Q: Many people say that all through history when a nation is attacked, it attacks in kind.
CHOMSKY: When countries are attacked they try to defend themselves, if they can. According to the doctrine proposed, Nicaragua, Cuba, South Vietnam, and numerous others should have been setting off bombs in Washington and other US cities, Palestinians should be applauded for bombings in Tel Aviv, and on and on. It is because such doctrines had brought Europe to virtual self-annihilation after hundreds of years of savagery that the nations of the world forged a different compact after WWII, establishing—at least formally—the principle that the resort to force is barred except in the case of self-defense against armed attack until the Security Council acts to protect international peace and security. Specifically, retaliation is barred.
Since the US is not under armed attack, in the sense of Article 51 of the UN Charter, these considerations are irrelevant—at least, if we agree that the fundamental principles of international law should apply to ourselves, not only to those we dislike. International law aside, we have centuries of experience that tell us exactly what is entailed by the doctrines now being proposed and hailed by many commentators. In a world with weapons of mass destruction, what it entails is an imminent termination of the human experiment—which is, after all, why Europeans decided half a century ago that the game of mutual slaughter in which they had been indulging for centuries had better come to an end, or else.
Q: In the immediate aftermath of 9-11, many people were horrified to see expressions of anger at the US emanating from various parts of the world. Images of people celebrating the destruction of the WTC leave people wanting revenge.
CHOMSKY: A US-backed army took control of Indonesia in 1965, organizing the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people, mostly landless peasants, in a massacre that the CIA compared to the crimes of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. The massacre, accurately reported, elicited uncontrolled euphoria in the west, in the national media and elsewhere. Indonesian peasants had not harmed us in any way. When Nicaragua finally succumbed to the US assault, the mainstream media lauded the success of the methods adopted to “ wreck the economy and prosecute a long and deadly proxy war until the exhausted natives overthrow the unwanted government themselves,” with a cost to us that is “minimal,” leaving the victims “with wrecked bridges, sabotaged power stations, and ruined farms,” and thus providing the US candidate with “a winning issue,” ending the “ impoverishment of the people of Nicaragua” (Time).
We are “United in Joy” at this outcome, the New York Times proclaimed. It’s easy to continue. Very few people around the world celebrated the crimes in New York; overwhelmingly, the atrocities were passionately deplored, even in places where people have been ground underfoot by Washington’s boots for a long time. But there were undoubtedly feelings of anger at the United States. However, I am aware of nothing as grotesque as the two examples I just mentioned, or many more like them in the west.
Q: What is the purpose of the “war on terror”, as proposed by bush?
CHOMSKY: The “war on terror” is neither new nor a “war on terror.” We should recall that the Reagan administration came to office 20 years ago proclaiming that “international terrorism” (supposedly sponsored worldwide by the Soviet Union) is the greatest threat faced by the US, which is the main target of terrorism, and its allies and friends. We must therefore dedicate ourselves to a war to eradicate this “cancer”, this “plague” that is destroying civilization. The Reaganites acted on that commitment by organizing campaigns of international terrorism that were extraordinary in scale and destruction, even leading to a World Court condemnation of the US, while lending their support to innumberable others, for example, in southern Africa, where western-backed South African depredations killed a million and a half people and caused $60 billion of damage during the Reagan years alone. Hysteria over international terrorism peaked in the mid-80s, while the US and its allies were well in the lead in spreading the cancer they were demanding must be extirpated.
If we choose, we can live in a world of comforting illusion. Or we can look at recent history, at the institutional structures that remain essentially unchanged, at the plans that are being announced—and answer the questions accordingly. I know of no reason to suppose that there has been a sudden change in long-standing motivations or policy goals, apart from tactical adjustments to changing circumstances. We should also remember that one exalted task of intellectuals is to proclaim every few years that we have “changed course,” the past is behind us and can be forgotten as we march on towards a glorious future. That is a highly convenient stance, though hardly an admirable or sensible one. The literature on all this is voluminous. There is no reason, beyond choice, to remain unaware of the facts—which are, of course, familiar to the victims, though few of them are in a postion to recognize the scale or nature of the international terrorist assault which they are subjected.
Q: Do you believe that most Americans will accept that the solution to terror attacks on civilians here is for the US to respond with terror attacks against civilians abroad, and the solution to fanaticism is surveillance and curtailed civil liberties?
CHOMSKY: I hope not, but we should not underestimate the capacity of well-run propaganda systems to drive people to irrational, murderous, and suicidal behavior. Take an example that is remote enough so that we should be able to look at it with some dispassion: World War I. It can’t have been that both sides were engaged in a noble war for the highest objectives. But on both sides, the soldiers marched off to mutual slaughter with enormous exuberance, fortified by the cheers of the intellectual clases and those who they helped mobilize, across the political spectrum, from left to right, including the most powerful left political force in the world, in Germany. Exceptions are so few that we can practically list them, and some of the most prominent among them ended up in jail for questioning the nobility of the enterprise: among them Rosa Luxemburg, Bertrand Russell, and Eugene Debs. With the help of Wilson’s propaganda agencies and the enthusiastic support of liberal intellectuals, a pacifist country was turned in a few months into raving anti-German hysterics, ready to take revenge on those who had perpetrated savage crimes, many of them invented by the British Ministry of Information. But that’s by no means inevitable, and we should not underestimate the civilizing effects of the popular struggles of recent years. We need not stride resolutely towards catastrophe, merely because those are the marching orders.
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