As the hope for peace and diplomacy receded late Tuesday, Gore
Vidal ““ World War II veteran, author and anti-war activist
““ spoke about peace, imperialism and the president to an
audience that filled Royce Hall to capacity. “How did human
events conspire to bring us to this room?” he asked the
crowd, which welcomed him with a standing ovation. To Vidal, the
answer to this question is deeply seeded in what he perceives as
the United States’ imperial past. The current “mad war
of imperial vanity,” as he referred to the situation in Iraq,
is based on oil, not concern for American security, he said. He
cited ties between the Bush administration and major oil companies
to substantiate his claim that the President has “special
interests” in the region. In the course of his two-hour
program, which was conducted as an interview by KALW radio host
Laura Flanders, Vidal named numerous examples of U.S. imperial
involvement, ranging from President McKinley’s aggression in the
Philippines in 1900 to Reagan’s campaign in Nicaragua, as proof of
the long-standing imperial objectives of U.S. foreign policy. To
Vidal, the continuing trend of American imperial warfare is ominous
for both opponents of the United States as well as for U.S.
citizens. Quoting founding father James Madison, Vidal warned that
“You can have empire or you can have republic, but you cannot
have both.” Vidal sees the current war as a direct assault to
the Constitution of the United States. He argued that a declaration
of war by the president without the vote of Congress is both an
unconstitutional act and a dangerous abuse of power. “When
President Bush was sworn into office, he swore to preserve,
protect, and defend the Constitution,” Vidal said, “and
he has not kept that promise.” Though Vidal’s tone was often
jovial throughout his discussion, as he wove comic impersonations
of President Bush and Ronald Reagan into his historical analysis,
members of the crowd who stood to ask Vidal questions at the
program’s close portrayed feelings of exasperation and fear. After
several audience members asked Vidal what could be done now since
so many forms of mass organization against the war have failed,
Flanders refined the questions to pertain to Vidal’s personal
experience. “Having lived through World War II and so many
other crises, you must have faced times that have seemed at least
this bleak … “ But Vidal interrupted. “I’ve never
seen anything this bad,” he said. However, Vidal did ask the
audience to demonstrate and persist in hope, urging all present to
follow his example. “I don’t get around much anymore,”
he said, displaying his wooden cane, “but I was at (last
month’s protest at) Hollywood Boulevard and La Brea, and I was
there with a sense of great joy,” he said.