Robert Kennedy Jr.: A Campaign to Reverse America’s Disastrous Warmongering

The campaign of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., for Democratic presidential candidate has the potential to profoundly reshape the political landscape of the United States. That was evident in his first major foreign policy speech, delivered to an overflow crowd at Saint Anselm College in Goffstown, New Hampshire, on June 20, in which he demolished the narratives of the infamous “powers that be”. He used as a touchstone for his address the historic peace speech delivered 60 years ago by his uncle, President John F. Kennedy, on June 10, 1963, quoting from it directly on numerous occasions (cf. SAS 24/23).

The mainstream media have largely blocked out this and other interventions by RFK, Jr., limiting their coverage to his more controversial positions or to outright slanders. Nonetheless, he is already given a huge 20% in the polls, and is spreading panic among those in the Democratic Party, who know just how unpopular Joe Biden and his policies are. We provide a few excerpts of Kennedy’s speech below.

“Democratic and Republican administrations have pushed NATO towards Russia’s borders, violating our own solemn promise… that we would not move NATO one inch to the East. James Baker gave that assurance, as did the British government officials and many, many others. And yet, today we have surrounded Russia. We’ve moved it not one inch to the east, but a thousand miles, and 14 nations. We have surrounded Russia with missiles and military bases—something that we would never tolerate if the Russians did that to us. And statements from our government officials and think tanks lay out the goals for the Ukraine war — regime change in Russia, the overthrow of Vladimir Putin. This is what President Biden has said is our purpose in the Ukraine — the disabling and exhaustion of the Russian military and the dismembering of the Russian Federation.

“None of these objectives has anything to do with helping Ukraine, which, of course, was the pretext for our involvement in the war….

“We have been immersed in a foreign policy discourse that is all about adversaries, threats, allies, enemies, and domination. We’ve become addicted to comic book good-versus-evil narratives that erase complexity and blind us to the legitimate motives, cultural and economic concerns, and legitimate security concerns of other peoples and nations. We have internalized and institutionalized a reflex of violence as the response for any and all crises. Everything becomes a war — a war on drugs, the war on terror, the war on cancer, the war on climate change. This way of thinking predisposes us to wage endless wars abroad –wars and coups and bombs and drones and regime change operations and support for paramilitaries and juntas and dictators. None of this has made us safer, and none of it has burnished our leadership or our moral authority. But more importantly, we must ask ourselves, is this really who we are? Is this what we want to be? Is that what America’s Founders envisioned?

“Is it any wonder that as America has waged violence throughout the world, violence has overtaken us in our own nation? It has not come as an invasion; it has come from within. Our bombs, our drones, our armies are incapable of stopping the gun violence on our streets and schools or domestic violence in our homes…. Foreign violence is inseparable from domestic violence. Both are aspects of a basic orientation, of a basic set of priorities.

“Waging endless wars abroad, we have neglected the foundation of our own well-being. We have a decaying economic infrastructure, a demoralized people, a despairing people. We have toxins in our air, soil, and water. We have deteriorating mental and physical health. These are the wages of war. What will be the wages of peace? It will be the healing of all the symptoms of America’s decline. None of these are beyond our capacity to heal. We can restore America to the awesome vitality of the original Kennedy era.”

In closing, RFK, Jr. urged the Biden Administration to avoid “hostile rhetoric” and begin de-escalating immediately. And even more importantly, he said, “I call on every American to join in a new peace movement, to make your voices heard, to reject the insanity of escalation, and to celebrate no longer the ‘wartime president’, but a president who keeps the peace.”