Former presidential candidate and longtime U.S. senator George McGovern peppered an April 11 campus lecture on world hunger with expressions of his deep disagreement with the Iraq war, calling it a "hopeless morass," similar to that of Vietnam. Ending hunger worldwide would cost a fraction of what the United States has spent on the war, he said.

Hosted by Cornell's Program Board and Big Red Relief, McGovern, 84, a famously liberal politician, received a standing ovation from the audience as he strode to the podium in Statler Auditorium. His longtime passion for ending world hunger is perhaps as well known as his opposition to the Vietnam War and his presidential bid in 1972, in which he lost to Richard Nixon.

His roots on the hunger issue go back to his days as a World War II U.S. Air Force pilot, he recounted, when he was moved by his encounters with starving women and children in wartime Italy.

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy appointed McGovern to head the Food for Peace Program. Later, Kennedy authorized the start of what would become the United Nations World Food Program, now the largest food distribution agency in the world. In 2001, President Bill Clinton named McGovern U.N. global ambassador on world hunger. From 1963 to 1981 he was a U.S. senator for South Dakota.

Big Red Relief is hosting a benefit concert for victims of Darfur.

The concert will be at 7 p.m. in Bailey Hall Friday, April 13. For more information: http://rso.cornell.edu/bigredrelief/

Unlike many problems the world faces, McGovern said, feeding the 850 million hungry people in the world is one with an attainable solution.

"This is a problem that we can end," he said. "We can do it within the lifetime of most of the people in this room."

He praised the U.N.'s international school lunch program, a pilot venture begun in 2001 in which children around the world receive a free midday meal at school. He believes the program has caused enrollment jumps, increased academic performance and brought about a drop in birth rates as more young women are educated.

McGovern held an open question session after his speech, during which he both expressed disappointment in the current presidential administration and called the Democrats "soft."

Earlier in the evening, he hearkened back to his presidential bid of 1972, a landslide election in which McGovern carried the electoral votes of only Massachusetts and Washington, D.C.

"We didn't have the most votes, but we had the best ones," he said.