Chomsky- There is no war on terroism

[Guest guest]

excerpt...........

What gives you hope?

 

What gives me hope actually is public opinion. Public opinion in the

United States is very well studied, we know a lot about it. It's rarely

reported, but we know about it. And it turns out that, you

know, I'm pretty much in the mainstream of public opinion on most

issues.

 

 

For over 40 years, MIT professor Noam Chomsky has been one of the

world's leading intellectual critics of U.S. foreign policy. Today,

with America's latest imperial adventure in trouble both politically

and militarily, Chomsky -- who turned 77 last month -- vows not to

slow down " as long as I'm ambulatory. " I spoke with him by phone, on

Dec. 9 and again on Dec. 20, from his office in Cambridge.

 

Geov Parrish: Is George Bush in political trouble? And if so, why?

 

Noam Chomsky: George Bush would be in severe political trouble if

there were an opposition political party in the country. Just about

every day, they're shooting themselves in the foot. The striking fact

about contemporary American politics is that the Democrats are making

almost no gain from this. The only gain that they're getting is that

the Republicans are losing support. Now, again, an opposition party

would be making hay, but the Democrats are so close in policy to the

Republicans that they can't do anything about it. When they try to say

something about Iraq, George Bush turns back to them, or Karl Rove

turns back to them, and says, " How can you criticize it? You all voted

for it. " And, yeah, they're basically correct.

 

How could the Democrats distinguish themselves at this point, given

that they've already played into that trap?

 

Democrats read the polls way more than I do, their leadership. They

know what public opinion is. They could take a stand that's supported

by public opinion instead of opposed to it. Then they could become an

opposition party, and a majority party. But then they're going to have

to change their position on just about everything.

 

Take, for example, take your pick, say for example health care.

Probably the major domestic problem for people. A large majority of

the population is in favor of a national health care system of some

kind. And that's been true for a long time. But whenever that comes up

-- it's occasionally mentioned in the press -- it's called politically

impossible, or " lacking political support, " which is a way of saying

that the insurance industry doesn't want it, the pharmaceutical

corporations don't want it, and so on. Okay, so a large majority of

the population wants it, but who cares about them? Well, Democrats are

the same. Clinton came up with some cockamamie scheme which was so

complicated you couldn't figure it out, and it collapsed.

 

Kerry in the last election, the last debate in the election, October

28 I think it was, the debate was supposed to be on domestic issues.

And the New York Times had a good report of it the next day. They

pointed out, correctly, that Kerry never brought up any possible

government involvement in the health system because it " lacks

political support. " It's their way of saying, and Kerry's way of

understanding, that political support means support from the wealthy

and the powerful. Well, that doesn't have to be what the Democrats

are. You can imagine an opposition party that's based on popular

interests and concerns.

 

Given the lack of substantive differences in the foreign policies of

the two parties --

 

Or domestic.

 

Yeah, or domestic. But I'm setting this up for a foreign policy

question. Are we being set up for a permanent state of war?

 

I don't think so. Nobody really wants war. What you want is victory.

Take, say, Central America. In the 1980s, Central America was out of

control. The U.S. had to fight a vicious terrorist war in Nicaragua,

had to support murderous terrorist states in El Salvador and

Guatemala, and Honduras, but that was a state of war. All right, the

terrorists succeeded. Now, it's more or less peaceful. So you don't

even read about Central America any more because it's peaceful. I

mean, suffering and miserable, and so on, but peaceful. So it's not a

state of war. And the same elsewhere. If you can keep people under

control, it's not a state of war.

 

Take, say, Russia and Eastern Europe. Russia ran Eastern Europe for

half a century, almost, with very little military intervention.

Occasionally they'd have to invade East Berlin, Hungary,

Czechoslovakia, but most of the time it was peaceful. And they thought

everything was fine -- run by local security forces, local political

figures, no big problem. That's not a permanent state of war.

 

In the War on Terror, however, how does one define victory against a

tactic? You can't ever get there.

 

There are metrics. For example, you can measure the number of

terrorist attacks. Well, that's gone up sharply under the Bush

administration, very sharply after the Iraq war. As expected -- it was

anticipated by intelligence agencies that the Iraq war would increase

the likelihood of terror. And the post-invasion estimates by the CIA,

National Intelligence Council, and other intelligence agencies are

exactly that. Yes, it increased terror. In fact, it even created

something which never existed -- new training ground for terrorists,

much more sophisticated than Afghanistan, where they were training

professional terrorists to go out to their own countries. So, yeah,

that's a way to deal with the War on Terror, namely, increase terror.

And the obvious metric, the number of terrorist attacks, yeah, they've

succeeded in increasing terror.

 

The fact of the matter is that there is no War on Terror. It's a minor

consideration. So invading Iraq and taking control of the world's

energy resources was way more important than the threat of terror. And

the same with other things. Take, say, nuclear terror. The American

intelligence systems estimate that the likelihood of a " dirty bomb, " a

dirty nuclear bomb attack in the United States in the next ten years,

is about 50 percent. Well, that's pretty high. Are they doing anything

about it? Yeah. They're increasing the threat, by increasing nuclear

proliferation, by compelling potential adversaries to take very

dangerous measures to try to counter rising American threats.

 

This is even sometimes discussed. You can find it in the strategic

analysis literature. Take, say, the invasion of Iraq again. We're told

that they didn't find weapons of mass destruction. Well, that's not

exactly correct. They did find weapons of mass destruction, namely,

the ones that had been sent to Saddam by the United States, Britain,

and others through the 1980s. A lot of them were still there. They

were under control of U.N. inspectors and were being dismantled. But

many were still there. When the U.S. invaded, the inspectors were

kicked out, and Rumsfeld and Cheney didn't tell their troops to guard

the sites. So the sites were left unguarded, and they were

systematically looted. The U.N. inspectors did continue their work by

satellite and they identified over 100 sites that were systematically

looted, like, not somebody going in and stealing something, but

carefully, systematically looted.

 

By people who knew what they were doing.

 

Yeah, people who knew what they were doing. It meant that they were

taking the high-precision equipment that you can use for nuclear

weapons and missiles, dangerous biotoxins, all sorts of stuff. Nobody

knows where it went, but, you know, you hate to think about it. Well,

that's increasing the threat of terror, substantially. Russia has

sharply increased its offensive military capacity in reaction to

Bush's programs, which is dangerous enough, but also to try to counter

overwhelming U.S. dominance in offensive capacity. They are compelled

to ship nuclear missiles all over their vast territory. And mostly

unguarded. And the CIA is perfectly well aware that Chechen rebels

have been casing Russian railway installations, probably with a plan

to try to steal nuclear missiles. Well, yeah, that could be an

apocalypse. But they're increasing that threat. Because they don't

care that much.

 

Same with global warming. They're not stupid. They know that they're

increasing the threat of a serious catastrophe. But that's a

generation or two away. Who cares? There's basically two principles

that define the Bush administration policies: stuff the pockets of

your rich friends with dollars, and increase your control over the

world. Almost everything follows from that. If you happen to blow up

the world, well, you know, it's somebody else's business. Stuff

happens, as Rumsfeld said.

 

You've been tracking U.S. wars of foreign aggression since Vietnam,

and now we're in Iraq. Do you think there's any chance in the

aftermath, given the fiasco that it's been, that there will be any

fundamental changes in U.S. foreign policy? And if so, how would it

come about?

 

Well, there are significant changes. Compare, for example, the war in

Iraq with 40 years ago, the war in Vietnam. There's quite significant

change. Opposition to the war in Iraq is far greater than the much

worse war in Vietnam. Iraq is the first war I think in the history of

European imperialism, including the U.S., where there was massive

protest before the war was officially launched. In Vietnam it took

four or five years before there was any visible protest. Protest was

so slight that nobody even remembers or knows that Kennedy attacked

South Vietnam in 1962. It was a serious attack. It was years later

before protest finally developed.

 

What do you think should be done in Iraq?

 

Well, the first thing that should be done in Iraq is for us to be

serious about what's going on. There is almost no serious discussion,

I'm sorry to say, across the spectrum, of the question of withdrawal.

The reason for that is that we are under a rigid doctrine in the West,

a religious fanaticism, that says we must believe that the United

States would have invaded Iraq even if its main product was lettuce

and pickles, and the oil resources of the world were in Central

Africa. Anyone who doesn't believe that is condemned as a conspiracy

theorist, a Marxist, a madman, or something. Well, you know, if you

have three gray cells functioning, you know that that's perfect

nonsense. The U.S. invaded Iraq because it has enormous oil resources,

mostly untapped, and it's right in the heart of the world's energy

system. Which means that if the U.S. manages to control Iraq, it

extends enormously its strategic power, what Zbigniew Brzezinski calls

its critical leverage over Europe and Asia. Yeah, that's a major

reason for controlling the oil resources -- it gives you strategic

power. Even if you're on renewable energy you want to do that. So

that's the reason for invading Iraq, the fundamental reason.

 

Now let's talk about withdrawal. Take any day's newspapers or journals

and so on. They start by saying the United States aims to bring about

a sovereign democratic independent Iraq. I mean, is that even a remote

possibility? Just consider what the policies would be likely to be of

an independent sovereign Iraq. If it's more or less democratic, it'll

have a Shiite majority. They will naturally want to improve their

linkages with Iran, Shiite Iran. Most of the clerics come from Iran.

The Badr Brigade, which basically runs the South, is trained in Iran.

They have close and sensible economic relationships which are going to

increase. So you get an Iraqi/Iran loose alliance. Furthermore, right

across the border in Saudi Arabia, there's a Shiite population which

has been bitterly oppressed by the U.S.-backed fundamentalist tyranny.

And any moves toward independence in Iraq are surely going to

stimulate them, it's already happening. That happens to be where most

of Saudi Arabian oil is. Okay, so you can just imagine the ultimate

nightmare in Washington: a loose Shiite alliance controlling most of

the world's oil, independent of Washington and probably turning toward

the East, where China and others are eager to make relationships with

them, and are already doing it. Is that even conceivable? The U.S.

would go to nuclear war before allowing that, as things now stand.

 

Now, any discussion of withdrawal from Iraq has to at least enter the

real world, meaning, at least consider these issues. Just take a look

at the commentary in the United States, across the spectrum. How much

discussion do you see of these issues? Well, you know, approximately

zero, which means that the discussion is just on Mars. And there's a

reason for it. We're not allowed to concede that our leaders have

rational imperial interests. We have to assume that they're

good-hearted and bumbling. But they're not. They're perfectly

sensible. They can understand what anybody else can understand. So the

first step in talk about withdrawal is: consider the actual situation,

not some dream situation, where Bush is pursuing a vision of democracy

or something. If we can enter the real world we can begin to talk

about it. And yes, I think there should be withdrawal, but we have to

talk about it in the real world and know what the White House is

thinking. They're not willing to live in a dream world.

 

How will the U.S. deal with China as a superpower?

 

What's the problem with China?

 

Well, competing for resources, for example.

 

NC: Well, if you believe in markets, the way we're supposed to,

compete for resources through the market. So what's the problem? The

problem is that the United States doesn't like the way it's coming

out. Well, too bad. Who has ever liked the way it's coming out when

you're not winning? China isn't any kind of threat. We can make it a

threat. If you increase the military threats against China, then they

will respond. And they're already doing it. They'll respond by

building up their military forces, their offensive military capacity,

and that's a threat. So, yeah, we can force them to become a threat.

 

What's your biggest regret over 40 years of political activism? What

would you have done differently?

 

I would have done more. Because the problems are so serious and

overwhelming that it's disgraceful not to do more about it.

 

What gives you hope?

 

What gives me hope actually is public opinion. Public opinion in the

United States is very well studied, we know a lot about it. It's

rarely reported, but we know about it. And it turns out that, you

know, I'm pretty much in the mainstream of public opinion on most

issues. I'm not on some, not on gun control or creationism or

something like that, but on most crucial issues, the ones we've been

talking about, I find myself pretty much at the critical end, but

within the spectrum of public opinion. I think that's a very hopeful

sign. I think the United States ought to be an organizer's paradise.

 

What sort of organizing should be done to try and change some of these

policies?

 

Well, there's a basis for democratic change. Take what happened in

Bolivia a couple of days ago. How did a leftist indigenous leader get

elected? Was it showing up at the polls once every four years and

saying, " Vote for me! " ? No. It's because there are mass popular

organizations which are working all the time on everything from

blocking privatization of water to resources to local issues and so

on, and they're actually participatory organizations. Well, that's

democracy. We're a long way from it. And that's one task of organizing.

 

Geov Parrish is a Seattle-based columnist and reporter for Seattle

Weekly, In These Times and Eat the State! He writes the " Straight

Shot " column for WorkingForChange. Noam Chomsky is an acclaimed

linguist and political theorist. Among his latest books are Hegemony

or Survival from Metropolitan Books and Profit Over People:

Neoliberalism and the Global Order published by Seven Stories Press.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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