Viggo Mortensen talking:
the new Clinton, which is not all that new, as far as ideas when you talk about foreign policy, certainly, she’s the likely Democratic nominee. And I don’t expect that she nor any of the Republican candidates are going to talk in any detail or with any profundity about what happened in 2002, 2003, you know, and certainly they’re not going to talk about Iraq. I mean, Trump has thrown a few firecrackers at Jeb Bush to try to get a rise out of him. The subject of what our government did and what we as citizens allowed to happen in 2003, and the consequences that we are living with now, is not going to be a topic of conversation, really, I don’t think, in the presidential campaign.
I mean, I wish that Bernie Sanders would be president, for many reasons. I think in many ways he speaks truth to power. But even on foreign policy, you know, I mean, he’s a person who, as a senator, has voted for every military appropriation, has voted for every, you know, resolution, pro-Israel government resolution, without question. In many ways, he’s as hawkish as Hillary Clinton is.
I would say that you have to treat Israel like everybody else. You know, I don’t like that Israel is a—basically an offshore military base for the United States, you know? And it’s empire, basically. I have never liked that. There are certain—it’s relative. You know, you can see certain things, and it bothers you, and you get over it. You know, I don’t like that the Mets lost the World Series, but I’ll get over it. I don’t like that we invaded Iraq, and I’ll never get over it. I don’t like that people who knew better voted to give permission to the U.S. administration to do that. There’s many things that are really serious.
the one thing that I think Hillary has been using and will continue to use is the gun—you know, the gun thing in this country, gun laws and what Bernie’s track record is in Vermont. You know, I mean, I’m someone who was raised hunting with my father and so forth, so I’m not as troubled by his stance. I mean, he is for gun control, in a sense. And in a lot of ways, he is someone who people who want something done about gun control can feel good about. But he also looks at people who live in rural areas and hunting and so forth like that. I’m less troubled about that. I’m much more troubled about his warlike stance, you know, that is not really any different than—but that’s not going to be talked about, any more than what really happened in Iraq and what it means today. That’s not going to be talked about.
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Viggo Mortensen
Academy Award-nominated actor and editor of Perceval Press.
— source democracynow.org