>> guest: when people all around the world held protests on the street on the same day, in 665 cities across the world with. it began as the sun rose in the south pacific in australia, new zealand, some of the small island states, and then essentially followed the sun throughout the day and in capitals around the world there were the largest demonstration ever held in, whether it was -- and it was particularly true in

the countries where troops had been mobilized, governments forced by the u.s. to join what was known as the coalition of the willing, places like london, , in mad kid, in barcelona. these were governments that were going to war with the u.s. and, of course, in the u.s. in new york at the foot of the united nations and also in san francisco there were millions of people. the guinness book of world records said that it was the largest protest ever held in the history of humanity on one day, and it was somewhere between 12 and 14 million people. and it was one of the most extraordinary things. i think by that time, peter, i think most of us who had been involved in organizing -- and it had been over just a six week period, it's been a very rapid decision at a global movement, a global meeting of the world social forum had decided we should all do a protest on february 15th. and lo and behold, it actually

happened that way just six weeks later. i think most of us knew the war was going to happen anyway, but there was this scrap of hope somewhere that if there was a massive enough mobilization and, indeed, what we saw that day -- i was in new york. the day before was the day the security council had met, february 14th. and that day amazing things had happened. in the council for the fist time when the french foreign minister -- this is after the two u.n. inspectors had come in and said we don't have evidence of mass destruction, we can't move it yet, but we have no evidence. and in response the french foreign ministers said the united nations must be an instrument of war -- i'm sorry, an instrument for peace and not a tool for war. and the security council burst into applause. it had never happened. and the next morning before the rally began i went with a very small group led by bishop tu tu of south africa to visit kofi annan, then the secretary

general of the united nations, and we got through this frozen zone isolated by the police where we weren't allowed to be, but we had a police escort. and we got up to the 38th floor and bishop tutu said we are here on behalf of the people marring in 665 cities around the world, and we're here to tell you we claim the united nations as our own. and it was this amazing moment of, oh, my god, this is what things could look like. and later that day -- and we had gone back out. it was the coldest day of the year, it was 18 degrees in new york. there was this bitter wind off the east river. back stage they were passing out little hand warmers to put in your gloves because people were shaking so much. and i went out to speak, everyone went out to speak. 30 seconds was what -- no, 60 seconds we were given to speak. it was sort of ridiculous. then backstage all of a sudden somebody got a call on their cell phone that a wire story had just come across the ap wire,

and the story was just two lines. but they thought it was important, and can they called it back to us. i had scribbled it down on a flyer, and i convened the lead people and said, i don't know what we should do, should we tell people this? maybe it's not true, but the story's important. the story said: stunned by the outpour being of global criticism of the war, the u.s. and british authorities today announced they would no longer seek a second resolution for war, that their resolution in the u.n. would not call for war. of it was huge. because it meant that it worked. and so i was pushed back out on stage a second time. somebody said, you're the u.n. person, phyllis, go take this and read it. and i looked out at this crowd that was now at about half a million, 500,000 people shivering and be another couple hundred thousand we heard later the police hadn't allowed into the area because there was no more space or for whatever other reasons. i just added one line. i said, for anybody who thinks

our protests don't matter, listen up. and i read this little two-line clip from ap. and the crowd just roared. it was one of the most extraordinary things that anybody ever gets to participate in. and at the end of the day we didn't get to stop the war, but it did transform things. it made sure that everyone in the world knew that this war was illegal. it made clear that whatever the u.s. did, it did not have global support, that this was not a war that the people of the world supported. and that the governments who supported it were going to pay a price. as we saw the government of spain fell less than a year later as a result of it. so it was one of those amazing moments i'll never forget. >> host: ina, dallas, texas. you're on with phyllis bennis. >> caller: i'm overwhelmed, phyllis, to be able to talk to you. it's been so long since i have heard anyone articulate what i really think and feel. it's just amazing to hear you.

you've just done so much. i live in dallas, texas, and you can imagine that might be a conservative state. they elected this governor again. but in dallas county we have a lot of progressives. and in dallas county we are electing progressive individuals. and i belong to a group of women called, that call ourselves the democratic divas. we get together, we protest for health care and other things, and we have a lot of fun. and i'm going to have to tell them all about you. but i just wanted to say thank you for articulating what you have and letting us know that there are people out there like us that feel this way, and i would like you to put down your e-mail address again so that everyone can keep in touch. and can i'd like you to tell us what we, as individuals or as groups, can do to bring these

wars to an end and bring the money home so that -- and, of course, the lives that are being lost is just, oh, horrendous. and we need to bring the money home and use it in our country, provide jobs and fix the infrastructure and provide -- >> host: all right, ina, we got the point. i don't think we put your e-mail address up, but i do think we put up your -- >> guest: web site. >> host: web site. and we will put that up again, ina, and they can contact you through that? >> guest: absolutely. thank you, ina, so much for what you said. i think right now particularly in this next period when the congress is going to be very, very difficult for people who are trying to end wars and deal with unemployment, for instance, i think that we're going to see more and more of our political work focused at the local level. the kinds of work we did in the run up to the war in iraq that was called cities for peace. i think we're seeing that now where we're going to see efforts to get city council resolutions saying we want to bring the money home, that we don't want to use it on more soldiers, we

want to use it for more jobs. i think that's going to become more and more a feature of what's going to -- what that's going to look like in this new period. >> host: k.p. in morehead, minnesota. good afternoon. >> caller: good afternoon. i really admire ms. bennis for what she has embodied in this show. i have a few statements that i would like ms. bennis to make a comment. can you draw an analogy between the u.s. policy for not withdrawing or its continued occupation in afghanistan with churchill's speech on 18th march, 1931, and i quote: to abandon india to the rule of -- [inaudible] would be an act of cruel and wicked negligence, unquote. and also would like to also make -- wish to, wish her to

make a comment on the state of affairs of today's india in spite of the bloodshed that occurred in 947. >> guest: well, thank you. these are very complex questions. i think that there certainly is a claim that the u.s. makes that we can't leave afghanistan because of what will happen if taliban comes back. and the answer is, i think, we are making it worse, not were the. not better. we are encouraging people to join the taliban, we are strengthening the taliban. when the u.s. attacks, the taliban fades away, it moves somewhere else and emerges somewhere else. the military part of it is a game of what can a mole. but the bottom line is the taliban are an indigenous organization of afghanistan. when they won power in 1996 after several years of a devastating civil war, it wasn't only because they won militarily. they did, but they also won massive popular support because they promised to end the

fighting among the war lords. and they did so. they did so brutally and with tremendous repression socially, particularly for women, but they did end that fighting. and that was what so many people in afghanistan wanted. kabul had been brought to ruin in that war on the warlords. and it was the promise to end it that got the taliban so much support. so i think that we hear that, but we have to recognize that what the u.s. is doing does not match that rhetoric. if goal of the u.s. is to allow the afghans to establish their own government based on their own traditions, their own culture, their own kind of government, we have to get out of the way and let them do that. we have to insure that there is regional negotiations going on, that there are regional diplomatic moves but without controlling it, without trying to impose our own government whether it's karzai or somebody else. the u.s.-imposed government is

not going to work. the repression of the taliban is terrible, but these warlords in the government are no better. we sometimes think it's a question of there's the taliban bad, government good. the reality is the cultural things that we respond to, i think, in a visceral way -- particularly some of the horrific attacks on women -- did not start with the taliban. one of the most horrific and i think, peter, you've heard of these cases where young girl students have had acid thrown in their face by islamist factions that don't want them to go to school. that practice didn't start with the taliban. that started back in 1976 by a young afghan student attica bull university at at the time who became somebody who in the 1980s was one of the lead members of the mujahideen who was brought to the white house by president reagan, introduced as one of the newfound being fathers of the new afghanistan, introduced to the world as a

great hero. that same person was the one who went back to afghanistan and is now part of the resistance -- not the taliban, another organization of his own -- but he was the one who first invented this horrific idea of throwing acid in the face of girl students. so the problems that face women in afghanistan are much broader than just the taliban. there's one great story and we'll take other calls. there's a young woman from afghanistan who became the youngest member of the new parliament. she was in strasbourg at the time of this anti-nato protest that i was at last year. we were tear gassed together, in fact. and this extraordinary young woman who has faced death threats, who can go back to afghanistan now only in disguise -- she can't go openly because there have been several assassination attempts against her, several of them too

close -- but she said something that i found very important. she said, you know, in civil society in afghanistan we women, we face three enemies that create chaos and bloodshed in our country. we face the taliban, we face this horrifying government of warlords, and we face the u.s. occupation. if you can get rid of the u.s. occupation, we'll only have two. and i thought, that's a very good way to put it. it doesn't mean that ending the u.s. occupation of afghanistan is going to turn afghanistan into switzerland. it does mean that it's a step towards allowing the afghans to reclaim their country. >> host: here's an e-mail, what is your view on the extraordinary silence of american foreign policymakers and the administration on pakistan's role in the horrific terrorist attacks in india? >> guest: i think that the u.s. is facing this very tricky foreign policy challenge. on the one hand, they're trying to build a strategic relationship with india because

they see india, appropriately, as one of the rising new economic powers along with china. so the relationship with india is partly to bolster a u.s. presence vis-a-vis china, not quite against china, but certainly as an alternative, an asian alternative to china in a sense. and at the same time they have to continue some kind of strategic connection to the afghans -- sorry, to the pakistani government and military because that's the only way they can continue even this charade of a war that's killing people in real world but whose victories are a charade. they need to maintain that tie with pakistan. so they have to balance this rhetorically. they can't certainly focus on the role of the pakistani-backed guerrillas who are thought to be behind the mumbai attack, for instance. at the same time, they have to make career to india that -- clear to india that they are saying something about who's

responsible for that horrific attack that killed 1467 people -- 167 people. so it's a very tricky business. the problem is the u.s. policy is not based on international law or real internationalism. it's based on u.s. interests being superior to all others, and we're going to build our relationships based on what are our strategic interests when they contradict the strategic interests of our so-called friends like india and pakistan. >> host: lou tweets in, what is your position on the wikileaks revelations and your position on policy and corporate whistleblowers in general? >> guest: for some of these i'd ask you to check our web site. i wrote a piece that's up on the huffington post also on wikileaks. a few weeks ago we had a

seminar/debate/discussion about wikileaks at ipf that emerged -- ips that emerged when we realized we had quite significant differing opinions of the process. my own view is that democracy requires sunshine. democracy requires openness. war requires secrecy. and i don't like war, so i don't like secrecy. i think the more we know, the better empowered we are to fight against wars and wad -- bad policies. having said that, i think we have to be clear that any of these wikileaks documents, and we're only seeing -- we've seen about 2,000 so far out of, apparently, the 250,000 in this cache, but i think that any individual one that we're seeing may or may not be true. it may or may not reflect actual government policy. it may reflect the goal of some young and ambitious junior

diplomat who's trying to impress somebody back home. all those things come into account. but at the end of the day what we know is on that day this is what the embassy in x country told the state department whether it was true or not we don't know, but we know that was what they were told. that become withs very important. becomes very important. we heard there were a number of arab leaders, for instance, in the small gulf countries who told the u.s. privately that they supported u.s. military action against iran. well, that's not new. i mean, they've said things that made that clear publicly as well. but what it did tell us is just how far apart those governments and their position bees are from the -- positions are from the vast majority of the people many their countries. that's useful for people to know. i had somebody ask me the other day about something that came up recently about zimbabwe, that there was, apparently, a, an

indication from -- i'm forgetting his name -- the leader of the opposition in zimbabwe, the leader of the movement for democratic change who's in this very fragile, precarious coalition government. and he, apparently, told u.s. diplomats privately that he actually supported the crippling economic sanctions that the u.s. has imposed on zimbabwe which are opposed by the vast majority of the population including his own party. and somebody said to me, well, do you think that makes the possibility more difficult of reaching a -- and there was or actually an article saying this, that it makes the possibility of pressuring the leader of zimbabwe who is, no doubt, seized nationalism in the interest of a very repressive regime at this point. does it make the solution more difficult? i said, well, i'm not sure, but i think it is important that people in zimbabwe know that chang rye is saying one thing to

them in public and another thing to u.s. diplomats. it may make it more difficult for him to arrange the kind of political solution he wants, but it's important the people know that he doesn't necessarily represent what they thought he represented. so i think it is good. i think it is important that there be whistleblower protections. >> host: we have about 40 minutes left with our "in depth" guest this month, phyllis bennis hartford, connecticut, thanks for holding. you're on the air. >> caller: hi, how are you? happy new year to you. my question, i'm originally from pakistan. my thinking, i've read about afghanistan war, but i haven't read your week, and i will -- book, and i will definitely. >> guest: good. >> caller: my assessment that afghanistan war right now is a war by proxy within a civil war. do you agree with that assessment, and how you see it ending? what you see as end game? >> guest: yeah. >> caller: how and where and when?

>> host: phyllis bennis. >> guest: thank you. it's a very hard question. i think there is a civil war underway in afghanistan at this point. the u.s. is one of the players. it's one of many military players, by far the most powerful. it's calling the shots for the government in, in kabul as well. the question of how it will end, i think, is very complicated. not because it has to be, but because of the politics of it. i think that president obama and his administration and most of congress is simply reluctant to say, we've got to pull out. it's not working, we have to do something else to help bring stability to this country that we have destabilized so badly. the military version isn't working, we have to do something else. they're not prepared to say that because it implies they know they've lost. they know that they -- they're doing the wrong thing, and they don't want to be called on it. so i think the problem that we face is a political problem, not a military problem. there will never be a moment -- and i just wrote a new piece

about a week ago with my colleague, kevin martin, who's the head of peace action, the largest of the peace organizations working in the u.s. and he and i did a piece together analyzing president obama's most recent afghanistan speech. and we started by saying -- i forget exactly how we said it, but some version of it seems there's nothing the u.s. can do militarily that won't signify a victory in the rhetoric of the obama administration. if violence is up, it's because we're bringing the fight to the enemy. if violence goes down, it's because our strategy is working. and the problem is the military part isn't working. we hear it over and over again, there is no military solution. but yet we hear from the military this is all we can do because we have to keep doing it even though it's not working. so the problem is political, not military. the military we know is going to lose, the military is not going to win. the question is, how many more people have to die? how many more afghan civilians, how many more young u.s. soldiers, how many more nato

troops have to die before we acknowledge that the military's not going to work and we're going to have to do something different? it's a political challenge which means it's a challenge for those of us who live in this country much more than the possibility that it's going to change on the ground in afghanistan. >> host: shirley in 'em mets metsburg, iowa, good afternoon. >> caller: hi, phyllis. >> guest: hi. >> caller: i've agreed with most of what you've said, but i'd just like to make a suggestion for you with a couple of caveats. if somebody asks you if you're a liberal, why not answer, compared to what? [laughter] because for myself i'm liberal compared with the radical right that we have in this country. but if you were to call me a communist, i am definitely not a communist. i'm a former ceo of a small business who was put out of business by some foreign corporations. and i think that's one of the

our biggest problems is the more than half of our businesses in this country have no patriotism to this country because they are foreign-owned. and two of my sons have worked for foreign-owned businesses and found them not very good bosses. one of them was an executive, the other was a manager for these businesses. so i'm wanting to ask you, also, have you read general butler's book, "war is a racquet"? he named which corporations he went to way back in the early 1900s. he named which corporations he went to, which countries on behalf of this corporation in this country and that corporation this that country, and we still have the same things going on, but we don't name the corporations that we're going in there for.

>> guest: thank you, shirley. i think that the issue of what you call patriotism, i guess that's the right term, for corporations is a huge issue. for me, the most unpatriotic corporations tend to be american corporations like aig, like goldman sachs, like these banking companies, like bank of america. these are the companies that i consider to be unpatriotic because their interest is of their ceos and stockholders, not of people. not of people who depend on their services, not people in the country where they live and where they work. the companies like british petroleum is not patriotic in britain or here. not because they're british, but because of their destruction of people's lives and of the environment. so i think that i would define it a little bit differently, but i agree with you that the biggest problem we face is the lack of concern of corporations for people's rights, for the rights of the environment. and these are the struggles we

have ahead of us as we struggle to end wars. we have to look at who's profiting from those wars. >> host: next call comes from louise in johnson city, tennessee. louise, you're on the air. >> caller: well, thank you. thank you for c-span and thank you so much, ms. bennis, for what you are doing. please, keep doing it. >> guest: thank you. >> caller: keep doing and saying what you are. without c-span i would drown in beautiful east tennessee. i do not understand why our congress allows the corporations and the military industrial complex, why they're allowing them to destroy us. >> host: all right, louise. let's, if we could, take that and talk about the new congress that is coming in and your views on what could possibly occur. >> guest: yeah. let me just say one thing to louise first, and that is on the question of the media.

i think the corporate control of our media is a huge, huge, huge problem, and the existence of things like c-span is very important. but i would also say that we have a vibrant and growing independent media sector which i would urge louise and others to look at as well ranging from college radio stations, pacifica radio, democracy now on both television and radio, laura flanders' terrific new show, grit tv. all of these are important outlets for new media as well as the internet. now, the question of congress. oh, yes. congress is going to be a struggle. i think that it's very interesting to read about how these new tea party members who are political neophytes, who didn't come up through local governments and end up in congress but who suddenly end up in congress without much experience, how they are finding their way in washington where the assumption is that they're going to be bought off like everybody else. it'll be very interesting to see

how that process happens or doesn't happen. what i think is very interesting is that the left/right divide in congress, this next time around, is going to look much more like a republican/democrat split than it used to. mainly because the right-wing democrats, the so-called blue dogs, what are known as moderates but, in fact, are quite right wing, what they used to call the reagan democrats, they're the ones who lost in the overall scheme of how the democrats laos seats. overwhelmingly it was not the progressive caucus who came out of this very well. almost all of them were reelected. the loss in the senate, of course, of russ feingold is a huge loss, the great voice of liberalism after the at the deaf teddy kennedy. but in the house, the progressives did very well and came out much closer. so i think what we're going to see now is that the right wing is going to be much more the

republicans, and the progressive side is going to be much more the democrats. it's not entirely that way, of course. et never is. but -- it never is. but it'll be closer to than than it ever has been. i think despite the tact that the economy -- fact that the economy remains the key issue particularly for the newcomers in congress, those who want to stop government spending, most of them have not yet been challenged on are you willing to say we should stop spending a trillion dollars on a military policy that is failing and use that money to provide jobs. are they willing to do that? we don't know yet. we haven't seen how that's going to play out. on the question of support for the israeli occupation which has remained a kind of third rail issue, i don't yet see whether there's going to be much change there either. i think the fact that there is a $30 billion commitment made by the bush administration in the last weeks of president bush's presidency and agreed to in the first weeks of president obama's

term that he would implement it, $30 billion over ten years, that's enough for 600,000 new i green jobs. now, is the new congress going to be more willing than the old to say we're not keeping anybody safe, we're not stoning terrorism -- stopping terrorism. we're not doing anything but antagonizing people throughout the region and don't make israelis or palestinians or americans any safer. maybe there will be some new ideas, new energy on that issue as well. i don't think we're seeing it yet, but it's early yet. >> host: arnold, new york city. good afternoon to you. >> caller: good afternoon. thanks for taking my call. i'd like to hear ms. bennis' comments on the obama justice department's opinion where they can hold you indefinitely and

not charge you and not put you on trial. >> guest: i think that one of the most disappointing noncommitments of the obama campaign, one of the things that was violated so quickly, was the commitment to shutting guantanamo, ending torture and all the of the things related to that. what we're seeing is quite the opposite. we're seeing guantanamo continuing, we're seeing the expansion, as you say, of the right of the u.s. government to imprison potentially forever anyone deemed a threat who for whatever reason cannot be put on trial including u.s. citizens. we're seeing this effort to, for the kill or capture list that now includes an american citizen in yemen without judicial oversight. so this whole range of expansion of the rights of the executive branch to, essentially, wage a secret, unaccountable war. unaccountable to the congress, unaccountable to the courts. this is a serious violation to

the division of power that's supposed to characterize our democracy, and it's one of the ways in which we can see how shredded our democracy is becoming, how endangered our democracy is becoming. fighting to protect what remains of our democracy, remains, i think, one of our most important obligations. >> host: linda in santa barbara e-mails in, in order to combat gentryification of your d.c. neighborhood, might i suggest that she move out and give her condo to five latino families. incidentally, having just returned from the middle east, it is just as likely that the israelis will move out of their settlements and let palestinian families move in. one man's occupation is another man's homeland. perhaps the u.n. can sort it out. they have done such a wonderful job in africa solving their problems. oh, i forgot. it is bill gates who are solving their problems. p.s., i was in israel in 1969 when she was burning down the bank.

>> guest: well, first of all, the bank burned down, not by me, in 1970, not 1969. but small, small problem. okay. first of all, i live in a cooperative, not in a condo. also not very relevant. but i think that the issue of gentryification in washington is a huge one. i have fought against it and continue to do so. i don't know how much of her comments were serious and how much were sarcasm. but i would say one thing, i will take it seriously whether she meant it seriously or not, the question about -- i'm not sure why she said one man, but one person's homeland being another person's occupation. i think that's absolutely right. the question is, what's the homeland? and what happens to the people who actually have a home, who actually live somewhere? when someone else comes in and claims that biblical claim, for example, makes it their homeland? i have no claim to israel being my homeland. for me as a jew, it's not my

homeland. i don't come from there. no one in my family comes from there. my family was from russia and the areas around latvia and be lithuania for as far back as anybody knows. i don't think even for those who believe that biblical claims have some validity, i don't think god writes real estate contracts. i don't think it works that way. and i think leaving out the indigenous people who live somewhere because someone else comes in and says we have a moral claim but based on what someone else did to us somewhere else doesn't work. i don't think it works. >> host: john robert e-mails in, i listened to your response regarding whether people in iraq were better before saddam hussein was deposed than now. i understood your response to be that although the iraqi populace endured severe political repression, that millions lived better lives which i took to mean that it would have been better not to depose him.

>> guest: i think the answer is it would have been better, i think, for most iraqis if they had deposed him themselves. that could have started if, for example, the u.s. had stopped its military and economic support of saddam hussein. one of those other things that we don't like to talk about very much, throughout the years, for example, of the 1980s when the iraqis were at war with iran, the u.s. was providing, among other things, money, seed stock for biological weapons that came from a little firm called the america type culture collection right outside of washington here in rockville targeting information to go after, to use chemical weapons. so the u.s. has a lot of obligations that kept saddam hussein in power. if we had stopped that, i think it's quite likely that the government that remained in power in be iraq would have been a very different kind of government. that would have been much better for the people of iraq. >> host: next call for phyllis bennis, beaverton, oregon.

go ahead, josephine. >> caller: hi, ms. bennis. i want to complement you, first, on your high intelligence and your knowledge of the issues. >> guest: thank you. >> caller: and, but i would like to know more of a personal question, is if you believe in a god, and if you do, do you believe that people that do believe in a god should be in control of the world, or do you think that it should be more people who would like to control the world because of their intelligence or their knowledge of the issues and of that sort? >> guest: that's a different kind of question than i'm used to getting, i suppose. i don't believe in god. i believe in people. i have a great deal of faith. i consider myself a person of faith in a sense, but what i

mean by that is that i have faith in people. in people's movements, in what, how people can change. i believe in the history of this country as being something that, despite starting as a government and a country based on genocide and slavery, it's also a country that has a history, an incredible history of social movements to challenge genocide and slavery and the lack of rights. and i think that both of those exist side by side. it's why i'm always so grateful to howard zinn for his people's history of the united states and what that taught us about what our real history is. that it's not just who's elected to be the governor this week, but it's what are the movements that change our world. so for me that's what's most important, and i think who runs the world needs to be those people. the forms of government are going to be different everywhere. i don't think we've done such a hot job in finding the best ones, but i have a lot of faith. i have a lot of faith in people

that we're going to figure that out. >> host: over the course of the last several years on booktv we've featured several that auts who are atheist. is that a movement? >> guest: i guess it is although i frankly don't see it so much as a movement. christopher hitchens and some ores who are sort of making that their self-definition which, to me, is kind of irrelevant. i'm more interested in what do you do? you know, what do you do to make the world a better place? if you don't believe in god, fine. if you do believe in god, fine. i'm not that interested one way or the other. but i'm interested in what you do. and i make judgments about what i think works, who i think is a good person. based on what they do more than what they profess to believe. >> host: cover bin, omaha, nebraska. on with phyllis bennis. >> caller: hi there. c-span's great and thanks for having me. madam bennis, my big question and then i'd like to tack one on, but my big question is this:

in a rational, not mud-slinging sense how would you defend yourself to the middle if someone way over there on the right claimed that you always blame america first? >> host: okay, that's your big question. what's your follow-up? >> caller: okay. my follow up would be -- you mentioned something about the tea party folks being neophytes, and you wondered how that was going to play out. i think we've got an example because isn't obama kind of a neofite? >> host: all right. thanks for calling in. >> guest: good questions. how would i defend against the charge that i always see america being most responsible? i think there's two parts to that. one is that i think in the history of the world of the last, say, 40 years maybe more, the u.s. has been by far the most powerful country in the world. militaryically, economically, socially, politically,

diplomatically, in every way. hasn't been the best be country, it's within the most powerful country. -- it's been the most powerful country. and it means it has had more responsibilities when things go bad in the world whether it's responsible for making them go bad, whether it's responding badly or in the wrong way, responding militarily rather diplomatically. so often in my view it is a problem of the u.s. the other problem, though, is i'm an american. this is my country, and i love this country. and i want this to be a different kind of country. so i spend my time focusing on what our country does wrong and needs to do better. i've worked on the issue of ending the israeli occupation, for instance, for, well, way longer than i care to remember. basically, since i stopped supporting it when i stopped being a kid, i guess. but would i do differently now what i've done differently through these last two years is keep the focus on u.s. policy

rather than focusing on israel's doing this. yes, they are, and we have to stop that. but what i'm concerned about is what is the u.s. doing. we're paying money for israeli violations. we're providing protection in the security council. we're making sure that israeli nuclear weapons are not talked about in the discussion of proliferation around the world. those are really big problems, and i want to keep my work on my country, my government where i pay taxes. what's done in my name. so to me that's a big part of why i keep the focus on the united states. >> host: bill lis bennis, in the last couple years you've been writing a primer series, "understanding the palestinian-israeli conflict," "ending the u.s. war in afghanistan," "understanding the u.s.-iran crisis, "ending the iraq war." are there more in the series to come? >> guest: there's another one that i didn't write on islam,

"understanding us -- islam." i think there are more to come. i don't think i'm going to write another primer for a while. i'm a little tired of the genre. i think they're important and useful tools for activists, for people trying to understand hot issues as they emerge. i think my next book is likely to be something a little more challenging for me rather than another primer. >> host: have you started the next book? >> guest: i haven't. i've got some ideas. i want to do some study. i have the honor of getting -- i've been invited by the lennon foundation to do a writers' retreat in martha, texas, in, later this spring, and i'm looking forward to having five weeks to read and to study and to maybe begin some writing. >> host: that's -- talk a little bit more about that foundation and that texas connection. i mean, it's kind of an odd, odd thing, isn't it? >> guest: i depress it is. >> host: or unique is probably a better word. >> guest: it is unique. the foundation is based in santa fe, new mexico, and it's

historically done a lot of work in supporting the arts and supporting poetry. but patrick lennon, who's one of the key people in the foundation, has also been very interested in the middle east and in the question of palestine. he was a great, developed a great relationship with edward saeed, one of my great mentors and challengers, if you will. i learned more from edward challenging me on things than, perhaps, anyone else. and they, among other things, he was this extraordinary opportunity for writers to go to martha, texas, for weeks at a time to write if they're working on a book, to study or to read if they're not in the middle of a book, to think about their next book, plan and get away from their day-to-day work. so i'm greatly looking forward to that. >> host: what is olive branch press which published the primers? >> guest: olive branch press is

the, what would i call it, the political arm of interleague books which is the publishing company in, now in northampton, massachusetts. and they publish a huge amount of work from politics of the middle east, a lot on the palestinian/israeli conflict, a lot on arab churl -- culture. cookbooks, artbooks, great fiction and translating including the most comprehensive amount of fiction in translation in arabic in this country. published in english, many of them for the first time. the first sudanese book published in english. the first yemeni novel published in english was published by interlink, so i think these are -- it's a great, important contribution particularly at moments as it's been for the last so many years that our country is at war either militarily or through the use of

sanctions against so many peoples in the middle east. and we understand so little of who these people are and what their culture is, what these countries are about. and it's often through fiction that we can learn that. so interlink books has been a huge gift. unfortunately, not as many independent bookstores exist these days, and it's harder to be sold in the chains. but you have bookstores like, for example, the teaching for change bookstore which is a nonprofit bookstore at pus boys and poets -- busboys and poets, one of the great cultural centers here in washington, d.c., that pushes, that sells all kinds of books from interlink and other publishers. all of the howard zinn books. the question of publishing and be selling books becomes so important. in the internet era when books are becoming passe to some people, i think they're very far from passe. i think they're very, very important, and i think publishing books that are not

otherwise available is a key part to getting people to understand what it means when we go to war in iraq. what is iraq? where is iraq? who are the people who live there? what are their aspirations, their history, their dreams? some of that you can do in a primer. not very much of it. much of it you need to read the poetry, you need to read the novels, and you need publishers that are willing to publish that stuff knowing it might not make a lot of money, but it's important to have access to it. >> host: if people are interested in buying any of your books, are they available at the constitute for policy studies web site? >> guest: they are. they can get them online at interlink.com. >> guest: next call for phyllis bennis. about 15 minutes left. michigan, harrison. go ahead. >> caller: hello, c-span. thank you for taking my call. my question is concerning the israeli occupation. i happen to be -- [inaudible]

secular jew who who's had his heart with israel since this whole thing began. and i know very little about everything concerning it, but i have one question that plagues me, and that is israel took occupation, and my understanding is they became occupiers because they were attacked by either just the palestinians or a consortium of arab states. why are they so criticized for the occupation in view of the fact that they were attacked? >> guest: well, thanks for your question. it's a very good one. i assume that you're talking about the 1967 occupation. there's a school of thought that also says that when israel was created in 1948 that that was also a kind of occupation of palestinian land, albeit approved partly by the united nations. israel, of course, ended that

war in 1949 with 78% of historic palestine rather than the 55% they had been granted. but in 1967 they took over the additional 22% that was left. there is a, what i consider a myth in this country. it's a popular one that says that israel was attacked in the 967. in fact, it was not. in fact, israel attacked first. they attacked the egyptian and syrian air forces first. they wiped out the entire egyptian air force in the one day in what became the six-day war. it was in response to egypt having told the u.n. that they wanted the u.n. troops, the border observers to be removed which was their right. it was a provocative move, but it was their right. but they had not attacked israel. israel attacked first. so part of the criticism is for that. but the larger part is for holding on to the territory, and that's why resolution 242 of the

united nations is very clear in its preamble. it says that it prohibits the acquisition of territory by force. it says there can be no acquisition of territory by force. so the whole point is that in a war, in a battle, in a fight war creates changes in territory. somebody ends up with land they didn't have before. the point is, you can't keep it. it's the keeping it that now is the major violation. and if you look at u.n. resolutions, if you look at the international law, you look at the geneva conventions, the obligations of an occupying power are based on the idea that occupation is a temporary phenomenon. so if you look at the most recent reports of the u.n.'s special reporters on the question of human rights in the occupied territories, for instance, they are to proposing that the international court of justice examine the question of whether this kind of long-term

occupation in the case of the '67 war we're now looking at 43 years of occupation of that territory which the u.n. itself said is illegal, that that should be considered as something different. it's a different kind of violation than what the geneva conventions anticipated back in 1948, '49, '50 when they were being drafted which was the idea that there would be a short-term occupation during which time certain obligations applied. that there's an entirely different new, more significant violation at stake here when the land has been annexed and stolen and permanent buildings put up, walls, villages knocked down to build israeli settlements. and that's continuing day by day. so when we hear from the obama administration we want a settlement freeze, for instance, to me that's simply not sufficient because it doesn't deal with the ongoing violation of having half a million illegal israeli settlers, illegal

because the geneva conventions, article 33 says -- i'm sorry, article 49 says that the occupying power, israel, may not place its own population in the occupied territories. that's illegal. we now have 500,000 israeli-jewish settlers living on these illegal settlements breaking the law simply by waking up in the morning. that's a huge problem that goes way beyond do we stop the settlement activity now, what do we do about what already exists? that's why this thing becomes so complicated. >> host: greg e-mails in, as a peace activist, what, if anything, have you done to secure the release of the idf soldier kidnapped from a southern nation by hamas, a terrorist organization? >> guest: i have repeated oh and over -- over and over again that every prison should have immediate access to the international committee of the red cross. i would ask mr. harrison, was

it? >> host: garrison. >> guest: similarly, i'm curious what work e he has done to secure the release of the 11,000 palestinian political prisoners currently being held by israel. i hope that all of them can be psychiatried by the red cross -- visited by the red cross. >> host: go ahead, you're on with phyllis bennis. >> caller: phyllis, let me say i never heard about you until about a week ago, and it's so refreshing to hear such honesty, i must tell you. it truly is. anyway, as an outset here, a little background, i am liberal, and i am republican. and anybody that wants to know what loneliness is all about, try wearing those two hats. [laughter] i'd like to get away from the wars, if you don't mind. i have a question for you. i'm suffering from war fatigue, i think, like a lot of fellow americans. phyllis, i remember being a freshman in college in washington, d.c., 1980, 2:00 in the morning a couple friends of mine and i we went to the

grounds of the washington monument, we had a picnic, we brought champagne. you know, i think we saw one security person. likewise, when the hostages were released from iran and president reagan was giving that speech, we were literally outside one of the white house gates. now, you couldn't see anything and this gate was, a lot of cement and metal, but we were within probably 50 yards of the president. now, of course, today you know if i was in be either one of those spots today physically, i don't think i would remain vertical for -- >> host: phillip, can you bring this to a conclusion? >> caller: this is my question for her. looking down the road, phyllis, with all the increased security we have today in combination with all this technology, is the spirit of activism, can that still be enhanced by these powers, or do you see it being diminished? >> guest: i think that the security issues have created huge problems logistically for protest in the street, but i also think that we've come to a point where protest in the street are not our only form of

protest. demonstrations are still very important, but they're not the only thing. getting a city council resolution passed, saying that we want our war dollars to stay home, that has a huge impact. getting the governor of montana to say we want the montana national forward brought home, we don't want it wasted in iraq, that's huge. these kinds of local activities become very important, and i will challenge you with just one point. i'm not prepared to say it's acceptable for anyone in this country who pays taxes and especially someone who votes for either party, for any party or for no party to say they have war fatigue. it's our tax money that's preventing the end of wars in afghanistan and iraq and too many other places around the world. we don't have the right to say we're tired. the people against whom our troops are fighting, against whom our money is buying our bonds to drop, they're the ones who are very, very tired of war, much more than any of us could ever be. >> host: e-mail, do you see any difference between the bush

administration and the obama administration's foreign policies? >> guest: on many issues, absolutely. and i think the s.t.a.r.t. treaty, although it's weak and limited and doesn't go very far, it probably couldn't have been passed under the bush administration. it's an important step. it doesn't go far enough, but i think on other issues as well, i think on some of the relations in latin america have been very different, relations with china, even relations with iran, i think, have been significantly different. they're not good with iran. but they're better than they would have been under the bush administration. on the question of the issues that are the most urgent, unfortunately, we have seen far too much consistency and far too little distinction. >> host: do you see your next book possibly breaking out from the middle east? >> guest: maybe. i don't know exactly what i would write about because i don't know very much about anything else. [laughter]

i'm not sure i'm enough of a generalist. i, i think -- as i said earlier, i'm very interested in turkey which is not only a middle east question, it's also a european question. but i, i've had people urge me to write, you know, fiction, to write memoir, whatever. i don't think of myself as a writer in that sense. i mean, i write a lot, but i think of myself more as an activist, and my writing is what i do to help build social movements. it's like ips is a think tank, but it's a think tank whose goal is to change the world which means our audience is not necessarily congress. i mean, sometimes it's congress, but not very often. more often social movements who are then going to try and be influence congress because if you believe as i do, and i think at my institute we all do, that social change is made by people and movements, not by individual policymakers who suddenly get the light, i think we've got a lot of work to do to build those

movements. that's what i think we have to do. >> host: how is ips funded today? >> guest: with great difficulty. [laughter] we're funded, we take no government money and no corporate money by the terms of our charter. we get money from individuals and from foundations and private foundations. it's a big struggle. our projects have to raids their own -- raise their own funds, and it's not an easy haul. anyone listening who's interested in helping to fund ips, you're welcome to go to our web site and hit the donate button. but it's all about private foundations and private funders, private individuals who are able to put some of their money into a nonprofit educational institution whose goal is to provide movements with the kind of educational work they need to do their work better. >> host: rockville, maryland. david, you're on. please, go ahead. >> caller: thank you for taking my call, and c-span is great. i've always loved you guys. on one specific thing you ought

to try and bring another person in to talk about the legality issues of the settlements and all that. because i do think, i do think she is misstating the facts about the restrictions onset element. that's why the u.s. has never said they were illegal. she said they're not helpful in bringing about the solution. but as a more general thing phyllis has always used the term ending the occupation. but doesn't there have to be another symmetry to this? you can't end the occupation without ending the war against israel. when israel signed a treaty we egypt, she gave up land for peace. when israel signed a treaty with jordan, she gave up land for peace. the problem is the palestinian authority, the plo formerly and now hamas are obstacles to peace, and if israel were to give up land like they did in gaza, it would lead to a

disaster. >> guest: well, i appreciate the comments. first of all, the u.s. government has on occasion said that the settlements are illegal. and they, in a legal finding by the state department back in i believe it was about 1986, i'm not sure of the exact date, there was a whole finding on the illegality of the entire settlement process. but i think that the point is that israel has an obligation to withdraw from territory that it illegally occupies which includes all of the west bank, all of gaza and all of arab east jerusalem. and i think that on the political side right now the pa and hamas have both indicated their willingness to accept a two-state solution, hamas on what they call a long-term basis which they said could last up to 100 years. the cease fire with hamas, for instance, was holding. the ceasefire in 2008 was

holding until it was violated on november 4th of of that year by israel which led to the deterioration of the cease fire and then the gaza war. so under international law israel still has to end its occupation. >> host: phyllis bennis has been our guest on in depth. once again, here is her list of book withs. beginning in 1990 with "stones to statehood." edited two books. "calling the shots" was published in 2000." before and after," 2003. "challenging empire" she wrote in 2006, and then she began a primer series published in 2009 and 2010. here are the four: "understanding the palestinian-israeli conflict," "ending the iraq war," quality and ending -- ending the u.s. war in afghanistan." if you go to