|
|
Startsida
|
Ø NOAM CHOMSKY ON "TERROR WAR" > (OBS
FÖRKORTAT) > > Ø
David Barsamian:
> Ø What do you say to the peace activists who labored for so long trying to prevent > the invasion of Iraq and who are now feeling a sense of anger and sadness? > > Noam Chomsky: > That they should be realistic. How long did the struggle go on before they made > any progress? If you give up every time you don't achieve the immediate gain > you want, you're just guaranteeing that the worst is going to happen. > > These are long, hard struggles. And, in fact, what happened in the last couple of months should be seen quite positively. The basis was created for expansion and development > of a peace and justice movement, that will move on to much harder tasks. > And that's the way these things go. It isn't easy. > > ..never before has there been so much opposition before a war began. Where is it going? > > ..The tasks are now much greater and more serious than they were before. On the other hand, it's harder. It's just psychologically easier to organize to oppose a military attack than it is to oppose a long-standing program of imperial ambition, of which this attack is one phase, and of which others are going to come next. That takes more thought, more dedication, more long-term engagement. > ............................................................................ .......................................................... > > DB: What are the regional implications of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq? > > NC: I think not only the region but the world in general perceives it correctly as a kind > of an easy test case to try to establish a norm for use of military force. > ..It also coincided with the onset of the congressional campaign. All these are tied together. > > ..if there is any challenge perceived to its domination, then the U.S.will have the right to destroy that challenge before it becomes a threat. That's preventive war, not preemptive war. > > ..So if you want to establish a new norm, you have to do something. And the easiest way to do it is to select a completely defenseless target (Iraq), which can be completely overwhelmed by the most massive military force in human history. > > However, in order to do that credibly, at least to your own population, you have to frighten them. So the defenseless target has to be turned into an awesome threat to survival which was responsible for September 11 and is about to attack us again etc...Once the easy case is handled, you can move on to think of harder cases. > > ..To control Iraq is to be in a very strong position to determine the price and production levels, of oil not too high, not too low, to probably undermine OPEC, and to swing your weight around throughout the world. That's been true since the Second World War. It has nothing > in particular to do with access to the oil; the U.S. doesn't really intend to access it. > But it does have to do with control. > > ..So the projections are: control the Middle East, but maintain access to the Atlantic Basin, including the countries you mentioned (Venezuela and Colombia; and also Nigeria). > ..Yes, that's a possibility..Another possibility is Iran. > > ..NC: As far as Israel is concerned, Iraq has never been much of an issue. They consider it > a kind of pushover. But Iran is a different story. Iran is a much more serious military and economic force. And for years Israel has been pressing the United States to take on Iran. > Iran is too big for Israel to attack, so they want the big boys to do it. > > ..Although there will be a military attack only if it's taken for granted that Iran would be basically defenseless. They're not going to invade anyone who can fight back. > > ..U.S. military forces in Afghanistan and in Iraq, as well as bases in Turkey and Central Asia- Iran is literally surrounded now. Might not that objective reality on the ground push forces inside Iran to develop nuclear weapons, if they don't already have them, in selfdefense? > > .. NC: What you described is highly likely. If you come out and say, "Look, we're going to attack you," and countries know that they have no means of conventional defense, you're virtually ordering them to develop weapons of mass destruction and networks of terror. It's transparent. That's exactly why the CIA and everyone else predicted it. > > ..DB: What does the Iraq war and occupation mean for the Palestinians? > ..NC: Disaster. > ..DB: No roadmaps to peace? > > ..Up until now, the U.S. had, at least in principle, gone along with the 1968 Security Council resolution ordering Israel to revoke its annexation and occupation and settlement policies in East Jerusalem. For the first time, last Dec, the Bush administration reversed that principle. > > ..and the effort to pursue it is called a U.S. initiative, > although in fact, what it really is, ...is a U.S. effort to catch up to long-standing > European and Arab efforts and to try to cut them down, so they don't mean very much. > > ..But now .. Bush is saying the opposite: Go on and settle. We'll keep paying for it, > until we decide that somehow the peace process has reached an adequate point. > > So, it was a significant change towards more aggression, undermining of international law, and undermining of the possibilities of peace. That's not the way it was portrayed. > But take a look at the wording. > > ..DB: Do you see Europe and East Asia emerging as counterforces toU.S. power at some point? > > ..NC: There is no doubt that Europe and Asia are economic forces roughly on a par with North America, and have their own interests. Their interests are not simply to follow U.S. orders. They're tightly linked. So, for example, the corporate sector in Europe, the U.S.. and most of Asia are linked in all kinds of ways and have common interests. On the other hand, there are separate interests, and these are problems that go way back, especially with Europe. > > ..The U.S. has always had an ambivalent attitude towards Europe. It wanted Europe to be unified, as a more efficient market for U.S. corporations, great advantages of scale. > On the other hand, it was always concerned about the threat that Europe might move off > in another direction. > > A lot of the issues about the accession of the East European countries to the European Union have a lot to do with that. The U.S. is strongly in favor of it, because it's hoping that these countries will be more susceptible to U.S. influence and will be able to undermine the core > of Europe, which is France and Germany, the big industrial countries, which might move > in a somewhat more independent direction. > > ..Also in the background is a long-standing U.S. hatred of the European social market system, which provides decent wages and working conditions and benefits. It's very different from > the U.S. system. And they don't want that model to exist, because it's a dangerous one. People get funny ideas. > > And it's very explicitly stated that with the accession of Eastern European countries, with > low wages and repression of labor and so on, it may help undermine the social and > worker standards in Western Europe, and that would be a big benefit for U.S. > > ..how is the Bush administration going to maintain what some are calling a garrison state > with permanent war and occupation of numerous countries? How are they going to pull it off? > > .. during the next six years they hope to undermine social programs, diminish democracy, which of course they hate, by transferring decisions out of the public arena into private hands. And they will have done it in a way, that will be very hard to disentangle. > > ..And internationally, they hope that they will have institutionalized the doctrines of > imperial domination through force and preventive war as a choice. > > The U.S. now in military spending probably exceeds the rest of the world combined, and it's much more advanced and moving out into extremely dangerous directions, like space. > > They assume, I suppose, that no matter what happens to the American economy, that will give such overwhelming force, that people will just have to do what they say. >
|