|
Why Isn't Iraq in the
2008 Election?
The following speech, transcribed by
Democracy Now!, was
delivered by Chomsky in Massachusetts at an event sponsored by
Bikes Not Bombs.
By Noam Chomsky
03/03/08 "Democracy
Now!" -- - -Not very long ago, as you all
recall, it was taken for granted that the Iraq war would be the
central issue in the 2008 election, as it was in the midterm
election two years ago. However, it's virtually disappeared off
the radar screen, which has solicited some puzzlement among the
punditry.
Actually, the reason is not very obscure. It was cogently
explained forty years ago, when the US invasion of South Vietnam
was in its fourth year and the surge of that day was about to
add another 100,000 troops to the 175,000 already there, while
South Vietnam was being bombed to shreds at triple the level of
the bombing of the north and the war was expanding to the rest
of Indochina. However, the war was not going very well, so the
former hawks were shifting towards doubts, among them the
distinguished historian Arthur Schlesinger, maybe the most
distinguished historian of his generation, a Kennedy adviser,
who -- when he and Kennedy, other Kennedy liberals were
beginning to -- reluctantly beginning to shift from a dedication
to victory to a more dovish position.
And Schlesinger explained the reasons. He explained that -- I'll
quote him now -- "Of course, we all pray that the hawks are
right in thinking that the surge of that day will work. And if
it does, we may all be saluting the wisdom and statesmanship of
the American government in winning a victory in a land that we
have turned," he said, "to wreck and ruin. But the surge
probably won't work, at an acceptable cost to us, so perhaps
strategy should be rethought."
Well, the reasoning and the underlying attitudes carry over with
almost no change to the critical commentary on the US invasion
of Iraq today. And it is a land of wreck and ruin. You've
already heard a few words; I don't have to review the facts. The
highly regarded British polling agency, Oxford Research Bureau,
has just updated its estimate of deaths. Their new estimate a
couple of days ago is 1.3 million. That's excluding two of the
most violent provinces, Karbala and Anbar. On the side, it's
kind of intriguing to observe the ferocity of the debate over
the actual number of deaths. There's an assumption on the part
of the hawks that if we only killed a couple hundred thousand
people, it would be OK, so we shouldn't accept the higher
estimates. You can go along with that if you like.
Uncontroversially, there are over two million displaced within
Iraq. Thanks to the generosity of Jordan and Syria, the millions
of refugees who have fled the wreckage of Iraq aren't totally
wiped out. That includes most of the professional classes. But
that welcome is fading, because Jordan and Syria receive no
support from the perpetrators of the crimes in Washington and
London, and therefore they cannot accept that huge burden for
very long. It's going to leave those two-and-a-half million
refugees who fled in even more desperate straits.
The sectarian warfare that was created by the invasion never --
nothing like that had ever existed before. That has devastated
the country, as you know. Much of the country has been subjected
to quite brutal ethnic cleansing and left in the hands of
warlords and militias. That's the primary thrust of the current
counterinsurgency strategy that's developed by the revered "Lord
Petraeus," I guess we should describe him, considering the way
he's treated. He won his fame by pacifying Mosul a couple of
years ago. It's now the scene of some of the most extreme
violence in the country.
One of the most dedicated and informed journalists who has been
immersed in the ongoing tragedy, Nir Rosen, has just written an
epitaph entitled "The Death of Iraq" in the very mainstream and
quite important journal Current History. He writes that "Iraq
has been killed, never to rise again. The American occupation
has been more disastrous than that of the Mongols, who sacked
Baghdad in the thirteenth century," which has been the
perception of many Iraqis, as well. "Only fools talk of
'solutions' now," he went on. "There is no solution. The only
hope is that perhaps the damage can be contained."
But Iraq is, in fact, the marginal issue, and the reasons are
the traditional ones, the traditional reasoning and attitudes of
the liberal doves who all pray now, as they did forty years ago,
that the hawks will be right and that the US will win a victory
in this land of wreck and ruin. And they're either encouraged or
silenced by the good news about Iraq.
And there is good news. The US occupying army in Iraq --
euphemistically it's called the Multi-National Force-Iraq,
because they have, I think, three polls there somewhere -- that
the occupying army carries out extensive studies of popular
attitudes. It's an important part of counterinsurgency or any
form of domination. You want to know what your subjects are
thinking. And it released a report last December. It was a study
of focus groups, and it was uncharacteristically upbeat. The
report concluded -- I'll quote it -- that the survey of focus
groups "provides very strong evidence" that national
reconciliation is possible and anticipated, contrary to what's
being claimed. The survey found that a sense of "optimistic
possibility permeated all focus groups and far more
commonalities than differences are found among these seemingly
diverse groups of Iraqis" from all over the country and all
walks of life. This discovery of "shared beliefs" among Iraqis
throughout the country is "good news, according to a military
analysis of the results," Karen de Young reported in the
Washington Post a couple of weeks ago.
Well, the "shared beliefs" are identified in the report. I'll
quote de Young: "Iraqis of all sectarian and ethnic groups
believe that the US military invasion is the primary root of the
violent differences among them, and see the departure of [what
they call] 'occupying forces' as the key to national
reconciliation." So those are the "shared beliefs." According to
the Iraqis then, there's hope of national reconciliation if the
invaders, who are responsible for the internal violence and the
other atrocities, if they withdraw and leave Iraq to Iraqis.
That's pretty much the same as what's been found in earlier
polls, so it's not all that surprising. Well, that's the good
news: "shared beliefs."
The report didn't mention some other good news, so I'll add it.
Iraqis, it appears, accept the highest values of Americans. That
ought to be good news. Specifically, they accept the principles
of the Nuremberg Tribunal that sentenced Nazi war criminals to
hanging for such crimes as supporting aggression and preemptive
war. It was the main charge against von Ribbentrop, for example,
whose position was -- in the Nazi regime was that of Colin
Powell and Condoleezza Rice. The Tribunal defined aggression
very straightforwardly: aggression, in its words, is the
"invasion of its armed forces" by one state "of the territory of
another state." That's simple. Obviously, the invasion of Iraq
and Afghanistan are textbook examples of aggression. And the
Tribunal, as I'm sure you know, went on to characterize
aggression as "the supreme international crime differing only
from other war crimes in that it contains within itself all the
accumulated evil of the whole." So everything that follows from
the aggression is part of the evil of the aggression.
Well, the good news from the US military survey of focus groups
is that Iraqis do accept the Nuremberg principles. They
understand that sectarian violence and the other postwar horrors
are contained within the supreme international crime committed
by the invaders. I think they were not asked whether their
acceptance of American values extends to the conclusion of
Justice Robert Jackson, chief prosecutor for the United States
at Nuremberg. He forcefully insisted that the Tribunal would be
mere farce if we do not apply the principles to ourselves.
Well, needless to say, US opinion, shared with the West
generally, flatly rejects the lofty American values that were
professed at Nuremberg, indeed regards them as bordering on
obscene, as you could quickly discover if you try experimenting
by suggesting that these values should be observed, as Iraqis
insist. It's an interesting illustration of the reality, some of
the reality, that lies behind the famous "clash of
civilizations." Maybe not exactly the way we like to look at it.
There was a poll a few days ago, a really major poll, just
released, which found that 75 percent of Americans believe that
US foreign policy is driving the dissatisfaction with America
abroad, and more than 60 percent believe that dislike of
American values and of the American people are also to blame.
Dissatisfaction is a kind of an understatement. The United
States has become increasingly the most feared and often hated
country in the world. Well, that perception is in fact
incorrect. It's fed by propaganda. There's very little dislike
of Americans in the world, shown by repeated polls, and the
dissatisfaction -- that is, the hatred and the anger -- they
come from acceptance of American values, not a rejection of
them, and recognition that they're rejected by the US government
and by US elites, which does lead to hatred and anger.
There's other "good news" that's been reported by General
Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker that was during the
extravaganza that was staged last September 11th. September
11th, you might ask why the timing? Well, a cynic might imagine
that the timing was intended to insinuate the Bush-Cheney claims
of links between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. They can't
come out and say it straight out, so therefore you sort of
insinuate it by devices like this. It's intended to indicate, as
they used to say outright but are now too embarrassed to say,
except maybe Cheney, that by committing the supreme
international crime, they were defending the world against
terror, which, in fact, increased sevenfold as a result of the
invasion, according to a recent analysis by terrorism
specialists Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank.
Petraeus and Crocker provided figures to explain the good news.
The figures they provided on September 11th showed that the
Iraqi government was greatly accelerating spending on
reconstruction, which is good news indeed and remained so until
it was investigated by the Government Accountability Office,
which found that the actual figure was one-sixth of what
Petraeus and Crocker reported and, in fact, a 50 percent decline
from the previous year.
Well, more good news is the decline in sectarian violence,
that's attributable in part to the murderous ethnic cleansing
that Iraqis blame on the invasion. The result of it is there are
simply fewer people to kill, so sectarian violence declines.
It's also attributable to the new counterinsurgency doctrine,
Washington's decision to support the tribal groups that had
already organized to drive out Iraqi al-Qaeda, to an increase in
US troops, and to the decision of the Sadr's Mahdi army to
consolidate its gains to stop direct fighting. And politically,
that's what the press calls "halting aggression" by the Mahdi
army. Notice that only Iraqis can commit aggression in Iraq, or
Iranians, of course, but no one else.
Well, it's possible that Petraeus's strategy may approach the
success of the Russians in Chechnya, where -- I'll quote The New
York Times a couple of weeks ago -- Chechnya, the fighting is
now "limited and sporadic, and Grozny is in the midst of a
building boom" after having been reduced to rubble by the
Russian attack. Well, maybe some day Baghdad and Fallujah also
will enjoy, to continue the quote, "electricity restored in many
neighborhoods, new businesses opening and the city's main
streets repaved," as in booming Grozny. Possible, but dubious,
in the light of the likely consequence of creating warlord
armies that may be the seeds of even greater sectarian violence,
adding to the "accumulated evil" of the aggression. Well, if
Russians share the beliefs and attitudes of elite liberal
intellectuals in the West, then they must be praising Putin's
"wisdom and statesmanship" for his achievements in Chechnya,
formerly that they had turned into a land of wreck and ruin and
are now rebuilding. Great achievement.
A few days ago, The New York Times -- the military and Iraq
expert of The New York Times, Michael Gordon, wrote a
comprehensive review, first-page comprehensive review, of the
options for Iraq that are being faced by the candidates. And he
went through them in detail, described the pluses and minuses
and so on, interviewing political leaders, the candidates,
experts, etc. There was one voice missing: Iraqis. Their
preference is not rejected; rather, it's not mentioned. And it
seems that there was no notice of that fact, which makes sense,
because it's typical. It makes sense on the tacit assumption
that underlies almost all discourse on international affairs.
The tacit assumption, without which none of it makes any sense,
is that we own the world. So, what does it matter what others
think? They're "unpeople," nice term invented by British
diplomatic historian [Mark] Curtis, based on a series of
outstanding volumes on Britain's crimes of empire -- outstanding
work, therefore deeply hidden. So there are the "unpeople" out
there, and then there are the owners -- that's us -- and we
don't have to listen to the "unpeople."
Last month, Panama declared a Day of Mourning to commemorate the
US invasion -- that's under George Bush no. 1 -- that killed
thousands of poor Panamanians when the US bombed the El Chorillo
slums and other poor areas, so Panamanian human rights
organizations claim. We don't actually know, because we never
count our crimes. Victors don't do that; only the defeated. It
aroused no interest here; there's barely a mention of the Day of
Mourning. And there's also no interest in the fact that Bush 1's
invasion of Panama was a clear case of aggression, to which the
Nuremberg principles apply, and it was apparently more deadly,
in fact possibly much more deadly, than Saddam Hussein's
invasion of Kuwait, happened a few months later. But it makes
sense that there would be no interest in that, because we own
the world, and Saddam didn't, so the acts are quite different.
It's also of no interest that, at that time of the time of
Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, the greatest fear in Washington was
that Saddam would imitate what the United States had just done
in Panama, namely install a client government and then leave.
That's the main reason why Washington blocked diplomacy in quite
interesting ways, with almost complete media cooperation.
There's actually one exception in the US media. But none of this
gets any commentary. However, it does merit a lead story a few
days later, when the Panamanian National Assembly was opened by
President Pedro Gonzalez, who's charged by Washington with
killing two American soldiers during a protest against President
Bush no.1, against his visit two years after the invasion. The
charges were dismissed by Panamanian courts, but they're upheld
by the owner of the world, so he can't travel, and that got a
story.
Well, to take just one last illustration of the depth of the
imperial mentality, New York Times correspondent Elaine Sciolino,
veteran correspondent, writes that "Iran's intransigence [about
nuclear enrichment] appears to be defeating attempts by the rest
of the world to curtail Tehran's nuclear ambitions." Well, the
phrase "the rest of the world" is an interesting one. The rest
of the world happens to exclude the vast majority of the world,
namely the non-aligned movement, which forcefully endorses
Iran's right to enrich uranium in accordance with the rights
granted by its being a signatory to the Non-Proliferation
Treaty. But they're not part of the world, even though they're
the large majority, because they don't reflexively accept US
orders, and commentary like that is unremarkable and unnoticed.
You're part of the world if you do what we say, obviously.
Otherwise, you're "unpeople."
Well, we might, since we're on Iran, might tarry for a moment
and ask whether there's any solution to the US-Iran
confrontation over nuclear weapons, which is extremely
dangerous. Here's one idea. First point, Iran should be
permitted to develop nuclear energy, but not nuclear weapons, as
the Non-Proliferation Treaty determines.
Second point is that there should be a nuclear weapons-free zone
in the entire region, Iran to Israel, including any US forces
that are present there. Actually, though it's never reported,
the United States is committed to that position. When the US
invaded Iraq in 2003, it appealed to a UN resolution, Resolution
687, which called upon Iraq to eliminate its weapons of mass
destruction. That was the flimsy legal principle invoked to
justify the invasion. And if you look at Resolution 687, you
discover that one of its provisions is that the US and other
powers must work to develop a nuclear weapons-free zone in the
Middle East, including that entire region. So we're committed to
it, and that's the second element of this proposal.
The third element of the proposal is that the United States
should accept the Non-Proliferation Treaty, a position which
happens to be supported by 82 percent of Americans, namely that
it should accept the requirement, in fact the legal requirement,
as the World Court determined, to move to make good-faith
efforts to eliminate nuclear weapons altogether.
And a fourth proposal is that the US should turn to diplomacy,
and it should end any threats against Iran. The threats are
themselves crimes. They're in violation of the UN Charter, which
bars the threat or use of force.
Well, of course, these four proposals -- again, Iran should have
nuclear energy, but not nuclear weapons; there should be a
weapons-free zone throughout the region; the US should accept
the Non-Proliferation Treaty; there should be a turn to
diplomacy and an end to threats -- these are almost
unmentionable in the United States. Not a single candidate would
endorse any part of them, and they're never discussed, and so
on.
However, the proposals are not original. They happen to be the
position of the overwhelming majority of the American
population. And interestingly, that's also true in Iran; roughly
the same overwhelming majority accepts all of these proposals.
But that's -- the results come from the world's most prestigious
polling agency, but not reported, as far as I could discover,
and certainly not considered. If they were ever mentioned, they
would be dismissed with the phrase "politically impossible,"
which is probably correct. It's only the position of the large
majority of the population, kind of like national health care,
but not of the people that count. So there are plenty of "unpeople"
here, too -- in fact, the large majority. Americans share this
property of being "unpeople" with most of the rest of the world.
In fact, if the United States and Iran were functioning, not
merely formal, democracies, then this dangerous crisis might be
readily resolved by a functioning democracy -- I mean, one in
which public opinion plays some role in determining policy,
rather than being excluded -- in fact, unmentioned, because,
after all, they're "unpeople."
Well, while we're on Iran, I guess I might as well turn to the
third member of the famous Axis of Evil: North Korea. There is
an official story -- read it right now -- is that the official
story is this, that after having been compelled to accept an
agreement on dismantling its nuclear weapons and the facilities,
after having been compelled to agree to that, North Korea is
again trying to evade its commitments in its usual devious way.
So The New York Times headline reads "The United States Sees
Stalling by North Korea on Nuclear Pact." And the article then
details the charges of how North Korea is not going through with
its responsibility. It's not releasing information that it's
promised to release. If you read the story to the last paragraph
-- and that's always a good idea; that's where the interesting
news usually is when you read a news story -- but if you manage
to get to the last paragraph, you discover that it's the United
States that has backed down on the pledges made in the
agreement.
The US just refused to supply it. It's refused only -- it's
supplied only 85 percent of the fuel that it promised, and it
was supposed to improve diplomatic relations, of course not
doing that. Well, that's quite normal.
If you want to find out what's going on in the US-North Korea
nuclear standoff, it's better -- you have to go to the
specialist literature, which is uniform on it, nothing hidden,
and in fact sort of sneaks out into small print in the press
reports, as I mentioned. What you find is that North -- I mean,
North Korea may be the most hideous state in the world, but
that's not the point here. Its position has been pretty
pragmatic. It's kind of tit-for-tat. The United States gets more
aggressive, they get more aggressive. The United States moves
towards diplomacy and negotiations, they do the same.
So when President Bush came in, there was an agreement -- it was
called the Framework Agreement that had been established in 1994
-- and neither the US nor North Korea was quite living up to it.
But it was more or less functioning. At that time, North Korea,
under the Framework Agreement, had stopped any testing of
long-range missiles. It had maybe one or two bombs worth of
plutonium, and it was verifiably not making more. Now, that was
when George Bush entered the scene. And now it has eight to ten
bombs, long-range missiles, and it's developing plutonium.
And there's a reason. The Bush regime immediately moved to a
very aggressive stance. The Axis of Evil speech was one example.
Intelligence was released claiming that North Korea was carrying
out -- was cheating, had clandestine programs. It's rather
interesting that these intelligence reports, five years later,
have been quietly rescinded as probably inadequate. The reason
presumably is that if an agreement is reached, there will be
inspectors in North Korea, and they'll find that this
intelligence had as much validity as the claims about Iraq, so
they're being withdrawn. Well, North Korea responded to all of
this by ratcheting up its missile and weapons development.
In September 2005, under pressure, the United States did agree
to negotiations, and there was an outcome. September 2005, North
Korea agreed to abandon -- quoting -- "all nuclear weapons and
existing weapons programs" and to allow international
inspection. That would be in return for international aid,
mainly from the United States, and a non-aggression pledge from
the US and an agreement that the two sides -- I'm quoting --
would "respect each other's sovereignty, exist peacefully
together and take steps to normalize relations."
Well, the United States, the Bush administration, had an instant
reaction. It instantly renewed the threat of force. It froze
North Korean funds in foreign banks. It disbanded the consortium
that was supposed meet to provide North Korea with a light-water
reactor. So North Korea returned to its weapons and missile
development, carried out a weapons test, and confrontation
escalated. Well, again, under international pressure and with
its foreign policy collapsing, Washington returned to
negotiations. That led to an agreement, which Washington is now
scuttling.
There's an earlier history, an interesting one. You recall a
couple of weeks ago, there was a mysterious Israeli bombing in
northern Syria, never explained, but it a sort of hinted that
this had something to do with Syria building nuclear facilities
with the help of North Korea. Pretty unlikely, but whether it's
true or not, there's an interesting background, which wasn't
mentioned. In 1993, Israel and North Korea were on the verge of
an agreement, in which Israel would recognize North Korea and in
return North Korea would agree to terminate any weapons-related
-- missile, nuclear, other -- any weapons-related activity in
the Middle East. That would have been an enormous boon to
Israel's security. But the owner of the world stepped in.
Clinton ordered them to refuse. Of course, you have to listen to
the master's voice. So that ended that. And it may be that there
are North Korean activities in the Middle East that we don't
know about.
Well, let me finally return to the first member of the Axis of
Evil: Iraq. Washington does have expectations, and they're
explicit. There are outlined in a Declaration of Principles that
was agreed upon, if you can call it that, between the United
States and the US-backed, US-installed Iraqi government, a
government under military occupation. The two of them issued the
Declaration of Principles. It allows US forces to remain
indefinitely in Iraq in order to "deter foreign aggression" --
well, the only aggression in sight is from the United States,
but that's not aggression, by definition -- and also to
facilitate and encourage "the flow of foreign investments [to]
Iraq, especially American investments." I'm quoting. That's an
unusually brazen expression of imperial will.
In fact, it was heightened a few days ago, when George Bush
issued another one of his signing statements declaring that he
will reject crucial provisions of congressional legislation that
he had just signed, including the provision that forbids
spending taxpayer money -- I'm quoting -- "to establish any
military installation or base for the purpose of providing for
the permanent stationing of [United States} Armed Forces in
Iraq" or "to exercise [United States] control of the oil
resources of Iraq." OK? Shortly after, the New York Times
reported that Washington "insists" -- if you own the world, you
insist -- "insists that the Baghdad government give the United
States broad authority to conduct combat operations," a demand
that "faces a potential buzz saw of opposition from Iraq, with
itsdeep sensitivities about being seen as a dependent state."
It's supposed to be more third world irrationality.
So, in brief, the United States is now insisting that Iraq must
agree to allow permanent US military installations, provide the
United -- grant the United States the right to conduct combat
operations freely, and to guarantee US control over the oil
resources of Iraq. OK? It's all very explicit, on the table.
It's kind of interesting that these reports do not elicit any
reflection on the reasons why the United States invaded Iraq.
You've heard those reasons offered, but they were dismissed with
ridicule. Now they're openly conceded to be accurate, but not
eliciting any retraction or even any reflection.
Noam Chomsky, Professor of linguistics at MIT for over half a
century, Chomsky is the author of dozens of books on US foreign
policy. His most recent is The Essential Chomsky.
Click on "comments" below to read or post comments
Comment Guidelines
Be succinct, constructive and
relevant to the story.
We encourage engaging, diverse
and meaningful commentary. Do not include
personal information such as names, addresses,
phone numbers and emails. Comments falling
outside our guidelines – those including
personal attacks and profanity – are not
permitted.
See our complete
Comment Policy
and
use this link to notify us if you have concerns
about a comment.
We’ll promptly review and remove any
inappropriate postings.
Send Page To a Friend
In accordance
with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material
is distributed without profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving the
included information for research and educational
purposes. Information Clearing House has no
affiliation whatsoever with the originator of
this article nor is Information ClearingHouse
endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
|
