Noam Chomsky recently spoke at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, where I happened to spend my first year of my undergraduate degree. Here is a complete transcript of his October 13 lecture, on occupying Iraq, the “War on Terrorism” and more. Many thanks to Stu for the transcript.
The ‘War on Terrorism’ And the New Rules of World Order Doctrines and Realities
Well Iíll say a few words about Iraq. But then Iíll turn to more background
issues, continuing issues that fly beyond whatís going on now. Actually, we
get lots of reports from Iraq, but theyíre very narrow in their character.
Almost entirely, they come from inside the ëgreen zone,í the carefully
protected zone inside Baghdad where the US forces are located, where the
chosen government is, and where most journalists stay. And what doesnít come
from there is usually controlled by the occupying army in some fashion or
another. Thatís not because journalists are lazy or lack courage, itís just
that itís far too dangerous to go outside of the protected area.
Iíll read you an excerpt from a recent letter thatís been circulating in
major newsrooms by a Wall Street Journal correspondent, published in one of
the internal journals. He says:
ìBeing a correspondent in Baghdad these days is like being under virtual
house arrested in the protected Green Zone. Outside is raging a barbaric
guerrilla war, the numbers of dead and injured are so shocking that the
Ministry of Health has now stopped disclosing them. Insurgents now attack
Americans eighty-seven times a day. If under Saddam, Iraq was a potential
threat, under the Americans it has been transformed into an imminent and
active threat, a foreign policy failure that is bound to haunt the Americans
for decades to come, and the world. The genie of terrorism, chaos, and
mayhem has been unleashed onto this country, and it canít be put back into a
bottle. The cops are being murdered by the dozens every day, over 700 to
date, and the insurgents are infiltrating their ranks. The problem is so
serious that the US military has allocated $6 billion to buy out 30,000 cops
that they just trained to get rid of them quietly.î
Thereís a lot of instructive material that comes from captured westerners
whoíve been released. That includes recently a Canadian war correspondent
who was released after several weeks in captivity in a Turkmen area. Iíll
read some of his remarks later if youíd like, but it essentially fills out
the details of this story that weíre not being told, not because journalists
donít want us to tell us, but because itís virtually impossible for them to.
One veteran British correspondent, Patrick Cockburn, whoís worked in the
area for decades, written many books and many articles about it, writes
recently that ìthe occupation is one of the most extraordinary failures in
history.î And it is indeed an extremely surprising failure. The fact of the
matter is that the Nazis had far less difficulty in occupying Europe, and
they were in the middle of a major war.
I should stress that ësuccessí and ëfailureí are not the same thing as
ërightí and ëwrong.í Those are totally different dimensions. Iím keeping to
the success/failure dimension, right and wrong you can figure out for
yourselves. This is the dimension that has to do with the consequences that
are likely to ensue. The best explanation that Iíve heard about the entirely
unexpected and quite remarkable failure of the occupation was about a year
ago from a high official of one of the leading relief organizations in
identifying that heís had experience all over the world in the worst
imaginable places. He came back, briefly, to the United States after several
months in Baghdad trying to get hospitals organized and so on. He says he
had ìnever seen such a combination of arrogance, ignorance, and
incompetence.î He was referring not to the troops on the ground, but to the
civilian leadership in the Pentagon.
But in Iraq, they have achieved pretty much what theyíve achieved in the
international arena very quickly, namely turning the United States into the
most feared and often hated country in the world, which is not a small
achievement. Polls in Iraq, [from] early this Spring, thatís before the
terrible fighting in April and before the Abu Ghraib exposures, polls then
showed that the population regarded the American forces there, by about 10
to 1, as an occupying force. And the support for the occupying army was then
in single digits. Itís [been] reduced considerably since then. Rumsfeld,
Cheney, and the rest of them have even succeeded in turning the young cleric
Muqtada al-Sadr, who was previously a marginal figure, into the second most
popular political figure in Iraq, right after the Grand Ayatollah Ali
al-Sistani. And itís all much worse now. After the offensives that are now
just getting under way, one hesitates to think what the situation will be
like.
The effect on the world has been much the same. A recent international poll
showed that in Muslim countries, large majorities view the United States as
a direct military threat. Thatís high numbers, like over 70% in countries
like Indonesia, Turkey, Pakistan, and Nigeria. In Europe, considerable
majorities in most of the countries regard the United States as a threat to
world peace [such as] Holland, Britain, France, and others. In some
countries, the dislike and the distrust of the United States has doubled or
tripled just in the last year. In Latin America, which happens to have the
most experience with the United States and its power, among the Latin
American elite, who are the most pro-US element in their countries, about
90% are strongly opposed to Bush and his policies, It is 98% in Brazil, and
almost as high in Mexico.
I should say that this is not entirely new. The scale is new, but not the
phenomenon. In fact in 1999, under Clinton, Foreign Affairs, the
establishment journal, had an article by a leading American political
scientist, Samuel Huntington of Harvard, in which he pointed out that ìmuch
of the world regards the United States as a rogue state, one of the greatest
external threats to their existence.î That was 1999 and it has escalated
very sharply since. Within the foreign policy elite, similar views are now
quite widely expressed, actually to a completely unprecedented level. I
donít think thereís ever been anything like this. To take a recent example,
the very sober and respectable institution, the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences, publishes a regular journal not given to hyperbole. In their
current issue, thereís an article by two well-known strategic analysts, who
discuss whatís called the ëtransformation of the American military.í Thatís
the Rumsfeld-initiated program to rapidly increase the lethal offensive
military capacity. They discuss this, and they say this policy is likely to
lead to, in their words, ìultimate doom.î Those are words you never hear in
sober respectable circles referring to US policy. They actually go on to
express the hope that China will lead a coalition of peace-loving countries
to counter the US militarism and aggressiveness. Weíve gotten to a pretty
pass when we hear that from the heart of the establishment. Notice that they
didnít ask Canada to lead the coalition, and you might wonder why.
Well, part of the reason for all of this is, of course, the invasion of
Iraq, which was carried out against overwhelming international opposition.
Itís worth remembering that this is the first time in the entire history of
Europe that there has been a massive overwhelming protest against an
aggressive colonial war before it was even launched. Nothing like that has
ever happened before. In the case of the Vietnam war, for example, which was
not that long ago, it was six or seven years after the war was launched
before protests reached a detectable stage. Thatís the norm. Here it was
before. Thatís part of the reason.
But a large part of the reason is the thinking that lies behind it. Recall
that the invasion of Iraq was virtually announced in September of 2002 at
the same time as Bushís National Security strategy, a ìnew imperial grand
strategy,î as it was called right away in a critical article in the main
establishment journal, Foreign Affairs, which described it as a threat to
the world and to the United States. It has since been subjected to a quite
unprecedented critique from within the establishment. Iím not talking about
the critics. The critique is very broad, but itís also extremely narrow in
content. Typically if you read Foreign Affairs and the other sort of
mainstream foreign policy journals, thereís a tremendous amount of
criticism, but on very narrow grounds. Itís not that the substance is wrong,
itís the style and the implementation that are a danger.
The critique was captured pretty well by Madeleine Albright, Clintonís
Secretary of State, same journal, Foreign Affairs. She was also quite
critical of the National Security Strategy and the implementation of it. But
again, she pointed out that every President has had a similar strategy, but
the President keeps it in his back pocket to be used if necessary. They
donít smash people in the face with it, and you donít implement it in brazen
defiance even of your allies, let alone others. Thatís just stupid. Thatís
another example of ìarrogance, incompetence, and ignorance.î
Albright didnít mention it, but she was fully aware, of course, that Clinton
had a similar doctrine, her doctrine. The Clinton Doctrine was quoted in
saying that the US is entitled to resort to unilateral use of military power
to defend vital interests, including uninhibited access to key markets,
energy supplies, and strategic resources. And itís entitled to do that
without even the pretext that Bush and Blair concocted. Thatís actually more
expansive, considerably more expansive than the Bush imperial grand
strategy, but it was issued quietly as a message to Congress, not brazenly,
so others know about it, but they didnít have to regard it as a direct
threat to their existence. Of course they know that American presidents are
going to do that if they want to. Itís one of the prerogatives of power in
societies where the state power was under very limited popular control, or
even knowledge. Albright, in the same article, pointed out that there are
plenty of precedence for it. And thatís true. There is a precedence in US
history and elsewhere, including precedence in US history one might not want
to think about exactly .
Well despite the precedence, the National Security Strategy was described
right away as something new, very new. Henry Kissinger described it as a
ìrevolutionary new strategy.î He generally approved of it, like everyone
else, in substance but also criticized it in style and in implementation,
said youíve gotta do it more sensibly. And he also added a crucial
qualification. He said that the policy, while right, must not be
universalized. That is, the right of aggression has to be reserved for the
United States alone, sometimes delegated to its clients and allies. So we
must reject forcefully one of the most elementary of moral truisms, namely
[that] we apply the same standards to ourselves at least that we apply to
others. Harsher ones if weíre serious. Itís to Kissingerís credit that heís
honest enough to say this. Usually itís concealed. We should thank him for
telling us what we ought to know.
Well, there were other voices. Perhaps the most respected of living American
historians, Arthur Schlesinger, the day the bombs started falling on
Baghdad, published an article in the major press in which he recalled
President Rooseveltís words right after Pearl Harbour. Roosevelt called it a
ìdate that shall live in infamy.î And Schlesinger said that Roosevelt that
was right, today it is Americans who live in infamy, as we follow the
policies of imperial Japan. Thatís an accurate description. He also warned
that the global wave of sympathy for the United States after September the
11th is turning into a global wave of hatred of American arrogance and
militarism. And that description was borne out, as weíve seen, in the time
thatís followed.
It was also predicted right away that the invasion would increase the threat
of terror. Those predictions came from foreign intelligence agencies, from
independent analysts, and we just learned recently that the same prediction
was made by the highest US intelligence analysts, the national intelligence
estimate in January, 2003, just a few weeks before the invasion. Thatís what
they predicted, and thatís what happened. The following year, 2003, is the
worst year on record for suicide bombings. The full figures arenít in for
the following year. Iraq had its first suicide attacks since the 13th
century. Harvard Universityís main terrorism specialist, Jessica Stern,
wrote that the invasion turned Iraq into a ëterrorist haven.í A country
which wouldnít have been thought to have been involved in international
terrorism is now a terrorist haven, a center of terrorism. And thatís gone
on throughout the world.
On the anniversary of the invasion, railroad stations in the United States,
Grand Central Station in New York and others were being patrolled by heavily
armed police with submachine guns and flak jackets. That was an immediate
reaction to the worst terrorist atrocity in Europe just a couple of days
earlier, the bombing in Madrid which killed a couple hundred people. Shortly
after the Madrid bombing, Spain had an election and the electorate voted out
the government that had gone to war over the objection of most of the
population.
The Spaniards were very much condemned for having voted them out
of office. They were [accused] of appeasement, giving in to terror, and so
on. I didnít see anybody point out that the Spanish voters were voting for
the position held at that time by 70% of the American population. And it had
been the US majority opinion since shortly after the beginning of invasion.
They were not for pulling out troops but that the UN ought to take the lead
in security issues, reconstruction, and the transfer to a new government in
Iraq. Thereís a difference between Spain and the United States. In Spain,
people know what public opinion is. In the United States, you know it as
long as you carry out a research project.
Secondly, in Spain, you can vote on it. In the United States, itís
inconceivable that issue will arise in an election, as you can see in the
current electoral campaign. Those are important matters. They have to do
with a significant deterioration of the democratic culture, not just in the
United States, but in a good part of the west. The issues that are of prime
concern to people are simply excluded from the political arena. Those people
arenít supposed to be there, theyíre supposed to be obedient and quiet and
everything else.
This is a striking example, but hardly the only one: Thereís a curious
performance thatís been going on in the last couple of months in Washington,
in the media, in intellectual circles and so on. It was initiated by leaks
from the Bush administration, Paul OíNeil, Richard Clarke, and the others,
indicating that they had downgraded the war on terror in favour of a war on
Iraq. Thatís supposed to be very surprising. The only thing thatís very
surprising about those revelations is that anybodyís surprised by them. Itís
completely obvious. They invaded Iraq! That settles the question. They
invaded Iraq knowing that it was very likely to increase the threat of
terror, as it did. What more is there to discuss? I mean, that tells you
what their priorities are.
Furthermore, those priorities are entirely rational. Itís perfectly
understandable. Itís not hard to figure out why. Itís been known for years,
certainly since 1993, itís been known that thereís a risk of serious
terrorist acts in the United States that may kill thousands of Americans,
maybe more. After all, in 1993, there was an attempt to blow up the World
Trade Centre, which came very close to succeeding. Much more ambitious plans were just barely thwarted. These were carried out by people whose origins were in the Jihadis that were organized, trained, and armed by the CIA and its associates, and quite openly turned against the United States by the
early 90ís. Since then they went on to reach headlines. There was an
awareness that this was a serious terrorist threat. The technical literature
was full of discussions of it.
Nobody could predict that something was going
to happen on September 11th or that it would be exactly this, but that some
major terrorist act was likely to happen was not a surprise, and that it
might have very serious consequences just as itís anticipated today. Itís
just not important. It doesnít rank very high in importance as compared with
establishing the first stable military bases in what they hope would be a
dependent client state right at the heart of the worldís major energy
resources, a state which itself has the second largest oil reserves in the
world. [These reserves] have been considered ever since the 1940ís as what
the State Department called a ìstupendous source of strategic power and one
of the greatest material prizes in world history.î Ever since then a prime
element of US foreign policy has been to maintain control over it. How could
it be otherwise?
Notice whatís important is ìcontrolî not ìaccess.î If the US was running on
solar energy, the policy wouldnít change. The point is itís a stupendous
source of strategic power. It gives what Ruginsky recently called a
ìcritical leverageî over the Europe and Asian economies. Those have been the
primary economic rivals and threats to the United States since the Second
World War. They have to be kept under control. Those are the major
industrial societies and centres, even more so now. One of the ways of
keeping them under control is by keeping your finger on the flow of energy
to them. Thatís what most of the jockeying around Central Asia is about,
where the pipelines will go and so on. Controlling roughly 2/3 of the
worldís energy resources, thatís no small quest. Quite apart from its
ìstupendous source of strategic powerî and the ìcritical leverageî it gives
of others, itís perfectly true that itís an enormous imperial prize. One
history of the oil industry describes it as a source of profits ìbeyond the
dreams of avarice.î And theyíre supposed to go to US companies, maybe some
British companies if they play their role, but not to others.
Those are part of the reasons for establishing a major military presence
right at the heart of the major energy producing region. Iraq happens to be
particularly significant in this respect. For one thing, it happens to be
the only known area of the world where there are enormous energy resources
that are still untapped, in fact largely unexplored, and furthermore very
easily accessible. You donít have to dig through permafrost, or figure out
how to deal with the Alberta tar sands, or anything like that. You just
stick your finger in the ground, and the oil practically bubbles out.
Thereís nothing remotely like it. And furthermore, it was understood that
others are getting ahead of the US and its British client in this. The
French and the Russians had the inside track on dealing with it. They were
beginning to develop and open up the unexplored oil fields. That wonít do.
Thatís finished. The invasion, the US and a few British companies will gain
their ìprofits beyond the dreams of avariceî and the US will have ìcritical
leverageî thanks to its control of this ìstupendous source of strategic
power.î If Iraq can be brought under control, which is proving to be a
surprisingly difficult task.
Well, thereís plenty of other evidence that terror is not considered a
serious threat, as compared to the more serious issues, compared with other
priorities. All of this ought to be front-page headlines, in my opinion,
every day. Thereís nothing secret or obscure or difficult to detect about
any of this. Last December [congress] passed almost anonymously what they
call the Syria Accountability Act, that threatens Syria with all sorts of
penalties and so forth, unless it follows US orders. In fact those threats
were implemented in policies that Bush implemented a couple of months later.
Well, Syria is a major asset in the so-called War on Terror. It has been
providing intelligence, getting information, helping to detect and identify
Islamic radicals. But that has to be put off. Itís not important.
Technically, Syria is on the official list of states that sponsor terrorism,
but it hasnít been accused by the CIA or anyone of sponsoring terrorism for
about 15 years. And how seriously thatís taken, you can tell very easily.
Clinton made an offer to Syria that he would remove it from the list of
states sponsoring terrorism if Syria agreed to US plans as to how to settle
the Israel/Arab conflict. Well, Syria wanted its territory back so they
didnít accept it. So they stayed on the list of states that sponsor terror.
That tells you something about the priorities, that discipline and obedience
are far more significant than reducing terrorist threats.
If Syria had been removed from the list, that would have been the first time
anyone had been removed from the list since 1982. In 1982 the Reagan
administration removed a country from list of states sponsoring terrorism,
namely Iraq. They did that so that they could supply their friend Saddam
Hussein with needed aid, including substantial dual-use technology
technology which could be used to develop missiles, nuclear weapons,
biological agents, and so on. And they continued to do that. We caught a
little piece of the television news coming in, they found a mass grave up in
Northern Iraq, which I think is probably Kurds massacred in 1988. That shows
you what an awful guy Saddam Hussein was. But as usual, nobody pointed out
that if he goes to trial for that, there will be some people standing next
to him, like Ronald Reagan, George Bush, the British government, most of the
New Labour, on and on. They knew about it, but they just didnít do anything
about it because they didnít care. And they continued to supply him. That
had nothing to do with the Iran war, it continued after the Iraq-Iran war
was over. In fact they were kind enough to tell us why they were doing it.
The George Bush administration explained to congress that we had to keep
supplying our friend Saddam out of our responsibility to support US
exporters, and because it increases stability in the region. Stability means
following our orders. And they also added the usual political plate about
it, how it improved human rights. And that went right up to the invasion of
Kuwait. In fact it actually continued afterwards when the US and Britain
supported [Saddamís] crushing of the Shiíite rebellion.
But Iraq was indeed removed from the list of terrorist states in 1982 for
those reasons. When they were removed, there was a gap. So Cuba was added to the list of states sponsoring terrorism, presumably in recognition of the
terrorist war, that the United States has been carrying out against Cuba
since Kennedy, had escalated in the late 70ís to a real peak, with major
atrocities such as shooting from airplanes, killing 75 people, and all sorts
of other things. The terrorists responsible for that are living happily in
places like Florida. Remember, a core part of the Bush doctrine is that
states that harbour terrorists are the same as terrorist states and must be
treated accordingly. In any event, it still goes on. Cuba was added to the
list of terrorist states to replace Saddam, who was removed, and Syria was
kept on because Syria refused to accept Clintonís demands about how to deal
with the problems with Israel.
Well, thereís plenty of other evidence right in front of our eyes that
matters such as discipline, following orders, are ranked far higher than
terrorism. In fact, a couple of months ago, the Treasury department gave
congress its regular information about one of its offices, the office of
Foreign Assets Monitoring. Thatís an office that is devoted to monitoring
suspicious transfers of funds internationally. Thatís a core part of the
so-called war on terror. And indeed, they do have officials who report to
congress who are monitoring fund transfers that are suspected of being
related to Al-Qaeda or Saddam Hussein. There are four employees. There are
almost six times that many devoted to inspecting possible invasions of the
US embargo against Cuba. That tells you something about priorities. And itís
an illegal embargo, itís been declared illegal by every imaginable body.
But it doesnít make any difference. And itís not Bush, this goes way back.
But they also gave figures on the monitoring of suspicious fund transfers
since 1990. From 1990-2003, they said that there had been 93 investigations
of terrorist-related or Iraq-related fund transfers, with $9000 in fines,
and 11,000 investigations with $8 million in fines for suspicion of evading
the US embargo against Cuba. That tells you something about priorities.
We know the reasons for that. The US is a very free country, there are
plenty of documents available, and we know very well from the Kennedy and
Johnson years that the main problem posed by Cuba, as the State Department
and the CIA described it, was the ìsuccessful defianceî of US policies,
going back to the Munroe doctrine of the 1820ís. That was the policy that
the US will dominate the hemisphere. And we donít tolerate any defiance of
that. So, forty years of terrorist war, legal and economic embargo, massive
inspection of attempts by others to evade it, all of that is far more
important than inspecting funds that might be involved in financing
Al-Qaeda, as these numbers illustrate.
The fact that the Reagan administration downgraded the threat of terror in
favour of their higher priorities was nothing new. The threat of successful
defiance is a very serious one. If you donít understand it, ask your
favourite mafia don how he reacts if some local storekeeper doesnít pay his
protection money. You donít just take the money. You make an example of it.
Successful defiance is extremely dangerous in a system of order thatís run
like a Mafia. In fact itís not a bad description of world order, Iím sorry
to say.
Well, turning to terror, thereís a very broad consensus among intelligence
agencies, including the government intelligence and independent experts, on
how to deal with this problem of terrorism, how to reduce it. Incidentally I
should mention that Iím using the term of ëterrorí here in its most
technical sense, the sense in which itís universally used in Western
discourse, meaning the terror that they carry out against us, not the terror
that we carry out against them. Thatís not terror. Iíll keep to that
conventional usage. And there is a consensus on how to react to it if you
want to increase it, or if you want to deal with it somehow.
Actually, the Iraq invasion is a perfect example of what to do if you want
to escalate the degree of terror. As I mentioned, it was undertaken with the
expectation that it would increase the threat of terror. And thatís pretty
normal. Violence quite typically elicits violence in response. Everyone
understands it, including intelligence agencies. Take Al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda and
bin Laden were virtually unknown. In fact Al-Qaeda is not even mentioned in
US intelligence records, and bin Laden was considered some minor financier
until 1998. What put them on the map was Clintonís bombing of Afghanistan
and the Sudan. That lead to a very rapid increase in recruitment and
financing for Al-Qaeda, and it made bin Laden into kind of a symbol for
Muslims of the world. The bombing of Sudan, in particular, established close
relations between Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, which had previously been cool
in comparison. The bombing in Sudan is completely ignored in the west. If
you said that Al-Qaeda bombed half the pharmaceutical supplies in Canada,
somebody would probably notice. And if Canada was a poor country under
embargo, so that people couldnít get drugs, so maybe tens of thousands of
people die, people might notice it even more. And to us it doesnít matter
because weíre doing it to poor Africans so who cares? But it does matter to
other people. Not everyone reacts the same way the privileged and the
powerful do. In fact you can learn a lot about ourselves from the null
reaction of these events in the West, as well as the hysterical denials and
tantrums if theyíre brought up. It tells us a lot about ourselves that is
useful to know.
Well, the next major contribution to the growth and expansion to Al-Qaeda
was the bombing of Afghanistan, which lead to a sharp increase in the
recruitment and financing, and made bin Laden even more of a major figure.
The bombing was undertaken without any real pretext. In fact eight months
after the bombing, the head of the FBI testified to the Senate, after the
most intensive intelligence inquiry in history, that they still didnít know
who was responsible for 9-11. They said they believed that the plot might
have been hatched in Afghanistan, but was probably implemented and financed
in the United Arab Emirates and in Europe. That was eight months after the
bombing. The bombing was also undertaken over the strong and vocal
objections of many of the most important Afghan opponents of the Taliban,
including the US favourites. And it did lead to a sharp increase in
recruitment and enthusiasm for whatís called the ìcosmic struggle between
good and evil.î Thatís the rhetoric shared by bin Laden and Bush.
Actually, in the last couple of minutes Iíve been mostly paraphrasing
closely the best book on Al-Qaeda by Jason Birk, British journalist/analyst.
He points out, correctly, that every use of force is another small victory
for bin Laden. And that is the general conclusion very widely shared among
intelligence agencies and specialists. We see it right in front of us all
the time. The case of Muqtada Al-Sadr, which I mentioned is a clear example.
Or take, say, Fallujah. Thereís another attack in the works, in fact itís
been under bombardment for the last number of months, but last April there
was a major marine assault on Fallujah, which killed…thousands of people.
That practically set off a conflagration all over the country. That attack
was an example of how violence elicits violence. The attack on Fallujah was
in reaction to the brutal murder of four US military contractors four days
earlier a couple of days earlier. Another case of violence eliciting
violence. But thatís not the end of the story either. Those four military
contractors were killed by a previously unknown group called the Brigade of
Martyrs of Sheikh Yassin. They were avenging the murder of a quadriplegic
Muslim cleric a couple of days earlier, right outside of a mosque in Gaza,
by whatís called in the West an ìIsraeli attack.î But itís not an Israeli
attack. Itís a US-Israeli attack. Itís an attack by US airplanes, US
helicopters, piloted by Israeli pilots. The US sends them helicopters
knowing full well that they are not for any defensive purpose, they are for
the purpose of actions like the carrying out assassinations, like the
assassination of Sheikh Yassin and half a dozen or so bystanders who just
happened to be there. In the previous six months, according to Israeli press
reports, there have been 50 such murders, murders of suspects by mostly
US-supplied equipment bought for that purpose, along with 80 or 90
bystanders.
Well, none of this enters the annals of state terrorism. But thatís because
we are agents of it. Since weíre doing it, our clients are doing it, itís
not terrorism. But others donít necessarily look at it that way. In this
particular case, the assassination of Sheikh Yassin lead directly to the
killing of the four military contractors, which lead in turn to the attack
on Fallujah, which threatened to blow up the country.
Well those two examples are unfortunately quite typical. Itís true that
violence can still elicit greater violence. As to reducing terror or the
threat of terror, thereís also a broad consensus on that. Itís a two-pronged
affair. The terrorists themselves are carrying out criminal acts, thereís no
doubt. And they should be dealt with like people are dealt with when they
carry out criminal acts, and thatís with police work. Police investigations,
police apprehensions, international if required, and fair trials. Thatís the
way you deal with criminal acts if you care about them.
The terrorists themselves regard themselves as a vanguard. Theyíre trying to
mobilize the population which may dislike them, in fact they hate them, they
fear them. But [the population] does recognize that thereís something just
about their cause and therefore the population can be mobilized. And we can
help the terrorist vanguard mobilize their reservoir of support by doing
what they want, namely carrying out violent acts which will help them
mobilize the sympathy, support, recruitment, and financing by demonstrating
that their message is correct and reliable. Thatís the way to escalate it if
itís in our interest.
Or we can reduce the terrorist threat by the obvious means by paying
attention to the grievances of this mass of people who they are trying to
mobilize. If you look, those grievances are often quite legitimate and ought
to be dealt with totally independently of any connection to terror. If you
happen to be interested in reducing terror, thatís the way you reduce the
threat. Again, there is overwhelming consensus on this from intelligence
agencies, independent experts and by the recent 9-11 commission. If you read
this report carefully, they point out, kind of quietly, that bin Ladenís
calls reach an audience because of anger over US policies ranging from Iraq
to Palestine to Americaís support for their repressive regimes. Thatís
correct. Thatís how it finds an audience. The 9-11 report isnít telling us
anything new. In fact theyíre just repeating what the National Security
Council told President Eisenhower in 1958. It was then a secret, it was
classified for years. Eisenhower raised the question of why there is what he
called ìa campaign of hatred against usî in the Arab world. And the answer
had in fact been supplied by the National Security Council analysis back
then. It said that there was anger in the Arab world because they perceive
us of supporting brutal and repressive regimes and blocking democracy and
development, and doing it because of our interest in controlling their
energy supplies. And they said that perception was correct, you have to
believe them because thatís important. In later years, a number of other
things were added, like Israel/Palestine, or like the Iraq sanctions which
were killing hundreds of thousands of people. [Those] were a huge issue in
the Arab world. So yes, the 9-11 commission is correct. There is an
audience, and bin Ladenís calls find receptive years even among people who
hate and fear him.
The transformation of the American military, now thatís a major threat, in
this case a threat to survival. The military analysts that I was quoting in
the Journal of the American Academy were not exaggerated when they said it
might lead to ìultimate doom.î We can see it happening in front of our eyes.
Early this year, the Russians had their first major military exercise in
about 20 years. They displayed newly developed offensive weapons,
nuclear-typed missiles, and more sophisticated weaponry aimed at the United
States and they pointed out exactly why. They said that this was in response
to an increase in US aggressiveness and militarism, which they regarded
correctly as a threat. So theyíre going to react to it. Theyíll react to it
in the only way they can, by increasing their armaments and military
capacity. According to US analysts, theyíve now tripled military
expenditures since the Bush administration came in, in response to the
transformation. Theyíve officially adopted Bushís first strike policy,
theyíre placing their weapons on automated response, which means computer
controlled response. But we know our own systems have given hundreds of
errors every year. Our systems allow three minutes for human intervention if
a computer analysis warns that a missile attack is coming. It happens all
the time, false alarms. Three minutes warning. Three minutes time to
intervene and stop it. And there have been plenty of such cases, literally
hundreds each year. The Russian systems are far less sophisticated; theyíre
also deteriorating with the collapse of the Soviet economy. Itís virtually
asking for an accidental nuclear war, which will be the end. Once that
happens, it will in fact escalate.
Furthermore, the US is forcing the Russians to move missiles all over
country, to transfer them from one place to another over its huge territory
as its systems deteriorate quickly. And theyíre travelling in trains,
un-guarded trains right across Central Russia. It wouldnít take much for
Chechen rebels to pick them up sometime. And then you have the ultimate
catastrophe. And theyíre doing that and US strategic analysts warn about
this publicly in reaction to the increasing threat. Now partly this is the
increasing threat of new nuclear weapons programs, we call them low yield,
which they see as aimed at Russian command bunkers hidden deep in the
mountains just like the US ones are, which would destroy their deterrent
capacity.
[The Russians] are also reacting to the militarization of space. The one
component of the National Security Strategy, which is much more dangerous
than those that have been discussed, has not been much discussed. Right
after the National Security Strategy was announced in September 2002, the
air-force space command came out with its plans for the coming years, and
they proposed a plan of implementing the National Security Strategy by
moving from, in their words, ìfrom control of space for military purposes to
ownership of space for military purposes.î Thatís consistent with the
National Security Strategy. No potential threat ever can be tolerated. It
has to be destroyed right away. So they have to own space for military
purposes. Actually the UN Atomic Commission has been deadlocked for years
because of the US refusal to go along with the rest of the world, lead in
this case by China, to live up to the Outer Space Treaty, which limits Space
for peaceful purposes. Clinton wanted control of space for military
purposes, weíve now moved up to ownership, which means instant engagement
anywhere with highly lethal weapons attacking, with virtually no notice,
anywhere in the world, which will be under tight surveillance. So, you can
tell from US command bunkers that a car is crossing the street in Istanbul
or whatever.
That essentially puts the world, or any part of it, under the threat of
instant destruction. Foreign intelligence agencies can read these studies
just as well as you can or I can, right on the internet. It doesnít take any
great genius to find them. And they react. The Russians are reacting, and
the Chinese are now reacting. China is the one country with nuclear weapons
that has not yet developed an offensive nuclear capacity. A very tiny one,
about twenty vintage, 1970ís-era missiles. Theyíve just announced that
theyíre upgrading their missile force, making them more advanced and lethal.
They will be planning a high tech offensive nuclear capacity within the next
couple of years. And they also say just what the Russians do, that this is a
reaction to US aggressiveness and militarism.
One of the threats that concern them greatly is whatís called Missile
Defence. Defence sounds polite. But on both sides, strategic analysts agree
that Missile Defence is a first-strike weapon. Thatís the way itís
understood. In fact, US analysts describe it in the same words. They say
itís a sword, not a shield. It provides space for aggressive military
reaction on the assumption that they will not face retaliation. Thatís
exactly how itís understood and they respond to it in exactly the same way
as every analyst predicts. In fact how theyíre going to react is well known
in the way the US reacted in the documents that have recently been
declassified about a year ago about how the US reacted when Russia put up a
very small missile defence system around Moscow, a very tiny missile defence
system. The US reacted by rapidly increasing its offensive nuclear capacity,
not only to destroy that system but to overwhelm it, to wipe out the radar
systems anywhere, and so on. Are the Chinese going to react any differently
to what they regard as a major threat, which Canada may help participate in?
These things are going on right now. The first stages of the so-called
missile defence system are supposed to be in place right about now. Well, if
China increases its capacity, then we will too. Pakistan will react to that.
Weíre off and running. Thereís also a huge threat from West Asia.
Iíll just get back to Iraq for a moment. As you know, all the pretexts for
the war have collapsed so nobody talks much about them anymore, except Fox
news and Wall Street Journal editorials. As they collapsed, new pretexts
were put in place. And the most recent one, which is now considered the
standard, is what the liberal press calls Bushís ìmessianic visionî to bring
democracy to Iraq and the Middle East. That was announced with great fanfare
about a year ago. And the reaction is very instructive. It tells us a lot
about ourselves. The reaction was virtually 100% acceptance that this was
the goal. Whatís the evidence for it? Well, Iíll leave that as a research
project for you. Youíll find that the sole evidence for it is that our
leader declared it. That became the reason. There are plenty of critics. The
critics say itís a noble and inspiring vision, but itís beyond their reach,
they havenít got the means for it, Iraqi culture is too backward to be able
to make this dramatic advance, and we ought to be more realistic. And thatís
the critics [in the mainstream press].
Actually thereís one sector of opinion that disagrees, namely Iraqis. At the
same time that Washington released this messianic vision, the Washington
Post did happen to release a poll of people in Baghdad, quietly in the back
pages, in which they were asked why they thought the US invaded Iraq. And
there were some who agreed with approximately 100% of western intellectual
opinion, namely 1%. 1% said the goal was to bring democracy. Most of the
rest said the opposite, to take our resources, to use Iraq to organize the
region in their interests, and so on. Actually their reaction was a little
more sophisticated. If you look at the whole poll, 1% said the goal was to
bring democracy. 60% said US wants democracy in Iraq. But they explained
that thatís not a contradiction. The US wants democracy, but will not allow
Iraqis to make their own choices.
And thatís correct. Thatís the way democracy is imposed on the world. You
guys can have democracy as long as you do what we tell you.
And they donít need instructions in US history to learn about that. They see
it enough in their own history Notice that Iraqis aspire to the same
ìmessianic visionî thatís lauded here. And the Iraqis agree with about 100%
of western opinion that there is a cultural problem in achieving it. But
they see the problem here, not there. It is a western problem. Westerners
will not permit such a dramatic change as a democratic, sovereign regime in
Iraq. And theyíve got plenty of evidence of that, unfortunately.
Well, if the Iraqis are right, and the primary problem is here, not there,
then thatís actually a hopeful sign, because here we can actually do
something about it. We happen to be free and very privileged, which means
there are plenty of opportunities. We donít have to wait for China to lead a
coalition of peace loving states to stop the violent and aggressive western
power
It will require a re-analysis and indeed a sharp change in global
policies that are very deeply rooted in the institutions along their
historical record. If thatís the direct conception, in my opinion it
basically is, it is a hopeful sign. But it means that we have choices and
those are fateful choices, not just for the fate of Iraqis, but far beyond.
And at this stage in human civilization, the choices reach as far as literal
survival.