2007.07.05: July 5, 2007: Headlines: Figures: COS - Dominican Republic: Politics: Congress: Election2008 - Dodd: Fairfield Weekly: Chris Dodd answers: why'd you decide to join the Peace Corps instead of, say, the military?

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Chris Dodd answers: why'd you decide to join the Peace Corps instead of, say, the military?

Chris Dodd answers: why'd you decide to join the Peace Corps instead of, say, the military?

"Somebody asked me to. It was really no more complicated than that. I got excited about it. I think probably in the fall of 1965 when I was in my senior year and wondering "What am I going to do?" I thought what a great idea this was. So I went off, and I had friends who did other things, including go into the military. My closest boyhood friend was in the Marines and killed in Quan Tre in Vietnam in Februray 1968. When I came out, I thought I'd served my country. I hadn't been home in two years and, I thought, making a difference in my country, obviously things had gotten pretty rough, between the spring of 1966 and 1968 when I arrived home. But I felt that I'd contributed. But I realized there's possibly more, so I joined the National Guard and ended up being in the reserves over the next five or so years."

Chris Dodd answers: why'd you decide to join the Peace Corps instead of, say, the military?

DODD ON DODD—THE WEEKLY Q&A

Sen. Chris Dodd has been campaigning across New Hampshire ahead of the Jan. 22, 2008 presidential primary. Freda Moon sat down with the senator at Nashua City Hall following a recent policy speech.

Today you outlined an "American Community Initiative" that would make public service mandatory for all Americans. How do you get people excited about something like this? There's a lot of disillusionment in the country right now.

The biggest part of it, the disillusionment, is that people aren't being asked. People want to be asked. They love to be asked. If you ask people to do things, to become a part of something like this, you'd be amazed at the response. People in a time of crisis do it almost voluntarily. But if you can begin early enough in schools, with the learned experience of doing this, it becomes contagious in a way.

And shared experience—what's a gang? It's a shared experience. How many parents have said, "I get my kids into sports because that gets them busy?" Well, how about getting busy doing something where you make a difference in people's lives?

While on the campaign trail, you've missed votes on some important issues, including immigration. How do you justify that?

Look, after 26 years in the Senate with a voting record of something like 96 percent&It's not as if I'm going on vacation someplace. I presume people in Connecticut would take some degree of pride if one of their own became the President of the United States.

So while there's obviously people who would disagree with that conclusion—who've probably never voted for me, who'd like to use this as a way to sort of whip you—I would hope that most people would understand that this is very important, and an awful lot is at stake.

But again, on critical issues, the staff is working overtime in Connecticut. They're at every major event in the state. The Washington office is functioning; we're having hearings all the time. I've had hearings on subprime lending and I've had hearings on the credit card legislation. I've had hearings the other day on student loans&so I'm working very aggressively on my committee assignments.

Two weeks ago, Senator Lieberman advocated strikes against Iran. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson came out and said that Lieberman's comments were irresponsible. What are your thoughts on Lieberman's hawkish stance on Iran?

I've never taken the military option off the table in dealing with any circumstance if that's what is warranted in the end. But I'm a strident, strong believer that we've basically abandoned statecraft and diplomacy in the last six years and that the statecraft is not an end in itself but a means of achieving ends.

And I've advocated that we ought to find power centers within Iran with whom we can start to negotiate. Now the administration is beginning to do that, but it took them forever to get around to it in a sense. Shoulda happened a long time ago in my view.

So, I didn't see Senator Lieberman's comments. I heard about them and I'll let his comments speak for themselves. I'll just tell you my viewpoint. We ought to be pursuing whatever other means we can to deal with the problem instead of sort of saber-rattling in the absence of efforts; it doesn't help in my view. But people who don't rattle sabers, I can't speak for everyone, but in my case, I don't take that arrow out of my quiver. I just don't believe you draw it out before you have to.

According to a CNN poll from June 25, you're currently at less than one percent in the national polls, below every other candidate except Mike Gravel. What do you think explains your poor reception?

I've never run for national office before. This takes time. There's a lot of noise and a lot of chatter and a lot to be competing with. I mean, you're competing with Paris Hilton and Anna Nicole stories.

And it's early. John Kerry was at four percent in the polls in late December, 2003—four weeks before the first caucus and primary, a point or two behind Al Sharpton—and so, if you have 100 percent name recognition and you're not doing as well as you should be, that's more of a concern.

Someone said to me the other day, they said, "Listen, Senator. Does anybody know the name of a horse in the Kentucky Derby until Derby Day?" It's kind of a funny analogy, and I don't mean to take it to an extreme, but the point is, most people aren't thinking about this stuff at this point, unless you've reached some sort of celebrity status.

I think Joe [Lieberman], in fact, was leading in New Hampshire at this point four years ago. I think he was at something like 30 percent up here. Then, of course, in the end it didn't work out. So, who's on first in June may have little or no significance.



Connecticut governor M. Jodi Rell just vetoed a medical marijuana bill. What are your views on the use of pot as medicine?

In controlled circumstances, there's enough evidence that this product can reduce levels of pain and so forth. I mean, under controlled circumstances, I don't know why we're prohibiting that. We're not talking about people growing plants in their backyard and so forth. We're talking about doctors prescribing a pain relief for people who suffer, whether it's cancer or other things, and I think it's a little backward to have this reaction, because if you called it something other than marijuana would you ban it? I mean, you know, if it had been cannabis?

How are we going to get ourselves out of Iraq?

By leaving.

Whatever we thought we were going to do, we've either accomplished or we haven't. And that's not in any way to demean the incredible efforts being made by our people in uniform. But the facts are that this is not a conflict that is going to be resolved by the U.S. military. And no one's ever looked at this thing for more than five minutes and drawn any other [conclusion], and yet we persist in insisting upon this military participation. So for many months now I've been advocating that we begin redeploying our forces out of Iraq and bring them home or go to Afghanistan or wherever else we can use them.

And I can't guarantee that's gonna produce the result, but I think it does a number of things. First of all, I think it may achieve the result of getting Iraqis to respond intelligently to their own future. Secondly, I think it opens up the opportunities for us to build the kind of coalitions within the region, and internationally to assume some responsibility if things continue to deteriorate. I think as long as we're there in such a dominant way, it'll be very difficult to get any more cooperation from anybody else, whereas if it's clear we're pulling back and pulling out of the situation, then to the extent you may need some sort of international force to avoid a genocide, for instance, you're more likely to get that sort of cooperation than if it's basically a U.S. operation and asking other countries to participate.

When you were young and looking at your future, why'd you decide to join the Peace Corps instead of, say, the military?

Somebody asked me to. It was really no more complicated than that. I got excited about it. I think probably in the fall of 1965 when I was in my senior year and wondering "What am I going to do?" I thought what a great idea this was. So I went off, and I had friends who did other things, including go into the military. My closest boyhood friend was in the Marines and killed in Quan Tre in Vietnam in Februray 1968.

When I came out, I thought I'd served my country. I hadn't been home in two years and, I thought, making a difference in my country, obviously things had gotten pretty rough, between the spring of 1966 and 1968 when I arrived home. But I felt that I'd contributed. But I realized there's possibly more, so I joined the National Guard and ended up being in the reserves over the next five or so years.

During your speech earlier today, you advocated the Peace Corps by saying that people can't hate America if they know Americans. But anti-American sentiment is growing around the world, including in Latin America, our closest neighbors and a region you know well.

I remember when Richard Nixon's car was stoned in Caracas, Venezuela in 1959 and two years later an American president was elected whose picture still hangs in a lot of places in Latin America. A lot of it's because we were preoccupied by 9/11 and then, obviously more lately, by a war of choice in Iraq. We're neglecting an awful lot of the world, and we're neglecting Latin America. It's not the only part of the world we're neglecting, but it's one of the striking places we've neglected. And I think Latins are angry and you're getting people coming along who are filling that vacuum, Hugo Chavez and others, who are speaking to the aspirations and hopes of people, maybe in ways that I find unrealistic and sort of superficial in some ways, but they're resonating and we don't have anything to answer with, except attacking Hugo Chavez, instead of attacking the problems that he's obviously raising and connecting with.

editor@fairfieldweekly.com




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