Daniel Ellsberg discusses Ron Paul, Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich

(Iran - Presstv.ir) - Daniel Ellsberg (born April 7, 1931) is a former American military analyst employed by the RAND Corporation who precipitated a national uproar in 1971 when he released the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret Pentagon study of government decision-making during the Vietnam War, to The New York Times and other newspapers.


MWC- Why is it that politicians appear to be closely aligned as to American foreign policy and you never hear those two key words: hegemony and imperialism?


DE- Now what you do not find among leading politicians or you rarely find among them, is an actual anti-imperialism, somebody who is really prepared to oppose American hegemony and empire. I think there are a few politicians like that running for the presidency, specifically Representative Dennis Kucinich, former Senator Mike Gravel and Representative Ron Paul (a Libertarian Republican). These candidates are actually anti-imperialist in their outlook, but they are very isolated, and little-known among the public. They're dismissed by the media, both because of their views and partly, no doubt, because they're seen as incapable of getting the kind of funding that would make them serious candidates, and that's true.


I think if the American public were ever to be given the alternative by a major candidate of non-imperial policy, we really might have a very sizeable number of people who would endorse that. By sizable I don't necessarily mean the majority, but a very large number, maybe 30 to 40 percent of the people, would go for that, conceivably even higher.


But they are not going to be offered that choice by our political process because the people who largely finance these campaigns, corporations and the rich, are benefiting from the imperial policy and they are not at all interested in pushing the views of someone like Gravel, Paul or Kucinich, who have an alternative point of view.