Thom Hartmann: And welcome back, Thom Hartmann here with you, and on the line with us from New York City, Professor Stephen Cohen; Contributing Editor to The Nation, Professor Emeritus of Russian Studies & Politics at NYU and Princeton. His book Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives which examines the new cold war is now available in paperback. For more of his writing, visit The Nation's website. Professor Cohen, welcome back.

Stephen Cohen: Thank you Thom.

Thom Hartmann: It's always nice having you with us. I saw...

Stephen Cohen: Thom, I was just wondering, can you permit a guest to digress from their subject to your commentary?

Thom Hartmann: Of course!

(Abraham Lincoln helped create our nation's land grant colleges with the signing of the Morrill Act in 1862. Since then, even our public universities have began charging a fortune for tuition, but one Senator wants to get back to our land-grant roots. Last week, while visiting Johnson State College in Vermont, Senator Bernie Sanders proposed free college at public universities, and a “revolution in the way higher education is funded.” He said, “It makes no sense that students and their parents are forced to pay interest rates for higher education that are much higher than they pay for car loans or housing mortgages.” Our country has more than a trillion dollars of outstanding student debt, and many young people are skipping out on an education because of the high cost of tuition. That outstanding debt is slowing down our economy, and a lack of education will slow down our advancement as a nation. Our public colleges should be free for every citizen, and wiping out student debt would be a great stimulus. It's not a matter of whether we can afford to make these changes, it's the fact that we can't afford not to.)

Stephen Cohen: I am a product of public schools. I went to public school in Kentucky where I grew up and I went to a state university, Indiana university. I am a patriot of the state land grant universities. They are in deep crisis. Senator Sanders is absolutely right. I don't think they should be completely free. I think they should have a nominal tuition. But the crisis of the public schools is part of the crisis of our political discourse. Those public schools, those state universities, were the way so many of us got our start.

And there's one other thing. What we call community colleges; two, three, year colleges in this country, they are providing people who can't afford and really don't need four year universities the kinds of programs that could be available with a little bit of original reconception so anybody who's on the front of public universities or colleges and community colleges holds the future of our country in their hands.

Thom Hartmann: Yeah, I totally agree, and yeah, this is a real serious crisis.

With regard to Ukraine, which is, and Russia, I saw this headline I think it was, let's see, 20 February, which was last week and it struck me, it was like whoa, we've got to get Stephen Cohen back on about this. The headline in the BBC is "Ukraine: UK and EU 'badly misread' Russia". And then the first line, "The UK and the EU have been accused of a 'catastrophic misreading' of the mood in the Kremlin in the run-up to the crisis in Ukraine." It's, we're about the one year anniversary of the new pro-western government, are we not?

Stephen Cohen: We are, and I saw that report. And it's not the first report. I think it was the German magazine Der Spiegel about four months ago did an investigative article to ask why in the world the German policy class decided in November 2013, more than a year ago, because that's when that crisis began, why the German foreign office, Merkel, the leader of Germany, went along with this notion that Ukraine should be confronted with an ultimatum: either you trade with the west or you trade with Russia, and you can't do what Putin, Russian president, was offering at that time, which was a three way arrangement to save Ukraine, which was already melting down financially.

So you've got now, first in Europe, and now the United Kingdom, which has been every bit as bad as Europe, these reports coming out. But it is an attempt by the people who made these decisions to cover up their role in what is now today, as we talk, the worst international crisis since the Cuban Missile Crisis. And since you and I talked, I don't know, two or three weeks ago, maybe less, I have the same cold so it couldn't be too long ago, things have gotten worse. But these reports are interesting because they tell us that the consensus of playing really hard ball with Russia and blaming Russia for the entire crisis, which is the official line in Washington, is breaking down in England and in Europe. So politically these reports are important even though they're fibbing a lot and there's a lot of covering up and passing the buck going on, but they are significant, you're absolutely right.

Thom Hartmann: So let's, for the benefit of somebody who might have just tuned in, let's just reset the story, you know. There is a story line that we have heard in the west that President Putin has been meddling in Ukrainian politics and snatched Crimea and now he wants the eastern part of Ukraine that would give him, I guess, a route to Crimea or something like that. Russia, the Russian people have a very different story line that they tell themselves, and that I think that Mr. Putin does, and there's a sort of intermediate, what's going on in Ukraine. Do you want to just recap all this stuff for us?

Stephen Cohen: I mean, all this stuff is just too much. There's so many moving pieces.

Thom Hartmann: Right.

Stephen Cohen: And you and I have talked about it, I don't know, in the last year maybe ten times. Don't want to go over everything, but let's remember what happened. This ultimatum trade agreement, which you and I just discussed, in November 2013 grew into a protest movement which led to the fall of the elected president of Ukraine which led to a new government that, excuse me Thom, wasn't elected. That led to a civil war, then was the Russian annexation, or re-unification as Russia calls it, of Crimea, The protest movement developed in Eastern Ukraine, mainly in the industrial area known as the Donbass finally began so you had a civil war. Russia backed the Eastern Ukrainians. The west, including Washington, backed Kiev and western Ukraine. And the result was not only a cold war but a confrontation, military, through proxies, between the United States, NATO and Russia.

And so that's where we are today. Now, if we have time for me to go on and update it because something very dramatic has happened in the last week.

Thom Hartmann: Please, we have 45 minutes here. Go for it.

Stephen Cohen: Well, I know you have to take breaks. Here's the thing now.

Thom Hartmann: We're three minutes from the next break. Just FYI.

Stephen Cohen: All right. So if we take I think it was Descartes who said that you think best by going from the specific to the general. We take a specific development that happened about ten days ago. Your listeners will remember that suddenly, I mean, almost on the spur of the moment, Chancellor Merkel of Germany accompanied by president Hollande of France got on a plane, got on a plane and flew to Kiev, Moscow, then Merkel came to Washington, then Merkel went back to Germany for a meeting with American senators, McCain and the rest in Munich. Then Merkel and Hollande got onto a plane and went to Minsk in Belarus and signed, after I think 13 hours or more of negotiations with Putin and the president of Ukraine, Poroshenko, a new Minsk agreement for a cease-fire and a lot of other things.

Now why did that happen? The story's not being told in this country. The reasons Merkel did that is she was in a state of near, I don't know if we'd call it panic, but grave alarm because certain things had happened. First of all, the Ukrainian economy, she understood, was near total meltdown; Kiev's economy. Secondly, the Ukrainian army, and this is the army that Obama is supposed to decide in two or three days whether he's going to send a billion dollars of weapons to, for the next three years, was also in meltdown. It can fight but it can't win. The army, the Ukrainian army, however brave the boys may be, the draftees, it isn't going to win any battles, sustained battles with the rebel army.

And on top of that, Merkel now became alarmed that Washington would actually ship these weapons. And if it did, Putin, Russia, would react very, very harshly.

Thom Hartmann: Yes. The equivalent of Russia providing the missiles to Cuba in 1962.

Stephen Cohen: All right, let's put it like that. So now we've got a situation where the two leaders of Germany, of Europe, excuse me, president, the Chancellor of Germany and president of France, suddenly realize that Washington's hard line policy, which they had more or less gone along with in the forms of economic sanctions, was leading to a catastrophe. So they tried to save the day. So they began this set of ...

Thom Hartmann: Yeah. Professor, for some reason because we're bringing you in by Skype, whenever our music start it kills the Skype audio. So my apologies if I'm stepping on you. But we'll be right back. Professor Stephen Cohen is with us, contributing Editor to The Nation, Professor Emeritus of Russian Studies & Politics at NYU and Princeton. you can read his writings at thenation.com. And Professor Cohen's new book, the Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives which examines the new cold war is now available in paperback.

Welcome back. 15 minutes past the hour. Professor Cohen, you're still with us?

Stephen Cohen: Sure I am.

Thom Hartmann: Yeah. I'm sorry, your last sentence there got kind of stomped on.

Stephen Cohen: We have now Merkel and Hollande racing, racing to all these capitals and then to Minsk to meet with Putin, president of Russia, and Poroshenko the president of Ukraine, because they see an even worse catastrophe coming. Now we come up to the events of last weekend. One of the issues that brought Merkel to Minsk was that in a town called Debaltseve, a small Ukrainian town in the east, but one of enormous importance because it's a railway hub that unites the whole of Donbass about somewhere between 5,000 and 7,000 Kiev Ukrainian soldiers were trapped by the rebel armies. Merkel did not want to see them wiped out. She thought that this would escalate the crisis beyond her control.

Thom Hartmann: Yeah.

Stephen Cohen: So they say that of the 13 hours in Minsk, for six hours they discussed what would happen to those trapped men. The best story that I can get, and it's not reported in the United States, is that Putin said the rebels would give them a safe conduct out - those boys can go home to their moms, their wives, their families - if they put down their heavy equipment, they leave their artillery behind. And there'll be a safe corridor, they can leave. And the president of Ukraine denied that those men were trapped. For six hours they could not persuade him to admit it and he kept leaving the room and calling Kiev, which tells us along the way, he doesn't have much power. He's talking to the guys in Kiev with the real power.

So they reach this agreement for a cease fire, this is I think last Saturday, but they leave aside the question of what's going to happen to those soldiers in Debaltseve because Poroshenko won't discuss them. And Putin says the offer remains: if they put down their heavy equipment they get a safe conduct home, all of them. But, if they try to fight their way out, or if they, and attempt is made by Kiev to send a rescue mission, the rebel armies will open fire. And that's what happened. And there was a horrible battle there and we don't know, because Kiev is lying, I mean flatly lying, when they said that maybe 100 soldiers died, some people think maybe 1,000 or more Ukrainian soldiers died. But the point is that the Ukrainian army suffered another catastrophic political defeat and that now has political ramifications.

Poroshenko is trying to put the best face on this in Kiev. He held a welcome home victory parade but it was preposterous. Now it ramifies to Washington. Are we really seriously going to give sophisticated American weapons to a Ukrainian army that has no clue how to use them? If they do learn how to use them, they will likely lose them to the rebel army and which would involve putting by my estimate maybe as many as 400 Americans on the ground and so now you've got boots on the ground to train the Ukrainians how to use those weapons. And you don't train them, you know, in 24 hours, and go home. Units operate those weapons and it takes real training. So that's where we're at now.

Thom Hartmann: Amazing. We'll be right back with Professor Stephen Cohen. Stick around. It's 20 minutes past the hour.

Thom Hartmann: We're back with Professor Stephen Cohen ... Professor Emeritus of Russian Studies & Politics at New York University and Princeton. His book Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives which examines the new cold war is available in paperback. and of course he's a contributing Editor to The Nation, thenation.com. Professor Cohen, just to summarize what we were just talking about in the last couple of minutes, you talked about how Chancellor Merkel and President Hollande of Germany and France respectively were doing this international shuttle diplomacy, almost hysterical thing, over the last week and a half or so, flying to the United States, flying to Moscow, flying to, ending up in Minsk, while they were there in Minsk trying to work out a negotiated cease fire, I guess, or some sort of an agreement, that Mr. Poroshenko, the president of Ukraine for 6 hours in that meeting kept leaving the room and kept denying that his 7,000 soldiers were trapped by the pro-Russian rebels, or whatever you would call them. Which raises the question in my mind, who is he answering to? Have I recapped that?

Stephen Cohen: You have.

Thom Hartmann: OK. So, first of all, who was he calling, Poroshenko, you know, periodically throughout this 6 hours when he didn't believe that his own soldiers were trapped but Hollande and Merkel knew that this was to be the case?

Stephen Cohen: So let me vent for a minute. We would not have to take so much of your time simply telling the story of what's happened if the American mass media was reporting it in full.

Thom Hartmann: Yep.

Stephen Cohen: But the reality is, is that the question you just asked, what in the world is going on in Kiev with the government, is not reported. Even though reporters from the New York Times, the Washington Post and others go to Kiev all the time. They file from Kiev. And what they file are the official military handouts of the Kiev secret services, military intelligences. And those services do not tell the truth, that they're printing. But have you one story about the politics in Kiev? About who holds real power, about what the parliament's doing, about Poroshenko's relations? Because he has a coalition government with a man by the name of Yatsenyuk. What's going on?

Thom Hartmann: I have not seen one.

Stephen Cohen: No, I have not seen one either, so I have to get my information not from my New York Times and Washington Post, but I have to go searching. Now, this military battle that I mentioned at Debaltseve brings into clear focus the political crisis and there's a crisis in Washington or a conflict in Europe and in Kiev. So on your question, to whom does Poroshenko answer, I want to draw this rather dramatically. I think Poroshenko's power, he's president, but after the overthrow of the last president the parliament reverted to a preceding Ukrainian constitution that actually gave the parliament somewhat more power, if anybody's paying attention to the constitution, that's another question, than the president has.

And this parliament, which was elected by excluding the eastern and southeastern or pro-Russian territories of Ukraine, are predominantly politicians, ultra nationalist, from the western and central parts of Ukraine. So this is a very, in American terms we would call it a very right wing government, though for some reason Washington calls it a democratic government. So, it's a right wing democratic government. Fine. But they're operating on a very ultra nationalist ideology and their military people, some of them members of the parliament, command battalions, the organized militias that grew out in the streets of the Maidan protest against Yanukovych more than a year ago.

So, think about it. If the regular Ukrainian army can't fight successfully for whatever reason, some people say it was badly trained, some say it's badly organized, some say it's the corruption of the generals, some say it's the stupidity of the high command, I don't know. But the battalions are doing the fighting. Now these battalions are not controlled by Poroshenko. That's his problem. They're either controlled by extremely wealthy oligarchs, who are the governments of territories on which these battalions were formed, or they're controlled by these ultra-nationalist political movements. And they were doing a lot of the fighting in the east. So now with Poroshenko we come to the rub now, signed the agreement in Minsk last week that there will be a cease fire, and by the way, Thom, a crucial part of the cease fire is that both sides have to pull back their heavy artillery beyond the range of those eastern cities, those two cities you and I have discussed, Donetsk and Luhansk, or in Ukrainian Lugansk, because that artillery was pounding those cities and therefore the families of the rebel fighters. Poroshenko agreed to that and the next day maybe the most important ultra-nationalist leader, the head of Right Sector, said he would not honor the cease fire.

Thom Hartmann: He could not honor the cease fire.

Stephen Cohen: ... That's insubordination against the president.

Thom Hartmann: Right. We're going to have to pick this up on the other side of the break because you're breaking up now in the presence of the music. My apologies. We'll be right back with more of Professor Stephen Cohen. This is a cliff hanger right here. We'll be right back. And you can read Professor Cohen's writings over at thenation.com, and his book Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives which examines the new cold war is now out in paperback.

Thom Hartmann: Welcome back. Thom Hartmann here with you and Professor Stephen Cohen on the line with us, Contributing Editor to The Nation, thenation.com, Professor Emeritus of Russian Studies & Politics at NYU and Princeton. And his new book, or his book Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives is newly out in paperback. It examines the new cold war. So check it out at all the local places. Professor Cohen, welcome back.

Stephen Cohen: Thanks Thom.

Thom Hartmann: So, let's just, if we can recap in a minute or two, the territory we've covered.

Stephen Cohen: Will you allow me one more trespass?

Thom Hartmann: All you like! Sure.

(Oklahoma Republicans hate American history – well, at least as long as it's AP history. Last week, a legislative committee in that state voted to ban Advanced Placement U.S. History courses, claiming that the class only teaches students “what is bad about America.” And, Oklahoma State Representative Dan Fisher introduced “emergency” legislation to block funding for that course as well. The Republican reasons for banning the AP course range from lawmakers' claims that it's part of Common Core standards, which were repealed last year, to special interest groups arguing that the class is “indoctrinating our youth at the exclusion of the Christian perspective.” In other words, Republicans don't like anything that stands in the way of pushing their revisionist history. This hostility towards accurate history didn't start in Oklahoma, and it's unlikely that state will be the last to try and rewrite history to fit their current beliefs. These actions have been met with walkouts, protests, and national attention in other states, and Oklahoma should expect the same reaction if they go forward with trying to rewrite the past.)

Stephen Cohen: One of the perks of becoming old, or as we have to say politically correctly, a senior citizen, is that you've got opinions based on your life. This story about rewriting text books in America, and I've seen it by state legislatures usually, over the years, has a parallel with Russia. There is a struggle in Russia now, and people blame it on Putin, but it's not about Putin, that powerful lobbies object to textbooks, including the history of Stalin's terror on exactly the same grounds, that it emphasizes negative pages in Russian history. They should be deleted for the positive pages. You see the exact same thing going on here. One day, when we have nothing else to talk about, let's talk about the way that the terror is remembered in Russia and the way slavery is remembered in the United States. There are very important parallels.

But let's go to Ukraine and the crisis because our lives may depend on it.

Some people think he may fall soon. I don;t know but I wouldn't rule that out.

Now look at Europe. Clearly, clearly beyond dispute, and this is confirmed by all the reports, including one you read at the top of the broadcast about a British report about who's to blame in England, we're now seeing a profound split between Europe and the United States. The United States was not invited to participate in the negotiations in Minsk. This was a European overture. So the question is now is will the European solution prevail? That means negotiation. But Europe itself is split. Poland is against this. The small Baltic Republics are against this. France, Germany, Spain, Italy are in favor. The United Kingdom stands with Washington. And Washington...

And now we come to Obama. He has said that in the next few days he would decide whether to ship these weapons. Now remember, the American Congress, including almost unanimously the Democratic Party, voted to arm Ukraine and Obama signed that legislation. That's what empowered him to do this as he wants. The war party in America, and if we have to put a face on it, it's senator McCain, but more powerful people than the senator stand behind the senator, these people do not want the negotiations or the cease fire to succeed. They want a showdown with Putin. Now, have they thought through this showdown? I don't know if they can think at all, but my reckoning they have not. Because if they think that Russia is going to bend or capitulate because of some economic sanctions, they have misread the entirety of Russian history. And they've misread the political situation in Moscow.

So yes, we're at a kind of slowly evolving high noon that's going to be decided now not primarily by the fighting on the ground but the rebel army holds all the cards there. It's now, it wasn't in the beginning, it was a bunch of mechanics and school teachers and hairdressers and shopkeepers and hotel workers and miners, but now it's a real army, trained by the Russians, absolutely, but I don't think there are many Russians fighting there. But this is an army, and they could go farther. They could go to Mariupol, which is now one place we've got to keep our eye on. But the real deciding factors are now the politics in Washington, Kiev, Europe and to a certain extent Moscow, because Putin's under pressure in Moscow. So your listeners, when they pick up the newspapers, whether the information is deadlined, filed from Kiev or Washington or Moscow or Brussels, should be skeptical. They should ask, what's behind this story? Who's spinning this story? Because we're in a fog of war, and a fog of war tells you we're approaching war.

Thom Hartmann: Wow. So, if the United States chooses to arm Kiev and then presumably the next step would be that Russia would say overtly, we're going to arm the rebels. We'd have a proxy war, a Vietnam kind of war.

Stephen Cohen: Everybody's saying this is going to be a proxy war. I would say to you, and getting a lot of criticism for it, it's already a proxy war. We know that Russia has been arming and training the rebel army. We know that. Otherwise, Russia would have had ??? that the Donbass, which is Russian, would have been lost to NATO. That's the Russian view and that's never going to happen whether Putin's the president or Thomas Jefferson's the president sitting in the Kremlin. That's just not possible. So we know Russia has been arming and training the rebel army. But for months and months and months we have been abetting the Ukrainian army. They don't really need weapons. The Ukraine was the weapon arsenal of the old Soviet Union. They've got lots of weapons. What they don't have is any money. So all these hundreds of millions of dollars we've been giving, if it's not war, is enabling Kiev we're arming, in that sense, Kiev.

In addition, there are reports I cannot confirm that every night, on two airstrips military cargo planes flying into Kiev's Ukraine and unload equipment. I don't know where it's coming from. Some people say it's coming from Poland via NATO, some say it's coming, some of the equipment that's in Afghanistan that we don't need any more is being sent there. No newspaper in America, all you have to do is go to these airstrips and sit there overnight and see what's coming in. There is no interest in this story. But we are already in a proxy war. The question is, will it become a direct hot war? That's where I think we are and at one more time there's now an intensely factional politics going on in all these capitals, Washington, Brussels, Kiev and Moscow.

So that's what we have to watch. Who's going to prevail? The factions that want a negotiated settlement and the war party denounces them as appeasers. Are you aware, for example, that last week at the Munich conference Senator McCain and other Americans, I think Lindsey Graham, went to Munich, the country of Merkel, and literally denounced her in her own country as an appeaser.

Thom Hartmann: You're kidding!

Stephen Cohen: No, you can look it up as Casey Stengel would say. I mean, they accused her of selling out Ukraine and the US. You can see how crazy this has become.

Thom Hartmann: It's astonishing. I mean, these are the guys who also went to Prince Bandar and said can you get us a few hundred million dollars from the Saudi billionaires to put together a Sunni fighting force to take against Assad and Syria and the Saudis "said, sure, we'll create ISIS for you".

Stephen Cohen: What we're saying, you and I, is that these people in Washington, and it's not just senator McCain, whatever his other virtues may or may not be, or Lindsey Graham, and by the way, there are Democrats standing right with him. The congressive wing of the Democratic Party has gone along with this war policy from the beginning. I think they're going to begin to break. I mean, I hear from contacts in Congress that now they're worried.

Thom Hartmann: Yeah. CNN's doing a story on Ukraine right this minute as we speak and the chyron says, "military: we will not withdraw heavy weapons". Now I don't know whose military is saying that.

Stephen Cohen: That's Ukrainian. That story's been coming out for the last 12 hours. What they're saying is, they can't withdraw their heavy artillery, and that's, that is the most essential part of the cease fire because as long as Kiev's heavy artillery can reach the big civilian cities of the east, rebels are going to protect their families there. I mean, just stop and think.

One other thing. The rebel army has not struck anywhere outside of the Donbass. They haven't invaded Kiev. The war is directed against the citizens of Donbass. In that sense it's a civil war. That artillery has to be withdrawn. It appears that Kiev is now in violation of the cease fire agreement. However, there were reports last night from not American, because we don't seem to have many war correspondents in this war, but non-American reporters there that both sides were beginning to pull back their artillery. That's good. But now you hear a war faction in Kiev saying, "we won't do it". Those are the same people, you asked me, you know, what's the tail wagging the dog in Kiev? That's these ultra right powerful political military figures in Kiev who have said they don't acknowledge Poroshenko's cease fire.

Now stop and think. Is this McArthur and Truman? Would it, I mean, Poroshenko is the president of the country. He is the Commander in Chief. He struts around in fatigue uniforms to look military. One of his commanders says to me, "no, you signed a cease fire agreement, my army will not obey it. We're fighting on". So there's...

Thom Hartmann: That's insubordination.

Stephen Cohen: It's insubordination, but let's go to Washington. Senator McCain and the others have their own foreign policy. They have it towards Syria. They have it toward Putin. They now see an opportunity, they think, to oppose that foreign policy on Obama. So I would say the day of reckoning has come for president Obama. He hasn't spoken directly, but whatever he does about the weapons, that's the key question now.

Thom Hartmann: The key question, what will he do about the weapons.

Stephen Cohen: Yeah.

Thom Hartmann: Fascinating stuff. Professor Stephen Cohen, Professor Emeritus of Russian Studies & Politics at NYU and Princeton. His book Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives is just now out in paperback. You can read his writings over at thenation.com. We'll be back. And Professor Stephen Cohen's writings you can easily find over at thenation.com. And thomhartmann.com will have a link to his books.

Thom Hartmann: Add welcome back. Professor Cohen, we have four minutes to wrap this all up. May I hand it to you to do so?

Stephen Cohen: You know Thom, you've been very good to me for a year. You've given me quality time, you've always kept questions right. I remember your own commentary on Europe when you came back from Germany a few months ago, I think...

Thom Hartmann: Yep.

Stephen Cohen: ... Led me to think about things I hadn't thought about. So sometimes I do a lot of talking, sometimes we have a dialogue. But, and I don't want to preach an epic here, but since you are one of the leading media spokesperson for what supposedly the progressive movement in the United States, I want to emphasize how different this struggle against cold war is today than it was in the seventies and eighties when we called it the struggle for detente. The American liberal left progressive movement is almost one hundred percent missing. It's absent.

Thom Hartmann: With regard to Ukraine.

Stephen Cohen: With Ukraine. It's not just Ukraine. We're now having a new cold war with Russia. We understood during the last cold war, but this has been forgotten, that for the sake of avoiding nuclear war we had to see that there were two sides to every story. We had to negotiate. We had to compromise. We had to find a settlement, and that was called detente. And eventually it led Reagan to sign, they thought, end of cold war deals with Gorbachev 25 years ago. But we can't find, those of us who are worrying, anyone in Congress on the left of center who will stand up and speak, who will come on the Thom Hartmann Program show and say, "No, we've done this wrong, we've got to rethink our policy" and then that would lead to the mainstream media, and that would lead to maybe other members of Congress. And believe me, we have made a lot of phone calls. And they're polite. They listen. But so far, they don't act publicly.

Thom Hartmann: Well, here's what I, I've spoken with a couple of politicians, shall we say, Democratic politicians, about this topic. And the feedback that I got is, "if I go out and start contradicting the White House, basically, on this issue as a Democrat, the punishment can be quite severe and I'm really putting myself out there and nobody's going to catch me". On the right, you know, McCain and Lindsey Graham, they know they can go total whack job in a "war, war, war, bomb, bomb Iran" and there will always be another hundred million dollars from the defense industry lobbyists to keep them going. Nothing like that on the left right now. I think you've got a lot of Democrats who are scared to death of this topic.

Stephen Cohen: It's all true, though we have found more conservative Republicans, at least in the House, who are deeply worried about this issue and beginning to move.

Thom Hartmann: Yes.

Stephen Cohen: And I think that if Senator Rand Paul was not afraid of Rubio, this would be his issue. This would be his issue. But to those Democratic politicians who say they're worried and afraid, that's not what being a politician or a leader is supposed to be about.

Thom Hartmann: Yep.

Stephen Cohen: I know that the old John Kennedy profile of courage wasn't entirely true and was a cliché, but what do we need politicians for who don't represent the best of the nation and the cause and who just worry about whether they are going to be re-elected? And all they need to do is remember those lonely handful of Democratic Senators and Congresspeople who challenged Lyndon Johnson at the beginning of the Vietnam war and history proved them to be right. And some, it's true, were not reelected.

Thom Hartmann: Yep. And then Barbara Lee in the modern era.

Stephen Cohen: They have to decide how they want to go down in history, as somebody who was re-elected, or somebody who was right.

Thom Hartmann: Professor Cohen, we're flat out of time. Professor Stephen Cohen, thanks so much for being with us today. I truly appreciate it.

Transcribed by Sue Nethercott.