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aeroplane
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 Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2007 9:35 am Post subject: Noam Chomsky on "the Iran Effect" |
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This puts the 'Let's attack Iran' nonsense into a better perspective.
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Tomgram: Noam Chomsky on "the Iran Effect"
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=182214
On Tuesday, meeting with the press in the White House Rose Garden, the President responded to a question about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Syria this way: "[P]hoto opportunities and/or meetings with President Assad lead the Assad government to believe they're part of the mainstream of the international community, when, in fact, they're a state sponsor of terror." There should, he added to the assembled reporters, be no meetings with state sponsors of terror.
That night, Brian Ross of ABC News reported that, since 2005, the U.S. has "encouraged and advised" Jundullah, a Pakistani tribal "militant group," led by a former Taliban fighter and "drug smuggler," which has been launching guerrilla raids into Baluchi areas of Iran. These incursions involve kidnappings and terror bombings, as well as the murder (recorded on video) of Iranian prisoners. According to Ross, "U.S. officials say the U.S. relationship with Jundullah is arranged so that the U.S. provides no funding to the group, which would require an official presidential order or 'finding' as well as congressional oversight." Given past history, it would be surprising if the group doing the encouraging and advising wasn't the Central Intelligence Agency, which has a long, sordid record in the region. (New Yorker investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has been reporting since 2005 on a Bush administration campaign to destabilize the Iranian regime, heighten separatist sentiments in that country, and prepare for a possible full-scale air attack on Iranian nuclear and other facilities.)
The President also spoke of the Iranian capture of British sailors in disputed waters two weeks ago. He claimed that their "seizure… is indefensible by the Iranians." Oddly enough, perhaps as part of secret negotiations over the British sailors, who were dramatically freed by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday, an Iranian diplomat in Iraq was also mysteriously freed. Eight weeks ago, he had been kidnapped off the streets of Baghdad by uniformed men of unknown provenance. Reporting on his sudden release, Alissa J. Rubin of the New York Times offered this little explanation of the kidnapping: "Although [Iraqi foreign minister, Hoshyar] Zebari was uncertain who kidnapped the man, others familiar with the case said they believe those responsible work for the Iraqi Intelligence Service, which is affiliated with the Central Intelligence Agency." The CIA, of course, has a sordid history in Baghdad as well, including running car-bombing operations in the Iraqi capital back in Saddam Hussein's day.
And don't forget the botched Bush administration attempt to capture two high Iranian security officials and the actual kidnapping of five Iranian diplomats-cum-Revolutionary-Guards in Irbil in Iraqi Kurdistan over two months ago -- they disappeared into the black hole of an American prison system in Iraq that now holds perhaps 17,000 Iraqis (as well as those Iranians) and is still growing. As Juan Cole has pointed out, most such acts, and the rhetoric that goes with them, represent so many favors to "an unpopular and isolated Iranian government attempting to rally support and strengthen itself."
In addition, just this week, the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz and other ships in its battle group left San Diego for the Persian Gulf. Two carrier battle groups are already there, promising an almost unprecedented show of strength. As the ship left port, U.S. military officials explained the mission of the carriers in the Gulf this way: They are intended to demonstrate U.S. "resolve to build regional security and bring long-term stability to the region."
And stability in the region, it seems, means promoting instability in Iran by any means possible. So, the President's Global War on Terror also turns out to be the Global War of Terror. No one has dealt with the way "state sponsorship of terror" works, when it comes to our own country, more strikingly than Noam Chomsky, who considers the larger Iranian crisis below. His latest book, Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy, is just out in paperback and couldn't be more to the point at the present moment. Right now, if the U.S. isn't already a failing state, it's certainly a flailing one. Tom
What If Iran Had Invaded Mexico?
Putting the Iran Crisis in Context
By Noam Chomsky
Unsurprisingly, George W. Bush's announcement of a "surge" in Iraq came despite the firm opposition to any such move of Americans and the even stronger opposition of the (thoroughly irrelevant) Iraqis. It was accompanied by ominous official leaks and statements -- from Washington and Baghdad -- about how Iranian intervention in Iraq was aimed at disrupting our mission to gain victory, an aim which is (by definition) noble. What then followed was a solemn debate about whether serial numbers on advanced roadside bombs (IEDs) were really traceable to Iran; and, if so, to that country's Revolutionary Guards or to some even higher authority.
This "debate" is a typical illustration of a primary principle of sophisticated propaganda. In crude and brutal societies, the Party Line is publicly proclaimed and must be obeyed -- or else. What you actually believe is your own business and of far less concern. In societies where the state has lost the capacity to control by force, the Party Line is simply presupposed; then, vigorous debate is encouraged within the limits imposed by unstated doctrinal orthodoxy. The cruder of the two systems leads, naturally enough, to disbelief; the sophisticated variant gives an impression of openness and freedom, and so far more effectively serves to instill the Party Line. It becomes beyond question, beyond thought itself, like the air we breathe.
The debate over Iranian interference in Iraq proceeds without ridicule on the assumption that the United States owns the world. We did not, for example, engage in a similar debate in the 1980s about whether the U.S. was interfering in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan, and I doubt that Pravda, probably recognizing the absurdity of the situation, sank to outrage about that fact (which American officials and our media, in any case, made no effort to conceal). Perhaps the official Nazi press also featured solemn debates about whether the Allies were interfering in sovereign Vichy France, though if so, sane people would then have collapsed in ridicule.
In this case, however, even ridicule -- notably absent -- would not suffice, because the charges against Iran are part of a drumbeat of pronouncements meant to mobilize support for escalation in Iraq and for an attack on Iran, the "source of the problem." The world is aghast at the possibility. Even in neighboring Sunni states, no friends of Iran, majorities, when asked, favor a nuclear-armed Iran over any military action against that country. From what limited information we have, it appears that significant parts of the U.S. military and intelligence communities are opposed to such an attack, along with almost the entire world, even more so than when the Bush administration and Tony Blair's Britain invaded Iraq, defying enormous popular opposition worldwide.
"The Iran Effect"
The results of an attack on Iran could be horrendous. After all, according to a recent study of "the Iraq effect" by terrorism specialists Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank, using government and Rand Corporation data, the Iraq invasion has already led to a seven-fold increase in terror. The "Iran effect" would probably be far more severe and long-lasting. British military historian Corelli Barnett speaks for many when he warns that "an attack on Iran would effectively launch World War III."
What are the plans of the increasingly desperate clique that narrowly holds political power in the U.S.? We cannot know. Such state planning is, of course, kept secret in the interests of "security." Review of the declassified record reveals that there is considerable merit in that claim -- though only if we understand "security" to mean the security of the Bush administration against their domestic enemy, the population in whose name they act.
Even if the White House clique is not planning war, naval deployments, support for secessionist movements and acts of terror within Iran, and other provocations could easily lead to an accidental war. Congressional resolutions would not provide much of a barrier. They invariably permit "national security" exemptions, opening holes wide enough for the several aircraft-carrier battle groups soon to be in the Persian Gulf to pass through -- as long as an unscrupulous leadership issues proclamations of doom (as Condoleezza Rice did with those "mushroom clouds" over American cities back in 2002). And the concocting of the sorts of incidents that "justify" such attacks is a familiar practice. Even the worst monsters feel the need for such justification and adopt the device: Hitler's defense of innocent Germany from the "wild terror" of the Poles in 1939, after they had rejected his wise and generous proposals for peace, is but one example.
The most effective barrier to a White House decision to launch a war is the kind of organized popular opposition that frightened the political-military leadership enough in 1968 that they were reluctant to send more troops to Vietnam -- fearing, we learned from the Pentagon Papers, that they might need them for civil-disorder control.
Doubtless Iran's government merits harsh condemnation, including for its recent actions that have inflamed the crisis. It is, however, useful to ask how we would act if Iran had invaded and occupied Canada and Mexico and was arresting U.S. government representatives there on the grounds that they were resisting the Iranian occupation (called "liberation," of course). Imagine as well that Iran was deploying massive naval forces in the Caribbean and issuing credible threats to launch a wave of attacks against a vast range of sites -- nuclear and otherwise -- in the United States, if the U.S. government did not immediately terminate all its nuclear energy programs (and, naturally, dismantle all its nuclear weapons). Suppose that all of this happened after Iran had overthrown the government of the U.S. and installed a vicious tyrant (as the US did to Iran in 1953), then later supported a Russian invasion of the U.S. that killed millions of people (just as the U.S. supported Saddam Hussein's invasion of Iran in 1980, killing hundreds of thousands of Iranians, a figure comparable to millions of Americans). Would we watch quietly?
It is easy to understand an observation by one of Israel's leading military historians, Martin van Creveld. After the U.S. invaded Iraq, knowing it to be defenseless, he noted, "Had the Iranians not tried to build nuclear weapons, they would be crazy."
Surely no sane person wants Iran (or any nation) to develop nuclear weapons. A reasonable resolution of the present crisis would permit Iran to develop nuclear energy, in accord with its rights under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, but not nuclear weapons. Is that outcome feasible? It would be, given one condition: that the U.S. and Iran were functioning democratic societies in which public opinion had a significant impact on public policy.
As it happens, this solution has overwhelming support among Iranians and Americans, who generally are in agreement on nuclear issues. The Iranian-American consensus includes the complete elimination of nuclear weapons everywhere (82% of Americans); if that cannot yet be achieved because of elite opposition, then at least a "nuclear-weapons-free zone in the Middle East that would include both Islamic countries and Israel" (71% of Americans). Seventy-five percent of Americans prefer building better relations with Iran to threats of force. In brief, if public opinion were to have a significant influence on state policy in the U.S. and Iran, resolution of the crisis might be at hand, along with much more far-reaching solutions to the global nuclear conundrum.
Promoting Democracy -- at Home
These facts suggest a possible way to prevent the current crisis from exploding, perhaps even into some version of World War III. That awesome threat might be averted by pursuing a familiar proposal: democracy promotion -- this time at home, where it is badly needed. Democracy promotion at home is certainly feasible and, although we cannot carry out such a project directly in Iran, we could act to improve the prospects of the courageous reformers and oppositionists who are seeking to achieve just that. Among such figures who are, or should be, well-known, would be Saeed Hajjarian, Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi, and Akbar Ganji, as well as those who, as usual, remain nameless, among them labor activists about whom we hear very little; those who publish the Iranian Workers Bulletin may be a case in point.
We can best improve the prospects for democracy promotion in Iran by sharply reversing state policy here so that it reflects popular opinion. That would entail ceasing to make the regular threats that are a gift to Iranian hardliners. These are bitterly condemned by Iranians truly concerned with democracy promotion (unlike those "supporters" who flaunt democracy slogans in the West and are lauded as grand "idealists" despite their clear record of visceral hatred for democracy).
Democracy promotion in the United States could have far broader consequences. In Iraq, for instance, a firm timetable for withdrawal would be initiated at once, or very soon, in accord with the will of the overwhelming majority of Iraqis and a significant majority of Americans. Federal budget priorities would be virtually reversed. Where spending is rising, as in military supplemental bills to conduct the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it would sharply decline. Where spending is steady or declining (health, education, job training, the promotion of energy conservation and renewable energy sources, veterans benefits, funding for the UN and UN peacekeeping operations, and so on), it would sharply increase. Bush's tax cuts for people with incomes over $200,000 a year would be immediately rescinded.
The U.S. would have adopted a national health-care system long ago, rejecting the privatized system that sports twice the per-capita costs found in similar societies and some of the worst outcomes in the industrial world. It would have rejected what is widely regarded by those who pay attention as a "fiscal train wreck" in-the-making. The U.S. would have ratified the Kyoto Protocol to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions and undertaken still stronger measures to protect the environment. It would allow the UN to take the lead in international crises, including in Iraq. After all, according to opinion polls, since shortly after the 2003 invasion, a large majority of Americans have wanted the UN to take charge of political transformation, economic reconstruction, and civil order in that land.
If public opinion mattered, the U.S. would accept UN Charter restrictions on the use of force, contrary to a bipartisan consensus that this country, alone, has the right to resort to violence in response to potential threats, real or imagined, including threats to our access to markets and resources. The U.S. (along with others) would abandon the Security Council veto and accept majority opinion even when in opposition to it. The UN would be allowed to regulate arms sales; while the U.S. would cut back on such sales and urge other countries to do so, which would be a major contribution to reducing large-scale violence in the world. Terror would be dealt with through diplomatic and economic measures, not force, in accord with the judgment of most specialists on the topic but again in diametric opposition to present-day policy.
Furthermore, if public opinion influenced policy, the U.S. would have diplomatic relations with Cuba, benefiting the people of both countries (and, incidentally, U.S. agribusiness, energy corporations, and others), instead of standing virtually alone in the world in imposing an embargo (joined only by Israel, the Republic of Palau, and the Marshall Islands). Washington would join the broad international consensus on a two-state settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict, which (with Israel) it has blocked for 30 years -- with scattered and temporary exceptions -- and which it still blocks in word, and more importantly in deed, despite fraudulent claims of its commitment to diplomacy. The U.S. would also equalize aid to Israel and Palestine, cutting off aid to either party that rejected the international consensus.
Evidence on these matters is reviewed in my book Failed States as well as in The Foreign Policy Disconnect by Benjamin Page (with Marshall Bouton), which also provides extensive evidence that public opinion on foreign (and probably domestic) policy issues tends to be coherent and consistent over long periods. Studies of public opinion have to be regarded with caution, but they are certainly highly suggestive.
Democracy promotion at home, while no panacea, would be a useful step towards helping our own country become a "responsible stakeholder" in the international order (to adopt the term used for adversaries), instead of being an object of fear and dislike throughout much of the world. Apart from being a value in itself, functioning democracy at home holds real promise for dealing constructively with many current problems, international and domestic, including those that literally threaten the survival of our species.
Noam Chomsky is the author of Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy (Metropolitan Books), just published in paperback, among many other works.
Copyright 2007 Noam Chomsky |
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=182214
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Nachtschattenreich
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| Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2007 2:57 pm Post subject: |
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My impression is that government is way less coherent than depicted in this analysis. It is a huge apparatus made up of rivaling factions whose only common denominator is that they fear losing power when they have to make trendsetting decisions. Different players in the governing dance will have different powers to lose, and therefore approach different outcomes of the same decisions. In America, the most obvious example of that would be the so-called intelligence community, some parts of which have sided with the current cabinet, while others have attempted to topple it, the most prominent attempt of which can be found in the leaks through CIA masthead Seymour Hersh. Simply decapitating an incoherent government would aggravate these rivalries, in the U.S.A. probably more than it did in Iraq.
Yet Noam Chomsky seems to live in a parallel world where John F. Kennedy, the very archetype of an "international consensus" in the 20th century, never was murdered, and an "international order" was not just in place and functioning, but legitimate and beneficial as well. This has very little to do with the real world, which is in objective disorder regardless what any U.S. government does, such as it has already been before the American independence. It is easy to speculate what the majority of individuals on the planet wants, but when it comes to defining a way how to measure it without distortion the difficulties begin. E.g. what a majority of delegates wants is irrelevant if they do not represent majorities, and even when the goals are clear, disputes remain over how to achieve them.
Still, the text touches an important question:
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| The debate over Iranian interference in Iraq proceeds without ridicule on the assumption that the United States owns the world. |
Who does own the world?
The nation with the biggest bombs? That may be a de facto ownership, but unless one believes as Mao did that political power is something that comes out of a gun, it is not grounded in any de jure legitimacy. When it comes to the best such a power might serve as an escrow holder, in the worst case scenario it will attract any form of destructive rebellion.
The Church? That would be theocracy, a system which has heavily wounded Europe when it was tried in the Dark Ages. The tragedy is repeated as a farce these days in Persia, where they are working to force an Islamic imitation thereof upon the rest of us - with a technology way more letal than anything the European theocracy had during its entire lifetime.
The United Nations? This leads to the question of the political legitimacy of that institution, if it does have any at all beyond that of the governments organised in it. It is questionable whether the United Nations, when serving as the endmost authority of the world, would be any better than the League of Nations, whose delegates went into a whistling and shouting match when Haile Selassie tried to speak to them in 1936. (mp3 of the event, zap to 08:20-09:10)
We The People? This is an attractive idea, but difficulties begin with its implementation. Without a political system, no man can speak for anybody but himself, and if people are represented by such a system, all the problems with governments mentioned above will apply. Historically, "we the people" has always been the con man who manages to get the biggest attention, in the technological age it is "we the media."
So who owns the world?
The sacred plants own the world.
The problem is, most current human institutions are hostile to them. What do the proposals of the writer quoted above contribute to change that? |
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aeroplane
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| Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2007 7:31 am Post subject: |
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Nobody owns the world. It is un-own-able. We homosaphians have the luxury of using it for a short time. But soon, we too will pass and yet the world will go on without us just as it always has. 
We are but a glitch in the system.
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Nachtschattenreich
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| Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2007 10:36 am Post subject: |
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| So you believe Noam Chomsky is not about growing a better future, but instead a sort of Rev. Jim Jones for atheists? |
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Ferre
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| Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2007 12:37 pm Post subject: |
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| Nachtschattenreich wrote: |
| So you believe Noam Chomsky is not about growing a better future, but instead a sort of Rev. Jim Jones for atheists? |
I think he's more of a Jim Jones for wannabee intellectuals. 
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prntrkmt
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| Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2007 10:02 pm Post subject: |
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| Ferre wrote: |
| Nachtschattenreich wrote: |
| So you believe Noam Chomsky is not about growing a better future, but instead a sort of Rev. Jim Jones for atheists? |
I think he's more of a Jim Jones for wannabee intellectuals. |
Noam Chomsky has done more positive for computer science than probably anyone other than Tim Berners-Lee, Alan Turing, Bill Atkinson, Nicklaus Wirth, John von Neumann, Alan Kay, and Grace Murray Hopper.
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Nachtschattenreich
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| Posted: Wed Apr 25, 2007 1:41 pm Post subject: |
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| While Chomsky seems to be convinced to know the location of the world´s reboot button, I wonder where we could find his own reboot button. |
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aeroplane
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| Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2007 10:51 am Post subject: |
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Brother Nacht, have you actually read Chomsky? You are quick to criticize him, but your criticisms reflect more poorly on you than on Noam.
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Nachtschattenreich
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| Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2007 3:19 pm Post subject: |
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Brother Airplane, I have carefully read the article posted above three times before I replied to it. I also went to Wikipedia to read about Chomsky´s political work, and followed a number of links there. Then I performed a research on the history East Timor and looked into his related articles. After prntrkmt weighed in on Chomsky´s scientific work, I went again to Wikipedia to read a number of articles on his theories about grammar and language, and took out from my archive a book on that subject to check for more context.
Here´s one detail of my criticism:
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| The Iranian-American consensus includes the complete elimination of nuclear weapons everywhere (82% of Americans); if that cannot yet be achieved because of elite opposition, then at least a "nuclear-weapons-free zone in the Middle East that would include both Islamic countries and Israel" (71% of Americans). |
The "Middle East" is quite a vague term without a clear consensus which nations would belong into it. All members of the OIC can´t, since many of the 57 "Islamic countries" are definitely not part of the "Middle East". (In my native German tongue, it´s called "der Nahe Osten", literally "the Near East", a different word with the same imprecise meaning.)
The geographically correct name for that region is West Asia. This does matter because Pakistan - an ally of the U.S.A. with a nuclear arsenal derived from designes stolen from the Netherlands that might be subject to a putsch if the White House decided to cancel the alliance tomorrow - may or may not be seen as a part of the "Middle East". However, there is no doubt that Pakistan is part of West Asia.
To be fair, originally this is a mistake of Mohamed ElBaradei not of Noam Chomsky. But wouldn´t you expect a specialist for the loopholes in language to find and correct that one? |
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aeroplane
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| Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2007 10:06 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
| But wouldn´t you expect a specialist for the loopholes in language to find and correct that one? |
Not really. I mean what you wish to argue about here is nothing but semantics, while overlooking the far more important issue of reducing the threat of nuclear weapons in the most volatile human habitation on this planet.
The argument which you make is about as pointless as if I were to berate the misuse of my handle by one quasi-intellectual whom has claimed to have done a thorough study of the author of the above topic and can thus cast doubt upon said author's intentions.
The correct spelling and usage of my handle is: aeroplane (please note the prevailing use of lower case letters and the Latin spelling of air. Also note that said handle has been posted here over 1,445 times.) 
Bliss on!
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Nachtschattenreich
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| Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2007 3:52 pm Post subject: |
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aeroplane, please forgive me the misspelling. I´ve just been trying to be casual.
However, I do not agree with your point. Pakistan is the most promising starting point for rolling back the proliferation of nuclear weapons on this planet. The sloppy language I criticised may be a razzle-dazzle by the corrupt IAEA to prevent that the nuclear war criminal AQ Khan is tried by the International Court at the Hague. And the White House may be interested to keep it that way, since it might see an extradition of a war criminal by Pakistan as a precedent for similar extraditions by other nations, including their own. |
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