Nader Challenges Michael Moore to a Debate

international | politics / elections | press release Monday October 11, 2004 17:57 by Vote Nader

Who Should the Anti-War Movement Vote for in 2004?

Ralph Nader today challenged film-maker Michael Moore to debate the question of which Presidential candidate the anti-war movement should support in November.

Nader proposes that the debate with Moore take place in Tempe, AZ, prior to the final Presidential debate on Wednesday, Oct. 13. "Since Bush and Kerry will not debate a plan to end our involvement in this quagmire, Michael should join me in giving the American people a deep and thoughtful discussion of how to avoid the quagmire that looms before us."

Michael Moore has stood by as the anti-war movement has morphed into a pro-Kerry movement. Secure in the knowledge that the anti-war movement has lost its integrity, Kerry has moved to leapfrog Bush, becoming the supreme war-hawk in this campaign. In the first debate, Kerry proclaimed that he would "win the war in Iraq," pledged to send more American troops to do it, and criticized Bush for having pulled back from the assault on Falluja in the face of large civilian casualties already from American bombs.

The nation’s premier right-wing columnist, William Safire, wrote in the New York Times on Oct. 4th, that Kerry had become the "newest neo-conservative," and was now "more hawkish than President Bush."

"The Nader/Camejo campaign continues to stand against this war," said Nader. "America should immediately declare a phased withdrawal of our military and corporate forces over the next 6 months, which will cause the bottom to drop out of the insurgency. Once mainstream Iraqis know they are getting their country back, they will have no reason to support the insurgency and the focus will immediately become how the Iraqis will work out their own affairs. The world should be prepared to assist with supervised elections, humanitarian aid, and with providing temporary peace-keeping forces from neutral nations to help the Iraqis settle their own affairs."

Just before the Iraq war the New York Times called the anti-war movement the world’s second super-power. Now, all that the movement has predicted has come to pass in Iraq, yet rather than being empowered by its vindication, the movement has no pulse except one of unconditional surrender to Kerry. The time is short, the need is great. We must breathe a renewed dynamism into our movement. As Fredrick Douglass said in the pre-civil war years, "Power concedes nothing without a demand."

What say you, Michael? Don’t you want them to trust you again?