"The United States has been torturing Iran, without a stop, since 1953.
Overthrew the parliamentary government, installed the tyrant Shah Reza Pahlavi,
and backed him through horrible torture and everything else. The minute the
Shah was overthrown, the United States moved at once to try and overthrow the
new regime. The United States turned for support to Saddam Hussein and his
attack against Iran, in which hundreds of thousands of people were slaughtered
with chemical weapons and so on. The United States continued to support Saddam"
Chomsky on World Ownership
Michael Shank | January 23, 2008
Editor: John Feffer
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4920
Noam Chomsky is a noted linguist, author, and foreign policy expert. On
January 15, Michael Shank interviewed him on the latest developments in U.S.
policy toward Iraq, Iran, and Pakistan. In the first part of this two-part
interview, Chomsky also discussed how the U.S. governments belief in its
ownership of the world shapes its foreign policy. Michael Shank: Is the
leading Democrats policy vis-à-vis Iraq at all different from the Bush
administrations policy?
Noam Chomsky: Its somewhat different. The situation is very similar to
Vietnam. The opposition to the war today in elite sectors, including every
viable candidate, is pure cynicism, completely unprincipled: If we can get
away with it, its fine. If it costs us too much, its bad. Thats the way the
Vietnam opposition was in the elite sectors.
Take, say, Anthony Lewis, whos about as far to the critical extreme as you
can find in the media. In his final words evaluating the war in The New York
Times in 1975, he said the war began with blundering efforts to do good but
by 1969, namely a year after the American business community had turned against
the war, it was clear that the United States could not impose a solution
except at a price too costly to itself, so therefore it was a disastrous
mistake. Nazi generals could have said the same thing after Stalingrad and
probably did. Thats the extreme position in the left liberal spectrum. Or take
the distinguished historian and Kennedy advisor Arthur Schlesinger. When the
war was going sour under LBJ, he wrote that we all pray that the hawks are
right and that more troops will lead to victory. And he knew what victory
meant. He said were leaving a land of ruin and wreck, but we all pray that
escalation will succeed and if it does we may all be saluting
the wisdom and statesmanship of the American government. But probably the
hawks are wrong, so escalation is a bad idea.
You can translate the rhetoric almost word by word into the elite, including
political elite, opposition to the Iraq war.
Its based on two principles. The first principle is: we totally reject
American ideals. The only people who accept American ideals are Iraqis. The
United States totally rejects them. What American ideals? The principles of the
Nuremburg decision. The Nuremburg tribunal, which is basically American,
expressed high ideals, which we profess. Namely, of all the war crimes,
aggression is the supreme international crime, which encompasses within it all
of the evil that follows. Its obvious that the Iraq invasion is a pure case of
aggression and therefore, according to our ideals, it encompasses all the evil
that follows, like sectarian warfare, al-Qaeda Iraq, Abu Ghraib, and everything
else. The chief U.S. Prosecutor Robert Jackson, addressed the tribunal and
said, we should remember that were handing these Nazi war criminals a
poisoned chalice. If we ever sip from it we must be subject to the same
principles or else the whole thing is a farce. Well, it seems that almost
no one in the American elite accepts that or can even understand it. But
Iraqis accept it.
The latest study of Iraqi opinion, carried out by the American military,
provides an illustration. There is an interesting article about it by Karen
DeYoung in the Washington Post. She said the American military is very excited
and cheered to see the results of this latest study, which showed that Iraqis
have shared beliefs. Theyre coming together. Theyre getting to political
reconciliation. Well, what are the shared beliefs? The shared beliefs are that
the Americans are responsible for all the horrors that took place in Iraq, as
the Nuremberg principles hold, and they should get out. Thats the shared
belief. So yes, they accept American principles. But the American government
rejects them totally as does elite opinion. And the same is true in Europe,
incidentally. Thats point number one.
The second point is that there is a shared assumption here and in the West
that we own the world. Unless you accept that assumption, the entire discussion
that is taking place is unintelligible. For example, you see a headline in the
newspaper, as I saw recently in the Christian Science Monitor, something like
New Study of Foreign Fighters in Iraq. Who are the foreign fighters in Iraq?
Some guy who came in from Saudi Arabia. How about the 160,000 American troops?
Well, theyre not foreign fighters in Iraq because we own the world; therefore
we cant be foreign fighters anywhere. Like, if the United States invades
Canada, we wont be foreign. And if anybody resists it, theyre enemy
combatants, we send them to Guantanamo.
The same goes for the entire discussion about Iranian interference in Iraq.
If youre looking at this from some rational standpoint, you have to collapse
in ridicule. Could there be Allied interference in Vichy France? There cant
be. The country was conquered and its under military occupation. And of course
we understand that. When the Russians complained about American interference in
Afghanistan, wed laugh. But when we talk about Iranian interference in Iraq,
going back to viable political candidates, every single one of them says that
this is outrageous meaning, the Iranians dont understand that we own the
world. So if anybody disrupts any action of ours, no matter what it is, the
supreme international crime or anything else, theyre the criminals. And we
send them to Guantanamo and they dont get rights and so on. And the Supreme
Court argues about it.
In fact, the same is true almost anywhere you look. Since we own the world,
everything we do is necessarily right. It can be too costly and then we dont
like it. Or there could be a couple of bad apples who do the wrong thing like
Abu Ghraib. Going back to the Nuremburg tribunal, they did not try the SS men
who threw people into the extermination chambers. The people who were tried
were the people at the top, like von Ribbentrop, the foreign minister, who was
accused of having supported a preemptive war. The Germans invaded Norway to try
to preempt a British attack against Germany. By our standards they were totally
justified. But Powell is not being tried. He is not going to be sentenced to
hanging.
Shank: And with a Democrat president, will that thinking fundamentally
change?
Chomsky: Itll change. Theres a pretty narrow political spectrum, and in
fact, intellectual and moral spectrum. But its not zero. And the Bush
administration is way out at the extreme. In fact, so far out at the extreme
that theyve come under unprecedented attack from the mainstream.
I quoted Schlesinger on the Vietnam War. To his credit, he is perhaps the one
person in the mainstream who took a principled stand on the Iraq War. When the
bombing started in 2003, Schlesinger did write an op-ed in which he said that
this is a day which will live in infamy, quoting Franklin Delano Roosevelt, as
the United States follows the policies of imperial Japan. Thats principled.
There was no such principled critique when the liberal Democrats were doing
it. But his critique of the invasion of Iraq, from its first days, was unusual.
It is probably unique, so much so that its kind of suppressed. It reflects,
first of all, a change of sentiment in the country, and also the fact that the
Bush administration is so far out that theyre denounced right in the
mainstream.
When the Bush administration came out with its National Security Strategy in
September 2002, which basically was a call for the invasion of Iraq, Foreign
Affairs, which is as respectable as you can get, ran an article just a couple
of weeks later by John Ikenberry, a mainstream historian and analyst, in which
he pretty sharply condemned what he called this new imperial grand strategy. He
said its going to cause a lot of trouble; its going to get us in danger.
Thats quite unusual. But in the case of Bush, theres plenty more like him. So
yes, theyre way out at the extreme. Any candidate now, maybe anyone except
Giuliani, will moderate somewhat the policies.
Shank: With Bushs campaign in the Gulf, rallying Gulf States against Iran,
whats the strategy now? Whats the importance of the timing of his tour?
Chomsky: First of all, remember that in the United States, which is a rich
powerful state which always wins everything, history is an irrelevance.
Historical amnesia is required. But among the victims thats not true. They
remember history, all over the Third World. The history that Iranians remember
is the correct one. The United States has been torturing Iran, without a stop,
since 1953. Overthrew the parliamentary government, installed the tyrant Shah
Reza Pahlavi, and backed him through horrible torture and everything else. The
minute the Shah was overthrown, the United States moved at once to try and
overthrow the new regime. The United States turned for support to Saddam
Hussein and his attack against Iran, in which hundreds of thousands of people
were slaughtered with chemical weapons and so on. The United States continued
to support Saddam.
In 1989, the Iran-Iraq war was all over. George Bush I, supposedly the
moderate, invited Iraqi nuclear engineers to the United States for advanced
training in weapons production. Iranians dont forget that. After what theyve
just been through, they should be able to see the total cynicism of whats
happening. Immediately after the war, which the United States basically won for
Iraq by breaking the embargo, shooting down Iranian commercial airplanes, and
so on, the Iranians were convinced that they couldnt fight the United States.
So they capitulated. Immediately after that the United States imposed harsh
sanctions, which continue, they got worse. Now the United States is threatening
to attack. This is a violation of the UN charter, if anybody cares, which bars
the threat of force. But outlaw states dont care about things like that.
And its a credible threat. Just a couple of weeks ago there was a
confrontation in the Gulf. Here the story is: look how awful the Iranians
are. But suppose Iranian warships were sailing through Massachusetts Bay or
the Gulf of Mexico. Would we think thats fine? But since we own the world of
course its fine when we do it off their shores. And were there for the
benefit of the world, no matter what we do, so its fine. But Iranians arent
going to see it that way. They dont like the threats of destruction. They
dont like the fact that its a very credible threat. Theyre surrounded on all
sides by hostile American forces. Theyve got the American Navy sending combat
units to the Gulf.
Take this recent Annapolis meeting about Israel-Palestine. Why did they pick
Annapolis? Is that the only meeting place in the Washington area? Well,
Iranians presumably notice that Annapolis is the base from which the U.S. Navy
is being sent to threaten Iran. You think they cant see that? American
editorial writers and commentators cant see it, but Im sure Iranians can.
So yes, theyre living under serious constant threat. Its never ended since
1953. And Bush is now desperately trying to organize what Condoleezza Rice
calls the moderate Arab states, namely the most extreme, fundamentalist
tyrannies in the world, like Saudi Arabia. So the moderate Arab states,
theyre trying hard to organize them to join the United States in confronting
Iran. Well, theyre not going along. They dont tell Bush and Rice go home.
Theyre polite and so on but theyre not going along. Theyre continuing to
enter into limited but real relations with Iran. They dont want a conflict
with them.
Shank: Did the National Intelligence Estimate offer a reprieve, any window at
all?
Chomsky: I think so. I think it pulled the rug out from under people like
Cheney and Bush who probably wanted to have a war to end up their glorious
regime. But its going to be pretty hard to do it now. Although Olmert just
announced again yesterday that Israel is leaving open the option of attacking
Iran, if Israel decides that it is a threat. Israel, which is a U.S. client
state, is granted a right similar to that of the United States. The United
States owns the world and can do anything, and its client states can be
regional hegemons. Israel wants to make sure that it dominates the region and
therefore can carry out whatever policies it wants to in the occupied
territories, invading Lebanon or whatever it happens to be. The one threat that
they cannot overcome on their own is Iran.
Israel and Iran had pretty good relations right through the 1980s. They were
clandestine relations but not bad. And now they recognize that Iran is the one
barrier to their complete domination of the region. So therefore they want the
United States, the big boy, to step in and take care of it and if the United
States wont, they claim theyll do it. I dont think they would unless the
United States authorized it. Its much too dangerous. They would do it only if
theyre pretty sure they can bring the United States in.
Shank: The presidential candidates in the Democratic Party are trying to
one-up each other on who can be more militaristic vis-à-vis Pakistan, who would
bomb first if there was actionable intelligence. Whats Washingtons role in
helping Pakistan now? Should it have a role and if it does what should it look
like?
Chomsky: Again, theres a little bit of history that matters to people
outside centers of power. First of all, the United States supported Pakistani
military governments ever since Pakistan was created. The worst period was the
1980s, when the Reagan administration strongly supported the Zia ul Haq regime,
which was a brutal harsh tyranny and also a deeply Islamic tyranny. So thats
when the madrassas were established, Islamic fundamentalism was introduced,
they no longer studied science in schools and things like that, and also when
they were developing nuclear weapons.
The Reagan administration pretended that it didnt know about the nuclear
weapons development so that it could get congressional authorization every year
for more funding to the ISI, the intelligence agencies, the fundamentalist
tyranny and so on. It ended up holding a tiger by the tail. It commonly
happens. The Reagan administration also helped create what turned into al-Qaeda
in Afghanistan at the same time. Its all interrelated. And they left
Afghanistan in the hands of brutal, vicious, fundamentalist gangsters, like
their favorite Gulbuddin Hekmatyar who got his kicks out of throwing acid in
the face of women in Kabul who werent dressed properly. Thats who Reagan was
supporting.
The United States also tolerated the Khan proliferation system. In fact the
United States is still tolerating it. Khan is under whats called house arrest,
meaning just about anything he likes. And it continues with the support of the
Musharraf dictatorship. Now the United States is kind of stuck. The population
strongly opposes the dictatorship. The United States tried to bring in some
kind of compromise with Bhutto, whom they thought would be a pliable candidate.
But she was assassinated under what remain unclear circumstances. The ISI, the
intelligence agencies who are extremely powerful in Pakistan, have withdrawn
support for the extremist militants in the tribal areas and now theyre
beginning to fight back. In fact it was just reported that one of their leaders
has said that theyre going to continue to resist the Pakistani Army as theyve
been doing.
People who know the Middle East like Robert Fisk have been saying for years
that Pakistan is the most dangerous country in the world, for all kinds of
reasons. For one, its falling apart. There are rebellions in the Baluchi
areas. The tribal areas are now out of control of the ISI. There is a Sindhi
opposition movement. It could very well be a resistance movement especially
after Bhuttos assassination, since she was Sindhi. There are strong
anti-Punjabi feelings developing, against the Army, the elite and so on.
So the country is barely being held together. Its got nuclear weapons. Its
very anti-American. Take a look at popular opinion; its very strongly
anti-American, because they remember the history. We may forget it. We tell
ourselves how nice and wonderful we are, but other people, especially the
people who are at the wrong end of the club, they see the world as it is. So
its very anti-American. If the United States wants to do something there it
has to get a surrogate to come in and do it. Even the dictator that the United
States supports, Musharraf, and the army are strongly against any direct U.S.
involvement in the tribal areas, which the United States is now talking about.
Who knows what that could lead to, some other war against a country with
nuclear weapons?
The Bush administration is really playing with fire. I dont think it has a
lot of options at this point. If I were asked to recommend a policy I wouldnt
know what to say. Except to try to withdraw support from the dictatorship and
allow the popular forces to do something. The United States, for example, gave
no support to the lawyers and their opposition. It could have. The United
States is not all powerful, but it could have done something. But when Obama
says, Okay well bomb them, thats not very helpful.
Michael Shank is a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus (www.fpif.org) and
an analyst with George Mason Universitys Institute for Conflict Analysis and
Resolution.
For More Information The second part of this interview, Chomsky on the Rise
of the South, was published on January 30, 2008.
With Regards
Abi
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