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The U.S is a Leading Terrorist State
Byrnzie
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The United States is a Leading Terrorist State
Noam Chomsky interviewed by David Barsamian
Monthly Review, vol. 53, no. 6, November, 2001
Q: There is rage, anger and bewilderment in the U.S. since the September 11 events. There have been murders, attacks on mosques, and even a Sikh temple. The University of Colorado, which is located here in Boulder, a town which has a liberal reputation, has graffiti saying, “Go home, Arabs, Bomb Afghanistan, and Go Home, Sand Niggers.” What’s your perspective on what has evolved since the terrorist attacks?
A: It’s mixed. What you’re describing certainly exists. On the other hand, countercurrents exist. I know they do where I have direct contacts, and hear the same from others. In this morning’s New York Times there’s a report on the mood in New York, including places where the memorials are for the victims of the terrorist attack. It points out that peace signs and calls for restraint vastly outnumbered calls for retaliation and that the mood of the people they could see was very mixed and in fact generally opposed to violent action. That’s another kind of current, also supportive of people who are being targeted here because they look dark or have a funny name. So there are countercurrents. The question is, what can we do to make the right ones prevail?
Q: The media have been noticeably lacking in providing a context and a background for the attacks on New York and Washington. What might be some useful information that you could provide?
A: There are two categories of information that are particularly useful because there are two distinct, though related, sources for the attack. Let’s assume that the attack was rooted somehow in the bin Laden network. That sounds plausible, at least, so letsay it’s right. If that’s right, there are two categories of information and of populations that we should be concerned with, linked but not identical. One is the bin Laden network. That’s a category by itself. Another is the population of the region. They’re not the same thing, although there are links. What ought to be in the forefront is discussion of both of those. The bin Laden network, I doubt if anybody knows it better than the CIA, since they were instrumental in helping construct it. This is a network whose development started in 1979, if you can believe President Carter’s National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski. He claimed, maybe he was just bragging, that in mid–1979 he had instigated secret support for Mujahedin fighting against the government of Afghanistan in an effort to draw the Russians into what he called an “Afghan trap,” a phrase worth remembering. He’s very proud of the fact that they did fall into the Afghan trap by sending military forces to support the government six months later, with consequences that we know. The U.S., along with Egypt, Pakistan, French intelligence, Saudi Arabian funding, and Israeli involvement, assembled a major army, a huge mercenary army, maybe 100,000 or more, and they drew from the most militant sectors they could find, which happened to be radical Islamists, what are called here Islamic fundamentalists, from all over, most of them not from Afghanistan. They’re called Afghanis, but like bin Laden, they come from elsewhere.
Bin Laden joined very quickly. He was involved in the funding networks, which probably are the ones which still exist. They were trained, armed, organized by the CIA, Pakistan, Egypt, and others to fight a holy war against the Russians. And they did. They fought a holy war against the Russians. They carried terror into Russian territory. They may have delayed the Russian withdrawal, a number of analysts believe, but they did win the war and the Russian invaders withdrew. The war was not their only activity. In 1981, groups based in that same network assassinated President Sadat of Egypt, who had been instrumental in setting it up. In 1983, one suicide bomber, maybe with connections to the same networks, essentially drove the U.S. military out of Lebanon. And it continued.
By 1989, they had succeeded in their holy war in Afghanistan. As soon as the U.S. established a permanent military presence in Saudi Arabia, bin Laden and the rest announced that from their point of view this was comparable to the Russian occupation of Afghanistan and they turned their guns on the Americans, as had already happened in 1983 when the U.S. had military forces in Lebanon. Saudi Arabia is a major enemy of the bin Laden network, just as Egypt is. That’s what they want to overthrow, what they call the un–Islamic governments of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, other states of the Middle East and North Africa. And it continued.
In 1997, they murdered roughly sixty tourists in Egypt and destroyed the Egyptian tourist industry. And they’ve been carrying out activities all over the region, North Africa, East Africa, the Middle East, for years. That’s one group. And that is an outgrowth of the U.S. wars of the 1980s and, if you can believe Brzezinski, even before, when they set the “Afghan trap.” There’s a lot more to say about them, but that’s one part.
Another is the people of the region. They’re connected, of course. The bin Laden network and others like them draw a lot of their support from the desperation and anger and resentment of the people of the region, which ranges from rich to poor, secular to radical Islamist. The Wall Street Journal, to its credit, has run a couple of articles on attitudes of wealthy Muslims, the people who most interest them: businessmen, bankers, professionals, and others through the Middle East region who are very frank about their grievances. They put it more politely than the poor people in the slums and the streets, but it’s clear. Everybody knows what they are. For one thing, they’re very angry about U.S. support for undemocratic, repressive regimes in the region and U.S. insistence on blocking any efforts towards democratic openings. You just heard on the news, it sounded like the BBC, a report that the Algerian government is now interested in getting involved in this war. The announcer said that there had been plenty of Islamic terrorism in Algeria, which is true, but he didn’t tell the other part of the story, which is that a lot of the terrorism is apparently state terrorism. There’s pretty strong evidence for that. The government of course is interested in enhancing its repression, and will welcome U.S. assistance in this.
In fact, that government is in office because it blocked the democratic election in which it would have lost to mainly Islamic–based groups. That set off the current fighting. Similar things go on throughout the region.
The “moneyed Muslims” interviewed by the Journal also complained that the U.S. has blocked independent economic development by “propping up oppressive regimes,” that’s the phrase they used. But the prime concern stressed in the Wall Street Journal articles and by everybody who knows anything about the region, the prime concern of the “moneyed Muslims”—basically pro–American, incidentally—is the dual U.S. policies, which contrast very sharply in their eyes, towards Iraq and Israel. In the case of Iraq, for the last ten years the U.S. and Britain have been devastating the civilian society. Madeleine Albright’s infamous statement about how maybe half a million children have died, and it’s a high price but we’re willing to pay it, doesn’t sound too good among people who think that maybe it matters if a half a million children are killed by the U.S. and Britain. And meanwhile they’re strengthening Saddam Hussein. So that’s one aspect of the dual policy. The other aspect is that the U.S. is the prime supporter of the Israeli military occupation of Palestinian territory, now in its thirty–fifth year. It’s been harsh and brutal from the beginning, extremely repressive. Most of this hasn’t been discussed here, and the U.S. role has been virtually suppressed. It goes back twenty–five years of blocking diplomatic initiatives.
Even simple facts are not reported. For example, as soon as the current fighting began last September 30, Israel immediately, the next day, began using U.S. helicopters (they can’t produce helicopters) to attack civilian targets. In the next couple of days they killed several dozen people in apartment complexes and elsewhere. The fighting was all in the occupied territories, and there was no Palestinian fire. The Palestinians were using stones. So this is people throwing stones against occupiers in a military occupation, legitimate resistance by world standards, insofar as the targets are military.
On October 3, Clinton made the biggest deal in a decade to send new military helicopters to Israel. That continued the next couple of months. That wasn’t even reported, still isn’t reported, as far as I’m aware. But the people there know it, even if they don’t read the Israeli press (where it was immediately reported). They look in the sky and see attack helicopters coming and they know they’re U.S. attack helicopters sent with the understanding that that is how they will be used. From the very start U.S. officials made it clear that there were no conditions on their use, which was by then already well known. A couple of weeks later Israel started using them for assassinations. The U.S. issued some reprimands but sent more helicopters, the most advanced in the U.S. arsenal. Meanwhile the settlement policies, which have taken over substantial parts of the territories and are designed to make it virtually impossible for a viable independent state to develop, are supported by the U.S. The U.S. provides the funding, the diplomatic support. It’s the only country that’s blocked the overwhelming international consensus on condemning all this under the Geneva conventions. The victims, and others in the region, know all of this. All along this has been an extremely harsh military occupation.
Noam Chomsky interviewed by David Barsamian
Monthly Review, vol. 53, no. 6, November, 2001
Q: There is rage, anger and bewilderment in the U.S. since the September 11 events. There have been murders, attacks on mosques, and even a Sikh temple. The University of Colorado, which is located here in Boulder, a town which has a liberal reputation, has graffiti saying, “Go home, Arabs, Bomb Afghanistan, and Go Home, Sand Niggers.” What’s your perspective on what has evolved since the terrorist attacks?
A: It’s mixed. What you’re describing certainly exists. On the other hand, countercurrents exist. I know they do where I have direct contacts, and hear the same from others. In this morning’s New York Times there’s a report on the mood in New York, including places where the memorials are for the victims of the terrorist attack. It points out that peace signs and calls for restraint vastly outnumbered calls for retaliation and that the mood of the people they could see was very mixed and in fact generally opposed to violent action. That’s another kind of current, also supportive of people who are being targeted here because they look dark or have a funny name. So there are countercurrents. The question is, what can we do to make the right ones prevail?
Q: The media have been noticeably lacking in providing a context and a background for the attacks on New York and Washington. What might be some useful information that you could provide?
A: There are two categories of information that are particularly useful because there are two distinct, though related, sources for the attack. Let’s assume that the attack was rooted somehow in the bin Laden network. That sounds plausible, at least, so letsay it’s right. If that’s right, there are two categories of information and of populations that we should be concerned with, linked but not identical. One is the bin Laden network. That’s a category by itself. Another is the population of the region. They’re not the same thing, although there are links. What ought to be in the forefront is discussion of both of those. The bin Laden network, I doubt if anybody knows it better than the CIA, since they were instrumental in helping construct it. This is a network whose development started in 1979, if you can believe President Carter’s National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski. He claimed, maybe he was just bragging, that in mid–1979 he had instigated secret support for Mujahedin fighting against the government of Afghanistan in an effort to draw the Russians into what he called an “Afghan trap,” a phrase worth remembering. He’s very proud of the fact that they did fall into the Afghan trap by sending military forces to support the government six months later, with consequences that we know. The U.S., along with Egypt, Pakistan, French intelligence, Saudi Arabian funding, and Israeli involvement, assembled a major army, a huge mercenary army, maybe 100,000 or more, and they drew from the most militant sectors they could find, which happened to be radical Islamists, what are called here Islamic fundamentalists, from all over, most of them not from Afghanistan. They’re called Afghanis, but like bin Laden, they come from elsewhere.
Bin Laden joined very quickly. He was involved in the funding networks, which probably are the ones which still exist. They were trained, armed, organized by the CIA, Pakistan, Egypt, and others to fight a holy war against the Russians. And they did. They fought a holy war against the Russians. They carried terror into Russian territory. They may have delayed the Russian withdrawal, a number of analysts believe, but they did win the war and the Russian invaders withdrew. The war was not their only activity. In 1981, groups based in that same network assassinated President Sadat of Egypt, who had been instrumental in setting it up. In 1983, one suicide bomber, maybe with connections to the same networks, essentially drove the U.S. military out of Lebanon. And it continued.
By 1989, they had succeeded in their holy war in Afghanistan. As soon as the U.S. established a permanent military presence in Saudi Arabia, bin Laden and the rest announced that from their point of view this was comparable to the Russian occupation of Afghanistan and they turned their guns on the Americans, as had already happened in 1983 when the U.S. had military forces in Lebanon. Saudi Arabia is a major enemy of the bin Laden network, just as Egypt is. That’s what they want to overthrow, what they call the un–Islamic governments of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, other states of the Middle East and North Africa. And it continued.
In 1997, they murdered roughly sixty tourists in Egypt and destroyed the Egyptian tourist industry. And they’ve been carrying out activities all over the region, North Africa, East Africa, the Middle East, for years. That’s one group. And that is an outgrowth of the U.S. wars of the 1980s and, if you can believe Brzezinski, even before, when they set the “Afghan trap.” There’s a lot more to say about them, but that’s one part.
Another is the people of the region. They’re connected, of course. The bin Laden network and others like them draw a lot of their support from the desperation and anger and resentment of the people of the region, which ranges from rich to poor, secular to radical Islamist. The Wall Street Journal, to its credit, has run a couple of articles on attitudes of wealthy Muslims, the people who most interest them: businessmen, bankers, professionals, and others through the Middle East region who are very frank about their grievances. They put it more politely than the poor people in the slums and the streets, but it’s clear. Everybody knows what they are. For one thing, they’re very angry about U.S. support for undemocratic, repressive regimes in the region and U.S. insistence on blocking any efforts towards democratic openings. You just heard on the news, it sounded like the BBC, a report that the Algerian government is now interested in getting involved in this war. The announcer said that there had been plenty of Islamic terrorism in Algeria, which is true, but he didn’t tell the other part of the story, which is that a lot of the terrorism is apparently state terrorism. There’s pretty strong evidence for that. The government of course is interested in enhancing its repression, and will welcome U.S. assistance in this.
In fact, that government is in office because it blocked the democratic election in which it would have lost to mainly Islamic–based groups. That set off the current fighting. Similar things go on throughout the region.
The “moneyed Muslims” interviewed by the Journal also complained that the U.S. has blocked independent economic development by “propping up oppressive regimes,” that’s the phrase they used. But the prime concern stressed in the Wall Street Journal articles and by everybody who knows anything about the region, the prime concern of the “moneyed Muslims”—basically pro–American, incidentally—is the dual U.S. policies, which contrast very sharply in their eyes, towards Iraq and Israel. In the case of Iraq, for the last ten years the U.S. and Britain have been devastating the civilian society. Madeleine Albright’s infamous statement about how maybe half a million children have died, and it’s a high price but we’re willing to pay it, doesn’t sound too good among people who think that maybe it matters if a half a million children are killed by the U.S. and Britain. And meanwhile they’re strengthening Saddam Hussein. So that’s one aspect of the dual policy. The other aspect is that the U.S. is the prime supporter of the Israeli military occupation of Palestinian territory, now in its thirty–fifth year. It’s been harsh and brutal from the beginning, extremely repressive. Most of this hasn’t been discussed here, and the U.S. role has been virtually suppressed. It goes back twenty–five years of blocking diplomatic initiatives.
Even simple facts are not reported. For example, as soon as the current fighting began last September 30, Israel immediately, the next day, began using U.S. helicopters (they can’t produce helicopters) to attack civilian targets. In the next couple of days they killed several dozen people in apartment complexes and elsewhere. The fighting was all in the occupied territories, and there was no Palestinian fire. The Palestinians were using stones. So this is people throwing stones against occupiers in a military occupation, legitimate resistance by world standards, insofar as the targets are military.
On October 3, Clinton made the biggest deal in a decade to send new military helicopters to Israel. That continued the next couple of months. That wasn’t even reported, still isn’t reported, as far as I’m aware. But the people there know it, even if they don’t read the Israeli press (where it was immediately reported). They look in the sky and see attack helicopters coming and they know they’re U.S. attack helicopters sent with the understanding that that is how they will be used. From the very start U.S. officials made it clear that there were no conditions on their use, which was by then already well known. A couple of weeks later Israel started using them for assassinations. The U.S. issued some reprimands but sent more helicopters, the most advanced in the U.S. arsenal. Meanwhile the settlement policies, which have taken over substantial parts of the territories and are designed to make it virtually impossible for a viable independent state to develop, are supported by the U.S. The U.S. provides the funding, the diplomatic support. It’s the only country that’s blocked the overwhelming international consensus on condemning all this under the Geneva conventions. The victims, and others in the region, know all of this. All along this has been an extremely harsh military occupation.
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A: There’s a lot more. There is the fact that the U.S. has supported oppressive, authoritarian, harsh regimes, and blocked democratic initiatives. For example, the one I mentioned in Algeria. Or in Turkey. Or throughout the Arabian Peninsula. Many of the harsh, brutal, oppressive regimes are backed by the U.S. That was true of Saddam Hussein, right through the period of his worst atrocities, including the gassing of the Kurds. U.S. and British support for the monster continued. He was treated as a friend and ally, and people there know it. When bin Laden makes that charge, as he did again in an interview rebroadcast by the BBC, people know what he is talking about.
Let’s take a striking example. In March 1991, right after the Gulf War, with the U.S. in total command of the air, there was a rebellion in the southern part of Iraq, including Iraqi generals. They wanted to overthrow Saddam Hussein. They didn’t ask for U.S. support, just access to captured Iraqi arms, which the U.S. refused. The U.S. tacitly authorized Saddam Hussein to use air power to crush the rebellion. The reasons were not hidden. New York Times Middle East correspondent Alan Cowell described the “strikingly unanimous view” of the U.S. and its regional coalition partners: “whatever the sins of the Iraqi leader, he offered the West and the region a better hope for stability than did those who have suffered his repression.” Times diplomatic correspondent Thomas Friedman observed, not critically, that for Washington and its allies, an “iron–fisted Iraqi junta” that would hold Iraq together just as Saddam’s “iron fist” had done was preferable to a popular rebellion, which was drowned in blood, probably killing more people than the U.S. bombing. Maybe people here don’t want to look, but that was all over the front pages of the newspapers. Well, again, it is known in the region. That’s just one example. These are among the reasons why pro-American bankers and businessmen in the region are condemning the U.S. for supporting antidemocratic regimes and stopping economic development.
Q: Talk about the relationship between ends and means. Let’s say you have a noble goal. You want to bring perpetrators of horrendous terrorist crimes to justice. What about the means to reach those ends?
A: Suppose you want to bring a president of the U.S. to justice. They’re guilty of horrendous terrorist acts. There’s a way to do it. In fact, there are precedents. Nicaragua in the 1980s was subjected to violent assault by the U.S. Tens of thousands of people died. The country was substantially destroyed, it may never recover. The effects on the country are much more severe even than the tragedies in New York the other day. They didn’t respond by setting off bombs in Washington. They went to the World Court, which issued a judgment in their favor condemning the U.S. for what it called “unlawful use of force,” which means international terrorism, ordering the U.S. to desist and pay substantial reparations. The U.S. dismissed the court judgment with contempt, responding with an immediate escalation of the attack. So Nicaragua then went to the Security Council, which passed a resolution calling on states to observe international law. The U.S. vetoed it. They went to the General Assembly, where they got a similar resolution that passed near–unanimously, which the U.S. and Israel opposed two years in a row (joined once by El Salvador). That’s the way a state should proceed. If Nicaragua had been powerful enough, it could have set up another criminal court. Those are the measures the U.S. could pursue, and nobody’s going to block it. That’s what they’re being asked to do by people throughout the region, including their allies.
Remember, the governments in the Middle East and North Africa, like the terrorist Algerian government, which is one of the most vicious of all, would be happy to join the U.S. in opposing terrorist networks which are attacking them. They’re the prime targets. But they have been asking for some evidence, and they want to do it in a framework of at least minimal commitment to international law. The Egyptian position is complex. They’re part of the primary system that organized the bin Laden network. They were the first victims of it when Sadat was assassinated. They’ve been major victims of it since. They’d like to crush it, but they say, only after some evidence is presented about who’s involved and within the framework of the UN Charter, under the aegis of the Security Council. That’s a way to proceed.
Q: Do you think it’s more than problematic to engage in alliances with those whom are called “unsavory characters,” drug traffickers and assassins, in order to achieve what is said to be a noble end?
A: Remember that among the most unsavory characters are the governments of the region, our own government and its allies. If we’re serious, we also have to ask, What is a noble end? Was it a noble end to drive the Russians into an Afghan trap in 1979, as Brzezinski claims he did? Supporting resistance against the Russian invasion is one thing. But organizing a terrorist army of Islamic fanatics for your own purposes is a different thing. The question we should be asking now is: What about the alliance that’s being formed, that the U.S. is trying to put together? We should not forget that the U.S. itself is a leading terrorist state. What about the alliance between the U.S., Russia, China, Indonesia, Egypt, Algeria, all of whom are delighted to see an international system develop, sponsored by the U.S., which will authorize them to carry out their own terrorist atrocities? Russia, for example, would be very happy to have U.S. backing for its murderous war in Chechnya. You have the same Afghanis fighting against Russia, also probably carrying out terrorist acts within Russia. As would perhaps India, in Kashmir. Indonesia would be delighted to have support for its massacres in Aceh. Algeria, as just announced on the broadcast we heard, would be delighted to have authorization to extend its own state terrorism. The same with China, fighting against separatist forces in its Western provinces, including those “Afghanis” whom China and Iran had organized to fight the war against the Russians, beginning maybe as early as 1978, some reports indicate. And that runs through the world.
Q: Your comment that the U.S. is a “leading terrorist state” might stun many Americans. Could you elaborate on that?
A: I just gave one example, Nicaragua. The U.S. is the only country that was condemned for international terrorism by the World Court and that rejected a Security Council resolution calling on states to observe international law. It continues international terrorism. That example’s the least of it. And there are also what are in comparison, minor examples. Everybody here was quite properly outraged by the Oklahoma City bombing, and for a couple of days, the headlines all read, Oklahoma City looks like Beirut. I didn’t see anybody point out that Beirut also looks like Beirut, and part of the reason is that the Reagan Administration had set off a terrorist bombing there in 1985 that was very much like Oklahoma City, a truck bombing outside a mosque timed to kill the maximum number of people as they left. It killed eighty and wounded two hundred, aimed at a Muslim cleric whom they didn’t like and whom they missed. It was not very secret. I don’t know what name you give to the attack that’s killed maybe a million civilians in Iraq and maybe a half a million children, which is the price the Secretary of State says we’re willing to pay. Is there a name for that? Supporting Israeli atrocities is another one. Supporting Turkey’s crushing of its own Kurdish population, for which the Clinton Administration gave the decisive support, 80 percent of the arms, escalating as atrocities increased, is another. Or take the bombing of the Sudan, one little footnote, so small that it is casually mentioned in passing in reports on the background to the Sept. 11 crimes. How would the same commentators react if the bin Laden network blew up half the pharmaceutical supplies in the U.S. and the facilities for replenishing them? Or Israel? Or any country where people “matter”? Although that’s not a fair analogy, because the U.S. target is a poor country which had few enough drugs and vaccines to begin with and can’t replenish them. Nobody knows how many thousands or tens of thousands of deaths resulted from that single atrocity, and bringing up that death toll is considered scandalous. If somebody did that to the U.S. or its allies, can you imagine the reaction? In this case we say, Oh, well, too bad, minor mistake, let’s go on to the next topic. Other people in the world don’t react like that. When bin Laden brings up that bombing, he strikes a resonant chord, even with people who despise and fear him, and the same, unfortunately, is true of much of the rest of his rhetoric.
Or to return to “our own little region over here,” as Henry Stimson called it, take Cuba. After many years of terror beginning in late 1959, including very serious atrocities, Cuba should have the right to resort to violence against the U.S. according to U.S. doctrine that is scarcely questioned. It is, unfortunately, all too easy to continue, not only with regard to the U.S. but also other terrorist states.
Q: In your book Culture of Terrorism, you write that “the cultural scene is illuminated with particular clarity by the thinking of the liberal doves, who set the limits for respectable dissent.” How have they been performing since the events of September 11?
A: Since I don’t like to generalize, let’s take a concrete example. On September 16, the New York Times reported that the U.S. has demanded that Pakistan cut off food aid to Afghanistan. That had already been hinted before, but here it was stated flat out. Among other demands Washington issued to Pakistan, it also “demanded…the elimination of truck convoys that provide much of the food and other supplies to Afghanistan’s civilian population”—the food that is keeping probably millions of people just this side of starvation (John Burns, Islamabad, NYT). What does that mean? That means that unknown numbers of people, maybe millions, of starving Afghans will die. Are these Taliban? No, they’re victims of the Taliban. Many of them are internal refugees kept from leaving. But here’s a statement saying, OK, let’s proceed to kill unknown numbers, maybe millions, of starving Afghans who are victims of the Taliban. What was the reaction?
I spent almost the entire day afterwards on radio and television around the world. I kept bringing it up. Nobody in Europe or the U.S. could think of one word of reaction. Elsewhere in the world there was plenty of reaction, even around the periphery of Europe, like Greece. How should we have reacted to this? Suppose some power was strong enough to say, Let’s do something that will cause a million Americans to die of starvation. Would you think it’s a serious problem? And again, it’s not a fair analogy. In the case of Afghanistan, left to rot after it had been exploited for Washington’s war, much of the country is in ruins and its people are desperate, already one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world.
Q: National Public Radio, which in the 1980s was denounced by the Reagan Administration as “Radio Managua on the Potomac,” is also considered out there on the liberal end of respectable debate. Noah Adams, the host of “All Things Considered,” asked these questions on September 17. Should assassinations be allowed? Should the CIA be given more operating leeway?
A: The CIA should not be permitted to carry out assassinations, but that’s the least of it. Should the CIA be permitted to organize a car bombing in Beirut like the one I described? Not a secret, incidentally; prominently reported in the mainstream media, though easily forgotten. That didn’t violate any laws. And it’s not just the CIA. Should they have been permitted to organize in Nicaragua a terrorist army which had the official task, straight out of the mouth of the State Department, to attack “soft targets,” meaning undefended agricultural cooperatives and health clinics? What’s the name for that? Or to set up something like the bin Laden network, not him himself, but the background networks? Should the U.S. be authorized to provide Israel with attack helicopters to carry out political assassinations and attacks on civilian targets? That’s not the CIA. That’s the Clinton Administration, with no noticeable objection, in fact even reported.
Q: Could you very briefly define the political uses of terrorism? Where does it fit in the doctrinal system?
A: The U.S. is officially committed to what is called “low–intensity warfare.” That’s the official doctrine. If you read the definition of low–intensity conflict in army manuals and compare it with official definitions of “terrorism” in army manuals, or the U.S. Code, you find they’re almost the same. Terrorism is the use of coercive means aimed at civilian populations in an effort to achieve political, religious, or other aims. That’s what the World Trade Center bombing was, a particularly horrifying terrorist crime. And that’s official doctrine. I mentioned a couple of examples. We could go on and on. It’s simply part of state action, not just the U.S. of course. Furthermore, all of these things should be well known. It’s shameful that they’re not. Anybody who wants to find out about them can begin by reading a collection of essays published ten years ago by a major publisher called Western State Terrorism, edited by Alex George (Routledge, 1991), which runs through lots and lots of cases. These are things people need to know if they want to understand anything about themselves. They are known by the victims, of course, but the perpetrators prefer to look elsewhere.
we overthrow democracies in order to install ruthless dictators, we arm more than half the 3rd world, we create, arm, fund and train death squads...how far must ones head be buried to overlook this?
he had a voice that was strong and loud and
i swallowed his facade cos i'm so
eager to identify with
someone above the crowd
someone who seemed to feel the same
someone prepared to lead the way
Maybe the US wants to stop the food deliveries to Afghanistan because they are shipping in weapons instead?
If we were so chummy with the terrorists from the beginning, why did they attack us?
If we setup all the funding channels then we should have been able to shut it down in a month?
If we prop up govts that aren't democracies around the world what would be the alternative govt? A democratically elected terrorists organization?
Since when has the World court judged fairly? Are they like the UN, corrupt and therefore if they decided we were terrorists that wouldn't neccessarily make it so. Do they deem terrorists 'terrorists' or freedom fighters.
Guess it is all your perspective. I am not disputing the interview, how could I possibly do that - it would take more time than I have and resources that I don't have. Raises very interesting questions though.
I suggest we just get out of everyone's business, turn off the electricity, shut down the roads, live off the land, and wait. We can hold out for awhile I think, but eventually the rest of the world will fall into chaos and once again they will come asking for our help.
...I just read Chomsky books over the last weekend, so I learned about this theory and I agree to many parts by now, although it was like an eye opener to me and I still struggle over this kind of truth.
But Wind: don't you see that the world develops by its own now?
How can you say that we would slíp into chaos if the US is not interfering all the time?
That is a statement that gives me chicken skin by now. It is exactly this thought of being the super- hyper- intellectual power of this planet
without everything would fall to pieces, so just let go on with ruling the planet,
as we are the better race, as we are the most important ones, so we are free to do what we want.
...
nahh, too many other countries have become strong and peaceful and are very much able to handle themselves.
and: btw the UN would then take care... and to me that is a better choice in power...
...the world is come undone, I like to change it everyday but change don't come at once, it's a wave, building before it breaks.
I was just spouting off, sort of being sarcastic. That is my reaction to information that is a slap in my face, if you know what I mean.
I guess my point was if all that was true, I would want to just pull back from our international interests, national interests, etc, and just stop the mess. But, then part of me thinks that if it is true, the cycle has already begun and who can stop it?
Europe has big issues too, and no one's hands are clean. Do you think Europe is safe from the violence that is being speyed out around the world today?
"It's a small world..."
This is what I think. I think a good chunk of the global wheel spins in synchronous. Governments codepend and interoperate on high levels. The US labels a brutal dictator. NATO slaps a big sticker on it and you have history. It's that simple. World dictatorship. Some countries aren't involved, guess which ones they are?
wind, so please excuse me, really. I haven't read too many threads by you, so I did not know at all that you mean it sarcastic.
Please accept my apologies!
I am not sure who can stop the spinning wheel anymore.
And I do not think that Europe is of any better behavour as the US,
not in the past and probably not even now.
I am not sure if we are safe or not... fact is that the biggest aggression from the middle east/south america and maybe others go against the US ... but then, we have the same system so we are a target as well.
it is difficult to say,
and if I would know a solution I would be the happiest one here.
but well, nothing in my mind except of the UN (and that is a joke too, by now).
...
...the world is come undone, I like to change it everyday but change don't come at once, it's a wave, building before it breaks.
The UN is a joke. It's sickening. Countries on the security council have vetoed so many good resolutions for selfish reasons. It's just one way for these guys to dictate. It's not a real democracy. I don't think there is a such thing.
Or the U.S could simply stop preventing the U.N from functioning and stop abusing it's power of veto. If the U.N were stengthened with the support of those countries of major influence then we wouldn't see so much unilateral aggression and the fuelling of terrorism and hatred of the west in the world.
Exactly. "Countries on the security council have vetoed so many good resolutions for selfish reasons." Perhaps the power of automatic veto for the U.S, China, France, Russia, and U.K should be done away with, and a system whereby the majority vote wins implemented instead. This should then prevent Russia from vetoing every resolution condemning the slaughter in Chechnya, and the U.S from vetoing every resolution condemning Israel for it's continued illegal occupation.
b/c we manufacture threats so we can later profit in having to take them out.
if you want proof look at 4 of our past 5 wars (kosovo being the the 5th one left out)
panama- we kill thousands of civilians to take out a cia agent we helped put into power. why did we have to take him out? b/c he was into drugs? that's bullshit b/c while daddy bush was VP he told the intel agencies to stop reporting on noriega's drug activities.
iraq- we armed saddam supposedly b/c he was the lesser of 2 evils (altho we were arming the other side, iran, at the same time). while he was committing his atrocities congress passed a few sanctions against him...daddy bush vetoed every single one of them. it wasn't until congress slashed the defense budget (w/ the cold war being over) that all of a sudden saddam was this grave threat to mankind.
afghanistan- we supported the taliban
iraq (again)- see above...bin laden was the pretext for this (somehow) who was on the cia payroll for a while...in fact he was on the cia payroll when he created al qaeda
as i said, we manufacture the threats to later profit
iran actually had a democratically elected PM when we orchestrated a coup (b/c he wanted to nationalize their oil so we took him out and got 80% of their oil split w/ the UK) they were not terrorists back then. but the brutal dictator we put in his place treated the iranians so badly it gave support to the nuts in power now...had we not overthrown the PM they wouldn't be in power today. no democracy we overthrew were 'terrorists'
when haven't they? so you support the mining of niocarauga's harbors when they had no real navy? you support our illegal bombing of the country turning it from one of the richest economies in the region to one of the poorest in the world? can you explain WHY we needed to do this, again?
as for terrorists or freedom fighters...funny, after the iran/contra scandal came out congress stated WE suppled terrorist nations w/ weapons and money illegally. i'll be more than happy to send you a doc on it...it has lots of nice stuff from the hearings and all the charges. anyway, congress called the contras terrorists, reagan, daddy bush, cheney, rummy...called them freedom fighters.
i agree that we should stay out of other's affairs. our meddling leads to nothing but future wars and destabalizing areas
he had a voice that was strong and loud and
i swallowed his facade cos i'm so
eager to identify with
someone above the crowd
someone who seemed to feel the same
someone prepared to lead the way
the thing the UN does that is good is talk. But no self supported independent country in their right mind would let an international group of countries have final say in their actions. If majority ruled in the UN the G-8 would be at the mercy of every small poor country. The UN is right in condemning things but the entity of the UN won't DO anything b/c it can't. It's hard enough to keep order in each individual country much less keep order over the entire world.
For those who think Chomsky is god.....Go back and read what he thought about Pol Pot in the early days.
Firstly, I don't think Chomsky is god. Your comment is meaningless and irrelevant.
Secondly, I know what Chomsky has said with regard to casualty figures during the reign of terror in Cambodia and how they were reported by the mainstream press. Perhaps YOU would care to provide sources/limks in order to explain what you are getting at?
http://www.zmag.org/zmag/articles/chombookrev.htm
Read it.....Said to be Chomsky's biggest mistake in judgement.
Sorry, I don't have much time to read it all, but it appears to be only an analysis of the media reports... where does it says that the khmers never slaughtered people? It seems to me that the point of the article is just that the media reports were silent about the US role in the escalation of violence. But maybe I just didn't read it carefully...
He's comparing media coverage of Pol Pot's massacre in Cambodia (an official enemy) to the East Timor massacre (carried out by Indonesia, an official US ally) I believe.
Pointing out that 2 comparable massacres were not covered the same by the mass media, evidence of the propaganda system. Not proof by itself, but still 1 example of many.
I didn't read the entire article, pretty sure that's where he was going.
They are ridiculing atrocity accusations against the Khmer Rouge and blaming the US for deaths because of its proxy role.....
1) Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, "Distortions at Fourth Hand"
in "The Nation" (periodical), 25 Jun 1977, pp. 789-94
From the "Nation" article cited above:
"The 'slaughter' by the Khmer Rouge is a Moss-'New York Times'
creation" (N., p. 792, column 1)
Not at all. They found actual stories about the Khmer Rouge massacre that were completely fabricated, and pointed that out. When we look back on it now we can see they really didn't need to, there were plenty oif horror stories..but they wanted a Russian sattelite to be so evil and look so bad in the world's eye that they fabricated stories about an already terrible atrocity that was taking place.
It is a look at the very complex propaganda system in the United States, not a look into the Khmer Rouge Massacre.
I see how you could take that out of the article....and your very correct. However, I feel that he is not pointing anything out...He is blaming the US like usual for something that it is only loosely involved in.
I guess my point is that Chomsky always seems to take a situation and make it the United State's fault. Even if it means sympatizing (sp) with an evil regime such as the Khmer Rouge. He fails to analyze geo-politics for what they ARE and trys to point out double standards as much as he possibly can. If the US acts in the name of self interest they are horrible....but if the Khmer Rouge end up killling millions it is a diabolical plan by set up by the US to get the communist......Get my Point?
Yeah, he may stretch his points a bit, but I think he's pretty objective for the most part. He looks at the world in a very grounded way...he realizes the gov't of a nation acts with the consent of the people. He knows that the people are ultimately repsonsible for the actions of the gov't. And that's true in any structure-despotic, tyranic, monarchy, whatever. He realizes this and is doing everything he can to prevent them from doing these terrible things in his name-its out of guilt that he is doing what he does, not hatred or anything like that. He's trying to prevent things like the Khmer Rouge, or East Timor.
And I personally think he has a great point about the United States involvement in allowing someone like Pol Pot to come to power in Cambodia...we dropped more bombs on that country in 2 years than we dropped on vietnam during the entire vietnam war, creating a very unstable environment ripe for a killer regime like Khmere Rouge to rise up.
I agree with your take...
However, I think to say that the US makes a country unstable and then is responsible for mass genocide is crazy. That is what a majority of Chomsky's political writings are about. Misplaced blame or the idea that one thing leads to another. In his eyes the US creates every problem situation that it has ever been involved in. This may be true in theory, However, some blame must be placed with the actors themselves.
The US doesn't create every problem in the world.....as Chomsky would lead you to believe.
Suplying 50% of the world's arms the US is responsible for more than we think, I'd imagine. Not everything...and its just opinion now, but I don't think Chomsky believes the US is responsible for everything that happens in the world. But as the world's superpower they influence much of the world-through economic or military means-a word from Washington can end genocide in some cases...and has in the past.
I think we are getting into a chicken or the egg argument......Good Stuff.....The US sells arms.....who gets killed by them can blame who they want.
Chomsky has always just been food for thought in my book and their is no doubt that the guy has superior credentials. I just happen to think that pointing out double standards does nothing much to solve any "real world" situations. He seems to guide his theory in a "perfect world" context....
I hear you...which is attainable to some extent, I think...not a perfect world, but we can certainly do better than this.
"...sympathizing (sp) with an evil regime such as the Khmer Rouge"???
Why are you saying that he sympathised with the Khmer Rouge? Please provide evidence of this.
the us is responsable for the genocide in east timor...we gave indonesia the weapons and they started the genocide right after nixon (or wa it kissinger?) left a visit to indonesia. if you see someone committing genocide w/ the weapons you sell them shouldn't you think about not giving them anymore??
he had a voice that was strong and loud and
i swallowed his facade cos i'm so
eager to identify with
someone above the crowd
someone who seemed to feel the same
someone prepared to lead the way
you obviously didn't take the time to read the article above....or read any of the post after for that matter...
There's nothing obvious about it. I did read the article, and at no point does Chomsky express sympathy for the Khmer Rouge.
Well then you missed the point of the article when you read it. Everyone who has followed Chomsky's career knows that this is his biggest flaw.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anti-Chomsky_Reader
see the first section under contents....it is the first chapter of the book.