[Peace-discuss] Chomsky on the reason for the war

[C. G. Estabrook]

[Naturally, from a British paper.  --CGE]

 	The Independent
	Noam Chomsky: 'Controlling the oil in Iraq puts America in a
	strong position to exert influence on the world'
	The Monday Interview: Professor of linguistics at the
	Massachusetts Institute of Technology
	By David McNeill
	24 January 2005

Given the impossibly high praise lavished upon him - "One of the finest
minds of the twentieth century" (The New Yorker); "Arguably the most
important intellectual alive" (The New York Times) - it is hard to know
what to expect when Noam Chomsky enters the room, a beam of pure white
light perhaps, or at least the regal swish of academic royalty. Or the
whiff of sulphur. He has also been called a man with a "deep contempt for
the truth" (The Anti-Chomsky Reader) and an appeaser of Islamic fascism
(Christopher Hitchens), among some of the milder criticism.

So it is a surprise when a smiling, slightly stooped man with a diffident
air strolls into his office in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
in Boston, pours himself a coffee and apologises for keeping me waiting.

As has often been remarked, Professor Chomsky is modesty personified,
quietly spoken and generous with his time, diligently answering the
thousands of e-mails sent to him every week, a laborious task that eats up
seven hours a day; usually signing off simply with "Noam". "He recognises
no hierarchies," says Chomsky's long-time assistant, Bev Stohl. "He is
what people who love him say he is, a man who cares deeply for others."

Of all that has been said about him, Bono's quip "rebel without a pause"
fits as well as anything. At 76, and despite a recent struggle with
cancer, Chomsky seems to have increased his prodigious output. Bookshelves
across the world groan with his political writings, his voice can be heard
in radio interviews every week and apart from e-mailing and extensive
blogging he gives hundreds of speeches in dozens of cities every year.

"This is how it has been since 9/11," he says. "That had a complex effect
on the US which I don't think is appreciated abroad. The picture is that
it turned everyone into flag-waving maniacs, and that is just nonsense. It
opened people's minds and made a lot of people think, 'I'd better figure
out what our role is and why these things are happening'."

Chomsky's views on America's role in the world are well-known, thanks to
four decades of relentless political activity marked by his forensically
detailed demolition of the US official line. From the Vietnam War, which
he argued was fought to halt the spread of independent nationalism, not
communism, to the twin tower attacks, which he said were rooted in the
"fury and despair" caused by US policies, and his famous charge that every
post-war American president would have been hanged under the Nuremberg
Laws, Chomsky has been the acid in the belly of the US beast, using what
Arundhati Roy calls his "anarchist's instinctive mistrust of power" to eat
at its swaggering self-assurance.

Still, he says, he is amazed at how the invasion of Iraq has turned out in
what he believes "should have been one of the easier military occupations
in history". He says: "I thought the war itself would be over in two days
and that the occupation would immediately succeed. It was known to be the
weakest country in the region. The US never would have invaded otherwise.
The sanctions had killed hundreds of thousands and compelled the people to
rely on Saddam for survival, otherwise they probably would have overthrown
him."

"The country is obviously going to fall apart as soon as you push it. And
any resistance is going to have no outside support, a trickle but nothing
significant. But, in fact, it is proving harder than the German occupation
of Europe in the Second World War. The Nazis didn't have this much trouble
in Europe. But somehow the US has managed to turn it into an unbelievable
catastrophe. And it is partly because of the way they are treating people.
They have been treating people in such a way that engenders resistance and
hatred and fear."

The long-awaited Iraqi elections are to be held next Sunday but Chomsky
calls talk about a sovereign, independent, democratic Iraq a "poor joke".
He says: "I don't see any possibility of Britain and the US allowing a
sovereign independent Iraq; that's almost inconceivable. It will have a
Shia majority. Probably as a first step it will try to reconstitute
relations with Iran. Its not that they are pro-Khamenei [Iran's Supreme
Leader], they'll want to be independent. But it's a natural relationship
and even under Saddam they were beginning to restore relations with Iran."

"It might instigate some degree of autonomy in the largely Shia regions of
Saudi Arabia which happens to be where most of the oil is. You can project
not too far in the future a possible Shia-dominated region including Iran,
Iraq, oil-producing regions of Saudi Arabia which really would monopolise
the main sources of the world's oil. Is the US going to permit that? It is
out of the question. Furthermore, an independent Iraq would try to restore
its position as a great, perhaps leading power in the Arab world. Which
means it will try to rearm and confront the regional enemy, which is
Israel. It may well develop WMD to counter Israel's. It is inconceivable
that the US and the UK will permit this."

Chomsky believes comparisons of Iraq and Vietnam are mistaken, primarily
because Vietnam was not ultimately a defeat for American strategic aims.
"Vietnamese resources were not of that much significance. Iraq is
different. It is the last corner of the world in which there are massive
petroleum resources, maybe the largest in the world or close to it. The
profits from that must flow primarily to the right pockets, that is, US
and secondarily UK energy corporations. And controlling that resource puts
the US in a very powerful position to exert influence over the world."

One of the more surprising post-9/11 developments has been Chomsky's
falling out with erstwhile left colleagues, notably the writer Christopher
Hitchens, who accuses Chomsky of "making excuses for theocratic fascism"
and exercising "moral equivalency" in his discussions of 9/11 and US
imperialism. "In some awful way, Chomsky's regard for the underdog has
mutated into support for mad dogs," Hitchens said.

Chomsky says: "I don't care what sort of ranting and tantrums people have.
What does that mean, to equate 9/11 with US crimes? You can't even equate
9/11 with what they call the other 9/11 south of the border. In 9/11 1973,
in Chile, the president was killed, the oldest democracy in Latin America
was destroyed, the official number killed was 3,000 people. The actual
number is probably double that. In per capita relating to the US that's
100,000 people. It set up a brutal, vicious dictatorship, a virus that
spread through much of the rest of Latin America and helped induce a
tremendous wave of terror."

"How does that compare with 11 September, 2001? If you want to count
numbers and social consequences it is much worse. But it doesn't make
sense to compare them. They are atrocities on their own. And the ones we
are concerned with primarily are the ones we can stop."

"When Britain and the US invaded Iraq, it was with the reasonable
expectation that it was going to increase the threat of terror, as it has.
This means they are again contributing to terror of the 9/11 variety which
is likely to hit the US, which could be awesome. Sooner of later,
jihadist-style terror and WMD are going to come together and the
consequences could be horrendous. So if we care about jihadist-style
terror we don't want to be contributing to it."

Dealing with terror, Chomsky believes, requires a "dual programme" along
the lines of "what the British did in Northern Ireland". He says: "The
terrorist acts are criminal acts so you apprehend the guilty, use force if
necessary and bring them to a fair trial. They want to appeal to the
reservoir of understanding for what they're doing, even from people who
hate and fear them. If they can mobilise that reservoir they win. We can
help them mobilise that reservoir by violence or we can reduce it by
dealing with legitimate grievances."

"Every resort to violence has been a gift to the jihadists.  Respond with
violence which hits civilians and you're giving a gift to Osama bin Laden;
you're giving him the propaganda weapon he wants so he can say, 'We have
to defend Islam against the Western infidels trying to destroy it. We're
fighting a war of defence'."

"If you want to mobilise that constituency that is the way to intervene.
But there is another way and that is to pay attention to the legitimate
grievance. That's intervention too."

THE CV

Born: 7 December, 1928 in Philadelphia, son of William Chomsky, a Hebrew
scholar

1949: Marries linguist Carol Schatz. Three children

1955: Doctorate in linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania.

1957: His book Syntactic Structures revolutionises the field of
linguistics. Begins teaching at MIT

1964: Active against the Vietnam War, including organising tax strikes

1969: Lectures at MIT on "Government in the Future" and deeply impresses
the young and impressionable C. G. Estabrook, who sees no reason to change
his opinion 35 years later

1980-92: Cited as a source more than any other living scholar, Arts and
Humanities Citation Index shows

2001: Likens the 9/11 attacks to US bombing of al-Shifa pharmaceutical
plant in Sudan. Says in book after the attack: "Wanton killing of innocent
civilians is terrorism, not a war against terrorism"

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