Today, ThinkProgress spoke with ENOUGH Project co-founder John Prendergast and actor Ryan Gosling, who was nominated for an Academy Award for his role in Half Nelson, and is currently writing and producing a film on child soldiers in Northern Uganda.

The two visited the Center for American Progress for an ENOUGH Project event on the ongoing conflict in Northern Uganda, sometimes called the “world’s worst forgotten crisis.” Here are some highlights from the conversation:

Prendergast on the Iraq war diverting resources from other global crises:

[Iraq is] like the giant sucking sound that you hear in the background just drawing away international attention and resources twenty four hours a day, seven days a week.

Gosling on the State Department’s refusal to send even one high-level diplomat to deal with Uganda:

We were at the State Department this morning, we were sort of speaking with them about what they were doing and I think it’s a little frustrating for us because we feel like — they feel like they’re doing enough and obviously we feel like they could be doing more. Our hope is to sort of motivate enough people to push for a senior official or some sort of diplomat to go over and oversee the peace process and be involved and just have a presence there.

Gosling on criticism that he’s “using” the people of Africa to gain celebrity:

It’s a huge fear of mine, you know that I will bring any kind of negative attention to a situation that couldn’t be any worse. … I don’t want people to attach their opinions of me to the, to the issue, you know. I just am a guy, you know, who is having this amazing opportunity to work with these people and to go to these places.

Prendergast on Bill O’Reilly, who has attacked the work of other Africa activists like Don Cheadle and Angelina Jolie:

He’s [O'Reilly] just pandering for ratings. He doesn’t want to have a discussion, about Northern Uganda or Darfur or any of these issues. They more than anyone — these guys will use these kinds of issues as roadkill for ratings. … What’s really remarkable to me frankly is people like Ryan and Don Cheadle and George Clooney who, it doesn’t help their careers, by the way, to be working on these kinds of issues and to be spending a whole lot of time away from what they do, in order to go crusading around the world about issues that matter to them personally. … So I think there’s no negative, there’s no downside, and people that look for the downsides are sort of the debris, the barnacles, that feed off of this kind of stuff, and that’s how they get their ratings.

Watch it:

The ENOUGH Project is a new organization seeking to aggressively lobby Congress and raise awareness about crimes against humanity in Africa and around the world. Go HERE for more information on the civil war in Northern Uganda.

Transcript: Read more

Retired Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez commanded U.S. forces during the first year of the Iraq war. In “his first interview since he retired last year,” Sanchez has said that the war in Iraq is lost, and the best outcome America can hope for is to “stave off defeat.” From his remarks after a recent speech in San Antonio:

“I think if we do the right things politically and economically with the right Iraqi leadership we could still salvage at least a stalemate, if you will — not a stalemate but at least stave off defeat,” Sanchez told the San Antonio Express-News. “It’s also kind of important for us to answer the question, ‘What is victory?’, and at this point I’m not sure America really knows what victory is.” [...]

“I am absolutely convinced that America has a crisis in leadership at this time and we’ve got to do whatever we can to help the next generation of leaders do better than we have done over the past five years,” Sanchez said, “better than what this cohort of political and military leaders have done.”

Sanchez “is the highest-ranking former military leader yet to suggest the Bush administration has fallen short in Iraq.” In April, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) also said that at this stage, the war in Iraq “can only be won diplomatically, politically and economically“:

“I believe…that this war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything, as is shown by the extreme violence in Iraq this week,” Reid told journalists. [...]

“I know I was the odd guy out at the White House, but I told him at least what he needed to hear … I believe the war at this stage can only be won diplomatically, politically and economically.”

At the time, the right wing viciously attacked Reid, calling him “an embarrassment” and charging that his comments were “very, very close to treason.” But since that time, other generals, in addition to Sanchez, have spoken out against the war.

Nevertheless, conservatives continue to pound the issue. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has threatened that if a vote of no-confidence on Alberto Gonzales is brought to the floor, he may bring an amendment on “whether the Iraq War is actually ‘lost’ as Reid has suggested.”

Digg It!

The White House announced this week that it “would like to see a lengthy U.S. troop presence in Iraq like the one in South Korea,” where U.S. troops have been stationed for 50 years.

In the face of overwhelming evidence that Americans want U.S. troops out of Iraq, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has baselessly declared that Americans will support a long-term military presence “as long as the number of U.S. casualties can drop to almost nothing.”

“The key to this issue is not American presence, but American casualties,” he told a standing-room-only crowd of about 250 employees at Nationwide Insurance’s offices.

“We have had troops in South Korea for 60 years and nobody minds,” McCain said. “If you stay a long, long time, but have the Iraqis doing the fighting, and your people are back in the bases and away from the firing line, I think Americans would be satisfied.”

All the evidence suggests directly the opposite, that Americans want U.S. troops out of Iraq. Moreover, an ABC News poll this year found that 78 percent of Iraqis “oppose the presence of U.S. forces on their soil“; just one percent of Iraqis “want the US military presence to go on without end.”

This means that, unlike Korea, there is little chance that the U.S. presence in Iraq will be casualty-free. Indeed, “the specter of a permanent military presence in Iraq is widely considered to be one of the most inflammatory incitements to Iraq’s ever-growing anti-American insurgency.”

Of course, even if McCain admits that Americans don’t want to be in Iraq forever, it wouldn’t matter. He has previously proclaimed that he can ignore American public opinion because he knows “what’s best for the security of this nation.”

Digg It!