Alan Grayson has attracted attention by talking about health care and theFederal Reserve. Less well-known is his position on the war in Afghanistan. I was a little nervous as I got ready to watch the video below. I love his economic populism and feared that his foreign policy outlook would disappoint me. It didn't. Far from it. If this video is an indication, his foreign policy philosophy, like his positions on economics, runs counters to, and outshines, the conventional wisdom of both parties.
Good, right? You may disagree with him, but you can't argue that he's not well-informed. If he keeps showing such command, he'll defy the efforts of the corporate media to clownify him.
He doesn't merely take a position; he articulates a philosophy, in relatable terms:
"The basic premise that we alter Afghan society is extremely flawed…I’ve been to a hundred-seventy-five countries all around the world including Afghanistan, including every country in that region, and what I’ve seen everywhere I go is that there are some commonalties everywhere you go. Everywhere you go people want to fall in love. It’s an interesting thing. Everywhere you go, people love children. Everywhere, they love children. Everywhere you go, there’s a taboo against violence. Every single place you go. And everywhere you go, people want to be left alone. And that’s the best foreign policy of all: Just to leave people alone.”
What I love about this is that he doesn't oppose the occupation on narrow grounds. He doesn't argue that we need to withdraw because Bush screwed up or because we didn't get Bin Laden at Tora Bora. Those kinds of arguments only reinforce the hawkish delusion that imperial adventures will succeed if only they're managed correctly. Grayson understands that they are inherently flawed, doomed.
In June Grayson withstood a furious arm-twisting effort from the White House and opposed the request for further war funding--one of only thirty-two Democratsto do so. Here he explained why.
“There is no need in the 21st century to do this, to make us safe,” Representative Alan Grayson, a freshman Democrat from Florida, said of the continuing American-led wars. “This is a 19th-century strategy being played out at great expense in both money and blood in the 21st century, in the wrong time at the wrong place.”
“It’s wrong,” Mr. Grayson added. “That’s why I am going to vote against it.”
It makes sense that a politician who battles concentrated wealth at home would also battle imperialism abroad, because plutocracy and war go hand in hand. It's a connection Grayson surely understands better than most given his history of prosecuting war profiteers. An economic populist and an anti-imperialist: No wonder he unsettles "respectable" people.