Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. weighed in on President Joe Biden’s foreign policy, unbridled militarism and forever wars with an address that marked the anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s peace speech at American University.
“I call on every American to join a new peace movement, to make your voices heard … to celebrate no longer a wartime president but a president who keeps the peace,” said Kennedy, who is challenging Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Kennedy remarked about how his uncle asked Americans to put themselves in the Russian’s shoes at a time during the Cold War when most politicians sought to gain an advantage by demonizing and vilifying them.
Kennedy has been an explicit critic of the United States’ involvement in the Russia-Ukrainian War, calling it “a US war against Russia” and claiming that American former security officials had scuttled tentative peace agreements between Russia and Ukraine.
“I call upon President Biden to heed the advice of John F. Kennedy in his 1963 Peace Speech, when he said: ‘Nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war,’” said Kennedy. “We have surrounded the Russians with missiles and military bases,” reneging on a promise not to expand NATO.
As his uncle’s speech at American University did 60 years ago, Kennedy declared that the consequences of a nuclear confrontation between the U.S. and the Russian Federation remain so dangerous that working to prevent such a conflict must remain a central priority for both countries, no matter our ideological and political differences.
Kennedy said that Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s recent speech in Finland, in which he dismissed the idea of a ceasefire in the Ukraine conflict and called for further transfers of high-tech weaponry and aircraft to Ukraine, highlights once again that the Biden administration has no intention of ending this conflict peacefully.
His speech will lay the groundwork for his position about the implications of the war in the context of foreign policy.
An enthusiastic crowd chanted “Bobby! Bobby! Bobby!” as Kennedy promised that he would deliver a fundamentally new direction for American foreign policy.
Biden’s unprecedented Pentagon budget requests have America spending as much on weaponry as the next nine nations combined, yet the United States has grown weaker, not stronger, over the last 30 years.
Kennedy’s campaign manager, former Congressman Dennis Kucinich Kucinich, called the Democratic presidential candidate “the light that shines in the darkness of American politics,” as he introduced the candidate at St. Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire.
“Not only is the administration deceiving the American people about the motives for this costly and tragic war, but by continually escalating it they put the whole world at risk of nuclear conflagration,” said Kennedy. “Even by the standards of the Neocons who engineered this war, it is not going well. The “spring counteroffensive” is a pathetic failure. I’m waiting to see how the administration will sugarcoat this calamity to shore up dwindling support for this disastrous misadventure, one in a long series of forever wars.”
With his election in 2024, our country’s decades-long journey into military imperialism will be over. We will instead become again the exemplar of peace, freedom, and democracy that once inspired the world.
“This campaign is about protecting our environment, about safeguarding our children from toxic chemicals and drugs, about healing the divide that is preventing us from unified action in defense of our country and our values, about winding down the war machine, and about unraveling the corrupt corporate control of our government,” said Kennedy. “This critical mission means that we’re pitted against many of the most powerful forces in our country.”
As if to exhibit the kind of media bias that has shrouded the Kennedy campaign, denied voters an objective view of the candidate, and distorted his messaging, NBC’s Hallie Jackson and Brandy Zadrozny delivered a report savaging the candidate, using heavily edited video clips and talking heads instead of giving his speech any coverage.
Although Jackson did say that Kennedy would impose greater scrutiny to assure that vaccines are safe, Zadrozny described the candidate as a “conspiracy theorist” who is “Internet addled” while ignoring the fact that the founder of Waterkeeper Alliance and Children’s Health Defense was named one of Time magazine’s “Heroes for the Planet” for his success helping lead the fight to restore the Hudson River.
As Kennedy rises in the polls, the Democratic National Committee refuses to hold debates or even acknowledge the campaigns of Biden’s challengers.
It remains to be seen whether RFK Jr. can overcome these obstacles and expose the political establishment as a corrupt and undemocratic corporation captured by the very same big-money interests most Democratic activists and voters have been campaigning against.
Kennedy, known as RFK Jr. or Bobby, spoke on his foreign policy platform, saying that if elected as president, he would end the forever wars, clean up government, increase wealth for all, and tell Americans the truth.
Most mainstream media is refusing to cover his presidential candidacy or honestly convey what his administration could look like, but Kennedy is proposing an agenda that will make America strong again.
“It is time to end the imperial project and attend to all that has been neglected: the crumbling cities, the antiquated railways, the failing water systems, the decaying infrastructure, the ailing economy. Annual defense-related spending is close to one trillion dollars,” says Kennedy’s website. “We maintain 800 military bases around the world. The peace dividend that was supposed to come after the Berlin Wall fell was never redeemed. Now we have another chance.”
“As President, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. will start the process of unwinding empire,” says his website. “We will bring the troops home. We will stop racking up unpayable debt to fight one war after another. The military will return to its proper role of defending our country. We will end the proxy wars, bombing campaigns, covert operations, coups, paramilitaries, and everything else that has become so normal most people don’t know it’s happening. But it is happening, a constant drain on our strength. It’s time to come home and restore this country.”