How much concern have we seen in Japan about those Chinese deaths?   I can tell you that in America that there has been essentially no concern  in last sixty years about the effect on civilians of our strategic bombing in Germany and Japan, or—I am sorry and ashamed to say—our slaughter of civilians more recently in Vietnam or Iraq.  

Now should I consider somehow that this is peculiarly American, or that it is the product of capitalism?  There is no question that we have inflicted a lot of innocent deaths in the last sixty years. So is it peculiarly an American depravity?  I am prepared to call it depravity, because it does not live up at all to my sense what we humans should do or should be like. And that's true of my colleagues in the antiwar movement, we are shocked by it. But in terms of the way humans behave throughout history—not only Americans and not only capitalists--I am forced to conclude that this relative unconcern for “strangers, outsiders, enemies” outside our own tribe or nation is a human characteristic: one which is of utmost importance for us to try to recognize and transcend.  

We need somehow to gain a greater concern for people outside of our own language group, our own nation, our own religion, our own country, than humans have generally demonstrated over the years.  That is urgent above all in the nuclear era.  People who would not like to see humans bring about the extinction of our own species and many others have to be committed to changing that human unconcern about people outside their own nation or ethnic group and readiness to slaughter them.

MWC- In regard to this matter, do you feel that the media should have some ethical or moral standards to meet? 

DE- Well, obviously people get their education very heavily from media. Not only from media, there is of course schooling and what they learn from their parents and peers. They also learn a great deal about who they should be concerned about, or not, from their leaders as reported in the media. Once in a while, people get warnings from their leaders that they should be concerned about, let’s say, the victims of Saddam Hussein, or victims in some other places when they want to mobilize sentiment for changing the situation. But when they don't want to take action, they don’t arouse this concern and it does not happen. 

And the media are not living up to the idea of the free press; they in very large scale act as the secretaries or loud speakers for the government officials. They simply pass on the lies or misleading statements of the authorities without any question. They don't question the very selective compassion that is shown by the leadership. I think this is true for most countries. But the point is that our press aspires to be better than that. Once in a while it shows that, but generally speaking, it does not. It acts like propaganda arms of much more totalitarian governments. 

MWC- Why is it that politicians appear to be closely aligned as to American foreign policy and you never hear those two key words: hegemony and imperialism? 

DE- Now what you do not find among leading politicians or you rarely find among them, is an actual anti-imperialism, somebody who is really prepared to oppose American hegemony and empire. I think there are a few politicians like that running for the presidency, specifically Representative Dennis Kucinich, former Senator Mike Gravel and Representative Ron Paul (a Libertarian Republican).  These candidates are actually anti-imperialist in their outlook, but they are very isolated, and little-known among the public.  They’re dismissed by the media, both because of their views and partly, no doubt, because they're seen as incapable of getting the kind of funding that would make them serious candidates, and that's true. 

I think if the American public were ever to be given the alternative by a major candidate of non-imperial policy, we really might have a very sizeable number of people who would endorse that. By sizable I don't necessarily mean the majority, but a very large number, maybe 30 to 40 percent of the people, would go for that, conceivably even higher. 

But they are not going to be offered that choice by our political process because the people who largely finance these campaigns, corporations and the rich, are benefiting from the imperial policy and they are not at all interested in pushing the views of someone like Gravel, Paul or Kucinich, who have an alternative point of view.  (Just lately, the only Republican candidate to be clearly against the Iraq War, Ron Paul, has been getting a respectable amount of money from the internet, like Howard Dean in 2004, but not enough to make him a major competitor.)

MWC- Dr. Ellsberg, I personally believe attacking Iran, at this moment, is complete madness, what do you feel are the possibilities of attacking Iran by the Bush administration? 

DE- I would say considerably more likely than not in my opinion.  

MWC- That is a scary thought! 

ED- Yes it is, I have been spending two years focusing above all on that contingency or that likelihood, first because it is crazy and the consequences will be horrible for Iran, the Middle East in general, for the world and for the US specifically. And second, because it hasn't happened yet. So I concentrate on averting something that has not happened. 

What we are doing in Iraq is horrible and it is creating hell on earth for the people of Iraq, but unfortunately in that war that is ongoing  I don’t see a lot of chance of getting us out of there, I am sorry to say. So personally, unlike lots of my colleagues, I have been focusing to try to avert war with Iran. But I don't have any confidence that what I and many others are doing has any effect at all. 

A fair number of people have been pointing to that danger: in particular reflecting the reporting of Seymour Hersh for the last couple of years in the New Yorker.  But it is not clear what effects they had. One can say the attack has not occurred, and that is a hopeful sign. But I don’t take as much hope as one might from that, because I do think the president remains determined to carry out that attack while he is still president.