TWENTY-YEARS AGO, Dwight Macdonald published a series of articles in Politics on the responsibility of peoples and, specifically, the responsibility of intellectuals. I read them as an undergraduate, in the years just after the war, and had occasion to read them again a few months ago. They seem to me to have lost none of their power or persuasiveness. Macdonald is concerned with the question of war guilt. He asks the question: To what extent were the German or Japanese people responsible for the atrocities committed by their governments? And, quite properly, he turns the question back to us: To what extent are the British or American people responsible for the vicious terror bombings of civilians, perfected as a technique of warfare by the Western democracies and reaching their culmination in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, surely among the most unspeakable crimes in history. To an undergraduate in 1945-46—to anyone whose political and moral consciousness had been formed by the horrors of the 1930s, by the war in Ethiopia, the Russian purge, the “China Incident,” the Spanish Civil War, the Nazi atrocities, the Western reaction to these events and, in part, complicity in them—these questions had particular significance and poignancy. (more…)

First of all, I don’t think much of those theories, but I am bombarded with letters about this subject. It’s not only a huge industry but it’s kind of a fanatic industry. Many other people think I ought to change my priorities. But of the couple of hundred letters I’m getting every day, the flood that’s really abusive, which says, “It’s your responsibility to set this as your highest priority and to drop everything else,” is coming from the “9/11 truth” people. It’s almost a kind of religious fanaticism.

There are some questions you have to ask. One has to do with the physical evidence. There are the unexplained coincidences, personal accounts, and so on, which don’t amount to much. That’s found in any complex world event. With regard to the physical evidence, can you become a highly qualified civil and mechanical engineer and expert in the structure of buildings by spending a couple of hours on the Internet? If you can, we can get rid of the civil and mechanical engineering departments at MIT. Why go to the university? If you really believe any of this evidence, then there is no easy way to proceed. Go to specialists who can evaluate it. You may have found one physicist somewhere, though as far as I know no one has been willing to submit anything to a serious peer-reviewed journal. But that aside, you can go to the civil and mechanical engineering departments. Maybe the “9/11 truth movement” believes they’re all in on the conspiracy. If it’s that vast, we may as well forget it. These people claim that they’re afraid. There’s nothing to be afraid of. It’s one of the safest positions to take among those who are critical of power, as anyone with experience in these matters knows. If fact, it’s treated rather tolerantly by power centers.

Which takes us to another question. Why is this discussion of 9/11 treated so tolerantly? I suspect people in positions of power like it. It’s diverting enormous amounts of energy away from the real crimes of the administration, which are far more serious. Suppose they did blow up the World Trade Center? By their standards, that’s a minor crime. Increasing the threat of nuclear war and environmental disaster is a far worse crime, which might lead to the extinction of the species. Take the invasions of Iraq and Lebanon. Or look at what they’re doing to working people in the United States. We can go on and on. They’re committing real crimes, and there is very little protest about it. One of the reasons—not the only one, of course—is that so much potential activist energy is directed into 9/11 discussions. From the point of view of power centers, that’s great. We’ll give these people exposure on C-SPAN and have their books right up front at the local bookstores. A pretty tolerant reaction. We sort of say we think it’s a bad joke, but you don’t get the kind of reaction you do when you really go after hard issues.

So yes, it’s a terrible drain of energy away from much more serious problems. And I don’t think the evidence is serious. I don’t think the people who are presenting the physical evidence are even in a position to evaluate it. These are hard technical questions. What doesn’t seem to be understood is that there’s a reason scientists do experiments. They don’t just take a videotape of what’s happening out the window. The reason is that what’s happening out the window involves so many variable that you don’t understand what you’re getting in this complex mess. You can find all kinds of unexplained coincidences, apparent violations of the laws of nature. Even with controlled experiments, there are plenty of problems. You read the letters column of the science journals, you will find countless examples. So the fact that you’re finding out this happened, that happened, and so on, doesn’t mean anything.

The “Who benefits from 9/11?” argument has little force. I think in my first interview after 9/11, I made the not very brilliant prediction that every power system in the world would immediately exploit this for their own purposes. So Russia will step up its atrocities in Chechnya, Israel will in the West Bank, Indonesia will in Aceh, China in western China. In the United States, it was exploited, as we know, but also in ways that weren’t very well advertised.

Source: Noam Chomsky, What We Say Goes: Conversations on US Power in a Changing World, (Metropolitan Books: New York, 2007), pp. 35-37.

The torture memos released by the White House elicited shock, indignation and surprise. The shock and indignation are understandable. The surprise, less so.

For one thing, even without inquiry, it was reasonable to suppose that Guantánamo was a torture chamber. Why else send prisoners where they would be beyond the reach of the law — a place, incidentally, that Washington is using in violation of a treaty forced on Cuba at the point of a gun? Security reasons were, of course, alleged, but they remain hard to take seriously. The same expectations held for the Bush administration’s “black sites,” or secret prisons, and for extraordinary rendition, and they were fulfilled.

More important, torture has been routinely practiced from the early days of the conquest of the national territory, and continued to be used as the imperial ventures of the “infant empire” — as George Washington called the new republic — extended to the Philippines, Haiti and elsewhere. Keep in mind as well that torture was the least of the many crimes of aggression, terror, subversion and economic strangulation that have darkened U.S. history, much as in the case of other great powers. (more…)

On Saturday December 27, the latest US-Israeli attack on helpless Palestinians was launched. The attack had been meticulously planned, for over 6 months according to the Israeli press. The planning had two components: military and propaganda. It was based on the lessons of Israel’s 2006 invasion of Lebanon, which was considered to be poorly planned and badly advertised. We may, therefore, be fairly confident that most of what has been done and said was pre-planned and intended.

That surely includes the timing of the assault: shortly before noon, when children were returning from school and crowds were milling in the streets of densely populated Gaza City. It took only a few minutes to kill over 225 people and wound 700, an auspicious opening to the mass slaughter of defenseless civilians trapped in a tiny cage with nowhere to flee. (more…)

In short, Obama’s forceful reiteration of Israel’s right to defend itself is another exercise of cynical deceit … The deceit is particularly striking in this case because the occasion was the appointment of Mitchell as special envoy. Mitchell’s primary achievement was his leading role in the peaceful settlement in northern Ireland. It called for an end to IRA terror and British violence. Implicit is the recognition that while Britain had the right to defend itself from terror, it had no right to do so by force, because there was a peaceful alternative: recognition of the legitimate grievances of the Irish Catholic community that were the roots of IRA terror. When Britain adopted that sensible course, the terror ended. The implications for Mitchell’s mission with regard to Israel-Palestine are so obvious that they need not be spelled out. And omission of them is, again, a striking indication of the commitment of the Obama administration to traditional US rejectionism and opposition to peace, except on its extremist terms. (more…)

“It [the trial] shouldn’t be limited to the Cambodians,” said Chomsky in an interview that appeared on the weekend. “An international trial that doesn’t take into account Henry Kissinger or other authors of the American bombings and the support of the KR [Khmer Rouge] after they were kicked out of the country, that’s just a farce.”

“The records say that the U.S. wanted to ‘use anything that flies against anything that moves’ [during the bombing of Cambodia], which led to five times the bombing that was reported before, greater than all bombings in all theaters of World War Two, which helped create the Khmer Rouge,” he asserted. (more…)

Assaf Kfoury: The economic crisis is felt acutely in the US, but has now spread to the entire world, even to countries (in South America, for example) that initially thought they would be spared. And the American presidential campaign and elections cannot but concern people everywhere, given the dominant role of the US globally. The simultaneous unfolding of the two — the crisis and the presidential campaign — has naturally elicited considerable discussion outside the US. In the Middle East, in particular, there has been a kind of speculation, perhaps wishful thinking, be it from the left or from the right. Some Arab commentators have speculated that an Obama administration will follow less aggressive policies. Some other Arab commentators want to see the economic crisis as the sign of an imminent American global decline, and warn pro-American governments and parties to stop doing the bidding of a doomed North American hegemon. What is your response to this kind of thinking? More generally, in relation to the Middle East, what direction is US policy likely to take with the coming Obama administration in the wake of the economic crisis?

Noam Chomsky: I think that US hegemony will continue to decline as the world becomes more diverse. That process has been underway for a long time. US power peaked at the end of World War II, when it had literally half the world’s wealth and incomparable military power and security. By 1970, its share of global wealth had declined by about half, and it has remained fairly stable since then. In some important respects, US domination has weakened. One important illustration is Latin America, Washington’s traditional “backyard.” For the first time since European colonization 500 years ago, South America is making significant progress towards integration and independence, and is also establishing South-South relations independent of the US, specifically with China, but elsewhere as well. That is a serious matter for US planners. As it was discussing the transcendent importance of destroying Chilean democracy in 1971, Nixon’s National Security Council warned that if the US cannot control Latin America, it cannot expect “to achieve a successful order elsewhere in the world” — that is, to control the rest of the world. Controlling Latin America has become far more difficult in recent years. (more…)

I have been trying to avoid writing this review, not because of the book’s subject matter (this is not a profound book any sense of the word) but because it has been done so many times before and has by now become quite dated in the ephemeral world of controversy. But I finally read the book more than two years after downloading the original working paper of the same title from the Kennedy School of Government’s website—and at least a year since the book itself was published. I had put off reading the expanded argument because I was already familiar with both the working paper and the version published in the London Review of Books—plus, I was aware that Mearsheimer and Walt had based their arguments entirely on secondary research and I am already very familiar with the topic.

First, let me just address a minor issues: John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt (henceforth M/W) must be congratulated for their attempts at initiating a serious debate about this absurdly sensitive issue (at least in the United States). Considering their argument is neither new to anyone familiar with the subject, the book’s only real contribution is its success at reaching a wide audience. Had similar arguments been published by less reknowned academics and pundits (which they have been), “the Lobby” would surely have buried them in a mountain of obsolescence, ignored and forgotten without concern (which they have). But M/W cannot be dismissed as ideologues and so, the likes of Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz and other apologists for Israeli/U.S. crimes immediately went on the offensive by attempting to undermine the credibility and authority of the authors when faced with hard facts from a wide array of scholars. (more…)

Well, let’s begin with the elections. The word that the rolls off of everyone’s tongue is historic. Historic election. And I agree with it. It was an historic election. To have a black family in the white house is a momentous achievement. In fact, it’s historic in a broader sense. The two Democratic candidates were an African-American and a woman. Both remarkable achievements. We go back say 40 years, it would have been unthinkable. So something’s happened to the country in 40 years. And what’s happened to the country- which is we’re not supposed to mention- is that there was extensive and very constructive activism in the 1960s, which had an aftermath. So the feminist movement, mostly developed in the 70s-–the solidarity movements of the 80’s and on till today. And the activism did civilize the country. The country’s a lot more civilized than it was 40 years ago and the historic achievements illustrate it. That’s also a lesson for what’s next.

What’s next will depend on whether the same thing happens. Changes and progress very rarely are gifts from above. They come out of struggles from below. And the answer to what’s next depends on people like you. Nobody else can answer it. It’s not predictable. In some ways, the election—the election was surprising in some respects.

Going back to my bad prediction, If the financial crisis hadn’t taken place at the moment that it did, if it had been delayed a couple of months, I suspect that prediction would have been correct. But not speculating, one thing surprising about the election was that it wasn’t a landslide. By the usual criteria, you would expect the opposition party to win in a landslide under conditions like the ones that exist today. The incumbent president for eight years was so unpopular that his own party couldn’t mention his name and had to pretend to be opposing his policies. He presided over the worst record for ordinary people in post-war history, in terms of job growth, real wealth and so on. Just about everything the administration was touched just turned into a disaster. (more…)

U.S. policy is not about one individual, and no matter how much faith people place in President-elect Barack Obama, the policies he enacts will be fruit of a tree with many roots. Among them: his personal politics and views, the disastrous realities his administration will inherit, and, of course, unpredictable future crises. But the best immediate indicator of what an Obama administration might look like can be found in the people he surrounds himself with and who he appoints to his Cabinet. And, frankly, when it comes to foreign policy, it is not looking good.

Obama has a momentous opportunity to do what he repeatedly promised over the course of his campaign: bring actual change. But the more we learn about who Obama is considering for top positions in his administration, the more his inner circle resembles a staff reunion of President Bill Clinton’s White House. Although Obama brought some progressives on board early in his campaign, his foreign policy team is now dominated by the hawkish, old-guard Democrats of the 1990s. This has been particularly true since Hillary Clinton conceded defeat in the Democratic primary, freeing many of her top advisors to join Obama’s team.

"What happened to all this talk about change?" a member of the Clinton foreign policy team recently asked the Washington Post. "This isn’t lightly flavored with Clintons. This is all Clintons, all the time."
(more…)

Der Spiegal: Professor Noam Chomsky, cathedrals of capitalism have collapsed, the conservative government is spending its final weeks in office with nationalization plans. How does that make you feel?

Noam Chomsky: The times are too difficult and the crisis too severe to indulge in schadenfreude. Looking at it in perspective, the fact that there would be a financial crisis was perfectly predictable, its general nature, if not its magnitude. Markets are always inefficient.

DS: What exactly did you anticipate?

NC: In the financial industry, as in other industries, there are risks that are left out of the calculation. If you sell me a car, we have perhaps made a good bargain for ourselves. But there are effects of this transaction on others, which we do not take into account. There is more pollution, the price of gas goes up, there is more congestion. Those are the external costs of our transaction. In the case of financial institutions, they are huge.

DS: But isn’t it the task of a bank to take risks?

NC: Yes, but if it is well managed, like Goldman Sachs, it will cover its own risks and absorb its own losses. But no financial institution can manage systemic risks.
(more…)

Aghast at the atrocities committed by US forces invading the Philippines, and the rhetorical flights about liberation and noble intent that routinely accompany crimes of state, Mark Twain threw up his hands at his inability to wield his formidable weapon of satire. The immediate object of his frustration was the renowned General Funston. “No satire of Funston could reach perfection,” Twain lamented, “because Funston occupies that summit himself… [he is] satire incarnated.”

It is a thought that often comes to mind, again in August 2008 during the Russia-Georgia-Ossetia war. George Bush, Condoleezza Rica and other dignitaries solemnly invoked the sanctity of the United Nations, warning that Russia could be excluded from international institutions “by taking actions in Georgia that are inconsistent with” their principles. The sovereignty and territorial integrity of all nations must be rigorously honored, they intoned – “all nations,” that is, apart from those that the US chooses to attack: Iraq, Serbia, perhaps Iran, and a list of others too long and familiar to mention. (more…)

In the chronology of the Bush administration’s record of manipulation and willful distortion of evidence, the apparent revelation – revealed in a recently declassified National Intelligence Estimate – that Iran ceased its nuclear program in 2003 promises to usher in a renewed phase of White House propaganda. While the cautious pundits and news anchors of the television media may predict this new information to initiate a sea-change in Washington’s antagonistic posturing, I am more skeptical. This administration will somehow find a way to interpret the development as “proof” of their wolf-crying.

Leaving aside the obvious outrage we should express at the government’s failure to rely on solid evidence and the colossally ignorant manner in which Bush threatened to launch WWIII based on shoddy intelligence, it would be prudent to review the case Washington has made against Iran thus far… (more…)

I received this message from Professor Noam Chomsky this summer in response to my article Security or Demography: The West Bank Barrier as a Demographic Tool.

From: chomsky[at]MIT.EDU
Subject: Re: West Bank Barrier
Date: June 16, 2007 19:27:29  IDT
To: kris[at]harmonicminor.com

Interesting, and well done, but I’m quite skeptical about the value of such inquiries, for a number of reasons.  Here’s a few.
 
You say it is a “highly contentious point” whether a barrier on the Israeli side of the Green Line would have achieved whatever security effects the Separation Wall does.  I don’t agree with that at all.  It’s an obvious point.  In fact it could have achieved far better results, since it could be impregnable, patrolled heavily on both sides of the fence, etc. Furthermore, even accepting (for argument’s sake)  the idea that for security Israel somehow needs intrusion into the West Bank, then why not just build a wall a fixed distance from the Green line, say 5 km (or whatever number one wants), thereby excluding the Maaleh Adumim salient and the Ariel salient, and the many other illegal communities?  Plainly, that would be at least as effective for self-defense.  The whole discussion seems absurd.  I’ve followed the arguments, and they don’t stand up to a moment’s inspection.  About as clear an evasion of the obvious as can be imagined.  We should also be more than a little disturbed, I think, by the universal acceptance in the West that the question of “security” reduces to the security of Israelis, that is, to the rich and powerful state closely linked to the US and EU, while there is no security problem for those under the jackboot.  The racism is stunning, even given the ineradicable imperial mentality. (more…)