Noam Chomsky - On US Strategy - Audio only

I'd like to start with an event of considerable significant that the place last fall last September this was the announcement of the national security strategy of the United States what's been called the Imperial grand strategy which was the framework for the invasion of Iraq and undoubtedly many things to follow and it was has been high on the global agenda ever since the announcement the strategy report declared quite explicitly declared the intention of the most powerful state and history to maintain its dominance over the world through the use of military force it's the one dimension in which it ranks supreme competitors and other dimensions the official formulation is that our forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military buildup in hopes of surpassing or equaling the power of the United States that caused a lot of shudders around the world including the US foreign policy a lead the next issue the very next issue of the main establishment journal foreign affairs journal of the Council on Foreign Relations had an article by a well-known international relations specialist John I can vary discussing the grand strategy in these words he said the grand strategy begins with a fundamental commitment to maintaining a unipolar world in which the United States has no peer competitor a condition that is to be permanent so that no state or coalition could ever challenge United States as global leader protector and enforcer the strategy renders international norms of self-defense enshrined and article 51 of the UN Charter almost meaningless in general it dismisses international law and institutions as being of little value in fact if you read the security strategy you'll find that they're scarcely even mentioned the going on with eikenberry the new imperial grand strategy presents the United States as a revisionist state seeking to parlay it's momentary advantages into a world order in which it runs the show it will prompt others to find ways to work around undermine contain and retaliate against us power the strategy may appear to be successful in the short term given overwhelming US military force but he goes on it threatens to leave the world more dangerous undivided and the United States less secure a view that's exactly widely shared within the conservative foreign policy a lead the rhetorical rattle radicalism of the Imperial grand strategy is highlighted by contrasting it with the conceptions of world order that are that happened to be reiterated at about the same time by the president of the International Court of Justice the World Court this is the very conservative US judge judge fabled who's been a lone defender of the United States at the court for many years presenting the he was presenting the ICJ report annual report to the General Assembly of the United Nations and he said as the court enters the first century of the third millennium it stands for international law not international lawlessness for the peaceful settlement of international disputes in conformity with international law not the will of the more powerful party for international organization not for international Anarchy or for a state sovereignty which purports to be above the law it stands for human rights rights that can be effectively realized only within functioning systems of law local national and international you couldn't construct a more sharper antithesis than this conception from a conservative US Justice heading the International Court of Justice and the Imperial grand strategy that was announced shortly afterwards the Imperial grand strategy is often described in the press and elsewhere as authorizing preemptive war that's a mistake an important one preemptive war has a meaning within the framework of international law a preemptive war mayor on the border of being permissible under the existing framework of international law so a preemptive war for example would be say planes were flying from across the Atlantic with the clear intention of bombing the United States and the US Air Force was sent to shoot them down before they spawn and may need to attack the bases from which they came that would be the gray area thats called preemptive war might fall under Article 51 which grants the right of self-defense against an armed attack that's pre-emptive war but that has actually nothing to do with what was proposed on last September that was it's more more accurately called preventive war meaning you attack someone who you believe may pose a challenge to you in the future actually even the term preventive war is a little misleading because there doesn't have to be anything prevented so for example the invasion of Iraq and prevent anything it was done for other reasons wanted to attack Iraq preventive war just means war and it's an extended already in its first first instance of the doctrine to include attacking anybody you feel like actually that's been made pretty explicit after the failure to discover the weapons of mass destruction that were the pretext and I mean pretext because I don't think anybody really expected to find them that were the pretext for the war after that's failed and sort of disappeared from the news a high US official of the Bush administration explained that the doctrine of preventive war goes beyond what had been announced the original announcement was that we're going to prove development of weapons of mass destruction by potential enemy and since there weren't any the doctrine has to be expanded and now we the new doctrine the new expanded version says that we can carry out a preventive war against anyone who has the ability and intention of developing weapons of mass destruction well ability everyone has I'm in Arlington High School has the ability to develop weapons of mass destruction and I suspect if you somebody related to and detailed inspection of the kind of doing in Iraq and the under them in the backyard they'd probably find something left over from the chemistry or biology lab they could indicate that they had the ability to develop weapons of mass destruction as far as intention is concerned that's completely in the eye of the beholder so the doctrine that says we can strike anybody with the ability and intention to develop weapons of mass destruction that means very simply we can attack anybody we like on our own authority and since international laws and institutions are gone they're simply hot air as a beating local professor of international law really recently put it in foreign affairs that means we just do like we rule the world by force and the weekend saying about well that's that was last attempted the one of the events that took place last ember there were two others also important the less broad and scale one event that took place last September simultaneously with the announcement of the Imperial strategy was the beginning of the drumbeat of propaganda about the danger to our existence posed by Iraq up until then it was us for a nasty place but starting last September's eminent threat to the survival of the United States began with Condoleezza Rice on low vision warning that the next thing we find out about Iraq would be a mushroom cloud presumably in New York nobody else seemed to expect anything and shortly after the Congress was frightened into or railroaded into passing a resolution authorizing the use of force because of the grave threat to the national security of the United States hosed by the government of Iraq and then came a massive onslaught of government media propaganda does not with the presenting the message that Iraq was a imminent threat to us security and insinuating that Iraq was responsible for 911 was tied up with al-qaeda and other international terrorists was planning more and that had its effects it's is this a very frightened country and it's unfortunately not easy to frighten people by the end of September and for the subsequent months majority the population came to believe this so around sixty percent of the population varying month to month it did it believe that Iraq was an imminent threat to the security of the United States the United States is alone in the world in that respect with the neighboring countries for example despised Saddam Hussein but then in fira in fact they'd been trying to reintegrate direct back into the region for some years of her strong us objections that includes Kuwait and Iran both of which were invaded and attacked by you Saddam Hussein so they have little love for him but they knew he wasn't dangerous and they know perfectly well exactly what US planners knew and I presumed the editorial offices note that Iraq was the weakest country in the region it had been smashed by the 1991 war had a decade of sanctions which devastated the civilian society with horrifying effects that had been effectively disarmed by the UN inspections and in fact its military expenditures were about a third those of Quade which has ten percent of its population and far below the major powers in the region said nobody guarded as a threat except in the United States we're about sixty percent of the population regarded it as an imminent threat to us there's nothing new about that the congressional resolution if you read the wording of it is very similar to a declaration of a national emergency by ronald reagan in nineteen eighty five when he declared a national emergency in the united states because of the threat to the security of the United States opposed by the government of Nicaragua which cousin you're old enough to remember it was a Nicaraguan sir only two days marching time from Arlington Texas waiting there copies of mine come as Secretary of State Schultz put it and we're just about on the verge of destruction well you know that worked too and it's only one of many and bear in mind that the people in office now are the same people who were doing it then this administration is pretty much recycled from the more reactionary elements of the reagan-bush one administration so it comes as second nature the on the it also over the following months a substantial part of the population ultimately about half they came to believe the complete fabrication that unknown to be fabrication that Iraq was involved in 911 and that it had relations with al-qaeda there's no intelligence agency in the world who believes that or a strategic analyst nevertheless it was instituted sufficiently by effective propaganda that when Bush gave his victory speech on the Abraham Lincoln he was able to declare the victory of war a victory in the war against terror because of the connections of direct to al-qaeda which were fabricated by his public relations specialist as he probably knew certainly the press the reporter didn't know well that had a fact if you look closely the there was a close correlation between support for the war and belief that Iraq is a threat to our security was carried out 911 and planning to do it again and that's not really surprising if you believe those things there's good reason to go to work for a preventive war and the so the propaganda was indeed spectacularly successful unique in the United States if you take away the factor of panic in the United States induced by spectacular propaganda opposition to the war here was approximately like everywhere namely he'll overwhelming but this is here that's what were worried about that was the second major event that took place in September the third major event connected with it was the onset of the congressional midterm election also in September and that is connected the it was understood in fact karl rove the ministration campaign madison manager had already informed public and activists over the summer that if that they'd better go into the election on a national security issue if they went into the election with people worrying about pensions and the medical aid and Enron and the rest of the familiar litany then the administration would get smashed but if they get shifted to national security issues at a chance people will especially a frightened population does tend to huddle under the umbrella of power and it barely worked they sort of sneak through the election by a couple of tens of thousands of votes and if you look at the exit polls people maintain their preferences for the parties but they shifted their priorities so guess if you cared about medical care your pension and so on they would be opposed to the administration but if concerned about security overwhelmed it fairly so they managed to sneak by and get another two years of power and Karl Rove has already announced that that's what they're going to have to do for the year for the presidential election in fact the wall street journal one of the more honest journals report went during this Abraham Lincoln extravaganza two weeks ago the staged event pointed out that that's the opening that's the opening of the presidential campaign the presidential campaign is going to have to be conducted with the image created the image right out of central casting of the war president who saved us from destruction by Iraq and this by then you're going to be saving us from destruction from some new dragon it will be slain the Republican campaign was delayed so it opens in mid-september in new york September 12 you can write the speeches right now okay but that's the way it's going to have to be done and they understand it perfectly will they are carrying out a major assault against the general population they know it people know it you gotta divert attention away from it and there are a lot of ways to do it the only way that England's ever figured out is fear for the people in Washington now it is second nature that's the way they they're following a script which is very close to the first their first ten year in power 1981 1992 just take a look at that period and you see the script laid out very clearly through that jury to they instituted domestic policies which were quite harmful to the population wages stagnated or declined working hours went to the highest in the industrial world poverty rates for the highest in the industrial world the there was a major attack on labor rights and so on and that was extremely unpopular fact Reagan ended up in 1992 as after the Bush administration was over as the most unpopular living ex-president in the United States with the exception of Nixon Nixon slightly the amount and that was true right through the ages so when Reagan won what's called a landslide victory in 1984 I mean he got about thirty percent of the electorate by a considerable majority people who voted opposed his legislative program they voted for other reasons among them fear there was a constant that was constant pushing the panic button right through the 1980s started right away with Libyan hit men wandering the streets of Washington and 1981 going to assassinate our cowboy leader who was hiding in the White House tanks managed to save that before the where that was as if it just managed to barely get out of that one and the were building a air base in Grenada which they were going to use the bomb the United States well you know US air force could help us elite by but we managed barely in time to save ourselves from that one and we were standing tall as the cowboy leader told us six thousand US Special Forces succeeded in overcoming the resistance of about a couple of dozen armed and Cuban paramilitary workers and they got eight thousand medals of Honor for it but we were safe after that came Qaddafi was at it again there was an attack on the administration from the right wing especially on George Shultz Secretary of State he was militant enough and fortunately even they discovered a Libyan invasion of the Sudan across six hundred miles of desert again with the US and Egyptian Air Force was unable to do anything about it the plot was so well hidden that neither Egyptian or Sudanese intelligence knew about it and in a few American reporters very few who went to investigate of course found that it was a total fraud but it was it was enough for Schultz to get up on television and strike heroic poses tell us how Qadhafi's back in his box because of error powerful cowboy and so on then came the Nicaraguan today's marching time from Texas and then I went on and on one thing after another a lot of it was domestic those of you here well remember I'm sure how George Bush the first managed to win the election his presidential election namely by playing a very vulgar race card Willy Burton card so it was race crime drugs Nicaraguans Libyans one thing after another and the population was kept enough in a panic so that they could stay in office and push through their reactionary agenda now they want to do it much more extensively maybe read the Treasury Department than the Department of the budget of the Bush administration economists have just released a study showing anticipated 44 trillion dollar deficit in the next couple of years which will be a fiscal train wreck the economists are commenting on it it was kept out of them it was supposed to go into the budget mr. februari but they kept it out because they didn't want people to know about it when they're trying to push through another tax cut for the rich and almost everyone recognizes is on purpose they want the fiscal training they have a fiscal train wreck you have to have what's called fiscal responsibility meaning cut back extending not cut back spending that goes into the pockets of rich people so they'll be plenty of that but cut back on social spending eliminate Medicare Medicaid Social Security funding for the states so that they'll have huge deficits eliminate public schools and so on and just roll back any of the progressive legislation of the past century it's a pretty awesome program and it's gotta be conscious in this a way that be doing this without understanding it and how are you going to get people to accept it well exactly the way that karl rove described frightened terrified that's what happened last September and that's what's going to happen for the next collection that to understand and it's hard to visit so that's those are the three events national security strategy the propaganda about the Iraqi threat and the election which happen to be a midterm 1 but the same things gonna happen next time just as it happened right through the 80s I mean we have to really be blind to see that the script is being replayed in a much more extreme form well the national security strategy is a doctrine and if you announce the doctrine and you want people to take it seriously and make sure that they know you mean you have to implement it so you have to have a what's called a test case with the New York Times call the Petry dish to make people understand you really mean this well the test case for the doctrine has to meet several conditions first of all it has to be defenseless I mean nobody there you know brain functioning would attack anybody who can shoot back so you have to pick a defenseless country and it has to be one that's important enough to conquer so there's no use picking some country in central Africa that what he wants thirdly you have to be able to present the target as an awesome power either about commit genocide or about the Destroyers okay Iraq qualified on all three counts it's completely defenseless and they knew it it's a very important it's right in the heart of the major oil-producing regions of the world itself has the second largest reserves in the world and controlling those resources has been a centerpiece of US policy since the 1940s Britain before it and it's not hard to portray it as an ultimate evil all you have to do is pick up the rhetoric you hear from Tony Blair and colin powell and george bush which you've heard a thousand times about how this man is so evil that he even committed the ultimate crime he uses poison gas against his own people obviously can't be allowed to survive on always missing from the impassioned orations is that he did it with our help because we didn't because you in fact help the people now in Washington because they didn't care so they therefore over Road congressional attempts to condemn the atrocities went on supporting their friends and I'm saying providing them with badly needed aid agricultural means for developing weapons of mass destruction had nothing to do with the war with ran and on without a change after the war with Iran was over fact he went on up to the day of the invasion of quake when he committed a real crime disobedience you don't do that but he wanting Cassar on people that's fine the same surname would there were parliamentary objections but if you look at them you find some names missing like all of New Labour a Tony Blair Jack Straw Geoff hoon all missing Thank here but now you can bring it up to prove how evilly is actually we've just seen an interesting illustration of that in the last couple of weeks I'm sure you saw they're digging up his horrendous mass graves throughout much of the Iraq where you there are thousands of people buried from the Saddam Hussein's a murderous repression of the interactions of April 1991 and that's portrayed with proper horror and again with the usual or mission Saddam Hussein was authorized to do that by George Bush number one Colin Powell and the other thick Cheney and the others who are now in charge because who had complete command of the air and could have easily stopped in one minute but they authorized Saddam Hussein to use advanced weapons and military helicopters and others to crush the rebellion and what's more if you look back you'll even find the explanations so Thomas Friedman was in the chief diplomatic correspondent of the New York Times voice for the State Department essentially in the New York Times explain that makes us unhappy but we have to do it he said the best of all worlds would be an iron-fisted Iraqi military junta ruling Iraq the same way Saddam Hussein ended but without his name because he's an embarrassment and since we can't find the replacement this is the second best what cannot be allowed is for Iraq to be run by its own people that would be unacceptable and if there was rebellion that's what would happen but I can't be tolerated in fact the one consistent strain US policy over the years has been that the things vastly but the consistent part is they're not going to run it either will run in person some basil will run it well known as a secret you know it right in New York Times or anywhere else in 1991 but it's somehow miraculously missing in any event Iraq met all three conditions given for a period some subservience and subordination on the part of the educated classes which is not hard to get its defenseless it's it's extremely important and it can be portrayed as the ultimate evil and he was and certainly no one who supported so them Hussein and those actions should have impunity which happens to include everyone in the White House right now but that part isn't mentioned well the the the point of carrying out such an action is to establish fertile to gain control of Iraq which is important in itself but also to establish with what's called a norm in national law you have a doctrine you apply that establishes a new norm of course norms aren't established when we countries carry out actions only when those powerful states carry out actions so for example it takes a humanitarian intervention the supposed to have been a new norm of energy monetary and intervention established in the 1990s it could debate the cases but that's the standard version why and some questions arise why was the alleged new norm of international intervention humanitarian intervention established in the 1990s I mean why not for example in the nineteen seventy in the 1970s there did take place to military actions which since the Second World War are by far the most significant in ending really terrible atrocities the first was the Indian invasion of of what's now Bangladesh in 1971 which put into an end horrendous atrocities millions of people the second was the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in 1979 which put it into paul potts atrocities drove khmer rouge out of the country just at the time when the atrocities were peeking there's nothing in the 1990s it comes even close to this we could argue about whether those two actions qualify as humanitarian intervention but there is not the slightest out that they put to an end major atrocities vastly beyond anything that happened in the 90s so why isn't that the decade if humanitarian intervention well because countries like India and Vietnam can't establish norms they don't rule the world so therefore that's not a norm if the u.s. does something no matter how shaky the argument that establishes a norm furthermore the United States was strongly opposed to both of those interventions the Indian invasion was the u.s. threat actually threatened war the primary reason was that India was spoiling some photo ops for Henry Kissinger who was planning a secret trip to China through Pakistan and this kind of you know spoiled the opportunities oh he was furious in the u.s. sent nuclear-armed aircraft carrier into the Bay of Bengal and threatened sanctions and so on in the case of Vietnam was even worse Vietnam was bitterly announced for having gone for getting rid of hot the u.s. imposed very harsh sanctions on them it supported a Chinese invasion to punish them for this crime and the u.s. turned immediately to supporting Pol Pot directly both militarily and diplomatically so obviously that couldn't have established a new norm but when the powerful states do it it can be a new norm and now we read eloquent descriptions of the international law literature about how the new norm of preventive war has been established by the US invasion of Iraq and now that there's a norm now you can go on the next step and we come in fact expect more of the same well let's take a look at that doctrine that was announced last september's one important question to ask is how new it is and it is in some ways new a good reason why the world was startled and upset by it but it's not quite as new as is often believed there are presidents when Colin Powell says it's not that president he's quite accurate so let's have a look at a couple of those one important precedent at the opposite end of the political spectrum was in was just 40 years earlier in 1963 when Dean Acheson respected elder statesmen senior adviser to the Kennedy administration gave a lecture to the American Society of international law and which he explained to them that if he said that no legal issue arises if the u.s. responds to a challenge to its power position and prestige okay so if anyone poses a challenge to the power position and prestige of the United States and the United States responds by violence or any other way it's not a legal issue notice that his wording goes well beyond the national security strategy they at least talk about a threat you don't talk about a threat just to challenge the position power and prestige atchison said remarks were particularly significant because of the timing this was immediately after the cuban missile crisis that simmered down it was already known then that the missile crisis came very close to leading to a nuclear war how close we've just learned last October it's pretty shocking but it was pretty well understood already the Cuban Missile Crisis was the result of an international terrorist campaign carried out by the Kennedy administration against Cuba which was building up until October and during the crisis the the actions the terrorist actions continued they were briefly called often than they were picked up again right after the crisis was over was a major factor in the lunatic reaction of putting nuclear-tipped missiles there this was a international terrorist campaign aimed at regime change pretty familiar words these days right after that as the international terrorist campaign and illegal economic warfare were picking up atchison explained to the legal profession that there's no legal issue when the United States carried out these actions why incidentally was it carrying out these actions actually we are lucky to live in a very free society and we have access to government planning documents beyond any other country in the world as far as I know and we know exactly why they were doing because a ton of documentation has come out secret documentation the problem was what US planners Kennedy Johnson planners called Cuba's successful defiance of the United States they were defying a policy that goes back a hundred and fifty years nothing about the Russians the policy of 150 years was this region it has to be subordinated to us power and they were challenging that and that was successful to finance that's unacceptable further onyx even more unacceptable was the fact that there was a threat in quoting Arthur Schlesinger an internal document there was a threat of the spread of the castro idea of taking matters into your own hands which might appeal to other people in the region who were suffering from similar circumstances and that's got to be cut off right away so therefore the terrorism and the economic warfare were legitimate and if they came close to a terminal nuclear war that's the way the cookie crumbles we're then going to go on and in fact do well those are the circumstances of atchison statement that's at the left-liberal end of the spectrum discover the other end of the spectrum the right-wing the current incumbent in 1985 the Nicaragua which was being subjected to an international terrorist campaign carried out by the current incumbents in Washington brought a case to the World Court in which they asked court to order the United States to terminate the terrorism and pay reparations the United States refused to accept world court jurisdiction and that if we threw its earlier the grant of jurisdiction I was explained by Judge Abram so fair who was legal adviser of the State Department he explained it publicly he's that in the early days of the United Nations we could count on other countries to go along with what we said just true given the conditions of power they had to he said but by now many other countries in the world just don't agree with us and therefore we will have to reserve to ourselves the right to determine what falls within the domestic jurisdiction of the United States in this case terrorist war against Nicaragua well that's the other end of the spectrum another clear precedent for the national security strategy however these and their many other cases but these two examples are different from what happened in September in two crucial respects etchison and so fair were describing policy and in fact they were describing it accurately that's the way it works but they weren't proclaiming an official policy that's quite a difference furthermore atchison and so fair we're talking within the family and so I doubt if many people know about this you know about it if you're inside a narrow circle of people who pay attention to such things but the population is not allowed to know that these are the guidelines of policy we're supposed to believe all sorts of things about you know benevolence and wilsonian this and that and so on and so forth Tony inside and closed circles that you're supposed to know about this on the other hand the national security strategy of by September was announced loud and clear they want everybody to know about it they want everybody to know that we are a revisionist state which uses force to achieve its end and we'll do it without limits that was announced as clearly as possible the rack were made it clear if anybody didn't believe the words and that is a significant a very significant difference there are other precursors and they're worth looking at two so take just to understand ourselves which is presumably a good thing to do the National Security Council which is the top planning body was established after the Second World War 1947 its first memorandum NSE number one called for military support for underground operations in Italy along with national mobilization in the United States quoting it now in the event the Communists obtain domination of the Italian government by legal means okay mother's there was election coming up and it looked as if it wind resistance at anti-fascist resistance at my name prestige and Italy have strong labor movement but if they won the election by legal means the United States would declare a national mobilization and support paramilitary and other activities inside Italy overthrow the government okay that's pretty strong statement fortunately they were able to win the election by withholding food and reinstating the fascist police and the diverting Marshall Plan they'd only to the right people and so on so they didn't win the election by legal means but if they had that would happen what's we can go back even earlier so right for the United States got into the Second World War before Pearl Harbor there were high level meetings going on of the State Department of the Council on Foreign Relations planning for the post-war world and they knew this big event the Second World War they didn't know if the US would be involved but plainly it was going to have effect and they naturally carried out careful planning and that plans are worth reading they can have been public for 60 years but they're never read the and they're extremely important not because only because they were high level planning because but because those are the plans that were pretty much implemented after the war the this is the war peace studies group of the State Department of the Council on Foreign Relations and before the u.s. got into the war in 1940-41 they held that the in the postwar world the United States must hold unquestioned power and it must act to limit to ensure limitation of any exercise of sovereignty by states that interfere with us global designs and they recognized further that the foremost requirement to secure these ends is the rapid fulfillment of a program of complete rearmament which is a central component of an integrated policy to achieve military and economic supremacy for the United States and to a bar any exercise of sovereignty that might threaten it well you'll notice that that's the national security strategy Jane but again with the same two reservations it was plans but it wasn't an open announcement of an official policy plans were indeed implemented and it's in sight it's for the family not for the general public to know about even though who was public well at that time these ambitions were limited to what they called the non-german world it was assumed at that time that Germany would end up holding some part of the world and the non-german world would be organized as what they called a grand area which would include the Western Hemisphere the former British Empire and the Far East after Russia beat back the Nazi armies of Stalingrad it was clear that Germany was coming defeated and the plans were extended to cover as much of Eurasia as possible well that's earlier presidents differing and the important respect that i mentioned track of time well let me just make a couple of comments about the implications of all of this so it takes there are some problems implementing the grand design three major problems one in the oil-producing regions one in Europe and one in Asia they're all kind of the same problem but different show up in different ways so in the Middle East the primary concern of the United States has been and for obvious reasons a control of the world's major energy resources and there's disruptive factor there namely the israel-palestine conflict so one problem is to somehow dampen down that but that problem and gain regained supportively oppressive and tutorial Arab states which is kind of shaky because of this well there's and this is understood so for example michael ignatieff at harvard who's when supporters of the iraq war had a long article in the new york times magazine early January sporting the war in which he pointed out accurately that the chief danger in the Iraq gamble is to enforce a piece of Palestinians and Israel otherwise the region will remain in constant ferment it may blow up and the US will lose its control of the world's major energy energy supplies well how do you deal with that front pages tell you that there's something called a roadmap which is a map towards the president's vision of a Palestinian state I'm sure you've noticed that there's a journalistic convention that when you mentioned George Bush you have to mention in the same paragraph his vision or his dream or something like that and there's usually a picture accompanying of George Bush staring off into the distance that is vision with its eyes narrow and so on one interesting thing about these visions and dreams is that although we're supposed to worship them no one has a clue what they are you know nothing has ever said about what the vision is and that's important the public relations people understand that so if you want to find out something about the vision you're gonna have to look at the event you know the events of history documentary record all forbidden territory you're not allowed to go into but that's the only way to find out what the vision is well the fact is that the vision of the Palestinian state is not George Bush's that was a international consensus back in the mid 70s there was a very broad international consensus for to state settlement on the international borders on without going into the details it's been blocked unilaterally mid-seventies until this minute by the United States it simply wouldn't allow vetoed Security Council resolutions voted alone with Israel of the General Assembly and in every possible way has blocked that vision and nothing has changed in every state the same was true right through the Camp David 2000 negotiations you had about the magnanimous and generous offers that Clinton and Barack were making and how the terrible Palestinians turned and down but if you look carefully yoga there's an easy way to test that very easy way to evaluate how generous and magnanimous the offers were that's to look at a map but can't do that because the media and commentary journalists were very careful not to publish a madman so if you search you won't find a map unless you go about the disin publications or scholarly sources or the Israeli press for example with it published the maps and this is very good reason why the maps weren't published in the United States as soon as you looked at the maps you found that Clinton Barack proposal sort of made South Africa four years ago looked pretty good when they were establishing the advanta stint the Clinton Barack proposals broke the West Bank in 24 almost separated canton's full points of connection between them one of the northland in the central central region one in the south three of them separated from a little area of east jerusalem which is the center of os nain commercial and cultural life but is disconnected and then of course all disconnected from Gaza so kind of a band whose net proposal meanwhile Clinton and Barack were busily using your dollars paid for by US dollars of course to build substantial settlement programs infrastructure and so to establish the facts of the Bantams banta stand proposal which was to be implemented at Camp David well what's happened since let's play in Bush bush for our actions that you can look at not just visions so a good place to look as the United Nations which has meetings of the General Assembly of RIA every winter Bush's first intervention at the United Nations was to veto a Security Council resolution calling for the dispatcher of international monitors to reduce the level of violence and territories that is the way to do it but they don't want to do that they want to allow the violence to continue because they know perfectly well it's overwhelmingly a u.s. effect Israeli violence and they want that to continue even if it does lead to violence against Israelis so monitors were blocked at the same time the missus december 2001 switzerland which is the repository of the geneva conventions and responsible for them switzerland called another meeting they do it regularly of the High Contracting Parties that's almost every country in the world to Geneva to deal once again with the applicability of the Geneva Conventions to the occupied territories well in the past the United States supported that so for years the United States voted with the majority in fact it Security Council everybody on the applicability of the Geneva Conventions to the occupied territories under Clinton the United States moved to AB stanchion vote against or for so they can continues to be reformed Bush switched policy gun essentially under minded he boycotted the meetings in Geneva and therefore when the u.s. boycott something or vetoes it it's a double veto for one thing that's blocked and for another thing it doesn't get reported and it doesn't enter history so this wasn't reported and entered history and that's quite important because the Geneva meeting reaffirmed this is the whole European Union even England everybody else reaffirmed that just about everything that the United States and Israel are doing in the occupied territories is a breach of the Geneva Conventions and many of them are grave breaches that means serious war crimes under US law the geneva conventions are not a joke they were instituted in after the Second World War to formally criminalize the crimes of the Nazis the relevant on the fourth convention crimes of the Nazis occupied territories so the US doesn't want publicly to say they don't apply but what it's doing a silencing them and Bush took at a stage forward by undermining the meeting well that's december 2001 december 2002 he went beyond there's an annual resolution at the General Assembly which reaffirms a Security Council Lucien of 1968 passed unanimously United States as well ordering Israel to terminate and withdraw from its actions in occupied East Jerusalem okay it's meaningless because the United States never enforces it but at least it's been voted year after year this year for the first time wish administration shifted position on that and voted against that resolution well if that's men seriously that ends any possibility of a political settlement it means it's authorizing Israel's occupation of east jerusalem jerusalem and jerusalem by now is a huge area cutting out of being piece of the West Bank it's nothing like Jerusalem used to be so that virtually cuts the West Bank in two if the u.s. mented and this every reason to think that they do bushes next statement about Middle East was in February of this year it was called you know highly touted in the press is his most significant comment on the Middle East repeated right away by Powell most of it was just usual boilerplate would be nice to have peace and so on and so forth but there was one significant statement in it namely he said that us-backed Israeli settlements could continue without limit until progress is made in the peace process and he'll decide when progress is being made that's again a significant shift in policy up until now everything's been gestures to say that the settlements are illegal or maybe unhelpful or something but this was a straight authorization of them if you look at the road map we'll go through the details but it essentially repeats that says nothing of it borders says nothing in fact it says something vague about terminating NAT what's called natural growth in the settlements but the aerial shall run the official man of peace is called by but immediately told the Israeli Knesset that don't worry about it you can build their for your children and your grandchildren so my soulful relation with President Bush guarantees that and that's correct so what's happening is just a continuation and extension of the policies of undermining any hope for a peaceful political settlement there that's if you look at the facts of course if you keep the division well then you can believe it's about one final comment it was going to late but this is a really important topics that should be mentioned another comment has to do with Europe and Asia especially Northeast Asia there's an there's a long-standing problem in post-war international affairs and that is whether Europe will be subordinated to the United States who will pursue its own path Europe's rich place big place on the scale of the United States economies on a scale of the United States educated and so on it's conceivable that it might go off on its own path and that's always been a problem the United States was in favor of the integration of Europe for all kind of reasons but it was wary that it might take off on its own this was it described very lucidly by Henry Kissinger when he was national security adviser and Secretary of State back in 1973 1973 was called the year of Europe celebrate the unification for Europe and Kissinger gave most called the year of Europe address and which he informed the Europeans that they have to understand that Europe has we called regional responsibilities within the overall framework of order maintained by the United States in other words don't think about posing a challenge you can carry out here you can take care of you know immigration in the Mediterranean or whatever your regional responsibilities are but it's within the framework of order maintained by the united states that continues a Europe means primarily France and Germany that's the industrial financial heartland of Europe and a large part of the hysteria about France and Germany in the last couple of months which is kind of interesting in itself but a large part of hysteria has to do with concern that Europe might strike out on an independent course as it could okay the same problems arising in Asian Northeast Asia which includes japan south korea china eastern Siberia is by now and has been for some years the most dynamic economic region in the world it's gross domestic product is considerably larger than the United States it's growing fast it has about half the financial reserves in the world it's a major source of foreign direct investment in and by now it has in its an integrated region has plenty of resources eastern Siberia and China have resources the industrial countries of the region need the resources is a very natural unit and it's significant accepted military force it's on a par with the United States in Europe well that's a concern because Northeast Asia also could move on its own towards independence and a lot of fussing about North Korea and this is part of what's behind it in the regional countries all of them want to pursue some kind of negotiated diplomatic settlement North Korea somehow integrated a horrible place but they don't want a war that would be too awful they want to move to integrating it into the region somehow and that makes a lot of sense from every point of view pipelines from Siberia through into South Korea through North Korea or expansion of the trans-siberian railroad into South Korea would maybe important moves towards integrating the region and as one high-level US planning document really recent analysis really put it pipelines through North Korea could enhance regional stability and provide cheap alternatives to oil imported from the Middle East well one of the ways the u.s. controls Northeast Asia and Europe is by controlling its energy resources if they move towards independent energy resources and other resources that would be a spur towards separating into a independent area and with the resistance to the national security strategy that I can vary quoted this is exactly what's feared that other parts of the world are going to break out of the system create their own areas which could lead to unpleasant conditions if the u.s. really does insist on barring any challenge by violence as it has stated that it will these are the things that I think are right me often well first of all I don't agree that it doesn't make any difference I think it makes a huge difference so for example if just look over history of recent years you can see the difference the above first time I lobbied Congress actually first and last time was with Howard Zinn we went down in april nineteen sixty-five to talk to our congressional representatives and senators this was right after Lyndon Johnson had expanded the war in South Vietnam to the bombing of the north I won't run through the details but we couldn't even talk to them Tip O'Neill wouldn't let us into his office saltonstall who was the senior senator said well you know kind of let us give him a rap and says interesting but the president has spoken what he talking about Kennedy who was in a junior senator said you know sounds kind of interesting but I'm not much my brother's a brother takes care of foreign policy issues of the people in Congress or the only ones who can even talk there were a couple of Republican representatives or at least kind of helpful but that's just changed over the years I'm by now there there's much more access and much more pressure because the populations change they are under popular pressure and to the extent that they're under popular sure they can they will be thinks they're not going to stand up alone very few do I mean you can count them on the fingers of one hand there's a extruding and you know occasionally you'll find someone else but these are people who are happy to say I'm your leader when there's a enough people around for them to be the leader of and it has to be not just large and numbers but active and committed these things aren't achieved in a minute you know the anti-war movement in Vietnam took years before it got off the ground the situation today is far more advanced than it was then you didn't have hundreds of thousands of people on the street before Kennedy started bombing South Vietnam in 1962 it's different and it's not just habits everything else to civil rights women's rights environmental issues all sorts of things that countries just changed and it's changed because and we done you just we all have to understand these things don't happen fast these are long struggles of abolitionism took forever you know I it didn't happen by SAVAK by one demonstration so yeah I have to create the groundwork for it and in fact in the United States it's my feeling is it's an easy pretty terrific situation for organizing people the only way people are kept in line by now is by terrifying them with phantoms and the fam and they are phantoms you know and it's not hard for people to get to understand that but it's not going to happen easily you know it's going to take work because people really are afraid and you can overcome that fear but only by heart border same oh I'm the media have their own agenda which is the sport power if very if the general population changes and the culture changes and people's commitments and beliefs change the media will partially reflected otherwise not in the same way that I mean for example when the first you may know well go back to nineteen sixty-five again 1965 happened to be the first public demonstration against the international demonstrations against the Vietnam War and there was a demonstration here on the Boston Common the dem that didn't take place it was broken up by counter-demonstrators violently I was supposed to be one of the speakers on my way gotta live less bizarre couple hundred state troopers around the Boston Globe covered it supporting the counter demonstrators and denouncing the people who were daring to stand up and say maybe we shouldn't bomb North Vietnam well that's changed over a couple of years and it didn't change because their genes changed it changed because of the country change and that's where you have to work you know if there were a magic key to answer to open these stores somebody would have told us about it a long time ago and there isn't the only way to deal with it is by patient constant educational and organizing activities and we have to face reality it is a very frightened country it's not new and it's not just that I'm saying takes a crime crime in the United States is approximately like other industrial countries fear of crime on the other hand is way beyond other industrial countries same sir of drugs in other country other countries like ours industrial countries drugs are considered sort of a problem you know you deal with them here it's considered it's turned into a threat to our survival you know if Canada is going to make the perfectly rational move of not arresting people for can throwing them in jail forever for having small amount of pot people here will go crazy they make cut off relations with Canada okay those are things that you know those are the results of long and effective propaganda programs they go way back and it does go way back I mean some of you will be old enough to remember I'm sure that back in the early siclen in Lexington where the back in the early 60s when my kids were in school they were literally being taught to hide under desks in the Lexington schools to protect them from atom bombs well you know we can laugh they didn't laugh and there is no place in the world where anybody was there was anything like this I mean for a long time it's been an extremely frightened country and that is exploited by unscrupulous leaders and they're going to try to exploit it for the next election just as robizzy and the only way to deal with this is to get to people and help them participate with them so that they can under get us a sane grasp of reality and that can certainly be done and then it's been done on all sorts of issues we don't have to go back very far to see how it's done I mean I mentioned a couple of cases linked another one I mean there is an original sin in this country very straightforward original sin namely why are we here you know what happened to the people who were living here well you know what happened you know is that they were exterminated millions of like it wasn't small well until the 1960s that was simply not an issue it wasn't an issue in scholarship that wasn't an issue in consciousness when I was a kid we played cowboys and Indians and we were the Cowboys are killing the Indians it I can't say it's has been a that it's so marvelous today it isn't but there's an enormous change in that respect because people's awareness and consciousness has changed on issue after creation and it doesn't happen by a gift it happens by hard dedicated constant work and it takes time I mean take something like women's right and the century before it became right on the agenda sunday assume assuming my voice holds up well a patriot act is a pretty rotten act as a lot of horrible things in it but so far it has been used mostly against very vulnerable people where they're pretty sure they can get away with it you know like illegal immigrants so on they certainly want to use it against everybody there's a real fascist streak in the administration there's no doubt about it and they would like to be able to really undo the whole civil libertarian tradition but it's not so simple because people have are not going to accept it easily with regard to the Freedom of Information Act there haven't been many changes I'm in the bush administration like the Reagan administration wants the government to be free from scrutiny by citizens they are not conservatives they're reactionary status they don't think that the population has any right to know what the government is doing so the Reagan administration very radically undermined efforts to get declassified documents from 30 years earlier and the Bush administration is trying to do the same thing but so far they haven't succeeded very much and whether they succeed or not is up to us no I mean they can't really do these things if the citizens won't allow it they're pushing it as far as they can go and they're pushing very hard so just a couple of days ago the office even made the papers too there is a legislation which has been upheld by the courts for the last 20 years the Alien Tort Claims Act which actually goes back to the 18th century which allows people to bring suits against foreign foreigners or their local affiliates for acts like torture so forward so we're in suit in American Court against a you know Indonesian torch burns on and against preparations well one of the suits that's going on is an important one squirt cup through the courts in California is a suit against Unocal big oil company for using what amount to slave laborers and laborers in Burma and it's being filed under this act and it's moving along at the Ashcroft Justice Department just intervene with 80th first time to with a amicus brief to support unical and to call for termination of any use of this act against for torture victims and slave earlier victims and so on I mean they really want to cut out civil liberties at every point you can look at the new Patriot to act which they're thinking of their trying to sneak it through it's leaked you know hasn't been made public it's leaked on the internet law professors are written about it so I'm they are actually intending to claiming the right to take away citizenship on simply on what they call inference so if the Attorney General infers from some pattern of action of yours that you're a terrorist support or whatever that means they want to be able to take away your citizenship that's unheard of any any Western society but they will go as far as again and they have to be stopped or else it will be in bad trouble as for why the Palestinians accepted the roadmap its first of all the Palestinian Authority accepted the roadmap what the Palestinians may have in mind is another matter the and but I can understand what I mean whether it would have done it they don't have a lot of alternatives they're hoping very they're under an illusion i think but they're hoping that somehow the u.s. is going to change its traditional position on this there's no evidence word but they're hoping for it and there's only one way to realize that hope and that is for us here the force that change to take place they can't do anything about it I think we have time for about two more questions yeah well there has been some interesting stuff coming out about the actual planning for the war and it's been pretty obvious that they had made their minds up quite early and they're most of everything was my house for show but for those of you who want to look at it a little more closely there's a quite a good series that came out and the what I think is the best newspaper in the world the London Financial Times business newspaper best international business newspaper had a detailed investigation of the planning not as far as they could unearth from talking to people on the National Security Council and so on and what they ended up with it's plausible is that by mid-december the Bush administration had decided that was definitely going to be a war and their reasoning is interesting tells you a lot the reasoning as described and it's plausible the reasoning was described by a high official who was involved in the National Security Council Planning he said by early December of the administration had the feeling that in virtually quoting it that a tin-pot dictator is mocking us and we don't let tin-pot dictators mock us that's called establishing credibility in Internet affairs are in the Mafia which are very similar you da mafia don does not allow some local tin-pot to mock him and if you have the biggest military force in the world and you know you're immune from retaliation you don't let them mock you either so we'll go destroy the country or where we feel like doing that's very it fits very well with mentality and it bears on Iran I mean the problem with Iran is it's not it fails the first condition of those conditions three conditions actually it fails to of the conditions you can't i miss ugly place in many ways which can't claim that it has a horrendous record like a plenty of other states in the world but the worst thing is it's not defenseless and since it's not defenseless it can't be attacked the so what the US has been trying to do for some time it's not just starting out is to try to carry out subversive activities internal to iran which all fragmented or maybe cause pricings or something so there's pretty good reason to believe that for less at least for the last year and maybe farther back the US has been trying to stir up azeri nationalist movements in the north which do want independence and have some justification in fact the u.s. is now trying to do it appears what the Russians did in 1946 which is one of the early Cold War confrontations where they tried to support Azerbaijani independence within Iran which would have split up for rent and the u.s. Berkeley went to war over that at the time but now it looks as though do is trying to do the same thing they're very complicated dealings going on in that region with the you know azeri Turkish Israeli Lions you know trying to take power control there's pretty good evidence that the good part of the Israeli Air Force which is not a small Air Force it's bigger than more technologically advanced than any NATO air force accept you as a lot of its stationed in eastern Turkey and they're apparently flying reconnaissance over be read as part of a preparation for some kind of actions probably not a direct attack because the red can fight back in fact the u.s. is now driving he ran towards developing weapons of mass destruction oh you know just almost transparently and you know intelligence agencies have pointed this out strategic analysts pointed it out I mean the u.s. is making it clear to the world and has been for some time that if if you're defenseless we're going to attack you so you better have a deterrent and there's only two kinds of deterrent one is terror and the others weapons of mass destruction so the Bush administration is quite openly proliferate causing consciously causing proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and increase in terror I'm you know every intelligence agency in their own analysts pointed out to them the invasion of Iraq that Iraq had whatever you think about what I'm saying he had nothing to do with al-qaeda and those guys there's worst enemies but attacking Iraq would increase the threat of terror and apparently that's what's happening reports from around the world or that with the build-up of the invasion and the invasion itself recruiting for al-qaeda style organizations is by not fast and we just saw two major terrorist attacks which may well be the effect of it but they're perfectly willing to face that I mean they don't want terror but they don't really mind that much you know if there are terrorist attacks or weapons of mass destruction you know nice but it's of low priority as compared with higher ones like ramming through the domestic agenda and controlling the world and furthermore they know perfectly well that they can exploit terrorist attacks there could be a serious terrorist attack in the United States if you really want to be frightened correctly take a look at the heart Redmond report on terrorist threats in the United States high level planning analysis that just came out good people and what they say makes sense I meant as horrendous possibilities of it's like a cookbook coat you know we can do many of those things that very much talent and it's going to happen and it will you can increase the likelihood of it by refusing to ask where it's coming from if you react to it by violence you increases I'm every terrorist specialist mostest if you look at the grievances to try to deal with them and so unwell and could reduce the threat they're doing the opposite and the same is true with Iran I mean they probably are forcing around to accelerate efforts if they have them to develop weapons of mass destruction for perfectly sensible reasons how they're going to defend themselves from a US attack and maybe to get involved with terrorist organizations so there's no evidence that they are on the u.s. claims that they're involved with terrorist organizations but you have to look at the definition of terrorist so high on the US list of terrorist organizations very high as Hezbollah okay why is that a terrorist organization well because it drove a u.s. client out of Lebanon in Israel invaded Lebanon 20 years ago killed around 20,000 people stayed on ran a brutal military occupation in the south and they were driven out by Hezbollah okay that makes it as Bowa terrorists just like the current administration the guy powell rumsfeld the rest they regarded the nelson mandela and the african national congress is in their words one of the more notorious terrorist groups in the world because they were resisting our allies South Africa so they got to be really cautious about what's called terrorism i'm not saying because people are nice people probably you know probably not but their main the main charge against them is that they drove a u.s. client out of an illegal military occupation and it's undoubtedly true that iran supporting well I mean right son I mean then look the people running Washington now happen to be an unusually dangerous crowd within a spectrum that isn't that broad that's what I was trying to suggest by quoting Dean Acheson and the planners of the Franklin Roosevelt period and and others I mean it's a narrow spectrum and nevertheless within that spectrum there can be differences in those differences can these guys have so much power there in their hands that small differences can translate it to huge outcomes so I think it makes good sense to prevent care about bush but the crowd around him from wielding power on the other hand any Democrat I mean Democrats have done the same things you know what has to be done has changed the environment in which any of these guys are going through something and yeah just what you said is exactly correct it's this 40 years of work have made a huge difference not just in this area in every area anybody our age knows it so take my own University a mighty have been there for about 50 years if you walk through the halls of MIT today it's half women about a third minorities people casually dressed which reflects relation personal relationships means much authority and subordination if you walk through the same walls 40 years ago we've been white males well-dressed ties and jackets so beat in you know those are just changes that have taken place everywhere and they're not insignificant they've changed the country and they change politics and they change the media and everything else and it doesn't come easily the fear is very real but you know that's the kind of element that in a way it's easy to combat it's hard to combat security forces who are going to take you away and blow your brains out three in jail and torture you okay we're lucky we don't combat that what we combat is a culture of fear and subordination that's a lot easier to deal with so but it's hard work

Channel: infiniteinfiniteinfi

Views: 1,003

Rating: 4.826087 out of 5

Keywords: US, Strategy, speech, Q&A, Noam Chomsky (Author), Imperialism

Id: ImqQ7S70D2c

Length: 91min 22sec (5482 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 17 2015