And cannot one run for office and do what Jill Stein did out of conscience, too? Are these mutually exclusive? What viable alternatives, other than demonstrations and protests in the streets, are available to the American people, short of a revolution when our electoral system is controlled by the wealthy donors?
Or that Jill Stein just did it as a photo op, not really caring about housing foreclosures? Sorry, Rocky, to me your response sounds like a cop out, if not passing the buck. But you were right about me: I have no right to chide you for not taking to the streets if I am not willing to do so myself.
My only excuse, but one totally indefensible and an alibi, was that I was waiting for a leader to emerge for me to follow. I mistakenly thought YOU were that leader and I would follow. My mistake. Since Jill Stein and Occupy Wall Street have demonstrated that leadership, I will now simply join and support them in their protests against social, economic, and environmental injustices. But you are running for President, not the Supreme Court. And we rightfully expect more from our leaders than we do from ordinary citizens.
And we rightfully expect more than mere oratory. We expect them to lead by example so that we may follow and support them. And they did so at great risk to their own lives. Wow: that is leadership. Our forefathers sacrificed their lives against tyranny. I guess asking and expecting an individual, who wishes to be elected by the people as their leader, to lead and participate in protests and demonstrations on their behalf is too much to ask of that individual when the leadership position is the Presidency of the United States, the ultimate office of leadership in the world.
Shame on me. Rest assured that this fight against Corporate America will be a costly uphill battle. I believe it will be ugly. I believe it may even be bloody for many. The news organization was required to register as a foreign agent in the U. He rattled off U. Donate to the newsroom now. The Salt Lake Tribune, Inc.
By Bill Dentzer. Updated: Dec. In case you missed it. You might have to get past your neighbors first. I also wanted to comment on another South Dakota resident who passed just today.
He was key in organizing the occupation of Wounded Knee in South Dakota in Russell Means, who later became an actor. The issue of drones has not been raised at all in these debates.
Is that because the Republicans are not critical of President Obama, who has escalated the drone war to a level we have not seen before? So, unfortunately, our society has been in love with technological means of killing. That is our problem, including with drones. It reminds me a lot of Vietnamization, when President Nixon started to withdraw U. Yet the number of Vietnamese dying dramatically escalated, both because we were, you know, training Asians to kill Asians through supporting the Saigon government in its conscription, but also the automated air war dramatically increased—you know, the bombings in both South and later North Vietnam, as well, of course, as Laos and Cambodia.
And we really need to challenge this, for a whole number of reasons—obviously the moral reasons, obviously the legal reasons.
There are very serious questions on legality of this sort of thing. And this is the very kind of thing that can come back to haunt us. Other countries, including—and, in fact, other—terrorist groups could appropriate these technologies and attack us here, as well. So there are a whole number of serious questions, both on humanitarian grounds but also on very practical national security grounds, why we should really be seriously questioning this policy.
Tonight is the debate on foreign policy. Can you talk about, Professor Zunes, the militarization of Africa?
The coup in Mali was done by a young officer who had been trained by the—by the U. In the chaos after the overthrow of one of the most longstanding democracies in West Africa, separatists, Tuareg separatists, seized the northern part of that country, and they were quickly overrun by al-Qaeda sympathizers, who got a hold of sophisticated U.
Those policy changes for international law and a single standard of human rights can only come from the grassroots. This is how change takes place. It has to be from the people themselves.
And any effort to try to impose it from the outside, not to mention, of course, supporting these dictatorships in the first place, is totally contrary to—to advancing the very kind of freedom and democracy our country professes to believe in.
And we need to create a pathway for the 12 million people who are undocumented to be able to legalize and get on a pathway to citizenship. This Department of Labor has done more to enforce labor laws than—. Your assessment of what his business plan is for low-wage workers? We need a new direction. We need investment in low-wage workers. We need investment in job creation, that is about an investment in people and the potential of American people to—to come together and to really create wealth and prosperity for everyone.
And we will go to Lynn University and then bring in the third-party candidates. And if I could—pardon the pugilistic analogy—we need a one-two punch in the next weeks and months. Also want to thank Norman Solomon, longtime activist, co-founder of RootsAction. He ran for Democratic nomination in Congress in this area, barely lost. They will be debating in Lynn University in Boca Raton. What we plan to do, as we move forward, is to bring in two third-party presidential candidates, expanding the debate, broadcasting the entire Obama-Mitt Romney debate, pausing the tape to give Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein and Justice Party nominee Rocky Anderson a chance to respond to the same questions.
We are just about to turn to Boca Raton. Again, this has not been done before, as we expand the debate, breaking the sound barrier. The presidential debates are brought to you by a private corporation called the Commission on Presidential Debates.
Control of the debates was wrested from the League of Women Voters several decades ago, when they refused to sign a secret contract with the Republican and Democratic parties and held a press conference instead, releasing the contract. This is the fourth and last debate of the campaign, brought to you by the Commission on Presidential Debates. The questions are mine, and I have not shared them with the candidates or their aides. The audience has taken a vow of silence—no applause, no reaction of any kind, except right now, when we welcome President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney.
Gentlemen, your campaigns have agreed to certain rules, and they are simple. You will each have two minutes to respond, and then we will have a general discussion until we move to the next segment. And it is a sobering reminder that every president faces at some point an unexpected threat to our national security from abroad. The first segment is the challenge of a changing Middle East and the new face of terrorism.
The first question—and it concerns Libya. The controversy over what happened there continues. Four Americans are dead, including an American ambassador. Questions remain: What happened? What caused it? Was it spontaneous? Was it an intelligence failure? Was it a policy failure? Was there an attempt to mislead people about what really happened?
Governor Romney, you said this was an example of an American policy in the Middle East that is unraveling before our very eyes. Governor Romney, you won the toss. You go first. And thank you for agreeing to moderate this debate this evening. Thank you to Lynn University for welcoming us here.
And Mr. This is obviously an area of great concern to the entire world, and to America, in particular, which is to see a complete change in the—the structure and the—the environment in the Middle East. With the Arab Spring came a great deal of hope that there would be a change towards more moderation and opportunity for greater participation on the part of women in public life and in economic life in the Middle East. Of course, we see in Syria 30, civilians having been killed by the military there.
We see in—in Libya, an attack apparently by—I think we know now—by terrorists of some kind against—against our people there, four people dead.
Our hearts and—and minds go to them. Mali has been taken over, the northern part of Mali, by al-Qaeda-type individuals. We have in—in Egypt, a Muslim Brotherhood president. And, of course, the greatest threat of all is Iran, four years closer to a nuclear weapon. I congratulate him on—on taking out Osama bin Laden and going after the leadership in al-Qaeda.
This is a group that is now involved in 10 or 12 countries, and it presents an enormous threat to our friends, to the world, to America, long term, and we must have a comprehensive strategy to help reject this kind of extremism. And that allows us also to rebuild alliances and make friends around the world to combat future threats. And keep in mind that I and Americans took leadership in organizing an international coalition that made sure that we were able to, without putting troops on the ground, at the cost of less than what we spent in two weeks in Iraq, liberate a country that had been under the yoke of dictatorship for 40 years, got rid of a despot who had killed Americans.
We stand with them. Now, that represents the opportunity we have to take advantage of. We are seeing in Afghanistan our soldiers are being shot at by the police forces that they are supposed to be training in Afghanistan. Under my administration, we will have a foreign policy based on international law and human rights and the use of diplomacy. And instead of fighting wars for oil, we will be leading—as America, we will be leading the fight to put an end to climate change.
We have seen thousands and thousands of American lives lost, hundreds of thousands of civilian lives lost, about a trillion dollars a year being spent on a massive, bloated military-industrial-security budget. Instead, we need to cut that military budget, rightsize it to year levels, and build true security here at home, bringing our war dollars home.
The question was whether the killings at the embassy in Libya were a policy failure, whether they reflected a policy failure. And it is so clear to everyone that the policy failure has been in the way the United States has treated so many nations in the Middle East. We invaded Iraq and occupied that country.
It was completely illegal. Two United Nations secretaries-general declared that it was illegal. It was a war of aggression, and it was all done on a pack of lies. Now, we aggravate the situation by keeping bases in so many other nations, including Saudi Arabia, bolstering these tyrants and, at the same time, engaging in direct, unmanned drone strikes in at least four sovereign nations, killing, in the process, hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent men, women and children.
That is the policy failure: our belligerence, our efforts to control, to dominate and to make certain that we will always have that control over the resources in these nations.
We took over the government. We overthrew the Mosaddegh government in Iran in We have a history of doing that in this country. So, this is a holistic problem with a—an imperialist foreign policy that we have to turn around, and the American people can see to it if we join together.
MITT ROMNEY : Well, my strategy is pretty straightforward, which is to go after the bad guys, to make sure we do our very best to interrupt them, to—to kill them, to take them out of the picture. But my strategy is broader than that. The right course for us is to make sure that we go after the—the people who are leaders of these various anti-American groups and these—these jihadists, but also help the Muslim world. And how do we do that? The group of Arab scholars came together, organized by the U.
And the answer they came up with was this: one, more economic development. We should key our foreign aid, our direct foreign investment, and that of our friends, we should coordinate it to make sure that we—we push back and give them more economic development. Number two, better education. Number three, gender equality. Number four, the rule of law. We have to help these nations create civil societies. But next door, of course, we have Egypt. Libya has six million population; Egypt, 80 million population.
You said Russia. And the s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back, because, you know, the Cold War has been over for 20 years. But, Governor, when it comes to our foreign policy, you seem to want to import the foreign policies of the s, just like the social policies of the s and the economic policies of the s.
But just a few weeks ago, you said you think we should have more troops in Iraq right now. You said we should have gone into Iraq, despite the fact that there were no weapons of mass destruction.
You said that we should still have troops in Iraq to this day. Now you say maybe, or it depends, which means not only were you wrong, but you were also confusing and sending mixed messages both to our troops and our allies.
So, what—what we need to do with respect to the Middle East is strong, steady leadership, not wrong and reckless leadership that is all over the map. And—and attacking me is not an agenda. First of all, Russia, I indicated, is a geopolitical foe, not a—.
I have clear eyes on this. Number two, with regards to Iraq, you and I agreed, I believe, that there should have been a status of forces agreement. That certainly would not help us in the Middle East. That was something I concurred with. You thought it should have been 5, troops. But you know what? The answer was, we got—.
This is—. Now, you just gave a speech a few weeks ago in which you said we should still have troops in Iraq. That is not a recipe for making sure that we are taking advantage of the opportunities and meeting the challenges of the Middle East. Now, it is absolutely true that we cannot just meet these challenges militarily. Number four, we do have to develop their economic—their economic capabilities. That will help us maintain the kind of American leadership that we need.
And you and Rocky Anderson can go back and forth. And I just want to point out and to clarify that President Obama actually worked very hard to extend the immunity of U. So, strangely enough, it was George Bush who actually brought the troops home from Iraq under Barack Obama. Had he had his way, they might still be there, with the—with the immunity that the president sought to create. We already have nuclear weapons to be worried about. And, in fact, in order to achieve nonproliferation—that is, to stop the threat—the spread of nuclear weapons, not only to Iran, but other countries, as well—we must re-engage nuclear disarmament.
There is no stop to the spread of nuclear weapons unless those who have them also proceed with the original agreement, which was to get rid of all nuclear weapons as the basis for other countries not having them. It seems like there are so many accepted premises between the militarist Republican and Democratic parties that nobody is talking about building friendly relationships.
And under the War Power Clause of the United States Constitution, it must be Congress; the Congress has the sole prerogative to determine, based on the contemporaneous facts, whether the United States should go to war. But if they were making that determination, they would have found out that there were huge disagreements within our intelligence community as to whether Saddam Hussein even had weapons of mass destruction and whether he was building up a nuclear capability.
The same thing happened with regard to Libya. Of course this was war making. It was acts—these were all acts of war. They required action by Congress. We, the American people, need to insist of our Congress and of our president that they abide by the law and by these most fundamental requirements of the United States Constitution.
War in Syria has now spilled over into Lebanon. We have, what, more than a hundred people that were killed there in a bomb. There were demonstrations there, eight people dead. Since then, 30, Syrians have died. The war goes on. Should we reassess our policy and see if we can find a better way to influence events there? Or is that even possible? We have made sure that they are isolated. We have provided humanitarian assistance.
But ultimately, Syrians are going to have to determine their own future. First of all, 30, people being killed by their government is a humanitarian disaster. Secondly, Syria is an opportunity for us, because Syria plays an important role in the Middle East, particularly right now. And so, seeing Syria remove Assad is a very high priority for us.
Number two, seeing a—the replacement government being responsible people is critical for us. And so, the right course for us is working through our partners and with our own resources to identify responsible parties within Syria, organize them, bring them together in a—in a form of—not—if not government, a form of—of council that can take the lead in Syria, and then make sure they have the arms necessary to defend themselves.
Those arms could be used to hurt us down the road. We need to make sure, as well, that we coordinate this effort with our allies, and particularly with—with Israel. But the Saudis and the Qatari and—and the Turks are all very concerned about this. We need to have a very effective leadership effort in Syria, making sure that the—the insurgents there are armed and that the insurgents that become armed are people who will be the responsible parties. Recognize—I believe that Assad must go.
I believe he will go. But I believe we want to make sure that we have the relationships of friendship with the people that take his place, such that in the years to come we see Syria as a—as a friend and Syria as a responsible party in the Middle East. This—this is a critical opportunity for America. ROCKY ANDERSON : We probably just heard the greatest example of why we need to open up these presidential debates, because the premises under which both of these candidates are operating—the constricted debate does such a disservice to the people of this country.
What do we hear? This is a call for a bloodbath in Syria. Is this really what we want as a country? We have no business doing anything other than working with Russia and helping to bring about a peaceful resolution. And it can be done. There are many in the internal opposition in Syria that want exactly that approach. What they want is for the international community to butt out, except for helping bring about a diplomatic, peaceful resolution.
And we see that in spite of putting the full force of the United States military and NATO and trillions of dollars in a decade, we have not, with all the power of that force, been able to resolve these conflicts on the ground in Iraq and in Afghanistan.
So, how in the world, with a far smaller commitment—given the colossal failure of the war effort in Iraq and Afghanistan, how in the world are they thinking that a lesser degree of military intervention is going to solve the problem? We have got to turn this around. And we, the American people, can do it. And, in fact, this is a failed policy from the get-go. As the human rights head for the United Nations, Navi Pillay, points out, that with arms flowing in to both sides in Syria, you have really a catastrophe in the making.
We need to stop the flow of the arms. And in fact, the United States and the Obama government, in fact, undermined an international treaty that would have begun to slow down the international flow of arms.
So the American role here has actually been to throw gasoline on the fires of virtually every ethnic, religious and national conflict around the Middle East through its—through its militaristic export of arms and the profiteering war industry.
We organized the Friends of Syria. We are mobilizing humanitarian support and support for the opposition. And we are making sure that those we help are those who will be friends of ours in the long term and friends of our allies in the region over the long term. But when it came time to making sure that Gaddafi did not stay in power, that he was captured, Governor, your suggestion was that this was mission creep, that this was mission muddle.
Imagine if we had pulled out at that point. You know, Muammar Gaddafi had more American blood on his hands than any individual other than Osama bin Laden. And so, we were going to make sure that we finished the job. But we did so in a careful, thoughtful way, making certain that we knew who we were dealing with, that those forces of moderation on the ground were ones that we could work with.
And we have to take the same kind of steady, thoughtful leadership when it comes to Syria. As I indicated, our objectives are to replace Assad and to have in place a new government, which is friendly to us, a responsible government, if possible. And I want to make sure they get armed and they have the arms necessary to defend themselves, but also to—to remove—to remove Assad.
But I do not want to see a military involvement on the part of—of our—of our troops. We—we have—with our partners in the region, we have sufficient resources to support those groups. But look, this has been going on for a year.
This is a time—this should have been a time for American leadership. We should have taken a leading role, not militarily, but a leading role, organizationally, governmentally, to bring together the parties there, to find responsible parties. As you hear from intelligence sources even today, the—the insurgents are highly disparate.
That needs to happen. America can help that happen. And we need to make sure they have the arms they need to carry out the very important role, which is getting rid of Assad. President, because I want to ask about each of the—. Do you have any regrets about that? The notion that we would have tanks run over those young people who were in Tahrir Square, that is not the kind of American leadership that John F. Kennedy talked about 50 years ago. They have to abide by their treaty with Israel.
They want jobs. They want to be able to make sure their kids are going to a good school. They want to make sure that they have a roof over their heads and that they have the prospects of a better life in the future. I believe, as the president indicated, and said at the time that I supported his—his action there. But once it exploded, I felt the same as the president did, which is these—these freedom voices in the streets of Egypt were the people who were speaking of our principles, and the president, Mubarak, had done things which were unimaginable, and the idea of him crushing his people was not something that we could possibly support.
Let me—let me step back and talk about what I think our mission has to be in the Middle East and even more broadly, because our purpose is to make sure the world is more—is peaceful. We want a peaceful planet. And the mantle of leadership for the—promoting the principles of peace has fallen to America. But for us to be able to promote those principles of peace requires us to be strong. And that begins with a strong economy here at home.
And unfortunately, the economy is not stronger. The former chief of—chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said that—Admiral Mullen said that our debt is the biggest national security threat we face. This—we have weakened our economy. Parties define clear choices and help organize people's participation in democracy. Because parties intend to stick around for the long term, we expect them to be more interested in winning over average voters, and cementing their loyalty over time, than in scoring one big win, taking the presidency, Congress, and the Supreme Court and playing each one for maximum advantage.
That's the theory, anyway. But it may be that when there are just two parties, aligned precisely along lines of race, class, level of urbanization, and education, they don't have the same incentives. When there aren't many voters floating in between, available to be won over, the best strategy might be to just go for the biggest win possible and lock in the gains, in the way that Republicans in Wisconsin and North Carolina have tried to do.
That's also a strategy that's more likely to be adopted by a party whose demographic share of the electorate is on the decline. In , the historian and political scientist James MacGregor Burns identified "four parties" in American democracy — liberal and conservative factions in both the Democratic and Republican parties — whose members and voters combined and formed alliances along many different lines, sometimes furthering progress and sometimes impeding it. These quasi-parties were even semi-officially recognized at the time: Congressional Quarterly's records of House and Senate votes were labeled not just by party but by whether members were part of the "Conservative Coalition" of Southern Democrats and conservative Republicans, a coalition now fully coterminous with the GOP.
Even in the s, you could see the outlines of the four parties and surprising alliances among them. But that was long ago. Today there are alternative coalitions that one could imagine, in theory, but that never come together.
There could be a left-right cross-party coalition forming around, say, economic development in areas hit hard by the decline of the coal industry or one advocating stronger supports for Social Security.
But the structures of the electoral system, and a Republican Party that seems to be in search of a final showdown, make those alliances impossible to achieve in real life. Additional parties — even parties that you or I might not favor — could open up Congress and create new opportunities for bargaining and coalition building on unusual lines.
Critics of the two-party "duopoly" tend to make three mistakes from the start. One is to imagine that a party would emerge first at the presidential, or national, level. One reason the Libertarians and Greens have the modest presence they have is that over decades, they at least built a fragment of the structure of parties at the state and very local level. Neither party has won statewide elections Johnson and his running mate, William Weld, both won governorships as Republicans , but each boasts more than elected officials in municipal and regional office.
When new parties have emerged in the US, such as the Populists and Progressives of the late 19th century, or even the Republican Party in the s, it is from the bottom up, not the top down. New parties could have more influence in Congress or legislatures than simply as losing names on the presidential ballot.
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