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. Wipe the place out. Which is pretty much what happened.

 

North Vietnam was dangerous. You could hit Russian ships in harbor. As I said there were embassies in Hanoi where people could report that you were bombing an internal chinese railroad that happened to pass through North Vietnam. So there could be international repercussions and costs, so therefore it was very carefully calibrated. If you look at say Robert McNamara's memoirs, lot of discussion of the bombing of North Vietnam, virtually nothing about the bombing of the South Vietnam. Which even in 1965, was triple the scale of the bombing of the North, and it had been going on for years. Now there is a great deal more protest.

 

There actually one interesting illustration, I'll end with that, Arthur Schlesinger, best known American historian, in the case of Vietnam, the early years he supported it. In fact if you read his Thousand Days, story of the Kennedy administration, it's barely mentioned except for the wonderful things that's happening. By 1966, as there was beginning to be concern about the costs of the war, we were reaching situations rather like a lead opinion today about Iraq: it's too costly, we might not be able to win, and so on. Schlesinger wrote, I'm almost quoting, that we all pray that the hawks will be right in believing that more troops will allow us to win. And if they are right, we'll be praising the wisdom and statesman ship of the American government in winning a war in Vietnam after turning the land -- turning it into a land of ruin and wreck. So we'll be praising their wisdom and statesmanship, but it probably won't work. You can translate that into today's commentaries, which are called the doves.

 

On the other hand, greatly to his credit, when the bombing of Iraq started, Schlesinger took the strongest position of anyone I've seen, of condemnation of it. First stated so strong that it wasn't, almost never--didn't appear in the press and I haven't heard a word about it since. As the line began he said this is a date, which will live in infamy. And he re-called President Roosevelt's words at Pearl Harbor, a date that will live in infamy because the united states is following the path of the Japanese fascists, a pretty strong statement. I think that sort of reflects a difference you see in public attitudes too, opposition to aggression is far higher than it was in the 60's.

 

AMY GOODMAN: Howard Zinn, how did Vietnam end, the war end and what are the parallels that you see today? Do you see parallels today?

 

HOWARD ZINN: Well, I suppose if you believe that Henry Kissinger deserved the Nobel Prize, you would think that the war ended because Henry Kissinger went to Paris and negotiated with the Vietnamese. But the war ended, I think, because finally after that slow buildup of protests, I think the war ended because the protests in the United States reached a crescendo, which couldn't be ignored. And because the GI's coming home were turning against the war and because soldiers in the field were -- well, they were throwing grenades under the officer's tents, the "Fragging Phenomenon." There's a book called Soldiers in Revolt by a man named David Cortright and he details how much dissidence there was, how much opposition to the war there was among soldiers in Vietnam and how this was manifested in their behavior and desertions. A huge number of desertions and essentially the government of the United States found it impossible to continue the war. The ROTC chapters were closing down.

 

In some ways, it's similar to the situation now where the government in Iraq, the government is finding, our government is finding that we don't have enough soldiers to fight the war. So they're sending them back again and again. And where they're recruiting sergeants here in the United States, they're going to enormous lengths, lying to young people about what will await them and what benefits they will get. The government is desperate to maintain the military force today in Iraq. And I think in Vietnam, this dissidence among the military, and its inability to really carry on the war militarily was a crucial factor. Of course, along with the fact, we simply could not defeat the Vietnamese resistance. And resistance movements -- and this is what we are finding out in Iraq today -- resistance movements against a foreign aggressor, they will get very desperate, they will not give in. And the resistance movement in Vietnam would not surrender.

 

And so, the US government found it obviously impossible to win without, yes, dropping nuclear bombs, destroying the country and making it clear to the world that the United States was an outlaw nation and impossible to hold the support of the people at home. And so, yes, we finally did what a number of us had been asking for many, many years to withdraw from Vietnam and the same arguments were made at that time. That is, when we called in 1967, well, I wrote a book in 1967 called, Vietnam, the Logic of Withdrawal and the reaction to that was, you know, we can't withdraw. It will be terrible if we withdraw. There will be civil war if we withdraw. There will be a bloodbath if we withdraw. And so we didn't withdraw and the war went on for another six years, another eight years, six years for the Americans to withdraw, eight years totally. The war went on and on and another 20,000 Americans were killed. Another million Vietnamese were killed.

 

And when we finally withdrew, there was no bloodbath. I mean it wasn't that everything was fine when we withdrew and there were re- education camps set up, and the Chinese people were driven out of Hanoi on boats, so it wasn' -- . But the point is, that there was no bloodbath, the bloodbath was what we were doing in Vietnam. Just as today when they say, oh, there will be civil war, there will be chaos if we withdraw from Iraq. There is civil war, there is chaos and no one is pointing out what we have done to Iraq. Two million people driven from their homes and children in dire straits, no waters, no food. And so the remembrance of Vietnam is important if we are going to make it clear that we must withdraw from Iraq and find another way, not for the United States, for some international group, preferably a group composed mostly of representatives of Arab nations to come into Iraq and help mediate whatever strife there is among the various fractions in Iraq. But certainly the absolute necessary first step in Iraq now is what we should have done in Vietnam in 1967 and that is simply get out as fast as ships and planes can carry us out.

 

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! democracynow.org, the war and peace report. I'm Amy Goodman. My guests here in Boston, as we broadcast from Massachusetts on this Patriot's Day, are Noam Chomsky. Noam Chomsky, a professor of linguistics of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Howard Zinn, a legendary historian, taught at Spellman for years until he was forced out because he took the side of the young women students and then went to Boston University and only recently, in the last few years, was given -- what --given an honorary degree by Spellman?

 

HOWARD ZINN: Yes.

 

AMY GOODMAN: Did you feel vindicated?

 

HOWARD ZINN: I always feel vindicated.

 

AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky, what did you think of Nancy Pelosi, House speaker, third in line in succession for the presidency after Dick Cheney, going to Syria together with the first Muslim congress member in the United States, Keith Ellison from Minneapolis?

 

NOAM CHOMSKY: The only thing wrong with it, it was that it was the third person in line. I mean, if the United States government were sincerely interested in bringing about some measure of peace, prosperity, stability in the region instead of dominating it by force, now they would of course be dealing with Syria and with Iran. Pretty much the way the Baker-Hamilton report proposed except beyond what they proposed because they proposed, they should be dealing with it in matters concerning with Iraq. But there are regional issues. In the case of Syria, there are issues related to Syria itself, but also to Lebanon and to Israel. Israel is in control of, in fact has annexed in violation of Security Council orders, has annexed a large part of Syrian territory, the Golan Heights. Syria is making it very clear that they are interested in a peace settlement with Israel, which would involve, as it should, the withdrawal of the Israeli troops from occupied territories.

 

AMY GOODMAN: Are there secret negotiations going on between Israel and Syria now?

 

NOAM CHOMSKY: You never know what's going on in secret. But so far Israel has been flatly refusing any negotiations. In fact, the only debate that's going on now is whether it's the United States that's pressuring Israel or Israel is pressuring the United States to prevent negotiations on the Golan Heights and in fact on the occupied territories all together. This is called a very contentious issue, Israel-Palestine, which is kind of surprising. It's a contentious issue only in the United States, and even not among the American population. It's a contentious issue because the US government and the Israeli government are blocking a very broad international consensus, which has almost universal support, even the majority of Americans and which has been on the table for about 30 years, blocked by the US and Israel. And everyone knows who's involved in this, what the general framework for a settlement is.

 

It was put on the --it was brought to the Security Council in 1976, by the Arab states, Jordan, Syria and Egypt, the so-called confrontation states and the other Arab states. They proposed a two- state settlement on the internationally recognized border, a settlement, which included the wording of UN-242, the first major resolution, recognition of the right of each state in the region to exist in peace and security within secure and recognized boundaries, that would include Israel and a Palestinian state. It was vetoed by the United States and a similar resolution vetoed in 1980.

 

I won't run through the whole history, but throughout this whole history, with temporary and rare exceptions, there is a couple here and here, the US has simply blocked the settlement and still does and Israel rejects it. Sometimes it's dramatic. In 1988, the Palestinian National Council, their governing body, formally accepted a two-state settlement. They tacitly accepted it before. There was a reaction from Israel immediately; it was a coalition government, Shimon Perez, Yitzhak Shamir. Their reaction was, quoting, that "there cannot be an additional Palestinian state between Jordan and Israel." An additional implying that Jordan already is a Palestinian state. So there can't be another one and the fate of the territories will be settled according to the guidelines of the state of Israel. Shortly after that, the Bush number one administration totally endorsed that proposal -- that was the Baker plan, James Baker plan of December 1989 -- fully endorsed that proposal, extreme rejectionism.

 

And so it continues with rare exceptions, just moving to today, the Arab league proposal has been reintroduced, it's 2002, but they brought it up again a couple of weeks ago. That goes even further. It calls for full normalization of relations with Israel within the framework of the international consensus on a two-state settlement, which might involve to use official US terminology from far back, minor and mutual modifications, like straightening out the border, or in other words in the wrong place or something. And then there are technicalities to be resolved, plenty of them.

 

But that's the basic frame work, supported by the Arab world, by Europe, by the non-aligned countries, Latin America and others. It is supported by Iran, it doesn't get reported here. One loves Ahmadinejad's crazed statements, but do not report the statements of his superior, Ayatollah Khameni who's in charge of international affairs -- Ahmadinejad doesn't have anything to do with it -- who has declared a couple of times that Iran supports the Arab league position. Hezbollah in Lebanon has made it clear that they don't like it, they don't believe in recognizing Israel, but if the Palestinians accept it, they will not disrupt it, they are a Lebanese organization. And Hamas has said, they would accept the Arab league consensus. That leaves the United States and Israel in splendid isolation, even more so than in the past 30 years in rejecting a political settlement. So it's contentious in a sense, but not in that there's no way to resolve it. We know how to resolve it.

 

AMY GOODMAN: Do you think it will change?

 

NOAM CHOMSKY: It depends on people here. If the majority of the American population, who also accept this decide to do something about it, yeah, it will change.

 

AMY GOODMAN: Do you think it's changing, for example, with Carter's book coming out?

 

NOAM CHOMSKY: I think it's one of the signs of change and there are many others. Or is it just a change mood in the country, I mean, anybody who's been giving talks about this just knows it from personal experience. I mean not very long ago, if I was giving a talk on the Middle East, I mean, even at MIT, there would be armed police present, or at least undercover police to prevent violence, disruption, breakup of meetings and so on. That's a thing of the past. By now it's much easier to talk about this. Actually, Carter's book is quite interesting. Carter's book was essentially repeating what is known around the world.

 

AMY GOODMAN: Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.

 

NOAM CHOMSKY: Yeah. He -- there were a couple of errors in the book, they were ignored. The only serious error in the book, which a fact checker should have picked up, is that Carter accepted a kind of party line on the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Israel invaded Lebanon and killed maybe 15,000-20,000 people and destroyed much of southern Lebanon. They were able to do it because the Reagan administration vetoed Security Council resolutions and supported them and so on.

 

The claim here, you know, you read Thomas Freedman or someone, is that Israel invaded in response to shelling of the Galilee from -- by Palestinians, Palestinian terror attacks and Carter repeats that, it is not true. There was the border, there was a cease-fire, the Palestinians observed it despite regular Israeli attempts, something as heavy bombing and others to elicit some response that would be a pretext to the planned invasion. When there was no pretext, they invaded anyway. That's the only serious error in the book, ignored. There are some very valuable things in the book, also ignored. One of them, perhaps the most important is that Carter is the first, I think, in the main stream in the United States to report what was known in dissident circles and talked about, namely that the famous road map, which the quartet suggested as steps towards settlement of the problem, the road map was instantly rejected by Israel.

 

AMY GOODMAN: I'm going to interrupt you here because we're going to have to end the broadcast. We're going to bring you folks part two of this conversation in the next few days. But I want to end with Howard, tonight you'll be in Faneuil Hall in Boston. Do you have hope right now as a man who has been part of dissident movements for many years, led them, chronicled them in these last few minutes of this first part of our discussion?

 

HOWARD ZINN: By the way, you're going to be with me in Faneuil Hall, tonight. I won't go without you, yes.

 

AMY GOODMAN: I will be with you tonight at 7 pm in Faneuil Hall in Boston.

 

HOWARD ZINN: But do I have hope, it that what you are asking? Well, I do, I think the American people are basically decent and good people and if they learn the facts and as they are learning the facts, they become aroused as they did during Vietnam, as they did in the years of the civil rights movement.

 

AMY GOODMAN: I'm going to leave it there now, but part two later in the week. Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, thank you very much.

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Stopping a war with Iran requires a strong organized popular opposition

 

http://www.tomdispatch.com/

 

Tomdispatch.com April 6, 2007

 

By Noam Chomsky

 

Unsurprisingly, George W. Bush's announcement of a "surge" in Iraq came despite the firm opposition to any such move of Americans and the even stronger opposition of the (thoroughly irrelevant) Iraqis. It was accompanied by ominous official leaks and statements -- from Washington and Baghdad -- about how Iranian intervention in Iraq was aimed at disrupting our mission to gain victory, an aim which is (by definition) noble.

 

What then followed was a solemn debate about whether serial numbers on advanced roadside bombs (IEDs) were really traceable to Iran; and, if so, to that country's Revolutionary Guards or to some even higher authority.

 

This "debate" is a typical illustration of a primary principle of sophisticated propaganda. In crude and brutal societies, the Party Line is publicly proclaimed and must be obeyed -- or else. What you actually believe is your own business and of far less concern. In societies where the state has lost the capacity to control by force, the Party Line is simply presupposed; then, vigorous debate is encouraged within the limits imposed by unstated doctrinal orthodoxy. The cruder of the two systems leads, naturally enough, to disbelief; the sophisticated variant gives an impression of openness and freedom, and so far more effectively serves to instill the Party Line. It becomes beyond question, beyond thought itself, like the air we breathe.

 

The debate over Iranian interference in Iraq proceeds without ridicule on the assumption that the United States owns the world. We did not, for example, engage in a similar debate in the 1980s about whether the U.S. was interfering in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan, and I doubt that Pravda, probably recognizing the absurdity of the situation, sank to outrage about that fact (which American officials and our media, in any case, made no effort to conceal). Perhaps the official Nazi press also featured solemn debates about whether the Allies were interfering in sovereign Vichy France, though if so, sane people would then have collapsed in ridicule.

 

In this case, however, even ridicule -- notably absent -- would not suffice, because the charges against Iran are part of a drumbeat of pronouncements meant to mobilize support for escalation in Iraq and for an attack on Iran, the "source of the problem." The world is aghast at the possibility. Even in neighboring Sunni states, no friends of Iran, majorities, when asked, favor a nuclear-armed Iran over any military action against that country. From what limited information we have, it appears that significant parts of the U.S. military and intelligence communities are opposed to such an attack, along with almost the entire world, even more so than when the Bush administration and Tony Blair's Britain invaded Iraq, defying enormous popular opposition worldwide.

 

"The Iran effect"

 

The results of an attack on Iran could be horrendous. After all, according to a recent study of "the Iraq effect" by terrorism specialists Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank, using government and Rand Corporation data, the Iraq invasion has already led to a seven-fold increase in terror. The "Iran effect" would probably be far more severe and long-lasting. British military historian Corelli Barnett speaks for many when he warns that "an attack on Iran would effectively launch World War III."

 

What are the plans of the increasingly desperate clique that narrowly holds political power in the U.S.? We cannot know. Such state planning is, of course, kept secret in the interests of "security." Review of the declassified record reveals that there is considerable merit in that claim -- though only if we understand "security" to mean the security of the Bush administration against their domestic enemy, the population in whose name they act.

 

Even if the White House clique is not planning war, naval deployments, support for secessionist movements and acts of terror within Iran, and other provocations could easily lead to an accidental war. Congressional resolutions would not provide much of a barrier. They invariably permit "national security" exemptions, opening holes wide enough for the several aircraft- carrier battle groups soon to be in the Persian Gulf to pass through -- as long as an unscrupulous leadership issues proclamations of doom (as Condoleezza Rice did with those "mushroom clouds" over American cities back in 2002). And the concocting of the sorts of incidents that "justify" such attacks is a familiar practice. Even the worst monsters feel the need for such justification and adopt the device: Hitler's defense of innocent Germany from the "wild terror" of the Poles in 1939, after they had rejected his wise and generous proposals for peace, is but one example.

 

The most effective barrier to a White House decision to launch a war is the kind of organized popular opposition that frightened the political-military leadership enough in 1968 that they were reluctant to send more troops to Vietnam -- fearing, we learned from the Pentagon Papers, that they might need them for civil-disorder control.

 

Doubtless Iran's government merits harsh condemnation, including for its recent actions that have inflamed the crisis. It is, however, useful to ask how we would act if Iran had invaded and occupied Canada and Mexico and was arresting U.S. government representatives there on the grounds that they were resisting the Iranian occupation (called "liberation," of course). Imagine as well that Iran was deploying massive naval forces in the Caribbean and issuing credible threats to launch a wave of attacks against a vast range of sites -- nuclear and otherwise -- in the United States, if the U.S. government did not immediately terminate all its nuclear energy programs (and, naturally, dismantle all its nuclear weapons). Suppose that all of this happened after Iran had overthrown the government of the U.S. and installed a vicious tyrant (as the US did to Iran in 1953), then later supported a Russian invasion of the U.S. that killed millions of people (just as the U.S. supported Saddam Hussein's invasion of Iran in 1980, killing hundreds of thousands of Iranians, a figure comparable to millions of Americans). Would we watch quietly?

 

It is easy to understand an observation by one of Israel's leading military historians, Martin van Creveld. After the U.S. invaded Iraq, knowing it to be defenseless, he noted, "Had the Iranians not tried to build nuclear weapons, they would be crazy."

 

Surely no sane person wants Iran (or any nation) to develop nuclear weapons. A reasonable resolution of the present crisis would permit Iran to develop nuclear energy, in accord with its rights under the Non- Proliferation Treaty, but not nuclear weapons. Is that outcome feasible? It would be, given one condition: that the U.S. and Iran were functioning democratic societies in which public opinion had a significant impact on public policy.

 

As it happens, this solution has overwhelming support among Iranians and Americans, who generally are in agreement on nuclear issues. The Iranian-American consensus includes the complete elimination of nuclear weapons everywhere (82% of Americans); if that cannot yet be achieved because of elite opposition, then at least a "nuclear-weapons-free zone in the Middle East that would include both Islamic countries and Israel" (71% of Americans). Seventy-five percent of Americans prefer building better relations with Iran to threats of force. In brief, if public opinion were to have a significant influence on state policy in the U.S. and Iran, resolution of the crisis might be at hand, along with much more far-reaching solutions to the global nuclear conundrum.

 

Promoting democracy -- at home

 

These facts suggest a possible way to prevent the current crisis from exploding, perhaps even into some version of World War III. That awesome threat might be averted by pursuing a familiar proposal: democracy promotion -- this time at home, where it is badly needed. Democracy promotion at home is certainly feasible and, although we cannot carry out such a project directly in Iran, we could act to improve the prospects of the courageous reformers and oppositionists who are seeking to achieve just that. Among such figures who are, or should be, well-known, would be Saeed Hajjarian, Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi, and Akbar Ganji, as well as those who, as usual, remain nameless, among them labor activists about whom we hear very little; those who publish the Iranian Workers Bulletin may be a case in point.

 

We can best improve the prospects for democracy promotion in Iran by sharply reversing state policy here so that it reflects popular opinion. That would entail ceasing to make the regular threats that are a gift to Iranian hardliners. These are bitterly condemned by Iranians truly concerned with democracy promotion (unlike those "supporters" who flaunt democracy slogans in the West and are lauded as grand "idealists" despite their clear record of visceral hatred for democracy).

 

Democracy promotion in the United States could have far broader consequences. In Iraq, for instance, a firm timetable for withdrawal would be initiated at once, or very soon, in accord with the will of the overwhelming majority of Iraqis and a significant majority of Americans. Federal budget priorities would be virtually reversed. Where spending is rising, as in military supplemental bills to conduct the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it would sharply decline. Where spending is steady or declining (health, education, job training, the promotion of energy conservation and renewable energy sources, veterans benefits, funding for the UN and UN peacekeeping operations, and so on), it would sharply increase. Bush's tax cuts for people with incomes over $200,000 a year would be immediately rescinded.

 

The U.S. would have adopted a national health-care system long ago, rejecting the privatized system that sports twice the per-capita costs found in similar societies and some of the worst outcomes in the industrial world. It would have rejected what is widely regarded by those who pay attention as a "fiscal train wreck" in-the-making. The U.S. would have ratified the Kyoto Protocol to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions and undertaken still stronger measures to protect the environment. It would allow the UN to take the lead in international crises, including in Iraq. After all, according to opinion polls, since shortly after the 2003 invasion, a large majority of Americans have wanted the UN to take charge of political transformation, economic reconstruction, and civil order in that land.

 

If public opinion mattered, the U.S. would accept UN Charter restrictions on the use of force, contrary to a bipartisan consensus that this country, alone, has the right to resort to violence in response to potential threats, real or imagined, including threats to our access to markets and resources. The U.S. (along with others) would abandon the Security Council veto and accept majority opinion even when in opposition to it. The UN would be allowed to regulate arms sales; while the U.S. would cut back on such sales and urge other countries to do so, which would be a major contribution to reducing large-scale violence in the world. Terror would be dealt with through diplomatic and economic measures, not force, in accord with the judgment of most specialists on the topic but again in diametric opposition to present-day policy.

 

Furthermore, if public opinion influenced policy, the U.S. would have diplomatic relations with Cuba, benefiting the people of both countries (and, incidentally, U.S. agribusiness, energy corporations, and others), instead of standing virtually alone in the world in imposing an embargo (joined only by Israel, the Republic of Palau, and the Marshall Islands). Washington would join the broad international consensus on a two-state settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict, which (with Israel) it has blocked for 30 years -- with scattered and temporary exceptions -- and which it still blocks in word, and more importantly in deed, despite fraudulent claims of its commitment to diplomacy. The U.S. would also equalize aid to Israel and Palestine, cutting off aid to either party that rejected the international consensus.

 

Evidence on these matters is reviewed in my book Failed States as well as in The Foreign Policy Disconnect by Benjamin Page (with Marshall Bouton), which also provides extensive evidence that public opinion on foreign (and probably domestic) policy issues tends to be coherent and consistent over long periods. Studies of public opinion have to be regarded with caution, but they are certainly highly suggestive.

 

Democracy promotion at home, while no panacea, would be a useful step towards helping our own country become a "responsible stakeholder" in the international order (to adopt the term used for adversaries), instead of being an object of fear and dislike throughout much of the world. Apart from being a value in itself, functioning democracy at home holds real promise for dealing constructively with many current problems, international and domestic, including those that literally threaten the survival of our species.

_

 

Noam Chomsky is the author of Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy (Metropolitan Books), just published in paperback, among many other works.

_________________

 

 

A predator becomes more dangerous when wounded

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2029918,00.html

 

Comment

 

Washington's escalation of threats against Iran is driven by a determination to secure control of the region's energy resources

 

Noam Chomsky Friday March 9, 2007 The Guardian

 

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 sends 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 in Washington, Tehran is portrayed as the pinnacle in the so-called Shia crescent that stretches from Iran to Hizbullah in Lebanon, through Shia 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.

 

Presumably this minimal gesture toward diplomacy is intended to allay the growing fears and anger elicited by Washington's heightened aggressiveness. These concerns are given new substance in a detailed study of "the Iraq effect" by terrorism experts Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank, revealing that the Iraq war "has increased terrorism sevenfold worldwide". An "Iran effect" could be even more severe.

 

For the US, 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 US control. By an accident of geography, the world's major oil resources are in largely Shia 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 Shia alliance controlling most of the world's oil and independent of the US.

 

Such a bloc, if it emerges, might even join the Asian Energy Security Grid based in China. Iran could be a lynchpin. If the Bush planners bring that about, they will have seriously undermined the US position of power in the world.

 

To Washington, Tehran's principal offence has been its defiance, going back to the overthrow of the Shah in 1979 and the hostage crisis at the US embassy. In retribution, Washington turned to support Saddam Hussein's aggression against Iran, which left hundreds of thousands dead. Then came murderous sanctions and, under Bush, rejection of Iranian diplomatic efforts.

 

Last July, Israel invaded Lebanon, the fifth invasion since 1978. As before, US support 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 US-Israel invasion is that Hizbullah's rockets could be a deterrent to a US-Israeli attack on Iran. Despite the sabre-rattling it is, I suspect, unlikely that the Bush administration will attack Iran. Public opinion in the US and around the world is overwhelmingly opposed. It appears that the US military and intelligence community is also opposed. Iran cannot defend itself against US 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 the British military historian Corelli Barnett, who writes that "an attack on Iran would effectively launch world war three".

 

Then again, a predator becomes even more dangerous, and less predictable, when wounded. In desperation to salvage something, the administration might risk even greater disasters. The Bush administration has created an unimaginable catastrophe in Iraq. It has been unable to establish a reliable client state within, and cannot withdraw without facing the possible loss of control of the Middle East's energy resources.

 

Meanwhile Washington may be seeking to destabilise 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 US efforts to strangle Iran economically, with predictable success in Europe. Another predictable consequence, presumably intended, is to induce the Iranian leadership to be as repressive as possible, fomenting disorder while undermining reformers.

 

It is also necessary to demonise the leadership. In the west, any wild statement by President Ahmadinejad is circulated in headlines, dubiously translated. But Ahmadinejad has no control over foreign policy, which is in the hands of his superior, the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The US media tend to ignore Khamenei's statements, especially if they are conciliatory. It's widely reported when Ahmadinejad says Israel shouldn't exist - but there is silence when Khamenei says that Iran supports the Arab League position on Israel-Palestine, calling for normalisation of relations with Israel if it accepts the international consensus of a two-state settlement.

 

The US invasion of Iraq virtually instructed Iran to develop a nuclear deterrent. The message was that the US attacks at will, as long as the target is defenceless. Now Iran is ringed by US forces in Afghanistan, Iraq, Turkey and the Persian Gulf, and close by are nuclear-armed Pakistan and Israel, the regional superpower, thanks to US support.

 

In 2003, Iran offered negotiations on all outstanding issues, including nuclear policies and Israel-Palestine relations. Washington's response was to censure the Swiss diplomat who brought the offer. The following year, the EU and Iran reached an agreement that Iran would suspend enriching uranium; in return the EU would provide "firm guarantees on security issues" - code for US-Israeli threats to bomb Iran.

 

Apparently under US pressure, Europe did not live up to the bargain. Iran then resumed uranium enrichment. A genuine interest in preventing the development of nuclear weapons in Iran 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.

 

© Noam Chomsky, New York Times Syndicate

 

· Noam Chomsky is co-author, with Gilbert Achcar, of Perilous Power: The Middle East and US Foreign Policy

_________________

 

 

Noam Chomsky advocates Chávez

 

http://english.eluniversal.com/2006/10/16/en_pol_art_16A791411.shtml

 

US leftist intellectual Noam Chomsky Monday defended Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez' foreign policy and justified nuclear tests by North Korea as "an act of survival."

 

"North Korea faces the threat of the nuclear weapons the United States has in the region and, therefore, it needs to defend itself," Chomsky told reporters in the Chilean town of Temuco, Efe reported.

 

Chomsky, who arrived in Temuco upon an invitation from the La Frontera University to take part in a Congress on American Indigenous Languages and Literatures, also criticized the foreign policy of his country's President George W. Bush.

 

Chomsky (77) was quoted by Chávez last September 20 during his speech before the United Nations General Assembly, where the Venezuelan ruler suggested reading Chomsky's book "Hegemony and Survival," published in 2003.

 

In Temuco, Chomsky declared that Venezuela "lives in a climate of absolute democracy." He was replying to questions regarding Venezuela bid to occupy a non-permanent seat at the United Nations Security Council.

 

On the contrary, Guatemala - the other candidate to the Security Council for Latin America - "was intervened by the United States" in the 1950s and "has suffered a serious repression by its own governments."

 

"Anyone voting Guatemala is endorsing genocide, torture and killings in this country," Chomsky stressed, adding that Chávez "is given great support by his people, the largest support in the hemisphere."

_________________

 

 

See also http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15326.htm

Chavez, Chomsky and State Terrorism

By Frederick H. Gareau

10/17/06 "Information Clearing House"

 

A compilation of the testimony of those interviewed in each of the six reports revealed that the overwhelming percentage of the terrorism in each of the five countries was state terrorism committed by the government or agents it controlled, not private terrorism carried on by the guerrillas. In Guatemala, the commission appointed by the United Nations concluded that 93 percent of the terrorist acts, including 92 percent of the murderous ones and 91 percent of forced disappearances were committed by the government or its agents. The report on El Salvador charged the government and those it controlled with 95 percent of the terrorist acts resulting in death and the guerrillas with the remaining five percent. This evidence exposed as lies the claims of the governments that the guerillas were committing the bulk of the terrorism. The reports also concluded that the overwhelming number of those terrorized by their governments were ordinary workers, peasants, or the like, rather than terrorists and/or communists, as Americans had been led to understand. Washington had used "communist terrorism" as an excuse to aid what were in actuality terrorist governments.<<

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

 

 

 

U.S. Intervention in Venezuela and in Latin America

 

http://64.191.57.43/articles.php?artno=1850

Wednesday, Oct 11, 2006

 

By: Noam Chomsky

 

A public event on the occasion of the 30th Anniversary of the bombing of Cubana airliner, flight 455, which cost the lives of 73 passengers, was held on October 6th, 2006, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in Boston. Participating in this event were political activist and analyst Noam Chomsky, Cuban specialist and French scholar Salim Lamrani and the President of the National Lawyer’s Guild, Michael Avery, for a discussion of US foreign policy towards Cuba and Latin America, and the cases of Luis Posada Carriles and the Cuban Five.

 

The following is Noam Chomsky’s response to a question from the audience:

 

Audience Member: With the recent integration and cooperation between Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia, obviously the US is paying more attention to these countries. What in your opinion could be the agenda of secret agents currently in action in Venezuela? and could you please analyze the possibility of military intervention in Venezuela and Bolivia on the part of the US government.

 

Noam Chomsky: I think your point is well taken. We know that the US did support a military coup, which briefly overthrew President Chavez and the US had to back down, when he was restored quickly and also had to back down in the face of a very angry reaction in Latin American. In almost all of Latin America, there was a very angry reaction. They take democracy there more seriously then we do here.

 

Right after trying to overthrow the government by force, the US immediately turned to subversion, supporting anti-Chavez groups. That’s described in the press, the way it’s described is, the US is supporting pro-democracy groups, which are opposed to President Chavez.

 

Notice it’s true by definition that if you oppose the president, you are pro-democracy. It’s completely irrelevant that according to the best polls (Latin America has very good polling agencies which take regular polls on these issues around the continent). Support for democracy has been declining—not for democracy but for the democratic governments—has been declining through Latin America, for a pretty good reason, the governments have been associated with neo-liberal programs which undermine democracy—IMF, treasury department programs— so your support for the governments are declining. There are exceptions, and the major exception by far is Venezuela.

 

Since 1998, when Chavez was elected, support for the elected government as be rising very fast, its now by far the highest in Latin America. He has won several elections that have been recognized to be free and fair, he has won numerous referendums, but he is a dictator, a tin-pot dictator, which is proven by the fact that our dear leader said so, and since we are voluntary North Koreans, when the dear leader says it, it’s true. So therefore, he’s a dictator, and if you carry out subversion to overthrow him, that’s pro-democracy by definition. You have to look hard to find an exception to this, or even a comment on it, just like the other examples I discussed.

 

We might ask ourselves how we would react if Iran, say, had just supported a military coup that overthrew the government in the United States and when they have to back off from that, immediately turned to supporting pro-democracy groups in the United States that are opposed to the government. Would we give them ice-cream and candy?

 

Well in dictatorial Venezuela, they let them keep functioning. In fact, even let the newspapers in support of the coup keep functioning. I could go on with this, but what’s likely to happen?

 

Well, the US has had two major weapons for controlling Latin America for a long time. One of them is economic controls, the other is military force. They have both been used continually. Both of them are weakening and it’s a very serious problem for U.S. planners.

 

The Economic, for the first time in its history since the Spanish colonization, Latin America is beginning to get its act together. It’s moving towards some degree of independence, even some degree of integration. The Latin American countries have been very separate from one another through their histories, they have a huge gap between the very rich and the huge massive poor, so when we are talking about the countries, we are talking about the rich elites. The rich elites have been oriented towards Europe and North America, not their own citizens, not each other. So that Capital flight goes to Zurich, or London, or New York, the second home is in the Riviera, the children study in Cambridge or something like that. That’s the way it’s been, with very little interaction, and it’s changing.

 

First of all there are major popular movements, like in Bolivia. They had a democratic election of the kind we can’t even dream of. I mean if there was any honest newspaper coverage in this country we would be ashamed at the comparison between their election and ours. I won’t go through it, but with a little thought you can quickly figure it out, because there is mass popular participation, and the people know what they are voting for, and they pick somebody from their own ranks and their major issues and so on. It’s unimaginable here where elections are about the level of marketing toothpaste on television, literally.

 

There are mass popular movements all over and they have begun to integrate to some extent for the first time.

 

The military weapon has been weakened. The last effort of the US had to back off very quickly, in 2002 in Venezuela. The kinds of governments the US is now supporting—forced to support—are the kinds it would have been trying to overthrow not very long ago, because of this shift.

 

The economic weapon is weakening enormously. They are throwing out the IMF. The IMF means the US Treasury Department. Argentina, it was the poster boy of the IMF, you know, following all the rules and so on. It went in to a hideous economic crash. They managed to get out of it, but only by radically violating IMF rules, and they are now, as the President put it, “ridding themselves of the IMF” and paying off their debt with the help of Venezuela. Venezuela bought up a lot of their debt. The same is happening in Brazil. The same is going to happen in Bolivia.

 

In general, the economic measures are weakening, the military measures are no longer what they were. The US is deeply concerned about it, undoubtedly. We shouldn’t think that the US has abandoned the military effort, on the contrary, the number of US personnel— military personnel—in Latin America is probably as high as its ever been. The number of the Latin American officers being trained by the US is going up very sharply. By now, for the first time (it never happened during the cold war) the US military aid is higher than the sum of economic and social aid from key federal agencies- that’s a shift. There are more air bases all over the place.

 

Keep your eyes on Ecuador, there’s an election coming up in about a week, the likely winner, Rafael Correa is an interesting person, he was recently asked what he would do with the big Manta US airbase in Ecuador and his answer was, well he’d allow it to stay if the United States agreed to have an Ecuadorian airbase in Miami.

 

But these are the things that are going on. There’s a call for an Indian Nation for the first time. The indigenous—in some states like Bolivia—majority is actually entering the political arena for the first time in 500 years, electing their own candidates. These are major changes, but the US is certainly not giving up on it.

 

The Military training has been shifted. Its official focus now is on what’s called radical populism and street gangs. Well, you know what radical populism means, like the Priests organizing peasants or anyone who gets out of line. So yeah, it’s serious. What will they do?

 

Governments have what are called security interests; they have to protect the national security. If any of you have ever spent any time reading declassified documents, you know what that the means. I’ve spent a lot of time reading them and it’s true, there is defense of the government against its enemy, that prime enemy. Its prime enemy is the domestic population. That’s true of every government I know. So if you read the declassified documents, you find that most of them are protecting the government from its own population. Not much has to do with anything you might call security interests, in another sense, and that’s true right now. So we don’t know what they are planning because we have to be protected from knowing what the government is planning. So we have to speculate.

 

If you want my speculation, based on no information except what I would be doing if I was sitting in the Pentagon planning office and told to figure out a way to overthrow the governments of Bolivia, Venezuela, and Iran, in fact. The idea that immediately comes to mind, so I assume they are working on it, is to support secessionist movements, which is conceivable if you look at the geography and the places where the oil is and so on.

 

In Venezuela, the oil is in Zulia province, which is where the opposition candidate is coming from, right on the boarder of Colombia

(one of the only states in Latin America where the US has a firm military presence). It’s a rich province, pretty anti-Chavez, and it happens to be where most of the oil is, and in fact there is rumor of a Zulia independence movement, which, if they can carry it off, the US could then intervene to protect against the dictator. That’s Venezuela.

 

In Bolivia, the major gas resources are in the low-lands, the eastern low-lands, which is mostly European, not indigenous, opposed to the government, rich area, near Paraguay (one of the other countries where the US has military bases), so you can imagine the same project going on – also secessionist movements.

 

In Iran, which is the big one, if you look at it, the oil of the region (that’s where most of the hydrocarbons in the world are) they are right around the gulf, the Shiite sections of Iraq, the Shiite sections of Saudi Arabia and an Arab—not Persian—region of Iran, Khuzestan, right near the Gulf, it happens to be Arab. There is talk floating around Europe (you know it’s probably planted by the CIA) of an Ahwazi Liberation Movement for this region. A feasible, I don’t know if it’s feasible or not, but I think the kind of thought that would be occurring to the Pentagon planners is to sponsor a liberation movement, so-called, in the area near the Gulf then move in to defend it. They’ve got 150,000 troops in Iraq; presumably, you might try that, and then bomb the rest of the country back to the Stone Age. It’s conceivable, I mean, I wouldn’t be surprised if those are the kinds of plans that are being toyed with. Transcribed for Venezuelanalysis.com by Michael Fox

_________________

 

 

 

Chomsky's vindication

 

 

Georgia Straight 5-October-2006

 

As political alienation grows, America's most famous dissident finds the mainstream is coming to him

 

By Brian Lynch

 

At the age of 77, after decades as one of the world's most widely recognized and controversial critics of American government, Noam Chomsky is still occasionally taken aback by the politics of his country. For more than 30 years, he has tracked the steady and dramatic shift to the right in the attitudes and actions of America's leadership, a trend that, as he recently told the Georgia Straight in an extended interview, began as a predictable reaction in the early '70s to the preceding decade's wave of activism. Still, he admits, "I didn't think it would go this far."

 

Six presidents have come and gone since the renowned dissident and MIT linguistics pioneer published his first political work, American Power and the New Mandarins, in 1969. Yet the administration now governing surely counts as the most brazenly autocratic in that period. During their two terms, George W. Bush and his cohorts have taken virtually every step open to them to confine the powers of government to the Oval Office and its small coterie of appointed advisors. The result has undermined fundamental civil and human rights through such groundbreaking concepts as the USA PATRIOT Act and the suspension of habeas corpus. And all of it has served as scaffolding for a grimly innovative doctrine of unilateral military action that, as Chomsky argues in his latest book, Failed States, has radically weakened the fabric of international relations.

 

And yet, at the same time, Chomsky senses a growing openness in public political discussions that runs directly counter to this strong rightward current.

 

"I can see it in my own personal experience," he says on the line from his office in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "Last night I gave a talk, and the topics that I now discuss I could barely mention 10 or 20 years ago. It happened that this talk was on the Middle East, and I'd given another one a couple of days earlier. There were huge crowds. I was saying things that I couldn't say in the past. When I talked about these topics even a few years ago, even in a place like Cambridge, Massachusetts, the 'Athens of America', there had to be police protection, literally, because the meetings were being broken up and there were threats of terror. But now it's just totally gone -- I talk freely and engage people. And the same is true all over the country."

 

These impressions are backed up by the popular response to Chomsky's books. Failed States (Metropolitan Books, $32), released in March (and, amazingly, his 58th publication on politics), continues to sell strongly, while his 2003 title Hegemony or Survival (Owl Books) currently resides in the top 30 of the New York Times' bestseller list, the result of a spike in sales after Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez's much-noted endorsement of the book during a recent speech at the UN. It can all be considered evidence of what Chomsky describes as the American public's widespread feelings of alienation from an electoral process in which party platforms are increasingly indistinguishable from one another and increasingly distant from the genuine concerns of voters.

 

"When I look at public opinion, I'm not far out of the mainstream," he says, referring to discussions in Failed States of recent polls suggesting a widening political split between most Americans and their leaders. "I'm in it, in many respects. In some respects, public opinion goes beyond anything I've ever said. For example, a small majority of the public believes that the United States ought to give up the veto at the UN Security Council and follow the will of the majority, even if we don't like it. Have you ever heard those words expressed anywhere during an election campaign?"

 

A further example is the immediate prospect of serious environmental degradation, a matter that -- according to an extensive 2004 public-opinion poll by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations that Chomsky cites -- is of deeply pressing importance to most Americans. "We read in the press that the United States was one of the few industrial countries that wouldn't sign the Kyoto protocol, that didn't support it," he explains. "That's true if by 'United States' you exclude its population. The population was overwhelmingly in favour of it -- in fact, so strongly in favour that a majority of Bush voters assumed that he was in favour of it. That's partly a reflection of the fact that the party's election managers are very careful to keep issues off the table so you don't know where candidates stand."

 

And so on with a host of other major issues, from universal health care to the invasion of Iraq. Chomsky sees few reasons to believe that matters will be any different in the American midterm elections slated for next month, even though one might reasonably expect Bush's Republicans to suffer a resounding defeat in response to a slew of scandals, misdeeds, and distortions of vital fact.

 

"If there were a genuine opposition party in the United States, it would have been making hay in the last year or two," he notes. "I mean, every week the Bush administration has been shooting themselves in the foot on something, often in grotesque ways. But, although their popularity has declined as a result, the Democrats have gained very little from it..The reason is because they're perceived -- quite accurately -- as not presenting much of an alternative. On issues of major concern to Americans, they don't take any clear position..There are exceptions -- I don't want to talk about everybody. But as a general rule, the tendency is that they Democrats and Republicans both appeal to pretty much the same constituencies, namely concentrations of economic power and privilege. I mean, you don't run in an American election -- again, with rare exceptions -- unless you have substantial support of sectors of corporate power. And in fact the elections themselves have over the years become increasingly deprived of political content."

 

Chomsky has long argued that this hollowing-out of democratic debate, to the point of vacuousness during election campaigns, is largely the result of the growing prevalence and sophistication of the public-relations industry -- "the same people who are selling lifestyle drugs and toothpaste on television", as he remarks to the Straight.

 

"Everyone knows that when you look at a television ad, you do not expect to get information," he explains. "You expect to see delusion and imagery. And when they sell candidates, they naturally do the same thing, particularly because there's pressure in both parties to keep away from issues, since the public by and large doesn't agree with them on issues."

 

Thus the extraordinary usefulness of the war on terror, which, as a tool for misdirecting public attention, has been all the more effective for being hazily defined. As Chomsky argues in Failed States, it is merely the latest and most streamlined version of a tactic in use since the outset of the Cold War. Like its predecessors', its power is reductive: complex and often unpalatable plans for dominance on the world stage are transformed into simple dramas that pit a wholly benign American superpower against the diabolical enemy of the day -- even when, as in the case of Saddam Hussein, that enemy was relatively recently a favoured ally. Its basis is a PR-like appeal to emotion, he says, focusing on fear for the purpose of blurring the surrounding facts. And foremost among the current facts, as Chomsky points out, is the increasing evidence that Bush's adventure in Iraq has worked directly against its stated aims.

 

"This is a very frightened country," he notes. "Actually, it's been a frightened country all through its history, where it's been very easy to mobilize people in fear. That's true of many countries, but particularly true here. There is a genuine fear of terror, and it has a basis, like most fears. The Bush administration's main appeal to the country -- in the 2004 election and today in the midterm-election campaigns -- is 'Keep away from all issues; we're going to protect you from terror.' Is there any truth to that? No."

 

For proof, Chomsky points to a recent intelligence report -- initially leaked in the New York Times on September 24 and reluctantly declassified by the president two days later -- in which a range of U.S. intelligence agencies assessed the ongoing occupation of Iraq as a "cause célèbre" for violent Islamist groups around the world.

 

The report, Chomsky says, merely "stressed what has been known in the past. But now we have it from a higher authority, and in more detail, that the war, exactly as predicted, has increased the threat of terror and, in fact, has increased it far beyond what was anticipated. The dynamics were understood. It was predicted by intelligence agencies and specialists. It's been verified since by the CIA and others."

 

Where, then, is the widespread public outcry? If, as Chomsky claims, the majority of American voters reside some distance to the left of their leaders in the political spectrum, and if they are now more open than ever to opinions and ideas that have been consistently excluded from official discussion, why is there a clear lack of organized popular opposition, especially as the next set of elections approaches?

 

Chomsky suggests that there is "another new strain" growing alongside this greater public openness. "At least it's new in my experience, which goes back 60 years: a feeling of hopelessness. I mean, we have every possible opportunity, and an incomparable legacy of freedom, of privilege, of opportunity, and there's numbers that I've never seen involved, engaged, and concerned. But they feel they can't do anything. They feel hopeless."

 

Such desperation, he argues, is the result of an array of forces at work on average Americans, among them a deliberate erosion of key institutional and organizational structures, such as unions, "in which people used to get together and form opinions and prepare actions." Reinforcing the "atomizing" trend, he adds, is a rising tide of materialism, driven on by what he refers to as the "fabrication of consumers".

 

"That's by now a huge industry, and it affects everyone," he says. "People are deeply in debt -- for much of the population, debt is greater than income. So they're trapped..People are induced -- you can't say compelled, but induced under tremendous pressure -- to purchase commodities that they don't want."

 

Couple this with the stagnation of real wages that most of the population has experienced over the past 25 years, Chomsky says, and "people do feel helpless. I mean, if you're working 50 hours a week to try to maintain family income, and your children have the kinds of aspirations that come from being flooded with television from age one, and associations have declined, people end up hopeless, even though they have every option."

 

The fact that these options remain provides Chomsky with his greatest source of optimism at this late stage of his career. Indeed, although he has throughout the years been accused by opponents on both the right and the left of being motivated by a kind of knee-jerk anti-Americanism, he invokes the long, hard-won traditions of civil liberties and intellectual freedom that have flourished in the United States, most often through popular resistance.

 

"You know, we're not living in a fascist state," he says. "We don't have to face torture chambers and secret police and so on. Consumerism is a much easier threat to face than torture chambers. We can overcome this, as in the past. There have been similar periods of regression that have been overcome. The 1960s is a recent example. It really led to civilizing society in significant ways. The rights of minorities, the rights of women, opposition to aggression -- these were substantial changes. And there was a backlash.and very self-conscious efforts to try to beat back the democratizing wave. And, yes, we're in the middle of that period now. But not forever. It's continuing, but I think its hold on power is very fragile and it could be overcome. It's a matter of will, really."

_________________

 

 

 

Lessons of Lebanon

 

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14962.htm

 

By Noam Chomsky

 

09/12/06 "Information Clearing House" -- -- In Lebanon, a little-honoured truce remains in effect - yet another in a decades-long series of cease-fires between Israel and its adversaries in a cycle that, as if inevitably, returns to warfare, carnage and human misery.

 

Let's describe the current crisis for what it is: a US-Israeli invasion of Lebanon, with only a cynical pretense to legitimacy. Amid all the charges and countercharges, the most immediate factor behind the assault is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

 

This is hardly the first time that Israel has invaded Lebanon to eliminate an alleged threat. The most important of the US-backed Israeli invasions of Lebanon, in 1982, was widely described in Israel as a war for the West Bank. It was undertaken to end the Palestinian Liberation Organisation's annoying calls for a diplomatic settlement. Despite many different circumstances, the July invasion falls into the same pattern.

 

What would break the cycle? The basic outlines of a solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict are familiar, and have been supported by a broad international consensus for 30 years: a two-state settlement on the international border, perhaps with minor and mutual adjustments.

 

The Arab states formally accepted this proposal in 2002, as the Palestinians had, long before. Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has made it clear that though this solution is not Hezbollah's preference, they will not disrupt it. Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei recently reaffirmed that Iran too supports this settlement. Hamas has indicated clearly that it is prepared to negotiate for a settlement in these terms as well.

 

The United States and Israel continue to block this political settlement, as they have done for 30 years, with brief and inconsequential exceptions. Denial may be preferred at home, but the victims do not enjoy that luxury.

 

US-Israeli rejectionism is not only in words, but more important, in actions. With decisive US backing, Israel has been formalising its programme of annexation, dismemberment of shrinking Palestinian territories and imprisonment of what remains by taking over the Jordan Valley - the "convergence" program that is, astonishingly, called "courageous withdrawal" in the United States.

 

In consequence, the Palestinians are facing national destruction. The most meaningful support for Palestinians is from Hezbollah, which was formed in reaction to the 1982 invasion. Hezbollah won considerable prestige by leading the effort to force Israel to withdraw from Lebanon in 2000. Also, like other Islamic movements, including Hamas, Hezbollah has gained popular support by providing social services to the poor.

 

To US and Israeli planners it therefore follows that Hezbollah must be severely weakened or destroyed - just as the PLO had to be evicted from Lebanon in 1982. But Hezbollah is so deeply embedded within Lebanese society that it cannot be eradicated without destroying much of Lebanon as well - hence the scale of the attack on the country's population and infrastructure.

 

In keeping with a familiar pattern, the aggression is sharply increasing the support for Hezbollah, not only in the Arab and Muslim worlds beyond but also in Lebanon itself.

 

Late last month, polls revealed that 87 per cent of Lebanese support Hezbollah's resistance against the invasion, including 80 per cent of Christians and Druze. Even the Maronite Catholic patriarch, the spiritual leader of the most pro-Western sector in Lebanon, joined Sunni and Shia religious leaders in a statement condemning the "aggression" and hailing "the resistance, mainly led by Hezbollah." The poll also found that 90 per cent of Lebanese regard the United States as "complicit in Israel's war crimes against the Lebanese people."

 

Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, Lebanon's leading academic scholar on Hezbollah, observes that "these findings are all the more significant when compared to the results of a similar survey conducted just five months ago, which showed that only 58 per cent of all Lebanese believed Hezbollah had the right to remain armed, and hence, continue its resistance activity."

 

The dynamics are familiar. Rami G. Khouri, an editor of Lebanon's Daily Star, writes that "the Lebanese and Palestinians have responded to Israel's persistent and increasingly savage attacks against entire civilian populations by creating parallel or alternative leaderships that can protect them and deliver essential services."

 

Such popular forces will only gain in power and become more extremist if the United States and Israel persist in demolishing any hope of Palestinian national rights, and in destroying Lebanon.

 

In the current crisis even King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, Washington's oldest (and most important) ally in the region, was compelled to say, "If the peace option is rejected due to the Israeli arrogance, then only the war option remains, and no one knows the repercussions befalling the region, including wars and conflict that will spare no one, including those whose military power is now tempting them to play with fire."

 

It is no secret that Israel has helped to destroy secular Arab nationalism and to create Hezbollah and Hamas, just as US violence has expedited the rise of extremist Islamic fundamentalism and jihadi terror. The latest adventure is likely to create new generations of bitter and angry jihadis, just as the invasion of Iraq did.

 

Israeli writer Uri Avnery observed that Israeli Chief of Staff Dan Halutz, former air force commander, "views the world below through a bombsight." Much the same is true of Rumsfeld-Cheney-Rice and other top Bush administration planners. As history reveals, that view of the world is not uncommon among those who wield most of the means of violence.

 

Saad-Ghorayeb describes the current violence in "apocalyptic terms," warning that possibly "all hell would be let loose" if the outcome of the US-Israel campaign leaves a situation in which "the Shia community is seething with resentment at Israel, the United States and the government that it perceives as its betrayer."

 

The core issue - the Israel-Palestine conflict - can be dealt with by diplomacy, if the United States and Israel abandon their rejectionist commitments. Other outstanding problems in the region are also susceptible to negotiation and diplomacy. Their success can never be guaranteed. But we can be reasonably confident that viewing the world through a bombsight will bring further misery and suffering, perhaps even in "apocalyptic terms."

---

Noam Chomsky , the author, most recently, of Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy , is emeritus professor of linguistics and philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass.

_________________

 

 

 

Their view of the world is through a bombsight

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1862484,00.html

 

The Guardian September 1, 2006

 

American support for Israel's unwinnable aim of destroying Hizbullah only boosts its support in Lebanon and beyond

 

By Noam Chomsky

 

In Lebanon, a little-honored truce remains in effect - yet another in a decades-long series of ceasefires between Israel and its adversaries in a cycle that, as if inevitably, returns to warfare, carnage and human misery. Let's describe the current crisis for what it is: a US-Israeli invasion of Lebanon, with only a cynical pretense to legitimacy. Amid all the charges and counter-charges, the most immediate factor behind the assault is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

 

This is hardly the first time that Israel has invaded Lebanon to eliminate an alleged threat. The most important of the US-backed Israeli invasions of Lebanon, in 1982, was widely described in Israel as a war for the West Bank. It was undertaken to end the Palestinian Liberation Organisation's annoying calls for a diplomatic settlement. Despite many different circumstances, the July invasion falls into the same pattern.

 

What would break the cycle? The basic outlines of a solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict have been supported by a broad international consensus for 30 years: a two-state settlement on the international border, perhaps with minor and mutual adjustments.

 

The Arab states formally accepted this proposal in 2002, as the Palestinians had long before. Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has made it clear that though this solution is not Hizbullah's preference, they will not disrupt it. Iran's "supreme leader" Ayatollah Khamenei recently reaffirmed that Iran too supports this settlement. Hamas has indicated clearly that it is prepared to negotiate for a settlement in these terms as well.

 

The US and Israel continue to block this political settlement, as they have done for 30 years, with brief and inconsequential exceptions. Denial may be preferred at home, but the victims do not enjoy that luxury.

 

US-Israeli rejectionism is not only in words but, more importantly, in actions. With decisive US backing, Israel has been formalizing its program of annexation, dismemberment of shrinking Palestinian territories and imprisonment of what remains by taking over the Jordan valley - the "convergence" program that is, astonishingly, called "courageous withdrawal" in the US.

 

In consequence, the Palestinians are facing national destruction. The most meaningful support for Palestine is from Hizbullah, which was formed in reaction to the 1982 invasion. It won considerable prestige by leading the effort to force Israel to withdraw from Lebanon in 2000. Also, like other Islamic movements including Hamas, Hizbullah has gained popular support by providing social services to the poor.

 

To US and Israeli planners it therefore follows that Hizbullah must be severely weakened or destroyed, just as the PLO had to be evicted from Lebanon in 1982. But Hizbullah is so deeply embedded in society that it cannot be eradicated without destroying much of Lebanon as well. Hence the scale of the attack on the country's population and infrastructure.

 

In keeping with a familiar pattern, the aggression is sharply increasing the support for Hizbullah, not only in the Arab and Muslim worlds beyond, but also in Lebanon itself. Late last month, polls revealed that 87% of Lebanese support Hizbullah's resistance against the invasion, including 80% of Christians and Druze. Even the Maronite Catholic patriarch, the spiritual leader of the most pro-western sector in Lebanon, joined Sunni and Shia religious leaders in a statement condemning the "aggression" and hailing "the resistance, mainly led by Hizbullah". The poll also found that 90% of Lebanese regard the US as "complicit in Israel's war crimes against the Lebanese people".

 

Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, Lebanon's leading academic scholar on Hizbullah, observes that "these findings are all the more significant when compared to the results of a similar survey conducted just five months ago, which showed that only 58% of all Lebanese believed Hizbullah had the right to remain armed, and hence continue its resistance activity".

 

The dynamics are familiar. Rami Khouri, an editor of Lebanon's Daily Star, writes that "the Lebanese and Palestinians have responded to Israel's persistent and increasingly savage attacks against entire civilian populations by creating parallel or alternative leaderships that can protect them and deliver essential services".

 

Such popular forces will only gain in power and become more extremist if the US and Israel persist in demolishing any hope of Palestinian national rights, and in destroying Lebanon.

 

Even King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, Washington's oldest ally in the region, was compelled to say: "If the peace option is rejected due to the Israeli arrogance, then only the war option remains, and no one knows the repercussions befalling the region, including wars and conflict that will spare no one, including those whose military power is now tempting them to play with fire."

 

It is no secret that Israel has helped to destroy secular Arab nationalism and to create Hizbullah and Hamas, just as US violence has expedited the rise of extremist Islamic fundamentalism and jihadi terror. The latest adventure is likely to create new generations of bitter and angry jihadis, just as the invasion of Iraq did.

 

Israeli writer Uri Avnery observed that the Israeli chief of staff Dan Halutz, a former air force commander, "views the world below through a bombsight". Much the same is true of Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rice and other top Bush administration planners. As history reveals, that view of the world is not uncommon among those who wield most of the means of violence.

 

Saad-Ghorayeb describes the current violence in "apocalyptic terms", warning that possibly "all hell would be let loose" if the outcome of the US-Israel campaign leaves a situation in which "the Shia community is seething with resentment at Israel, the US and the government that it perceives as its betrayer".

 

The core issue - the Israel-Palestine conflict - can be settled by diplomacy, if the US and Israel abandon their rejectionist commitments. Other outstanding problems in the region are also susceptible to negotiation and diplomacy. Their success can never be guaranteed. But we can be reasonably confident that viewing the world through a bombsight will bring further misery and suffering, perhaps even in "apocalyptic terms".

 

Noam Chomsky's most recent book is Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy; he is emeritus professor of linguistics and philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology www.chomsky.info

_________________

 

 

Letter from Pinter, Saramago, Chomsky and Berger

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/print.html?path=HL0607/S00376.htm

 

Scoop Tuesday, 25 July 2006

 

This letter, signed by Harold Pinter, Jose Saramago, Noam Chomsky and John Berger, has been forwarded to major newspapers.

 

Don't Shoot the Messenger.

 

The latest chapter of the conflict between Israel and Palestine began when Israeli forces abducted two civilians, a doctor and his brother, from Gaza. An incident scarcely reported anywhere, except in the Turkish press. The following day the Palestinians took an Israeli soldier prisoner - and proposed a negotiated exchange against prisoners taken by the Israelis - there are approximately 10,000 in Israeli jails.

 

That this "kidnapping" was considered an outrage, whereas the illegal military occupation of the West Bank and the systematic appropriation of its natural resources - most particularly that of water - by the Israeli Defense

(!) Forces is considered a regrettable but realistic fact of life, is typical of the double standards repeatedly employed by the West in face of what has befallen the Palestinians, on the land allotted to them by international agreements, during the last seventy years.

 

Today outrage follows outrage; makeshift missiles cross sophisticated ones. The latter usually find their target situated where the disinherited and crowded poor live, waiting for what was once called Justice. Both categories of missile rip bodies apart horribly - who but field commanders can forget this for a moment?

 

Each provocation and counter-provocation is contested and preached over. But the subsequent arguments, accusations and vows, all serve as a distraction in order to divert world attention from a long-term military, economic and geographic practice whose political aim is nothing less than the liquidation of the Palestinian nation.

 

This has to be said loud and clear for the practice, only half declared and often covert, is advancing fast these days, and, in our opinion, it must be unceasingly and eternally recognized for what it is and resisted.

 

John Berger

Noam Chomsky

Harold Pinter

José Saramago

 

Later endorsed by.

 

Tariq Ali

Eduardo Galeano

Naomi Klein

Arundhati Roy

Giuliana Sgrena

Howard Zinn

_________________

 

 

Noam Chomsky on Israel, Lebanon and Palestine

 

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14404.htm

 

By Kaveh Afrasiabi of Global Interfaith Peace

 

08/07/06 "Information Clearing House" -- --

 

Do you agree with the argument that Israel's military offensive in

Lebanon is "legally and morally justified?"

 

Noam Chomsky: The invasion itself is a serious breach of international

law, and major war crimes are being committed as it proceeds. There is

no legal justification.

 

The "moral justification" is supposed to be that capturing soldiers in

a cross-border raid, and killing others, is an outrageous crime. We

know, for certain, that Israel, the United States and other Western

governments, as well as the mainstream of articulate Western opinion,

do not believe a word of that. Sufficient evidence is their tolerance

for many years of US-backed Israeli crimes in Lebanon, including four

invasions before this one, occupation in violation of Security Council

orders for 22 years, and regular killings and abductions. To mention

just one question that every journal should be answering: When did

Nasrallah assume a leadership role? Answer: When the Rabin government

escalated its crimes in Lebanon, murdering Sheikh Abbas Mussawi and his

wife and child with missiles fired from a US helicopter. Nasrallah was

chosen as his successor. Only one of innumerable cases. There is, after

all, a good reason why last February, 70% of Lebanese called for the

capture of Israeli soldiers for prisoner exchange.

 

The conclusion is underscored, dramatically, by the current upsurge of

violence, which began after the capture of Corporal Gilad Shalit on

June 25. Every published Western "timeline" takes that as the opening

event. Yet the day before, Israeli forces kidnapped two Gaza civilians,

a doctor and his brother, and sent them to the Israeli prison system

where they can join innumerable other Palestinians, many held without

charges -- hence kidnapped. Kidnapping of civilians is a far worse

crime than capture of soldiers. The Western response was quite

revealing: a few casual comments, otherwise silence. The major media

did not even bother reporting it. That fact alone demonstrates, with

brutal clarity, that there is no moral justification for the sharp

escalation of attacks in Gaza or the destruction of Lebanon, and that

the Western show of outrage about kidnapping is cynical fraud.

 

Much has been said about Israel's right to defend itself from its

enemies who are taking advantage of Israel's withdrawal from Gaza, thus

causing the latest chapter in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Do you agree?

 

NC: Israel certainly has a right to defend itself, but no state has the

right to "defend" occupied territories. When the World Court condemned

Israel's "separation wall," even a US Justice, Judge Buergenthal,

declared that any part of it built to defend Israeli settlements is

"ipso facto in violation of international humanitarian law," because

the settlements themselves are illegal.

 

The withdrawal of a few thousand illegal settlers from Gaza was

publicly announced as a West Bank expansion plan. It has now been

formalized by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, with the support of

Washington, as a program of annexation of valuable occupied lands and

major resources (particularly water) and cantonization of the remaining

territories, virtually separated from one another and from whatever

pitiful piece of Jerusalem will be granted to Palestinians. All are to

be imprisoned, since Israel is to take over the Jordan valley. Gaza,

too, remains imprisoned and Israel carries out attacks there at will.

 

Gaza and the West Bank are recognized to be a unit, by the United

States and Israel as well. Therefore, Israel still occupies Gaza, and

cannot claim self-defense in territories it occupies in either of the

two parts of Palestine. It is Israel and the United States that are

radically violating international law. They are now seeking to

consummate long-standing plans to eliminate Palestinian national rights

for good.

 

The United States has refused to call for an immediate cease-fire,

arguing that this would mean a return to the status quo ante, yet we

are witnessing a "back to the past" re-occupation of parts of Lebanon,

and Lebanon's rapid decline to political chaos by the current conflict.

Is the US policy correct?

 

NC: It is correct from the point of view of those who want to ensure

that Israel, by now virtually an offshore US military base and

high-tech center, dominates the region, without any challenge to its

rule as it proceeds to destroy Palestine. And there are side

advantages, such as eliminating any Lebanese-based deterrent if

US-Israel decide to attack Iran.

 

They may also hope to set up a client regime in Lebanon of the kind

that Ariel Sharon sought to create when he invaded Lebanon in 1982,

destroying much of the country and killing some 15-20,000 people.

 

What will be the likely outcome of this "two-pronged" crisis in Lebanon

and the occupied territories, in the near and long-term?

 

NC: We cannot predict much. There are too many uncertainties. One very

likely consequence, as the United States and Israel surely anticipated,

is a significant increase in jihadi-style terrorism as anger and hatred

directed against the United States, Israel, and Britain sweep the Arab

and Muslim worlds. Another is that Nasrallah, whether he survives or is

killed, will become an even more important symbol of resistance to

US-Israeli aggression. Hezbollah already has a phenomenal 87% support

in Lebanon itself, and its resistance has energized popular opinion to

such an extent that even the oldest and closest US allies have been

compelled to say that "If the peace option is rejected due to the

Israeli arrogance, then only the war option remains, and no one knows

the repercussions befalling the region, including wars and conflict

that will spare no one, including those whose military power is now

tempting them to play with fire." That's from King Abdullah of Saudi

Arabia, who knows better than to condemn the United States directly.

 

What steps do you recommend for the current hostilities to be brought

to an end and a lasting peace established?

 

NC: The basic steps are well understood: a cease-fire and exchange of

prisoners; withdrawal of occupying forces; continuation of the

"national dialogue" within Lebanon; and acceptance of the very broad

international consensus on a two-state settlement for Israel-Palestine,

which has been unilaterally blocked by the United States and Israel for

thirty years. There is, as always, much more to say, but those are the

essentials.

---

Noam Chomsky is Professor of Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute

of Technology (MIT). He is the author of numerous books, and his latest

is Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy

(2006).

Kaveh Afrasiabi is the founder and director of Global Interfaith Peace,

and a former political science professor at Tehran University. He is

the author of After Khomeini: New Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy

(Westview Press).

 

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

 

A recent interview with Noam Chomsky:

 

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14120.htm U.S. Is A Terrorist State Interview with Noam Chomsky

 

Noam Chomsky explains the reality of Israel's actions to Canadian interviewer Evan Solomon. The show is Hot Type on CBC

 

Part 1: video

 

Part 2: video

 

Hot Type edited down some of what Chomsky said, below is a transcript with more of what Chomsky said:

 

Chomsky: ... Let's take a look at the Middle East, let's take a look at facts. The facts are, for 35 years, there has been a harsh, brutal, military operation. There has not been a political settlement. The reason that there has not been a political settlement is because the United States, unilaterally, has blocked it for 25 years. Just recently, Saudi Arabia produced a highly praised plan for political settlement. The majority of the American population supports it. The majority of the population also thinks the United States ought to be more active in the Middle East. They don't know that that's a contradiction in terms. The reason that's a contradiction in terms is the following: In the Saudi Arabia plan is a repetition of a series of proposals, which go back to 1976 when the UN Security Council debated a resolution calling for a settlement, in accord with the Saudi plan, to state settlement on the internationally recognized borders. With arrangements to guarantee the rights of every state in the nation to exist in peace and security within secure and recognized borders. That was January 1976. OK, that was actually in accord with official U.S. policy. Except for one thing. It called for a Palestinian State in the territories; Israel wouldn't leave the occupied territories. That was vetoed by the US. It was supported by the Arab states, it was supported by the PLO, supported by Europe.

 

Solomon: Before they even recognized Israel as a state, though.

 

Chomsky: This was to exist as a state within secure and recognized borders. Nobody talked about recognizing the new Palestinian state, nobody talked about recognizing Israel. Look, is there a possible political settlement today? Has there been one for the last 25 years? Is it supported by the entire world, including the majority of the American people? The answer to that question is yes. There is a political settlement that has been supported by virtually the entire world, including the Arab states, the PLO, Europe, Eastern Europe, Canada.

 

Solomon: Didn't Barak put that on the table?

 

Chomsky: No, he did not!

 

Solomon: He did not?

 

Chomsky: What was also supported by the majority of the American people, has just been reiterated by Saudi Arabia. The U.S. has unilaterally blocked it for 25 years. What Barak put on the table, the population doesn't know this, because people like the Western media in Canada in the United States don't tell them. Like, you can check and see how often, you for example, and others, have reported what I just said. Don't bother checking. The answer is zero.

 

The Barak proposal in Camp David, the Barak-Clinton proposal, in the United States, I didn't check the Canadian media, in the United States you cannot find a map, which is the most important thing of course, check in Canada, see if you can find a map. You go to Israel, you can find a map, you go to scholarly sources, you can find a map. Here's what you find when you look at a map: You find that this generous, magnanimous proposal provided Israel with a salient east of Jerusalem, which was established primarily by the Labor government, in order to bisect the West Bank. That salient goes almost to Jericho, breaks the West Bank into two cantons, then there's a second salient to the North, going to the Israeli settlement of Ariel, which bisects the Northern part into two cantons.

 

So, we've got three cantons in the West Bank, virtually separated. All three of them are separated from a small area of East Jerusalem which is the center of Palestinian commercial and cultural life and of communications. So you have four cantons, all separated from the West, from Gaza, so that's five cantons, all surrounded by Israeli settlements, infrastructure, development and so on, which also incidentally guarantee Israel control of the water resources.

 

This does not rise to the level of South Africa 40 years ago when South Africa established the Bantustans. That's the generous, magnanimous offer. And there's a good reason why maps weren't shown. Because as soon as you look at a map, you see it.

 

Solomon: All right, but let me just say, Arafat didn't even bother putting a counter-proposal on the table.

 

Chomsky: Oh, that's not true.

 

Solomon: They negotiated that afterwards.

 

Chomsky: That's not true.

 

Solomon: I guess my question is, if they don't continue to negotiate -

 

Chomsky: They did. That's false.

 

Solomon: That's false?

 

Chomsky: Not only is it false, but not a single participant in the meetings says it. That's a media fabrication . . .

 

Solomon: That Arafat didn't put a counter-proposal . . .

 

Chomsky: Yeah, they had a proposal. They proposed the international consensus, which has been accepted by the entire world, the Arab states, the PLO. They proposed a settlement which is in accordance with an overwhelming international consensus, and is blocked by the United States.

 

Solomon: If you don't talk -

 

Chomsky: Yeah, they did talk. They talked. They proposed that.

 

Solomon: Once they walked out of Camp David,

 

Chomsky: They didn't walk out of Camp David . . .

 

Solomon: Both camps . . .

 

Chomsky: No, no, both sides walked out of Camp David.

 

Solomon: All right, once Camp David disbands, the radicals take over the process, my question is, how do . . .

 

Chomsky: No, no, the radicals didn't take over the process.

 

Solomon: You don't think that the Sharon, the right-wing Israeli . . .

 

Chomsky: No, Barak stayed in power for months. Barak cancelled it. That's how it ended.

 

Solomon: OK. The problem that people look at now in the Middle East is they say it's spun out of control because the radicals are on both sides now.

 

Chomsky: No, there's three sides. You're forgetting the United States. The radicals in the United States who have blocked this proposal for 25 years, continue to block it.

 

Solomon: How do we get back, now, there's so much distrust?

 

Chomsky: The first way we get back is by trying the experiment of minimal honesty. If we try that experiment of minimal honesty, we look at our own position and we discover what I just described. That for 25 years, the United States has blocked the political settlement, which is supported by the majority of the American population and by the entire world, except for Israel.

 

The first thing we do is accept the honesty and look at it. We take a look at Camp David and we see how it's the same. The United States was still demanding a Bantustans style settlement and rejecting the overwhelming international consensus and the position of the American people.

 

We then discovered the United States immediately moved to enhance terror in the region. So, let's continue. On September 29th, Ehud Barak put a massive military presence outside the Al Aqsa Mosque, very provocative, when people came out of the Mosque, young people started throwing stones, the Israeli army started shooting, half a dozen people were killed, and it escalated.

 

The next couple of days -- there was no Palestinian fire at this time -- Israel used U.S. helicopters (Israel produces no helicopters) to attack civilian complexes, killing about a dozen people and wounding several dozen.

 

Clinton reacted to that on October 3, 2000 by making the biggest deal in a decade -- to send Israel new military helicopters which had just been used for the purpose I described and of course would continue to be.

 

The U.S. press co-operated with that by refusing to publish the story. To this day, they have not published the fact.

 

It continued when Bush came in. One of his first acts was to send Israel a new shipment of one of the most advanced military helicopters in the arsenal. That continues right up to a couple of weeks ago with new shipments. You take a look at the reports, from say Jenin, by British correspondents like Peter Beaumont for the London Observer. He says the worst atrocity was the Apache helicopters buzzing around, destroying and demolishing everything.

 

Now, this is enhancing terror, and we may easily continue. On December

14th, the Security Council tried to pass a resolution calling for what everyone recognized to be the obvious means for reducing terror, namely sending international monitors. That's a way of reducing terror.

 

This happened to be in the middle of a quiet period, which lasted for about three weeks. The U.S. vetoed it. 10 days before that, there was a meeting at Geneva of the high-contracting parties of the 4th-Geneva convention, which has unanimously held for 35 years that it applies to Israel. The meeting condemned the Israeli settlements as illegal, condemned the list of atrocities -- willful destruction of property, murder, trials, torture.

 

What happened in that meeting? I'll tell you what happened in that meeting. The U.S. boycotted it. Therefore, the media refused to publish it.

 

Therefore, no one here knows that the United States once again enhanced terror by refusing to recognize the applicability of conventions which make virtually everything the United States and Israel are doing there a grave breech of the Geneva convention, which is a war crime.

 

These conventions were established in 1949 in order to criminalize the atrocities of the Nazis in occupied territory. They are customary international law. The United States is obligated, as a high-contracting party, to prosecute violations of those conventions. That means to prosecute its own leadership for the last 25 years. They won't do it unless the population forces them to. And the population won't force them to as long as they don't know it's a fact. And they won't know it's a fact as long as the media and loyal intellectuals keep it secret.