Noam Chomsky, born 1928

American linguist, anarchist, and social critic_________________

 

Click on the following to find books by Noam Chomsky: http://tinyurl.com/n5xa7

 

 

 

On Popular Culture

Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it's from Neptune.

 

Sports plays a societal role in engendering jingoist and chauvinist attitudes. They're designed to organize a community to be committed to their gladiators.

 

All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.

 

On Education

The intellectual tradition is one of servility to power, and if I didn't betray it I'd be ashamed of myself.

 

On Mass Media

The United States is unusual among the industrial democracies in the rigidity of the system of ideological control - "indoctrination," we might say - exercised through the mass media.

 

Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the U.S. media.

 

The more you can increase fear of drugs and crime, welfare mothers, immigrants and aliens, the more you control all the people.

 

Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.

 

On Censorship

Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever.

 

If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.

 

On Politics

I have often thought that if a rational Fascist dictatorship were to exist, then it would choose the American system.

 

Personally, I'm in favor of democracy, which means that the central institutions of society have to be under popular control. Now, under capitalism, we can't have democracy by definition. Capitalism is a system in which the central institutions of society are in principle under autocratic control.

 

If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged.

 

On Economics

Unlimited economic growth has the marvelous quality of stilling discontent while maintaining privilege, a fact that has not gone unnoticed among liberal economists.

 

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For a comprehensive list of essays by Noam Chomsky, visit the Noam Chomsky Archive on ZNet at http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/index.cfm

 

Nearly 800 articles by Chomsky at the above URL

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Israel, Palestine and the hypocrisy of power

 

The New Internationalist - www.newint.org

 

October 2007

 

If the US-Israel project prevails, argues Noam Chomsky, we may be about to witness a rare and sombre event - the death of a nation.

 

In January 2006 Palestinians voted in a carefully monitored election, pronounced free and fair by international observers. But Palestinians committed a grave crime, by Western standards. They voted the wrong way - for Hamas. The US instantly joined Israel in punishing them for their misconduct, with Europe toddling along behind as usual.

 

There is nothing novel about the reaction to these Palestinian misdeeds. It is obligatory to hail our leaders for their sincere dedication to bringing democracy to a suffering world, perhaps in an excess of idealism. However, the more serious scholar/advocates of the mission of 'democracy promotion' recognize that there is a strong line of continuity running through all US administrations. The US supports democracy if, and only if, it conforms to US strategic and economic interests. The project is pure cynicism, if viewed honestly. It should be described as blocking democracy, not promoting it.

 

The punishment of Palestinians for the crime of voting the wrong way was severe. With constant US backing, Israel increased its violence in Gaza, withheld funds that it was legally obligated to transmit to the Palestinian Authority, tightened its siege and, in a gratuitous act of cruelty, even cut off the flow of water to the arid Gaza Strip.

 

The Israeli attacks became far more severe after the capture of Corporal Gilad Shalit on 25 June, which the West portrayed as a terrible crime. Again, pure cynicism. Just one day before, Israel kidnapped two civilians in Gaza - a far worse crime than capturing a soldier - and transported them to Israel, where they presumably joined the roughly 1,000 prisoners held by Israel without charges, hence kidnapped. None of this merits more than a yawn in the West.

 

Rejectionist camp

 

There is no need here to run through the ugly details. The US-Israel made sure that Hamas would not have a chance to govern. The two leaders of the rejectionist camp flatly rejected Hamas's call for a long-term ceasefire to allow for negotiations in terms of the international consensus on a two-state settlement.

 

The US supports democracy if, and only if, it conforms to US strategic and economic interests

 

Meanwhile, Israel stepped up its programmes of annexation, dismemberment and imprisonment of shrinking Palestinian cantons in the West Bank, always with decisive US backing, despite occasional minor complaints accompanied by the wink of an eye and munificent funding. The programmes were formalized in Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's 'convergence programme', which spells the end of any viable Palestinian state. His programme was greeted in the West with much acclaim as 'moderate', because it did not satisfy the demands of 'greater Israel' extremists. It was soon abandoned as 'too moderate', again with mild notes of disapproval by Western hypocrites.

 

There is a standard operating procedure for overthrowing an unwanted government: arm the military to prepare for a military coup. The US-Israel adopted this conventional plan, arming and training Fatah to win by force what it lost at the ballot box. The US also encouraged Mahmoud Abbas to amass power in his own hands - steps that are quite appropriate in the eyes of Bush administration advocates of presidential dictatorship.

 

As for the rest of the Quartet, Russia has no principled objection to such steps, the UN is powerless to defy the Master, and Europe is too timid to do so. Egypt and Jordan supported the effort, consistent with their own programmes of internal repression and barring of democracy, with US backing.

 

The strategy backfired. Despite the flow of military aid, Fatah forces in Gaza were defeated in a vicious conflict. Many close observers described this as a pre-emptive strike, targeting primarily the security forces of the brutal Fatah strongman, Mohammed Dahlan.

 

However, those with overwhelming power can often snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, and the US-Israel quickly moved to turn the outcome to their benefit. They now have a pretext for tightening the stranglehold on the people of Gaza, cheerfully pursuing policies that the prominent international law scholar Richard Falk describes as a prelude to genocide that 'should remind the world of the famous post-Nazi pledge of "never again"'.

 

Conditions

 

The US-Israel can pursue this project unless Hamas meets the three conditions imposed by the 'international community' - a technical term referring to the US Government and whoever goes along with it. For Palestinians to be permitted to peek through the walls of their Gaza dungeon, Hamas must: (1) recognize Israel or, in a more extreme form, Israel's 'right to exist' - that is, the legitimacy of their expulsion from their homes; (2) renounce violence; (3) accept past agreements - in particular, the Road Map of the Quartet.

 

The hypocrisy again is stunning. No such conditions are imposed on those who wear the jackboots: (1) Israel does not recognize Palestine, in fact it is devoting extensive efforts to ensure that there will be no viable Palestine ever, always with decisive US support; (2) Israel does not renounce violence - and it is ridiculous even to raise the question with regard to the US; (3) Israel firmly rejects past agreements, in particular the Road Map.

 

The first two points are obvious. The third is correct, but scarcely known. While Israel formally accepted the Road Map, it attached 14 reservations that completely eviscerate it. To take just the first: Israel demanded that, for the process to commence and continue, the Palestinians must ensure an end to all hostilities, education for peace, cessation of incitement, dismantling of Hamas and other organizations. Even if they were to satisfy these virtually impossible demands, the Israeli Cabinet proclaimed that 'the Road Map will not state that Israel must cease violence and incitement against the Palestinians'. The other reservations continue in the same vein.

 

Israel's instant rejection of the Road Map, with US support, is unacceptable to the Western self-image, so it has been suppressed

 

Israel's instant rejection of the Road Map, with US support, is unacceptable to the Western self-image, so it has been suppressed. The facts did finally break into the mainstream with the publication of Jimmy Carter's Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. The book elicited a torrent of abuse and desperate efforts to discredit it, but the relevant sections - the only part of the book that would have been new to readers with some familiarity with the topic - were scrupulously avoided. The imperial mentality is so deeply embedded in Western culture that this travesty passes without criticism, even notice.

 

Now in a position to crush Gaza with even greater cruelty, Israel can also proceed, with US backing, to implement its plans in the West Bank, expecting to have the tacit co-operation of Fatah leaders, who will be amply rewarded for their capitulation. Among other steps, Israel began to release the funds - estimated at $600 million - that it had stolen in reaction to the January 2006 election, and is making a few other gestures. The programmes of undermining democracy are proceeding with shameless self-righteousness and ill-concealed pleasure, with gestures to keep the natives contented - at least those who play along. Israel continues its merciless repression and violence; and, of course, its immense projects to ensure that it will take over whatever is of value to it in the West Bank. All thanks to the benevolence of the gracious rich uncle.

 

Boycotts - for and against

 

What should concern us is that US-Israeli triumphalism, and European cowardice, might be the prelude to the death of a nation - a rare and sombre event.

 

A large majority of Americans oppose US Government policy and support the international consensus on a two-state settlement. Furthermore, a large majority also think that the US should deny aid to either of the contending parties - Israel and the Palestinians - if they do not negotiate in good faith towards this settlement. This is one of a great many illustrations of a huge gap between public opinion and public policy on critical issues.

 

I have always been sceptical about academic boycotts. There may be overriding reasons, but in general I think that those channels should be kept open. As for boycotts in general, they are a tactic, not a principle. Like other tactics, we have to evaluate them in terms of their likely consequences.

 

Let's consider South Africa and Israel, which are often compared in this context. In the case of South Africa, boycotts had some impact, but they were implemented after a long period of education and organizing, which had led to widespread condemnation of apartheid, even within mainstream opinion and powerful institutions. That included the US corporate sector, which has an overwhelming influence on policy formation. At that stage, boycott became an effective instrument.

 

The case of Israel is radically different. The preparatory educational and organizing work has scarcely been done. The result is that calls for boycott can easily turn out to be weapons for the hard right. Those who care about the fate of Palestinians will not undertake actions that harm them.

 

Nevertheless, carefully targeted boycotts, which are comprehensible to the public in the current state of understanding, can be effective instruments. One example is university divestment from corporations that are involved in US-Israeli repression and violence. In Europe, a sensible move would be to call for an end to preferential treatment for Israeli exports, until Israel stops its systematic destruction of Palestinian agriculture and barring of economic development. In the US, it would make good sense to call for reducing US aid to Israel by the estimated $600 million that Israel has stolen.

 

Looking farther ahead, a sensible project would be to support the stand of the majority of Americans that all aid to Israel should be cancelled until it agrees to negotiate seriously for a peaceful diplomatic settlement.

 

That, however, will require serious educational and organizational efforts. We can debate the extent to which Israel relies on US support. But there can be little doubt that its crushing of Palestinians, and other violent crimes, are possible only because the US provides it with economic, military, diplomatic and ideological support.

 

So, if there are to be boycotts, why not of the US, or Britain, or other criminal states? We know the answer - and it is not an attractive one.

 

This is an excerpt from an interview with the Lambeth and Wandsworth

(London) branch of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, conducted in July

2007. A full version of the interview can be found on the NI website, www.newint.org

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A Revolution is Just Below the Surface

September 28th 2007, by Eva Golinger

 

On September 21, 2007, I had the extraordinary opportunity to interview Noam Chomsky in his office at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The interview will be aired on Venezuelan and Latin American television as part of the promotion for the III International Book Fair in Venezuela, which this year focuses on the theme: "United States: Is Revolution Possible?" The transcription of the interview follows.

 

EVA: I read a quote of yours which said power is always illegitimate unless it proves itself to be legitimate. So in Venezuela right now we are in the process of Constitutional reform. And within that reform the People's Power is going to gain Constitutional rank, above in fact all the other state powers, the executive, legislative and judicial powers, and in Venezuela we also have the electoral and the citizen's power. Would this be an example of power becoming legitimate? A people's power? And could this change the way power is viewed? And change the face of Latin America considering that the Bolivarian Revolution is having such an influence over other countries in the region?

 

CHOMSKY: Your word, the word "could", is the right word. Yes it "could" , but it depends how it is implemented. In principle it seems to be a very powerful and persuasive conception, but everything always depends on implementation. If there is really authentic popular participation in the decision-making and the free association of communities, yeah, that could be tremendously important. In fact that's essentially the traditional anarchist ideal. That's what was realized the only time for about a year in Spain in 1936 before it was crushed by outside forces, in fact all outside forces, Stalinst Russia, Hitler in Germany, Mussilini's fascism and the Western democracies cooperated in crushing it. They were all afraid of it. But that was something like what you are describing, and if it can function and survive and really disperse power down to participants and their communities, it could be extremely important.

 

[...]

 

http://64.191.57.43/analysis/2659

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There Will Be a Cold War Between Iran and the U.S.

 

http://www.alternet.org/story/58243

 

By Noam Chomsky, City Lights. Posted July 30, 2007.

 

Despite the saber-rattling, it is unlikely that the Bush administration will attack Iran. A "cold war" of sorts between the two is likely to ensue. Tools EMAIL PRINT The following is an excerpt from Noam Chomsky's new book Interventions published by City Lights Books. The excerpt first appeared in Z Magazine.

 

In the energy-rich Middle East, only two countries have failed to subordinate themselves to Washington's basic demands: Iran and Syria. Accordingly both are enemies, Iran by far the more important.

 

As was the norm during the Cold War, resort to violence is regularly justified as a reaction to the malign influence of the main enemy, often on the flimsiest of pretexts. Unsurprisingly, as Bush send s more troops to Iraq, tales surface of Iranian interference in the internal affairs of Iraq -- a country otherwise free from any foreign interference, on the tacit assumption that Washington rules the world.

 

In the Cold War-like mentality that prevails in Washington, Tehran is portrayed as the pinnacle in the so-called Shiite Crescent that stretches from Iran to Hezbollah in Lebanon, through Shiite southern Iraq and Syria. And again unsurprisingly, the "surge" in Iraq and escalation of threats and accusations against Iran is accompanied by grudging willingness to attend a conference of regional powers, with the agenda limited to Iraq-more narrowly, to attaining U.S. goals in Iraq.

 

Presumably this minimal gesture toward diplomacy is intended to allay the growing fears and anger elicited by Washington's heightened aggressiveness, with forces deployed in position to attack Iran and regular provocations and threats.

 

For the United States, the primary issue in the Middle East has been and remains effective control of its unparalleled energy resources. Access is a secondary matter. Once the oil is on the seas it goes anywhere. Control is understood to be an instrument of global dominance.

 

Iranian influence in the "crescent" challenges U.S. control. By an accident of geography, the world's major oil resources are in largely Shiite areas of the Middle East: southern Iraq, adjacent regions of Saudi Arabia and Iran, with some of the major reserves of natural gas as well. Washington's worst nightmare would be a loose Shiite alliance controlling most of the world's oil and independent of the United States.

 

Such a bloc, if it emerges, might even join the Asian Energy Security Grid and Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), based in China. Iran, which already had observer status, is to be admitted as a member of the SCO. The Hong Kong South China Morning Post reported in June 2006 that "Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stole the limelight at the annual meeting of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO) by calling on the group to unite against other countries as his nation faces criticism over its nuclear programme." The non-aligned movement meanwhile affirmed Iran's "inalienable right" to pursue these programs, and the SCO (which includes the states of Central Asia) "called on the United States to set a deadline for the withdrawal of military installations from all member states.

 

If the Bush planners bring that about, they will have seriously undermined the U.S. position of power in the world.

 

To Washington, Tehran's principal offense has been its defiance, going back to the overthrow of the Shah in 1979 and the hostage crisis at the U.S. embassy. The grim U.S. role in Iran in earlier years is excised from history. In retribution for Iranian defiance, Washington quickly turned to support for Saddam Hussein's aggression against Iran, which left hundreds of thousands dead and the country in ruins. Then came murderous sanctions, and under Bush, rejection of Iranian diplomatic efforts in favor of increasing threats of direct attack.

 

Last July (2006), Israel invaded Lebanon, the fifth invasion since 1978. As before, U.S. support for the aggression was a critical factor, the pretexts quickly collapse on inspection, and the consequences for the people of Lebanon are severe. Among the reasons for the U.S.-Israel invasion is that Hezbollah's rockets could be a deterrent to a potential U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran.

 

Despite the saber-rattling, it is, I suspect, unlikely that the Bush administration will attack Iran. The world is strongly opposed. Seventy-five percent of Americans favor diplomacy over military threats against Iran, and as noted earlier, Americans and Iranians largely agree on nuclear issues. Polls by Terror Free Tomorrow reveal that "Despite a deep historical enmity between Iran's Persian Shiite population and the predominantly Sunni population of its ethnically diverse Arab, Turkish and Pakistani neighbors, the largest percentage of people in these countries favor accepting a nuclear-armed Iran over any American military action." It appears that the U.S. military and intelligence community is also opposed to an attack.

 

Iran cannot defend itself against U.S. attack, but it can respond in other ways, among them by inciting even more havoc in Iraq. Some issue warnings that are far more grave, among them by the respected British military historian Corelli Barnett, who writes that "an attack on Iran would effectively launch World War III."

 

The Bush administration has left disasters almost everywhere it has turned, from post-Katrina New Orleans to Iraq. In desperation to salvage something, the administration might undertake the risk of even greater disasters.

 

Meanwhile Washington may be seeking to destabilize Iran from within. The ethnic mix in Iran is complex; much of the population isn't Persian. There are secessionist tendencies and it is likely that Washington is trying to stir them up-in Khuzestan on the Gulf, for example, where Iran's oil is concentrated, a region that is largely Arab, not Persian.

 

Threat escalation also serves to pressure others to join U.S. efforts to strangle Iran economically, with predictable success in Europe. Another predictable consequence, presumably intended, is to induce the Iranian leadership to be as harsh and repressive as possible, fomenting disorder and perhaps resistance while undermining efforts of courageous Iranian reformers, who are bitterly protesting Washington's tactics. It is also necessary to demonize the leadership. In the West, any wild statement of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, immediately gets circulated in headlines, dubiously translated. But as is well known, Ahmadinejad has no control over foreign policy, which is in the hands of his superior, the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

 

The U.S. media tend to ignore Khamenei's statements, especially if they are conciliatory. For example, it's widely reported when Ahmadinejad says that Israel shouldn't exist-but there is silence when Khamenei says that Iran "shares a common view with Arab countries on the most important Islamic-Arabic issue, namely the issue of Palestine," which would appear to mean that Iran accepts the Arab League position: full normalization of relations with Israel in terms of the international consensus on a two-state settlement that the U.S. and Israel continue to resist, almost alone.

 

The U.S. invasion of Iraq virtually instructed Iran to develop a nuclear deterrent. Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld writes that after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, "had the Iranians not tried to build nuclear weapons, they would be crazy." The message of the invasion, loud and clear, was that the U.S. will attack at will, as long as the target is defenseless. Now Iran is ringed by U.S. military forces in Afghanistan, Iraq, Turkey and the Persian Gulf and close by are nuclear-armed Pakistan and particularly Israel, the regional superpower, thanks to U.S. support.

 

As already discussed, Iranian efforts to negotiate outstanding issues were rebuffed by Washington, and an EU-Iranian agreement was apparently undermined by Washington's refusal to withdraw threats of attack. A genuine interest in preventing the development of nuclear weapons in Iran -- and the escalating warlike tension in the region -- would lead Washington to implement the EU bargain, agree to meaningful negotiations and join with others to move toward integrating Iran into the international economic system, in accord with public opinion in the United States, Iran, neighboring states, and virtually the entire rest of the world.

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Guillotining Gaza

 

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18092.htm

 

By Noam Chomsky

 

07/30/07 -- -- - THE death of a nation is a rare and somber event. But the vision of a unified, independent Palestine threatens to be another casualty of a Hamas-Fatah civil war, stoked by Israel and its enabling ally the United States.

 

Last month's chaos may mark the beginning of the end of the Palestinian Authority. That might not be an altogether unfortunate development for Palestinians, given US-Israeli programmes of rendering it nothing more than a quisling regime to oversee these allies' utter rejection of an independent state.

 

The events in Gaza took place in a developing context. In January 2006, Palestinians voted in a carefully monitored election, pronounced to be free and fair by international observers, despite US- Israeli efforts to swing the election towards their favourite, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party. But Hamas won a surprising victory.

 

The punishment of Palestinians for the crime of voting the wrong way was severe. With US backing, Israel stepped up its violence in Gaza, withheld funds it was legally obligated to transmit to the Palestinian Authority, tightened its siege and even cut off the flow of water to the arid Gaza Strip.

 

The United States and Israel made sure that Hamas would not have a chance to govern. They rejected Hamas's call for a long-term cease- fire to allow for negotiations on a two-state settlement, along the lines of an international consensus that Israel and United States have opposed, in virtual isolation, for more than 30 years, with rare and temporary departures.

 

Meanwhile, Israel stepped up its programmes of annexation, dismemberment and imprisonment of the shrinking Palestinian cantons in the West Bank, always with US backing despite occasional minor complaints, accompanied by the wink of an eye and munificent funding.

 

Powers-that-be have a standard operating procedure for overthrowing an unwanted government: Arm the military to prepare for a coup. Israel and its US ally helped arm and train Fatah to win by force what it lost at the ballot box. The United States also encouraged Abbas to amass power in his own hands, appropriate behaviour in the eyes of Bush administration advocates of presidential dictatorship.

 

The strategy backfired. Despite the military aid, Fatah forces in Gaza were defeated last month in a vicious conflict, which many close observers describe as a pre-emptive strike targeting primarily the security forces of the brutal Fatah strongman Mohammed Dahlan. Israel and the United States quickly moved to turn the outcome to their benefit. They now have a pretext for tightening the stranglehold on the people of Gaza.

 

'To persist with such an approach under present circumstances is indeed genocidal, and risks destroying an entire Palestinian community that is an integral part of an ethnic whole,' writes international law scholar Richard Falk.

 

This worst-case scenario may unfold unless Hamas meets the three conditions imposed by the 'international community' - a technical term referring to the US government and whoever goes along with it. For Palestinians to be permitted to peek out of the walls of their Gaza dungeon, Hamas must recognise Israel, renounce violence and accept past agreements, in particular, the Road Map of the Quartet (the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations).

 

The hypocrisy is stunning. Obviously, the United States and Israel do not recognise Palestine or renounce violence. Nor do they accept past agreements. While Israel formally accepted the Road Map, it attached 14 reservations that eviscerate it. To take just the first, Israel demanded that for the process to commence and continue, the Palestinians must ensure full quiet, education for peace, cessation of incitement, dismantling of Hamas and other organisations, and other conditions; and even if they were to satisfy this virtually impossible demand, the Israeli cabinet proclaimed that 'the Roadmap will not state that Israel must cease violence and incitement against the Palestinians.'

 

Israel's rejection of the Road Map, with US support, is unacceptable to the Western self-image, so it has been suppressed. The facts finally broke into the mainstream with Jimmy Carter's book, 'Palestine: Peace not Apartheid,' which elicited a torrent of abuse and desperate efforts to discredit it.

 

While now in a position to crush Gaza, Israel can also proceed, with US backing, to implement its plans in the West Bank, expecting to have the tacit cooperation of Fatah leaders who will be rewarded for their capitulation. Among other steps, Israel began to release the funds - estimated at $600 million - that it had illegally frozen in reaction to the January 2006 election.

 

Ex-prime minister Tony Blair is now to ride to the rescue. To Lebanese political analyst Rami Khouri, 'appointing Tony Blair as special envoy for Arab-Israeli peace is something like appointing the Emperor Nero to be the chief fireman of Rome.' Blair is the Quartet's envoy only in name. The Bush administration made it clear at once that he is Washington's envoy, with a very limited mandate. Secretary of State Rice (and President Bush) retain unilateral control over the important issues, while Blair would be permitted to deal only with problems of institution-building.

 

As for the short-term future, the best case would be a two-state settlement, per the international consensus. That is still by no means impossible. It is supported by virtually the entire world, including the majority of the US population. It has come rather close, once, during the last month of Bill Clinton's presidency - the sole meaningful US departure from extreme rejectionism during the past 30 years. In January 2001, the United States lent its support to the negotiations in Taba, Egypt, that nearly achieved such a settlement before they were called off by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

 

In their final Press conference, the Taba negotiators expressed hope that if they had been permitted to continue their joint work, a settlement could have been reached. The years since have seen many horrors, but the possibility remains. As for the likeliest scenario, it looks unpleasantly close to the worst case, but human affairs are not predictable: Too much depends on will and choice.

---

 

Noam Chomsky is a professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the author, most recently, of Hegemony or Survival Americas Quest for Global Dominance.

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Imminent Crises: Threats and Opportunities

 

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=22&ItemID=13171

 

Thu Jun 28, 2007 11:55 am (PST)

Excerpt:

 

"The latest Bush administration's National Security Strategy, released March

2006, describes China as the greatest long-term threat to U.S. global dominance. The threat is not military, but economic. The document warns that Chinese leaders are not only "expanding trade, but acting as if they can somehow 'lock up' energy supplies around the world or seek to direct markets rather than opening them up."11 In the U.S.-China meetings in Washington a few weeks ago, President Bush warned President Hu Jintao against trying to "lock up" global supplies. Bush condemned China's reliance on oil from Sudan, Burma, and Iran, accusing China of opposition to free trade and human rights-unlike Washington, which imports only from pure democracies that worship human rights, like Equatorial Guinea, one of the most vicious African dictatorships; Colombia, which has by far the worst human rights record in Latin America; Central Asian states; and other paragons of virtue. No respectable person woul! d accuse Washington of "locking up" global supplies when it pursues its traditional "open door policy" and outright aggression to ensure that it dominates global energy supplies, firmly holding "the tools of intimidation and blackmail." It is interesting, perhaps, that none of this elicits ridicule in the West, or even notice."

==============

 

Full article:

 

Imminent Crises: Threats and Opportunities by Noam Chomsky Monthly Review; June 27, 2007

 

Regrettably, there are all too many candidates that qualify as imminent and very serious crises. Several should be high on everyone's agenda of concern, because they pose literal threats to human survival: the increasing likelihood of a terminal nuclear war, and environmental disaster, which may not be too far removed. However, I would like to focus on narrower issues, those that are of greatest concern in the West right now. I will be speaking primarily of the United States, which I know best, and it is the most important case because of its enormous power. But as far as I can ascertain, Europe is not very different.

 

The area of greatest concern is the Middle East. There is nothing novel about that. I often have to arrange talks years in advance. If I am asked for a title, I suggest "The Current Crisis in the Middle East." It has yet to fail. There's a good reason: the huge energy resources of the region were recognized by Washington sixty years ago as a "stupendous source of strategic power," the "strategically most important area of the world," and "one of the greatest material prizes in world history."1 Control over this stupendous prize has been a primary goal of U.S. policy ever since, and threats to it have naturally aroused enormous concern.

 

For years it was pretended that the threat was from the Russians, the routine pretext for violence and subversion all over the world. In the case of the Middle East, we do not have to consider this pretext, since it was officially abandoned. When the Berlin Wall fell, the first Bush administration released a new National Security Strategy, explaining that everything would go as before but within a new rhetorical framework. The massive military system is still necessary, but now because of the "technological sophistication of third world powers"-which at least comes closer to the truth-the primary threat, worldwide, has been indigenous nationalism. The official document explained further that the United States would maintain its intervention forces aimed at the Middle East, where "the threat to our interests" that required intervention "could not be laid at the Kremlin's door," contrary to decades of fabrication.2 As is normal, all of this passed without comment.

 

The most serious current problem in the minds of the population, by far, is Iraq. And the easy winner in the competition for the country that is the most feared is Iran, not because Iran really poses a severe threat, but because of a drumbeat of government-media propaganda. That is a familiar pattern. The most recent example is Iraq. The invasion of Iraq was virtually announced in September 2002. As we now know, the U.S.-British invasion was already underway in secret. In that month, Washington initiated a huge propaganda campaign, with lurid warnings by Condoleezza Rice and others that the next message from Saddam Hussein would be a mushroom cloud in New York City. Within a few weeks, the government-media propaganda barrage had driven Americans completely off the international spectrum. Saddam may have been despised almost everywhere, but it was only in the United States that a majority of the population were terrified of what he might do to them, tomorrow. Not surprisingly! , support for the war correlated very closely with such fears. That has been achieved before, in amazing ways during the Reagan years, and there is a long and illuminating earlier history. But I will keep to the current monster being crafted by the doctrinal system, after a few words about Iraq.

 

There is a flood of commentary about Iraq, but very little reporting. Journalists are mostly confined to fortified areas in Baghdad, or embedded within the occupying army. That is not because they are cowards or lazy, but because it is simply too dangerous to be anywhere else. That has not been true in earlier wars. It is an astonishing fact that the United States and Britain have had more trouble running Iraq than the Nazis had in occupied Europe, or the Russians in their East European satellites, where the countries were run by local civilians and security forces, with the iron fist poised if anything went wrong but usually in the background. In contrast, the United States has been unable to establish an obedient client regime in Iraq, under far easier conditions.

 

Putting aside doctrinal blinders, what should be done in Iraq? Before answering, we should be clear about some basic principles. The major principle is that an invader has no rights, only responsibilities. The first responsibility is to pay reparations. The second responsibility is to follow the will of the victims. There is actually a third responsibility: to bring criminals to trial, but that obligation is so remote from the imperial mentality of Western culture that I will put it aside.

 

The responsibility to pay reparations to Iraqis goes far beyond the crime of aggression and its terrible aftermath. The United States and Britain have been torturing the population of Iraq for a long time. In recent history, both governments strongly supported Saddam Hussein's terrorist regime through the period of his worst crimes, and long after the end of the war with Iran. Iran finally capitulated, recognizing that it could not fight the United States, which was, by then, openly participating in Saddam's aggression-something that Iranians have surely not forgotten, even if Westerners have. Dismissing history is always a convenient stance for those who hold the clubs, but their victims usually prefer to pay attention to the real world. After the Iran-Iraq war, Washington and London continued to provide military equipment to their friend Saddam, including means to develop weapons of mass destruction and delivery systems. Iraqi nuclear engineers were even being brought to t! he United States for instruction in developing nuclear weapons in 1989, long after Saddam's worst atrocities and Iran's capitulation.

 

Immediately after the 1991 Gulf War, the United States and the United Kingdom returned to their support for Saddam when they effectively authorized him to use heavy military equipment to suppress a Shi'ite uprising that might well have overthrown the tyrant. The reasons were publicly explained. The New York Times reported that there was a "strikingly unanimous view" among the United States and its allies, Britain and Saudi Arabia, that "whatever the sins of the Iraqi leader, he offered the West and the region a better hope for his country's stability than did those who have suffered his repression"; the term "stability" is a code word for "following orders."3 New York Times chief diplomatic correspondent Thomas Friedman explained that "the best of all worlds" for Washington would be an "iron-fisted military junta" ruling Iraq just the way Saddam did. But lacking that option, Washington had to settle for second-best: Saddam himself. An unthinkable option-then and now-is that ! Iraqis should rule Iraq independently of the United States.

 

Then followed the murderous sanctions regime imposed by the United States and Britain, which killed hundreds of thousands of people, devastated Iraqi civilian society, strengthened the tyrant, and forced the population to rely on him for survival. The sanctions probably saved Saddam from the fate of other vicious tyrants, some quite comparable to him, who were overthrown from within despite strong support from the United States and United Kingdom to the end of their bloody rule: Ceausescu, Suharto, and quite a rogues gallery of others, to which new names are being added regularly. Again, all of this is boring ancient history for those who hold the clubs, but not for their victims, or for people who prefer to understand the world. All of those actions, and much more, call for reparations, on a massive scale, and the responsibility extends to others as well. But the deep moral-intellectual crisis of imperial culture prevents any thought of such topics as these.

 

The second responsibility is to obey the will of the population. British and U.S. polls provide sufficient evidence about that. The most recent polls find that 87 percent of Iraqis want a "concrete timeline for US withdrawal," up from 76 percent in 2005.4 If the reports really mean Iraqis, as they say, that would imply that virtually the entire population of Arab Iraq, where the U.S. and British armies are deployed, wants a firm timetable for withdrawal. I doubt that one would have found comparable figures in occupied Europe under the Nazis, or Eastern Europe under Russian rule.

 

Bush-Blair and associates declare, however, that there can be no timetable for withdrawal. That stand in part reflects the natural hatred for democracy among the powerful, often accompanied by eloquent calls for democracy. The calls for democracy moved to center stage after the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, so a new motive had to be invented for the invasion. The president announced the doctrine to great acclaim in November 2003, at the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington. He proclaimed that the real reason for the invasion was not Saddam's weapons programs, as Washington and London had insistently claimed, but rather Bush's messianic mission to promote democracy in Iraq, the Middle East, and elsewhere. The media and prominent scholars were deeply impressed, relieved to discover that the "liberation of Iraq" is perhaps the "most noble" war in history, as leading liberal commentators announced-a sentiment echoed even by critics, who objected ! that the "noble goal" may be beyond our means, and those to whom we are offering this wonderful gift may be too backward to accept it. That conclusion was confirmed a few days later by U.S. polls in Baghdad. Asked why the United States invaded Iraq, some agreed with the new doctrine hailed by Western intellectuals: 1 percent agreed that the goal was to promote democracy. Another 5 percent said that the goal was to help Iraqis.5 Most of the rest took for granted that the goals were the obvious ones that are unmentionable in polite society-the strategic-economic goals we readily attribute to enemies, as when Russia invaded Afghanistan or Saddam invaded Kuwait, but are unmentionable when we turn to ourselves.

 

But rejection of the popular will in Iraq goes far beyond the natural fear of democracy on the part of the powerful. Simply consider the policies that are likely to be pursued by an independent and more or less democratic Iraq. Iraqis may have no love for Iran, but they would doubtlessly prefer friendly relations with their powerful neighbor. The Shi'ite majority already has ties to Iran and has been moving to strengthen them. Furthermore, even limited sovereignty in Iraq has encouraged efforts by the harshly repressed Shi'ite population across the border in Saudi Arabia to gain basic rights and perhaps autonomy. That is where most of Saudi Arabia's oil happens to be.

 

Such developments might lead to a loose Shi'ite alliance controlling the world's major energy resources and independent of Washington, the ultimate nightmare in Washington-except that it might get worse: the alliance might strengthen its economic and possibly even military ties with China. The United States can intimidate Europe: when Washington shakes its fist, leading European business enterprises pull out of Iran. But China has a three-thousand-year history of contempt for the barbarians: they refuse to be intimidated.

 

That is the basic reason for Washington's strategic concerns with regard to China: not that it is a military threat, but that it poses the threat of independence. If that threat is unacceptable for small countries like Cuba or Vietnam, it is certainly so for the heartland of the most dynamic economic region in the world, the country that has just surpassed Japan in possession of the world's major financial reserves and is the world's fastest growing major economy. China's economy is already about two-thirds the size of that of the United States, by the correct measures, and if current growth rates persist, it is likely to close that gap in about a decade-in absolute terms, not per capita of course.

 

China is also the center of the Asian Energy Security Grid and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which includes the Central Asian countries, and just a few weeks ago, was joined by India, Iran, and Pakistan as observers, soon probably members. India is undertaking significant joint energy projects with China, and it might join the Energy Security Grid. Iran may as well, if it comes to the conclusion that Europe is so intimidated by the United States that it cannot act independently. If Iran turns to the East, it will find willing partners. A major conference on energy last September in Teheran brought together government officials and scholars from Iran, China, Pakistan, India, Russia, Egypt, Indonesia, Georgia, Venezuela, and Germany, planning an extensive pipeline system for the entire region and also more intensive development of energy resources. Bush's recent trip to India, and his authorization of India's nuclear weapons program, is part of the jockeying over how ! these major global forces will crystallize. A sovereign and partially democratic Iraq could be another contribution to developments that seriously threaten U.S. global hegemony, so it is not at all surprising that Washington has sought in every way to prevent such an outcome, joined by "the spear carrier for the pax americana," as Blair's Britain is described by Michael MccGwire in Britain's leading journal of international affairs.6

 

If the United States were compelled to grant some degree of sovereignty to Iraq, and any of these consequences would ensue, Washington planners would be facing the collapse of one of their highest foreign policy objectives since the Second World War, when the United States replaced Britain as the world-dominant power: the need to control "the strategically most important area of the world." What has been central to planning is control, not access, an important distinction. The United States followed the same policies long before it relied on a drop of Middle East oil, and would continue to do so if it relied on solar energy. Such control gives the United States "veto power" over its industrial rivals, as explained in the early postwar period by influential planners, and reiterated recently with regard to Iraq: a successful conquest of Iraq would give the United States "critical leverage" over its industrial rivals, Europe and Asia, as pointed out by Zbigniew Brzezinski, an i! mportant figure in the planning community. Vice President Dick Cheney made the same point, describing control over petroleum supplies as "tools of intimidation and blackmail"-when used by others.7 He went on to urge the dictatorships of Central Asia, Washington's models of democracy, to agree to pipeline construction that ensures that the tools remain in Washington's hands.

 

The thought is by no means original. At the dawn of the oil age almost ninety years ago, Britain's first lord of the admiralty Walter Hume Long explained that "if we secure the supplies of oil now available in the world we can do what we like."8 Woodrow Wilson also understood this crucial point. Wilson expelled the British from Venezuela, which by 1928 had become the world's leading oil exporter, with U.S. companies then placed in charge. To achieve this goal, Wilson and his successors supported the vicious and corrupt dictator of Venezuela and ensured that he would bar British concessions. Meanwhile the United States continued to demand-and secure-U.S. oil rights in the Middle East, where the British and French were in the lead.

 

We might note that these events illustrate the actual meaning of the "Wilsonian idealism" admired by Western intellectual culture, and also provide the real meaning of "free trade" and the "open door." Sometimes that is even officially acknowledged. When the post-Second World War global order was being shaped in Washington, a State Department memorandum on U.S. petroleum policy called for preserving absolute U.S. control of Western hemisphere resources "coupled with insistence upon the Open Door principle of equal opportunity for United States companies in new areas."9 That is a useful illustration of "really existing free market doctrine": What we have, we keep, closing the door to others; what we do not yet have, we take, under the principle of the Open Door. All of this illustrates the one really significant theory of international relations, the maxim of Thucydides: the strong do as they can, and the weak suffer as they must.

 

With regard to Iraq today, talk about exit strategies means very little unless these realities are confronted. How Washington planners will deal with these problems is far from clear. And they face similar problems elsewhere. Intelligence projections for the new millennium were that the United States would control Middle East oil as a matter of course, but would itself rely on more stable Atlantic Basin reserves: West African dictatorships' and the Western hemisphere's. But Washington's postwar control of South America, from Venezuela to Argentina, is seriously eroding. The two major instruments of control have been violence and economic strangulation, but each weapon is losing its efficacy. The latest attempt to sponsor a military coup was in 2002, in Venezuela, but the United States had to back down when the government it helped install was quickly overthrown by popular resistance, and there was turmoil in Latin America, where democracy is taken much more seriously than in! the West and overthrow of a democratically elected government is no longer accepted quietly. Economic controls are also eroding. South American countries are paying off their debts to the IMF-basically an offshoot of the U.S. Treasury department. More frightening yet to Washington, these countries are being aided by Venezuela. The president of Argentina announced that the country would "rid itself of the IMF." Rigorous adherence to IMF rules had led to economic disaster, from which the country recovered by radically violating the rules. Brazil too had rid itself of the IMF, and Bolivia probably will as well, again aided by Venezuela. U.S. economic controls are seriously weakening.

 

Washington's main concern is Venezuela, the leading oil producer in the Western hemisphere. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that its reserves might be greater than Saudi Arabia's if the price of oil stays high enough for exploitation of its expensive extra-heavy oil to become profitable. Extreme U.S. hostility and subversion has accelerated Venezuela's interest in diversifying exports and investment, and China is more than willing to accept the opportunity, as it is with other resource-rich Latin American exporters. The largest gas reserves in South America are in Bolivia, which is now following much the same path as Venezuela. Both countries pose a problem for Washington in other respects. They have popularly elected governments. Venezuela leads Latin America in support for the elected government, increasing sharply in the past few years under Chávez. He is bitterly hated in the United States because of his independence and enormous popular support. Bolivia just had! a democratic election of a kind next to inconceivable in the West. There were serious issues that the population understood very well, and there was active participation of the general population, who elected someone from their own ranks, from the indigenous majority. Democracy is always frightening to power centers, particularly when it goes too far beyond mere form and involves actual substance.

 

Commentary on what is happening reveals the nature of the fears. London's Financial Times warned that President Evo Morales of Bolivia is becoming increasingly "authoritarian" and "undemocratic." This is a serious concern to Western powers, who are dedicated to freedom and democracy everywhere. The proof of his authoritarian stance and departure from democratic principles is that he followed the will of 95 percent of the population and nationalized Bolivia's gas resources, and is also gaining popularity by cutting public salaries and eliminating corruption. Morales's policies have come to resemble the frightening leader of Venezuela. As if the popularity of Chávez's elected government was not proof enough that he is an anti-democratic dictator, he is attempting to extend to Bolivia the same programs he is instituting in Venezuela: helping "Bolivia's drive to stamp out illiteracy and paying the wages of hundreds of Cuban doctors who have been sent to work there" among the p! oor, to quote the Financial Times' lament.10

 

The latest Bush administration's National Security Strategy, released March

2006, describes China as the greatest long-term threat to U.S. global dominance. The threat is not military, but economic. The document warns that Chinese leaders are not only "expanding trade, but acting as if they can somehow 'lock up' energy supplies around the world or seek to direct markets rather than opening them up."11 In the U.S.-China meetings in Washington a few weeks ago, President Bush warned President Hu Jintao against trying to "lock up" global supplies. Bush condemned China's reliance on oil from Sudan, Burma, and Iran, accusing China of opposition to free trade and human rights-unlike Washington, which imports only from pure democracies that worship human rights, like Equatorial Guinea, one of the most vicious African dictatorships; Colombia, which has by far the worst human rights record in Latin America; Central Asian states; and other paragons of virtue. No respectable person woul! d accuse Washington of "locking up" global supplies when it pursues its traditional "open door policy" and outright aggression to ensure that it dominates global energy supplies, firmly holding "the tools of intimidation and blackmail." It is interesting, perhaps, that none of this elicits ridicule in the West, or even notice.

 

The lead story in the New York Times on the Bush-Hu meeting reported that "China's appetite for oil also affects its stance on Iran....The issue of China's effort to 'lock up' global supplies is likely to come to a particular head over Iran," where China's state-owned oil giant signed a $70 billion deal to develop Iran's huge Yadavaran oil field.12 That's a serious matter, compounded by Chinese interference even in Saudi Arabia, a U.S. client state since the British were expelled during the Second World War. This relationship now threatened by growing economic and even military ties between China and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, now China's largest trading partner in West Asia and North Africa-perhaps further proof of China's lack of concern for democracy and human rights. When President Hu visited Washington, he was denied a state dinner, in a calculated insult. He cheerfully reciprocated by going directly to Saudi Arabia, a serious slap in the face to Washington that was! surely not misunderstood.

 

This is the barest sketch of the relevant global context over what to do in Iraq. But these critical matters are scarcely mentioned in the ongoing debate about the problem of greatest concern to Americans. They are barred by a rigid doctrine. It is unacceptable to attribute rational strategic-economic thinking to one's own state, which must be guided by benign ideals of freedom, justice, peace, and other wonderful things. That leads back again to a very severe crisis in Western intellectual culture, not of course unique in history, but with dangerous portent.

 

We can be confident that these matters, though excluded from public discussion, engage the attention of planners. Governments typically regard their populations as a major enemy, and keep them in ignorance of what is happening to them and planned for them. Nevertheless, we can speculate. One reasonable speculation is that Washington planners may be seeking to inspire secessionist movements that the United States can then "defend" against the home country. In Iran, the main oil resources are in the Arab areas adjacent to the Gulf, Iran's Khuzestan-and sure enough, there is now an Ahwazi liberation movement of unknown origin, claiming unspecified rights of autonomy. Nearby, Iraq and the gulf states provide a base for U.S. military intervention.

 

The U.S. military presence in Latin America is increasing substantially. In Venezuela, oil resources are concentrated in Zulia province near Colombia, the one reliable U.S. land base in the region, a province that is anti-Chávez and already has an autonomy movement, again of unknown origins. In Bolivia, the gas resources are in richer eastern areas dominated by elites of European descent that bitterly oppose the government elected by the indigenous majority, and have threatened to secede. Nearby Paraguay is another one of the few remaining reliable land bases for the U.S. military. Total military and police assistance now exceeds economic and social aid, a dramatic reversal of the pattern during Cold War years. The U.S. military now has more personnel in Latin America than most key civilian federal agencies combined, again a sharp change from earlier years. The new mission is to combat "radical populism"-the term that is regularly used for independent nationalism that does n! ot obey orders. Military training is being shifted from the State Department to the Pentagon, freeing it from human rights and democracy conditionality under congressional supervision-which was always weak, but had some effects that constrained executive violence.

 

The United States is a global power, and its policies should not be viewed in isolation, any more than those of the British Empire. Going back half a century, the Eisenhower administration identified three major global problems: Indonesia, North Africa, and the Middle East-all oil producers, all Islamic. In all cases, the concern was independent nationalism. The end of French rule in Algeria resolved the North African problem. In Indonesia, the 1965 Suharto coup removed the threat of independence with a huge massacre, which the CIA compared to the crimes of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. The "staggering mass slaughter," as the New York Times described it, was greeted in the West with unconcealed euphoria and relief.13 The military coup destroyed the only mass-based political party, a party of the poor, slaughtered huge numbers of landless peasants, and threw the country open to Western exploitation of its rich resources, while the large majority tries to survive in misery. Two yea! rs later, the major problem in the Middle East was resolved with Israel's destruction of the Nasser regime, hated by the United States and Britain, which feared that secular nationalist forces might seek to direct the vast energy resources of the region to internal development. A few years earlier, U.S. intelligence had warned of popular feelings that oil is a "national patrimony" exploited by the West by unjust arrangements imposed by force. Israel's service to the United States, its Saudi ally, and the energy corporations confirmed the judgment of U.S. intelligence in 1958 that a "logical corollary" of opposition to Arab nationalism is reliance on Israel as "the only strong pro-Western power in the Middle East," apart from Turkey, which established a close military alliance with Israel in 1958, within the U.S. strategic framework.14

 

The U.S.-Israeli alliance, unique in world affairs, dates from Israel's 1967 military conquests, reinforced in 1970 when Israel barred possible Syrian intervention in Jordan to protect Palestinians who were being slaughtered during Black September. Such intervention by Syria was regarded in Washington as a threat to its ally Jordan and, more important, to the oil-producers that were Washington's clients. U.S. aid to Israel roughly quadrupled. The pattern is fairly consistent since, extending to secondary Israeli services to U.S. power outside the Middle East, particularly in Latin America and southern Africa. The system of domination has worked quite well for the people who matter. Energy corporation profits are breaking all records. High-tech (including military) industry has lucrative ties with Israel, as do the major financial institutions, and Israel serves virtually as an offshore military base and provider of equipment and training. One may argue that other policies wo! uld have been more beneficial to the concentrations of domestic power that largely determine policy, but they seem to find these arrangements quite tolerable. If they did not, they could easily move to terminate them. And in fact, when there are conflicts between U.S. and Israeli state power, Israel naturally backs down; exports of military technology to China are a recent example, when the Bush administration went out of its way to humiliate Israel after it was initially reluctant to follow the orders of what Israeli commentator Aluf Benn calls "the boss-man called 'partner.'"

 

Let us turn next to Iran and its nuclear programs. Until 1979, Washington strongly supported these programs. During those years, of course, a brutal tyrant installed by the U.S.-U.K. military coup that overthrew the Iranian parliamentary government ruled Iran. Today, the standard claim is that Iran has no need for nuclear power, and therefore must be pursuing a secret weapons program. Henry Kissinger explained that "For a major oil producer such as Iran, nuclear energy is a wasteful use of resources." As secretary of state thirty years ago, Kissinger held that "introduction of nuclear power will both provide for the growing needs of Iran's economy and free remaining oil reserves for export or conversion to petrochemicals," and the United States acted to assist the Shah's efforts. Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz, the leading planners of the second Bush administration, worked hard to provide the Shah with a "complete 'nuclear fuel cycle'-reactors powered by an! d regenerating fissile materials on a self-sustaining basis. That is precisely the ability the current administration is trying to prevent Iran from acquiring today." U.S. universities were arranging to train Iranian nuclear engineers, doubtless with Washington's approval, if not initiative; including my own university, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for example, despite overwhelming student opposition. Kissinger was asked about his reversal, and he responded with his usual engaging frankness: "They were an allied country."15 So therefore they had a genuine need for nuclear energy, pre-1979, but have no such need today.

 

The Iranian nuclear programs, as far as is known, fall within its rights under Article IV of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which grants non-nuclear states the right to produce fuel for nuclear energy. The Bush administration argues, however, that Article IV should be strengthened, and I think that makes sense. When the NPT came into force in 1970, there was a considerable gap between producing fuel for energy and for nuclear weapons. But with contemporary technology, the gap has been narrowed. However, any such revision of Article IV would have to ensure unimpeded access for nonmilitary use, in accord with the initial bargain. A reasonable proposal was put forth by Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency: that all production and processing of weapon-usable material be under international control, with "assurance that legitimate would-be users could get their supplies."16 That should be the first step, he proposed, towards fully implementing th! e 1993 UN resolution calling for a Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty (called FISSBAN, for short), which bans production of fissile materials by individual states. ElBaradei's proposal was dead in the water. The U.S. political leadership, surely in its current stance, would never agree to this delegation of sovereignty. To date, ElBaradei's proposal has been accepted by only one state, to my knowledge: Iran, last February. That suggests one way to resolve the current crisis-in fact, a far more serious crisis: continued production of fissile materials by individual states is likely to doom humanity to destruction.

 

Washington also strenuously opposes a verifiable FISSBAN treaty, regarded by specialists as the "most fundamental nuclear arms control proposal," according to Princeton arms control specialist Frank von Hippel.17 Despite U.S. opposition, in November 2004, the UN Disarmament Committee voted in favor of a verifiable FISSBAN. The vote was 147 to 1, with 2 abstentions: Israel, which is reflexive, and Britain, which is more interesting. British ambassador John Freeman explained that Britain supported the treaty, but could not vote for this version, because he said it "divides the international community"-divided it 147 to 1.18 A later vote in the full General Assembly was 179 to 2, Israel and Britain again abstaining. The United States was joined by Palau.

 

We gain some insight into the ranking of survival of the species among the priorities of the leadership of the hegemonic power and its spear carrier.

 

In 2004, the European Union (EU) and Iran reached an agreement on nuclear issues: Iran agreed to temporarily suspend its legal activities of uranium enrichment, and the EU agreed to provide Iran with "firm commitments on security issues." As everyone understands, the phrase "security issues" refers to the very credible U.S.-Israeli threats and preparations to attack Iran. These threats, a serious violation of the UN Charter, are no small matter for a country that has been tortured for fifty years without a break by the global superpower, which now occupies the countries on Iran's borders, not to speak of the client state that is the regional superpower.

 

Iran lived up to its side of the bargain, but the EU, under U.S. pressure, rejected its commitments. Iran finally abandoned the bargain as well. The preferred version in the West is that Iran broke the agreement, proving that it is a serious threat to world order.

 

In May 2003, Iran had offered to discuss the full range of security matters with the United States, which refused, preferring to follow the same course it did with North Korea. On taking office in January 2001, the Bush administration withdrew the "no hostile intent" condition of earlier agreements and proceeded to issue serious threats, while also abandoning promises to provide fuel oil and a nuclear reactor. In response, North Korea returned to developing nuclear weapons, the roots of another current crisis. All predictable, and predicted.

 

There are ways to mitigate and probably end these crises. The first is to call off the threats that are virtually urging Iran (and North Korea) to develop nuclear weapons. One of Israel's leading military historians, Martin van Creveld, wrote that if Iran is not developing nuclear weapons, then they are "crazy," immediately after Washington demonstrated that it will attack anyone it likes as long as they are known to be defenseless.19 So the first step towards ending the crisis would be to call off the threats that are likely to lead potential targets to develop a deterrent-where nuclear weapons or terror are the only viable options.

 

A second step would be to join with other efforts to reintegrate Iran into the global economy. A third step would be to join the rest of the world in accepting a verifiable FISSBAN treaty, and to join Iran in accepting ElBaradei's proposal, or something similar-and I repeat that the issue here extends far beyond Iran, and reaches the level of human survival. A fourth step would be to live up to Article VI of the NPT, which obligates the nuclear states to take "good faith" efforts to eliminate nuclear weapons, a binding legal obligation, as the World Court determined. None of the nuclear states have lived up to that obligation, but the United States is far in the lead in violating it-again, a very serious threat to human survival. Even steps in these directions would mitigate the upcoming crisis with Iran. Above all, it is important to heed the words of Mohamed ElBaradei: "There is no military solution to this situation. It is inconceivable. The only durable solution is a neg! otiated solution."20 And it is within reach. Similar to the Iraq war: a war against Iran appears to be opposed by the military and U.S. intelligence, but might well be undertaken by the civilian planners of the Bush administration: Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, and a few others, an unusually dangerous collection.

 

There is wide agreement among prominent strategic analysts that the threat of nuclear war is severe and increasing, and that the threat can be eliminated by measures that are known and in fact legally obligatory. If such measures are not taken, they warn that "a nuclear exchange is ultimately inevitable," that we may be facing "an appreciable risk of ultimate doom," an "Armageddon of our own making."21 The threats are well understood, and they are being consciously enhanced. The Iraq invasion is only the most blatant example.

 

Clinton's military and intelligence planners had called for "dominating the space dimension of military operations to protect U.S. interests and investment," much in the way armies and navies did in earlier years, but now with a sole hegemon, which must develop "space-based strike weapons enabling the application of precision force from, to, and through space." Such measures will be needed, they said, because "globalization of the world economy" will lead to a "widening economic divide" along with "deepening economic stagnation, political instability, and cultural alienation," hence unrest and violence among the "have-nots," much of it directed against the United States. The United States must therefore be ready to plan for a "precision strike from space as a counter to the worldwide proliferation of WMD" by unruly elements.22 That is a likely consequence of the recommended military programs, just as a "widening divide" is the anticipated consequence of the specific vers! ion of international integration that is misleadingly called "globalization" and "free trade" in the doctrinal system.

 

A word should be added about these notions. Both are terms of propaganda, not description. The term "globalization" is used for a specific form of international economic integration, designed-not surprisingly-in the interests of the designers: multinational corporations and the few powerful states to which they are closely linked. An opposing form of globalization is being pursued by groups that are far more representative of the world's population, the mass global justice movements, which originated in the South but now have been joined by northern popular organizations and meet annually in the World Social Forum, which has spawned many regional and local social forums, concentrating on their own issues though within the same overarching framework. The global justice movements are an entirely new phenomenon, perhaps the seeds of the kind of international that has been the hope of the workers movements and the left since their modern origins. They are called "antiglobalizati! on" in the reigning doctrinal systems, because they seek a form of globalization oriented towards the interests of people, not concentrated economic power-and unfortunately, they have often adopted this ridiculous terminology.

 

Official globalization is committed to so-called neoliberalism, also a highly misleading term: the regime is not new, and it is not liberal. Neoliberalism is essentially the policy imposed by force on the colonies since the eighteenth century, while the currently wealthy countries radically violated these rules, with extensive reliance on state intervention in the economy and resort to measures that are now banned in the international economic order. That was true of England and the countries that followed its path of protectionism and state intervention, including Japan, the one country of the South that escaped colonization and the one country that industrialized. These facts are widely recognized by economic historians.

 

A comparison of the United States and Egypt in the early nineteenth century is one of many enlightening illustrations of the decisive role of sovereignty and massive state intervention in economic development. Having freed itself from British rule, the United States was able to adopt British-style measures of state intervention, and developed. Meanwhile British power was able to bar anything of the sort in Egypt, joining with France to impose Lord Palmerston's doctrine that "No ideas therefore of fairness towards Mehemet Ali ought to stand in the way of such great and paramount interests" as barring competition in the eastern Mediterranean.23 Palmerston expressed his "hate" for the "ignorant barbarian" who dared to undertake economic development. Historical memories resonate when, today, Britain and France, fronting for the United States, demand that Iran suspend all activities related to nuclear and missile programs, including research and development, so that nuclear ene! rgy is barred and the country that is probably under the greatest threat of any in the world has no deterrent to attack-attack by the righteous, that is. We might also recall that France and Britain played the crucial role in development of Israel's nuclear arsenal. Imperial sensibilities are delicate indeed.

 

Had it enjoyed sovereignty, Egypt might have undergone an industrial revolution in the nineteenth century. It shared many of the advantages of the United States, except independence, which allowed the United States to impose very high tariffs to bar superior British goods (textiles, steel, and others). The United States in fact became the world's leader in protectionism until the Second World War, when its economy so overwhelmed anyone else's that "free competition" was tolerable. After the war, massive reliance on the dynamic state sector became a central component of the U.S. economy, even more than it had been before, continuing right to the present. And the United States remains committed to protectionism, when useful. The most extreme protectionism was during the Reagan years-accompanied, as usual, by eloquent odes to liberalism, for others. Reagan virtually doubled protective barriers, and also turned to the usual device, the Pentagon, to overcome management failures a! nd "reindustrialize America," the slogan of the business press. Furthermore, high levels of protectionism are built into the so-called "free trade agreements," designed to protect the powerful and privileged, in the traditional manner.

 

The same was true of Britain's flirtation with "free trade" a century earlier, when 150 years of protectionism and state intervention had made Britain by far the world's most powerful economy, free trade seemed an option, given that the playing field was "tilted" in the right direction, to adapt the familiar metaphor. But the British still hedged their bets. They continued to rely on protected markets, state intervention, and also devices not considered by economic historians. One such market was the world's most spectacular narcotrafficking enterprise, designed to break into the China market, and also producing profits that financed the Royal Navy, the administration of conquered India, and the purchase of U.S. cotton-the fuel of the industrial revolution. U.S. cotton production was also based on radical state intervention: slavery, virtual extermination of the native population, and military conquest-almost half of Mexico, to mention one case relevant to current news. When! Britain could no longer compete with Japan, it closed off the empire in 1932, followed by other imperial powers, a crucial part of the background for the Second World War. The truth about free trade and economic development has only a limited resemblance to the doctrines professed.

 

Throughout modern history, democracy and development have had a common enemy: the loss of sovereignty. In a world of states, it is true that decline of sovereignty entails decline of hope for democracy, and decline in ability to conduct social and economic policy. That in turn harms development, a conclusion well confirmed by centuries of economic history. The work of economic historian M. Shahid Alam is particularly enlightening in this respect. In current terminology, the imposed regimes are called neoliberal, so it is fair to say that the common enemy of democracy and development is neoliberalism. With regard to development, one can debate causality, because the factors in economic growth are so poorly understood. But correlations are reasonably clear. The countries that have most rigorously observed neoliberal principles, as in Latin America and elsewhere, have experienced a sharp deterioration of macroeconomic indicators as compared with earlier years. Those that have i! gnored the principles, as in East Asia, have enjoyed rapid growth. That neoliberalism harms democracy is understandable. Virtually every feature of the neoliberal package, from privatization to freeing financial flows, undermines democracy for clear and well-known reasons.

 

The crises we face are real and imminent, and in each case means are available to overcome them. The first step is understanding, then organization and appropriate action. This is the path that has often been followed in the past, bringing about a much better world and leaving a legacy of comparative freedom and privilege, for some at least, which can be the basis for moving on. Failure to do so is almost certain to lead to grim consequences, even the end of biology's only experiment with higher intelligence.

 

Notes

1. See Aaron David Miller, Search for Security (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1980); Irvine Anderson, Aramco, the United States and Saudi Arabia (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981); Michael Stoff, Oil, War and American Security

(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980); Steven Spiegel, The Other Arab-Israeli Conflict (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 51.

2. National Security Strategy of the United States (Washington DC: The White House, March 1990).

3. Alan Cowell, "Kurds Assert Few Outside Iraq Wanted Them to Win," New York Times, April 11, 1991.

4. Nina Kamp and Michael E. O'Hanlon, "The State of Iraq," New York Times, March 19, 2006.

5. Walter Pincus, "Skepticism About U.S. Deep, Iraq Poll Shows; Motive for Invasion Is Focus of Doubts," Washington Post, November 12, 2003; Richard Burkholder, "Gallup Poll of Baghdad," Government & Public Affairs, October

28, 2003.

6. Michael MccGwire, "The Rise and Fall of the NPT," International Affairs

81 (January 2005): 134.

7. Zbigniew Brzezinski, "Hegemonic Quicksand," National Interest 74 (Winter

2003/2004): 5-16; Stefan Wagstyl, "Cheney Rebukes Putin on Energy 'Blackmail,'" Financial Times, May 4, 2006.

8. See Ian Rutledge, Addicted to Oil (London: I. B. Tauris, 2005).

9. See Multinational Oil Corporation and U.S. Foreign Policy, Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S. Senate, January 2, 1975 (Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1975).

10. Hal Weitzman, "Nationalism Fuels Fears over Morales' Power," Financial Times, May 2, 2006.

11. National Security Strategy of the United States (Washington DC: The White House, March 2006), 41.

12. David E. Sanger, "China's Rising Need for Oil Is High on U.S. Agenda," New York Times, April 18, 2006.

13. Editorial, New York Times, August 25, 1966

14. Mark Curtis, The Great Deception (London: Pluto Press, 1998), 133.

15. Darna Linzer, "Past Arguments Don't Square with Current Iran Policy," Washington Post, March 27, 2005.

16. Mohamed ElBaradei, "Towards a Safer World," The Economist, October 16,

2003.

17. Frank von Hippel, "Coupling a Moratorium To Reductions as a First Step toward the Fissile-Material Cutoff Treaty," in Rakesh Sood, Frank von Hippel, and Morton Halperin, "The Road to Nuclear Zero," Center for Advanced Study of India, 1998, 17.

18. See Rebecca Johnson, "2004 UN First Committee," Disarmament Diplomacy 79

(April/May 2005), and Jean du Preez, "The Fissban," Disarmament Diplomacy 79

(April/May 2005), http://www.acronym.org.

19. Martin van Creveld, "Sharon on the Warpath" International Herald Tribune, August 21, 2004.

20. Jeffrey Fleishman and Alissa Rubin, "ElBaradei Asks for Restraint on Iran Sanctions," Los Angeles Times, March 31, 2006.

21. Michael MccGwire, "The Rise and Fall of the NPT," International Affairs

81 (January 2005), 127; John Steinbruner and Nancy Gallagher, "Constructive Transformation," Daedalus 133, no. 3 (Summer 2004): 99; Sam Nunn, "The Cold War's Nuclear Legacy Has Lasted too Long," Financial Times, December 6,

2004.

22. National Intelligence Council, Global Trends 2015 (Washington DC, December 2000); U.S. Space Command, Vision for 2020 (February 1997), 7; Pentagon, Quadrennial Defense Review, May 1997.

23. See Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid Marsot, Egypt in the Reign of Muhammad Ali (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 240; Harold Temperley, England and the Near East (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1936).

 

Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor and Professor of Linguistics Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This article is based on a talk delivered May 12, 2006, in Beirut, two months before Israel began its military campaign against Lebanon on July 13, 2006. It appears in Inside Lebanon: Journey to a Shattered Land with Noam and Carol Chomsky (just published by Monthly Review Press, order online at www.monthlyreview.org or call 1-800-670-9499).

_________________

 

 

 

Joint Interview, Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn on Iraq, Vietnam, Activism and History

 

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/16/1338223

 

Monday, April 16th, 2007

 

In a Democracy Now! special from Boston, two of the city's leading dissidents, Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, sit down for a rare joint interview. Noam Chomsky began teaching linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge over 50 years ago. He is the author of dozens of books on linguistics and U.S. foreign policy. Howard Zinn is one of the country's most widely-read historians. His classic work "A People's History of the United States' has sold over 1.5 million copies and it has altered how many teach the nation's history. Chomsky and Zinn discuss Vietnam, activism, history, Israel-Palestine, and Iraq, which Chomsky calls "one of the worst catastrophes in military and political history." rush transcript included

 

Noam Chomsky. Professor Emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author of dozens of books on linguistics and U.S. foreign policy. His latest book is "Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy."

 

Howard Zinn. Professor emeritus at Boston University. His classic work "A People's History of the United States" has sold over 1.5 million copies. His latest book is "A Power Governments Cannot Suppress."

 

 

RUSH TRANSCRIPT This transcript is available free of charge. However, donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution. Donate - $25, $50, $100, more...

 

AMY GOODMAN: Today an hour with Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky in a rare interview with them together, and I welcome you both to Democracy Now!

 

NOAM CHOMSKY: Nice to be here.

 

HOWARD ZINN: Thanks Amy.

 

AMY GOODMAN: What a day to be here. This is a day of the Boston Marathon, it is raining. It is a major storm outside and tens of thousands of people -- were either of you planning to run today?

 

HOWARD ZINN: Well we were, yes, but you know -

 

NOAM CHOMSKY: but you really made it impossible for us.

 

AMY GOODMAN: I'm sorry about that.

 

HOWARD ZINN: We had a choice of running in the marathon or having an interview with you, what's more important?

 

AMY GOODMAN: Well, today is Patriot's Day, Howard Zinn, what does patriotism mean to you?

 

HOWARD ZINN: I'm glad you said what it means to me. Because it means to me something different than it means to a lot of people I think who have distorted the idea of patriotism. Patriotism to me means doing what you think your country should be doing. Patriotism means supporting your government when you think it's doing right, opposing your government when you think it's doing wrong. Patriotism to me means really what the Declaration of Independence suggests. And that is that government is an artificial entity.

 

Government is set up--and here's what a Declaration of Independence is about, government is set up by the people in order to fulfill certain responsibilities: equality, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. And according to the Declaration of Independence when the government violates those responsibilities, then, and these are the words of the Declaration of Independence it is the right of the people to alter or abolish the government.

 

In other's words the government is not holy, the government is not to be obeyed when the government is wrong. So to me patriotism in it's best sense means thinking about the people in the country, the principals for which the country stands for, and it requires opposing the government when the government violates those principles.

 

So today, for instance, the highest act of patriotism I suggest, would be opposing the war in Iraq and calling for a withdrawal of troops from Iraq. Simply because everything about the war violates the fundamental principles of equality, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, not just for Americans, but for people in another part of the world. So, yes, patriotism today requires citizens to be active on many, many different fronts to oppose government policies on the war, government policies which have taken trillions of dollars from this country's treasury and used it for war and militarism. That's what patriotism would require today.

 

AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky, the headlines today, just this weekend, one of the bloodiest months in Iraq, the number of prisoners in U.S. Jails in Iraq has reached something like 18,000. Who knows if that's not an underestimate? An Associated Press photographer remains in jail imprisoned by U.S. authorities without charge for more than a year. The health ministry has found 70% of Baghdad school children showing symptoms of trauma-related stress. Your assessment now of the situation there?

 

NOAM CHOMSKY: This is one of the worst catastrophes in military history and also in political history. The most recent studies of the Red Cross show that Iraq has suffered the worst decline in child mortality, infant mortality, an increase in infant mortality known. But it's since 1990. That is, it's a combination of the affect of the murderers' and brutal sanctions regime, which we don't talk much about, which devastated society through the 1990's and strengthened Saddam Hussein, compelled the population to rely on him for survival, which probably saved him from the fate of a whole long series of other tyrants who were overthrown by their own people supported by the U.S.

 

And then came the war on top of it which has simply increased the horrors. The decline is unprecedented. The increase in infant mortality is unprecedented; it's now below the level of, worse than some of the countries in sub-Saharan Africa. It's one index of what's happened. The most probably measure of deaths in a study sponsored by M.I.T. incidentally carried out by leading specialists in Iraq and here last October was about 650,000 killed, soon to be pushing a million. There are several million people fled including the large part of the professional classes, people who could in principal help rebuild the country. And without going on, it's a hideous catastrophe and getting worse.

 

It's also worth stressing that aggressors do not have any rights. This is a clear-cut case of aggression and violation of the U.N. Charter, a supreme international crime and in the words of the Nuremburg Tribunal, aggressors simply have no rights to make any decisions. They have responsibilities. The responsibilities are, first of all to pay enormous reparations and that includes for the sanctions-- the effect of the sanctions, in fact it ought to include the support for Saddam Hussein in the 1980's, which was torture for Iraqis and worse for Iranians.

 

The paid reparations hold those responsible, accountable and attend to the will of the victims. It doesn't necessarily mean follow blindly, but certainly attend to it. And the will of the victims is known, the regular U.S.-run polls in Iraq, and the government polling institutions, it's just an overwhelming support for either immediate or quick withdrawal of U.S. Troops, about 80 percent think that the presence of U.S. Troops increases the level of violence. Over 60% think that troops are legitimate targets. This isn't for all of Iraq, if you take the figures of Arab Iraq where the troops are actually deployed the figures are higher. The figures keep going up. They're unmentioned, virtually unreported, scarcely alluded to in the Baker- Hamilton critical report. That'll be our primary concern, along with the concerns of the Americans.

 

AMY GOODMAN: Vice president Cheney is saying this war can be won.

 

NOAM CHOMSKY: There's an interesting study being done right now by a former Russian soldier in Afghanistan in the late 1980's, he's now a student in Toronto who's comparing the Russian press and the Russian political figures and military leaders, what they were saying about Afghanistan, comparing it with what Cheney, others and the press are saying about Iraq and not to your great surprise, change a few names and it comes out about the same.

 

They were also saying the war in Afghanistan could be won and they were right. If they had increased the level of violence sufficiently, they could have won the war in Ira-in Afghanistan. They're also pointing out -- of course they describe correctly the heroism of the Russian troops, the efforts to bring assistance to the poor people of Afghanistan, to protect them from U.S.-run Islamic fundamentalist terrorist forces, the dedication, the rights they have won for the people in Afghanistan, and the warning that if they pull out it will be total disaster, mayhem, they must stay and win.

 

Unfortunately they were right about that too, when they did pull out, it was a total disaster. The U.S.-backed forces tore the place to shreds, so terrible that the people even welcomed the Taliban when they came in. So yes, those arguments can always be given. The Germans could have argued if they had the force that they didn't, that they could have won the Second World War. I mean the question is not can you win. The question is should you be there.

 

AMY GOODMAN: You say and talk about Afghanistan, sure the Russians could have won if they had--could have tolerated the level of violence. What are you saying about Iraq? Do you feel the same way?

 

NOAM CHOMSKY: It depends on what you mean by win. The United States certainly has the capacity to wipe the country out. If that's winning, yeah, you can win. It's -- in terms of the goals that the united states attempted to achieve, the U.S. Government, not the -- the United States, to install a client regime, which would be obedient to the United States, which would permit military bases, which would allow U.S. and British corporations to control the energy resources and so on, in terms of achieving that goal, I don't know if they can achieve that. But that they could destroy the country, that's beyond question.

 

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, on this Patriot's Day that is celebrated in Massachusetts. We're in Boston, Massachusetts and we'll be back with them in a min.

 

AMY GOODMAN: As we continue today, talking about the state of the world with two of the leading dissidents here in this country, Howard Zinn, legendary historian, author of many books, The People's History of the United States as well as, his latest is A Power Governments Cannot Suppress. We're also joined by Noam Chomsky, linguist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, his latest book is Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy. Howard, you went to North Vietnam, can you talk about how the Vietnam War ended, and also your experience there, why you went?

 

HOWARD ZINN: Well, I went to North Vietnam in early 1968 with Father Daniel Berrigan and the two of us went actually at the request of the North Vietnamese government who were going to release the first three airmen prisoners, American fliers who were in prison in North Vietnam and the North Vietnamese wanted to release them on the Tet holiday, also the Tet Offensive, sort of as a gesture, I suppose as a good will gesture and they asked for representatives of the American peace movement so Daniel Berrigan and I went to Hanoi for that reason.

 

And of course it was an educational experience for us. Noam was talking about in response to your question about victory and winning. And the question is, of course, why should we win if winning means destroying a country? And there's still people who say, oh, we could have won the Vietnam war, as if the question was, you know, can we win or can we lose, instead of what are we doing to these people.

 

And, yes, Noam said, yes, we could win in Iraq by destroying all of Iraq. The Russians could have won Afghanistan by destroying all of Afghanistan. We could have won in Vietnam by dropping nuclear bombs instead of killing two million people in Vietnam, killing 10 million people in Vietnam. And that would be considered victory, who would take satisfaction in that?

 

What we saw in Vietnam is, I think what people are seeing in Iraq. And that is huge numbers of people dying for no reason at all. What we saw in Vietnam was the American army being sent halfway around the world to a country, which was not threatening us and we were destroying the people in the country. And here in Iraq, we're going the other way, we're also going halfway around the world to do the same thing to them. And our experience in Iraq contradicted as I think the experiences of people who are on the ground in Iraq contradicted again and again the statements of American officials.

 

The statements of the high military, statements like, oh, we're only bombing military targets, oh, these are accidents when so many civilians are killed. And, yes, as Cheney said, victory is around the corner. What we saw in Vietnam was horrifying. And it was obviously horrifying even to G.I.'s in Vietnam because they began to come back from Vietnam and oppose the war and formed Vietnam Veterans against the war.

 

We saw villages as far away from any military target as you can imagine, absolutely destroyed. And children killed and their graves still fresh by American jet planes coming over in the middle of the night. When I hear them talk about John McCain as a hero, I say to myself, oh, yeah, he was a prisoner and prisoners are maltreated and everywhere and this is terrible. But John McCain, like the other American fliers, what were they doing? They were bombing defenseless people. And so, yes Vietnam is something that by the way, is still not taught very well in American schools. I spoke to a group of people in an advanced history class not long ago, 100 kids, asked them how many people here have heard of the My Lai Massacre? No hand was raised. We are not teaching -- if we were teaching the history of Vietnam as it should be taught, then the American people from the start would have opposed the war instead of waiting three or four years for a majority of the American people to declare their opposition to the war.

 

AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky, you went to Cambodia after the bombing.

 

NOAM CHOMSKY: I went to Laos and North Vietnam.

 

AMY GOODMAN: When and why?

 

NOAM CHOMSKY: Two years after Howard, early 1970. I spent the week in Laos. A very moving week, happened to be in Laos right after the C.I.A. mercenary army had cleared out about 30,000 people from the Plain of Jarres area in Northern Laos, where they had been subjected to what was then the most fierce bombing in human history, it was exceeded shortly after by Cambodia. These are poor peasant society, probably most of them didn't even know they were in Laos. There was nothing there. The planes were sent there because the bombing of North Vietnam had been temporarily stopped and there was nothing for the air force to do so they bombed Laos. They had been living in caves for over two years trying to farm at night. They had finally been driven out by the mercenary army to the surroundings of Vientien.

 

And I spent a lot of time interviewing refugees with Fred Branfman who did heroic work in bringing this story finally to the American people. And so more interesting things in Laos. Then I went to North Vietnam also where Howard had been, invited by the government, but I was actually invited to teach. It was a bombing pause, a short bombing pause and they were able to bring people in from outlying areas back to Hanoi and the Polytechnic University of what was left of it, the ruins of the Polytechnic University and I came and lectured on just about anything that I knew anything about-- these are people who had been out of touch with the faculty, students, others who had been out of touch with the world for five years and they asked me everything from what's Norman Mailer writing these days, to technical questions and linguistics and mathematics whatever else I could say anything about.

 

I also traveled around a little bit, not very much, but for a few days, but enough to see what Howard described, right close to Hanoi, I never got very far away, which was the most protected area because in Hanoi there were embassies and journalists so the bombing of the city was nothing like what it was much further away. But even there you could see the ruins of villages, the shell of the major hospital in Thanh Hoa, which had been bombed by accident of course. Areas that we're -- just moonscapes, where there had been villages in an effort to destroy a bridge and so on. So that those were my two weeks in Laos and North Vietnam.

 

AMY GOODMAN: You were a linguistics professor at M.I.T., at the time?

 

NOAM CHOMSKY: Yes.

 

AMY GOODMAN: So, why did you go? What drove you to? And, what was the response here at home?

 

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, I was able to-and actually I had intended to go only for one week to North Vietnam. But the -- if you really want to know the details, the U.N. bureaucrat in Laos who was organizing flights was a very board Indian bureaucrat who had nothing to do and apparently his only joy in the world was making things difficult for people who wanted to do something, not untypical. And fortunately for me, he made it difficult for me and my companions, Doug Dowd and Dick Fernandez to go to North Vietnam. So I had a week in Laos, which was an extremely valuable week. I wrote about it in some detail. But, I was teaching at the time, I was to be away, it was a vacation week, so actually I taught linguistics at the Polytechnic University.

 

AMY GOODMAN: What about the opposition here at home and your level of protest at MIT? What did you do?

 

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, M.I.T was a curious situation. I happened to be working in the laboratory, which was 100%, supported by the three armed services, but it was also one of the centers of the anti-war resistance. Starting in 1965 along with an artist friend in Boston, Harold Tovish, we organized, tried to organize national tax resistance, this was 1965. Like Howard, I was giving talks, taking part in demonstrations, getting arrested.

 

By 1966 we were becoming involved directly in support for a draft resistance, helping deserters and others that just continued - it's worth remembering, one often hears today justified complaints about how little protest there is against the war in Iraq. But that's very misleading. And here is as Howard was saying a little sense of history is useful.

 

The protest against the war in Iraq is far beyond the protest against Vietnam on any comparable level. Large-scale protest against the war in Vietnam did not begin until there were several hundred thousand U.S. troops in South Vietnam, the country had been virtually destroyed, the bombing had been extended to the north, to Laos, soon to Cambodia, where incidentally we have just learned, - or rather we haven't learned, but we could learn if we had a free press, that the bombing in Cambodia, which is known to be horrendous, was actually five times as high as was reported, greater than the entire allied bombing in all of World War II on a defenseless peasant society, which turned peasants into enraged fanatics. During those years the Khmer Rouge grew from nothing, a few thousand scattered people to hundreds of thousands and that led to the part of the Cambodia that we're allowed to think about.

 

But the real protest against the war in Vietnam came at a period far beyond what has yet been reached in Iraq. First few years of the war, there was almost nothing. So little protest that virtually nobody in the United States even knows when the war began. Kennedy invaded South Vietnam in 1962. That was after seven years of efforts to impose a Latin-American style terror state, which had killed tens of thousands of people and elicited resistance.

 

In 1962, Kennedy sent the U.S. Air force to start bombing South Vietnam, under South Vietnamese markings, but nobody was deluded by that, initiated chemical warfare to destroy crops and ground cover, and started programs which rounded openly millions of people into what amounted to concentration camps, called strategic hamlets where they were surrounded by barbed wire to protect them as it was said from the guerrillas, who everyone knew they were voluntarily supporting, an indigenous South Vietnamese resistance. That was

1962.

 

You couldn't get two people in a living room to talk about it. In October 1965, right here in Boston, maybe the most liberal city in the country, there were then already a couple hundred thousand troops, bombing North Vietnam had started. We tried to have our first major public demonstration against the war on the Boston Common, the usual place for meetings. I was supposed to be one of the speakers, but nobody could hear a word. The meeting was totally broken up by students marching over from universities, by others, and hundreds of state police, which kept people from being murdered. The next day's newspaper, the Boston Globe, the world newspaper was full of denunciations of the people who dared make mild statements about bombing the North.

 

In fact right through the protests, which did reach a substantial scale and were really significant, especially the resistance, it was mostly directed against the war in North Vietnam. The attack on South Vietnam was mostly ignored. Incidentally the same is true of government planning. We know about that from the Pentagon Papers and the subsequent documents, there was meticulous planning about the bombing of the North. Where should you bomb? And how far should you go? And so on. Bombing of the South in the internal documents there's almost nothing. There's a simple reason for it. The bombing of the south was costless. Nobody's going to shoot you down. Nobody's going to complain. Do whatever you want. Wi