[Peace-discuss] Chomsky, and yet again Chomsky
Jenifer Cartwright
jencart13 at yahoo.com
Mon Jan 28 14:33:33 CST 2008
Great article, thanks for posting, Carl.
Btw, folks, I caught Chomsky yesterday on C-SPAN 2. Very worth watching -- and tho' he didn't specifically mention his latest book, Interventions, he discussed the subject fully and well (what else from Chomsky??) From this link click on Watch Now (it's an hour and 12 minutes long)
www.booktv.org/program.aspx?ProgramId=9047&SectionName=&PlayMedia=No
Chomsky handled the interviewer (a scrappy little know-it-all who was off-base most of the time) gently, respectfully, and brilliantly (how else from Chomsky!) He gave a mind-altering response to a question at end re his reasons for pessimism and optimism about the state and future of the world.
--Jenifer
"C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at uiuc.edu> wrote:
Chomsky on World Ownership
Michael Shank | January 23, 2008
Editor: John Feffer
Foreign Policy In Focus
www.fpif.org
Noam Chomsky is a noted linguist, author, and foreign policy expert. On January
15, Michael Shank interviewed him on the latest developments in U.S. policy
toward Iraq, Iran, and Pakistan. In the first part of this two-part interview,
Chomsky also discussed how the U.S. governments belief in its ownership of the
world shapes its foreign policy.
Michael Shank: Is the leading Democrats policy vis-à-vis Iraq at all different
from the Bush administrations policy?
Noam Chomsky: Its somewhat different. The situation is very similar to Vietnam.
The opposition to the war today in elite sectors, including every viable
candidate, is pure cynicism, completely unprincipled: If we can get away with
it, its fine. If it costs us too much, its bad. Thats the way the Vietnam
opposition was in the elite sectors.
Take, say, Anthony Lewis, whos about as far to the critical extreme as you can
find in the media. In his final words evaluating the war in The New York Times
in 1975, he said the war began with blundering efforts to do good but by 1969,
namely a year after the American business community had turned against the war,
it was clear that the United States could not impose a solution except at a
price too costly to itself, so therefore it was a disastrous mistake. Nazi
generals could have said the same thing after Stalingrad and probably did.
Thats the extreme position in the left liberal spectrum. Or take the
distinguished historian and Kennedy advisor Arthur Schlesinger. When the war was
going sour under LBJ, he wrote that we all pray that the hawks are right and
that more troops will lead to victory. And he knew what victory meant. He said
were leaving a land of ruin and wreck, but we all pray that escalation will
succeed and if it does we may all be saluting the wisdom and statesmanship of
the American government. But probably the hawks are wrong, so escalation is a
bad idea.
You can translate the rhetoric almost word by word into the elite, including
political elite, opposition to the Iraq war.
Its based on two principles. The first principle is: we totally reject
American ideals. The only people who accept American ideals are Iraqis. The
United States totally rejects them. What American ideals? The principles of the
Nuremburg decision. The Nuremburg tribunal, which is basically American,
expressed high ideals, which we profess. Namely, of all the war crimes,
aggression is the supreme international crime, which encompasses within it all
of the evil that follows. Its obvious that the Iraq invasion is a pure case of
aggression and therefore, according to our ideals, it encompasses all the evil
that follows, like sectarian warfare, al-Qaeda Iraq, Abu Ghraib, and everything
else. The chief U.S. Prosecutor Robert Jackson, addressed the tribunal and said,
we should remember that were handing these Nazi war criminals a poisoned
chalice. If we ever sip from it we must be subject to the same principles or
else the whole thing is a farce. Well, it seems that almost no one in the
American elite accepts that or can even understand it. But Iraqis accept it.
The latest study of Iraqi opinion, carried out by the American military,
provides an illustration. There is an interesting article about it by Karen
DeYoung in the Washington Post. She said the American military is very excited
and cheered to see the results of this latest study, which showed that Iraqis
have shared beliefs. Theyre coming together. Theyre getting to political
reconciliation. Well, what are the shared beliefs? The shared beliefs are that
the Americans are responsible for all the horrors that took place in Iraq, as
the Nuremberg principles hold, and they should get out. Thats the shared
belief. So yes, they accept American principles. But the American government
rejects them totally as does elite opinion. And the same is true in Europe,
incidentally. Thats point number one.
The second point is that there is a shared assumption here and in the West that
we own the world. Unless you accept that assumption, the entire discussion that
is taking place is unintelligible. For example, you see a headline in the
newspaper, as I saw recently in the Christian Science Monitor, something like
New Study of Foreign Fighters in Iraq. Who are the foreign fighters in Iraq?
Some guy who came in from Saudi Arabia. How about the 160,000 American troops?
Well, theyre not foreign fighters in Iraq because we own the world; therefore
we cant be foreign fighters anywhere. Like, if the United States invades
Canada, we wont be foreign. And if anybody resists it, theyre enemy
combatants, we send them to Guantanamo.
The same goes for the entire discussion about Iranian interference in Iraq. If
youre looking at this from some rational standpoint, you have to collapse in
ridicule. Could there be Allied interference in Vichy France? There cant be.
The country was conquered and its under military occupation. And of course we
understand that. When the Russians complained about American interference in
Afghanistan, wed laugh. But when we talk about Iranian interference in Iraq,
going back to viable political candidates, every single one of them says that
this is outrageous meaning, the Iranians dont understand that we own the
world. So if anybody disrupts any action of ours, no matter what it is, the
supreme international crime or anything else, theyre the criminals. And we send
them to Guantanamo and they dont get rights and so on. And the Supreme Court
argues about it.
In fact, the same is true almost anywhere you look. Since we own the world,
everything we do is necessarily right. It can be too costly and then we dont
like it. Or there could be a couple of bad apples who do the wrong thing like
Abu Ghraib. Going back to the Nuremburg tribunal, they did not try the SS men
who threw people into the extermination chambers. The people who were tried were
the people at the top, like von Ribbentrop, the foreign minister, who was
accused of having supported a preemptive war. The Germans invaded Norway to try
to preempt a British attack against Germany. By our standards they were totally
justified. But Powell is not being tried. He is not going to be sentenced to
hanging.
Shank: And with a Democrat president, will that thinking fundamentally change?
Chomsky: Itll change. Theres a pretty narrow political spectrum, and in fact,
intellectual and moral spectrum. But its not zero. And the Bush administration
is way out at the extreme. In fact, so far out at the extreme that theyve come
under unprecedented attack from the mainstream.
I quoted Schlesinger on the Vietnam War. To his credit, he is perhaps the one
person in the mainstream who took a principled stand on the Iraq War. When the
bombing started in 2003, Schlesinger did write an op-ed in which he said that
this is a day which will live in infamy, quoting Franklin Delano Roosevelt, as
the United States follows the policies of imperial Japan. Thats principled.
There was no such principled critique when the liberal Democrats were doing it.
But his critique of the invasion of Iraq, from its first days, was unusual. It
is probably unique, so much so that its kind of suppressed. It reflects, first
of all, a change of sentiment in the country, and also the fact that the Bush
administration is so far out that theyre denounced right in the mainstream.
When the Bush administration came out with its National Security Strategy in
September 2002, which basically was a call for the invasion of Iraq, Foreign
Affairs, which is as respectable as you can get, ran an article just a couple of
weeks later by John Ikenberry, a mainstream historian and analyst, in which he
pretty sharply condemned what he called this new imperial grand strategy. He
said its going to cause a lot of trouble; its going to get us in danger.
Thats quite unusual. But in the case of Bush, theres plenty more like him. So
yes, theyre way out at the extreme. Any candidate now, maybe anyone except
Giuliani, will moderate somewhat the policies.
Shank: With Bushs campaign in the Gulf, rallying Gulf States against Iran,
whats the strategy now? Whats the importance of the timing of his tour?
Chomsky: First of all, remember that in the United States, which is a rich
powerful state which always wins everything, history is an irrelevance.
Historical amnesia is required. But among the victims thats not true. They
remember history, all over the Third World. The history that Iranians remember
is the correct one. The United States has been torturing Iran, without a stop,
since 1953. Overthrew the parliamentary government, installed the tyrant Shah
Reza Pahlavi, and backed him through horrible torture and everything else. The
minute the Shah was overthrown, the United States moved at once to try and
overthrow the new regime. The United States turned for support to Saddam Hussein
and his attack against Iran, in which hundreds of thousands of people were
slaughtered with chemical weapons and so on. The United States continued to
support Saddam.
In 1989, the Iran-Iraq war was all over. George Bush I, supposedly the moderate,
invited Iraqi nuclear engineers to the United States for advanced training in
weapons production. Iranians dont forget that. After what theyve just been
through, they should be able to see the total cynicism of whats happening.
Immediately after the war, which the United States basically won for Iraq by
breaking the embargo, shooting down Iranian commercial airplanes, and so on, the
Iranians were convinced that they couldnt fight the United States. So they
capitulated. Immediately after that the United States imposed harsh sanctions,
which continue, they got worse. Now the United States is threatening to attack.
This is a violation of the UN charter, if anybody cares, which bars the threat
of force. But outlaw states dont care about things like that.
And its a credible threat. Just a couple of weeks ago there was a confrontation
in the Gulf. Here the story is: look how awful the Iranians are. But suppose
Iranian warships were sailing through Massachusetts Bay or the Gulf of Mexico.
Would we think thats fine? But since we own the world of course its fine when
we do it off their shores. And were there for the benefit of the world, no
matter what we do, so its fine. But Iranians arent going to see it that way.
They dont like the threats of destruction. They dont like the fact that its a
very credible threat. Theyre surrounded on all sides by hostile American
forces. Theyve got the American Navy sending combat units to the Gulf.
Take this recent Annapolis meeting about Israel-Palestine. Why did they pick
Annapolis? Is that the only meeting place in the Washington area? Well, Iranians
presumably notice that Annapolis is the base from which the U.S. Navy is being
sent to threaten Iran. You think they cant see that? American editorial writers
and commentators cant see it, but Im sure Iranians can.
So yes, theyre living under serious constant threat. Its never ended since
1953. And Bush is now desperately trying to organize what Condoleezza Rice calls
the moderate Arab states, namely the most extreme, fundamentalist tyrannies in
the world, like Saudi Arabia. So the moderate Arab states, theyre trying hard
to organize them to join the United States in confronting Iran. Well, theyre
not going along. They dont tell Bush and Rice go home. Theyre polite and so on
but theyre not going along. Theyre continuing to enter into limited but real
relations with Iran. They dont want a conflict with them.
Shank: Did the National Intelligence Estimate offer a reprieve, any window at all?
Chomsky: I think so. I think it pulled the rug out from under people like Cheney
and Bush who probably wanted to have a war to end up their glorious regime. But
its going to be pretty hard to do it now. Although Olmert just announced again
yesterday that Israel is leaving open the option of attacking Iran, if Israel
decides that it is a threat. Israel, which is a U.S. client state, is granted a
right similar to that of the United States. The United States owns the world and
can do anything, and its client states can be regional hegemons. Israel wants to
make sure that it dominates the region and therefore can carry out whatever
policies it wants to in the occupied territories, invading Lebanon or whatever
it happens to be. The one threat that they cannot overcome on their own is Iran.
Israel and Iran had pretty good relations right through the 1980s. They were
clandestine relations but not bad. And now they recognize that Iran is the one
barrier to their complete domination of the region. So therefore they want the
United States, the big boy, to step in and take care of it and if the United
States wont, they claim theyll do it. I dont think they would unless the
United States authorized it. Its much too dangerous. They would do it only if
theyre pretty sure they can bring the United States in.
Shank: The presidential candidates in the Democratic Party are trying to one-up
each other on who can be more militaristic vis-à-vis Pakistan, who would bomb
first if there was actionable intelligence. Whats Washingtons role in helping
Pakistan now? Should it have a role and if it does what should it look like?
Chomsky: Again, theres a little bit of history that matters to people outside
centers of power. First of all, the United States supported Pakistani military
governments ever since Pakistan was created. The worst period was the 1980s,
when the Reagan administration strongly supported the Zia ul Haq regime, which
was a brutal harsh tyranny and also a deeply Islamic tyranny. So thats when the
madrassas were established, Islamic fundamentalism was introduced, they no
longer studied science in schools and things like that, and also when they were
developing nuclear weapons.
The Reagan administration pretended that it didnt know about the nuclear
weapons development so that it could get congressional authorization every year
for more funding to the ISI, the intelligence agencies, the fundamentalist
tyranny and so on. It ended up holding a tiger by the tail. It commonly happens.
The Reagan administration also helped create what turned into al-Qaeda in
Afghanistan at the same time. Its all interrelated. And they left Afghanistan
in the hands of brutal, vicious, fundamentalist gangsters, like their favorite
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar who got his kicks out of throwing acid in the face of women
in Kabul who werent dressed properly. Thats who Reagan was supporting.
The United States also tolerated the Khan proliferation system. In fact the
United States is still tolerating it. Khan is under whats called house arrest,
meaning just about anything he likes. And it continues with the support of the
Musharraf dictatorship. Now the United States is kind of stuck. The population
strongly opposes the dictatorship. The United States tried to bring in some kind
of compromise with Bhutto, whom they thought would be a pliable candidate. But
she was assassinated under what remain unclear circumstances. The ISI, the
intelligence agencies who are extremely powerful in Pakistan, have withdrawn
support for the extremist militants in the tribal areas and now theyre
beginning to fight back. In fact it was just reported that one of their leaders
has said that theyre going to continue to resist the Pakistani Army as theyve
been doing.
People who know the Middle East like Robert Fisk have been saying for years that
Pakistan is the most dangerous country in the world, for all kinds of reasons.
For one, its falling apart. There are rebellions in the Baluchi areas. The
tribal areas are now out of control of the ISI. There is a Sindhi opposition
movement. It could very well be a resistance movement especially after Bhuttos
assassination, since she was Sindhi. There are strong anti-Punjabi feelings
developing, against the Army, the elite and so on.
So the country is barely being held together. Its got nuclear weapons. Its
very anti-American. Take a look at popular opinion; its very strongly
anti-American, because they remember the history. We may forget it. We tell
ourselves how nice and wonderful we are, but other people, especially the people
who are at the wrong end of the club, they see the world as it is. So its very
anti-American. If the United States wants to do something there it has to get a
surrogate to come in and do it. Even the dictator that the United States
supports, Musharraf, and the army are strongly against any direct U.S.
involvement in the tribal areas, which the United States is now talking about.
Who knows what that could lead to, some other war against a country with nuclear
weapons?
The Bush administration is really playing with fire. I dont think it has a lot
of options at this point. If I were asked to recommend a policy I wouldnt know
what to say. Except to try to withdraw support from the dictatorship and allow
the popular forces to do something. The United States, for example, gave no
support to the lawyers and their opposition. It could have. The United States is
not all powerful, but it could have done something. But when Obama says, Okay
well bomb them, thats not very helpful.
[Michael Shank is a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus (www.fpif.org) and an
analyst with George Mason Universitys Institute for Conflict Analysis and
Resolution.]
###
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