[Peace-discuss] Chomsky -- cf. Bush

[C. G. Estabrook]

Published on Sunday, September 7, 2003 by the Toronto Star
There's Good Reason to Fear US
by Noam Chomsky
 

Amid the aftershocks of recent suicide bombings in Baghdad and Najaf, and
countless other horrors since Sept. 11, 2001, it is easy to understand why
many believe that the world has entered a new and frightening "age of
terror," the title of a recent collection of essays by Yale University
scholars and others.

However, two years after 9/11, the United States has yet to confront the
roots of terrorism, has waged more war than peace and has continually
raised the stakes of international confrontation.

On 9/11, the world reacted with shock and horror, and sympathy for the
victims. But it is important to bear in mind that for much of the world,
there was a further reaction: "Welcome to the club."

For the first time in history, a Western power was subjected to an
atrocity of the kind that is all too familiar elsewhere.

Any attempt to make sense of events since then will naturally begin with
an investigation of American power — how it has reacted and what course
it may take.

Within a month of 9/11, Afghanistan was under attack. Those who accept
elementary moral standards have some work to do to show that the United
States and Britain were justified in bombing Afghans to compel them to
turn over people suspected of criminal atrocities, the official reason
given when the bombings began.

Then, in September, 2002, the most powerful state in history announced a
new National Security Strategy, asserting that it will maintain global
hegemony permanently.

Any challenge will be blocked by force, the dimension in which the United
States reigns supreme.

At the same time, the war drums began to beat to mobilize the population
for an invasion of Iraq.

And the campaign opened for the mid-term congressional elections, which
would determine whether the administration would be able to carry out its
radical international and domestic agenda.

The final days of 2002, foreign policy specialist Michael Krepon wrote,
were "the most dangerous since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis," which
historian Arthur Schlesinger described, reasonably, as "the most dangerous
moment in human history."

Krepon's concern was nuclear proliferation in an "unstable
nuclear-proliferation belt stretching from Pyongyang to Baghdad,"
including "Iran, Iraq, North Korea and the Indian subcontinent."

Bush administration initiatives in 2002 and 2003 have only increased the
threats in and near this unstable belt.

The National Security Strategy declared that the United States, alone, has
the right to carry out "preventive war" — preventive, not pre-emptive
— using military force to eliminate a perceived threat, even if invented
or imagined.

Preventive war is, very simply, the "supreme crime" condemned at the
Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals.

From early September, 2002, the Bush administration issued grim warnings
about the danger that Saddam Hussein posed to the United States, with
broad hints that Saddam was linked to Al Qaeda and involved in the Sept.
11 attacks. The propaganda assault helped enable the administration to
gain some support from a frightened population for the planned invasion of
a country known to be virtually defenseless— and a valuable prize, at
the heart of the world's major energy system.

Last May, after the putative end of the war in Iraq, President Bush landed
on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln and declared that he had won a
"victory in the war on terror (by having) removed an ally of Al Qaeda."

But Sept. 11, 2003, will arrive with no credible evidence for the alleged
link between Saddam and his bitter enemy Osama bin Laden. And the only
known link between the victory and terror is that the invasion of Iraq
seems to have increased Al Qaeda recruitment and the threat of terror.

The Wall Street Journal recognized that Bush's carefully staged
aircraft-carrier extravaganza "marks the beginning of his 2004 re-election
campaign," which the White House hopes "will be built as much as possible
around national security themes."

If the administration lets domestic issues prevail, it is in deep trouble.

Meanwhile, bin Laden remains at large. And the source of the post-Sept. 11
anthrax terror is unknown — an even more striking failure, given that
the source is assumed to be domestic, perhaps even from a federal weapons
lab.

The Iraqi weapons of mass destruction are still missing, too.

For the second 9/11 anniversary and beyond, we basically have two choices.
We can march forward with confidence that the global enforcer will drive
evil from the world, much as the president's speech writers declare,
plagiarizing ancient epics and children's tales.

Or we can subject the doctrines of the proclaimed grand new era to
scrutiny, drawing rational conclusions, perhaps gaining some sense of the
emerging reality.

The wars that are contemplated in the war on terror are to go on for a
long time.

"There's no telling how many wars it will take to secure freedom in the
homeland," the president announced last year.

That's fair enough. Potential threats are limitless. And there is strong
reason to believe that they are becoming more severe as a result of Bush
administration lawlessness and violence.

We also should be able to appreciate recent comments on the matter by Ami
Ayalon, the 1996-2000 head of Shabak, Israel's General Security Service,
who observed that "those who want victory" against terror without
addressing underlying grievances "want an unending war."

The observation generalizes in obvious ways.

The world has good reason to watch what is happening in Washington with
fear and trepidation.

The people who are best placed to relieve those fears, and to lead the way
to a more hopeful and constructive future, are the people of the United
States, who can shape the future.

[Author Noam Chomsky is a political activist and professor of linguistics
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.]

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