[Peace-discuss] Chomsky Says Bush Needs Fear for Reelection

[C. G. Estabrook]

[This article comes with a picture of "Noam Chomsky, MIT professor of
linguistics and philosophy, talking with Cuban President Fidel Castro at a
conference of the Latin American Social Sciences Council (CLACSO), in
Havana October 28, 2003. Chomsky, in a lecture attended by Castro, said
President George W. Bush's administration will have to resort to a 'fear
factor' and 'manufacture' a new threat to U.S. national security to win
the 2004 elections." The Right in the US will have fun with that. --CGE]

	Published on Thursday, October 30, 2003 by Reuters
	U.S. Dissident Says Bush Needs Fear for Reelection
	by Anthony Boadle
 
HAVANA - U.S. linguist and political dissident Noam Chomsky said on
Wednesday that President Bush will have to "manufacture" another threat to
American security to win reelection in 2004 after U.S failure in occupying
Iraq.

Chomsky, attending a Latin American social sciences conference in Cuba,
said that since the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, the Bush
administration had redefined U.S. national security policy to include the
use of force abroad, with or without U.N. approval.

"It is a frightened country and it is easy to conjure up an imminent
threat," Chomsky said at the launching of a Cuban edition of a book of
interviews published by the Mexican newspaper La Jornada, when asked how
Bush could get reelected.

"They have a card that they can play ... terrify the population with some
invented threat, and that is not very hard to do," he said.

After the "disaster" of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Bush could turn his
sights on Communist-run Cuba, which his administration officials have
charged with developing a biological weapons research program, the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor of linguistics said.

Chomsky said the military occupation of Iraq, to topple a "horrible
monster running it but not a threat to anyone," was a failure.

"The country had been devastated by sanctions. The invasion ended
sanctions. The tyrant is gone and there is no outside support for domestic
dissidence," he said. "It takes real talent to fail in this endeavor."

Chomsky said it was reasonable to assume the Bush administration would try
to "manufacture a short-term improvement in the economy" by incurring in
enormous federal government debt and "imposing burdens on future
generations."

The Bush administration was a continuation of the Ronald Reagan presidency
that declared a national emergency over the threat posed by Nicaragua's
leftist government in the 1980s, he said.

"The same people were able to present Grenada as a threat to survival of
the United States the last time they were in office," Chomsky said, in
reference to the U.S. invasion of the Caribbean island in 1983 to thwart
Cuban influence.

Chomsky, a leftist icon who is better known today for his critique of U.S.
foreign policy that for his revolutionary theory of syntax and grammar in
the 1960s, gave a lecture on the U.S politics of domination on Tuesday
night that was attended by Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

The author of "Language and mind," "Manufacturing Consent," "Profit Over
People" and "9-11" said the Bush administration was out to dominate the
world by the use of military force if need be, and Iraq was the first
test.

Chomsky criticized Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar for backing the
United States and Britain in invading Iraq under a false pretext that the
Arab country possessed weapons of mass destruction.

Chomsky praised Cuba's defiance of U.S. hostility and trade sanctions for
four decades. But he also criticized the jailing of 75 Cuban dissidents
earlier this year by Castro's government.

"Yes, I have criticized them for that," he said in an interview on August
28 with Radio Havana. "I think it was a mistake."

Copyright © 2003 Reuters Limited