Kevin Zeese interviews Debra Sweet

Debra Sweet is the National Coordinator of World Can’t Wait.
Richard Nixon refused to speak to the press for six months after the US
invasion of Cambodia. When he finally appeared before the White House
press corps, it was to make awards for service and bravery to Young
Americans, whom he said were “not out protesting.” Debra Sweet, a
recipient of an award was 19 at the time. When she was handed the award
she told him that he was responsible for killing millions of people in
southeast Asia. He got angry, turned and left the room, making a front
page story and international news. Ms. Sweet continues to speak truth
to power with World Can’t Wait.

 

Kevin Zeese: What is the purpose of World Can’t Wait? How did it develop?

Debra Sweet: We started this movement in July 2005 because of the
mounting disaster of 5 years of the Bush Regime. Starting with the
first stolen election, through the horrors done in our name to people
of the planet and living in this country, and now, looking at the open
threats of war on Iran, including possible use of nuclear weapons, it’s
inescapable. The world truly can’t wait to see what the Bush
administration will do given another 2+ years.

The Call to Drive Out the Bush Regime, signed by many thousands of
people, including some very well-known voices of conscience, describes
why the regime must be driven out, and how. We seek to create a
political situation where Bush himself is driven from office, and where
the whole direction he has been taking society is reversed.

The will and sentiments of the majority of people living in this
country are not being given expression by “official politics” or by
protest as usual. Relying on the leadership of the Democratic Party has
proven a disaster. Something radically different is urgently needed. On
Thursday, October 5th we”re calling for the beginning of something that
does not yet exist in this country but which is restlessly under the
surface, being pent up and frustrated by politics as usual and looking
for an outlet.

KZ: What is happening on October 5, 2006? What is the goal of that event? What can people do to help?

DS: On Thursday, Oct. 5 we are going for critical mass, momentum in
society, a “snowballing” going into it, and critical mass on that day.
A new political force will be in existence that says because of our
firm stand-“Drive Out This Regime”-and our large numbers, we cannot be
ignored. We’re making a powerful political statement by refusing to
work, or leaving work, refusing to go to school or walking out of
school, rejecting business as usual, making it to the town center or
the federal building, and demanding together: Bring This to a Halt.

This is what makes this different from any other day. The dynamic it
can get going in society is that people who feel there’s nothing that
can be done and feel that there’s not any effective way to act against
this regime and the whole disastrous direction of things will see us
act in sufficient numbers to wake them up and give them a sense the
vehicle they need to act.

To reach people all across the country in 2006, you”ve got to do
advertising. We”ve done two full page ads in the New York Times in
August; we”re on Air America Radio, and on all sorts of local and
alternative stations and in weekly and Spanish papers.

So your readers can donate online now as a very important part of stopping the regime.

Coming out, and getting everyone you know to do so, is something
everyone can do, no matter where you are. Go to worldcantwait.org to
find or plan an action where you are. Or call 866-973-4463. Even if
there is no committee where you live you can make your own sign,
download some flyers from our site, and go to your City Hall at 6pm on
Thursday, October 5, and meet people who feel like you do. If you can
volunteer –you are needed right now!

KZ: What have been some of the prior efforts of World Can’t Wait?

DS: When our Call came out a year ago, some people said we were “too
strident” in our condemnation of the Bush crimes, and in saying “People
look at all this and think of Hitler – and they are right to do so. The
Bush regime is setting out to radically remake society very quickly, in
a fascist way, and for generations to come.” The Boston Globe just ran
an editorial responding to our ad in the Times, saying that you can’t
make this comparison. This is to the nub of a question that this
society better confront: what is happening here and how serious is it?
When do you decide to fight and when does it become too late? If you
let it go on are you complicit? We think history will judge us very
sharply if we fail to act decisively!

Look what’s happened just in the year since we put out this analysis
in our call: NSA spying rampant, exposed, and now legal, the
legitimization of torture, the destruction of Constitutional rights,
and even the right of habeas corpus, which predates the Constitution by
about 500 years. If you google “Bush+Hitler” today, you”ll get 127,000
hits. People are increasingly raising the historical analogy. Of course
it’s not literally the same, but in many ways the consequences and
stakes are higher for the whole world. As Nobel laureate Harold Pinter
put it in his statement supporting World Can’t Wait, The Bush
administration is “more dangerous than Nazi Germany because of the
range and depth of its activities and intentions worldwide.”

We launched this November 2, 2005, on the anniversary of the
election, in 70 cities. That day was the largest walk-out of high
school students, over 200 schools, until the immigrant rights protests
this spring. On January 31, during Bush’s State of the Union message,
we held a political “drown-out” of his lies in those cities. We”ve
published four full page ads in the New York Times, in alternative
papers, and run ads on Air America Radio, where we”ve reached many
well-informed people agonizing and looking for a way to stop the
direction the country is going in under Bush.

KZ: On Democracy Rising we have been advocating the impeachment of
President Bush and Vice President Cheney as well as for their
resignations. So, we are in agreement with you on that. But, isn’t the
root cause of Bushism, really broader?

DS: Undoubtedly, most of your readers have a critique of American
society that recognizes very basic inequalities in it, which I share.
The global economic and military reach of the world’s only superpower,
unchallenged by any equally powerful rival, now seeking to dominate the
planet, is dangerous, particularly when you have the nuclear trigger in
the hands of a President who thinks he was appointed by God. It is very
hard to see this regime quitting Iraq, for instance, even though the
war has gone very badly for them. They are driven to go further, based
on deeper causes – and certainly for different reasons than they claim
publicly! This is aided now by the open capitulation of the leadership
of the Democrats who essentially agree with the need to attack Iran,
who voted for renewing the Patriot Act, and so on.

There are people involved in this movement to drive out the Bush
regime who come from widely different perspectives on this. You can see
that in who has signed the Call. Some are Jeffersonian democrats,
believing that this country has veered away from the founding
principles to its detriment; others of us think those very founding
principles are the basis for a superpower seeking global empire.

Everyone in this movement is motivated by wanting to bring about a
better world, and people have varied visions of what that will be. The
discussion over the root causes, and what to do about them, is really
important, and we encourage it, knowing that we won’t, and don’t have
to, agree on all that in order to act.

So let’s not be paralyzed by points of political and even
ideological difference. The Bush Regime is casting a very broad net
here: Hollywood, anyone who voted for Ned Lamont, not to mention people
who “fit the profile” of what they define as a terrorist based on
nationality or religion; the whole “reality-based” as opposed to
“faith-based” world is being identified as the enemy. This week Bush is
saying if you oppose the war you are aiding Osama Bin Laden. And
Condolezza Rice is equating people who oppose the war with people who
would have refused to fight to end slavery.

Their efforts to remake the world in a fascist direction are
bringing about a society that increasing numbers of people won’t want
to live in. They have to be repudiated, firmly, and decisively, now, or
we won’t get the chance to be debating the “root causes” of Bush at our
leisure. But if we do succeed, we are in a position to radically change
the very bad polarization in this country into something much more
positive. On our side are millions who think the war must be ended,
that the rights of women should be upheld and protected, that
immigrants driven here by the globalized reach of US corporations
bringing ruin to their homelands should not be terrorized and hunted at
the border like animals because they are looking for work; that things
like the Katrina disaster are absolutely intolerable, etc.

If we succeed it would go a long way towards making this a much more
two-sided battle rather than the pitiful and very dangerous state of
affairs in this country where people are accommodating themselves to
terms everyday going further and further to the right. What was
considered totally outrageous yesterday is being legitimated and
legislated today. And people are learning or being forced to accept
this.

KZ: Isn’t our militaristic foreign policy based on the foreign
policy of both of the old parties? President Carter put forward the
Carter doctrine which called for use of military force to ensure access
to Middle East oil and President Clinton made regime change in Iraq the
nation’s foreign policy. Further, these policies have deep roots —
President Eisenhower approved the CIA coup against the elected Prime
Minister of Iran.

DS: These policies do have very deep roots in both parties. It’s
interesting to think of recent history, when the Vietnam War was
started by the Democrats, resulted in a Democratic President being
forced from office (LBJ) and then was ended under the Republicans after
Nixon had to resign. Those parties have a lot in common. In fact, the
last Democrat President, Clinton, was to the right of Richard Nixon on
many things, even though his party has a base of people who are
traditionally less empowered. It’s gotten very difficult to tell the
difference, given that the Democrats running for President already are
vying to be more “resolute” in so-called “war on terror” (which is
really a war for empire) than Bush himself.

But, objectively, look at what has happened under Bush in the last 5
years. A lot of us would say we couldn’t imagine the changes which have
already taken place; a “rolling coup” under the authority of the
Supreme Court; a virtually unending war projected to last decades; the
mass transferal of resources from the public to private sectors in
everything from military expenditures to health care, and public
education”and the remaking of society based on the ideology of narrow
Christian fundamentalism attacking even the basis of modern science,
evolution. There are millions of people who look at Bush’s
environmental practice alone, and think he could bear responsibility
for destroying the planet.

The fact that the policies have deep roots, and are significantly
shared by both parties is no reason to tolerate them! In fact, it
underscores the need for people to get OUT of this framework, and come
into the streets on October 5.

KZ: So, removing Bush is certainly a good step, but isn’t Bush a
symptom of a bigger problem that the leadership of both political
parties?

DS: Let’s not step over that “good step”! Driving out this regime is
absolutely urgent, and necessary. No one seeking social justice or even
wanting to hold on to the way things have traditionally been in this
country (as abhorrent as the horrors that come with even the normal
workings of the system is to many of us) can hope to do that while this
regime is in place. With Bush you get the “unitary executive” with its
unprecedented seizure of powers by the President. As a former broadcast
executive told me, even if it’s not until the last day of his
Presidency, Bush must be removed and leave in disgrace, or you have
everything in place for the Bush successor to keep to the same
direction. The world can’t wait till 2008. Imagine just the damage that
they area already telling us they”ll do in the next two years!

KZ: What does World Can’t Wait do about the bigger than Bush problem?

DS: Driving out the Bush regime itself is essential to solving the
“bigger than Bush” problem. Fighting the outrages one at a time has
meant losing ground to the whole societal onslaught. There are
political and economic reasons why, with the emergence of the US as the
sole super-power, the Republicans have the initiative in the halls of
power; why Christian Fundamentalists with ambitions of making this
country a theocracy are now entrenched in the highest offices of the
land, and why the Democrats have no coherent alternative to the Bush
program for running the empire. This is more than we can cover in this
interview. But the whole disastrous course this regime concentrates and
that is being accommodated and re-enforced by what the Democrats are
doing — all this has to be brought to a halt. And, the only way of
doing that is through the mobilization of massive political opposition
by the people”from below.

If that is done, then the possibility of turning things around and
onto a much more favorable direction will take on a whole new dimension
of reality. It will go from something only vaguely hoped for, by
millions of isolated individuals, and acted on by thousands so far, to
something that has undeniable moral force and unprecedented political
impact. Imagine a movement in this country coming out of a politically
activated people who created enough upheaval to do this, moving on to
tackle how the global environment can be saved, for example!

On October 5, 2006, on the basis of our Call, The World Can’t Wait –
Drive Out the Bush Regime!, people throughout the country will be
stepping forward in a day of mass resistance. The breadth, the depth,
the impact and the power of that day depends not only on those in The
World Can’t Wait organization, and others, who are already organizing
for this day. It also depends on all those who have been hoping and
searching for a means to do something that will really make a
difference.

If we fail to act to make this a reality, then it will definitely
make a difference — in a decidedly negative way. But if we do take up
the challenge to build for this, and then do take history into our
hands on that day, through political action on the massive scale that
is called for — it can make all the difference in the world, in a very
positive sense and for the possibility of a better future for humanity.

I’m challenging, and inviting all your readers to join in this
effort, now. There’s not a moment to waste. Thanks for the opportunity
to talk.

 

For more information visit the World Can’t Wait at
http://www.worldcantwait.net/. And, join us on October 5 in Washington,
DC or at a demonstration near your community.

Kevin Zeese is executive director of DemocracyRising.US.