Read an Excerpt
What We Say Goes
Conversations on U.S. Power In A Changing World
By Noam Chomsky Henry Holt and Company
Copyright © 2007 Aviva Chomsky and David Barsamian
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4299-1820-6
CHAPTER 1
WHAT WE SAY GOES
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS (FEBRUARY 10, 2006)
James Traub, in the New York Times Magazine, writes, "Of course, treaties and norms don't restrain the outlaws. The prohibition on territorial aggression enshrined in the UN Charter didn't faze Saddam Hussein when he decided to forcibly annex Kuwait." Then he adds, "When it comes to military force, the United States can, and will, act alone. But diplomacy depends on a united front."
As Traub knows very well, the United States is a leading outlaw state, totally unconstrained by international law, and it openly says so. What we say goes. The United States invaded Iraq, even though that's a radical violation of the United Nations Charter.
If he knows that, why doesn't he write it in the article?
If he wrote that, then he wouldn't be writing for the New York Times. There is a certain discipline that you have to meet. In a well-run society, you don't say things you know. You say things that are required for service to power.
That reminds me of the story of the emperor Alexander and his encounter with a pirate.
I don't know if it happened, but according to the account from Saint Augustine, a pirate was brought to Alexander, who asked him, How dare you molest the seas with your piracy? The pirate answered, How dare you molest the world? I have a small ship, so they call me a pirate. You have a great navy, so they call you an emperor. But you're molesting the whole world. I'm doing almost nothing by comparison. That's the way it works. The emperor is allowed to molest the world, but the pirate is considered a major criminal.
Eighteen Pakistani civilians were killed in a U.S. missile attack on Pakistan in January 2006. The New York Times, in an editorial, commented, "Those strikes were legitimately aimed at top fugitive leaders of Al Qaeda."
That's because the New York Times agrees, and always has, that the United States should be an outlaw state. That's not surprising. The United States has the right to use violence where it chooses, no matter what happens. If we hit the wrong people, we might say, "Sorry, we hit the wrong people." But there should be no limits on the right of the United States to use force.
The Times and other liberal media outlets are exercised about domestic surveillance and invasions of privacy. Why doesn't that concern for law extend to the international arena?
Actually, the media are very concerned, just like James Traub, with violations of international law: when some enemy does it. So the policy is completely consistent. It should never be called a double standard. It's a single standard of subordination to power. Surveillance is bothersome to people in power. They don't like it. Powerful people don't want to have their e-mails read by Big Brother, so, yes, they're kind of annoyed by surveillance. On the other hand, a gross violation of international law — what the Nuremberg Tribunal called "the supreme international crime" that "contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole" — for example, the invasion of Iraq, that's just fine.
There is an interesting and important book, which naturally has hardly been reviewed, by two international law specialists, Howard Friel and Richard Falk, called The Record of the Paper. It happens to focus on the New York Times and its attitude toward international law, but only because of the paper's importance. The rest of the press is the same. Falk and Friel point out that the practice has been consistent: if an enemy can be accused of violating international law, it's a huge outrage. But when the United States does something, it's as if it didn't happen. To take one example, they point out that in the seventy editorials on Iraq from September 11, 2001, to March 21, 2003, the invasion of Iraq, the words UN Charter and international law never appeared. That's typical of a newspaper that believes the United States should be an outlaw state.
Martin Luther King Jr., in his April 4, 1967, Riverside Church speech, said, "Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war." Is that true?
You see that anywhere you look. It's obviously true in the United States. But was the United States "at war" in 1967? King suggests it was. It's an odd sense of being at war. The United States was attacking another country — in fact, it was attacking all of Indochina — but had not been attacked by anybody. So what's the war? It was just plain, outright aggression.
Howard Zinn, in his speech "The Problem Is Civil Obedience," says civil disobedience is " not our problem.... Our problem is civil obedience," people taking orders and not questioning. How do we confront that?
Howard is quite right. Obedience and subordination to power are the major problem, not just here but everywhere. It's much more important here because the state is so powerful, so it matters more here than in Luxembourg, for example. But it's the same problem.
We have models as to how to confront it. First of all, we have plenty of models from our own history. We also have examples from other parts of the hemisphere. For example, Bolivia and Haiti had democratic elections of a kind that we can't even conceive of in the United States. In Bolivia, were the candidates both rich guys who went to Yale and joined the Skull and Bones Society and ran on much the same program because they're supported by the same corporations? No. The people of Bolivia elected someone from their own ranks, Evo Morales. That's democracy. In Haiti, if Jean-Bertrand Aristide had not been expelled from the Caribbean by the United States in early 2004, it's very likely that he would have won reelection in Haiti. In Haiti and Bolivia, people act in ways that enable them to participate in the democratic system. Here, we don't. That's real obedience. The kind of disobedience that's needed is to re-create a functioning democracy. It's not a very radical idea.
Evo Morales's victory in Bolivia in December 2005 marks the first time an indigenous person has been elected to lead a country in South America.
It's particularly striking in Bolivia because the country has an indigenous majority. And you can be sure that the Pentagon and U.S. civilian planners are deeply concerned. Not only is Latin America falling out of our control, but for the first time the indigenous populations are entering the political arena, in substantial numbers. The indigenous population is also substantial in Peru and Ecuador, which are also big energy producers. Some groups in Latin America are even calling for the establishment of an Indian nation. They want control of their own resources. In fact, some of them don't even want those resources developed. They'd rather have their own lives, not have their society and culture destroyed so that people can sit in traffic jams in New York. All this is a big threat to the United States. And it's democracy, functioning in ways that by now we have agreed not to let happen here.
But we don't have to accept that. There have been plenty of times in the past when popular forces in the United States have caused great change. You mentioned Martin Luther King. He would be the first to tell you that he didn't act alone. He was part of a popular movement that made substantial achievements. King is greatly honored for having opposed racist sheriffs in Alabama. You hear all about that on Martin Luther King Day. But when he turned his attention to the problems of poverty and war, he was condemned. What was he doing when he was assassinated? He was supporting a strike of sanitation workers in Memphis and planning a Poor People's March on Washington. He wasn't praised for that, any more than he was praised for his rather tepid, delayed opposition to the Vietnam War. In fact, he was bitterly criticized.
This isn't quantum physics. There are complexities and details. You have to learn a lot and get the data right, but the basic principles are so transparent, it takes a major effort not to perceive them.
CHAPTER 2
LEBANON AND THE CRISIS IN THE MIDDLE EAST
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS (AUGUST 15, 2006)
The official story about the Israeli invasion of Lebanon goes like this: Israel acted in self-defense after Hezbollah, in a cross-border attack on July 12, killed eight of its soldiers and captured two others. President Bush said Hezbollah attacked Israel and started the crisis. Are there any holes in the official story?
Quite a lot of holes. The narrow facts are accurate. However, it's necessary to point out that the United States and Israel have no objection whatsoever to the capture of soldiers and even to the much more serious crime of kidnapping civilians. Israel has been abducting civilians for decades, and no one has ever suggested that anyone should invade Israel in response. Just to make it more dramatic, the recent upsurge in violence did not begin on July 12. It began in Gaza after June 25, when Hamas captured an Israeli soldier at the border and also killed two others. That led to a huge upsurge of violence in which about forty Palestinians in Gaza were killed by Israel in June and more than one hundred and seventy were killed from the Israeli escalation of attacks on June 28 through July. Israeli violence more than quadrupled in a month.
But something also happened on June 24, one day earlier, namely, Israeli forces abducted two Palestinian civilians in Gaza, a doctor and his brother. It was known; you can find occasional mentions of it. But nobody reacted. No one suggested that Israel should be invaded and half destroyed. So, by our own standards, there is no justification whatsoever for the U.S.-Israeli attack on Lebanon. That's one point.
Another is that, whatever one thinks of the Hezbollah action, it did have official reasons. One was exchange of prisoners. To go back a couple of months, in February 2006, about 70 percent of the Lebanese population, which doesn't like Hezbollah particularly, were in favor of the capture of Israeli soldiers to exchange with prisoners because they know perfectly well that Israel has been kidnapping and killing civilians in Lebanon for decades. We don't know the exact numbers, it's all kept secret. Hezbollah's other official reason was an expression of solidarity and support for the people of Gaza, who were under bitter attack. In the entire Arab world, Hezbollah provides the only source of meaningful support for the Palestinians today.
However, there is also a very rich background that is barely even discussed. The immediate background is that in January 2006, Palestinians held a free election and they voted the wrong way, electing Hamas to a majority of seats in the parliament. You're not allowed to vote the wrong way in a free election. That's our concept of democracy. Democracy is fine as long as you do what we say, but not if you vote for someone we don't like. So instantly Israel and the United States instituted harsh punishment of the Palestinians, cutting off funds, stepping up atrocities, and starving them, to punish the Palestinians. That pretty much tells you what is meant by "democracy promotion." In particular, Israel stepped up its crimes in Gaza, which were already serious. As Israeli human rights groups point out, Israel has turned Gaza into the biggest prison in the world.
Meanwhile, on the West Bank, Israel, with U.S. backing as always, is carrying out a program that Israel euphemistically calls "convergence" and the United States describes as "withdrawal." In fact, it is a program of annexation and cantonization through which Israel is annexing valuable land and the major resources, particularly water, and designing settlement and infrastructure projects so as to break up the shrinking Palestinian territories into unviable cantons. These are virtually separated from one another and all virtually separated from whatever tiny corner of Jerusalem is to be left to Palestinians as the center of their commercial, educational, and cultural life. Israel is taking over the Jordan Valley, again with U.S. backing. So, in addition to the major prison in Gaza, several prisons are being established on the West Bank.
All of these U.S.-backed Israeli programs are, of course, totally illegal, in violation of UN Security Council orders, World Court decisions, and so on. And the conditions for Palestinians under occupation are very harsh and brutal, as they have been for years.
According to many sources, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine do not recognize Israel and are dedicated to its eradication. They are also launching Qassam rockets at Israel from Gaza and Katyusha and other rockets from Lebanon.
Let's start with Hamas. Hamas had observed a truce with Israel for a year and a half that ended only after Israeli atrocities sharply picked up again. Some Palestinians did fire Qassam rockets from Gaza, which was criminal and foolish. But we know the reason. It's a reaction to Israel's continuing atrocities and its takeover, annexation, and cantonization programs. During the year and a half Hamas observed a truce, though, Israel refused to accept it and continued to carry out assassinations, bombings, and of course its illegal cutoff of funds. Hamas has indicated repeatedly that it is calling for a long-term, indefinite truce and will enter negotiations on a two-state settlement if Israel commits itself to withdrawing from the occupied territories.
What about Hezbollah? First of all, as far as rockets are concerned, the United Nations keeps very careful records of what happens on the Israel-Lebanon border. The UN has registered hundreds of Israeli border violations, overflights, sonic booms, and other actions on essentially a daily basis, but did not record one confirmed case of a Hezbollah rocket from May 2000, when Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon, up until July 2006, apart from a May 28, 2006, firing in retaliation for Israeli cross-border air strikes, artillery, mortar, and tank fire. Otherwise, there was not a single confirmed case.
Hezbollah's position is that it does not regard Israel as a legitimate state. It doesn't think Israel ought to exist. However, Hassan Nasrallah, its leader, has said repeatedly that Hezbollah will accept whatever the Palestinians accept. If the Palestinians accept a two-state settlement, Hezbollah won't like it, but they will accept it. Incidentally, the Iranian position is exactly the same. The West loves Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's crazed outbursts, but he has a superior who is in charge, the supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. And Khamenei has declared that Iran accepts the Arab League position: normalization of relations with Israel in a two-state settlement on the international border, in other words, the international consensus. The only two major actors that do not accept this consensus are the United States and Israel. So the right question to ask is: What are we going to do about the fact that the United States and Israel continue to reject and to block a diplomatic settlement of the Israel-Palestine problem, and render it impossible by their illegal actions, as they have for the past thirty years? That's the question we ought to ask.
You met with Nasrallah when you were in Lebanon. What was your take on him?
About the same as everyone else who has met him. For example, the reaction of Edward Peck, who was a high figure in counterterrorism in the Reagan administration, was about the same as mine. Peck said Nasrallah seems reasonable and pragmatic. He's thoughtful and answers the questions you ask him. You can like what he says or not, but you're getting serious answers to serious questions. On Israel, he says what I just repeated. His most controversial position has to do with Hezbollah maintaining weapons.
I spent even more time in Lebanon, which was never reported, with the strongest opponents of Hezbollah. With two friends from here, my wife and I went to meet the Druze leader Walid Jumblatt. We spent quite a few hours talking to him and to Chibli Mallat, the Maronite presidential candidate and constitutionalist, who is also very anti-Hezbollah. I asked them and others in Lebanon how they answered Hezbollah's reasoning about keeping their weapons. Unfortunately, nobody had an answer. And I don't know the answer.
The issue of Hezbollah's weapons goes back to the question: Does Lebanon deserve to have a deterrent to U.S.-Israeli aggression? That's not abstract. The current invasion of Lebanon is the fifth in the last thirty years. Every one has been disruptive and violent. One of them, in 1982, wiped out a large part of the country and killed probably twenty thousand people. This is not a joke. So, do they have a right to a deterrent? If nobody has a right to a deterrent against U.S.-Israeli aggression, the answer is clear: they don't. The United States and Israel are allowed to invade anyone they like. If Lebanon does have a right to a a deterrent, what is it? It can't be the Lebanese army, which is much too weak and penetrated by the United States. One credible deterrent would be a U.S. commitment to stop any Israeli invasion. Maybe an asteroid will hit the earth tomorrow, too. That's our problem. If people like you and me and others in the United States cannot provide that deterrent, it doesn't count.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from What We Say Goes by Noam Chomsky. Copyright © 2007 Aviva Chomsky and David Barsamian. Excerpted by permission of Henry Holt and Company.
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