I have long believed in the importance of engagement with ideas and the exchange of ideas and analyses through debate. Our political culture has changed greatly since my early experiences with this process in the late 1960s. Today, it seems to me that too many people shun debate and are happy to be reinforced by group-think and their own sense of righteousness rather than be open to challenge. It really boils down to individuals stopping thinking and finding comfort in a kind of religious satisfaction.
It is telling, I think, as to who seeks debate, who is willing to be open to challenge and follow it through, and who is not. In the following email correspondence between Arthur Dent (formerly Albert Langer) and Noam Chomsky in 2002 and 2003, it is very clear as to who fits which category.
This document contains:
1. First message to Noam Chomsky
2. Noam Chomsky’s reply .
3. Long explanation of why he thinks that Bush has adopted a policy very close to the one Chomsky proposed in his article Drain The Swamps And There Will Be No More Mosquitoes (September 2002)
4. Noam Chomsky’s very short response.
5. Full text of Chomsky’s article.
6. Full text of article May Day – it’s the festival of the distressed
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First message to Chomsky:
Hi,
Some comments comparing your article on “Draining the Swamps” with the
position George W Bush switched to more recently, are in an article I
published in “The Australian” (national serious mainstream broadsheet) today
(2003-05-01):
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/printpage/0,5942,6362012,00.html
(NB the above url no longer works. The article is included below (scroll down). Alternatively you could open it in a separate window by right clicking here)
Apart from the courtesy notification, I was hoping you might be interested
in further discussion/debate.
Although you have clearly identified with the peace movement and, in my
view, adopted a very different position from your earlier article, it seems
to me that there is still a subtle difference between your analysis on Iraq
and many other articles I have seen on Znet.
Perhaps a debate could clarify the nature of those differences?
Finally, if you happen to know of any other “pro-war left” (as opposed to
pro-war liberal) web sites I would be grateful for any links.
Seeya
2. CHOMSKY’S RESPONSE
—–Original Message—–
From: Noam Chomsky [mailto:chomsky@MIT.EDU]
Sent: Sunday, May 04, 2003 12:12 AM
Subject: Re: Draining the swamp reply
Thanks for sending your article. I’ve received 100s of letters in response to the article to which you refer, some of which misunderstood it, but nothing remotely like this. I can only assume that you have not actually seen the article. I’ll quote the relevant parts.
The quote from Harkabi is as follows:
Twenty years ago, the former head of Israeli military intelligence, Yehoshaphat Harkabi, also a leading Arabist, made a point that still holds true. “To offer an honourable solution to the Palestinians respecting their right to self-determination: that is the solution of the problem of terrorism,” he said. “When the swamp disappears, there will be no more mosquitoes.”
The reference to the campaign of hatred is as follows:
“The president is not the first to ask: “Why do they hate us?” In a staff discussion 44 years ago, President Eisenhower described “the campaign of hatred against us [in the Arab world], not by the governments but by the people”. His National Security Council outlined the basic reasons: the US supports corrupt and oppressive governments and is “opposing political or economic progress” because of its interest in controlling the oil resources of the region. Post-September 11 surveys in the Arab world reveal that the same reasons hold today, compounded with resentment over specific policies. Strikingly, that is even true of privileged, western-oriented sectors in the region.”
The words you quote state — clearly and unambiguously — that the way to reduce the threat of terror is to change the policies that Eisenhower and his staff identified, and the subsequent policies that are identified. That is, the US should stop supporting corrupt and oppressive government and blocking political and economic progress because of its interest in controlling Near East oil, and should stop its support for Israeli terror and integration of the occupied territories, and its murderous sanctions that are devastating the people of Iraq while strengthening Saddam Hussein.
I am sure you agree that the only relation between this and Bush’s policies is the relation of flat-out contradiction.
Once you look at the actual article to which you refer, I trust you will agree that a published retraction is in order.
I’m afraid I can’t answer your last question because of its assumptions, which are based on total misunderstanding.
Noam Chomsky
3. REPLY TO CHOMSKY:
Thanks for your prompt email response (May 4).
I had read your original article (“Drain the Swamps..”) before I wrote mine. My understanding when I read it agrees with the summary in your email quoted below. I agree that your article did “clearly and unambiguously” advocate that:
“…the way to reduce the threat of terror is to change the policies that Eisenhower and his staff identified, and the subsequent policies that are identified. That is, the US should stop supporting corrupt and oppressive government and blocking political and economic progress because of its interest in controlling Near East oil, and should stop its support for Israeli terror and integration of the occupied territories, and its murderous sanctions that are devastating the people of Iraq while strengthening Saddam Hussein.”
If you believe readers of my article might gain some other impression of your views, you are welcome to include this email with the above acknowledgement in any request you make to ‘The Australian’ for a correction or clarification.
For my part I do not agree that a published retraction is in order as I do not believe my article would give any other impression. Further discussion/debate/clarification certainly is in order.
In my view the real disagreement between us is expressed by your statement:
“I am sure you agree that the only relation between this and Bush’s policies is the relation of flat-out contradiction.”
In fact I do not agree.
You must get a lot of email, and have reasonable defences against getting dragged into pointless disputes with random nutters. Before assuming I am one, I hope you will carefully consider the points below:
My position is that Bush has now switched to a policy very similar to the one you advocated both in your orginal article and as summarized by you above. I stated this “clearly and unambiguously” in my article as follows:
“Stripped of the ‘God bless America’ stuff, the US President’s case now goes like this:
‘If we devote our resources to draining the swamps, addressing the roots of the “campaigns of hatred”, we can not only reduce the threats we face, but also live up to ideals that we profess and that are not beyond reach if we choose to take them seriously.’
Actually, those words are from Noam Chomsky two days before Bush’s UN speech on September 10, 2002.”
I made it clear that I was asserting that it was not a case of you endorsing Bush’s policy, but of Bush switching to a policy similar to yours, as follows:
“But if Bush had adopted Chomsky’s position so early, that would have prevented congressional authorisation. Such a position threatens to destabilise despotic, reactionary regimes everywhere. But those in the US foreign policy establishment have devoted their entire careers to supporting the most corrupt tyrannies in the Middle East, in the name of ‘stability’.”
The above also explicitly highlights that I am saying that traditional US policy has been to support the corrupt tyrannies and that Bush’s policy reverses direction. Clearly you are entitled to disagree as to whether Bush has changed direction.
But only Bush could claim to be misrepresented and ask for a retraction. You cannot ask for a retraction while reaffirming that you do in fact, as is well known, advocate a policy opposed to the traditional US foreign policy line of supporting corrupt tyrannies, as I implied above.
Again, I made it clear that despite what I believe should follow logically from your analysis, you in fact opposed the war:
“For Chomsky, ‘draining the swamps’ apparently didn’t include killing people and blowing things up. Fortunately, Bush is made of sterner stuff.”
“Both Bush and Chomsky know the US cannot be secure from medievalist terrorist mosquitoes while the Middle East remains a swamp. But Bush also knows that modernity grows out of the barrel of a gun.”
I emphasized the depth of the switch I claimed had occurred in Bush’s policy as follows:
“That is a genuinely Left case for a revolutionary war of liberation, such as has occurred in Iraq. The pseudo-Left replies: ‘That’s illegal.'”
“Well, of course revolutionary war is illegal. Legal systems are created by revolutions, not revolutions by legal systems.”
Finally I highlighted my view that Bush’s new policy includes acceptance that the US “should stop its support for Israeli terror and integration of the occupied territories” as follows:
“The next logical step for the new policy is to establish a viable Palestinian state. Bush has put himself in a position where he can and must take that step. Naturally, he will not admit to the enormous strategic and policy retreat that such a step implies, so he has preceded it with enough triumphalist rhetoric to make even the Fox News team look queasy.”
Thus my position is that Bush’s actual policy now is the same as the policy you advocated in September last year – and which you summarized for me in your email. Namely Bush agrees that:
“the US should stop supporting corrupt and oppressive government and blocking political and economic progress because of its interest in controlling Near East oil, and should stop its support for Israeli terror and integration of the occupied territories, and its murderous sanctions that are devastating the people of Iraq while strengthening Saddam Hussein.”
Perhaps you find that view of Bush’s actual policy so bizarre that you cannot imagine I would be saying it?
Nevertheless, I am.
Of course I am not claiming that Bush admits that US policy was aimed at blocking political and economic progress because of US interest in controlling Near East oil, nor that he would endorse such terms as “Israeli terror” or “murderous sanctions”.
I am simply saying that Bush has changed policy, and done so for essentially the reasons you advocate. There should be nothing inconceivable about that. After all at one time US policy was to escalate the war in Vietnam until a US victory. Nixon changed that policy to withdrawing all troops and accepting defeat, but describing defeat as “peace with honour”. He did that by redefining the goal of the war as “return of all American Prisoners of War” and then rallying the American right to achieve that goal (which was won very simply by signing the peace agreement and withdrawing the troops).
I suggest something similar is going on now. Bush has redefined America’s goals in the middle east as being to promote democracy and has rallied the right by linking that to defeating terrorism. He doesn’t need to worry about the left because we’ve always been in favor of promoting democracy just as we were in favor of Vietnam defeating the US aggression.
He doesn’t need to worry about the pseudo-Left because they are just bizarre (the anti-war movement may have appeared to be a roaring flash flood that rose much faster and extended much wider than the Vietnam war movement but it was in fact also much more shallow and immediately turned into a puddle).
Even before September 11, Israeli goals were being redefined as an “end to Palestinian terrorism” rather than “Greater Israel”, as preparation for accepting defeat of the occupation and creation of a Palestinian state. That has now become mainstream. A victory against Palestinian terrorism can of course be achieved just as easily as the return of American POWs was achieved in Vietnam – by simply withdrawing from the occupied territories etc.
Instead of simply dismissing my view as inconceivable, you do need to consider and reply to it.
First, I’m not the only person on the left drawing similar conclusions about changes in US policy. It is also, less explicitly, part of the background to the collapse of the mass anti-war movement and the somewhat bizarre debates about whether it would be “irresponsible” to call for an immediate end to the occupation.
While you might be able to get away with simply brushing me off, the view of Bush’s policy that you seem to have just dismissed as inconceivable is going to keep coming up and will need to be debated eventually.
For example KADEK/PKK (the Kurdish Workers Party) has several thousand troops in Kurdistan, has been actively involved in armed struggle with the Turkish government and was originally opposed to the US attack on Iraq. Its May Day statement(same date as my article) included the following:
“Middle East countries have been suffering from severe national and social problems but are now involved in a new process which started with the war on Iraq. Those severe problems are forcing the regimes to improve freedom and human rights. The prerequisites required for a solution are available now. The main characteristics of the new process are that the democratic unity issue involves both war and peaceful efforts. Although concrete results have not been achieved yet, as the Iraq case proves, if diplomatic and political methods, peaceful efforts, do not resolve the problem then the only option is war.”
“Talking about peace, without offering a solution does not make any sense to people of the Middle East, who are suffering from severe problems. The collapse of the Iraqi regime will serve the interests of the society, and lead to social improvement.”
“The sovereign regimes in all Middle East countries have lost their capacities of solving the problems. In spite of colossally rich natural resources, making available opportunities to develop, those regimes could not solve the problems, but on the contrary have exacerbated them. This is the main reason for lack of developments in democracy, freedom, and human rights. The existing regimes reply to peoples’ demands for democracy, freedoms, and human rights by increasing pressures. Local people cannot benefit from their countries’ rich resources, but suffer from poverty, hunger and poor socio-economic living conditions. In spite of all this, the regimes refuse to change, do not reply the democratic change and transformation efforts and this will require their removal.”
[…]
“Whether the intervention in Iraq will succeed or not depends on the development of democracy, freedom, and human rights. The more improvements are achieved in these human values the more the US intervention in Iraq will succeed. Setting up the kind of regimes in continuity with the past will lead to chaos.”
“Therefore, the only option for the US should be to support democratic regimes. The wider dimension of the problem is the necessity of democratic change and transformation imposed upon the regimes within the region, which is the only option in order prevent war and conflict. Radical democratic reforms will prevent war.” […]
Note that KADEK/PKK is saying “The more improvements are achieved in these human values the more the US intervention in Iraq will succeed” – directly opposite to the line you have been taking. Of course they can be completely wrong, just as I can. But so can you be wrong and you certainly aren’t going to prove you are right just by saying “I am sure you agree”!
Next, note that your summary of your position is “clearly and unambiguously” advocated by former CIA Director James Woolsey, one of the leading proponents of the war in Iraq:
From his Washington Post article “Objective: Democracy“, Tuesday, November 27, 2001; Page A13:
[…] “This ought to be enough to make us call into question some of the European-generated ‘truths’ about another region, the Mideast, that have generally guided our conduct there for the past 80 years: that Arabs and Muslims have no aptitude for democracy, that we are well-advised to stay in bed with corrupt rulers — occasionally changing them if they seem to threaten, especially, our access to oil — and that the general rule should be: better the devil we know than the devil we don’t.”
“We have, on the whole, followed this European conceptual lead, and it has brought us Sept. 11, disdain and hatred. Only in Afghanistan, and in Iran, where we are perceived to be at odds with the repressive regime, do the demonstrating crowds chant ‘U-S-A.'”
“One of these days we’re going to get the picture. It has been the received wisdom at various times in the 20th century that Germans, Japanese, Koreans, Russians and Chinese would never be able to manage democracy. Yet from Berlin to Taipei, people seem to have figured out how to make it work. And no democracy threatens us, for the very good reason that, unlike dictators, democracies turn to war last, not first. And no democracy consciously harbors terrorists or encourages them to attack us.”
“The Mideast does present a special problem. Outside Israel and secular Turkey, the governments of the region comprise no democracies but rather vulnerable autocracies and pathological predators. Some of the autocracies have launched reforms and may evolve toward constitutional monarchies with parliaments and the rule of law — Jordan and Bahrain, for example — if a predator doesn’t get them first. Other autocracies, such as Saudi Arabia, seem mired in self-destructive behavior: spending vast sums to promote a whole set of domestic and foreign institutions, such as Saudi and Pakistani schools, that build hatred against both us and the modern world and that will, in time, undermine their own rule.”
“Many in the West see hatred and conclude that the people of the Muslim and Arab worlds are our enemies. They could not be more wrong. If we continue to follow the European paradigm — as, tragically, the first Bush administration did in the spring of 1991, when it failed to back the Iraqi resistance’s rebellion against Saddam — we will continue to be hated both by predator governments and by a vocal minority in the streets of the autocracies. Our only sound strategy is to take the side of the people against the predators and, albeit less urgently, the autocrats as well.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A19477-2001Nov26?language=printer
Woolsey describes existing US policy as “staying in bed” with, or “tolerating” corrupt tyrannies rather than actively “supporting” them.
Also he bizarrely describes this policy, as “European” instead of using your presumably tongue in cheek phrase “live up to ideals that we profess”.
The policy recommendation as to how to reduce the threat of terrorist attacks from the Middle East is however, utterly clear and entirely the same as yours – “take the side of the people against (their oppressors, whether anti-US or pro-US regimes)”.
The only difference is that “take the side of the people” is rather stronger than “stop supporting” the oppressors”, and leads directly to support for a revolutionary war.
Incidentally, as well as describing US policy in terms of access to oil, Woolsey also describes the Baath regime as “fascist” in the same way that I do:
From JINSA Online, June 04, 2002.
The following interview with James Woolsey appeared on Insight Magaizine’s website on May 13, 2002.
Mr. Woolsey is a member of JINSA’s Board of Advisors and was Director of Central Intelligence from 1993 until 1995.
[…]
Insight: If the United States topples Saddam, what kind of regime will replace him?”
JW: That’s the right question for those folks in the U.S. government who might sponsor coups! But for those of us who want democracy to flourish in Iraq, there’s only one answer: whomever the Iraqi people choose. Mideast scholar Bernard Lewis is absolutely right – Iraq is one of the Arab states most suited to democracy. It has a well-educated populace and is far less tribally diverse or divisive than a number of other nations. Iraq also possesses great oil wealth. But, first, we need to de-Ba’ath the country as the U.S. and her allies de-Nazified Germany. Our role as Americans should be to assist the Iraqi nation in establishing new democratic institutions. Then, as good partners, we should stand back and let the Iraqi people decide who will rule their nation.
Insight: What is the Ba’ath Party?”
JW: It is a despotic organization modeled after the fascist regimes of Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy. Essentially, Ba’athists are modern-day fascists. Indeed, among some circles in the Mideast, there is much admiration for German fascism of the 1930s.
Insight: How do you bring about regime change in the Mideast, yet avoid catastrophic upheaval?
JW: For the last 40 or 50 years we have tolerated Mideast tyrants because of the U.S. thirst for oil. Of the 22 Arab states in the region, not one is a democracy. The U.S. must rid the Mideast of its tyrants, beginning with the most horrible of predators, Saddam. As we stay the course in Afghanistan, eradicating the Taliban and al-Qaeda infrastructures, other autocrats in the region will realize the U.S. means business. In time, the region will progress toward democracy.
Insight: How do you dispel the notion that the West must coddle these regimes?”
JW: In 1945, a lot of people in the nation’s capital said Germany and Japan never would progress toward democracy. They also said nations like South Korea and even Russia would never become democracies. Yet these nations proved to be able to govern themselves. Spain, Portugal and Chile also were ruled by dictators. Today they are democracies. In 1914, there were not more than 10 democracies in the world; today there are more than 120.
The Mideast, however, remains a part of the world untouched by democracy, except for Israel and Turkey. The region systematically produces terrorists, weapons of mass destruction, autocrats and dictators.
Dictators start wars. They seek out external enemies. More often than not, they escalate conflict beyond their own borders to distract internal suspicions of the illegitimacy of their regimes. In the case of Iraq, Saddam invaded Iran in 1980, just one year after coming formally to power.
Democracies, on the other hand, use force as a last resort because they are responsive to the wishes of their citizens. If we make it clear that we are determined to bring democracy to this part of the world, it will encourage hundreds of millions of decent people in the Mideast. For us to win this war the entire face of the Mideast must change. But, first, all this hinges on our success in bringing down Saddam.
http://www.jinsa.org/articles/print.html/documentid/1494
Again, while it would be easy to wax sarcastic about the last paragraphs, and the role of the USA in escalating conflict beyond its borders, the fact remains that Woolsey has recognized the same policy imperatives that you pointed out and is simply presenting them in language that can appeal to fellow senior officials of US imperialism.
Would you agree that Woolsey is indeed seriously advocating a policy that “the US should stop supporting corrupt and oppressive government and blocking political and economic progress because of its interest in controlling Near East oil“?
If so, an assertion that Bush has also accepted this policy, and that it is actual rather than merely declaratory, should be considered seriously rather than merely dismissed as inconceivable.
The point is of course that nobody familiar with the Middle East could possibly reach any other conclusions, when studying the question of how to respond to September 11, even though they might have an interest in presenting those conclusions in a more apologetic way than you do.
It is difficult to imagine how any US imperialist policy making group reviewing US policy in the light of September 11 could possibly avoid advising that supporting Islamist terrorism hadn’t been such a good idea, supporting Baath fascism hadn’t been such a good idea, supporting the House of Saud isn’t a good idea, supporting “Greater Israel” isn’t a good idea and it’s way past time to drain the swamps.
As you noted in “Wars of Terror” on 30 April:
“In serious scholarship, at least, it is recognized that “Unless the social, political, and economic conditions that spawned Al Qaeda and other associated groups are addressed, the United States and its allies in Western Europe and elsewhere will continue to be targeted by Islamist terrorists.” 13″
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=11&ItemID=3543
Given that, why on earth should we assume the real, as opposed to the declared conclusions of US policy makers differ from those reached by serious scholarship?
(Incidentally, the copy at the above URL appears to be broken as it ends in mid-sentence. Please let me know when it is fixed. I noticed that almost every paragraph from “Draining the Swamps” is expanded in “Wars of Terror” and am curious to see what happened to the concluding paragraph I quoted in my article, in the light of recent shifts in US rhetoric.)
Finally, although Bush stuck rigidly to the “Saddam must disarm” line right up until the last minute, this has now taken a back seat to more or less open explanations of the new policy.
As mentioned in my article, Bush presents the new line with lots of “God bless America” rhetoric as a triumphant reaffirmation of American values rather than an admission of defeat and retreat. He is able to get away with that precisely because of the stand taken by the anti-war movement.
Instead of taking credit for having opposed the criminal and disasterous policy that brought “Sept. 11, disdain and hatred” long before Woolsey, you allow Bush to present the adoption of your views as a triumph for US imperialism!
Unlike Woolsey, Bush needs to present his declaratory policy less clearly and unambiguously than either Woolsey or your summary of it in your email to me.
Nevertheless, here’s an example (from February 26, 2003), to show that Bush is indeed saying things that sound very similar to the words I quoted from your article:
[…] A liberated Iraq can show the power of freedom to transform that vital region, by bringing hope and progress into the lives of millions. America’s interests in security, and America’s belief in liberty, both lead in the same direction: to a free and peaceful Iraq. (Applause.)
[…]
There was a time when many said that the cultures of Japan and Germany were incapable of sustaining democratic values. Well, they were wrong. Some say the same of Iraq today. They are mistaken. (Applause.) The nation of Iraq — with its proud heritage, abundant resources and skilled and educated people — is fully capable of moving toward democracy and living in freedom.
(Applause.)
The world has a clear interest in the spread of democratic values, because stable and free nations do not breed the ideologies of murder. They encourage the peaceful pursuit of a better life. And there are hopeful signs of a desire for freedom in the Middle East. Arab intellectuals have called on Arab governments to address the “freedom gap” so their peoples can fully share in the progress of our times. Leaders in the region speak of a new Arab charter that champions internal reform, greater politics participation, economic openness, and free trade. And from Morocco to Bahrain and beyond, nations are taking genuine steps toward politics reform. A new regime in Iraq would serve as a dramatic and inspiring example of freedom for other nations in the region. (Applause.)
It is presumptuous and insulting to suggest that a whole region of the world — or the one-fifth of humanity that is Muslim — is somehow untouched by the most basic aspirations of life. Human cultures can be vastly different. Yet the human heart desires the same good things, everywhere on Earth. In our desire to be safe from brutal and bullying oppression, human beings are the same. In our desire to care for our children and give them a better life, we are the same. For these fundamental reasons, freedom and democracy will always and everywhere have greater appeal than the slogans of hatred and the tactics of terror. (Applause.)
[…]
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/02/iraq/20030226-11.html
Clearly Bush is deliberately linking the question of US security from terrorist attack (mosquitoes) to the question of liberating people from corrupt tyrannies (draining the swamps).
That is exactly the theme of the paragraph I quoted from your article. The context is support for a war that you oppose. But what is there in the words that Bush uses to make the case for linking US security from terrorist attack with freedom and democracy in the Middle East, that you would disagree with?
Of course the fact that Bush is making a (declaratory) “case” that includes quotes like the one above does not establish what his actual policy is.
Nevertheless, given such quotes it is necessary to seriously consider the question and argue the issue rather than simply dismiss it. Certainly raising expectations in this way is not going to be helpful to any US project for imposing a puppet dictatorship in Iraq.
In the summary of your views that I quoted above from your last email, you mentioned 3 policies that would have to be changed “in order to reduce the threat of terror”. These were the policies of:
1. ”supporting corrupt and oppressive government and blocking political and economic progress because of the US interest in controlling Near East oil.”
2. “supporting Israeli terror and integration of the occupied territories.”
3. “maintaining murderous sanctions that are devastating the people of Iraq while strengthening Saddam Hussein.”
I will look at each of these separately:
1. ”supporting corrupt and oppressive government and blocking political and economic progress because of the US interest in controlling Near East oil.”
That has certainly been actual US policy in the past (though of course never “declaratory policy”). If there has been a change, the onus is clearly on those saying so to demonstrate it. I have attempted to demonstrate above the plausability of such a shift and the adoption of a declaratory policy that would correspond to it.
It’s too early to conclusively demonstrate to what extent actual policy has changed. However nothing that has happened so far either in Iraq itself or in its neighbours Saudi Arabia and Turkey has conformed to the expectations of people in the anti-war movement claiming there would be no shift towards democracy.
Already political parties such as the Iraqi Communist Party are free to setup offices and publish newspapers in Baghdad when they cannot do that elsewhere and pictures of (anti-US) demonstrations are being beamed into other capitals where the people know they do not have the same freedom to protest.
The governments of neighbouring regimes are clearly petrified. Bush and Blair have done nothing to reassure them by talking about Saddam wasting oil revenues on “palaces” and by allowing the Shia to very openly celebrate. Likewise democratic forces have been heartened.
Even people opposed to the war (as is still almost obligatory throughout the region) are able to point to the impotence of the current regimes in the face of US intervention as grounds for modernizing and democratizing.
2. “supporting Israeli terror and integration of the occupied territories.”
Again, that has clearly been US policy in the past and the onus is on me to demonstrate that actual US policy has changed, which I will attempt below.
Moreover Bush has gone out of his way to express unconditional declaratory support for Sharon’s stepped up Israeli terror against the Palestinians and has been very ostentatious about doing nothing to declare policies that hinder integration of the occupied territories. Declaratory policy in this case has been fairly close to actual policy (with the usual euphemisms instead of “Israeli terror”, and very minimal purely cosmetic reservations concerning the details of integration of the occupied territories).
First however, would you agree that your quote from Yehoshaphat Harkabi demonstrates that a former head of Israeli military intelligence advocates stopping “Israeli terror and integration of the occupied territories”?
If so, an assertion that Bush has also accepted this policy, and that it is actual rather than merely declaratory, should again be considered seriously rather than merely dismissed as inconceivable.
According to your article:
“One way for the US to lessen Israeli-Palestinian tensions would be to stop refusing to join the long-standing international consensus that calls for recognition of the right of all states in the region to live in peace and security, including a Palestinian state in the currently occupied territories (perhaps with minor and mutual border adjustments).”
Well, now the road map has been oficially released:
“A settlement, negotiated between the parties, will result in the emergence of an independent, democratic, and viable Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with Israel and its other neighbors. The settlement will resolve the Israel-Palestinian conflict, and end the occupation that began in 1967, based on the foundations of the Madrid Conference, the principle of land for peace, UNSCRs 242, 338 and 1397, agreements previously reached by the parties, and the initiative of Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah — endorsed by the Beirut Arab League Summit — calling for acceptance of Israel as a neighbor living in peace and security, in the context of a comprehensive settlement.”
http://usinfo.state.gov/regional/nea/summit/text2003/0430roadmap.htm
As well as the Palestine National Authority, this “road map” for ending the occupation of the territories that were occupied in 1967 has been endorsed by the Arab League, the UN, the EU and Russia. If that is not joining “the long-standing international consensus” what would be? Only Israel is complaining.
If Bush intends to persist with the previous policy, his recent moves to commit himself personally to major efforts for the achievement of a viable Palestinian state within a set time frame will be extremely damaging for him.
If on the other hand he intends to adopt your proposal, his reputation as a hard-line supporter of Israeli state terrorism against the Palestinians will make it much easier for him to do so. (“Only Nixon could go to Peking“).
Anyone attempting to defeat the Zionist lobby in the USA needs a plan and Bush’s plan for outflanking them seems like a good one.
Solidarity with the Palestinians is not expressed by endorsing defeatist propaganda that the Israeli position has been strengthened by the US occupation of Iraq. On the contrary we should be emphasizing that the Palestinian right of return is critical to the achievement of US goals in the Middle East as without it, even the establishment of a Palestinian state will not avoid an ongoing festering sense of grievance like that in Northern Ireland, which will continue to be exploited by terrorists.
3.“maintaining murderous sanctions that are devastating the people of Iraq while strengthening Saddam Hussein.”
Once again, sanctions have clearly been US policy in the past and the effect of those sanctions has clearly been murderous and devastating for the people of Iraq while strengthening Saddam.
It seems obvious that US policy is now opposed to continued sanctions, so I will not discuss this third element further.
However it is worth commenting on some aspects of how the US carried out and presented that change in policy, for the light it sheds on how I suggest the US has carried out and presented the changes I claim have been made policy on the other two elements.
It seems unlikely that the intended effect of the US sanctions policy was to strengthen Saddam. The US has sincerely and genuinely wanted to get rid of Saddam, at least since shortly after the immediate aftermath of the Kuwait war, even though they did not wish to get rid of the Baath regime (presided over by some other, more manageable dictator) until much later. The intended effect of the sanctions was to weaken Saddam, not to strengthen him.
Given that a policy had an actual effect opposite to the intention, the question must have arisen as to how to change that policy without damaging other US imperialist interests.
It seems reasonable to suppose that a serious problem for US policy makers must have been that simply dropping the sanctions would have been widely perceived as a defeat for US imperialism.
More specifically it would have been presented by both Saddam and Osama bin Laden as a victory for them. Any US policy maker would have had to propose some measure to counteract the impact of that.
By carrying out the dropping of sanctions as a simple consequence of the occupation of Iraq and destruction of Saddam’s regime, the US has certainly avoided any perception that abandoning sanctions was a victory for either Saddam Hussain or Osama bin Laden or indeed that it involved any defeat for US imperialism whatever.
Nevertheless, the long term impact of that on the roots of the ‘campaigns of hatred’ is the same. The US is no longer perceived as continuing murderous sanctions that are devastating the people of Iraq. Therefore the cumulative effect of campaigns about that (for example from supporters of Osama bin Laden), will cease growing, even though there will be short term damage to US interests from hostility to the deaths and devastation caused by the war.
Likewise the US has now announced that it will meet two other demands exploited by Osama bin Laden – withdrawal from Saudi Arabia and reducing the oppression of Palestinians – without any risk of Islamist victory celebrations.
My position is that in a similar way as with the other 2 policies, US policy makers have been looking for, and have adopted, a method of carrying out and presenting a reversal of previous policy that is intended to avoid any perception of a defeat for US imperialism (and that both the war in Iraq and the position adopted by the anti-war movement has been central to enabling them to get away with that).
In your Guardian interview of February 4, 2003 you were asked:
Matthew Tempest: Will the propaganda rebound if democracy is not established in Iraq after ‘liberation’?”
You replied:
NC: You’re right to call it propaganda. If this is a war aim, why don’t they say so? Why are they lying to the rest of the world? What is the point of having the UN inspectors? According to this propaganda, everything we are saying in public is pure farce – we don’t care about the weapons of mass destruction, we don’t care about disarmament, we have another goal in mind, which we’re not telling you, and that is, all of a sudden, we’re going to bring democracy by war. Well, if that’s the goal, let’s stop lying about it and put an end to the whole farce of inspections and everything else and just say now we’re on a crusade to bring democracies to countries that are suffering under miserable leadership. Actually that is a traditional crusade, that’s what lies behind the horrors of colonial wars and their modern equivalents, and we have a very long rich record to show just how that worked out. It’s not something new in history.”
http://www.zmag.org/content/Activism/chomsky_antiwar.cfm
Well, Bush pretty much took you up on that proposal too!
My suggestion is that in February you treated your question “why don’t they say so?” as rhetorical with an assumed answer that they would say they were on a crusade for democracy instead of maintaining the inspections farce if that was actually the case. Now that they have abandoned the farce and are speaking openly of the crusade, one must conclude that your assumed answer to the rhetorical question was wrong.
You should have treated it as a non-rhetorical question and thought about what the reason for them not saying so at the time might actually have been. In fact there were good reasons why it was not in their interests to say so then, just as you have mentioned that the US has a policy of sometimes attempting to appear less rational and more vindictive than it is.
Instead of developing the idea about “colonial wars”, which would at least be consistent with continued reactionary opposition, you advanced several demonstrably wrong reasons why the US could not promote democracy in Iraq:
“The chances that they will allow anything approximating real democracy are pretty slight. There’s major problems in the way of that – problems that motivated Bush No 1 to oppose the rebellions in 1991 that could have overthrown Saddam Hussein. After all, he could have been overthrown then if the US had not authorised Saddam to crush the rebellions.”
“One major problem is that roughly 60% of the population is Shi’ite. If there’s any form of democratic government, they’re going to have a say, in fact a majority say, in what the government is. Well they are not pro-Iranian but the chances are that a Shi’ite majority would join the rest of the region in trying to improve relations with Iran and reduce the levels of tension generally in the region by re-integrating Iran within it. There have been moves in that direction among the Arab states and Shi’ite majority in Iraq is likely to do that. That’s the last thing the US wants. Iran is its next target.”
“It doesn’t want improved relations. Furthermore if the Shi’ite majority gets for the first time a real voice in the government, the Kurdish minority will want something similar. And they will want a realisation of their quite just demands for a degree of autonomy in the northern regions. Well Turkey is not going to tolerate that. Turkey already has thousands of troops in Northern Iraq basically to prevent any such development. If there’ s a move towards Kirkuk, which they regard as their capital city, Turkey will move to block it, the US will surely back them, just as the United States has strongly supported Turkey in its massive atrocities against the Kurds in the 1990s in the south-eastern regions. What you’re going to be left with is either a military dictatorship with some kind of democratic façade, like maybe a parliament that votes while the military runs it behind the scenes – it’s not unfamiliar – or else putting power back into the hands of something like the Sunni minority which has been running it in the past.
“Nobody can predict any of this. What happens when you start a war is unknown. The CIA can’t predict it, Rumsfeld can’t predict it, nobody can. It could be anywhere over this range. That’s why sane people refrain from the use of violence unless there are overwhelming reasons to undertake it – the dangers are simply far too great. However it’s striking that neither Bush nor Blair present anything like this as their war aim. Have they gone to the security council and said let’s have a resolution for the use of force to bring democracy to Iraq? Of course not. Because they know they’d be laughed at.
Essentially you were insisting that the policies of the Bush Senior administration would prevail, despite the change in US perceptions since September 11, 2001. Not much of the above has stood the test of time – except for your tacit admission that you cannot predict what is happening.
So far Rumsfeld’s predictions have held up quite well. But after only 3 months your own speculations have proved completely irrelevant. I suggest that your acknowledged inability to make accurate predictions and your demonstrated inability to even make relevant speculations is not because there is nothing predictable about current events but because we are in a new situation and your assumptions based on an analysis of the previous situation no longer reflect reality.
Once it becomes clear to you that the US actually is introducing (bourgeois) democracy in Iraq, you can of course simply abandon your arguments about why that would be inconceivable and just shift to opposing the “imposition” of democracy as being a colonialist “crusade”.
But you have demonstrated an ability to analyse new situations in the past and should not be afraid to do so now.
Regards,
PS Your concluding paragraph was:
“I’m afraid I can’t answer your last question because of its assumptions, which are based on total misunderstanding.”
I am not sure what this was referring to.
My last paragraph was an implicit question as follows:
“Finally, if you happen to know of any other ‘pro-war left’ (as opposed to pro-war liberal) web sites I would be grateful for any links.”
Your concluding paragraph does not seem to be responsive unless perhaps you thought I was under the bizarre impression that Znet is a “pro-war left” web site.
I was of course referring to the web site URL given in my article, and mentioned in my final PPS, following the article text, as being “pro-war left” – http://www.lastsuperpower.net.
If you don’t know of any others. Please say so.
Alternatively, perhaps more likely, you were referring to the assumptions in an earlier paragraph that was followed by a question as to whether debate might clarify the nature of “a subtle difference” I had perceived to exist between your analysis and other Znet articles.
At any rate I accept that your response rejects my suggestion that there might be some difference between your previous and current positions or between your current position and that of other Znet contributors. Note that I did not make that suggestion in my published article but only directly to you.
4. CHOMSKY’S RESPONSE:
Original Message—–
From: Noam Chomsky [mailto:chomsky@MIT.EDU]
Sent: Friday, May 09, 2003 11:54 PM
Subject: RE: Draining the swamp reply
I’m rather surprised that you see no need for public retraction of the extreme falsification in your article, particularly where it is so transparent. But to be frank, that’s no concern of mine.
I won’t discuss the fallacies in your message. I’m sure we both have better things to do than to enter into discussion where we do not even share the most elementary assumptions about fact and logic.
Noam Chomsky
5. CHOMSKY’S ARTICLE:
Drain The Swamp And There Will Be No More Mosquitoes
by Noam Chomsky; September 10, 2002
September 11 shocked many Americans into an awareness that they had better pay much closer attention to what the US government does in the world and how it is perceived. Many issues have been opened for discussion that were not on the agenda before. That’s all to the good.
It is also the merest sanity, if we hope to reduce the likelihood of future atrocities. It may be comforting to pretend that our enemies “hate our freedoms,” as President Bush stated, but it is hardly wise to ignore the real world, which conveys different lessons.
The president is not the first to ask: “Why do they hate us?” In a staff discussion 44 years ago, President Eisenhower described “the campaign of hatred against us [in the Arab world], not by the governments but by the people”. His National Security Council outlined the basic reasons: the US supports corrupt and oppressive governments and is “opposing political or economic progress” because of its interest in controlling the oil resources of the region.
Post-September 11 surveys in the Arab world reveal that the same reasons hold today, compounded with resentment over specific policies. Strikingly, that is even true of privileged, western-oriented sectors in the region.
To cite just one recent example: in the August 1 issue of Far Eastern Economic Review, the internationally recognised regional specialist Ahmed Rashid writes that in Pakistan “there is growing anger that US support is allowing [Musharraf’s] military regime to delay the promise of democracy”.
Today we do ourselves few favours by choosing to believe that “they hate us” and “hate our freedoms”. On the contrary, these are attitudes of people who like Americans and admire much about the US, including its freedoms. What they hate is official policies that deny them the freedoms to which they too aspire.
For such reasons, the post-September 11 rantings of Osama bin Laden – for example, about US support for corrupt and brutal regimes, or about the US “invasion” of Saudi Arabia – have a certain resonance, even among those who despise and fear him. From resentment, anger and frustration, terrorist bands hope to draw support and recruits.
We should also be aware that much of the world regards Washington as a terrorist regime. In recent years, the US has taken or backed actions in Colombia, Nicaragua, Panama, Sudan and Turkey, to name a few, that meet official US definitions of “terrorism” – that is, when Americans apply the term to enemies.
In the most sober establishment journal, Foreign Affairs, Samuel Huntington wrote in 1999: “While the US regularly denounces various countries as ‘rogue states,’ in the eyes of many countries it is becoming the rogue superpower … the single greatest external threat to their societies.”
Such perceptions are not changed by the fact that, on September 11, for the first time, a western country was subjected on home soil to a horrendous terrorist attack of a kind all too familiar to victims of western power. The attack goes far beyond what’s sometimes called the “retail terror” of the IRA, FLN or Red Brigades.
The September 11 terrorism elicited harsh condemnation throughout the world and an outpouring of sympathy for the innocent victims. But with qualifications.
An international Gallup poll in late September found little support for “a military attack” by the US in Afghanistan. In Latin America, the region with the most experience of US intervention, support ranged from 2% in Mexico to 16% in Panama.
The current “campaign of hatred” in the Arab world is, of course, also fuelled by US policies toward Israel-Palestine and Iraq. The US has provided the crucial support for Israel’s harsh military occupation, now in its 35th year.
One way for the US to lessen Israeli-Palestinian tensions would be to stop refusing to join the long-standing international consensus that calls for recognition of the right of all states in the region to live in peace and security, including a Palestinian state in the currently occupied territories (perhaps with minor and mutual border adjustments).
In Iraq, a decade of harsh sanctions under US pressure has strengthened Saddam Hussein while leading to the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis – perhaps more people “than have been slain by all so-called weapons of mass destruction throughout history”, military analysts John and Karl Mueller wrote in Foreign Affairs in 1999.
Washington’s present justifications to attack Iraq have far less credibility than when President Bush Sr was welcoming Saddam as an ally and a trading partner after he had committed his worst brutalities – as in Halabja, where Iraq attacked Kurds with poison gas in 1988. At the time, the murderer Saddam was more dangerous than he is today.
As for a US attack against Iraq, no one, including Donald Rumsfeld, can realistically guess the possible costs and consequences. Radical Islamist extremists surely hope that an attack on Iraq will kill many people and destroy much of the country, providing recruits for terrorist actions.
They presumably also welcome the “Bush doctrine” that proclaims the right of attack against potential threats, which are virtually limitless. The president has announced: “There’s no telling how many wars it will take to secure freedom in the homeland.” That’s true.
Threats are everywhere, even at home. The prescription for endless war poses a far greater danger to Americans than perceived enemies do, for reasons the terrorist organisations understand very well.
Twenty years ago, the former head of Israeli military intelligence, Yehoshaphat Harkabi, also a leading Arabist, made a point that still holds true. “To offer an honourable solution to the Palestinians respecting their right to self-determination: that is the solution of the problem of terrorism,” he said. “When the swamp disappears, there will be no more mosquitoes.”
At the time, Israel enjoyed the virtual immunity from retaliation within the occupied territories that lasted until very recently. But Harkabi’s warning was apt, and the lesson applies more generally.
Well before September 11 it was understood that with modern technology, the rich and powerful will lose their near monopoly of the means of violence and can expect to suffer atrocities on home soil.
If we insist on creating more swamps, there will be more mosquitoes, with awesome capacity for destruction.
If we devote our resources to draining the swamps, addressing the roots of the “campaigns of hatred”, we can not only reduce the threats we face but also live up to ideals that we profess and that are not beyond reach if we choose to take them seriously.
6. May Day article
May Day – it’s the festival of the distressed
THE Left tide that rose worldwide in the 1960s subsided in the ’70s, just as
the previous tides from the ’30s and ’40s subsided in the ’50s.
There was no significant Left upsurge in the ’80s or ’90s, partly because
reactionary forces were already on the retreat, with the liberation of
southern Africa, East Timor and Eastern Europe, the creation of the
Palestinian Authority and the shift from military to parliamentary rule
throughout Latin America, the Philippines and Indonesia.
When the left tide is rising, May Day provides an opportunity to sum up past
victories and preview the revolutionary “festival of the oppressed” to come.
When the tide is low or dropping, as now, Mayday is just the international
distress call – a cry for help.
For more than two decades, the genuine Left has been swamped by a
pseudo-Left whose hostility to capitalism is reactionary rather than
progressive. The pseudo-Left opposes modernity, development, globalisation,
technology and progress.
It embraces obscurantism, relativism, romanticism and even nature worship.
At May Day rallies, the pseudo-Left whines about how things aren’t what they
used to be.
The real Left has been marginalised, debating neither the neo-cons nor the
pseudo-Left, simply because there has been no audience for that debate.
Incoherent nonsense from complete imbeciles is published as “Left” comment
in newspapers just so right-wing commentators can pretend they have
something intelligent to say. In fact “Left” is used as a euphemism for
“pessimistic”, “unimaginative” and just plain “dull”.
But now there is an audience. The war in Iraq has woken people everywhere –
and the pseudo-Left has really blown its chance.
Millions who marched in mid February stopped marching two months later, as
soon as the argument shifted towards democratising and liberating the Iraqi
people. Those millions still agree that George W. Bush is an arrogant bully,
but they no longer believe the peacemongers have got it right. People want
to figure out what is going on and are joining the debate at websites such
as http://www.lastsuperpower.net.
For months, the argument was about weapons of mass destruction and the role
of the UN. If the demands of the US, and the UN, had been fully met, Saddam
Hussein could have lived happily, and the Iraqi people miserably, for ever
after.
But look at what happened next! Suddenly we were hearing a different song.
Bush has been making the argument not for disarming Iraq but for liberating
Iraq.
Stripped of the “God bless America” stuff, the US President’s case now goes
like this:
“If we devote our resources to draining the swamps, addressing the roots of
the ‘campaigns of hatred’, we can not only reduce the threats we face, but
also live up to ideals that we profess and that are not beyond reach if we
choose to take them seriously.”
Actually, those words are from Noam Chomsky two days before Bush’s UN speech
on September 10, 2002.
But if Bush had adopted Chomsky’s position so early, that would have pre
vented congressional authorisation. Such a position threatens to destabilise
despotic, reactionary regimes everywhere. But those in the US foreign policy
establishment have devoted their entire careers to supporting the most
corrupt tyrannies in the Middle East, in the name of “stability”.
For Chomsky, “draining the swamps” apparently didn’t include killing people
and blowing things up. Fortunately, Bush is made of sterner stuff.
Both Bush and Chomsky know the US cannot be secure from medievalist
terrorist mosquitoes while the Middle East remains a swamp. But Bush also
knows that modernity grows out of the barrel of a gun.
That is a genuinely Left case for a revolutionary war of liberation, such as
has occurred in Iraq. The pseudo-Left replies: “That’s illegal.”
Well, of course revolutionary war is illegal. Legal systems are created by
revolutions, not revolutions by legal systems.
The next logical step for the new policy is to establish a viable
Palestinian state. Bush has put himself in a position where he can and must
take that step. Naturally, he will not admit to the enormous strategic and
policy retreat that such a step implies, so he has preceded it with enough
triumphalist rhetoric to make even the Fox News team look queasy.
The revival of the Left in the ’60s only began once it was widely noticed
that the remnants of the previous movement were reactionaries obstructing
progress. After it tried so hard to preserve fascism in Iraq, even after
Bush Jr had wisely given up on Bush Sr’s policy of keeping the Iraqi
dictator in power, can anyone deny the pseudo-Left is reactionary?
End —
C21st Left 