Kennedy chooses NH to give anti-war speech

Jun. 20—GOFFSTOWN — Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. gave a major anti-war speech here Tuesday night, following the 60th anniversary of his late uncle President John F. Kennedy's seminal address that called for an end to the Cold War.

"I call on every American to join a new peace movement, to make your voices heard ... to celebrate no longer a wartime president but a president who keeps the peace," Kennedy said.

If elected, Kennedy said he would pursue policies of "peace, freedom and democracy" that he said used to be the American ideal that inspired the world.

Kennedy, 69, chose to speak at the Dana Center-Koonz Theatre on the campus of Saint Anselm College, the site where former President Donald Trump appeared last month for a CNN-sponsored town hall that in part led to the sacking of the media outlet's CEO.

The neocons in both major political parties have kept the country in a "constant state of war," Kennedy warned.

"When you see humans as fundamentally selfish and nations as fundamentally evil then all you have available to change their behavior are threats and bribes. Peace comes from a different place," Kennedy said.

An ardent foe of the military industrial complex, Kennedy opposed the Iraq War as well as the American involvement in the Russian invasion of Ukraine that he called a "U.S. war against Russia."

"We have surrounded Russia with missiles and military bases, something we would never tolerate if the Russians did (that) to us," Kennedy said.

Kennedy has called for a peace agreement in Ukraine in which the Dombas region would remain in Ukraine but be given territorial autonomy.

"War is inevitable only if we make it inevitable," Kennedy said. "The war in Ukraine could have been avoided even we now know as late as the spring of 2022."

Kennedy said recent presidents have refused to personally engage Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

"Maybe Russia won't respond, maybe they won't respond in kind or in any way but at least we will have known we tried," Kennedy said.

Kennedy: 'Can't Biden meet with Putin?'

Later he declared, "Can't Biden meet with Putin? Can't we at least begin a conversation."

Kennedy said the bellicose rhetoric from both political parties has poisoned domestic as well as foreign policy

"We have institutionalized a reflex of violence as the response to any and all crises. Everything becomes a war, war on drugs, war on terror, war on climate change. None of this has made us safer," Kennedy said.

Down the street from the event, anti-war protesters outside the New Hampshire Institute of Politics stood in front of a sign that read, "60 years ago, John F. Kenney called for an end to the threat of nuclear war."

Then-President Kennedy on June 10, 1963, gave an oft-cited, anti-war speech on the campus of American University.

"I speak of peace, therefore, as the necessary rational end of rational men," the late President Kennedy said. "I realize that the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war and frequently the words of the pursuer fall on deaf ears, but we have no more urgent task."

In that address, President Kennedy said Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev had just agreed to begin talks toward a comprehensive test ban treaty and he promised the U.S. would not conduct nuclear tests in the future unless other countries did so.

Overflow crowd

Robert Kennedy Jr.'s speech Tuesday night started more than a half hour late because the campaign was unable to get an overflow crowd through a very sensitive metal detector.

The campaign opened up two remote rooms for citizens to watch the speech who were without a seat in the main theatre hall.

"We literally have hundreds of people lined up the hill waiting for people to get in," said Kennedy Campaign Manager Dennis Kucinich, a former Ohio congressman and two-time presidential candidate.

Kennedy continues to engage in an unconventional presidential campaign, his first run for any major elective office.

A successful environmental lawyer, Kennedy dismisses the view that his challenge of President Joe Biden is a long shot that he cannot possibly win.

Kennedy has yet to engage in any retail campaigning in New Hampshire, choosing instead to give major speeches including one at the State House.

Later this week he is scheduled to speak to a Libertarian Party annual festival in Lancaster that celebrates the Free State Movement.

Kennedy has also done no major media interviews in New Hampshire thus far, instead picking selected national media outlets on occasion to answer their questions.

While Kennedy only started running in mid-April, some polls have him getting up to 20% of the vote in a horse race poll with Biden and observers believe there is further room for him to grow.

The president's allies in New Hampshire have warned that if Biden follows through on his plans not to file for office here, he runs the risk of losing the first-in-the-nation primary state to Kennedy.

Famous name not always a benefit

The famous name hasn't always translated into victory in New Hampshire, however.

In 1980, his uncle, then-Mass. Sen. Ted Kennedy, challenged President Jimmy Carter in the Democratic primary here.

Hugh Gallen, the Democratic governor at the time, endorsed Carter, who easily beat Kennedy here.

Some political observers suggest, however, the Kennedy challenge played a part in Republican Ronald Reagan making Carter a one-term president.

Robert Kennedy Jr.'s comments against vaccines and promoting conspiracy theories continue to spark controversy.

On Monday, YouTube removed a video of Kennedy speaking with podcast host Jordan Peterson for spreading what the company said was vaccine misinformation.

"We removed a video from the Jordan Peterson channel for violating YouTube's general vaccine misinformation policy, which prohibits content that alleges that vaccines cause chronic side effects, outside of rare side effects that are recognized by health authorities," YouTube said Monday in a statement.

Without notice, ABC News censored Kennedy's comments about vaccines from a major profile piece it had done on his candidacy.

klandrigan@unionleader.com