Noam Chomsky: Enter a World That Is Truly Surreal --

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Date Posted: 09:17:39 10/08/01 Mon
Author: Nikolai von Kreitor
Subject: Noam Chomsky: Enter a World That Is Truly Surreal

ENTER A WORLD THAT IS TRULY SURREAL
United States Sudden Use of International Violence

By Noam Chomsky

WE CAN GET YOU ANYTIME
As bombs and missiles were raining on Baghdad, Basra, and miserable conscripts hiding in holes in the sands of southern Iraq, President George Bush declared that "What is at stake is more than one small country: it is a big idea: a new world order ﷓ where diverse nations are drawn together in common cause, to achieve the universal aspirations of mankind: peace and security freedom and the rule of law" (January 29, 1991). His oration evoked much awe and admiration in the West, and its notes still echo in the chorus of self﷓adulation among wealthy and powerful sectors of the rich nations, savoring the triumphs of the 1980s in their conflict against the third world and its growing counterpart at home. Since those who proclaimed the advent of a new era with such pride chose Western policies towards Iraq as the prime illustration of their principles and intentions, it would only be proper to observe how those policies have evolved since August 1990, when Bush's friend and ally Saddam Hussein committed the first crime that mattered, disobeying orders. Let's begin with the most recent display.

On June 26, 1993, President Clinton ordered a missile attack on Iraq. Twenty﷓three Tomahawk cruise missiles were fired at an intelligence headquarters in downtown Baghdad. Seven missed the target, striking a residential area instead. Eight civilians were killed and a dozen wounded, Nora Boustany reported from Baghdad. Among the dead was Layla al -Attar, an artist well﷓known in the Arab world, and a man found with his baby son in his arms. It is understood that a missile attack will inevitably have technical failures, but its "main advantage," Defense Secretary Les Aspin explained, is that "it does not put US pilots at risk" as more accurate bombing would do; only Iraqi civilians, who are expendable.

Clinton was greatly cheered by the results, the press reported. "I feel quite good about what transpired and I think the American people should feel good about it," the deeply religious President said on his way to church the next day. His pleasure was shared by congressional doves, who found the missile attack "appropriate, reasonable and necessary" (Barney Frank); "we've got to show these people that we're not sitting targets for terrorism" Joseph Moakley).

The attack was announced as retaliation for an alleged Iraqi attempt to assassinate ex﷓President Bush in April on a visit to Kuwait, where the accused were on trial under dubious circumstances as the missiles were launched. In public, Washington claimed to have "certain proof' of Iraqi guilt, but it was quietly conceded that this was a fabrication, as usual: "Administration officials, speaking anonymously," informed the press "that the judgment of Iraq's guilt was based on circumstantial evidence and analysis rather than ironclad intelligence," a New York Times editorial observed. The fact, considered trivial, was barely noted and quickly forgotten.

At the UN Security Council, US Ambassador Madeleine Albright defended the resort to force with an appeal to Article 51 of the UN Charter. Article 51 authorizes the use of force in self defense against, armed attack until the Security Council takes action. Under international law, such self defense is authorized when its necessity is "instant, overwhelming, and leaving no choice of means and no moment for deliberation." To invoke Article 51 in bombing Baghdad two months after an alleged attempt to assassinate a former president scarcely rises to the level of absurdity, a matter of little concern to commentators.

The editors of the Washington Post assured the nation's elites that the facts of this case "plainly fit" Article 51. "Any President has a duty to use military force to protect the nation's interests," their colleagues at the New York Times added. "Diplomatically, this was the proper rationale to invoke," the Boston Globe declared: "Clinton's reference to the UN charter
conveyed an American desire to respect international law." Others offered still more creative interpretations of Article 51, "which permits states to respond militarily if they are threatened by a hostile power," Stephen Hubbell reported in the Christian Science Monitor. No one, however, seems to have reached the heights scaled by Washington in defending its invasion of Panama, when UN Ambassador Thomas Pickering informed the Security Council that Article 51 'provides for the use of armed force to defend a country, to defend our interests" (my emphasis), and the Justice Department added that the same provision of the Charter entities the US to invade Panama to prevent its "territory from being used as a base for smuggling drugs into the United States."
Though transparently absurd, Clinton's appeal to international law was widely endorsed by intellectual opinion and by the more obedient US clients: Britain, Russia, and others. While some questioned the appeal to Article 51 (editorials, New York Times, Financial Times (London)), they refrained from drawing the immediate conclusion: the attack was a criminal act that should be punished accordingly.

It is, incidentally, not difficult to imagine how the world would look if Washington's code of behavior were adopted generally: it would be a jungle, in which the powerful would work their will as they choose. It would, in short, be much like what we see as we look around us without the blinders of ideology and doctrine.

The Washington Post praised Clinton for "confronting foreign aggression' and relieving the fear that he might not be willing to resort to violence as freely as his predecessors. The bombing, the Post continued, refuted the dangerous belief that "American foreign policy in the post Cold War era was destined to be forever hogtied by the constraints of multilateralism" - that is, by international law and the UN charter.

Many noted that the decision to attack Iraq was politically astute, gaining public support for the President at a difficult moment, as the population rallied round the flag. Viewing the same picture from a sharply different perspective, American TV correspondent Charles Glass, writing in London, asked "what is the connection between an Iraqi artist named Layla al Attar, and Rickey Ray Rector, a black man executed in 1992 for murder in Arkansas?" The answer, he pointed out, is Bill Clinton's need to improve his ratings, in one case, by sending missiles to bomb Baghdad, in the other, by returning to Arkansas in the course of his presidential campaign to supervise the execution of a mentally incapacitated prisoner, proving "that a Democrat could be tough on crime."

Clinton's PR advisers have their fingers on the pulse of the country. They know that in unprecedented numbers, people are disillusioned, skeptical and troubled over the conditions of their lives, their apparent powerlessness, and the decline of democratic institutions, a reaction intensified by the impact of a decade of Reaganism; it is hardly a surprise that Reagan ranks alongside of Nixon as the most unpopular living ex﷓President, particularly disliked by working people and "Reagan Democrats." The image makers also know that the Administration has no intention of addressing the problems of ordinary people; any meaningful measures would infringe upon the prerogatives of its primary constituencies, and therefore are excluded. For the executives of a transnational corporation, professionals linked to the power structure, and other privileged sectors, it is important for the world to be properly disciplined, for advanced industry to be granted its huge public subsidies, and for the wealthy to be guaranteed security. It does not matter much if public education and health deteriorate, the useless population rots in slums and prisons, and the basis for a livable society erodes for the public at large. In adopting these basic guidelines for policy, the current Administration is at one with it's predecessors.

Under such conditions, the public must be frightened and diverted. The collapse of urban communities has consequences that really are frightening to many people; in a depoliticized society in which resources are increasingly directed to the privileged, many will welcome the harsh whip of state power against those who threaten them, seeing no alternative. The same attitudes extend to foreign hordes, sentiments that were articulated by the populist president Lyndon Johnson when he warned that "we are outnumbered 15 to one" by hostile forces poised to "sweep over the United States and take what we have"; lacking the means to bomb them to dust in their lairs, we would be "easy prey to any yellow dwarf with a pocket knife." Throughout the period when he was exhibited to the public, Ronald Reagan, the pathetic figure playing cowboy, appealed to the same sense of imminent doom if we let down our guard, whimpering about Sandinistas marching on Texas, awesome air bases in Grenada, and other such grim threats to our existence.

Cold War propaganda served the purpose of intimidation for many years, "scaring Hell out of the American people" in a style that was "clearer than truth," as the influential Senator Arthur Vandenberg and his mentor Dean Acheson advised in the late 1940s. Inundated by this deluge, much of the population lives in dread of foreign devils about to descend upon them and steal what little they still hold. Through the 1980s, with the Soviet menace losing its utility, new demons were invented, with some success. The United States became an object of no little derision abroad as the tourist industry periodically collapsed because Americans, frightened by images of crazed Arabs, were afraid to venture to Europe, where they would be far safer than in any American city. During the buildup to the Gulf War, the terror was palpable; one could find wealthy towns 100 miles from nowhere that were fortifying themselves in fear of Arab terrorists, if not Saddam himself. Meanwhile, a flood of propaganda about our unique generosity and the ungratefulness of the wretches who benefit from it has led to a situation in which almost half the population believes that foreign aid is the largest element of the federal budget and another third select welfare as the chief culprit, also far overestimating the proportion that goes to blacks and to child support; less than a quarter give the correct answer, military spending, and surely few are aware that these expenditures are in large part welfare for the rich, much like the minuscule "aid" program that is one of the most miserly in the developed world.
Exploiting these achievements, the doctrinal managers leaped into the fray as soon as their leader determined to resort to force in response to the invasion of Kuwait. These successes taught valuable lessons to the Clinton Administration, which anticipated ﷓ correctly ﷓ that it would receive similar favors. Its tactical choices were in part determined by the consideration noted by the Secretary of Defense: Why put the lives of American soldiers at risk merely to reduce civilian casualties? More generally, why act at all, anywhere, except on the basis of self﷓interest? On this guiding principle, US ground troops can be sent in massive force to Somalia well after the famine had receded to manageable levels and good photo ops were guaranteed, expecting little short﷓term resistance from teenagers with rifles. But not to Bosnia, where the slaughter is approaching genocide; or to Angola, where the same is true but there is no need to react or even to report, since Western interests are not at risk and the primary agent, Jonas Savimbi, is a long﷓time US client extolled as a "freedom fighter" by leading political figures, even declared to be "one of the few authentic heroes of our time" by Jeane Kirkpatrick after his forces had boasted of shooting down civilian airliners with hundreds killed along with numerous other atrocities, while killing and destroying on a truly heroic scale with US and South African support. The rules of engagement in Bosnia are highly restrictive; in Somalia, however, UN troops are authorized to carry out massive retaliation against local forces, with many civilian casualties. The operative criteria are again clear: retaliation would be costly to the West in Bosnia, while Somalis are weak enough to be fair game. Terrible atrocities in Haiti could have been stopped with a few gestures, but the US and its partners have not been eager to restore to power a democratically﷓elected representative of the poor, whose efforts to help the vast majority of the population are condemned as "divisive" acts of "class warfare" by government and media, as distinct from the usual pattern of brutal exploitation in the interests of tiny elites, which did not merit such appellations. And, of course, mass slaughter and general terror are often regarded as meritorious and therefore granted decisive military and diplomatic support, as in Timor, Central America, and large parts of Africa in recent years, not to speak of earlier exploits.

To be sure, the US could have resorted to far more savage bombardment of Baghdad without incurring any loss of lives that matter. But that would not have been in Washington's interest. The President "did not want to risk serious civilian casualties," Times chief diplomatic correspondent Thomas Friedman explained: "A strike with more civilian casualties would have probably resulted not in widespread support for Washington, but rather sympathy for Iraq," and therefore would have been unwise.

Despite this powerful argument against mass murder, not everyone was pleased with the President's restraint. New York Times columnist William Safire condemned the Administration for administering "a pitiful wrist slap" instead of a full﷓scale attack on "Saddam's war machine and economic base - setting back all hopes of recovery for years." His qualms were
endorsed by the New Republic, though its editors were pleased by the "silence of the Arab world," signaling its approval for Clinton's decisive action. As they knew, the bombing was criticized even by Washington's Arab allies, and condemned by the League of Arab States as an act of aggression. "In Morocco, a close ally of the US, the official press blasted
Washington" the day after the raid, and "accused the Clinton administration of exploiting �the new world order to enslave the countries and people of the world� (and) �using the UN Security Council as �an organ of American foreign policy�� the Christian Science Monitor reported from Cairo. As for the family dictatorships that manage Gulf oil for the West, they were "silent" so as to distance themselves from an act that caused great bitterness in the Arab world.

Though quite false, the editors' claim becomes intelligible when we recall the norms of respectable usage, which they illustrated further in reminding their readers that President Bush had "organized the opinion of the world against Saddam" as he launched the attack against Iraq in January 1991. This conventional formula too is grossly false﷓if "the world" is taken to include its people. But it is correct if we adopt the standard convention that "the world" consists of its rich white faces and obedient Third World clients. Similarly, if we understand "the Arab world" to include only Arabs who satisfy the criteria of Western elites, the claim that "the Arab world" approves of US actions is accurate enough, indeed tautologous.

The propaganda campaign typically takes the form of fear of "Islamic fundamentalism", a new Great Satan threatening the world, replacing the Soviet menace. This campaign has its farcical elements even putting aside the fact that U.S. culture compares with Iran in its religious fundamentalism. The most extreme Islamic fundamentalist state in the world is the loyal U.S. ally Saudi Arabia, or to be more precise, the family dictatorship that serves as the "Arab facade" behind which the U.S. effectively controls the Arabian peninsula, to borrow the terms of British colonial rule. The West has no problems with Islamic fundamentalism there. Probably the most fanatic Islamic fundamentalist group in the world is led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the terrorist extremist who has been the CIA favorite and prime recipient of the $3.3 billion in (official) U.S. aid given to the Afghan rebels (with roughly the same amount reported from Saudi Arabia ) , the man who has recently been shelling Kabul with thousands killed, driving hundreds of thousands of people out of the city (including all Western
Embassies), in an effort to shoot his way into power; not quite the same as Pol Pot emptying Phnom Penh, since the U.S. client has been far more bloody in that operation.
Similarly, it is not at all concealed in Israel that its invasion of Lebanon in 1982 was undertaken in part to destroy the secular nationalism of the PLO, which was becoming a real nuisance with its persistent call for a peaceful diplomatic settlement, which was undermining the U.S﷓Israeli strategy of gradual integration of the occupied territories within Israel. One result was the creation of Hizbollah, an Iranian﷓backed fundamentalist group that drove Israel out of most of Lebanon. For similar reasons, Israel supported fundamentalist elements as a rival to the accommodationist PLO in the occupied territories. The results are similar to Lebanon, as Hamas attacks against the Israeli military become increasingly difficult to contain. The examples illustrate the typical brilliance of intelligence operations when they have to deal with populations, not simply various gangsters. The basic reasoning goes back to the early days of Zionism: Palestinian moderates pose the most dangerous threat to the goal of avoiding any political settlement until facts are established to which it will have to conform.

In brief, Islamic fundamentalism is an enemy only when it is "out of control." In that case, it falls into the category of "radical nationalism" or "ultranationalism," more generally, of independence whether religious or secular, right or left, military or civilian; priests who preach the "preferential option for the poor" in Central America, to mention a recent case.

The alleged plot against Bush was "loathsome and cowardly," President Clinton declared. The missile attack was "essential to protect our sovereignty" and "to affirm the expectation of civilized behavior among nations." Others agreed that the "plot to kill a former president" is "an outrageous crime" (Washington Post), "an act of war" (New York Times). William Safire spelled out the argument further: it is "an act of war ... when one head of state tries to murder another. If clear evidence had shown that Fidel Castro ordered the killing of President Kennedy, President Johnson would surely have used military force to depose the regime in Havana."

The rhetorical device selected is instructive. Of course, Safire knows full well that his hypothetical example reverses the actual historical record. He and his readers are fully aware of the repeated attempts of the Kennedy administration to assassinate Fidel Castro, the last of them set in motion on the very day of Kennedy's assassination. But a truly refined imperial arrogance permits the bland inversion of the facts, with confidence that colleagues and the educated community generally will not "notice" that according to the preaching of Western moralists, US attempts to assassinate Castro were "loathsome and cowardly acts of war" which entitled Castro to use military force to depose the regime in Washington, had that been possible, and surely justified bombs in Washington in retaliation for Kennedy's "outrageous crime." That conclusion, however, follows only if the lofty pronouncements are taken seriously, a lapse that would evoke scorn among sophisticates.

The fact that a respected columnist is capable of drawing the analogy to Castro and Kennedy in this manner is remarkable enough. But it scarcely hints at the corruption of the intellectual community. Throughout this entire farce, the major media and journals of opinion were successfully defended from crucial facts that must have occurred at once to any literate person: Washington holds the world record for attempts to assassinate foreign leaders, including Castro and Patrice Lumumba, and played a leading role in the killing of Salvador Allende and of US ally Ngo Dinh Diem after a coup set in motion by John F. Kennedy, and applauded by Kennedy a few days after the assassination in a secret cable to his Saigon Ambassador, who was instrumental in executing the coup. In a free and independent press, this would have been the lead story. It was, however, avoided with exceptions so rare as to be virtually undetectable, though it should be noted that letters to the press did recognize that 2+2=4, like Orwell's Winston Smith before he too was broken.

The discipline of the educated classes is most impressive.
It may be worth recalling the justifications that were offered for the attempts to assassinate Castro when the Senate's Church Commission investigated these policies in 1975. Kennedy's CIA director John McCone testified that Castro was a man who would

�seize every opportunity before a microphone or television to berate and criticize the United States in the most violent and unfair and incredible terms. Here was a man that was doing his utmost to use every channel of communication of every Latin American country to win them away from any of the principles that we stood for and drive them into Communism. Here was a man that turned over the sacred soil of Cuba in 1962 to the Soviets to plant nuclear warhead short﷓range missiles.�

- in defense against an expected US invasion of Cuba (a plausible expectation from the Cuban and Soviet perspective, as Defense Secretary Robert McNamara later acknowledged), and well after the onset of murderous CIA run terrorist attacks on Cuba including assassination attempts. In the face of such crimes, it is understandable that we should attempt to assassinate Castro; and, 30 years later, are entitled to recall the Kennedy Castro interchange only as offering a hypothetical justification for bombing Baghdad after an alleged attempt to assassinate a former President.

A no less astonishing feature of media commentary on Clinton's attack was the frequent reference to Reagan's air strike against Libya in 1986, killing dozens of Libyan civilians in retaliation for a bombing in Berlin in which an American soldier was killed; the bombing was attributed to Libya with no credible evidence, as the press, which suppressed the facts throughout, conceded when enough time had passed. Thus Thomas Friedman noted that "In the raid on Libya, Colonel Qaddafi was personally targeted, members of his family were killed, and he narrowly escaped being blown apart in his tent." Conclusion? The attempted assassination of Qaddafi is a worthy precedent for Clinton's bombing in retaliation against an alleged plot to assassinate Bush.

At this point, we enter a world that is truly surreal, defying comment. The rules of the game must be strictly observed in civilized society: assassinations, terrorism, torture, and aggression are crimes that must be harshly punished when the targets are people who matter; they are not even worth mentioning, or are laudable acts of self﷓defense, if the chief mafia don himself conducts the crimes in the name of the Free World. So self evident are these truths that close to 100 of reporting and commentary on Clinton's attack upheld them, even descending to the level of citing US attempts to assassinate foreign leaders in justification of the US attack on Iraq. Any totalitarian state would be proud to have an intellectual class capable of such a performance.

Outlining Washington's reasoning, Thomas Friedman explained why Clinton's attack did not target Saddam Hussein: "it has always been American policy that the iron fisted Mr. Hussein plays a useful role in holding Iraq together," and, officials say privately, "the United States is better off with a unified Iraq than with seeing it broken into Kurdish, Shiite and Sunni Muslim states, which could destabilize" the region. Here the Times chief diplomatic correspondent reiterates his exposition of Bush Administration thinking in the immediate aftermath of the Gulf slaughter war" is hardly the appropriate term for a conflict in which one side massacres the other from a safe distance, meanwhile wrecking the civilian society. That phase having ended, the victors stood by silently while Saddam crushed the Shiite uprising in the South, then the Kurds in the North, right under the eyes of Stormin' Norman Schwartzkopf, whose forces refused even to allow rebelling Iraqi generals access to captured Iraqi equipment. Support for Saddam's new slaughters pained our delicate sensibilities, government and media explained, but they were necessary to ensure "stability," a magic word that can always be invoked to cover the demands of the rich men who rule, whatever they may be. The immediate task for the victors in March 1991 was to hold the ruined civilian society hostage under tight embargo, causing sufficient pain so that some general might take power, the Bush Administration reasoned. In that event, Friedman wrote, "Washington would have the best of all worlds: an ironfisted Iraqi junta without Saddam Hussein," a return to the days when Saddam's "iron fist ... held Iraq together, much to the satisfaction of the American allies Turkey and Saudi Arabia" ﷓ and, of course, their superpower patron.

Another feature of the new world order illustrated as its announcement was reverberating is the racism and hypocrisy with which it is suffused. Saddam's vicious attack on the Kurds was extensively covered, evoking a public reaction that forced Washington to take some reluctant steps to protect the victims, with their Aryan features and origins. The far more destructive attack on the Shiites in the South evoked little coverage or concern. Meanwhile, ongoing Turkish atrocities against the Kurds escaped notice in the US media, again apart from the margins.

The sincerity of the concern for the Kurds is revealed by what took place after public pressures dissipated. The Kurdish areas are subject indirectly to the sanctions against Iraq in addition to an embargo imposed by Iraq in violation of UN sanctions. The West, which could easily provide for the needs of the Kurds, refuses to do so. "Kurdish and Western specialists estimate about $50 million would be needed to buy back a sufficient portion of the [Kurdish] wheat crop to protect die poorest Kurds and prevent Baghdad from undercutting the northern Iraqi economy," the Washington Post reports, but donors have come up with only $6.8 million, a pittance. Returning home from a "fruitless two﷓month trip trying to raise funds in the United States, Europe and Saudi Arabia," Kurdish Democratic Party leader Massoud Barzani said the alternatives facing his people were to "become refugees again in Iran and Turkey," or "we surrender to Saddam Hussein." Meanwhile "in southern Iraq, where conditions are most acute, the U.N. no longer maintains a permanent presence," the executive director of Middle East Watch reports, and a UN mission in March 1993 "did not even ask permission to visit the marshes." The LTN Department of Humanitarian affairs prepared a 1/2 billion dollar relief and rehabilitation program for Kurds, Shi'ites, and poverty﷓stricken Sunnis in central Iraq. United Nations' members pledged a pathetic $50 million, the Clinton administration offering $15 million, "money left over from contributions to a previous U.N. program in northern Iraq."

The US policy of holding the Iraqi population hostage requires effective economic warfare, a practice in which Washington has much experience, including embargoes against Cuba, Nicaragua, and Vietnam in recent years to punish them for insufferable disobedience and to ensure that other learn what such behavior entails. The embargo against Iraq has left Saddam's power unaffected while causing many more civilian casualties than the bombardment itself In a study reported by the New England Journal of Medicine, leading US and foreign specialists estimated "that an excess of more than 46,900 children died between January and August 1991," far more since, consequences that the West would unhesitatingly describe as genocidal if attributable to some official enemy. Meanwhile the US continues to bomb Iraq at its pleasure. Bush's final gesture on leaving office in January 1993 was to order 45 Tomahawk cruise missiles to be fired at an industrial complex near Baghdad; 37 hit the target, one struck the Rashid Hotel, 'killing two people. And Bill Clinton waited only five months into his term of office to demonstrate that he too is capable of ordering the Pentagon to strike defenseless Iraqi targets.

Clinton's first triumphant display of his manhood and character, and the reaction to it in the West, also carries its lessons. The first is that the US remains a violent and lawless state, a stance that is fully endorsed by its allies and clients, who understand that international law is a fraud to which the powerful appeal when they seek some veil, however transparent, for whatever they choose to do. A second lesson, equally familiar, is that such behavior can proceed with impunity in an intellectual culture that recognizes few limits in its services to power. We have to turn to Third World dictatorships to find the truisms that are suppressed with such remarkable effectiveness in the Free World: the new world order is "new" only that it adapts traditional policies of domination and exploitation to somewhat changed contingencies; it is much admired by the West because it is recognized to be nothing more than yet another device "to enslave the countries and people of the world."

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