My goal of this interview is first to get an idea
of the message you were attempting to get out through your interruption of
President Obama, but more about what goes into the process of doing the kinds
of things that you do, and that Code Pink has often done in so many excellent
ways. So first: what were you trying to
accomplish there?
Medea Benjamin: Well, I should say, Rob, that the most
important thing is to have the ability to be in that space to then figure out
if it seems appropriate or not to speak out.
I didn't go in with the intention, necessarily, of speaking out, because
there had been so much hype about this speech that I really thought there were
going to be some significant policy changes discussed, and then it wouldn't
have been appropriate. Then it would've
been more, you know, get up and applaud with everybody. So I think it's important to be flexible, to
think, "Well, if he says things that we don't agree with, then maybe it is
appropriate; but if he is announcing changes that we've been pushing for for
years now, then it's not appropriate."
Rob Kall: OK, fair
enough. Now, in your article on why you
did it, you talked about how you waited patiently, and after enough time you
figured, "No."
Medea Benjamin: Well, he was coming to the very end of his
speech. I thought the part about drones
was going back and forth and back and forth, between saying, "We're going to
use them less, but we still justify them."
"It's still OK to violate other countries' sovereignty." He obviously didn't say anything about
apologies to victims. He did say it
"haunts" him when civilians are killed, but him being haunted is a lot
different than saying, "We are going to acknowledge the innocent people who
have been killed, and do something to compensate them, even though we know that
money can never account for the loss of a loved one." In the case of Afghanistan, the military does
try to compensate innocent victims, so why not do it in Pakistan or Yemen or
Somalia? But he didn't say that, and I
kept waiting and waiting.
Then he got to the Guantanamo part, and he said,
"This is the last thing I'm going to talk about." Well, it was already about forty-five (45)
minutes into the speech, and that's when I realized: he had already gone
through drones, and there weren't significant policy changes; in fact, there
were things that really angered me that he said. For example, when he said that his policy was
to capture people instead of killing them!
That's just not true. In fact,
the whole issue around the drones is that it's been Obama's alternative to
capturing people as was done under the Bush Administration. That's why there were about 800 people who
ended up in Guantanamo. But the Obama
Administration chose a different route, and thought it was "cleaner and easier"
to just kill people.
So, I had already thought, "Wow. He didn't say the things about drones that
had been rumored." For example, it seems
that his policy is to switch drones away from the hands of the CIA into the
military, but he didn't even mention the word "CIA." He talked about transparency with the
American people, but he didn't say he was going to publicly release the legal
memos that Congress had been asking for and that the American people deserved
to see. So when he got to the part of
Guantanamo and he started blaming Congress - and sure, Congress has put up obstacles;
but after all, he is the most powerful man in the world, he is the Commander in
Chief, and there are certainly ways that he can start releasing the prisoners
in Guantanamo, and he hasn't had the moral courage or the political will to do
it. So it seemed appropriate to me at
that point to get up and say something.
I started out about talking about the Guantanamo issue, but I did want
to get in a few words about the drones as well.
Rob Kall: Yes. OK, and did you feel that you accomplished
something significant there?
Medea Benjamin: Well, it was interesting how the whole thing
went down; because when I first stood up, I said something like, "You are the
Commander in Chief, you have the power to release the eighty-six (86) prisoners
who have already been cleared for release."
And the audience (as often happens in these kind of situations) starts
clapping for the President, not for me, as a way to drown my voice out. At that point I thought, "Uh oh! Maybe that's the end of my chance to get some
issues out," and I tried to actually address the audience. I don't think that was heard/picked up yet by
the audio, saying, "This is important, please be quiet," to the audience.
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