|
Comment on this article |
Email this Article
|
|
Noam Chomsky On 9/11 |
Current rating: 0 |
by Noam Chomsky via BBC via Joe Futrelle
Email: futrelle (nospam) shout.net (verified) |
11 Sep 2002
|
|
Noam Chomsky appeared on the BBC to offer his reflections on 9/11. He concludes that the world is not as different as we might want to believe it is: |
It is generally assumed that the September 11 terrorist attacks have changed the world dramatically, that nothing will be the same as the world enters a new and frightening "age of terror." There surely is some truth to that. The target on Sept. 11 was not Cuba, or Lebanon, or Chechnya, or one of the numerous other traditional victims of large-scale criminal violence, but a country with the power to shape the future, to an extent without historical precedent.
Nevertheless, I think there is reason to expect essential continuity: to expect policy choices to remain within a framework that is well-entrenched, modified perhaps in important ways but not fundamentally changed. One reason is the stability of the basic institutions in which decisions are rooted. But there are also narrower ones.
It is worth recalling that the war on terror was not declared on Sept. 11, but 20 years earlier, when the Reagan administration came into office, announcing that a primary focus of policy would be the war against international terrorism, primarily in Central America and the West Asia/Mediterranean region. The rhetoric was much the same as today. Many of the same people are playing a prominent role.
We know a good deal about the first phase of the war on terror. In brief, its commanders compiled a record of terrorism that vastly exceeds anything that could be charged to their adversaries, continuing until the present day. And they were not forging a new path. Twenty years earlier, John F. Kennedy had ordered his staff to unleash "the terrors of the earth" against Cuba because of its "successful defiance" of the United States, and they did so, with grim effects. Meanwhile senior statesman Dean Acheson announced that legal issues do not arise in the case of a US response to a "challenge [to its] power, position, and prestige."
When President Bush proclaims the right of preemptive strike against potential threats, he is basically adopting Acheson's principle. More closely, he is paraphrasing the Reagan administration doctrine that the US is entitled to use military force in what they called "self-defense against future attack," the official justification for the bombing of Libya. Current rhetoric about Iraq has earlier roots. A century ago Woodrow Wilson wrote that "Our interest must march forward, altruists though we are; other nations must see to it that they stand off, and do not seek to stay us." He was referring to the "liberation of the Philippines," with a ghastly toll. And Wilson was merely borrowing from Europe's global conquests.
After tragic experiences that we need not recount, efforts were made to construct an international order in which the powerful would not be free to resort to violence at will, on shameful pretexts that we also need not review. But it is now fashionable to hold that the framework of law and treaties that was laboriously constructed must be discarded in favor of a new principle -- which is in fact the old principle: the self-anointed "enlightened states" will serve as global enforcers, proclaiming a new era of justice and freedom under the guidance of "the idealistic New World bent on ending inhumanity," as the world's leading newspaper assures us.
A rich record is available that allows us to evaluate such pronouncements, which are all too familiar. The record can be ignored only by those who choose to have blind faith in the nobility of the leadership that pledges to drive evil from the world.
Others will prefer to examine closely what has been achieved in the name of "ending inhumanity." They will seek the reasons that lie behind the standard pretexts. To take one current case, they will discover that the reasons now offered for invading Iraq held with at least comparable force before Sept. 11. And that the reasons held with far greater force a few years earlier, when Saddam Hussein was being welcomed as an ally and trading partner by the US and Britain, who even provided him with the means to develop weapons of mass destruction. His worst crimes were then in the past, and well known; and he was a far greater threat than today -- facts that surely raise some questions.
Those who are not satisfied with blind faith should also listen to the words of high officials when they are not strutting on the stage. If they do, they will find that planners expect a "widening economic divide," so that the rich and powerful will have to develop more powerful means of control and destruction, which pose awesome threats even to survival.
We can choose to huddle under the wings of enforcers who proclaim their allegiance to the highest principles and values, or take responsibility for our fate, and that of future generations. The latter choice is far harder, but is the only one that can be contemplated by decent and honest people. |
See also:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/world/2002/september_11_one_year_on/2229628.stm
|
