On another subject entirely, you co-wrote the book that sort of launched the Swift boat movement and some would say led to the reelection of George W. Bush. Given what you've found out about Bush now, do you regret writing that book?
No, I don't regret writing ["Unfit for Command"]. The Swift boat book has nothing to do with what I'm currently doing. The Swift Boat Veterans don't endorse this. This is my own work entirely. That was a chapter in my life that preceded this. And the Swift Boat Veterans were not organized to reelect George W. Bush. Having been intimately involved with the group, I can tell you that the group was created to oppose John Kerry's run for the presidency. The only theme that unified the Swift Boat Vets was that John Kerry was unfit for command ... John O'Neill and I knew each other as young men. He debated at Annapolis; I debated at Case Western Reserve. We were friends some 38 or 40 years ago. And we reunited to do the book and tell the Swift boat story. And I'm honored by having worked with John O'Neill and the Swift Boat Veterans to tell that story in the book, and this effort has nothing to do with the Swift boats. It's an entirely separate subject and separate involvement.
By the time the book was released, John Kerry was essentially the Democratic nominee and there is a lot of thought that the book, the Swift Boat ads and questions about John Kerry's military service are what led to George Bush's reelection. In 2006, you said specifically that had President Bush been running openly on the North American Union stuff that you're talking about, he wouldn't have carried Ohio, let alone half of the red states he needed to win reelection. That sounds to me like you now oppose him.
Am I personally disappointed by George W. Bush in the second term? Yes. I've also openly stated I voted for George Bush twice, and I'm deeply disappointed, especially by the second term. And I think that had he campaigned openly on the Security and Prosperity Partnership, which he didn't declare until after he was reelected, I think it would have hurt his reelection chances. But that's still distinguished from the fact that the Swift boat movement was not aimed at reelecting George W. Bush. Regardless of how I voted personally, the group did not endorse George W. Bush and was not organized to support him. It was organized to oppose John Kerry, and I suspect would have been organized regardless of who Kerry's opponent was and was not influenced by George W. Bush's campaign. George W. Bush's campaign renounced the Swift Boat Vets, if you recall.
Your book did have an impact.
I don't regret writing the book. I would continue to oppose Kerry. It's separate issues for me. And I'm deeply disappointed in what George W. Bush has done.
The biggest funder of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth was Texas homebuilder Bob Perry. He has come out in favor of the kind of immigration reforms that President Bush and the Senate have been talking about. How do you feel about that?
I don't have any feelings about it. I haven't discussed it with Mr. Perry. He's entitled to his own views, and I see no reason why I would discuss it with him because he's entitled to his own opinions.
Do you see a split in the kind of coalition that elected George W. Bush in 2004 and the Republican Party generally over this?
I think that the immigration issue as a whole, especially in George Bush's second term, has deeply divided the Republican Party. You know I'm not a Republican and I'm not a Democrat. I don't believe I've ever been registered with either party ... George W. Bush in the second term has clearly alienated a large segment of the conservative Moral Majority that has elected Republican presidents back to Ronald Regan ... The conservative coalition within the Republican Party wants, typically, border security as a first objective. And that George W. Bush has continued to push this comprehensive immigration reform agenda, many conservatives have come out and said that this is tantamount to amnesty and that's been an issue that's caused a severe split within the Republican Party and significantly damaged the Republican Party's conservative base in terms of its support. No question about it.
What do you think his motive is?
Well I, again, I have never met George Bush, let alone discussed it with him, and it's hard to know what another person's motive is, which implies their psychological reality. All I can judge is what he's doing. George W. Bush -- and it's been bipartisan by the way, both Democrats and Republicans, because you've got Bill Clinton who pushed the NAFTA agenda as strongly as George W. Bush has advanced the NAFTA agenda with the Security and Prosperity Partnership, and the winners seem to be the multinational corporations that increasingly want our borders with Mexico and Canada erased or opened and want a world global economy in which China has increasing access to the manufacturing that was traditionally done in the United States. And I argue both in the book and in the articles I've written that the clear winners in this agenda are the multinational corporations and China. Even Mexico -- Mexican labor has not had any of the promises fulfilled from NAFTA that Mexicans would benefit in terms of reducing poverty or expanding wealth in Mexico. Mexico today remains just as drug cartel-controlled and corrupt a country, with a massive split between the few very wealthy and the mass that are tremendously poor and what Mexico's strategy seems to be is to be demanding increasingly open borders so that they can transfer their impoverished masses to the U.S.
What would be so bad about being in an EU-style confederation?
A loss of sovereignty is a major consideration, I think it should be, to millions of Americans. I think that our institutions of government, our declaration of rights, are unique, and you know our declaration of rights, our rights are declared to be inalienable, that means given from God, not declared by a North American Union. Our institutions, the founding fathers believed, were a form of government that derived from natural right, from a set of principles that were needed, given human nature, to form a limited constitutional republic in which the various branches of government balanced each other and competed for power. That structure of government, I think, is unique in preserving the liberties it was created to preserve. And if we compromise it, or move away from its sovereignty, I believe that we threaten the liberties it was intended to protect and we compromise a unique form of government created in human history that seems to have worked and to have fulfilled the promise the Founding Fathers articulated.
Haven't the countries of the EU done fairly well for themselves? You were talking about Italy. Its monetary system was in shambles before Italy picked up the euro.
You seem to imply that doing well means economically only. If that's your only criterion, I'm not even sure I'd agree there. But that's not the only criterion. Other criteria are sovereignty, which I'm trying to convey to you is an important and independently important consideration from economics and worth preserving. You know, I think we have thousands of men and women buried in Arlington who did not die for a North American Union or NAFTA; they died for the United States of America.
About the writer
Alex Koppelman is a staff writer for Salon.
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