BILL O'REILLY, HOST: Thanks for staying with us. I'm Bill O'Reilly. In the "Personal Story" segment tonight, according to the latest polls, nearly 90 percent of Americans support the Bush administration's war against terrorists.
But one college professor in Texas does not. Robert Jensen of the University of Texas wrote in the Houston Chronicle that what happened at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon was, quote, "no more despicable by the massive acts of terrorism by the United States."
Professor Jensen joins us now from Austin.
Excuse me, Professor. The president of the University of Texas, your boss, wrote in reply to your column that "Professor Jensen's views are a fountainhood of undiluted foolishness on the issues of public policy," basically calling you a moron, which is unprecedented in the history of the University of Texas. How do you react?
ROBERT JENSEN, ANTI-WAR ACTIVIST: Well, I think that public debate that should go around on this issue is central to a college campus, and President Faulkner has received a lot of feedback, much of it negative, that he put a chill in the air on that debate, and I really do think that the college campuses are the place where these discussions should go on. So I was sad to see the president react that way.
O'REILLY: All right, but you know, there's a time and place for everything, and now with 7,000 people lying dead and their families devastated, for you to come out and say, you know, those -- that what happened wasn't worse than what the United States had done in some foreign policy is insensitive at worst, subversive -- you know, it's insensitive, subversive. It -- there might be a time where you would have been arrested for those kind of comments.
JENSEN: Indeed, there would have been a time when I would have been arrested, and that's one of the great things about the United States, is we've moved to a greater level of freedom.
I think that it was necessary to start talking about the history of the United States and the need for an anti-war movement precisely because the Bush administration took away our time to grieve. By the end of the first day of that tragedy, the Bush people were already talking about massive military retaliation.
I personally would have liked to have had a lot more time to deal with the feelings that were coming to all of us, the emotions from that.
O'REILLY: OK, but...
JENSEN: The Bush administration took that away from us.
O'REILLY: Ninety percent -- 90 percent of the people -- 90 percent of Americans disagree with you, and while they want time to grieve and pray, they also want the perpetrators of this to be brought to justice, and...
JENSEN: As does everyone.
O'REILLY: Well, I don't know. I mean, I don't know whether you do or not. See, if you're going to be an anti-war guy, then there's no way they're going to be brought to justice, is there?
JENSEN: No, I disagree. I disagree. I think, instead of making this a military question, the Bush administration could have taken another path. They could have said this a crime, an unparalleled crime, a massive crime, but a crime that we are going to pursue through the appropriate domestic law enforcement and courts and -- and reaching out to the international community.
I've had e-mails from all over the world, and all of them come the same way. They start, "We grieve for you, we feel with you, we'd like to help you, but please don't rush to war." The rest of the world is not behind this, and based on the e-mail I've gotten and the discussions I've had on campus and in the community, I do not think that the vast majority of people want to rush to war the way the Bush administration...
O'REILLY: Well, then you're out of touch. You're simply out of touch, Professor...
JENSEN: No, I'm talking about...
O'REILLY: ... because the polls don't lie. The polls don't lie.
JENSEN: I'm talking about the way -- I'm talking about when you...
O'REILLY: Ninety percent.
JENSEN: I'm talking about when you engage people in longer discussions and you get past the initial emotional -- we all have emotions, strong emotions. Revenge is one of those emotions. But I think the mark of a mature people is to move beyond that and ask the question...
O'REILLY: Well, the mark of the...
JENSEN: ... what are the consequences.
O'REILLY: The mark of a mature nation is to -- is to take information, to consider both sides, and decide what the best course of action is.
Now we're two weeks -- almost two weeks after this terrible thing. Ninety percent of the American people have come to the conclusion that the Bush administration is absolutely right to declare war.
Now, see, when you say a police action, you -- what you do then is you basically put it into an area that you know -- you have to know -- the police can't handle that. I mean, this is a foreign nation, Afghanistan, harboring a man who has ordered an attack on the United States. The police aren't going to be able to handle that, and the Afghans aren't going to handle it either.
So what do you do then? You sit down there in Austin and say: "Gee, it's too bad. It's a police action. We can't get them."
JENSEN: No, you use the international agencies, use the cooperation that the international community, I think, wants to give us.
O'REILLY: Like what? Like what? Afghanistan's already isolated. They only had three people recognizing them, and they all now don't. I mean, it's an outlaw rogue government, and they're not going to respond to you or anybody else.
JENSEN: Well, let me put the question to you. Do you think that the United States government currently through a massive military strike on an enemy that is unknown is going to make you more secure? I mean, I -- if the United States started bombing today, I would feel less secure than I did yesterday. I do not think that is going to solve the problem.
O'REILLY: With all due respect, Professor...
JENSEN: The Hippocratic...
O'REILLY: Professor, with all due respect, your security doesn't mean anything to me, OK? It means nothing. My -- my basic tenet is that the nation has to be protected from terrorists. Then if you take and say your personal security -- I don't care about it, and I don't care about people who are afraid.
(CROSSTALK)
JENSEN: ... about all our security, Bill.
O'REILLY: If you're afraid, that's too bad. What I want and I think what 90 percent of the American people want is they want a nation that's going to defend -- "defend" is the key word -- their citizenry. So when you kill 7,000 of us, then the nation has a responsibility to go over and get the people who did that.
So I'm saying to you I haven't seen any massing -- massive bombing, and I don't think I'm going to. I think I might see surgical bombing, as we saw in Yugoslavia. Were you against that?
JENSEN: The bombing in Yugoslavia was not surgical. There were lots of civilians killed.
O'REILLY: Were you against that?
JENSEN: I thought the NATO attack on Yugoslavia was illegal, and I believe it was...
O'REILLY: All right. So you would have rather had these people being slaughtered in Kosovo? That would have been better.
JENSEN: No. You've got the facts wrong, Bill. It was the NATO bombing that unleashed the ethnic cleansing that drove...
O'REILLY: I see. There was no ethnic cleansing before that?
JENSEN: That's not the -- of course there was, but on a very small scale. The NATO bombing gave the Yugoslav government the cover to do exactly what they did, and if there's a lesson in that, the bombing did not help the people in Kosovo. The bombing...
O'REILLY: Of course it did.
JENSEN: No.
O'REILLY: He's out, and he's being tried as a war criminal in The Hague, and Yugoslavia is back on the world stage as a civilized country.
JENSEN: Look at the sequence of events. It was the NATO bombing that gave them the cover to unleash that ethnic cleansing that caused that huge refugee flow.
O'REILLY: That isn't...
JENSEN: I think...
O'REILLY: That's prop -- that is the biggest bunch of propaganda I've ever -- I've ever heard in my life. And you see...
JENSEN: You go back...
O'REILLY: This is what I mean. When you read your article -- and you're entitled to your opinion, Professor, and if people want to believe you, they can. But I read your article all the way down. I read the Vietnam thing, I read the -- I read the Nicaragua thing, and I covered that war, OK, and what I basically got from you is you never met a dictator or communist or socialist person that you don't like. You like those people. You want...
JENSEN: No, I don't like people that...
O'REILLY: You are on their side and against what the United States is trying to do, which is having a world where people are free.
JENSEN: Well, I always teach my students that the way you frame a question has a lot to do with the answer, and of course, what you've done just done is suggest that anyone who opposes U.S. military action is supporting dictators, when, in fact, often, the anti-war movement has said that the U.S. support for dictators is the problem.
The government in Nicaragua of the Somoza regime, of course, had U.S. backing and was a thug-like dictatorship.
O'REILLY: And the Sandinistas were just as bad.
JENSEN: No, they were not just as bad.
O'REILLY: Yes, they were, Professor.
JENSEN: But let's -- you said you didn't want to rehash the past.
O'REILLY: Hey, were you down there?
JENSEN: Let's look...
O'REILLY: Were you down there, Professor? I was. They were just as bad. There were no good guys down there at all.
Hey, listen, Professor, we've got to run. We respect you for coming on. I mean, you came on. You know, I mean, I think...
JENSEN: I'm a -- I'm a professor, sir. I educate. I talk. That's public engagement. That's what we're here for.
O'REILLY: OK. I disagree with every single thing you wrote, but I respect you for coming on the program.
JENSEN: Thank you. Appreciate you're having me. |
