities Commission and through the Homeland

Security, as well -- National Security Agency.

 

All of these different agencies, all of these different bureaucracies

have their own special assignments, and then they come -- and when you

look at the collective, America is playing out a horror theme. The

fact that we're a joyous nation, when you see sports and you see so

much light, frothy, mindless entertainment bombarding you every day

and so much disinformation coming your way, is enough to make any

citizen mentally, as well as socially, blurred to truth.

 

But the fact is that it exists, and it exists very intensely in our

midst. There are citizens at this moment who are being arrested, who

are not being told why they're arrested. Some have been spirited out

of this country to faraway places to be imprisoned and tortured. These

are realities, and the American people had best wake up, because as

one priest once said, or I think it was a protestant minister in

Germany, said, 'When they came for the communists, I didn't know any.

When they came for the Jews, I didn't know any. When they came for the

labor movements, I didn't know any. And then when they came for me, no

one was left.' I don't think we can distance ourselves from what's

going on in America.

 

And as Roosevelt said, that 'When our government is being subverted,

our Constitution is being undermined by those who sit in the seat of

government and power, it is the right of citizens and the

responsibility of citizens to raise their voice against this intrusion

and this collapse and should speak out against it and, in fact, change

the government; and those who do not do that, should be charged with

patriotic treason.'

 

Amy Goodman: How do you think people should do that?

 

Harry Belafonte: By organizing, by coming together, by meeting, and if

those sources of information that come your way blur, and all have the

same voice, it's very easy to find Democracy Now! It's very easy to go

to the internet. It's very easy to go to local meetings that are being

held all over this country, on university campuses, in communities. I

work very vigorously with groups in California, in South Central, up

in Northern California. I go into the prisons of America. This nation

is humming with people who are in discussion about what's happening to us.

 

Amy Goodman: Can you talk to people who are afraid of being

blacklisted or whitelisted, if you will, from your own experience? I

mean, here you were. the Calypso King. You were the first one to sell

a million albums, way ahead of Frank Sinatra, all of them, but you

were willing to risk it all. What did it mean to be blacklisted in

this country?

 

Harry Belafonte: Actually, upon hindsight, it meant that I was doing

something right, and regardless of any doubts that I may have had in

the beginning, in wondering where this was all going, I've come to

find that men like Paul Robeson and women like Eleanor Roosevelt and

Fannie Lou Hamer and Ella Baker and so many noble warriors that were

in the Civil Rights Movement, also those noble people in Africa, many

who waged a vigorous resistance to colonialism, foremost would be

Nelson Mandela, when our correspondence started while he was in prison

and then ultimately to see the A.N.C. come about and bring a

transition to a rather oppressive experience, one of the most in that

century, and to do so nonviolently, to transform this government

without firing one shot, all of these people stand as torches to my --

to the validation of what it was that we did, as the principle, as the

clear voice of what people have to do. And I would say to my

colleagues, 'If it is the economics of your life, when will you have

enough? And at what price do you sell your soul when you know what the

truth is and refuse to embrace it at the price of losing our democracy?'

 

Amy Goodman: When you say you started writing to Nelson Mandela when

he was imprisoned -- for almost three decades -- where was this

country? And how dangerous was this to do it?

 

Harry Belafonte: Writing to Nelson Mandela, as such, was not an act

that endangered me, I don't think. It was certainly an act that was

very much in tandem with the way I was behaving with a lot of people

in the world who were having their human rights violated. I had done

quite a lot of work in Africa. I was a cultural advisor to the Peace

Corps, appointed by John Kennedy. I helped shape some of the early

policies and how the Corps did its business in faraway countries. And

long before most of the African countries had come to independence, I

was there, talking to potential heads of state. I went to Kenya with

Thurgood Marshall at the celebration of their independence, the only

American artist or global artist to be so invited. And I worked with

Tom Mboya before Kenya got its independence to bring African students

to this country by the hundreds, along with Jackie Robinson and others

who foot the bill.

 

We did a lot of work in Africa. I knew Julius Nyerere and Kenneth

Kaunda, and then eventually Seku Ture, and had a long relationship to

the continent. And so, therefore, writing Nelson Mandela would not

have been an unusual thing for me to do, except that we knew he was

incarcerated, charged with being a terrorist and all those things that

we charged him with. And then I thought that in prison he should be at

least -- we should make an attempt to reach him and to help with his

spirits. My letters were delivered through his attorney, because all

of his mail was read, and some of the letters got to him in a

clandestine way.

 

I don't think any of us expected to see him alive. And at the end of

27 and a half years, because I continued to work with the A.N.C., I

had continued to work with the issues of apartheid and the sanctions,

I had brought to this country great African artists, Miriam Makeba,

Hugh Masekela, who were hugely successful, and they delighted American

audiences. And those artists spoke to the plight of the South

Africans. And behind their calling, behind their power, and in the

midst of my own, we did a lot to put the light on the darkness of what

was going on in South Africa. And when Nelson Mandela was finally

released from prison, the A.N.C. asked me to come to London to meet

with Oliver Tambo, because they wanted me to personally handle all of

his events when he came to the country, to help pick his agenda, what

were the best targets, who were the people that he should most reach

out to.

 

Amy Goodman: And this was Nelson Mandela?

 

Harry Belafonte: This was Nelson Mandela. And all the events were

looked at. We negotiated -- we discussed clearly where we thought he

should be. George Bush's father, the original President Bush, was in

office then. I had to meet with his special services, securities, to

talk about Nelson Mandela's safety in the country. David Dinkins was

the mayor. I had to negotiate with him in the city -- a host of things

that were done, in order to be able to secure his presence in this

country and to let his voice be heard. So that was not unusual for me.

 

I had talked with other heads of state, Michael Manley from Jamaica, a

place in which I grew up, where my roots stood. I worked very hard

with Michael Manley for the Caribbean nations in the region, and I

spent a great deal of time there, working socially and politically. So

that's an open page. There was nothing clandestine about it. It's hard

to be a superstar and hidden.

 

Amy Goodman: But early on, you were taking on corporate America and

the U.S. government by supporting the A.N.C.

 

Harry Belafonte: Yes. I still take on corporate America and the U.S.

government.

 

Amy Goodman: What about in Haiti? President Aristide is now in South

Africa, ousted from Haiti. In February 29, 2004, he was taken out of

the country in a U.S. plane, out of his own country, sent to the

Central African Republic. And he said, he was the victim of a

kidnapping in the service of a coup d'etat backed by the United

States. Your response?

 

Harry Belafonte: My response is that I believe his story to be so. I

believe that is exactly what happened. I've talked to many people who

have far more information than I do, because I don't live within the

womb of government, but those who do have attested to the fact that

what took place historically, that we described as an undermining of a

legitimate democracy, was the case. And as a matter of fact, I think

the story that you alluded to at the beginning of this broadcast in

the New York Times does not say that fully. But it certainly has taken

a big slice of that period to show America's complicity in helping to

undermine that government and destabilize that beleaguered country.

 

That's not unusual for us. We've done that with many places. While we

talk about having democracy for the world, we undermine the democracy

of Chile, where we murdered and participated fully in the murder of

Allende. We have now talked about another legally existing president

in Venezuela, Hugo Chavez. We sought to do everything to diminish and

demonize that president. We're speaking about other democracies in the

region. It is not unusual for us to be duplicitous when it comes to talk.

 

We admit and accept democracies according to how we think they serve

our most selfish and our most arrogant and our most oppressive needs.

That's what we do, especially in the developing world. We stepped in

while Vietnam was trying to iron out its own internal policies and

were very close to having a victory there, when the United States

intervened and lied once again to the American people, led us to a war

that cost millions of lives, and all the things that we know about

Vietnam.

 

It's not an unusual thing for us to do. And I think that citizens just

have to understand that the first order of business for a democracy is

vigilance among the citizens. It is a delicate instrument. It

continues to need nourishment and attention. And the minute we turn

away from that nourishment and that attention, it will be taken away

from us, as it is now appearing to be the case.

 

Amy Goodman: You knew Paul Robeson?

 

Harry Belafonte: Yes, very well.

 

Amy Goodman: Paul Robeson, who the government pulled his passport. The

government went after him. White-listed from almost every public space

in this country. Have you been concerned in the past, and especially

if young people are listening, as you were deeply concerned also about

your career, that they could go after you in the same way? And what

did Paul Robeson say about this?

 

Harry Belafonte: Paul Robeson was very clear. He felt he did

 

what he had to do, in conscience and in the spirit of this nation. And

he made a choice. He has never imposed that choice on others. He knows

that it is a very, very difficult thing to do, especially if you're

from the poor. Especially if you're in the black community, coming

from a line of never having to a moment where you have access, and all

of a sudden to put that access in jeopardy. And I think that I would

not put upon people some harsh judgment if they found that they were

living in a zone of fear and had to move cautiously, as to what they

would do to try to speak out against that oppression. But I suspect

that if it is not attended to in the earliest, it may have to be

attended to in the latest. And in the latest, you may find that it's

too late.

 

Amy Goodman: You also knew Rosa Parks.

 

Harry Belafonte: Yes, I knew her.

 

Amy Goodman: What about her legacy? One of the things the corporate

media said when she died, though they did pay a lot of attention, they

made the point that she was no troublemaker. But it looks like her

history shows the very opposite. She was a troublemaker from way back,

committing her life to equality, against segregation.

 

Harry Belafonte: She never stopped being a troublemaker. But it is now

to this country's best interest, in order to further hide its

villainy, to reach out and to somehow blur those who were very

revolutionary and those who, in the end, turned out to be huge moral,

as well as social, forces in our time, to lay claim to them, because

it helps hide who they are and what they do. Cheney, I mean, he didn't

want Dr. King to be a holiday. He worked vigorously against the levels

of acceptability that he has reached in the United States government.

I mean, our government is replete with people who now lay claim to Dr.

King and honor him.

 

Well, let me say this, as one who was instructed by Dr. King to seek

and to encourage redemption, I'm glad that at this late date in life

they somehow celebrate it. But I don't think they celebrate it in

honor. They celebrate it to subvert what it is that they do, by having

people believe that they embrace the principles of a woman like Rosa

Parks and people like Fannie Lou Hamer, one of the most courageous of all.

 

Amy Goodman: Kanye West, after Hurricane Katrina, said President Bush

doesn't like black people. Do you agree?

 

Harry Belafonte: I do not know that I could look upon President Bush

as someone who actively works every day of his life to oppress and to

kill black people as a direct act of race. I think his insensitivity,

in the class frame, being who he is, coming from the privileges that

he does, being one who pursues the edge of imperial ambition -- not so

much the edge, he's right smack in the center of it -- he can be

expected to do those things, which will cruelly administer no relief

at all to those who are oppressed, who are poor. And in that act,

because of the way in which our society is structured, a large group

of brown people, a large group of yellow people, a large group of

black people, are on the forefront of this nation's poverty. And

therefore, we feel the brunt of it.

 

One cannot help but wonder that if what happened in Katrina in that

region of America had happened somewhere in Maine or had happened

somewhere else in America where white sensibilities and white life

would have been in great jeopardy, that our nation would have been

that blurred, and certainly our government, to what was happening to

the citizens who are not white.

 

I think somewhere in the American psyche, black people are expendable

when we try to sustain our positions of privilege and our positions of

power, just as I think people in the Middle East are expendable.

 

I don't think America really knows who we are. We don't know our

fellow citizens. We don't know the nations we invade. We don't have a

real deep and honest sense of who we are as a people, both on the good

side of the ledger, to who we are as a people that comes from the dark

side of the ledger. We are the most uninformed people on the face of

the earth. And I don't say that as hyperbole.

 

Amy Goodman: Do you think Americans should join the military, and do

you think soldiers should go to Iraq?

 

Harry Belafonte: I don't think soldiers should be anywhere in the

world. I mean, that is a moral and a basic philosophy. I think that

the only way to end wars is to have no military and to find other ways

in which -- I think we should suspend all nuclear weapons. Do I think

we can do that as an act that is instantaneous? No. I think too much

of the world is locked in to what the military stabilizes in civilized

society. So I think there is a process. But if that is the goal and

the aim, and it is so declared, then I think citizens should

participate in the prospect of disengagement.

 

Let me just say this. If you have a patient who is hit by a disease,

and doctors look and say, 'To go in, it will be a shock to the body to

move that, without looking at what it does to other parts of the body;

let us move to prepare the body for the moment of great relief,' then

that's what we pursue. I think the same thing exists in a civil

society and in the political process. We have to be careful. But I

think that we should have as our goal to end military intrusion as a

way to settle grievances.

 

Amy Goodman: Would you counsel soldiers not to serve in Iraq?

 

Harry Belafonte: If I were a soldier today or going into the military

today, as an act of conscience, I would not serve. I volunteered to be

in the United States Navy during the Second World War as an act of

conscience, not just because it gave me relief from poverty and I had

a place to go to maybe learn a skill, because I wasn't learning

anywhere I lived and had opportunity where I was living, but because I

really believed in the principles of what we fought for and what we

said we were doing in making the world safe.

 

So I think it's an act of conscience and an act of social

responsibility to say yes, as tens of thousands of young people do. We

just don't hear about them. I think we're having trouble recruiting

young people, because they're not readily volunteering because they

have conflict about what this war means and what our government is

asking them to do.

 

Amy Goodman: What gives you hope?

 

Harry Belafonte: People. I cannot believe that which we have achieved

in this country, nothing could have been darker than the time of

slavery. We extricated ourselves from that. Nothing could be darker

than a century of apartheid and oppression. We extricated ourselves

from that. The Second World War was not winnable by the onslaught of

the German forces. We won that. I think in the final analysis, the

people are the true frontier, and I think people will save this

nation. But it is only people who can do it.