[casi] interview with Noam Chomsky Re: Iraq. Dec 2 2003

["Rania Masri" <rania@DELETETHISnc.rr.com>]

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http://www.gulf-news.com/Articles/print.asp?ArticleID=104336


 <http://www.gulfnews.com> Gulf News Online Edition






Interview: 'Of course, it was all about Iraq's resources'


 | By Simon Mars | 02/12/2003





Edited excerpts of an interview with Noam Chomsky by Simon Mars of Dubai's
Business Channel. The interview will be aired again on the programme
Perspectives on Tuesday (Business Channel) and Saturday (Channel 33). Noam
Chomsky's latest book Hegemony and Survival, America's Quest for Global
Dominance was published in November and covers some of the themes included
in this interview.


   Simon Mars: Do you think control over energy resources was the main
reason for the invasion of Iraq?
Noam Chomsky: They didn't decide to invade Eastern Congo where there's much
worse massacres going on. Of course it was Iraq's energy resources. It's not
even a question. Iraq's one of the major oil producers in the world. It has
the second largest reserves and it's right in the heart of the Gulf's oil
producing region, which US intelligence predicts is going to be two thirds
of world resources in coming years.

The invasion of Iraq had a number of motives, and one was to illustrate the
new National Security Strategy, which declares that the United States will
control the world permanently by force if necessary and will eliminate any
potential challenge to that domination. It is called pre-emptive war.

It is not a new policy, it's just never been announced so brazenly, which is
why it caused such uproar, including among the foreign policy elite in the
United States. They're appalled by it.
But having announced the doctrine, it needed an exemplary action, to show
that the United States really meant it.

But if the United States is going to attack somebody, the action has to meet
several criteria. The first and crucial criterion is that they must be
completely defenseless. It's stupid to attack anyone who can shoot back.
Anyone knows this.

They understood perfectly well that Iraq was completely defenseless, the
weakest country in the region. Its military expenditure was about a third of
Kuwait, devastated by sanction, held together by Scotch tape. Mostly
dis-armed, under complete surveillance, so Iraq met that condition.

Second criteria is that the place attacked has to be important enough to
matter. There's no point taking over Eastern Congo, which is also
defenseless, but Iraq matters. That's where the issue of oil comes up, since
the United States will end up with military bases right in the heart of the
oil producing region.

The third criteria is you have to somehow pretend it's a threat to your
existence. While the people of Kuwait and Iran might be delighted to tear
Saddam Hussein limb from limb, they still did not regard him as a threat.
No-one thought he was a threat.

But in the United States the propaganda did succeed in moving the American
population, and Congress passed a resolution authorizing the use of force to
defend the US against the continuing threat posed by Iraq. No matter what
you think, that's just laughable.

   How many people know that Donald Rumsfeld gave Saddam Hussein golden
spurs back in 1983?
A little of that has begun to leak out, but how many people know that Colin
Powell, the present administration moderate, was the National Security
Advisor at the time of Halabja massacre, when the Reagan administration,
responded by simply increasing aid to Saddam Hussein, as did the first Bush
administration later.

They knew that this aid was used for chemical and biological warfare, and
for developing missiles and nuclear weapons. But they did not care so the
aid continued.

Nowadays, Powell moans about the graves in Halabja, but he didn't care at
the time. They now claim this was because of the war with Iran, but it had
nothing to do with the war in Iran. The war in Iran was over. They provided
aid to their friend Saddam Hussein because of their duty to support US
exporters, as they said on public record.

When Saddam Hussein was massacring the Kurds, he was also wiping out
agricultural areas. They needed agricultural aid and US agro-business was
delighted to have the US taxpayer pay them to send agricultural aid to Iraq.
Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Colin Powell and Dick Cheney thought that was
just fine. Then it gets worse.

Right now, since the weapons of mass destruction have not been found, there
are other excuses being used for the invasion of Iraq. In article after
article, Thomas Friedman of New York Times, as well as Colin Powell, both
moan about the mass graves that have been discovered.

It is true they did not see them before, but of course they knew they were
there. In 1991, after the Gulf War, the US had total control of the whole
region, Saddam Hussein was effectively authorized to massacre the Shiites,
and to put down the rebellion that could have overthrown him.

Today, Thomas Friedman is agonizing about the mass graves, but if you go
back and read him in 1991, he knew about them. He was the New York Times'
Chief Diplomatic Correspondent, and he said that the best of all worlds for
the United States would be an iron fisted military junta that would rule
Iraq the same as Saddam Hussein, but since Saddam is an embarrassment, lets
try to get someone else. And if we cannot find someone else, we will have to
settle for second best, Saddam Hussein himself.

The British are an interesting case. In the US, we have pretty much the same
government that was in office in 1991. But in Britain, today's government
was in opposition in 1991. There were parliamentary protests in England
about the gassing of the Kurds and so on, but try to find the names of Tony
Blair, Jeff Hoon, Jack Straw, I think even Robin Cook. They're missing.

   What do the American public think about the situation in Israel?
The study by the Program on International Policy Attitudes, PIPA, has done
very interesting in-depth studies of people's attitudes towards Israel and
Palestine, but they are never reported because the conclusions are
unacceptable.

The PIPA study found that a considerable majority of the American population
favour what is called the Saudi plan, which is the latest version of
international consensus on a two state settlement that the United States has
been unilaterally blocking since 1975. Yet about two thirds of the United
States' population supports it.

The Poll shows that a large majority of people in the United States think
that they should cut off aid to either of the two parties, Israel or the
Palestinians, if they refuse to enter into goodwill negotiations.

   Next question. Suppose that both sides enter into negotiations, what
should the United States do?
Give equal aid to Israel and the Palestinians.

   Then comes the next question. Should the United States be more involved
in this?
Yes. Same large majority. That's a contradiction, a self contradiction. It's
the United States involvement since the mid 1970's that's prevented a
political settlement. Step by step, vetoes at the Security Council since
1976 - votes alone, or with one or two client states of the General Assembly
blocking the plan.

Supporting the Israeli invasion of Lebanon with the express purpose of
undermining the possible threat of negotiations and on and on.

   So the US is involved in what it describes it "the peace process," yet it
is actually be trying to prevent peace . you just can't make that
connection.
By definition the United States is running the peace process, but does that
mean they're trying to bring peace? Of course not. You can go back to 1971
when Anwar Al Sadat, the new president of Egypt offered a full peace treaty
to Israel with only one condition: That it withdraw from Egyptian territory.
Nothing about the Palestinians. Nothing about the West Bank or Golan
Heights. Just withdraw from Egyptian territory and you can have a full peace
treaty.

Israel understood it, they considered it, they recognized it was a genuine
peace offer that they could accept and end the state of war. They turned it
down because they said it was more important to expand settlements.

At the point the settlements were in the North Eastern Sinai, and tens of
thousands of Bedouins had been kicked out. It was a Labour government, not
Sharon, and it decided that it was more important to expand into the
northern Sinai, so they rejected Sadat's offer.

  Well what did the United States do?
That's crucial, that determined what happened. There was an internal debate
in the United States and the United States government. Henry Kissinger - his
position won out. As he wrote, was that we should reject negotiations and he
called for a stalemate. No negotiations just force. So the United States
backed Israel's rejection of Sadat's peace offer. That led directly to the
1973 war.

The 1973 war was a close call for Israel, very dangerous. There was a
nuclear alert; there was a close call for the world. I mean even Kissinger,
who's not very smart, understood that we can't just assume Egypt's a basket
case. We have to do something. So he began the shuttle diplomacy that then
ended up in Camp David with the Camp David agreements. That is hailed as a
triumph in American diplomacy. Carter just won the Nobel Peace prize for it.


It was a catastrophe of American diplomacy.

What they accepted at Camp David was Sadat's 1971 proposal but now in terms
that were much more harsh for both the United States and Israel because by
1978 Sadat was calling for a consensus on the Palestinians and leaving the
rest to the occupied territories. So actually the United States at Camp
David was forced to accept a proposal, that was worse from their point of
view and Israel's point of view, than the one they turned down in 1971.

In the United States, Carter immediately raised US aid to Israel to over 50
percent of total aid. Israel understood what was happening. Egypt, the only
Arab deterrent, was out of the conflict, and the United States had increased
aid. Israel drew the conclusion that the US was telling us that we can
expand into the occupied territories and attack our northern neighbour,
which is exactly what they did.

Since 1976, the first veto at the Security Council and in fact back to 1971,
the United States has been blocking, unilaterally blocking a Middle East
peace settlement. A settlement whose terms are accepted by almost the entire
world. I mean in 1976 the major Arab states accepted it, the Palestinian
Liberation Army accepted it, Europe accepted it. In fact, everyone accepted
it. The United States vetoed it.

The United States seems set to enter a very dark phase of its history with
the domestic legislation such as Patriot and its foreign affairs policy.

   Do you think things have a chance of getting better?
Remember that the people now in control are an extremely reactionary
nationalist wing, even of the Republican Party. The major foreign policy
journals like Foreign Affairs, wrote very critical articles about the
National Security Strategy. The people in control are an extremist wing; and
they barely hold political power.

The presidential elections in 2000 were disputed election, and they barely
managed to sneak through, with a few tens of thousands of votes.

   How did they do it?
By frightening people. The attack on Iraq was purposely timed, the
announcement of it, to the start of the election campaign. The campaign
manager made it clear when he said we've got to focus the election on
national security issues because people don't like our social and economic
policy, naturally because they're harming most of the population.

They're trying essentially to reverse the progressive legislation of the
past century and people don't like it so we focus on national security
issues. That way we frighten them.

You don't know how long people can be controlled. It's a free country you
know. People are free to say what they want. Do what they want. There is
very little coercion possible. Some, but very little, so sooner or later
people are not going to accept what's being done to them.
When that will happen? Hard to say.

   What is your assessment of how the World Bank, the IMF and WTO have
structured the global economy?
The IMF and World Bank have played various roles since they were founded but
let's take the last 30 years, the period of so called neo-liberalism. This
new era began in the early 1970's after Richard Nixon dismissed the Bretton
Woods system, established by Keynes and White right after the Second World
War.

Breton Woods was based on the principle that countries could control capital
flow, so you could prevent capital flight. That's what Britain did after the
war to allow recovery. Also currencies were fixed within a pretty narrow
band, so there was very little speculation against currency.

Those were the fundamental principles, which were eliminated in the early
1970's, first by the Nixon's US, then Britain, Switzerland and other major
countries. It was perfectly well understood what this would mean.

Keynes pointed out 70 years ago that if you have financial liberalization
and free flow of capital, it will undermine the possibility of democracy for
a very simple reason: it creates what economists call a virtual senate.

A virtual parliament of investors and lenders who carry out a moment by
moment referendum on government policies. If they don't like them they
destroy the economy by capital flight, by attacking the currency.

Again technical economics talk about governments facing what they call a
dual constituency - the voters, if they're democratic and the virtual
parliament. Of course the virtual parliament always wins.

Since the new rules were established, there has been a very striking attack
on democracy, exactly as you'd expect. There's been a decline of social
economic policies all over the industrial world because you just can't carry
them out against these pressures and in the third world's it's a disaster.

The international structure is designed to prevent democratic choices, as
are the every other aspect of the neo-liberal programmes. Take, for example,
the privatisation of services like water, education, health. There is no
economic motivation for this privatization, despite the wave of
privatization instigated by the World Bank.

There were technical studies by very famous economists, pointing out that
there's no economic motivation for privatization. If it is done in an
efficient country like Sweden, public industries will be efficient. But if
it is done in corrupt countries, they will be inefficient.

Privatization narrows the public arena by definition so that resources like
health, education are controlled by the private sector, which in turn means
corporations, which are unaccountable tyrannies themselves. You put
decisions in to their hands, and they're out of the hands of the public, and
so the public arena shrinks. So the opportunities for democratic choice
shrink.


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