There's Good Reason to Fear US
By
Noam Chomsky
Toronto Star
08 September, 2003
Amid
the aftershocks of recent suicide bombings in Baghdad and Najaf, and
countless other horrors since Sept. 11, 2001, it is easy to understand
why many believe that the world has entered a new and frightening "age
of terror," the title of a recent collection of essays by Yale
University scholars and others.
However, two years after 9/11, the United States has yet to confront
the roots of terrorism, has waged more war than peace and has continually
raised the stakes of international confrontation.
On 9/11, the world
reacted with shock and horror, and sympathy for the victims. But it
is important to bear in mind that for much of the world, there was a
further reaction: "Welcome to the club."
For the first time
in history, a Western power was subjected to an atrocity of the kind
that is all too familiar elsewhere.
Any attempt to make
sense of events since then will naturally begin with an investigation
of American power how it has reacted and what course it may take.
Within a month of
9/11, Afghanistan was under attack. Those who accept elementary moral
standards have some work to do to show that the United States and Britain
were justified in bombing Afghans to compel them to turn over people
suspected of criminal atrocities, the official reason given when the
bombings began.
Then, in September,
2002, the most powerful state in history announced a new National Security
Strategy, asserting that it will maintain global hegemony permanently.
Any challenge will
be blocked by force, the dimension in which the United States reigns
supreme.
At the same time,
the war drums began to beat to mobilize the population for an invasion
of Iraq.
And the campaign
opened for the mid-term congressional elections, which would determine
whether the administration would be able to carry out its radical international
and domestic agenda.
The final days of
2002, foreign policy specialist Michael Krepon wrote, were "the
most dangerous since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis," which historian
Arthur Schlesinger described, reasonably, as "the most dangerous
moment in human history."
Krepon's concern
was nuclear proliferation in an "unstable nuclear-proliferation
belt stretching from Pyongyang to Baghdad," including "Iran,
Iraq, North Korea and the Indian subcontinent."
Bush administration
initiatives in 2002 and 2003 have only increased the threats in and
near this unstable belt.
The National Security
Strategy declared that the United States, alone, has the right to carry
out "preventive war" preventive, not pre-emptive
using military force to eliminate a perceived threat, even if invented
or imagined.
Preventive war is,
very simply, the "supreme crime" condemned at the Nuremberg
trials of Nazi war criminals.
From early September,
2002, the Bush administration issued grim warnings about the danger
that Saddam Hussein posed to the United States, with broad hints that
Saddam was linked to Al Qaeda and involved in the Sept. 11 attacks.
The propaganda assault helped enable the administration to gain some
support from a frightened population for the planned invasion of a country
known to be virtually defenseless and a valuable prize, at the
heart of the world's major energy system.
Last May, after
the putative end of the war in Iraq, President Bush landed on the deck
of the USS Abraham Lincoln and declared that he had won a "victory
in the war on terror (by having) removed an ally of Al Qaeda."
But Sept. 11, 2003,
will arrive with no credible evidence for the alleged link between Saddam
and his bitter enemy Osama bin Laden. And the only known link between
the victory and terror is that the invasion of Iraq seems to have increased
Al Qaeda recruitment and the threat of terror.
The Wall Street
Journal recognized that Bush's carefully staged aircraft-carrier extravaganza
"marks the beginning of his 2004 re-election campaign," which
the White House hopes "will be built as much as possible around
national security themes."
If the administration
lets domestic issues prevail, it is in deep trouble.
Meanwhile, bin Laden
remains at large. And the source of the post-Sept. 11 anthrax terror
is unknown an even more striking failure, given that the source
is assumed to be domestic, perhaps even from a federal weapons lab.
The Iraqi weapons
of mass destruction are still missing, too.
For the second 9/11
anniversary and beyond, we basically have two choices. We can march
forward with confidence that the global enforcer will drive evil from
the world, much as the president's speech writers declare, plagiarizing
ancient epics and children's tales.
Or we can subject
the doctrines of the proclaimed grand new era to scrutiny, drawing rational
conclusions, perhaps gaining some sense of the emerging reality.
The wars that are
contemplated in the war on terror are to go on for a long time.
"There's no
telling how many wars it will take to secure freedom in the homeland,"
the president announced last year.
That's fair enough.
Potential threats are limitless. And there is strong reason to believe
that they are becoming more severe as a result of Bush administration
lawlessness and violence.
We also should be
able to appreciate recent comments on the matter by Ami Ayalon, the
1996-2000 head of Shabak, Israel's General Security Service, who observed
that "those who want victory" against terror without addressing
underlying grievances "want an unending war."
The observation
generalizes in obvious ways.
The world has good
reason to watch what is happening in Washington with fear and trepidation.
The people who are
best placed to relieve those fears, and to lead the way to a more hopeful
and constructive future, are the people of the United States, who can
shape the future.
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Toronto Star Newspapers Limited