-Caveat Lector-
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/09.10E.chomsky.iraq.htm
By Attacking Iraq, the US Will Invite a New
Wave of Terrorist Attacks
Noam Chomsky
The Guardian
September 9. 2002
September 11 shocked many Americans into an
awareness that they had better pay much closer attention to what
the US government does in the world and how it is perceived. Many
issues have been opened for discussion that were not on the agenda
before. That's all to the good.
It is also the merest sanity, if we hope to
reduce the likelihood of future atrocities. It may be comforting to
pretend that our enemies "hate our freedoms," as President Bush
stated, but it is hardly wise to ignore the real world, which
conveys different lessons.
The president is not the first to ask: "Why
do they hate us?" In a staff discussion 44 years ago, President
Eisenhower described "the campaign of hatred against us [in the
Arab world], not by the governments but by the people". His
National Security Council outlined the basic reasons: the US
supports corrupt and oppressive governments and is "opposing
political or economic progress" because of its interest in
controlling the oil resources of the region.
Post-September 11 surveys in the Arab world
reveal that the same reasons hold today, compounded with resentment
over specific policies. Strikingly, that is even true of
privileged, western-oriented sectors in the region.
To cite just one recent example: in the
August 1 issue of Far Eastern Economic Review, the internationally
recognised regional specialist Ahmed Rashid writes that in Pakistan
"there is growing anger that US support is allowing [Musharraf's]
military regime to delay the promise of democracy".
Today we do ourselves few favours by
choosing to believe that "they hate us" and "hate our freedoms". On
the contrary, these are attitudes of people who like Americans and
admire much about the US, including its freedoms. What they hate is
official policies that deny them the freedoms to which they too
aspire.
For such reasons, the post-September 11
rantings of Osama bin Laden - for example, about US support for
corrupt and brutal regimes, or about the US "invasion" of Saudi
Arabia - have a certain resonance, even among those who despise and
fear him. From resentment, anger and frustration, terrorist bands
hope to draw support and recruits.
We should also be aware that much of the
world regards Washington as a terrorist regime. In recent years,
the US has taken or backed actions in Colombia, Nicaragua, Panama,
Sudan and Turkey, to name a few, that meet official US definitions
of "terrorism" - that is, when Americans apply the term to enemies.
In the most sober establishment journal,
Foreign Affairs, Samuel Huntington wrote in 1999: "While the US
regularly denounces various countries as 'rogue states,' in the
eyes of many countries it is becoming the rogue superpower ... the
single greatest external threat to their societies."
Such perceptions are not changed by the
fact that, on September 11, for the first time, a western country
was subjected on home soil to a horrendous terrorist attack of a
kind all too familiar to victims of western power. The attack goes
far beyond what's sometimes called the "retail terror" of the IRA,
FLN or Red Brigades.
The September 11 terrorism elicited harsh
condemnation throughout the world and an outpouring of sympathy for
the innocent victims. But with qualifications.
An international Gallup poll in late
September found little support for "a military attack" by the US in
Afghanistan. In Latin America, the region with the most experience
of US intervention, support ranged from 2% in Mexico to 16% in
Panama.
The current "campaign of hatred" in the
Arab world is, of course, also fuelled by US policies toward
Israel-Palestine and Iraq. The US has provided the crucial support
for Israel's harsh military occupation, now in its 35th year.
One way for the US to lessen
Israeli-Palestinian tensions would be to stop refusing to join the
long-standing international consensus that calls for recognition of
the right of all states in the region to live in peace and
security, including a Palestinian state in the currently occupied
territories (perhaps with minor and mutual border adjustments).
In Iraq, a decade of harsh sanctions under
US pressure has strengthened Saddam Hussein while leading to the
death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis - perhaps more people
"than have been slain by all so-called weapons of mass destruction
throughout history", military analysts John and Karl Mueller wrote
in Foreign Affairs in 1999.
Washington's present justifications to
attack Iraq have far less credibility than when President Bush Sr
was welcoming Saddam as an ally and a trading partner after he had
committed his worst brutalities - as in Halabja, where Iraq
attacked Kurds with poison gas in 1988. At the time, the murderer
Saddam was more dangerous than he is today.
As for a US attack against Iraq, no one,
including Donald Rumsfeld, can realistically guess the possible
costs and consequences. Radical Islamist extremists surely hope
that an attack on Iraq will kill many people and destroy much of
the country, providing recruits for terrorist actions.
They presumably also welcome the "Bush
doctrine" that proclaims the right of attack against potential
threats, which are virtually limitless. The president has
announced: "There's no telling how many wars it will take to secure
freedom in the homeland." That's true.
Threats are everywhere, even at home. The
prescription for endless war poses a far greater danger to
Americans than perceived enemies do, for reasons the terrorist
organisations understand very well.
Twenty years ago, the former head of
Israeli military intelligence, Yehoshaphat Harkabi, also a leading
Arabist, made a point that still holds true. "To offer an
honourable solution to the Palestinians respecting their right to
self-determination: that is the solution of the problem of
terrorism," he said. "When the swamp disappears, there will be no
more mosquitoes."
At the time, Israel enjoyed the virtual
immunity from retaliation within the occupied territories that
lasted until very recently. But Harkabi's warning was apt, and the
lesson applies more generally.
Well before September 11 it was understood
that with modern technology, the rich and powerful will lose their
near monopoly of the means of violence and can expect to suffer
atrocities on home soil.
If we insist on creating more swamps, there
will be more mosquitoes, with awesome capacity for destruction.
If we devote our resources to draining the
swamps, addressing the roots of the "campaigns of hatred", we can
not only reduce the threats we face but also live up to ideals that
we profess and that are not beyond reach if we choose to take them
seriously.
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section
107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information
for research and educational purposes.)
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