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Date: August 3, 2007 9:58:01 AM PDT
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Subject: Chomsky: "Ain't No Such Thing as 'War On Terror'"
Chomsky: 'There Is No War On Terror'
By Geov Parrish, AlterNet
Posted on January 14, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/30487/
For over 40 years, MIT professor Noam Chomsky has been one of the
world's leading intellectual critics of U.S. foreign policy. Today,
with America's latest imperial adventure in trouble both
politically and militarily, Chomsky -- who turned 77 last month --
vows not to slow down "as long as I'm ambulatory." I spoke with him
by phone, on Dec. 9 and again on Dec. 20, from his office in
Cambridge.
Geov Parrish: Is George Bush in political trouble? And if so, why?
Noam Chomsky: George Bush would be in severe political trouble if
there were an opposition political party in the country. Just about
every day, they're shooting themselves in the foot. The striking
fact about contemporary American politics is that the Democrats are
making almost no gain from this. The only gain that they're getting
is that the Republicans are losing support. Now, again, an
opposition party would be making hay, but the Democrats are so
close in policy to the Republicans that they can't do anything
about it. When they try to say something about Iraq, George Bush
turns back to them, or Karl Rove turns back to them, and says, "How
can you criticize it? You all voted for it." And, yeah, they're
basically correct.
How could the Democrats distinguish themselves at this point, given
that they've already played into that trap?
Democrats read the polls way more than I do, their leadership. They
know what public opinion is. They could take a stand that's
supported by public opinion instead of opposed to it. Then they
could become an opposition party, and a majority party. But then
they're going to have to change their position on just about
everything.
Take, for example, take your pick, say for example health care.
Probably the major domestic problem for people. A large majority of
the population is in favor of a national health care system of some
kind. And that's been true for a long time. But whenever that comes
up -- it's occasionally mentioned in the press -- it's called
politically impossible, or "lacking political support," which is a
way of saying that the insurance industry doesn't want it, the
pharmaceutical corporations don't want it, and so on. Okay, so a
large majority of the population wants it, but who cares about
them? Well, Democrats are the same. Clinton came up with some
cockamamie scheme which was so complicated you couldn't figure it
out, and it collapsed.
Kerry in the last election, the last debate in the election,
October 28 I think it was, the debate was supposed to be on
domestic issues. And the New York Times had a good report of it the
next day. They pointed out, correctly, that Kerry never brought up
any possible government involvement in the health system because it
"lacks political support." It's their way of saying, and Kerry's
way of understanding, that political support means support from the
wealthy and the powerful. Well, that doesn't have to be what the
Democrats are. You can imagine an opposition party that's based on
popular interests and concerns.
Given the lack of substantive differences in the foreign policies
of the two parties --
Or domestic.
Yeah, or domestic. But I'm setting this up for a foreign policy
question. Are we being set up for a permanent state of war?
I don't think so. Nobody really wants war. What you want is
victory. Take, say, Central America. In the 1980s, Central America
was out of control. The U.S. had to fight a vicious terrorist war
in Nicaragua, had to support murderous terrorist states in El
Salvador and Guatemala, and Honduras, but that was a state of war.
All right, the terrorists succeeded. Now, it's more or less
peaceful. So you don't even read about Central America any more
because it's peaceful. I mean, suffering and miserable, and so on,
but peaceful. So it's not a state of war. And the same elsewhere.
If you can keep people under control, it's not a state of war.
Take, say, Russia and Eastern Europe. Russia ran Eastern Europe for
half a century, almost, with very little military intervention.
Occasionally they'd have to invade East Berlin, Hungary,
Czechoslovakia, but most of the time it was peaceful. And they
thought everything was fine -- run by local security forces, local
political figures, no big problem. That's not a permanent state of
war.
In the War on Terror, however, how does one define victory against
a tactic? You can't ever get there.
There are metrics. For example, you can measure the number of
terrorist attacks. Well, that's gone up sharply under the Bush
administration, very sharply after the Iraq war. As expected -- it
was anticipated by intelligence agencies that the Iraq war would
increase the likelihood of terror. And the post-invasion estimates
by the CIA, National Intelligence Council, and other intelligence
agencies are exactly that. Yes, it increased terror. In fact, it
even created something which never existed -- new training ground
for terrorists, much more sophisticated than Afghanistan, where
they were training professional terrorists to go out to their own
countries.
So, yeah, that's a way to deal with the War on Terror -- namely,
increase terror. And the obvious metric, the number of terrorist
attacks, they've succeeded in increasing terror.
The fact of the matter is that there is no War on Terror. It's a
minor consideration. So invading Iraq and taking control of the
world's energy resources was way more important than the threat of
terror. And the same with other things. Take, say, nuclear terror.
The American intelligence systems estimate that the likelihood of a
"dirty bomb," a dirty nuclear bomb attack in the United States in
the next ten years, is about 50 percent. Well, that's pretty high.
Are they doing anything about it? Yeah. They're increasing the
threat, by increasing nuclear proliferation, by compelling
potential adversaries to take very dangerous measures to try to
counter rising American threats.
This is even sometimes discussed. You can find it in the strategic
analysis literature. Take, say, the invasion of Iraq again. We're
told that they didn't find weapons of mass destruction. Well,
that's not exactly correct. They did find weapons of mass
destruction, namely, the ones that had been sent to Saddam by the
United States, Britain, and others through the 1980s. A lot of them
were still there. They were under control of U.N. inspectors and
were being dismantled. But many were still there. When the U.S.
invaded, the inspectors were kicked out, and Rumsfeld and Cheney
didn't tell their troops to guard the sites. So the sites were left
unguarded, and they were systematically looted. The U.N. inspectors
did continue their work by satellite and they identified over 100
sites that were systematically looted, like, not somebody going in
and stealing something, but carefully, systematically looted.
By people who knew what they were doing.
Yeah, by people who knew what they were doing. It meant that they
were taking the high-precision equipment that you can use for
nuclear weapons and missiles, dangerous biotoxins, all sorts of
stuff. Nobody knows where it went, but, you know, you hate to think
about it. Well, that's increasing the threat of terror,
substantially. Russia has sharply increased its offensive military
capacity in reaction to Bush's programs, which is dangerous enough,
but also to try to counter overwhelming U.S. dominance in offensive
capacity. They are compelled to ship nuclear missiles all over
their vast territory. And mostly unguarded. And the CIA is
perfectly well aware that Chechen rebels have been casing Russian
railway installations, probably with a plan to try to steal nuclear
missiles. Well, yeah, that could be an apocalypse. But they're
increasing that threat. Because they don't care.
Same with global warming. They're not stupid. They know that
they're increasing the threat of a serious catastrophe. But that's
a generation or two away. Who cares? There's basically two
principles that define the Bush administration policies: stuff the
pockets of your rich friends with dollars, and increase your
control over the world. Almost everything follows from that. If
you happen to blow up the world, well, you know, it's somebody
else's business. Stuff happens, as Rumsfeld said.
You've been tracking U.S. wars of foreign aggression since Vietnam,
and now we're in Iraq. Do you think there's any chance in the
aftermath, given the fiasco that it's been, that there will be any
fundamental changes in U.S. foreign policy? And if so, how would it
come about?
Well, there are significant changes. Compare, for example, the war
in Iraq with 40 years ago, the war in Vietnam. There's quite
significant change. Opposition to the war in Iraq is far greater
than the much worse war in Vietnam. Iraq is the first war I think
in the history of European imperialism, including the U.S., where
there was massive protest before the war was officially launched.
In Vietnam it took four or five years before there was any visible
protest. Protest was so slight that nobody even remembers or knows
that Kennedy attacked South Vietnam in 1962. It was a serious
attack. It was years later before protest finally developed.
What do you think should be done in Iraq?
Well, the first thing that should be done in Iraq is for us to be
serious about what's going on. There is almost no serious
discussion, I'm sorry to say, across the spectrum, of the question
of withdrawal. The reason for that is that we are under a rigid
doctrine in the West, a religious fanaticism, that says we must
believe that the United States would have invaded Iraq even if its
main product was lettuce and pickles and the oil resources of the
world were in Central Africa. Anyone who doesn't believe that is
condemned as a conspiracy theorist, a Marxist, a madman, or something.
Well, you know, if you have three gray cells functioning, you know
that that's perfect nonsense. The U.S. invaded Iraq because it has
enormous oil resources, mostly untapped, and it's right in the
heart of the world's energy system. Which means that if the U.S.
manages to control Iraq, it extends enormously its strategic power,
what Zbigniew Brzezinski calls its critical leverage over Europe
and Asia. Yeah, that's a major reason for controlling the oil
resources -- it gives you strategic power. Even if you're on
renewable energy you want to do that. So that's the reason for
invading Iraq, the fundamental reason.
Now let's talk about withdrawal. Take any day's newspapers or
journals and so on. They start by saying the United States aims to
bring about a sovereign democratic independent Iraq. I mean, is
that even a remote possibility? Just consider what the policies
would be likely to be of an independent sovereign Iraq. If it's
more or less democratic, it'll have a Shiite majority. They will
naturally want to improve their linkages with Iran, Shiite Iran.
Most of the clerics come from Iran. The Badr Brigade, which
basically runs the South, is trained in Iran. They have close and
sensible economic relationships which are going to increase. So you
get an Iraqi/Iran loose alliance. Furthermore, right across the
border in Saudi Arabia, there's a Shiite population which has been
bitterly oppressed by the U.S.-backed fundamentalist tyranny. And
any moves toward independence in Iraq are surely going to stimulate
them, it's already happening. That happens to be where most of
Saudi Arabian oil is. Okay, so you can just imagine the ultimate
nightmare in Washington: a loose Shiite alliance controlling most
of the world's oil, independent of Washington and probably turning
toward the East, where China and others are eager to make
relationships with them, and are already doing it. Is that even
conceivable? The U.S. would go to nuclear war before allowing that,
as things now stand.
Now, any discussion of withdrawal from Iraq has to at least enter
the real world, meaning, at least consider these issues. Just take
a look at the commentary in the United States, across the spectrum.
How much discussion do you see of these issues? Well, you know,
approximately zero, which means that the discussion is just on
Mars. And there's a reason for it. We're not allowed to concede
that our leaders have rational imperial interests. We have to
assume that they're good-hearted and bumbling. But they're not.
They're perfectly sensible. They can understand what anybody else
can understand. So the first step in talk about withdrawal is:
consider the actual situation, not some dream situation, where Bush
is pursuing a vision of democracy or something. If we can enter the
real world we can begin to talk about it. And yes, I think there
should be withdrawal, but we have to talk about it in the real
world and know what the White House is thinking. They're not
willing to live in a dream world.
How will the U.S. deal with China as a superpower?
What's the problem with China?
Well, competing for resources, for example.
NC: Well, if you believe in markets, the way we're supposed to,
compete for resources through the market. So what's the problem?
The problem is that the United States doesn't like the way it's
coming out. Well, too bad. Who has ever liked the way it's coming
out when you're not winning? China isn't any kind of threat. We can
make it a threat. If you increase the military threats against
China, then they will respond. And they're already doing it.
They'll respond by building up their military forces, their
offensive military capacity, and that's a threat. So, yeah, we can
force them to become a threat.
What's your biggest regret over 40 years of political activism?
What would you have done differently?
I would have done more. Because the problems are so serious and
overwhelming that it's disgraceful not to do more about it.
What gives you hope?
What gives me hope actually is public opinion. Public opinion in
the United States is very well studied, we know a lot about it.
It's rarely reported, but we know about it. And it turns out that,
you know, I'm pretty much in the mainstream of public opinion on
most issues. I'm not on some, not on gun control or creationism or
something like that, but on most crucial issues, the ones we've
been talking about, I find myself pretty much at the critical end,
but within the spectrum of public opinion. I think that's a very
hopeful sign. I think the United States ought to be an organizer's
paradise.
What sort of organizing should be done to try and change some of
these policies?
Well, there's a basis for democratic change. Take what happened in
Bolivia a couple of days ago. How did a leftist indigenous leader
get elected? Was it showing up at the polls once every four years
and saying, "Vote for me!"? No. It's because there are mass popular
organizations which are working all the time on everything from
blocking privatization of water to resources to local issues and so
on, and they're actually participatory organizations. Well, that's
democracy -- and we're a long way from it.
Geov Parrish is a Seattle-based columnist and reporter for Seattle
Weekly, In These Times and Eat the State! He writes the "Straight
Shot" column for WorkingForChange. Noam Chomsky is an acclaimed
linguist and political theorist. Among his latest books are
Hegemony or Survival from Metropolitan Books and Profit Over
People: Neoliberalism and the Global Order published by Seven
Stories Press.
© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/30487/
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