After
the War
By Noam Chomsky
Democracy Now!
09 January, 2004
[Speech delivered
at Columbia University, NYC, November 20, 2003, at an event commemorating
Edward Said. Transcript courtesy of Democracy Now.]
The
first remark has to do with the title. The title that was announced
was after the war, which is a good topic. We should be concerned with
what is coming ahead, but any title like that, especially in the United
States requires kind of a word of caution. There is a trap which is
deeply rooted in the intellectual culture, and we have to avoid it.
The trap is the doctrine that I sometimes call the doctrine of change
of course. It's a doctrine that's invoked every two or three years in
the United States. The content of the doctrine is yes, in the past,
we did some wrong things because of our innocence or out of inadvertence,
but now that's all over, so we can't not waste any more time on this
boring, stale stuff, which incidentally we suppressed and denied while
it was happening, but must now be effaced from history as we march forward
to a glorious future. And if you look, it is literally every two or
three years that the doctrine is invoked. There is a qualification.
We are permitted, in fact, required to recall with great horror the
misdeeds of official enemies, and we're also required to admire with
awe, our own magnificent achievements in the past in both categories,
relying in no small measure on self-serving reconstructions, which quickly
collapse if you follow the path of paying attention to the facts, but
fortunately, that dangerous course is excluded by the convenient doctrine
of change of course, which blocks any such heresies.
The doctrine is
entirely understandable on the part of those who are engaged in criminal
enterprises, which means just about any power system, any system of
concentrated power past and present, and of course, it includes its
acolytes, one of the major commitments of respected intellectuals right
throughout history is to be the acolytes of the systems of power.
Since intellectuals
write history, but it doesn't look like that, you have to be cautious
about what people write about themselves. If you look carefully, you
will find that the course -- the doctrine is dishonest, cowardly, but
has advantages. It does protect us from the danger of understanding
what's happening before our eyes, and, therefore, inducing the kind
of conformism that is useful to systems of power and domination. So,
it has its advantages. In any event, the word after in the title is
appropriate but with some qualifications that should be kept in mind.
And what has happened before, if we escape the domination of the doctrine,
what has happened before can be expected to persist for elementary reasons.
Policies and actions are rooted in institutions. There's some variation,
but limited. The institutions are stable. Therefore, it's only reasonable
to expect the policies and actions to persist, adopt adapted to circumstances.
If you want to understand anything about the world that is to come,
and have any influence on the way it evolves, more than useful to keep
this in mind. Well, let's go to after the war. We might as well, adopting
the doctrine of change of course, we might as well start with today.
So, today our leader
is in London. The mayor of London greeted him by declaring that George
Bush is the greatest threat to life on the planet that we have most
probably ever seen. As I walked in, I was told by someone that they
just heard over the radio that someone else I forget who, announced
that he is the most unwelcome visitor to England since William the Conqueror.
These sentiments
are described here as rather -- met with some surprise, but that reflects
again the useful category of the useful quality of forgetting the recent
past. Similar sentiments have been very widely expressed since September,
2002, to some extent before, but particularly since then.
Within weeks after
September, 2002, a crucial moment in world affairs, within weeks even
the mainstream U.S. press was compelled to report that the world now
regards George Bush as a greater threat to peace than Saddam Hussein.
That fact is an understatement because much as Saddam Hussein was hated
and reviled, he was not regarded as a threat. Even by the countries
that he had attacked, Iran and Kuwait, both of which understood perfectly
well that after a decade of sanctions that had devastated the society,
and after having been effectively disarmed, however awful Saddam Hussein
was, he wasn't going to threaten anybody. In fact, it was the weakest
country in the region. One of the reasons why it was attacked, it met
the primary conditions for target of attack, it was defenseless and
known to be. In fact, they had joined the other states in the region
in trying to integrate Iraq back into the region for several years over
strong U.S. objections. So, the statement, while correct is understated.
These kinds of reactions that you hear today and you have been hearing
for the past year if you pay attention, are as far as I'm aware, are
entirely without precedent. I can't remember anything like them. And
how one decides to evaluate the sentiments that are expressed, one thing
is clear, no sane person should ignore them.
Just a couple of
weeks ago, there was a European Union poll which aroused some interest
here. The poll was asking Europeans what they thought was the greatest
threat to world peace, and it turned ed out that the United States was
ranked right next to North Korea and Iraq, same percentage.
Well, that was felt
to be a surprise, but it shouldn't have been a surprise, because that's
what polls have been showing for a year, over a year, growing concern
and fear that the United States is out of control under the present
leadership, and is a tremendous threat to peace.
Actually, the poll
-- the commentary on the poll focused on something else, namely, the
U.S., North Korea, and Iran were ranked right below Israel, which was
ranked as the greatest threat to peace. But my strong suspicion is that
that's because the questions in the poll were wrongly asked. You have
to be really careful reading polls. Israel in itself is not a threat
- much of a threat at all, but U.S. support for Israel is an enormous
threat to world peace. And I presume that that's what people were answering.
However, the question
was phrased, and if that's correct, then the major threat perceived
to world peace in Europe are U.S. support for Israel, which is the regional
superpower and the U.S. actions elsewhere in the world. Well, if that's
the right interpretation, then the polls are reflecting an understanding
of phenomena that are real and important and widely understood.
They were just pointed
out in a important book that is about to appear by Dilip Hero, one of
the most astute and knowledgeable commentator, historians dealing with
the contemporary Middle East and the international framework in which
its problems arise. What he says is -about - after the war, the book's
about the Iraq war, and its consequences. He says, that has actually
happened in Iraq is something deadlier than the worst scenarios sketched
by the so-called liberal pessimists. The invasion of Iraq has led to
an alliance of Arab nationalism with Islamic militancy steering both
of them towards an amalgam, which is very ominous for the region and
in fact for the world. Again, today's newspapers give you or examples
of that.
That's another contributing
factor to this extremely dangerous amalgam is U.S. support for Israel's
continued rejection of a long-standing international consensus on a
political settlement for the Israel-Palestine issue, and its ongoing
actions to undermine any possibility that a political settlement can
be reached. Always crucially with decisive U.S. support, otherwise those
actions are impossible . For 30 years now, the U.S. has been unilaterally,
and that's worth stressing, unilaterally blocking the possibility of
a political settlement and providing the decisive diplomatic, economic
and military means that permit the actions that step by step make any
such settlement impossible. That's dramatically true right now. It's
all consistently suppressed in the doctrinal system, and now of course,
it's to be - if even mentioned, eliminated from history by the usual
means, the convenient doctrine of change of course. Well, this has been
decisive for 30 years, and it's going on, and we should pay attention
to it if we care about the future. Today's news again gives further
reasons.
With regard to Iraq,
the predictions before the war by intelligence agencies and independent
analysts were pretty uniform. It was predicted that the invasion of
Iraq would increase the threat of terror, and would yield the amalgam
that Dilip Hero is talking about. It would increase the terror and of
proliferation of the weapons of mass destruction. The logic of that
is straight-forward. If you announce to people I'm going to come and
attack you, at will without any pretext, they don't say thank you. Here's'
my neck, cut it. What they do is respond in some fashion. No one can
respond to the United States in military force. The U.S. spends about
as much by now as the rest of world combined, and it is far more technologically
advanced, so people turn to the weapons available to them, and the weak
do have weapons available to them. Two, in fact, terror and weapons
of mass destruction, which are now not that hard to construct. Sooner
or later it, will be united. For example, they might be united in a
small nuclear weapon sneaked into a New York Hotel room. Not at all
out of the question. And by inciting terror and inciting proliferation,
as a deterrent or for revenge, those probabilities are being increased.
Well, those were the predictions before the Iraq war, and there have
been -- they have been verified, not surprisingly, since the war. It
has apparently been, according to specialists on the various countries
involved, stimulated proliferation, not surprisingly, and it has certainly
stimulated terror. The same intelligence agencies and independent analysts
are reporting a sharp spike in recruitment for Al Qeada-style organizations,
and if you pay attention and you observe an increase of horrendous terrorist
acts all over the world.
Exactly as predicted,
the administration was certainly aware of this. I mean they can figure
it out themselves even without reading the reports of their own intelligence
agencies, and they don't desire that outcome, but they don't care that
much. It just has a low priority, ranked alongside of other concerns.
And those other concerns are not insignificant. Some of them are domestic.
These are not conservatives. They are radical reactionary statists,
who are dedicated to unraveling the progressive achievements, legislation
and actions of the past century, and to do that, they have a very narrow
hold on political power. They must maintain it in order to carry out
that program. You see it day by day in the legislations produced and
the actions undertaken and they have an international program, which
has been announced, dominating the world by force, permanently, preventing
any challenge, and in particular, controlling the very crucial energy
resources of the world. Mostly in the Middle East, secondarily in Central
Asia and a few other places. Those are serious goals and they are worth
undertaking from the perspective of the policy managers, even if it
does increase the threat of destruction, in fact maybe the destruction
of the species, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the stimulation
of terror to which the population of the United States will also be
subject as before. How do Iraqis feel about all of this? That's critically
important and much harder to determine. It's harder to determine the
attitudes of people under military occupation, but it's not impossible.
There's a series of U.S.-run polls taking place. They're informative,
so one recent poll actually had a front page story in the New York Times,
with a headline saying that Iraqis are pleased to be rid of Saddam Hussein.
Well, we didn't need a poll to tell us that. And presumably, although
the question wasn't asked. Are they happy to be relieved of the murderous
U.S. sanctions, which had killed hundreds of thousands of people, devastated
the society, and reduced it to total ruin? That question wasn't asked
because you're not allowed to mention it. You're not allowed to mention
that this took place. We don't consider our own massive crimes there.
The doctrine of change, of course, is so extreme that you don't even
mention it while it's going on, let alone in the past. So, that question
wasn't asked. And what that almost predictable answer wasn't mentioned.
Also unmentioned is the fact that the murderous sanctions are a large
part of the reason why Iraqis were unable to send Saddam Hussein to
the same fate that greeted other comparable monsters and tyrants and
torturers who were also supported by the people who are now in office
in Washington, just as they supported Saddam Hussein right through his
worst atrocities and long after the war with Iran.
There's quite a
rogue's gallery of, Ceausescu of Romania, the Saddam supported by the
Reagan and Bush administrations right through the last minute overthrown
from within and the same is true of a long list. The Marcos, Duvalier,
Mubutu, Suharto, a long list, all strongly supported, as long as they
could maintain power, overthrown from within, ranking easily many of
them, with Saddam Hussein in brutality and terror, but if you destroy
a society, and you compel the society to rely on the tyrant just for
survival, and things like that are not going to happen. This has been
understood for a long time, and again, those are some of the things
that you just don't mention just like you don't mention the effects
of the sanctions. Well, there was more interesting aspect of the poll
in the headline. If you read down further in the column, there were
other results given.
One of the questions
asked in the same poll was - people were asked for their - how they
evaluated foreign leaders, favorability ranking. Do you have a favorable
opinion of x, y and z? The one who ranked highest was by far was French
president Jacques Chirac. He was the international symbol of opposition
to the invasion. Well below him, you found Bush, and even below him,
the rather pathetic Blair, trailing behind. That was reported without
comment, although evidently, The New York Times reporter had some -
bothered him a little and he came back to it a couple of weeks later
and mentioned it in another context and had a comment on it. He gave
the figures. His comment was "go figure." Well, I'm not sure
how exactly how to interpret that, but I presume what he meant is crazy
Arabs. Go figure. Here we liberate them, and they are not thanking us
for liberating them. What can it possibly mean, if they regard Jacques
Chirac as the most - give him the most highest favorable ranking of
any foreign leader. Well, you know, figure Columbia students might be
able to figure out a different interpretation, but anyway for the Times
it was, "go figure." Turning to another poll where this question
was asked recently. How do you regard the coalition forces? Are they
an occupying force or a liberating force? By five to one, they were
called - an occupying force. Should the coalition forces leave? By five
to three, Iraqis wanted them to leave. That's a remarkable figure, because
about 95% of the population also reports that the security situation
is much worse than it was before the invasion. And the only thing that's
keeping any kind of a lid on it is the occupying forces. But nevertheless,
by a very substantial majority, they want them to leave. Well, what
does that mean? Again, you can figure it out. Other polls ask people
why did the United States invade Iraq? Well, here it's worth - in the
United States, there's some straight answers. So the official reason
that widely repeated as long as you can hang on to, is that Iraq had
weapons of mass destruction and their links to terror, which was such
a threat to us that we had invade it.
And then there was
a massive government propaganda campaign in September of 2002 when the
invasion was effectively announced and it did drive a large part of
the U.S. population completely off the international spectrum. The United
States was the only country where a large part of the population was
genuinely afraid of Saddam Hussein, because of his weapons of mass destruction,
and his links to terror. It turns out that the people who had those
attitudes, those attitudes are strongly correlated with support for
the war. Which is not in the least surprising. If I believed those things,
I would support the war, too. I mean, if you believe that here is a
murderous tyrant accumulating weapons of mass destruction, responsible
for 9-11, linked to Al qaeda, planning new terror, we have to stop him
in time, there's a rational decision to invade Iraq. Of course, there
never was any reason to believe there was a particle of truth to that.
As I say, the U.S. was alone in having any detectable part of the population
even have those opinions. Even in places like Iran and Kuwait. The lying
about that continues until the present. It doesn't matter that it was
all debunked. So George Bush in his radio addresses a couple of weeks
ago, he continues to repeat that the U.S., I'm quoting him, "saved
the world from a tyrant, who was developing weapons of mass destruction,
and cultivating ties to terror." Well, you know, nobody believes
that, including his speechwriter, but they know something else. They
know that if you keep repeating a lie long and loud enough, and nobody
takes you to account for it, it will become truth. There are plenty
of precedents for that. Not pretty ones to think about, but they're
there and you know them so I won't go on with it. It accounts for the
reactions that you hear around the world. The collapse of the official
stories about weapons of mass destruction and terror, they did have
consequences. In a fact, ominous consequences. The most significant
consequence of the collapse of the story about weapons of mass destruction
was that it changed the official doctrine. All of this is taking place
in the context of the national security strategy that was announced
in September, 2002. That strategy was based on the principle that if
a country has weapons of mass destruction, the United States is entitled
to attack it in anticipatory self-defense.
What's called in
the press and some commentary preemptive war but that's a total fabrication.
It has nothing to do with preemptive war, it's just a euphemism for
direct aggression. As Arthur Schelinger pointed out, preemption means
something and nothing like that. But that was the doctrine, whenever
you think about it, the doctrine has been changed. With the discovery
that there were no weapons of mass destruction, the doctrine has been
changed so that now the United States has the right and authority, sovereign
right, to attack any country that has the intent and ability to develop
weapons of mass destruction. Okay. That's a significant change, that
lowers the wars on aggression very significantly. And in fact, it makes
it universal. Every country has the ability to develop weapons of mass
destruction, any country with a high school chemistry and biology lab
has the capacity. Intent is in the eye of the beholder. You don't need
evidence for it. So what that's saying in effect is everybody's liable
to attack. We have the sovereign right to attack anyone we want. That's
a significant change in the doctrine. Even if it's not reported here,
it's noticed by the potential victims, and the potential victims are
now generalized - essentially universally. Another consequence of the
collapse of the official reasons is that there's a new - you know, there's
a new doctrine about why we went to war. It was a reflection of what
the press calls our yearning for democracy. That's a term that became
prominent in the Reagan years, yearning for democracy. And so we invaded
Iraq in order to establish a democracy there, because our yearning for
democracy, and in fact, to democratize the Middle East and so on. If
you read the commentary on this, the press, journals and 0 on, I think
you will discover that this assumption is close to universal.
Even the critics,
strongest critics say, yes, we invaded to create democracy, but premature,
can't do it, circumstances are not right. One criticism or another,
sometimes the repetition of this assumption reaches the level of really
rapturous acclaim, fact that you may remember from, you know, reading
the North Korean press, if you look at it. David Ignatius, the highly
respected leading commentator in The Washington Globe recently described
the invasion of Iraq as the most idealistic war fought in modern times,
fought solely to bring democracy to Iraq and the region and you know,
how can you be more noble than that? He was particularly impressed with
Paul Wolfowitz, the grand visionary of the yearning for democracy, who
he describes as a genuine intellectual whose heart bleeds for the oppressed
in the Muslim world, and who dreams of liberating it? So, presumably,
that explains his career, like his very strong support for Suharto in
Indonesia, one of the worst mass murderers and killers and aggressors.
Wolfowitz was ambassador to Indonesia, and he had full support for his
friend, Suharto, and that goes right up to 1997, a couple of months
before Suharta was overthrown by an internal revolution.
However, it's only
fair to say that Wolfowitz's support for democracy and yearning - you
know, his heart bleeding for the tortured victims is ecumenical. It's
not limited to Muslims. He had the same attitude - he was the high official
in the state department under Reagan concerned with Asian affairs, and
that support extended to the brutal, vicious dictator - Chun, of South
Korea, who despite the support of the Reagan administration to the very
end, was overthrown by a mass popular movement in 1987. It extends to
Marcos in the Philippines. The Reagan administration was full of what
they called love for Marcos and his love of democracy, and that continued
until he was overthrown to the end. All of this is on Wolfowitz's watch.
And it continues, I won't go on with it. But all of this is irrelevant
because of the convenient doctrine of change of course. So, yes, he
is a grand visionary who loves democracy, and his heart bleeds for the
victims of oppression, and if there's a record that shows precisely
the opposite, it's just that boring old stuff which we forget about,
because that's now we're going on to the future. I don't know how far
back the doctrine of change of course extends, but if it extend as few
months, then there's some other things that you might mention.
So, for example,
Wolfowitz dramatically illustrated his "love" of democracy
earlier this year when he berated the Turkish military for failing to
intervene to prevent the elected government from keeping to the position
of 95% of the population. About 95% of the population was opposed to
participation in the U.S. war in Iraq, and surprisingly, the elected
government went along with them, which caused absolute fury in the United
States. Powell instantly announced they were going to be harshly punished
for this, cutting back aid and so on. That they were denounced all over
the press. Former ambassador, Morton Abramowitz wrote an article saying
this proves that the government lacks democratic credentials because
it's not listening to orders from Crawford and Washington.
It's following 95%
of the population, but Wolfowitz went even beyond denouncing the military
for not intervening, and demanding that they apologize to the United
States for this, and recognize that their duty is, as he put it, to
help the United States. Now, that's real commitment to democracy. That's
a couple of months ago. It's an extenuation of Wolfowitz, one might
say this was in the midst of a display of hatred and contempt for democracy
of a sort that I have never seen in the past. It was so obvious that
you cannot ignore it, all connected with the same insistence of a few
governments on keeping to the overwhelming position of their population.
Bitterly condemned for this across the spectrum.
The ones that were
hailed were the ones disregarding even larger percentages of their population.
They were the bold new Europe, the wave of the future. A great Churchillian
figure like Berlusconi, for example?. I have never seen anything like
that. And what's astonishing and revealing to us, and important for
the future is that this display of total hatred for democracy went side
by side with a chorus of self-adulation about our yearning for democracy.
I mean, to be able to carry that off is a very impressive achievement,
not only of the media, but of educated intellectuals generally. I think
it would be hard to mimic that totalitarian state. You might want to
think about it and what it means.