Noam Chomsky's blog

Z Sustainer: In an interview on Irish television (RTS News “On the Iraq War and Rendition Flights”, January 19, 2006) you were asked some questions about NATO’s “humanitarian intervention” in Kosovo. The interviewer quoted the executive summary of the OSCE report KOSOVO – As Seen, As Told concluding that the Serbian forces’ “intent to apply mass killing as an instrument of terror, coercion or punishment against Kosovo Albanians was already in evidence in 1998”. You responded “They didn't say that. What they said is that they had contingency plans to carry out atrocities if they were under attack”. I haven't been able to find any mention of “contingency plans” in this report.

Noam Chomsky: Hard for me to remember exactly what was said in an interview 3 months ago, particularly one like this, which was mostly a tirade in which I was barely able to get a word in edgewise. However, what you cite -- "intent to apply mass killing" -- is a contingency plan, in that context: intent under certain circumstances, if they arise. That wasn't in question. It would have been unnecessary to add, redundantly, that the intent if those circumstances arise was formalized in a contingency plan. That's taken for granted. If the US and UK "intended" to invade Iraq, they had "contingency plans" to do so. That seems elementary. And note that after the period you are referring to, there was a tentative settlement, which more or less held until it was broken by the KLA guerrillas, and was maintained, in fact, until NATO announced the intention to bomb and withdrew the monitors and the KLA escalated its attacks (the OSCE reported)

Z Sustainer: Do you think it is likely that the Bush Administration will attack Iran? I thought they would be reluctant to fight someone who can put up resistance, but I guess they could do some air strikes without losing any troops?

 Noam Chomsky: My assumption all along has been that they would not attack Iran, and I strongly suspect that the Pentagon and US intelligence (and their British counterparts) are trying to leak dire warnings in the hope of cutting it off at the pass. 

Z Sustainer question: Have you been following the new explosion of activism on the immigration issue?  It's a really exciting time to live in Tucson.  I've been involved in this issue for over 6 years and I've never seen anything like it before...

Noam Chomsky: It certainly is becoming a major issue, and as you say, the lines are drawn in complicated ways.  The business community wants cheap and easily exploitable workers, who will drive down wages and benefits especially for the poor.  There's a jingoist element that wants to keep the country "pure." The immigrants here want basic human rights.

Z Sustainer question: Do you think the US/Israeli position of refusing aid/relations with the PA under Hamas is likely to have the effect of making Hamas take a more radical uncompromising stance vis-a-vis Fatah and Israel? If so, do you think this is an intended effect of cutting off relations? It seems that refusing to work with Hamas is an effective way of forcing them to rely on more radical elements such as Iran rather than cooperate with Hamas.

Noam Chomsky: Press reports in Israel indicate that, as expected, the government is delighted with the Hamas victory, which enables the government to persist in its "there is no partner" posture, enabling it to carry forward its programs of taking over the valuable parts of the West Bank and ensuring that remaining fragments left to Palestinians will be unviable -- a second prison alongside of Gaza, decisions now explicit with the announcement of the virtual annexation of the Jordan Valley and steps to expel the population gradually.  The US position is probably more complex.  Washington doubtless welcomes the opportunity to carry forward the Israeli plans for which it has provided decisive support.  On the other hand, it is reasonably clear that Washington would have preferred to pursue these policies within the framework of a powerless Palestinian authority, reduced to weak rhetorical gestures and discrediting the cause of securing Palestinian national rights.  A genuine commitment to realizing these rights was not one of the options.  The non-option is supported by almost the entire world and by a considerable majority of the US population, but that is largely irrelevant, as in many other cases, and will remain so until real progress is made at home in "democracy promotion," to borrow a fashionable phrase.

Suppose that Al-Qaeda destroyed half the pharmaceutical supplies in some country where people matter -- say the US, or Israel, etc.  Would we regard it as an act of terrorism?  They could claim they had no intent to harm anyone, they just thought that the plants were involved in producing biological weapons or components for them.  In fact their claim would be vastly more credible than in the case of the [US] Sudan bombing, because their targets would be rich countries where supplies could easily be replenished, domestically and from abroad, unlike the Sudan. 

I don't think there would be the slightest question raised about this being a terrorist act, in fact an appalling terrorist act, even though, as noted, it does not approach the criminality of the al-Shifa bombing.  And no one would even bother to laugh at their protestation about intent.  Of course, if you carry out an act like this you know that there will be severe effects on civilians -- vastly more so in the Sudan case, transparently.  In law, incidentally, one criterion for determining intent is anticipated effects, but even elementary moral considerations make it clear.

Suppose we decide that the Clinton bombers had no specific intent to harm civilians [in the Sudan], though of course they knew that the effects would be very severe.  That puts them at even a lower moral level than the major international terrorists.  It means they are treating people rather as we treat ants when we take a walk.  We don't intend to kill them.  It's just that they mean so little to us that we don't even consider the matter.

Let's try another case.  Suppose the WTC attackers were to claim that they had no intent to harm anyone.  They assumed that anyone in the buildings would find their way out, and their intent was to interfere with acts of corporations and financial institutions that are not just threatening to do severe harm, but are doing so.  That perhaps reaches the level of plausibility of apologetics for the al-Shifa bombing.  Would we even bother to laugh?

Terms like "terror," "aggression," etc., and other terms used to deal with human affairs are not defined well enough to yield an explicit answer for every situation.  Nor should they be; precise definition makes sense only within far-reaching explanatory systems, where the precision matters.  That's even been true in the history of mathematics.  Law, domestic or international, is not a formal axiom system.  To decide how to use the terms of political discourse, a good criterion is to ask how we would use them in the case of acts carried out by others, not when the blood is on our hands.  It's a useful exercise.

[There was a transcription error in the earlier presentation here - corrected now]

...[T]he invasion was not undertaken to overthrow the Taliban.  That was an afterthought, added after three weeks of bombing.  A [main thing to consider], is that the invasion was undertaken with the recognition that it might drive literally millions of people to starvation and death, which makes it a major war crime. 

The fact that the worst didn't happen has nothing to do with the justification for the actions, clearly.  Actions are evaluated on the basis of likely consequences, not whatever may have happened.  We don't go out on the streets praising Khrushchev every October because the missiles he put in Cuba did not lead to a nuclear war, as was not unlikely (and came close to happening), and deterred a further US invasion of Cuba.  Nor do we celebrate Pearl Harbor Day because the effect was to drive the Western powers out of Asia (which is why Japan received plenty of local support), saving uncountable millions of lives and making it possible for the region to resume economic development after the imperial powers were kicked out.  An additional reason for opposing the invasion at the time was given by anti-Taliban Afghans, very vociferously, including US favorites: the US was carrying it out just to "show its muscle" and intimidate the world, and the invasion was undermining their own efforts to overthrow the Taliban from within, which they were confident they could do (and in retrospect looks possible).  There is actually a parallel in this respect with Iraq.  The US seriously undermined popular Iraqi efforts to overthrow Saddam from within, insisting either on a military coup by its friends or outright invasion (that included two huge crimes: supporting Saddam's crushing of the Shi'ite uprising in 1991, with probably tens of thousands of deaths, and the murderous sanctions regime, with hundreds of thousands killed and the society devastated).  In both Afghanistan and Iraq, evaluation of choices has to at least compare invasion with permitting internal popular overthrow of a hated regime.

We understand such things very well when others carry out violent acts, but there are next to undiscussable about ourselves.

All that aside, insofar as its population feels that they are better off, we should all be grateful, and should be calling for massive reparations for Afghanistan from the countries that devastated it for the past 25 years, primarily Russia and the US.

[Editorial Note:] The US Code for defining an "act of terrorism" is an activity that -- (A) involves a violent act or an act dangerous to human life that is a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or any State, or that would be a criminal violation if committed within the jurisdiction of the United States or of any State; and (B) appears to be intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by assassination or kidnapping.[End Note]

Usage of the term "propaganda" is interesting. ...it's much like "terrorism."

Ahmadinejad seems to be something of a loose cannon, and he's apparently making the religious conservatives who are the real power pretty nervous. They've stripped the presidency of some of its powers and transferred them to his main rival Rafsanjani. He appears to have limited experience beyond the local level, and appears not to comprehend how his statements will be exploited by hostile powers.

It's pretty clear that the major Shiite parties have pretty close links with Iran.