Noam Chomsky interviewed by David Barsamian
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.
Q: Is there anything else you want to add?
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.
Source: http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/200111--02.htm
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