Munich American Peace Committee (MAPC)
Radio Lora, 9. Mai und 13. Juni 2006
Alternative Radio
Noam Chomsky
Iran im Fadenkreuz
David Barsamian von Alternative Radio interviewte Noam Chomsky am 10. Februar 2006 in Cambridge MA.
Prof. Noam Chomsky vom Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT) ist nicht nur der weltberühmte
"Erfinder" der modernen Linguistik, sondern auch eine weltweit
beachtete Stimme für Frieden und soziale Gerechtigkeit. Die "New
York Times" bezeichnet den Autor zahlreicher Bücher als den "wohl
meist gelesenen außenpolitischen Kommentator unseres
Planeten." Sein neu erschienenes Werk "Imperial Ambitions" wurde
sofort zu einem Bestseller.
Alles, was die Bush Regierung heute über Iran sagt, klingt
genauso, wie das, was sie seinerzeit über den Irak verbreitete.
Für Präsident Bush und Verteidigungsminister Rumsfeld ist
Iran "der Hauptsponsor des Terrors". Die US Außenministerin hat
für dieses Land nur "Verachtung" übrig und die Medien stimmen
nur allzu willig in diesen Chor mit ein.
Seit mehr als einem halben Jahrhundert hat sich das Muster der
US-Iranpolitik nicht verändert. Alles begann 1953 mit dem Sturz
der demokratisch gewählten Regierung Mossadegh durch einen
von den USA und Großbritannien unterstützten
Militärcoup, der den Schah an die Macht brachte. In den USA
spricht man immer nur von den US Geiseln und nie von den
vorausgegangenen 25 Jahren des Terrors und der Folter unter dem
Schah-Regime. 1979, nach dem Sturz des Schahs, versuchte Washington,
das iranische Militär gegen die neue Zivilregierung
aufzurüsten. Als dies nicht gelang, unterstützte man statt
dessen im irakisch-iranischen Krieg den Irak. Saddam Hussein steht
heute für Verbrechen vor Gericht, die er 1982 begangen hat, also
damals, als Ronald Reagan den Irak von der Liste der Terrorstaaten
gestrichen hatte und ihn mit ABC Waffen und Bauteilen zur Herstellung
von Massenvernichtungswaffen ausstattete. Das haben die Iraner nicht
vergessen, denn sie waren die Opfer der irakischen Aggressionen und
Giftgasangriffe. Und noch heute läßt man sie mit Gewalt- und
Kriegsandrohungen dafür büßen, dass sie sich von einem
brutalen Tyrannen, der ein Freund der USA war, befreit haben.
Israel ist quasi ein Übersee-Militärstützpunkt der USA.
Nur die US Air Force ist besser und moderner ausgestattet als die
israelische Luftwaffe. Als die USA Israel über 100 hochmoderne
Kampfjets lieferten, versäumte man nicht zu erwähnen, dass
man nun Iran mit "Spezialwaffen" angreifen könne. Kein Wunder,
dass diese Nachricht in Iran Angst und Schrecken hervorgerufen hat.
Seit den Angriffen auf den Irak und Afghanistan ist Iran eingekesselt
von US-Truppen und Israel und Pakistan, seine feindlichen Nachbarn,
verfügen über Atomwaffen. Deshalb schrieb sogar der
israelische Militärhistoriker Martin van Creveld in der
International Herald Tribune, dass Iran verrückt wäre, wenn
er angesichts dieser strategischen Situation keine wirkungsvolle
atomare Abschreckung aufbauen würde.
Als Iran ankündigte, Uran für zivile Zwecke anzureichern,
entsprach dies durchaus den Regeln des Atomsperrvertrages. Vielleicht
sollte man diesem Zusammenhang auch daran erinnern, dass 1977 das MIT -
gegen die Stimmen der Studentenschaft - dem Schah für teures Geld
wissenschaftliche und technische Unterstützung bei der
Atomentwicklung gewährte und Henry Kissinger erklärte, dass
Iran dringend Atomenergie bräuchte, um sein
Erdölvorkommen für andere, sinnvollere Zwecke einsetzen
zu können. Heute erzählt uns derselbe Henry Kissinger, dass
Iran keine Atomenergie benötige und deshalb ohne jeden Zweifel
Atombomben entwickle. Gewiß, der Schritt von der friedlichen
Nutzung hin zum Bau einer Atombombe ist klein und wer weiß,
vielleicht hat ja van Creveld recht und die Iraner sind nicht
verrückt.
Vor zwei Jahren traf die Europäische Union mit Iran eine
Vereinbarung, wonach Iran, die im Atomsperrvertrag genehmigte
Urananreicherung beenden würde und die EU im Gegenzug Garantien
für Irans Sicherheit zusagte. Doch trotz der ständig
zunehmenden israelisch-amerikanischen Bombendrohungen standen die
Europäer nicht zu ihrem Wort. Sie gaben dem Druck der USA nach und
verweigerten die versprochenen Sicherheitsgarantien. Warum sollte sich
Iran danach noch an seine Zusagen gebunden fühlen?
Drohungen und Sanktionen werden die iranische Atombombe nicht
verhindern, das könnte allein ein Zugehen auf Iran und die
Aufnahme des Landes in die Weltgemeinschaft und das internationale
Wirtschaftssystem.
- 2 -
Weil China sich von den USA nicht einschüchtern läßt,
fürchten sich die USA vor China. Anders als die europäischen
Investoren, die sich aus Angst vor den USA aus Iran zurückzogen,
zeigten sich die Chinesen völlig unbeeindruckt. Und das macht sie
den Amerikanern so unheimlich. Angesichts der amerikanischen
Drohpolitik und der Feigheit der Europäer könnte sich Iran
vom Westen abwenden und gemeinsam mit China, Russland, Indien und
eventuell auch Südkorea einem unabhängigen
Energieversorgungssystem für diese aufstrebende Industrieregion
beitreten. Das wäre ein herber Schlag für die
US-Weltherrschaft! Mit dem wichtigen Öllieferanten Saudi Arabien
unterhält China nicht nur rege Handelsbeziehungen, sondern plant
auch bereits ein für die USA höchst bedrohliches
Militärabkommen. Auch könnte das militärische Desaster
im Irak durchaus auf eine schiitische Regierungsmehrheit mit engen
Beziehungen zum schiitischen Iran hinauslaufen. Der vor dem Irakkrieg
völlig unbedeutende schiitische Prediger Muktada al-Sadr gewann
bei den Parlamentswahlen 50% der Stimmen und drohte, bei einem Angriff
Israels oder der USA auf Iran, die Amerikaner im Irak,
möglicherweise gemeinsam mit der iranischen Armee anzugreifen. Das
sollte als Abschreckung genügen. Aber es könnte auch der
Beginn des amerikanischen Albtraums von einem schiitischen Block aus
Iran, Irak und Saudiarabien sein, der unabhängig von den USA, den
größten Teil der Ölreserven der Erde kontrolliert und
einem asiatischen Energie - Sicherheitssystem angehört. Damit
wäre es der Bush-Regierung gelungen, die Stellung der USA in der
Welt erfolgreich zu unterminieren.
Nicht nur im Mittleren Osten demonstrieren die USA ihr Talent, sich mit
Verbündeten zu überwerfen. Sie haben es geschafft, auch
Kanada und Venezuela, ihre wichtigsten Energielieferanten, so vor den
Kopf zu stoßen, dass diese in Zukunft ihr Öl an China
verkaufen wollen. Vorbei sind die Zeiten, als die USA Lateinamerika
durch Militärumstürze und Waffengewalt unter ihre Kontrolle
zwingen konnten. Inzwischen wird dort Demokratie ernster genommen als
in Washington und längst hat man sich dem Einfluß des
Internationalen Währungsfonds und der Weltbank entzogen..
Eine gewaltige Bedrohung für das internationale Finanzsystem
bedeutet die Absicht des Asiatischen Energie -Sicherheitsverbandes,
seine riesigen Geldreserven nicht wie bisher ausschließlich in
US-Dollar, sondern auch in anderen Währungen anzulegen.
Wie wir gesehen haben, nehmen die USA, Großbritannien und
inzwischen auch Frankreich im Falle einer Bedrohung für sich und
nur für sich das Recht auf einen Präventivschlag in Anspruch.
Außenministerin Condoleezza Rice geht sogar soweit zu behaupten,
dass das internationale Recht für die USA keine Anwendung findet.
Das erinnert an die Geschichte von Alexander dem Großen und dem
Piraten. Der eine stört die Ordnung des Meeres, der andere die
Ordnung der ganzen Welt. Den einen bestraft man als Verbrecher, den
anderen bejubelt man als Kaiser. Als im Januar 2006 bei einem
amerikanischen Raketenangriff 18 pakistanische Zivilisten getötet
wurden, bezeichnete dies die New York Times als einen legitimen
Schlag gegen flüchtige Al-Qaida Anführer und drückt
damit aus, dass die USA - ganz so wie Alexander der Große -
jenseits von Recht und Gesetz stehen und jederzeit gegen jedermann
Gewalt anwenden dürfen.
- 3 -
Ende Januar schrieb die Los Angeles Times, dass inzwischen 57% der US
Bevölkerung einen Militärschlag gegen Iran befürworten,
aber gleichzeitig der Widerstands gegen den Irakkieg ständig
wächst. Ist das nicht paradox?
Keineswegs, auch beim Irak plädierten fast Zweidrittel der
Befragten gegen einen Angriff falls Saddam Hussein nicht über
Massenvernichtungswaffen verfügen sollte, während 50%
eine Invasion befürworteten und auch noch an eine Bedrohung durch
Massenvernichtungswaffen glaubten, als schon längst klar war, dass
die Regierung gewußt hatte, dass es keine gab.
Regierungspropaganda und Medien hatten mit ihrer Panikmache gute Arbeit
geleistet. Und genauso läuft es jetzt mit Iran. Schenkt man den
Zeitungen Glauben, dann schweben wir alle in höchster
Lebensgefahr, sobald Iran auch nur über eine einzige Atomwaffe
verfügt. Dabei ist allen klar, dass eine solche Waffe lediglich
als Abschreckung dienen soll und ein Einsatz unweigerlich die totale
Vernichtung Irans nach sich zöge. Wie wirkungsvoll
Angst-Propaganda sein kann, hat sich auch am Deutschland der Weimarer
Republik gezeigt, als innerhalb von nur wenigen Jahren aus einem der
kultiviertesten Ländern der Welt ein Haufen irrer Fanatiker wurde,
dem man eingehämmert hatte, sich gegen Juden und Bolschewisten
verteidigen zu müssen. Wir alle wissen, wie diese Geschichte
ausgegangen ist.
Doch auch Verschweigen ist Propaganda. Außer in den großen
Wirtschaftszeitungen liest man heute kein Wort darüber, dass Iran
mit der Urananreicherung ja erst begann, nachdem die Europäer
nicht mehr zu ihren Sicherheitsgarantien standen.
Hat man eigentlich schon einmal nachgerechnet, wie viel unser Öl
kosten würde, wenn man die Ausgaben des Pentagons für
Bodentruppen, Marine- und Luftstützpunkte im Mittleren Osten und
für die Bereitstellung von Massenvernichtungswaffen und
konventionellem Kriegsgerät hinzuzählte?
Politik wird nicht für den Steuerzahler oder für das
Wohl der Gemeinschaft gemacht, sondern für Machterhalt und Profit.
Um ihre wirtschaftlichen Defizite zu kaschieren, hat die Bush-Regierung
aus den USA eine monströse, unberechenbare Angriffsmaschine
gemacht und sie damit ganz bewußt der Gefahr durch
internationalen Terror und Atomangriffe ausgesetzt.
Radio Lora, 9. Mai und 13. Juni 2006
NOAM CHOMSKY
Targeting Iran
Interviewed by David Barsamian
Cambridge, MA 10 February 2006
Noam Chomsky, internationally renowned MIT professor, practically
invented modern linguistics. In addition to his pioneering work in that
field he has been a leading voice for peace and social justice. He is
in huge demand as a public speaker all over the world. The New York
Times calls him, "a global phenomenon, perhaps the most widely read
voice on foreign policy on the planet." Author of scores of books, his
latest is the bestseller "Imperial Ambitions."
Bush administration rhetoric on
Iran reflects similar comments it made about Iraq. The president calls
Iran “the world's primary state sponsor of terrorism,” the
secretary of state calls the country “something to be
loathed,” Defense Secretary Rumsfeld said “the Iranian
regime is today the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism.”
And accompanying that rhetoric is the media echo chamber. The February
13th cover story of Newsweek. “The Next Nuclear Threat: How
Dangerous Is Iran?” with a grim photo of the Iranian president,
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Where is U.S. policy going on Iran?
U.S. policy has been fairly consistent with regard to Iran for over
half a century. There are variations depending on circumstances, but
the guiding principles are the same. Here people sort of pretend it's
ancient history. The people who hold the clubs typically like to forget
history, say it's irrelevant. But the people who are hit by the clubs
tend to remember history, for good reasons, because it teaches you
something. If we want to learn about it, we should be with the victims.
They are correct in this.
Crucial, relevant parts of U.S. policy towards Iran begin, of course,
with the overthrow of the parliamentary government in 1953 by a U.S.,
British-backed initiated military coup, which installed the Shah, one
of the most brutal tyrants of the last half century and supported him
fully to the end. A couple of months before he was overthrown,
President Carter was telling him how much the Iranian people love him
because he's so marvelous and so on.
He was overthrown in 1979. There were hostages taken at the time
of the crisis. The only event that exists in American history is that
hostages were taken, not 25 years of terror and torture after the
overthrow of the government. But Iranians look at it differently. This
is more history. Ever since that time the U.S. has tried to destroy the
government. Right away Carter sent a NATO general to try to
instigate a military coup. The U.S. had close relations with the
Iranian military. It didn't work. They started providing the Iranian
military with arms—that’s the way you overthrow a civilian
government: you arm the military—via Israel, with Saudi Arabian
money, which makes sense because Iran, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Turkey
were the allies in controlling Middle East oil. That didn't work. Then
the U.S. supported Iraq's war against Iran. Iraq invaded Iran.
Saddam Hussein is now on trial for crimes that he committed in 1982. If
we had a free press in the country, it would be pointing out that 1982
is quite an important year in U.S., Iraqi, Iranian relations. That was
the year in which Reagan took Iraq off the list of states supporting
terror. And the reason was so that he could provide Iraq with aid,
including means to develop weapons of mass destruction, nuclear
weapons, biotoxins, chemical weapons, and so on. At that time it was
primarily for the war against Iran, although the
same aid continued long after that war was over. There were other
reasons. Donald Rumsfeld, whom you quoted, was sent to Iraq to finalize
the deal with their friend Saddam. The Iranians don't forget this. They
lost a huge number of casualties to the U.S.-backed Iraqi aggression.
They were attacked with chemical weapons, and other atrocities.
It continues until today. And the basic reason is simply that Iran
disobeyed orders. Overthrowing a U.S.-installed tyrant is not
acceptable behavior, and in one or another way the Iranian people have
to be punished for it. So they've been under harsh sanctions, now
threats of attack—not just threats, preparations for attack.
Israel is a small country, but it's more or less by now a U.S. offshore
military base, It has a very powerful military. Its air force is larger
and technologically more advanced than any NATO power outside the U.S.
For the last couple of years the U.S. has been sending over 100
advanced jet bombers to Israel, very publicly advertised as capable of,
with the intention of, bombing Iran, equipped with what are called
“special weapons” in the Hebrew press. No one knows what
that means, but it's for the ears of Iranian intelligence. They're
supposed to make a worst-case analysis.
And the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan put U.S. forces surrounding
Iran. The major and only serious nuclear power in the region is Israel.
It has hundreds of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass
destruction. Pakistan has nuclear weapons. Iran is simply surrounded by
hostile forces. The invasion of Iraq was a very clear signal, quite
well understood everywhere, that if you want to deter a U.S. invasion,
you have to have some kind of deterrent. One deterrent is terror.
Another deterrent is nuclear weapons. So it's basically a plea to Iran
to develop nuclear weapons. And that's understood. One of Israel's
leading military historians, Martin van Creveld, wrote, I think it was
in the International Herald Tribune, that of course it doesn't want
Iran to get nuclear weapons, but he said if they're not doing it,
they're crazy, given the strategic situation.
Let's come closer to the present. Two years ago, the European Union and
Iran made a bargain. Iran says they're enriching uranium for the
development of nuclear energy. If that's what they're doing, it's
entirely within the framework of the nonproliferation treaty. In fact,
it's little bit ironic at MIT, where we are now, I should say, because
around 1977 MIT made a deal with the Shah of Iran pretty much to sell
him the nuclear engineering department. The deal was that MIT would
train lots of Iranian nuclear engineers and in return the Shah would
pay some big sum of money. That leak led to a huge protest on campus by
students, who were overwhelmingly opposed to it. The faculty equally
overwhelmingly approved it. All of this was done if not at U.S.
initiative certainly with its support. At that time Henry Kissinger was
explaining that Iran needs nuclear energy. It has to preserve its
petrochemicals for other purposes. Now Henry Kissinger—he's just
a symbol, the same with everyone—is saying they can't possibly
need nuclear energy, they have so much petroleum gas reserves, so they
must be developing nuclear weapons. This is the same program. In fact,
Kissinger was asked about this, and he said, well, they were an ally,
so then they needed nuclear energy. Now they broke out of our control
so they don't need nuclear energy. Enrichment of uranium, which is
legal under the NPT, is not a long step from developing nuclear
weapons. So who knows? Maybe van Creveld is correct and they're not
crazy. I don’t know.
Anyway, two years ago the European Union did make a bargain with them
that Iran would stop enriching uranium, though they're legally entitled
to do it, and in return—here’s the other half of the
bargain—the European Union would provide firm guarantees on
security issues. The phrase “security issues” refers to
U.S.-Israeli threats to bomb Iran, which are very serious. By U.S.
standards, Iran ought to be carrying out terrorist acts in the U.S. In
fact, we ought to be demanding that they do it. They're under far
greater threat than anything Bush or Blair ever conjured up. And that's
supposed to authorize what they call anticipatory self-defense, namely
attack. They can't bomb the U.S. They could do something else. Of
course, that's totally outrageous, but that just tells you something
about U.S., British standards. However, Europe did not live up to its
half of the bargain. Under U.S. pressure, it backed off. It did not
make any offer to provide any guarantees of security. After a couple of
years Iran backed off from its side of the bargain.
That brings us up to the present, with Europe refusing to live up to
the bargain, the U.S. and Israel continuing, extending, in fact, the
threats to security, which are serious, and Iran, we don't know.
They're probably back to enriching uranium, and we don't know for what
purposes. No one wants Iran to get nuclear weapons. If there were any
interest in preventing that, what would happen is you would reduce the
threats, which are making it likely that they'll develop them as a
deterrent, implement the bargain that was made, and then move towards
integrating Iran into the general international economic system, remove
the sanctions, which are against the people, not the government, and
just bring them into the world system. The U.S. refuses. Europe is so
cowardly that they do what the U.S. orders them to do.
One of the problems that the U.S. is facing is that China is not
intimidated. That's why the U.S. is so frightened of China. You see
headlines on the front pages, “How Dangerous Is
China?” Of all the major nuclear powers, China has been the
most restrained in its development of offensive weaponry. But China is
frightening because it was not intimidated. Europe will back off and
China won't. European companies, frightened of the U.S., have backed
away from investments in Iran, but China just proceeds. That's why the
U.S. is so terrified of China. If you're the Mafia don and somebody
doesn't pay protection money, that's scary, especially when you can't
do anything about it.
What may happen, the Bush administration may succeed in driving Iran
into the Asian energy security system. Iran has options. They might
decide that Europe is much too cowardly to stand up to the U.S. and
decide, okay, they'll break their ties with the West and turn eastward.
There is an Asian energy security grid. It's based in China and Russia.
India will probably join. It's unclear. South Korea will probably join.
They want to develop an independent energy security system for this
rapidly growing industrial region in Asia. That's a very frightening
prospect for the U.S., because it reduces global domination. If Iran
joins it, it could be a kind of lynchpin. It has plenty of natural gas,
substantial petroleum, and so on. And the U.S. may drive them into that
grid, which would strengthen it. And that's expanding.
China, as I say, is not intimidated. They're also making deals with
Saudi Arabia, which is the main center of energy production. I forgot
the exact number, but I think they're getting maybe 10-15% from Saudi
Arabia. They're also entering into military relations both with Iran
and Saudi Arabia. With Iran, it's presumably because the two countries
regard it as a deterrent to U.S. threats. With Saudi Arabia, it's
extremely frightening to U.S. planners. The U.S. military catastrophe
in Iraq, which is one of the worst in history, nobody anticipated it,
may end up leaving Iraq with a Shiite majority, with pretty close
relations with Shiite Iran. A lot of the clerics, including the
Ayatollah Sistani, come from Iran. The major militia in the south, the
Badr brigade, was trained in Iran, and actually fought with Iran during
the Iran-Iraq war.
These ties have already been increasing. Moqtada Sadr leads Mahdi, the
other major militia. The U.S. has turned him from a minor, unknown
cleric into a major figure in Iraq by attacking him. He gained, I
think, 50% or so in the last parliamentary elections and is now on a
par with the other major Shiite bloc. He may end up being the leading
element in the Shiite bloc. He was in Tehran recently and announced
that if the U.S. or Israel attacks Iran, his militia—and the U.S.
is afraid maybe the Iranian army—will join in attacking the U.S.
in Iraq. That could blow up. That's one of the deterrents. We
don’t know. Nobody knows. The Pentagon doesn't know. But it could
end up the ultimate nightmare for Washington: a Shiite bloc, including
Iran, Iraq to the extent it attains any sovereignty, and the Shiite
areas of Saudi Arabia, which are adjacent to the two, which happen to
be where most of Saudi Arabian oil is. That could be conceivably an
independent, loose, Shiite alliance controlling most of the world's
oil, not subordinated to the U.S., possibly even joining the Asian
energy security grid. If the Bush administration achieves that, they
will have seriously undermined the U.S. position in the world.
Moving elsewhere, they're doing the same thing in the western
hemisphere. Their talent for alienating allies is phenomenal. They've
even succeeded in alienating Canada, and that takes tremendous talent.
But the Bush administration has refused to follow NAFTA judgments in
favor of Canada in Canada-U.S. cases. The U.S. just told them to get
lost, of course, after they ruled against the U.S. Canada is not very
happy about it. They don’t stand up to the U.S., but they didn't
like it. And the government has said that, Well, if this
continues, we'll divert oil that we're sending to the U.S. to China.
Canada is one of the major energy providers to the U.S.
The other major provider in the western hemisphere is Venezuela. U.S.
hostility to Venezuela has driven them also to diversify. They have
increasing relations with China. They are quite happy to do it. They're
diversifying their exports. And from Venezuela down to Argentina, the
region is almost out of control. The U.S. doesn't have the mechanisms
it used to have, like military coups and attacks and so on. It can't do
that anymore. In fact, they tried. In 2002, they did try to support a
military coup in Venezuela to overthrow the government. That's the
standard technique. But they had to back off very quickly.
There was a huge uproar in Latin America, where
democracy is taken more seriously than in Washington. They had to back
away and turn to subversion. They are also losing the economic
controls. The main economic stranglehold for Latin America has been
basically the offshoots of the Treasury Department: the IMF, World
Bank. They have led Latin America into a complete economic disaster
almost everywhere, and they're now being kicked out.
Argentina, which was the poster child for the IMF, had a terrible
economic collapse following IMF rules. They managed to recover, but
only by radically violating the rules. They are now, as the president
says, ridding themselves of the IMF, paying off the debt, no more
contact with the IMF. They're being helped by Venezuela, which bought
up part of their debt. Bolivia will probably do the same. The same IMF,
World Bank catastrophe for the last 25 years. And if the U.S. loses its
economic stranglehold over Latin America and can no longer carry out
military attacks, which is not so obvious, incidentally. The U.S. is
considerably increasing its military forces in Latin America. But if
those controls are gone, it may not have any effect, almost certainly
won't have anything like the degree of control it's had before. That
includes major resource producers, oil in particular. Venezuela and
Canada aren't going to drift very far. But even if they do a little, if
you add that to what they might do in Middle East, it's going to change
world affairs considerably.
If the Asian energy security grid expands and if, an even worse
nightmare for Washington, it includes Iran as a sort of a lynchpin,
possibly even Shiite Iraq and Saudi Arabia, they're going to diversify
their financial reserves. They're held in dollars. That's part of
what's propping up the U.S. economy. They have enormous financial
reserves, the biggest in the world. If they diversify to other
currencies, which is going to come sooner or later, that's going to be
a major blow to the international financial system. Nobody knows what
would happen, but it would be significant.
And, yes, the threats against Iran, which are very serious and criminal, in fact, literally —
Why do you say that?
Take a look at the U.N. Charter. The threat of force is ruled out,
threat or use of force. But the threat alone is ruled out. We accept
that, for example, if somebody threatened us. It is official U.S.,
British policy that if there is any threat of force against the U.S.
and Britain—threat, not act—they can carry out anticipatory
self-defense. They can attack the country. That's what happened in
Iraq. In fact, France just went along with that. President Chirac a
couple of weeks ago said that if any country threatens France with
weapons of mass destruction, France is free to attack it. In fact, what
he said literally is, “Any country that is considering the use of
weapons of mass destruction is subject to attack by France.”
Commentators were polite enough not to point out that what he was
saying is that the French air force ought to be dropping nuclear bombs
on Paris, because, as he announced, France is considering the use of
weapons of mass destruction, therefore should be a target of attack by
French nuclear forces. Put aside his little logical lapse. But that's
an expansion, a corollary to the British-U.S. position.
And, yes, it's the typical imperial mentality. No one can consider the
use of force against us, certainly not threaten, obviously, not prepare
for it. That would be outlandish. But we can do it against them. In
fact, that's considered very righteous. The people at the other end of
the club don't necessarily see it that way.
James Traub, in The New York Times Magazine,
writes, “Of course, treaties and norms don't restrain the
outlaws. The prohibition on territorial aggression enshrined in the
U.N. Charter didn't faze Saddam Hussein when he decided to forcibly
annex Kuwait.” Then he adds, “When it comes to military
force, the United States can, and will, act alone, but diplomacy
depends on a united front.”
As Traub knows very well, the U.S. is a leading outlaw state, totally
unconstrained by international law, and says so. It just invaded Iraq,
even though that's a radical violation of the U.N. Charter.
If he knows that, why doesn't he write it in the article?
If he wrote it in the article, he wouldn't be writing in The New York
Times. There is a certain discipline that you have to meet. In kind of
a well-run society, you don't say things you know; you say things that
are required for service to power. We can go back.
Speaking of outlaw states, the U.S. is the only state in the world to
have rejected a World Court decision. It used to have some company,
Albania and Libya, but they've now accepted them. So the U.S. now
stands alone in rejecting a World Court decision on the matter of
international terrorism or, if we want to be literal, aggression.
That was the case of Nicaragua in 1986.
It's not usually noticed that technically U.S. actions against
Nicaragua would fall under the definition of aggression, the one that
was given by the chief counsel, Robert Jackson, at Nuremberg. If you
take a look at the wording, it explicitly includes what the U.S. was
doing against Nicaragua, in fact what it was doing against Cuba, but
certainly the invasion of Iraq. There is not any question. Furthermore,
we can run through the list, but it's hard to find any state that
compares with the U.S. as an outlaw state. And it says so proudly.
Anticipatory self-defense is a complete violation of the basic
principles of international law. Condoleezza Rice has been pretty frank
about it. She says that international jurisdiction is not appropriate
for the U.S.
Tell the story of the Emperor Alexander and his encounter with a pirate on the open seas.
I don't know if it happened, but the story is that the pirate was
brought to Alexander and Alexander asked him, “How dare you
molest the seas with your piracy?” The pirate answered, according
to the account, “How dare you molest the world? I have a small
ship, so they call me a pirate. You have a great navy, so they call you
an emperor. But you're molesting the world. I'm doing almost nothing by
comparison.” Yes, that's the way it works. The emperor is allowed
to molest the world, the pirate is a major criminal. Again, the world
doesn't see it that way.
Eighteen Pakistani civilians were
killed in a U.S. missile attack on Pakistan in early January 2006. The
New York Times, in an editorial commented, “Those strikes were
legitimately aimed at top fugitive leaders of al-Qaeda.”
That's because The New York Times
agrees, and always has, that the U.S. should be an outlaw state. That's
not surprising. You could have read the same thing in the Iraqi press,
I suppose. Yes, the U.S. should be an outlaw state. It has the right to
use violence where it chooses, no matter what happens. If we hit the
wrong people, we'll say, “Sorry, we hit the wrong people.”
But, yes, there should be no limits on the right of the U.S. to use
force.
The Times and other such liberal
outlets are exercised about surveillance and snooping and invasions of
privacy that are going on. But that concern for law does not seem to
extend to the international arena.
That's not quite true. They're very concerned, just like James Traub,
with violations of international law when some enemy does it. So the
policy is completely consistent. It should never be called a double
standard. It's a single standard. You subordinate yourself to power.
That's the single standard. Surveillance is bothersome to people in
power. They don't like it. CEOs don't want to have their e-mails read
by Big Brother. So, yes, they're kind of annoyed with surveillance. On
the other hand, a gross violation of international law, what the
Nuremberg tribunal called the supreme international crime, that carries
with it all the accumulated evil that follows, namely, for example, the
invasion of Iraq, that's just fine. There is an interesting, important
book which, naturally, isn't reviewed, by two international law
specialists, Howard Friel and Richard Falk—
Record of the Paper.
—which happens to focus on The New York Times but only because of
its importance. The rest of the press is the same. So they focus on The
New York Times and its attitude toward international law. And they
point out that, yes—I think they cover about 40 years—the
practice has been consistent. If an enemy can be accused of violating
international law, a huge outrage, a bunch of posturing and so on. But
when the U.S. does it, it didn't happen. So they point out, just to
take one example, that in the, I think, 70 editorials and opinion
pieces prior to the invasion of Iraq, the words “U.N.
Charter” and “international law” never appeared.
That's typical of the state of a journal that believes the U.S. should
be an outlaw state. So you can't criticize them. They're very
consistent. They're consistent in supporting the right of the powerful,
with whom they are associated, to carry out any crimes they want.
A report in late January in the L.A.
Times entitled “57% Back a Hit on Iran if Defiance
Persists,” shows that support for military action against Iran
has increased over the last year even though public sentiment is
running against the war in Iraq. Is that a paradox?
No, it's not a paradox. In fact, there are figures and polls that look
like paradoxes. So, for example, take Iraq. I've forgotten the exact
numbers, but a fairly large percentage, maybe two-thirds of the
population, thinks it would have been wrong to invade Iraq if it had no
weapons of mass destruction; and, even if it had an intention to do so,
it would have been wrong to invade. On the other hand, about half
thought it was right to invade Iraq even though the fact that they had
no weapons of mass destruction has been officially conceded long before
and the public knows it. That looks like a direct contradiction. But
the director of the institute that runs the polls, the Program on
International Policy Attitudes which is the major one under Steven
Kull, pointed out that it's not really a contradiction. People still
believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, even though it's
been officially conceded that they don't.
What does that mean? He didn't go into it, but what it means is that
the government, media propaganda campaign was extremely effective in
instilling fear. People think they're defending themselves. Even if
it's already been conceded that the threat was not there, and maybe
concocted, the fear still remains. And it's the same with Iran. If you
read enough of those articles you cited, you will think we're in mortal
danger if Iran gets a nuclear weapon. What danger are we in, even if
Iran does get a nuclear weapon? They're not going to use it except as a
deterrent. If there were even an indication that they were planning to
use it, the country would be vaporized. So it's there for a deterrent.
But people can be frightened by massive propaganda. It's not a surprise.
Take a classic example, Germany. It was the most civilized country in
the world, the leader in the sciences, the arts, the Weimar Republic.
Within two or three years it had been turned into a country of raving
maniacs by extensive propaganda, which, incidentally, was explicitly
borrowed from Anglo-American commercial propaganda. And it worked. It
frightened Germans. They thought they were defending themselves against
the Jews, against the Bolsheviks. And you know what happened next. It
can be done. And it was done to an extent in the U.S. as well, by very
effective propaganda.
You're seeing it again today. So, for example, just do a media search
and find out how often it has even been mentioned that when Iran began
enriching uranium again, it was after the Europeans had rejected their
side of the bargain, namely, to provide firm guarantees on security
issues. Which is no trivial matter. That means guarantees that Iran
will not be attacked. Of course, when you back down, you expect them to
back down. Ask if that has been mentioned once in the media in the U.S.
anywhere. It's not that the press doesn't know it. Of course they know
it. At least, if they read the international business press, they know
it. For example, in mid-January there was a very good article about it
by Selig Harrison in the Financial Times, the leading business paper of
the world. You think they didn't read it at The New York Times news
desk or editorial board? Sure they read it. But that's not the kind of
thing you report. I don't have the facilities to do a search, but I'd
be willing to bet that that's not even been mentioned in the U.S.
Or that Iran is virtually surrounded by U.S. military forces in Afghanistan, Iraq, Turkey and the Persian Gulf.
If that were mentioned, which it may be, it's because we're defending
ourselves, just like Hitler was defending himself against the Jews.
Has anyone ever done research on the
real cost of oil to the U.S. when you factor in Pentagon spending, the
ground troops, the naval and air bases in the Middle East, the
stockpiles of WMDs and conventional weapons?
I know of only one attempt to do it. It was by Alfred Cavallo, an
energy consultant. He did a study—I don't want to quote the
figures from memory, but it was something like—if you count in
the military, it accounts for 30% of the price of oil. But it's not a
correct calculation. Military spending and bases may be costly to the
American taxpayer, but policy is not designed for the benefit of the
population, it's designed for the benefit of power sectors. And for
them it's useful to dominate the world, by force if necessary. And also
don't forget that Pentagon spending, though it's a cost to the
taxpayer, is profit for the corporations. It depends what you think the
country is. If you think the country is its population, yes, it's a big
cost. If you think the country is the people who own the country, no,
it's a gain.
I should say, the same is true of other things, like a lot of concern
about the enormous U.S. trade deficit. How we are going to deal with
it? Economists tear their hair out. It’s a catastrophe. If you
assume that the U.S. consists of its people, yes, there is a trade
deficit. On the other hand, if you assume that the U.S. consists of the
people who own the country, which is more reasonable, the trade deficit
goes way down. Then, for example, if Dell is exporting computers from
China to the U.S., it would be considered U.S. exports, not U.S.
imports. And it is from the point of view of the Dell management. If
you count imports and exports that way, it's pretty rational. Then the
trade deficit shoots way down. You can read about that in The Wall
Street Journal. It's not a big secret. The business world understands
it. And they don't say it, of course, but they act and The New York
Times acts and the government acts as if the country is the people who
own it. And that's not surprising. They're part of the people who own
it, so why shouldn't they look at it that way? And simply ask yourself,
how many pages are there in the press devoted to business affairs and
how many are devoted to labor? Most of the people in the country are
labor, not owners of stock. The ownership of stock is very highly
concentrated: the top 1% owns maybe half of it and most people own
essentially nothing. But the stock market and business affairs are a
huge issue. Labor affairs, you don't even have a reporter covering it.
That expresses the same comprehension of what the country is.
Tariq Ali suggests that unchallenged
U.S. military power could lead to more aggression and war in order to
mask its economic weakness.
It's possible. A dangerous predator, say, some lion on the march, can
be dangerous, but a wounded beast is much more dangerous. Then it may
act in ways which are unpredictable. Everyone knows that. The same is
true in international affairs. The Bush administration has turned the
U.S. into a monstrous attack instrument, but a wounded one. And that's
a very threatening state of affairs. In fact, the Bush administration
is quite consciously increasing the threat of nuclear terror against
the U.S. It's increasing the threat of general terrorism in many, many
ways. And it's conscious. Not because they want it, but because it just
doesn't matter that much, it's a low priority.
Take the invasion of Iraq. It's perfectly well understood, and they
learned from their own intelligence agencies and others, that the
attack was likely to increase proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction for deterrence and to increase terror. And so it did. In
fact, it did so in unanticipated ways. It was expected that it would
probably increase terror, as in fact it did, but what about weapons of
mass destruction? You read that it was discovered by the official U.S.
investigations. The Duelfer and Kay reports that Iraq didn't have the
means to develop weapons of mass destruction. That's not exactly
correct. It did. They were there: the ones that were provided to Saddam
Hussein by Britain, the U.S., and others, as long as he was obeying
orders. They were being dismantled but they were still there, under
guard by U.N. inspectors.
The U.N. inspectors were kicked out. Rumsfeld, Cheney, and the rest
didn't think it was interesting to tell their troops to guard the
sites, so they were systematically looted. The inspectors continued
their work by satellite, and they reported that over 100 sites had been
systematically looted, meaning not just somebody goes in and steals
something, but carefully looted. And they described the equipment that
was in them. It was high-precision machine tools and others that could
be used to develop missiles and nuclear weapons, lethal biotoxins, that
could be used for biological weapons. All that went somewhere. That's
expanding the threat of weapons of mass destruction. We all hate to
guess where it went, but you can make a guess. That's well beyond the
threat to the U.S. that was anticipated from the invasion of Iraq.
I met a Jordanian journalist, who was part of a Swedish journalists
association, who informed me that he was at the Jordanian-Iraqi border
through this period. He said the border guards were reporting that one
out of every eight trucks that was coming from Iraq into Jordan under
the U.S. occupation was testing positive for radioactive materials.
There is a name for this; in fact, Rumsfeld had a nice phrase for it.
Stuff happens. Stuff happens. And it's not that they're trying to
increase the threat to the U.S. It's just that it doesn't matter.
That can bewilder some people,
because these are intelligent, smart people, educated at the best
universities. Why would they pursue a policy that seems threaten their
interests?
It's not. It's very good for their interests. They have two
fundamental interests. You have to be willfully blind not to see it.
It's very simple administration policy. Policy one is stuff the pockets
of your rich friends with as many dollars as possible. That's policy
one. Policy two is get into a position where you can shake your fist at
the world and they will do what you want them to do; intimidate the
world by force. The invasion of Iraq achieved those aims. Nobody at
Halliburton is complaining that they're going broke. In fact, the same
companies that provided Iraq with the weapons are now being paid to
what they call reconstruct Iraq, which means to rob the U.S. taxpayer
blind. The amount of corruption and robbery under the occupation has
just been colossal. So they're making out fine.
I think everyone assumed, that the invasion would be a walk-over. Iraq
was completely defenseless. They knew it. They had already been bombing
it for a year. We know that in detail.
“Spikes of activity.”
Which they kept secret, because Blair and Bush and the guys around them
hate democracy so much that you must not allow the population to know
what you're doing. But they were doing it. And we now know about it,
some of it at least. So Iraq was defenseless. They should have been
able to walk in. Certainly the easiest military occupation in history.
They managed to turn it into a catastrophe. But it looked as though
they would easily be able to control Iraq, which means gaining control
of the second largest hydrocarbon reserves in the world and
significantly increasing their domination of Middle East oil
production. That would provide, as Zbigniew Brzezinski put it, the U.S.
with “critical leverage” over its major rivals, Europe and
the Asian industrial system.
Those are policies that go back to right after the Second World War. As
George Kennan said, We don't need Middle East oil, we don't even want
it, but controlling it gives the U.S. “veto power” over
others. If you have your hand on the spigot, you can determine
what they will do. We just saw an illustration of this when Russia
turned off the spigot to the Ukraine and Europe was facing an energy
crisis. Nobody expects them to do that, but just the poised fist is a
very good instrument of control. So it's a rational policy.
If it happens to be threatening to the American population, it's not a
priority. That's not who they're working for. When they cut taxes for
the rich, is that for the benefit of the population? Read this
morning's headlines. If they concealed the fact that the levees had
broken in New Orleans for two days, is that in order to help the
population? It's just not a priority.
The new Bush budget includes big increases in spending on the military and domestic security and cuts in social programs.
It just follows from the two simple principles: enrich your rich
friends as much as possible, increase your power over the world. And
somebody else will take care of the rest. If you have to cut Medicaid
for the poor, well, who cares about them? There are almost 40 million
people going hungry, don't have money to buy food. Does that matter?
They're not influential, so who cares what happens to them?
The owners of the economy and the
managers of the state, have children, grandchildren. Certainly in the
areas you're describing of increasing military threats, they're putting
their own lives and the lives of their families in peril. Again, it
doesn't seem logical.
Here you have to distinguish between people in their human existence
and their institutional role. A corporate executive or an official in
the Pentagon may be the nicest guy in the world, takes care of his
children, plays with them, cares about them. But in an institutional
role he may act in such a way as to endanger their lives. So it takes a
corporate executive. After all, they have legal obligations.
Their legal obligation is to maximize profit and market share. They're
not allowed to do anything else. It would, in fact, be a violation of
corporate law. That's their legal obligation, part of the institutional
role. And that goes across the board.
Just go back to this case I mentioned to you right here at MIT back in
the late 1970s about providing Iran with the means to develop nuclear
energy. The students were overwhelmingly opposed. There was a
referendum. The faculty approved it by approximately 80%. The faculty
are just the students of a couple years ago. So what happened in
between? Did they get smarter or something? No. They shifted their
institutional role. When you're a student, you're relatively free.
That's the freest time of your life. You're out of parental control,
more or less, you don't have to worry about providing for a family.
You're free to think and act. When you're a faculty member, you're part
of the institution. You support institutional priorities. And the same
people who were students a couple years before took exactly the
opposite position from the students after they had shifted the
institutional role. That's very common. It doesn't mean that their
personalities have changed. It has nothing to do with that.
And that's why you find euphoria in business circles over the election
of a president whose policies grossly oppose their own values. That's
demonstrable. CEOs have what are called liberal values: they
don’t have any objection to gay rights, they want abortion
rights, so on and so forth. On the so-called cultural issues, they're
kind of like college faculty. On the other hand, if you read the
business press the day after the election, there was euphoria in
boardrooms. Why? Because this government is going to give a free run to
business. And if it turns out that that destroys the lives of our
grandchildren, well, it's not our institutional role to worry about
that. As a person I may, but not when my task is to maximize power and
profit.
With the deaths of Rosa Parks and
Coretta Scott King and the birthday of Martin Luther King in January,
there were lots of retrospectives on the civil rights movement. Bob
Herbert, in a column in The New York Times, says, “We've honored
Dr. King, but we've never listened to him.” King himself in his
April 4, 1967, Riverside Church speech, said, “Even when pressed
by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of
opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war.”
You see that anywhere you look. It's obviously true in the U.S. Was the
U.S. at war at that time, in 1967? He was assuming it was. And in a
sense it was. It was a war in the same sense that Iraq was at war when
it invaded Kuwait. The U.S. was at war when it invaded South Vietnam,
which is much worse. But it's an odd sense of being at war. The U.S.
was attacking another country. In fact, it was attacking all of
Indochina. The U.S. was not being attacked by anybody. So what's the
war? It's just plain, outright aggression. However, the American people
were frightened.
Take, say, Lyndon Johnson, who was a man of the people pretty much. He
expressed concerns which undoubtedly were pretty wide. You remember the
way he described it, undoubtedly straight from his heart. He said
something like, There are 150 million of us and 3 billion of them. If
might makes right, they'll “sweep over” us “and take
what we have.” So we have to stop them in Vietnam. I'm sure
he meant it, just like he meant years earlier his comment that
“without superior air power,” we'll be “prey to any
yellow dwarf with a pocket knife.” That's expressing attitudes
which are deeply held and go way back in American history.
There is a very interesting study of popular culture in the United
States by Bruce Franklin. He's a literary theorist at Rutgers. He wrote
a very good book about it called War Stories. He traces strains in
popular literature going back to the colonial period. And there is a
strain in the kind of literature he points out that, say, Harry Truman
was reading when he was growing up, a strain very widely read in
popular magazines and so on—you now see it in television and
movies—which runs that the U.S. is under terrific threat by some
horrendous enemy and at the last moment it's miraculously saved by a
superhero or a superweapon, and somehow we survive. That's the theme.
He also points out that the enemy that's attacking us is typically one
that we are destroying. So the enemy that's attacking us is American
Indians or blacks or Chinese. “You think those are laundries, but
that's part of their insidious effort to take over the country.”
This goes right across the board. Jack London, one of the leading
progressive writers, wrote around 1910 about how we should wipe out the
Chinese by bacteriological warfare because otherwise they're going to
destroy us. That's a strain that goes way back. It's psychologically
understandable. When you're crushing everybody in sight, there is
reason to be afraid that maybe something will happen to you. So, yes,
there is a streak of fear that runs through the culture, and Lyndon
Johnson was expressing it. In that sense we were at war, a war of
defense. It was presented as a war of defense and so interpreted by
much of the population.
In early February, the 35-nation
Board of Governors of the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency
voted to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council over its nuclear
program. There is a possibility of sanctions being imposed on Iran.
There is not a possibility. The U.S. has had sanctions on Iran ever since they disobeyed orders.
Right, but in terms of U.N.-imposed sanctions à la Iraq.
They're called U.N. sanctions on Iraq, but that's just propaganda. They
were U.S. sanctions administered through the U.N. because the U.N. is
afraid to stand up to the U.S. But everybody who has paid attention
knows there is virtually no support for those sanctions outside of the
U.S. and Britain. They're called U.N. sanctions because then it sounds
as if somebody else is doing it. They were U.S. sanctions which were
devastating the society. And if the U.N., under the U.S. fist, passes
some kind of sanctions, which, frankly, I think is questionable,
they will be U.S. sanctions again. Do you know anybody else in the
world aside from the U.S. and Britain who are in favor of the
sanctions? The Europeans aren't. They want to invest in Iran. They had
to pull out—they didn’t have to, they did pull out of many
of the corporations, pulled out of investment. And they explained why.
You can read it in The Wall Street Journal. They said, “We just
don't want to offend the U.S. It's too dangerous.”
International affairs is very much like the Mafia. You don't offend the
don. It’s dangerous. Especially if the don is wounded. You never
know what he's going to do.
But Iran has a weapon to fight back
with in terms of putting the choke on its oil supply, and that would
have a potentially deleterious effect on the global economy. It's the
fourth largest producer of oil in the world.
I'm not sitting in meetings of Pentagon planners, but I think they
would like that, because that would give them an excuse to bomb Iran.
It might even give them an excuse to invade. If you look at the
geography, Iranian oil is concentrated in the Gulf area, which happens
to be substantially Arab Shiite. I'm no military expert, but I'm sure
it's within the military capacity of the U.S. to occupy that area and
to open up the Gulf. And if Iran tried to close it, and they might very
well do that, who knows what it would lead to? Maybe we would blow Iraq
up and blow the world up. But it's not a calculation. Any more than
they care that they are compelling Russia and China to sharply increase
their offensive military forces aimed at the U.S., to put their
missiles on hair-trigger alert, which strategic analysts just call an
accident waiting to happen. Not leftists, incidentally. Former Senator
Sam Nunn, a serious and respectable conservative, who has been in the
lead in efforts to cut back on the threat of nuclear war, warned
recently that we may be developing an Armageddon of our own making.
Maybe. But if you're a planner, that doesn't matter much. So, yes, if
Iran did try to choke off the Gulf of Hormuz, the Pentagon planners
might be delighted and take that as an excuse to prove that we not only
have to bomb Iran and kill its people and so on but also occupy its
oil-producing areas.
We have already done it during the Iran-Iraq war. U.S. support for Iraq
was so strong that the U.S. essentially patrolled the Gulf. And just in
order to make Iran understand it, a U.S. destroyer shot down an Iranian
airliner in Iranian commercial air space, killing 290 people. George
Bush I was then president and thought that was great. Iranians might
not have liked it.
Howard Zinn in his essay The Problem
is Civil Disobedience, says, “Civil disobedience is not our
problem. Our problem is civil obedience,” of people behaving and
taking orders and not questioning. Talk about that and resistance.
We don't have to undertake armed resistance. He's quite right. In fact,
the press that you were reading at the beginning is a perfect example
of it. That's obedience to power and authority. The suppression of the
critical facts about the potential confrontation with Iran is just
obedience to authority. And we can run through such a long list that
it's not worth going through it. It's obedience and subordination to
power that's the major problem, not just here but everywhere. It's much
more important here because the state is so powerful, so it matters
more here than in Luxembourg. But, yes, it's the same problem.
How do you confront it? We have models as to how to confront it. First
of all, we have plenty of them in our own history. We have them also in
the hemisphere. For example, Bolivia and Haiti had democratic elections
of a kind that we can't even conceive of. Take, say, Bolivia. Were the
candidates both rich guys who went to Yale and joined Skull and Bones
and can run with the same programs because they're supported by the
same corporations? No. They elected someone from their own ranks.
That's democracy. It half happened in Haiti. If Aristide had not been
expelled from the Caribbean by the U.S., it's very likely that he would
have won the election. They act in ways which enable them to
participate in the democratic system. Here, we don't. That's real
obedience. The kind of, if you like, disobedience that's needed is to
recreate a functioning democracy. It's not a very radical idea.
Evo Morales's victory in Bolivia in
December 2005 marks the first time an indigenous person has been
elected to lead a country in Latin America.
It's particularly striking in Bolivia because there is an indigenous
majority. And that's another thing you can be sure that's deeply
concerning the Pentagon and civilian planners, that not only is Latin
America falling out of control but for the first time the indigenous
populations are entering the political arena, and they're substantial.
In Bolivia it happens to be a majority, but they're substantial in Peru
and Ecuador, also big energy producers. They're even calling for an
Indian nation. And they want control of their own resources. In fact,
some of them don't even want those resources developed. They'd rather
have their own lives, not have their society and culture destroyed so
that people can sit in traffic jams in New York. All of this is a big
threat to the U.S. And it's democracy. It's democracy functioning in
ways which by now we have agreed not to let happen here.
But that's an agreement. We don't have to accept that. There have been
plenty of times in the past when popular forces in the U.S. have caused
great change. Take Martin Luther King. It wasn't him alone. He would be
the first to tell you. It was a big popular movement, which did make
substantial achievements. It's kind of interesting to look at King's
legacy. He’s greatly honored for having opposed racist sheriffs
in Alabama and you heard all about that on Martin Luther King Day and
the glorious rhetoric. What happened when he turned his attention
to the problem of poverty and war? Then he was condemned. He kind
of lost his marbles, doesn’t know what he’s doing.
The last couple years of his life he was mostly condemned. What was he
doing when he was assassinated? He was supporting a strike of
sanitation workers in Memphis and he was planning a poor people’s
march on Washington. He wasn’t praised for that. Any more than he
was praised for his rather tepid, delayed opposition to the Vietnam
War. In fact, he was bitterly criticized for it: he’s
losing his direction. He doesn’t know what he's doing
anymore. That, as usual, fits the single standard. The editors at The
New York Times have nothing against denouncing racist sheriffs in
Alabama. They think that's fine. What about letting the sanitation
workers have decent wages or letting poor people participate in the
political and economic system? Huh-uh. That's something quite
different. Now you're overstepping the line.
The same simple principles, not obscure. This isn't quantum physics.
There are complexities and details. You have to learn a lot of get the
data right, but the basic principles are so transparent, it takes a
major effort not to perceive them.
(Due to time constraints some portions of the interview were not
included in the national broadcast. Those portions are included in this
transcript.)
Other Noam Chomsky AR programs –
Washington's Messianic Mission
Democracy & U.S. Foreign Policy
War Crimes & Imperial Fantasies.
The Doctrine of the Change of Course
On Imperialism
U.S. Grand Strategy: Global Rule by Force
Iraq: A Test Case of Imperial Violence
Collateral Language: War & Propaganda
Propaganda & Control of the Public Mind
The Chomsky books “Imperial Ambitions” and “Propaganda & the Public Mind” are available from AR.
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