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I’d like to start by
saying thank you for doing the interview we did 14 months
ago. The interview—in the shape of the film, Power
and Terror, has given many people the opportunity to think
about what’s going on in the world with a lot greater
depth and perspective and engagement. We estimate that
probably 100,000 people have seen the film, in Japan,
the US, Australia, Canada, and now in Europe, and it is
still playing, a year after it was finished, to standing-room-only
audiences. We’re all grateful because it’s given
us a great deal of insight, and also stimulated a lot
of action.
We’re doing this interview today, aiming toward the
next big event that we’re organizing in Tokyo, which
is a gathering of about 2000 people. We’re trying
to fill a very large theater, and the title of the event
is "Let’s take a look at the Chomsky film and
think about what we can do now." That’s actually
the way the film has been used in general, to encourage
people not just to learn about things, but also to think
about what can be done now.
A lot of events have taken place since we last talked
14 months ago, but, of course, the biggest one is the
U.S. invasion of Iraq. Is it your sense that this invasion
is an epoch changing event? |
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The invasion of Iraq was actually a piece
of a much bigger picture. When we talked 14 months ago,
we probably didn't talk much about it. The reason is that
the great government-media propaganda campaign-- about
Iraq being an imminent threat to the survival of the United
States-- began in September, a couple of months after
we talked. And this campaign coincided with two other
crucial events.
One was the announcement on September 17th of the National
Security Strategy, which is not entirely without precedent,
but it is something new. The Bush administration declared,
quite frankly and brazenly, that the United States-- their
version of the United States-- intends to dominate the
world completely and permanently. This means that any
potential challenge will be blocked, and if necessary
destroyed by the use of military force. This is the one
dimension of power, and this is crucial, in which the
U.S. has overwhelming advantages. That's not true economically,
and it's not true in other respects. It's a more complicated
world. But, militarily the United States is in a class
by itself, and it's expanding its military force enormously
in extremely hazardous ways, which are worth looking at.
And the intention is to use that advantage to control
the world. So, that was announced in September.
When you announce a policy--if you want it to be taken
seriously--you have to carry out what's sometimes called
"an exemplary action" to demonstrate that you
really mean it. And Iraq was chosen to be the test case,
what the New York Times later called "the petri dish,"
in which the strategy is tried.
Now, Iraq was a very sensible test case. To be a test
case for this strategy, a country has to meet several
conditions. One, it must be completely defenseless. It
doesn’t make any sense to attack anybody who can
fight back. That would be ridiculous. So, it has to be
defenseless, which of course Iraq was. It was one of the
weakest countries in the region. It was devastated by
sanctions. Its military expenditures were about a third
of Kuwait's, which has 10% of its population. It was under
complete surveillance. They knew where every pocket knife
in the country was. So, it was completely defenseless.
That's point one.
Secondly, it has to be important. There's no point intervening
in or conquering, say, Liberia. What are you going to
do with it? Iraq is extremely important. It has the second
largest reserves of oil in the world. The United States
will end up dominating a major sector of the hugest energy
reserves in the world. It has dominated it for a long
time, but this will advance [that dominance]. Presumably,
the U.S. will end up with military bases in Iraq. This
is part of the shift of military bases towards the oil
producing regions, and it will be the first real military
base right in the oil producing regions. So, that's very
important.
And third you have to be able to portray the country as
somehow evil or threatening our existence, or something
like that. And that's possible too. All you have to do
is listen to every speech by George Bush or Tony Blair,
and they say, "How can we let somebody survive who
gassed his own population and invaded two countries, and
was developing weapons of mass destruction," and
so on, all of which is completely true. But, they always
omit the few crucial words. Yeah, he did all that, and
we helped him. And we helped him because we didn't care.
And "we" is the people now running Washington.
They are almost completely recycled from the [Reagan-Bush]
administration, which in fact was supporting Saddam Hussein
right through his worst atrocities. They knew exactly
what he was doing, and didn't care. It wasn’t because
of the war with Iran; the support continued after the
war with Iran was over. In fact, it continued up to the
day of the invasion of Kuwait. So, you have to suppress
that, and you have to count on the media not to be impolite
and bring it up. And then you add that, if he used gas
against his own people, then he's a threat to us. It doesn't
make any sense. The United States was the only country
that feared Saddam Hussein. He was rightly despised everywhere,
but he was feared only in the United States. Kuwait and
Iran, the countries he invaded, didn't fear him-- they
hated him, but they didn't fear him. They knew he was
powerless and weak and so on. But, in September he was
[described as a threat to the US]. |
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(c) Noam Chomsky.
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