The Real Leaders we failed to recognize. 'World fears US as a war-hungry drunk' - ex-Senator Mike Gravel
The Real Leaders we failed to recognize. 'World fears US as a war-hungry drunk' - ex-Senator Mike Gravel
“I like the US. But at the same time I think my country is an imperial country that is going downhill, and our leadership does not even acknowledge the problem,” confesses Gravel.
“Phony triumphalism has turned into a device to make Americans live in fear of a terrorist attack, yet you are a thousand times more likely to catch cancer than ever be hurt by that,” he points out.
“All I can say about what the US is doing – it‘s immoral,” Gravel says, explaining that “as a result of 9/11, we have altered our moral compass. And people began to get used to brutalizing each other.”
“We Americans used to think ‘oh, what happened in Germany could never happen with us!’ Well, it is happening with us. And it is happening to the detriment of our global position.”
“In Afghanistan, in Iraq and in Vietnam at the era, all American soldiers died in vain,” Gravel claims, recalling the millions of war victims in Vietnam, which is now developing along its own path, regardless.
New American policies enable US military or security officials to take a decision and dispatch a drone to kill a suspect without trial – together with all civilians who happen to be close to the target, Gravel says.
“The morality of that is removing responsibility – those who drop bombs [from remotely operated robot drones] do not see people die,” he says.
“We have not matched the progress in the private sector of technology and science with the ability to govern ourselves in a proper fashion. We do not have a democracy. We have a system of representative governments worldwide, and that is not good enough for people to govern themselves in the XXI century,” argues the former Senator.
