Charlie Rose

NeilMacCallister  01/15/2013 05:43 PM Report

Did this former SENATOR just say that???

..this man we considered for PRESIDENT ???????

---

"We spend $700 Billion dollars a year on defense,

and no one attacks us.."

"..so I guess we can stop spending $700 Billion a year."

---

What, George?? ..You are not happy with that outcome????

james1125  01/09/2012 08:22 AM Report

One of the greatest leaders of our time. Try to imagine how different the world could have been if you had chosen him instead of Nixon. Thank you Mr. McGovern.

CatFromHue  01/07/2012 04:26 PM Report

This is the man you voted against--jesus wept--in favor

of Nixon, who disgraced the office. An iconic figure

from the heartland, a jimmy stewart if you will, who

braved the flak to win a good war, braved calumny and

heartache to end a bad one; unique, and arguably the

best man we ever put up.

God bless George McGovern.

Gelles  01/07/2012 02:55 AM Report

Richard DeBiase, on 01/06/2012, mentioned the war on drug use to Senator McGovern. Richard sees the war as a failure by our government.

I agree.

I have never used drugs -- but I believe criminalizing their use has been wrong. The problem is not use, but addiction. Addiction is a disease. Drug trafficking probably needs to be fought like a war. But drug use alone needs sympathy and help to prevent addiction -- like alcohol. I wonder how much of the war on drug use has been promoted by people who make money on its account -- like lawyers and prisons.

tabs  01/06/2012 03:04 PM Report

Mr McGovern can say whatever he likes and no one can fault him as he has earned that right. However Mr McGovern is not the first one to decry excessive US military spending. Does anyone remember President Eisenhower farewell statement of "Beware of the Military Industrial Complex." and if one recalls it was fellow Democrats John Kennedy and later LBJ that pumped up US military spending to new heights in the 1960's. From which we have never really stepped back from.

Secondly the US with less than 200 Servicemen on the ground brought down the Taliban in Afghanistan in less than 2 months. Quite to the contrary of Mr McGovern's take on the matter Afghanistan was necessary as it showed that the US still had the will to use military force to defend itself. If the US did not use military force to bring down the Taliban regime the world would have lost confidence in the veracity of Americas military and political power and the result would have been as the UK Shadow Minister of Defense said at the time "Global security will fail" . The world would have posed the question if a 911 event does not provoke a military reaction exactly what will? From the fall of the Taliban on the US military with its hierarchial bureaucratic mindset took over and began to quantify the situation in Afghanistan.

Further Mr McGovern is a New Deal Democrat who sees nothing but virtue in government. But let one state the problem with ever bigger and thus expensive government. As government erg the BUREAUCRACY grows ever bigger it become ever more UNWIELDLY and thus INEFFICIENT. The US has reached the point where the government can not even respond to events like Katrina or the BP Oil Spill with anything like competency. That is something that every NEO NEW DEALER should contemplate whenever they think about a new function for government.

REMant  01/06/2012 11:46 AM Report

Oh, I think our politics was at least as messed up in 1972 when his message was opposed by nearly the entire country. I agreed with him then. But I agree with him today on little else except for cutting the Defense budget and Afghanistan, his stand on Cuba and the like. He is most noted, of course, for his anti-war position, but he also cleverly supported farmers at the same time through advocacy of food for peace, the need for which has perhaps never been greater, but not just because of the Defense budget. The lesson he undoubtedly came away with from his WWII experience was that belligerency and deprivation feeds on itself, but I don't think we can end wars through patronage. The largess has to come from somewhere.

But, he did oppose Nixon's wage and price controls, if blaming the war alone for them, and has written from experience of the adverse effects of govt red tape on small business.

While tax cutting has undoubtedly increased the Federal budget, the inflation engendered by the Fed and borrowing to make up shortfalls has simultaneously diminished the tax base.

Since the senator made the news after a fall about a month ago, but appears completely recovered, I'm wondering just when this was taped.

Richard_DeBiase  01/06/2012 10:43 AM Report

Dear Senator McGovern,

In this interview you cited several of the great things done by the U.S. Government. But while you are contemplating the nature of the United States today, don't forget that we also created the greatest prison population in the world. Thanks to the U.S. Government's Drug War, we have a greater percentage of our population in prison than any other country; we have 5% of the world's population, but 25% of the world's prisoners.

Also, thanks to the U.S. Government's Drug War, Mexico is being turned into another Somalia.

For more reasons than I can possibly cite here, the Drug War is a bad war. It is a humanitarian crisis.

Best regards.