SchNEWS Interview
Mark Thomas: If we can start with US foreign policy in
relation to Iraq and the War on Terror, what do you think is going
on at the moment?
Noam Chomsky: First of all I think we ought to be very
cautious about using the phrase 'War on Terror'. There can't be a
War on Terror. It's a logical impossibility. The US is one of the
leading terrorist states in the world. The guys who are in charge
right now were all condemned for terrorism by the World Court. They
would have been condemned by the U.N. Security Council except they
vetoed the resolution, with Britain abstaining of course. These guys
can't be conducting a war on terror. It's just out of the question.
They declared a war on terror 20 years ago and we know what they
did. They destroyed Central America. They killed a million and a
half people in southern Africa. We can go on through the list. So
there's no 'War on Terror'.
There was a terrorist act, September 11th, very unusual, a real
historic event, the first time in history that the west received the
kind of attack that it carries out routinely in the rest of the
world. September 11th did change policy undoubtedly, not just for
the US, but across the board. Every government in the world saw it
as an opportunity to intensify their own repression and atrocities,
from Russia and Chechnya, to the West imposing more discipline on
their populations.
This had big effects - for example take Iraq. Prior to September
11th, there was a longstanding concern of the US toward Iraq - that
is it has the second largest oil reserves in the world. So one way
or another the US was going to do something to get it, that's clear.
September 11th gave the pretext. There's a change in the rhetoric
concerning Iraq after September 11th - 'We now have an excuse to go
ahead with what we're planning.'
It kinda stayed like that up to September of this year when Iraq
suddenly shifted... to 'An imminent threat to our existence.'
Condoleeza Rice [US National Security Advisor] came out with her
warning that the next evidence of a nuclear weapon would be a
mushroom cloud over New York. There was a big media campaign with
political figures - we needed to destroy Saddam this winter or we'd
all be dead. You've got to kind of admire the intellectual classes
not to notice that the only people in the world who are afraid of
Saddam Hussien are Americans. Everybody hates him and Iraqis are
undoubtedly afraid of him, but outside of Iraq and the United
States, no one's afraid of him. Not Kuwait, not Iran, not Israel,
not Europe. They hate him, but they're not afraid of him.
In the United States people are very much afraid, there's no
question about it. The support you see in US polls for the war is
very thin, but it's based on fear. It's an old story in the United
States. When my kids were in elementary school 40 years ago they
were taught to hide under desks in case of an atom bomb attack. I'm
not kidding. The country is always in fear of everything. Crime for
example: Crime in the United States is roughly comparable with other
industrial societies, towards the high end of the spectrum. On the
other hand, fear of crime is way beyond other industrial
societies...
It's very consciously engendered. These guys now in office,
remember they're almost entirely from the 1980s. They've been
through it already and they know exactly how to play the game. Right
through the 1980s they periodically had campaigns to terrify the
population.
