9-11 (10 page)

In the immediate aftermath of 9-11 many people were horrified to see expressions of anger at the U.S. emanating from various parts of the world, including but not confined to the Middle East. Images of people celebrating the destruction of the World Trade Center leave people wanting revenge. How do you react to that?

A U.S.-backed army took control in 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 U.S. assault, the mainstream press 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 U.S. 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, 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.

Getting beyond these public reactions, in your view what are the actual motivations operating in U.S. policy at this moment? What is the purpose of the “war on terror,” as proposed by Bush?

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” (sponsored worldwide by the Soviet Union) is the greatest threat faced by the U.S., 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 U.S., while lending their support to innumerable 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 U.S. 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 position to recognize the scale or nature of the international terrorist assault to which they are subjected.

Do you believe that most Americans will, as conditions permit more detailed evaluation of options, accept that the solution to terror attacks on civilians here is for the U.S. to respond with terror attacks against civilians abroad, and that the solution to fanaticism is surveillance and curtailed civil liberties?

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 classes 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.

6.
Civilizations East and West

Based on interviews with European media September 20-22, 2001 with Marili Margomenou for Alpha TV Station (Greece), Miguel Mora for
El País
(Spain), Natalie Levisalles for
Liberation
(France).

[
Editor’s note: As many of these questions were written by journalists who speak English as a second language, in some instances phrases were edited for clarity with every effort to preserve the intended meaning
.]

Q: After the attack in the U.S.A., Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said that the U. S. government will revise the laws for terrorism, including the law of
1976 that prohibits assassinations of foreigners. The European Union is also about to apply a new law on terrorism. How might response to the attacks come to constrict our freedoms? For instance, does terrorism give government the right to put us under surveillance, in order to trace suspects and prevent future attacks?

CHOMSKY:
A response that is too abstract may be misleading, so let us consider a current and quite typical illustration of what plans to relax constraints on state violence mean in practice. This morning (September 21), the
New York Times
ran an opinion piece by Michael Walzer, a respected intellectual who is considered a moral leader. He called for an “ideological campaign to engage all the arguments
and excuses for terrorism and reject them”; since, as he knows, there are no such arguments and excuses for terrorism of the kind he has in mind, at least on the part of anyone amenable to reason, in effect this translates as a call to reject efforts to explore the reasons that lie behind terrorist acts that are directed against states he supports. He then proceeds, in conventional fashion, to enlist himself among those who provide “arguments and excuses for terrorism,” tacitly endorsing political assassination, namely, Israeli assassinations of Palestinians who Israel claims support terrorism; no evidence is offered or considered necessary, and in many cases even the suspicions appear groundless. And the inevitable “collateral damage”—women, children, others nearby—is treated in the standard way. U.S.-supplied attack helicopters have been used for such assassinations for ten months.

Walzer puts the word “assassination” in quotes, indicating that in his view, the term is part of what he calls the “fervid and highly distorted accounts of the blockade of Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” He is referring to criticism of U.S.-backed Israeli atrocities in the territories that have been under harsh and brutal military occupation for almost thirty-five years, and of U.S. policies that have devastated the civilian society of Iraq (while strengthening Saddam Hussein). Such criticisms are marginal in the U.S., but too much for him, apparently. By “distorted accounts,” perhaps Walzer has in mind occasional references to the statement of Secretary of State Madeleine Albright over national TV when she was asked about the estimates of a half million deaths of Iraqi children as a
result of the sanctions regime. She recognized that such consequences were a “hard choice” for her administration, but said “we think the price is worth it.”

I mention this single example, easily multiplied, to illustrate the substantive meaning of the relaxation of constraints on state action. We may recall that violent and murderous states quite commonly justify their actions as “counter-terrorism”: for example, the Nazis fighting partisan resistance. And such actions are commonly justified by respected intellectuals.

That is not ancient history. In December 1987, at the peak of concern over international terrorism, the UN General Assembly passed its major resolution on the matter, condemning the plague in the strongest terms and calling on all nations to act forcefully to overcome it. The resolution passed 153-2 (U.S. and Israel), Honduras alone abstaining. The offending passage states “that nothing in the present resolution could in any way prejudice the right to self-determination, freedom and independence, as derived from the Charter of the United Nations, of peoples forcibly deprived of that right …, particularly peoples under colonial and racist regimes and foreign occupation or other forms of colonial domination, nor … the right of these peoples to struggle to this end and to seek and receive support [in accordance with the Charter and other principles of international law].” These rights are not accepted by the U.S. and Israel; or at the time, their South African ally. For Washington, the African National Congress was a “terrorist organization,” but South Africa did not join Cuba and others as a “terrorist state.” Washington’s
interpretation of “terrorism” of course prevails, in practice, with human consequences that have been severe.

There is now much talk about formulating a Comprehensive Convention against Terrorism, no small task. The reason, carefully skirted in reports, is that the U.S. will not accept anything like the offending passage of the 1987 resolution, and none of its allies will accept it either if the definition of “terrorism” conforms to official definitions in the U.S. Code or army manuals, but only if it can somehow be reshaped to exclude the terrorism of the powerful and their clients.

To be sure, there are many factors to be considered in thinking about your question. But the historical record is of overwhelming importance. At a very general level, the question cannot be answered. It depends on specific circumstances and specific proposals.

Bundestag in Germany already decided that German soldiers will join American forces, although
80
percent of the German people do not agree with this, according to a survey of the Forsa Institute. What are your thoughts on this?

For the moment, European powers are hesitant about joining Washington’s crusade, fearing that by a massive assault against innocent civilians the U.S. will provide bin Laden, or others like him, with a way to mobilize desperate and angry people to their cause, with consequences that could be even more horrifying.

What do you think about nations acting as a global community during a time of war? It is not the first time that every country must ally with the U.S.A., or be considered an enemy, but now Afghanistan is declaring the same thing
.

The Bush administration at once presented the nations of the world with a choice: join us, or face destruction. [
Editor’s note: Here Chomsky is referring to a quote published in the
New York Times,
September 14, 2001. See
this page
.]

The “global community” strongly opposes terror, including the massive terror of the powerful states, and also the terrible crimes of September 11. But the “global community” does not act. When Western states and intellectuals use the term “international community,” they are referring to themselves. For example, NATO bombing of Serbia was undertaken by the “international community” according to consistent Western rhetoric, although those who did not have their heads buried in the sand knew that it was opposed by most of the world, often quite vocally. Those who do not support the actions of wealth and power are not part of “the global community,” just as “terrorism” conventionally means “terrorism directed against us and our friends.”

It is hardly surprising that Afghanistan is attempting to mimic the U.S., calling on Muslims for support. The scale, of course, is vastly smaller. Even as remote as they are from the world outside, Taliban leaders presumably know full well that the Islamic states are not their friends. These states have, in fact, been subjected to terrorist attack by the radical Islamist forces that were organized and trained to fight a Holy War against the U.S.S.R. twenty years ago, and began to pursue their own terrorist agenda elsewhere immediately, with the assassination of Egyptian president Sadat.

According to you, an attack against Afghanistan is a “war against terrorism”?

An attack against Afghanistan will probably kill a great many innocent civilians, possibly enormous numbers in a country where millions are already on the verge of death from starvation. Wanton killing of innocent civilians is terrorism, not a war against terrorism.

Could you imagine how the situation would be if the terrorist’s attack in the U.S.A. had happened during the night, when very few people would be in the WTC? In other words, if there were very few victims, would the American government react in the same way? Up to what point is it influenced by the symbolism of this disaster, the fact that it was the Pentagon and the Twin Towers that were hit?