Andrew J. Bacevich, Jr.  is an American political scientist specializing in international relations, security studies, American foreign policy, and American diplomatic and military history. He is currently Professor of International Relations and History at Boston University. He is also a retired career officer in the Armor Branch of the United States Army, retiring with the rank of Colonel. Professor Bacevich is author of several books, including American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of US Diplomacy (2002), The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War (2005) and The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (2008). He has also appeared on television shows such as The Colbert Report and the Bill Moyers Report and has written op-eds which have appeared in papers such as The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, and Financial Times. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Professor Bacevich has been “a persistent, vocal critic of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, calling the conflict a catastrophic failure.”  In March 2007, he described George W. Bush’s endorsement of such “preventive wars” as “immoral, illicit, and imprudent.”

We spoke with Andrew Bacevich earlier.

DAVID:  Tying sports to war. Lyndon Baines Johnson has been caught on tape saying he didn’t want to be the first US president to lose a war. Americans… and this is, again, this is on sports. We refuse to admit defeat. We love sports. It’s a metaphor for war. And we often think about the win/loss column. Nixon and even George W. Bush wanted to know how many of the other guys were we getting.

So for our sports fans, did we lose Vietnam? Did we lose Iraq? Are we losing in Afghanistan? And would America be better off if we could admit defeat? Is there a benefit to saying we lost? Or does admitting defeat in Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, does that dishonor our troops?

President Lyndon Johnson said he didn’t want to go down in history as the first U.S. President to lose a war.

ANDREW BACEVICH: Well, I don’t think it dishonors our troops. I mean, my argument would be that we need to be realistic, pragmatic, and deal with reality. And the reality is… first of all, war is not a sport. War is, as Carl von Clausewitz said, a continuation of politics by other means. It’s using violence in order to achieve political purposes. And we need to be honest enough to recognize that in Vietnam, we failed to achieve our political purposes. In Iraq, we failed to achieve our political purposes. In Afghanistan, in all likelihood, we will fail.

And you face up to that, and you act accordingly. I mean, we need to recognize that the notion that using military power can somehow fix the Middle East in ways that will serve our interest — it is not going to happen. We’ve been trying to do that for 30 years now, and we have met with one failure and frustration after another. And…

DAVID: I’m going to interrupt you. I’m going to interrupt you. You’re a colonel.

ANDREW BACEVICH:  Well, I was, long ago.

 DAVID: Okay. 25 years in the military. West Point. Vietnam. Does it make you feel uncomfortable to say, “We lost?”

ANDREW BACEVICH: Well, no, it doesn’t. I mean, I’m… and when I was a captain just coming back from Vietnam, I might have had a different view at that time. I was a different person in a different circumstance. But at this stage of my life, I think we do a disservice to our military, and we do a disservice to our country, if we basically lie to ourselves about what our military involvement in recent decades has yielded. I think we owe it to those who served and sacrificed to call a spade a spade.

DAVID: Mm-hmm. Which brings us to more of the sports theme: spectators. War is not a spectator sport. And yet in your book, you kind of say it has become a spectator sport for Americans. We got rid of the draft in 1973, and we’ve converted to an all-volunteer military. And within seven years of that, Ronald Reagan was elected president. For the next 30 years, our political system lay waste to the middle class. Unions. We’ve witnessed unprecedented homelessness and a celebration of excess that would make Caligula cringe.

What toll has this all-volunteer army taken on the common man? On… not the soldier, but on us, the people who don’t volunteer. Who stay home? What’s the toll?

ANDREW BACEVICH: We, the people, forfeited any ownership of our military. It’s not America’s military. It’s Washington’s military. Washington has used that military as it has seen fit, and, I think, with mostly negative consequences. So the militarization of US policy, which had already begun during the Cold War, but which was accelerated by the move to the all-volunteer force and then the end of the Cold War, has not made us more secure. It’s not made us more prosperous. It’s not made us more free. I think that the militarization of policy since the creation of the all-volunteer force has hurt the country, meaning its hurt us.

President George W. Bush, former owner of the Texas Rangers, tried to fight two wars without a draft and by gifting the American people with a series of tax cuts.

DAVID: They ask why is Washington, DC, why are our politicians so out of touch? They have so much contempt for us? I think a lot of that is rooted in the all-volunteer army. It’s gotten easier, if you’re a politician or a bureaucrat in Washington, surrounded by soldiers in Washington, DC, guys who actually volunteer and make a sacrifice. If I were a politician, I would have nothing but contempt for the rest of America, because they don’t make a sacrifice.

And under Bush, W. Bush, he was handing out tax cuts during a time of war.

ANDREW BACEVICH: Right.

DAVID: Now we don’t sacrifice ourselves, our family, or money. Why wouldn’t Washington have nothing but contempt? If I were living in Washington, if I were… I would look at all Americans as welfare cheats.

ANDREW BACEVICH: I’m with you, but I think I’d point my finger at us, at the American people who have allowed this circumstance to develop. We have chosen a definition of citizenship that is paper-thin. And we have not been willing to consider the possibility that citizenship should entail collective obligation. And therefore, to see wars as not simply Washington’s business, but as the people’s business.

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President Lyndon Johnson declared a war on poverty and America, unlike Vietnam, won that war. World War One and Iraq remind us that some wars, even though we triumphed, have to be fought again. Such is the case with LBJ’s war on poverty. We won it, but now there’s a new war and we’re losing it thanks to the enemy within, a fifth column of Republican extremists who don’t want to pay their fair share.

For more on this we talked with Greg Kaufmann one of America’s leading voices for the poor.

Greg Kaufmann is the former poverty correspondent to The Nation and a current contributor. He serves as an advisor to the Ehrenreich Hardship Reporting Project and the Half in Ten Campaign. Through his writing he seeks to increase media coverage of poverty, share new research, elevate the voices of people living in poverty and offer readers opportunities to get involved with organizations working to eradicate poverty. Melissa Harris-Perry calls Greg “one of the most consistent voices on poverty in America.” Greg has spoken at numerous conferences and been a guest on Moyers & Company, MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry, Tavis Smiley on PBS, NPR’s Radio Times with Marty Moss-Coane, Here & Now, Your Call, The Thom Hartmann Program, Stand Up! with Pete Dominick and The Matthew Filipowicz Show, as well as various local radio programs. His work has also been featured on CBSNews.com, NPR.org, WashingtonPost.com, and BusinessInsider.com. He serves as an adviser for Barbara Ehrenreich’s Economic Hardship Reporting Project. He graduated from Dickinson College and studied creative writing at Miami University (Ohio). He lives in his hometown of Washington, DC, with his wife, son and two daughters.

Greg is a frequent guest on Bill Moyers’ show. As a press spokesman for L.B.J. Moyers was on the front lines in the war on poverty.

We spoke with Greg about poverty in America.

David: You know, you’re a terrific writer, and before we start, I want everybody who’s listening to read your piece on “The Nation’s Website.” It’s up right now. It’s entitled “Confronting Congressional Hunger Games,” and I want to congratulate you on this piece. I’ll post the link to it on our website. Everyone has to read this article. It’s called “Confronting Congressional Hunger Games.” It’s up on The Nation’s website right now. It’s loaded with hyperlinks, just so you know that Greg Kaufmann doesn’t make things up.

Folks, you can decide not to pay attention to hunger in America, but read this article, because nobody can say you didn’t know. You can think whatever you want about people on food stamps, but you need to read this article so at least nobody can ever say you didn’t know. It is a great article, and if you’re on the right side, our side, this article will provide you with pretty much all the ammunition you’re going to need to change minds. People need to know. And so, again, Greg, I thank you for this article. I can’t wait to talk to conservatives because of this article. It’ll be like shooting fish in a barrel. Unfortunately, we can’t eat those fish, and people are starving.

Greg Kauffman: Yeah, David, well, thank you very much.

David: We’re out of time. Thanks for being on the show. Bye-bye.

Greg: I understand, your lordship. No, I thank you for that nice intro, and, yeah, I get sad and angry, too. I think it’s a particularly frustrating time. I mean, covering the poverty beat’s not great for morale anyway most of the time. Yeah, the SNAP food stamp votes and the farm bill votes of late have definitely made for some trying times, mostly for the people who need that assistance, of course.

David: Yeah. Before we dig into this and roll up our sleeves and talk about the farm bill . . .

Born into great wealth Senator Robert Kennedy spent the last years of his life learning about and speaking up for America’s poor.

Greg: Yeah.

David: . . . if I were a Muslim and somebody told me the United States is a Christian nation, I’d say, “Good, let your religion take the brunt of this. Let your religion take responsibility for this,” because this is embarrassing.

Greg: Right.

David: This is really embarrassing, so if people want to call this a Christian nation, knock yourself out, have at it, because I would be ashamed to associate any religion with our country.

Greg: It’s obscene! Before we had the food stamp program, back in the late ’60s, or mid ’60s, there were childrenwith bloated bellies in Mississippi and Appalachia. You know, Bobby Kennedy, Peter Edelman went down there, Marion Wright, who’s now Marion Wright-Edelman, showed them around towns where they met these kids with the kind of hunger and malnutrition that we associate with third world countries now, and we say, “Well, we don’t have that in the States.” And, yeah, we don’t have that, and that’s because we created a federal food stamp program. Yeah.

David: I’m told the federal government can’t do anything right, that if it’s left to the federal government, everybody’s just going to fail.

Greg: Yeah.

David: What was the poverty rate in America before Lyndon Johnson declared a war on poverty, and what was the poverty rate after his war on poverty?

Greg: The impact of public policy from 1964 to 1973, the poverty rate fell by 43 percent. I’m not a numbers guy, actually, but I keep a list of numbers, because I’m not a numbers guy.

David: Right. And by the way, it’s in your article. That’s why I asked you.

By all accounts President Johnson’s war on poverty was a success. Unfortunately Republican attempts to undermine that victory has also been a success.

Greg: Yeah. And at the end of my article, I keep something called vital statistics that’s part of the end of my blog every Friday, and part of the reason I do that is for myself to keep those numbers present, but more it’s because people have no idea. I mean, I didn’t before I started working this beat and the statistics about poverty. So when they say the war on poverty failed, they should look at how the poverty rate fell during the war on poverty.

And further, even more recently, if you look at 2010, Arloc Sherman, who’s a great policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, looked at the impact that the safety net programs had on poverty in 2010. We had a 15 percent rate of poverty that year. Your listeners should know that the poverty rate and the poverty level is just $18,000 for a family of three, so we’re talking about people who lived on less than $18,000, and it was 15 percent that year. I think that’s like 45 million Americans, 46 million Americans, and it would’ve been almost double, 28 percent, without the safety net.

So Congressman Ryan says quite frequently, “We’re not looking at the results of our programs. We’re just looking at how much money we spend.” Baloney. He’s looking just at how much money we spend. He’s not looking at the results. He’s complaining about the money we spend. He’s not looking at the fact that poverty would be twice as high without the programs we have in place, and when you talk about getting angry, I mean, those are the kinds of moments where, yeah, anybody who believes in sort of rational analysis, not to mention the kind of values you were talking about, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, humane values, that should make you pretty angry.

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