Bill Moyers Journal

War and its Aftermath

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:51:40 -0500

This week, the JOURNAL presented a shortened version of a new documentary film, THE GOOD SOLDIER, which explores how the experience of combat irrevocably changed the lives of four veterans of America’s various war efforts.

One of those featured, Jimmy Massey, who served in Iraq earlier this decade, described what it was like for him to return to the United States:

“You first come home and you immediately forget about everything. You go to McDonald’s and you go to all your favorite restaurants and you do all your favorite things and you’re having a great time, and you know… And then all of sudden you wake up one day and you’re like-- wait a minute. I’m not having a good time any more. I’m starting to think about this, and I’m starting to think about that, because all the newness has worn off. You’re home. I’m alive. I got my arms, I got my legs, I’m alive. But then the mind, the mind starts catching up with everything else. I found myself going through my gear, prepping like I’m getting ready to go to combat. I mean I even look for suicide bombers, you know, anything out of the ordinary. Once you’ve reached that level of your senses being that heightened, it’s hard to turn it off. It’s like being a caged tiger.”

What do you think? Have you or a loved one ever been in combat? What were your or their experiences of war?

Bill Moyers Essay: Restoring Accountability for Washington's Wars

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:02:46 -0500

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WEB EXCLUSIVE: Glenn Greenwald

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 12:14:12 -0500

Acclaimed blogger Glenn Greenwald, recipient of the Park Center for Independent Media Izzy Award, spoke with Bill Moyers this week for the special web-exclusive conversation below.

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How Much Can the Government Do?

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 12:10:38 -0500

(Photos by Robin Holland)

This week, the JOURNAL featured wide-ranging conversations about America’s economy and William F. Buckley, Jr.’s contribution to the conservative movement.

Both guests on the broadcast, liberal economist James K. Galbraith and conservative writer Richard Brookhiser, engaged a fundamental question that people have been debating for centuries and that cuts to the core of recent disputes about economic stimulus and health reform: how much is the government capable of doing?

Galbraith argued that past federal programs have been successful and that the U.S. government should focus on creating more programs to pursue broad social goals:

“There’s been a massive collapse, a collapse which is comparable in scale to 1930. The overall economy hasn’t come down nearly as much, and the reason for that is that we have the institutions that were created in the New Deal and the Great Society, institutions of the welfare state [and] social security... We need to set a strategic direction, as we did in the 1930s and 40s, when the strategic direction over 50 years was basically to create a middle class... When you’re focused on achieving a certain goal, you can eliminate poverty. You can deal with the environmental questions. You can, in fact, do this if you can sustain a course of policy for a 30 or 40 year period... The problem here is organizational. It’s a matter of will. It’s a matter of creating appropriate institutions that are in the public sector and incentives in the private sector to get certain jobs done.”

Brookhiser said, however, that the conservative movement became increasingly influential in the 1960s as more and more Americans became skeptical of the federal government’s ability to tackle complex problems:

“[During the 1960s] a post-Depression, post-war liberal consensus was finally beginning to come apart. World War II had been won, obviously, by an exertion of the government, and the Depression seemed to have been ended by the exertions of the government. There was a consensus that this was the way that we should address all our future problems, and that we could do it successfully by bringing the best thoughts and then the powers of the state to bear upon them. But, in the late 60s, for a lot of reasons – the war in Vietnam, racial troubles that the civil rights bills didn’t seem to be able to address – people all across the spectrum began having doubts, and many of them were on the right. That was really the moment the conservative criticisms of this consensus began to get traction.”

Recent polling indicates that an increasing majority of Americans believe that the government is doing too much. According to Gallup, 57% of respondents agreed with the statement “the government is trying to do too many things that should be left to individuals and businesses,” the most in over a decade, while 51% said that “the federal government today has too much power.”

What do you think?

How much is the federal government capable of doing competently? Explain.

Do you agree with poll respondents that the federal government is trying to do too much, and that it has too much power? Why or why not?

What is the appropriate role for government to serve, and what should be reserved for individuals and businesses?

Were War Crimes Committed in Gaza?

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 13:00:47 -0500

(Photo by Robin Holland)

This week on the JOURNAL, Bill Moyers spoke with Justice Richard Goldstone, a respected figure in international law who headed the controversial UN Human Rights Council investigation into Israel and Hamas’ actions during military operations in Gaza that began last December.

While the resulting ‘Goldstone Report’ concluded that both sides had committed war crimes and, potentially, crimes against humanity, it was especially harsh in its condemnation of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) for their actions in Gaza, saying that they were “a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate, and terrorize a civilian population, radically diminish its local economic capacity both to work and to provide for itself, and to force upon it an ever increasing sense of dependency and vulnerability.”

Last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a speech to the UN in which he argued that the report was unfair and morally misguided. The released text of the speech says:

“For eight long years, Hamas fired from Gaza thousands of missiles, mortars, and rockets on nearby Israeli cities. Year after year, as these missiles were deliberately hurled at our civilians, not a single UN resolution was passed condemning those criminal attacks. We heard nothing, absolutely nothing, from the UN Human Rights Council, a misnamed institution if ever there was one... Faced with an enemy committing a double war crime of firing on civilians while hiding behind civilians, Israel sought to conduct surgical strikes against the rocket launchers. That was no easy task because the terrorists were firing missiles from homes and schools, using mosques as weapons depots and ferrying explosives in ambulances. Israel, by contrast, tried to minimize casualties by urging Palestinian civilians to vacate the targeted areas... Never has a country gone to such extraordinary lengths to remove the enemy’s civilian population from harm’s way. Yet faced with such a clear case of aggressor and victim, who did the UN Human Rights Council decide to condemn? Israel. A democracy legitimately defending itself from terror is morally hanged, drawn and quartered, and given an unfair trial to boot. By these twisted standards, the UN Human Rights Council would have dragged Roosevelt and Churchill to the dock as war criminals. What a perversion of truth, what a perversion of justice.”

On the JOURNAL, Justice Goldstone addressed critics of the report and described his experience conducting the investigation in Gaza:

“I would like to see [critics’] response to the substance [of the report], particularly the attack on the infrastructure of Gaza, which seems to me to be absolutely unjustifiable... I saw the destruction of the only flour-producing factory in Gaza. I saw fields plowed up by Israeli tank bulldozers... I had to have the very emotional and difficult interviews with fathers whose little daughters were killed, whose families were killed... It was a very difficult investigation which will give me nightmares for the rest of my life.”

Bill Moyers then asked Goldstone why he considers Israel’s actions to have been war crimes. Goldstone said:

"[In] humanitarian law, really fundamental is what’s known as the principle of distinction. It requires commanders, troops, all people involved in war to distinguish between civilians and combatants, and then there’s a question of proportionality. One can, in war, target a military target, and there can be what’s euphemistically referred to as ‘collateral damage,’ but the collateral damage must be proportionate to the military aim. If you can take out a munitions factory in an urban area with a loss of 100 lives, or you can use a bomb twice at large and take out the same factory and kill 2000 people, the latter would be a war crime. The former wouldn’t... We found that [Hamas’] firing of many thousands of rockets and mortars at a civilian population to constitute a serious war crime, and we said possibly crimes against humanity... It’s difficult to deal equally with a state party with the sort of sophisticated army Israel has, with an air force and a navy and the most sophisticated weapons [and] with Hamas using really improvised, imprecise armaments. It’s difficult to equate their power.”

Click here to review the Goldstone report and some of the voices responding to it.

What do you think?

Do you believe that war crimes were committed in Gaza? If so, by whom?

Considering Israel’s tactical and technological advantage, would you weigh the IDF and Hamas differently when considering possible war crimes? Explain.

Are the conclusions of the Goldstone report fair? Why or why not?

Local Heroes

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 12:58:40 -0500

In this week’s JOURNAL, Bill Moyers reflected on the life and recent death of a fellow Texan and one of his personal heroes, Justice William Wayne Justice. Justice was a veteran federal district judge whose rulings compelled Texas to integrate schools, reform its prison system, and provide public education to illegal immigrants.

Who are your local heroes? Tell us why you think their contributions have made the world a better place.

Bill Moyers & Michael Winship: Texas, the Eyes of Justice Are Upon You

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 12:20:13 -0500

On October 13, we lost a resolute champion of the law, a man who left his impact on the lives of untold numbers of Americans.

His very name made his life’s work almost inevitable, a matter of destiny. William Wayne Justice was a Federal judge for the Eastern District of Texas. That’s right, he was “Justice Justice.” And he spent a distinguished legal career making sure that everyone – no matter their color or income or class – got a fair shake. As a former Texas lieutenant governor put it last week, “Judge Justice dragged Texas into the 20th century, God bless him.”

Dragged it kicking and screaming, for it was Justice who ordered Texas to integrate its public schools in 1971 – 17 years after the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision made separate schools for blacks and whites unconstitutional. Texas resisted doing the right thing for as long as it could. Many of its segregated schools for African-American children were so poor they still had outhouses instead of indoor plumbing.

Web Exclusive: More from Mark Danner

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 10:25:44 -0500

The taping of last week's interview with journalist Mark Danner included more valuable insights and analysis than we could fit into the JOURNAL broadcast. In the web-exclusive video below, Danner shares his thoughts on the nature of evil:

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Stripping Bare the Body of America

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 15:47:44 -0500

(Photo by Robin Holland)

In this week’s JOURNAL, Bill Moyers spoke with journalist Mark Danner, who shared his perspective on how decades of American intervention abroad has shaped our nation and its international reputation.

Danner explained the significance of the title of his latest book, STRIPPING BARE THE BODY:

“It comes from a former Haitian President, who survived in office for about four months before being overthrown in a coup d’etat, and he told me and said in speeches subsequently that political violence is like ‘stripping bare the body,’ the better to place the stethoscope and hear what’s going on beneath the skin. He meant that times of revolution, coup d’etat, war, or any kind of social violence going on tend to form a ‘moment of nudity,’ as he put it, in which you can actually see the forces at work within the society stripped bare. It’s like one of those models in biology class, where you see the body, you see all the organs beneath it, and suddenly you see who’s oppressing whom, who has the money, who has the power, how that power is exerted. And that is the time to seize a society and look at it, to x-ray it, and try to understand what exactly is going on in its intimate recesses.”

What do you think?

If 9/11, the ‘war on terror,’ and the economic meltdown can be considered political violence that have stripped bare the body of America, what do they tell us about our nation?

Organizing the Grassroots

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 15:06:34 -0500

This week, the JOURNAL profiled community health advocate America Bracho and her organization, Latino Health Access. Working in Santa Ana, California, they have organized community-based programs relating to diabetes and domestic violence, among other concerns. Recently, they led a successful campaign to procure permission and land so that they will be able to build a neighborhood community center.

Bracho said:

“What I want our community to know is that nobody is going to do this for us... You can complain and sometimes I feel very frustrated, but if you are at home watching soap operas and feeling sorry, I can understand that, but that is not going to help... From day one, when we began this project, we said to each other: the most important but also the most dangerous part in doing community work is when people actually believe they can transform their community. That's pretty dangerous, because when people believe that, they want to do that again, and again, and again.”

Although community organizing has traditionally been identified with the left wing of politics, activists on the right have increasingly begun to adopt organizing tactics for their causes. THE WASHINGTON INDEPENDENT recently reported on some conservatives’ newfound interest in renowned left-wing organizer Saul Alinsky and his 1971 book RULES FOR RADICALS: A PRAGMATIC PRIMER FOR REALISTIC RADICALS:

“Thirty-eight years since the publication of his handbook and 37 years since he died, Alinsky has found a thriving and surprising fan club in the modern conservative movement... ‘Alinsky-cons” have taken the union organizers ‘13 rules for power tactics’ and ’11 rules to test whether power tactics are ethical’ and found a strategy that, they believe, is chipping away at the momentum for national health care reform. When they flummox representatives with chants, or laugh out loud at their attempts to explain their votes, many ‘Tea Party’ activists say they’re cribbing from Alinsky.”

What do you think?

How much change can community organizers effect on a local, state, and national level?

Are some issues too complicated for grassroots activists to tackle? Why or why not?

What role do you think community organizing will play in political battles to come, including passage of legislation regarding health insurance reform and climate change?

Michael Winship: The Nobel Prize with an Asterisk

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 14:53:40 -0500

(Photo by Robin Holland)

Below is an article by JOURNAL senior writer Michael Winship. We welcome your comments below.

"The Nobel Prize with an Asterisk"
By Michael Winship

Despite the graciousness of his speech at the White House last Friday, President Obama’s acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize did have an air slightly reminiscent of Lincoln’s story about the man who was tarred, feathered and ridden out of town on a rail – if it wasn’t for the honor of the thing he’d just as soon walk.

Inger-Marie Ytterhorn, a member of the Nobel committee that chose him, told the Associated Press this week, “I looked at his face when he was on TV and confirmed that he would receive the prize and would come to Norway and he didn’t look particularly happy.”

After all, Obama has been President for barely nine months and yes, he has made some fine speeches in support of peace and bettering international relations. But was that enough to merit the award? Was he winning it more for who he’s not – George W. Bush – than for who he is?

Sadly, much of the initial reaction in the United States was churlish and scornful, ill-informed, and frankly, as un-American as those of the knee-jerk right who cheered when Obama’s quick trip to Copenhagen failed to win the Olympics for his Chicago hometown. We are less serious as a nation than we should be. The empty-headedness and inanity of much of the media and political response to the announcement bears testament to that unhappy truth. We would do better to see ourselves as others see us than to scream in protest and sarcasm when another part of the world wishes to honor our President and us.

Wall Street vs. Reform?

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 14:55:47 -0500

(Photos by Robin Holland)

This week on the JOURNAL, Bill Moyers’ guests were one of Congress’ leading progressives, Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH), and former IMF chief economist Simon Johnson, who shared their perspectives on Washington’s failure to reform the financial sector since last year’s economic catastrophe.

While Kaptur and Johnson broadly agreed that Wall Street’s influence has stymied government efforts to rein in large banks and trace how several hundred billion dollars of bailout money has been spent, they differed over their interpretations of President Obama’s actions since taking office.

Rep. Kaptur suggested that Obama is making an honest effort but is being misdirected by the wrong economic team:

“Mr. Geithner came from the New York Fed, he came from Wall Street, and he becomes Secretary of the Treasury... You can go back decades and you will see that there’s this revolving door between Wall Street and Washington... I still have hope for President Obama and his wife Michelle. When Lincoln ran into trouble during the Civil War, he got new Generals. He brought in Grant. I hope that President Obama will bring in some new generals on the financial front. I don’t think any individuals who had their hands in creating this mess should be in charge of cleaning it up... I don’t think President Obama has the right people around him. The poor man inherited a total mess, globally and domestically. I think some of the people that he trusted haven’t delivered. He and his wife are extraordinarily intelligent people. I urge him to get new generals, it’s time.”

Johnson, who noted his support for Obama’s presidential campaign, was skeptical of the argument that the President isn’t fully behind his Administration’s financial policy decisions.

“President Obama campaigned on a message of change... I thought that the time for change, for the financial sector, was absolutely upon us... Rahm Emanuel, the President’s chief of staff, is widely known for saying ‘never let a good crisis go to waste.’ Well, the crisis is over. The crisis in the financial sector, not for people who own homes, but the crisis for the big banks is substantially over, and it was completely wasted. The Administration refused to break the power of the big banks when they had the opportunity earlier this year, and the regulatory reforms they are now pursuing will – in my opinion and I do follow this day to day – turn out to be essentially meaningless... Louis XIV of France was a very powerful monarch [who] was famous for having bad things happen under his rule, and people would say ‘If only Louis XIV knew, I’m sure he doesn’t know. If we could just tell him, he’d sort it out.’ I’m skeptical.”

What do you think?

In your view, is President Obama making a serious effort to enact substantive financial reform? Do you agree more with Kaptur or Johnson’s interpretation of his actions thus far?

Has the Obama Administration’s handling of financial reform affected how you view its efforts on other issues, such as health care and environmental policy? Why or why not?

What financial reforms do you want to see Washington pursue? Explain.

(For more from Simon Johnson, visit his blog at baselinescenario.com)

Bill Moyers & Michael Winship: In Washington, Revolving Doors are Bad for Your Health

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 13:59:34 -0500

Below is an article by Bill Moyers and JOURNAL senior writer Michael Winship. We welcome your comments below.

"In Washington, Revolving Doors are Bad for Your Health"
By Bill Moyers & Michael Winship

On Tuesday, October 13, the Senate Finance Committee finally is scheduled to vote on its version of health care insurance reform. And therein lies yet another story in the endless saga of money and politics.

In most polls, the majority of Americans favor a non-profit alternative -- like Medicare -- that would give the private health industry some competition. So if so many of us, including President Obama himself, want that public option, how come we're not getting one?

Because the medicine that could cure our healthcare nightmare has been poisoned from Day One – fatally adulterated, thanks to the infamous, Washington revolving door. Movers and shakers rotate between government and the private sector at a speed so dizzying they forget for whom they’re supposed to be working.

If you’ve been watching the Senate Finance Committee’s markup sessions, maybe you’ve noticed a woman sitting behind Committee Chairman Max Baucus. Her name is Liz Fowler.

Fowler used to work for WellPoint, the largest health insurer in the country. She was its vice president of public policy. Baucus’ office failed to mention this in the press release announcing her appointment as senior counsel in February 2008, even though it went on at length about her expertise in “health care policy.”

Now she’s working for the very committee with the most power to give her old company and the entire industry exactly what they want – higher profits – and no competition from alternative non-profit coverage that could lower costs and premiums.

No JOURNAL this Week

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 14:07:18 -0500

This week, the JOURNAL is preempted in most areas for Ken Burns' documentary THE NATIONAL PARKS: AMERICA'S BEST IDEA. Some stations will air an encore presentation of Bill Moyers' interview with David Simon, creator of the award-winning series THE WIRE.

In the meantime, you can comment on the David Simon interview, explore previous broadcasts in our archive section, and read JOURNAL senior writer Michael Winship's latest column below.

Michael Winship - Gelbart and Schulberg: Two Writers Depart an Ever Stranger Land

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 13:43:20 -0500

(Photo by Robin Holland)

Below is an article by JOURNAL senior writer Michael Winship. We welcome your comments below.

"Gelbart and Schulberg: Two Writers Depart an Ever Stranger Land"
By Michael Winship

You certainly can argue that the depths to which our so-called democratic dialogue has sunk are nothing new. Politicians and advocates have been slinging mud since the earth was cool enough to hurl.

The undeniable difference today is the speed and variety of the compost being thrown. With the 24-hour instantaneous delivery systems offered by radio, TV and the Internet, people are feeling more and more compelled to say ludicrous, shameful things in public that just a short time ago they would have hesitated to say in private.

Rational pleas for ceasefires go unheeded. But this week, conservative Rick Moran, the freelance writer (and brother of ABC News’ Nightline co-host Terry Moran) who runs the archly named Web site Right Wing Nuthouse, went out on a limb and urged sanity.

He wrote, “Employing reason and rationality to fight Obama and the liberals is far superior to the utter stupidity found in the baseless, exaggerated, hyperbolic and ignorant critiques of the left and Obama that is [sic] passed off as ‘conservative’ thought by those who haven’t a clue what conservatism means…

“Exaggeration is not argument. It is emotionalism run rampant. And at its base is simple, unreasoning fear. Fear of change, fear that the powerlessness conservatives feel right now is a permanent feature of American politics, and, I am sorry to say, fear of Obama because he is a black man.”

Stir into this perverse brew some of the illogical bloviation being bruited about in the chambers of the United States Congress and you have the perfect recipe for the death of rational political discourse in America.