[Mb-civic] Newsweek Int. website: Short but sweet Chomsky interview

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

  MSNBC.com

The Last Word: Noam Chomsky
A Tale of Two Quagmires
Newsweek International

Jan. 9, 2006 issue - Noam Chomsky has been called one of the most 
influential intellectuals of the 20th century, but it's an accolade the 77-
year-old MIT professor doesn't take very seriously. "People just want to 
hear something outside the rigid dogma they're used to," he says. 
"They're not going to hear it in the media." The linguistics prodigy 
turned political theorist has been a leading mind in the antiwar 
movement since the early '60s; he's also still a prolific author, 
producing more than six books in the past five years. He spoke to 
NEWSWEEK's Michael Hastings about the current geopolitical 
climate. Excerpts:

Hastings: Where do you see Iraq heading right now?
Chomsky: Well, it's extremely difficult to talk about this because of a 
very rigid doctrine that prevails in the United States and Britain which 
prevents us from looking at the situation realistically. The doctrine, to 
oversimplify, is that we have to believe the United States would have 
so-called liberated Iraq even if its main products were lettuce and 
pickles and [the] main energy resource of the world were in central 
Africa. Anyone who doesn't accept that is dismissed as a conspiracy 
theorist or a lunatic or something. But anyone with a functioning brain 
knows that that's not true—as all Iraqis do, for example. The United 
States invaded Iraq because its major resource is oil. And it gives the 
United States, to quote [Zbigniew] Brzezinski, "critical leverage" over 
its competitors, Europe and Japan. That's a policy that goes way back 
to the second world war. That's the fundamental reason for invading 
Iraq, not anything else.

Once we recognize that, we're able to begin talking about where Iraq is 
going. For example, there's a lot of talk about the United States 
bringing [about] a sovereign independent Iraq. That can't possibly be 
true. All you have to do is ask yourself what the policies would be in a 
more-or-less democratic Iraq. We know what they're likely to be. A 
democratic Iraq will have a Shiite majority, [with] close links to Iran. 
Furthermore, it's right across the border from Saudi Arabia, where 
there's a Shiite population which has been brutally repressed by the 
U.S.-backed fundamentalist tyranny. If there are any moves toward 
sovereignty in Shiite Iraq, or at least some sort of freedom, there are 
going to be effects across the border. That happens to be where most 
of Saudi Arabia's oil is. So you can see the ultimate nightmare 
developing from Washington's point of view.

You were involved in the antiwar movement in the 1960s. What do you 
think of the Vietnam-Iraq analogy?
I think there is no analogy whatsoever. That analogy is based on a 
misunderstanding of Iraq, and a misunderstanding of Vietnam. The 
misunderstanding of Iraq I've already described. The 
misunderstanding of Vietnam had to do with the war aims. The United 
States went to war in Vietnam for a very good reason. They were 
afraid Vietnam would be a successful model of independent 
development and that would have a virus effect—infect others who 
might try to follow the same course. There was a very simple war 
aim—destroy Vietnam. And they did it. The United States basically 
achieved its war aims in Vietnam by [1967]. It's called a loss, a defeat, 
because they didn't achieve the maximal aims, the maximal aims 
being turning it into something like the Philippines. They didn't do that. 
[But] they did achieve the major aims. It was possible to destroy 
Vietnam and leave. You can't destroy Iraq and leave. It's 
inconceivable.

Was the antiwar movement more successful in the '60s than it is 
today?
I think it's the other way around. The United States attacked Vietnam in 
1962. It took years before any protest developed. Iraq is the first time 
in hundreds of years of European and American history that a war was 
massively protested before it was launched. There was huge protest in 
February 2003. It had never happened in the history of the West.

Where do you put George W. Bush in the pantheon of American 
presidents?
He's more or less a symbol, but I think the people around him are the 
most dangerous administration in American history. I think they're 
driving the world to destruction. There are two major threats that face 
the world, threats of the destruction of the species, and they're not a 
joke. One of them is nuclear war, and the other is environmental 
catastrophe, and they are driving toward destruction in both domains. 
They're compelling competitors to escalate their own offensive military 
capacity—Russia, China, now Iran. That means putting their offensive 
nuclear missiles on hair-trigger alert.

The Bush administration has succeeded in making the United States 
one of the most feared and hated countries in the world. The talent of 
these guys is unbelievable. They have even succeeded at alienating 
Canada. I mean, that takes genius, literally.
© 2006 Newsweek, Inc.

© 2006 MSNBC.com

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10682403/site/newsw/
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"A war of aggression is the supreme international crime." -- Robert Jackson,
 former U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice and Nuremberg prosecutor

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