New Chomsky Interview: "U.S. Is A Leading Terrorist State"

[brad]

http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2002/12/1555839.php

[IrishHand]

Hmm...where have we heard something like that before? /forums/images/icons/smile.gif

[brad]

well there are facts and opinions.

facts are things like US trains south american death squads at school of the americas. (they learn torture and stuff) cant dispute that.

opinions are like what the interview with chomsky is about. the important thing i think is that prominent intellectuals like chomsky hold these opinions, which means that honest people need to evaluate whether or not theres something to them.

if you cant evaluate then youre doomed to being brainwashed.

[The_Baron]

I took a course called, "Methods of Development of Viable Intelligence Product From Non-Allied HUMINT Resources." It was taught verbatim from the old School of the Americas curriculum guide. It specifically covered things like pulling toenails, using your vice-grips to crush teeth, electricity to the genitals, etc. The information was taught specifically to illustrate methods that are markedly less effective than simple sleep/sensory deprivation.
Where the idea come from that there needs to be a class taught on how to torture someone? The bible describes perfectly adequate methods of torture Anyone who's had a dentist start drilling before the anesthetic took effect is fully conversant with torture methods.
Where do you get your information on the SOTA curriculum? Are you an alumni? A former instructer? One of the Congressional members with oversight on the facility? Where exactly do you get the information on which you're basing your opinion?
As for being able to dispute it, I most certainly can dispute it. SOTA closed down in the mid 1990s. Nobody is teaching anyone there.
As for Noam Chomsky being a, " prominent intellectual." I'll agree he considers himself an intellectual. I'll agree that he's often heard spouting in any number of venues. He certainly has some sort of prominence among the tree-hugger crowd. Of course he also rides in a gas powered limousine when he travels to and from the airport where he flies on petroleum powered aircraft. That in and of itself tends to lead me to think there's a certain moral flexibility in his politics.
If he wants to consider the US a terrorist state, good for him. Let's have a brief mind experiment here. Let's imagine the United States suspends all of it's activities outside its own borders for a period of 90 days. Nothing to do with any of the geographical areas mr. Chomsky assures us that the US is attempting to control. We just shut down and do nothing.
What do you think the effects would be on the world as a whole? Chomsky is a hypocrite of the first water and the world has the misfortune in that he's found a ready source of believers of his prattle on the Internet.
His commentary on his impending imprisonment that was disrupted because of the Tet Offensive is particularly delicious. I wonder if he'd care to explain the train of causality that lead from violating the Tet ceasefire to his not being tried. Perhaps you could find some resource where he explains that?
As for the folks in Brighton being pepper sprayed for, "just sitting in the street." Yep, they were doing that. And they weren't getting up and moving when the police asked them to. They didn't get up and move when the police told them to do it. They didn't even do it when the police mentioned that they were going to be sprayed with capsicum resin and dragged off. Real bummer their eyes hurt for an hour or so. What about the people who wanted to use the street they were, "just sitting in?" Or do their needs somehow lose significance because somebody want's to protest the government's position?

[brad]

well alex jones thinks chomsky is a total scum and i agree with everything alex says but on the other hand i think chomsky makes some good points.

what u dont think the phoenix program in vietnam operated either? (just cia assassinations, nothing big.)

seriously, do u dispute the northwoods documents as described and verified in james bamford's book body of secrets?

i guess you figure no one in a uniform would ever do anything wrong.

[The_Baron]

I have no doubt the Phoenix program operated. It was conducted by SFOD-B52 under the auspices of the Studies and Observation Group. The assassinations under this program were based on intelligence gathered in part by the CIA but weren't "CIA assassinations", in and of themselves. The primary objective of the Phoenix program and its successors was the disruption of the low and mid-level authority, financial and political infrastructure of the Viet Cong.
If you're asking me if I think it's wrong to pop a round into the head of the local VC regimental paymaster; nope. I not only don't think it's bad, I think it's nearly essential and should have been part of the overt operations being conducted at the time. They should have put out active bounties on members of the Viet Cong power structure. The primary failing of Phoenix was that it was born from the military/intelligence heirarchy who'd been humiliated at the Bay of Pigs. To generate an overt program of planned assassination would have been political suicide for the generals in power at the end of the Kennedy administration and who'd been saddled with Johnson as Commander in Chief. From my perspective, the missions weren't wrong in any way, the fact they were hidden was what caused the problems.
Since I haven't seen the actual documents relating to Operation: Northwoods, I can't really say a lot about it. Do I believe that there is/was a section of the US military/intelligence community who would advocate deliberate acts of violence against US citizens and interests in order to further their view of the overall national interest? Absolutely. I have no doubt about it at all. I've personally known people in both the military and intelligence communities who regularly advocated such actions.
Do I think that nobody in uniform would ever do anything wrong? Calley. Though not in uniform, Aldrich Ames. Until I can actually read the Northwoods OpPlan and formative directives, I can't really give an educated opinion about it.
As for Mr. Bamford. I think he made a name for himself by writing-- The Puzzle Palace-- and is now trying to cash in on that fame. Unfortunately for most conspiracy afficionados, the US intelligence gathering system is both tedius and filled with venal gits just as any other business enterprise. It's very unlikely that there are many terrorist scenarios that haven't been at least discussed somewhere in one of the alphabet agencies. Very likely most of those have been put on paper somewhere and eventually made it to the National Archives. The fact that an overachieving imbecile put pen to page and wrote out a sordid plan for US dominance based on terror directed against US citizens really doesn't do much more than prove that imbecile put the pen to the page. There are literally tens of millions of scenarios in every stage of development from the Post-It note saying, "Hey, what if the following?"; all the way to fully developed War Plans with specific Orders of Battle. The unfortunate thing is the tremendous number of people who want to believe that anything written down by a "spook" must somehow have such horrendous importance. Most of what's written down by the spooks is either make believe or is a badly worded summary of information you can now get from CNN.
I wish Mr. Bamford the best. The NSA weenies I've had opportunity to work with have been universally either computer geeks or telecommunication wonks. Not very spooky at all.

[andyfox]

Probably not of much interest to many here, but a few words about Phoenix.

Phoenix was developed by the CIA in 1967, intended to "neutralize" the Vietcong infrastructure. "Neutralize" was a eupehmism for kill, capture, or make to defect, and "infrastructure" refered to those civilians suspected of "supporting" North Vietnamese and Vietcong soldiers.

Under Phoenix, there was no such thing as due process. South Vietnamese civilians (ie, citizens of the "country" we were supposedly defending) whose names appeared on blacklists, could be kidnapped, tortured, detained for two years without trial, or murdered, on the word of an anonymous informer. Phoenix managers imposed, at its height, quotas of 1800 hundred "neutralizations" per month on the people running the program in the field, opening it up to abuses by corrupt security officers, policemen, politicians, and racketeers, all of whom extorted innocent civilians. CIA officer Lucien Conein called Phoenix "a very good blackmail scheme for the central government. 'If you don't to what I want, you're VC.'"

Phoenix "neutralizations" were often conducted at midnight while its victims were home asleep. People were brutally murdered along with their familities or neighbors as a means of terrorizing the neighboring population into a state of submission. Such acts were often made to look as if they had been committed by the enemy. My Lai was a not unexpected outcome of the Phoenix program and our more general program of murder and mayhem.

The primary failing of Phoenix was that it made us into terrorists. Those, like Chomsky, who attempted to stop the murder, deserve our thanks. Those who subverted America's values and disgraced her name in Vietnam deserve everlasting shame.

[The_Baron]

Okay, I stand corrected. I worded things poorly. The CIA was the promulgating agency for Phoenix and it's offspring. The majority of the actual work was conducted by US Army Special Forces seconded to the program or physically reassigned. In addition the use of "indigenous assets" was emphasized to provide the necessary deniability. Because of its complexity, Phoenix became subject to an alarming amount of abuse for personal gain. Regardless, the basic concept was valid and I still think, essential.
Now I've got to ask. How was My Lai in any way connected to Phoeinx?

[andyfox]

In some areas where the population was believed to support the NLF strongly, entire provinces were subjected to campaigns of destruction and mass killing. One such province was Quang Ngai, where by late 1967, 70% of the villages had been destroyed. This was before Tet; after Tet, the killing was itensified. There is evidence that the CIA, via Phoenix, perpetrated the My Lai massacre and also concealed it, that the killing in My Lai was part and parcel of the Phoenix program.

[rounder]

[ripdog]

The same Admiral Poindexter who was convicted of conspiracy, lying to Congress, defrauding the government, and destroying evidence in the Iran-Contra scandal? The same Donald Rumsfeld who was convicted of perjury in the Iran-Contra scandal? Go ahead and snitch to these no good lying bastards.

[MMMMMM]

The potential for the abuse of such programs is one of the best arguments against them.

What disturbs me about Chomsky's approach to such matters is that he seems unconcerned, at least outwardly, about the horrific abuses comitted by the other side. For instance, how much criticism did Chomsky heap on the Viet Cong for their genocidal actions? Similarly, he doesn't see fit that one of the world's worst tyrants, Saddam Hussein, should be removed by force (if not removed, Saddam will continue the widespread murder, torture, and rape of his own citizens as a matter of policy). To what extent is Chomsky willing to condemn behaviors by other sides than ours? How about when those other sides do far, far worse than we, on sometimes larger scales?

To what extent is Chomsky willing to support active resistance against totalitarian regimes?

Chomsky also appears to fail to distinguish between varying degrees of "bad" things and between situations which are far from parallel. For instance, our involvement in South America was not entirely misplaced or bad, although some of it was. Let's bear in mind that much of this region had been involved in brutal struggles, corruption, and political murder throughout much of their history. Generally speaking, if we had stepped in to support either side, we would probably have been supporting some bloody bastards. So when he claims this as evidence of the USA being a "terrorist state", he doesn't mention this, nor does he mention it in context of supporting resistance against the expansion of the largest and most murderous "terrorist state" ever in the entire history of the world: the former USSR. I'm not saying we were justified in all respects in the region, but Chomsky leaves out important context and fails to make some significant distinctions. Along similar lines, I have argued at length (especially with Chris Alger) that distinctions of intent need to be made regarding deaths in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. The deliberate targeting of innocents for murder IS worse than collateral damage, and a philosophy embracing such targeting is disgusting and morally bankrupt. Here again, Chomsky fails to differentiate.

To the extent that Chomsky informs us of our past bad deeds, in light of hopefully avoiding mistakes in the future, he is to be commended. To the extent he deliberately leaves out the other side of the equation in order to paint us as being as bad or worse than the worst regimes on the face of the Earth (past or present), his portrayal is seriously flawed and should be highly criticized. If he says there is no difference between the USA and history's worst regimes, he is simply wrong.

[brad]

thing about operation northwoods is that it was approved all the way up to and including the joint chiefs of staff.

highest military in country said yeah, lets bomb our own guys to blame it on cuba, thats a good idea.

sec defense or president himself vetoed it.

its also not too hard to figure out how bamford got ahold of it; it was leaked to him. (so i agree he could be an idiot but someone it was convenient to use)

[andyfox]

"What disturbs me about Chomsky's approach to such matters is that he seems unconcerned, at least outwardly, about the horrific abuses comitted by the other side."

I can't presume to speak for Chomsky, but for me, the horrific abuses committed by my country are much more troubling. The abuses by the Vietcong were miniscule compared to the level of violence inflicted by the United States. But even if this were not so, I would still be much more concerned when my own government abandoned it's principles.

[IrishHand]

Well said.

[MMMMMM]

But isn't this, pardon the expression, perhaps somewhat of a narcissistic outlook? It doesn't address the sufferings of the great masses under totalitarian regimes: if another government is slaughtering vast numbers of innocent people and horribly repressing their own citizens, where is the empathy for those people if our greatest concern is for the acts of our own government? In other words, a truly humanitarian outlook must consider the needless sufferings caused by bad governments or policies--all bad governments or policies--not merely our own bad policies--and it must prioritize. Stalin murdered 20 million of his own countrymen: should the West have ignored this (what the West might actually have been able to do about may be another matter)? Didn't the North Vietnamese kill over a million South Vietnamese? And what about Pol Pot?

In the last few years, Kim Jong-il ("Our Dear Leader") has systematically let about two million of his own people starve to death--all the while stockpiling two years' worth of food and fuel for his military.

To ignore such atrocities and give tyrants free rein, we have only to do what you seem almost to be suggesting: focus on our own policies since they may be more personally troubling. I do agree that we need to critically examine and perhaps change some of our own policies, but if we should focus on this nearly exclusively it would be tantamount to ignoring the sufferings of countless millions under the most brutal and tyrannical regimes today--and this approach even strikes me as overly self-absorbed, perhaps even selfish. Granted, we can't overthrow every little tinpot dictator all at once--there are just too many--but the worst tyrants days' should be numbered, and we should do what we can to help the millions suffering under totalitarianism and tyranny, to the extent that we reasonably can.

So I believe it is a pragmatic and moral mistake to focus too heavily on either our own flaws or on the flaws of others--all else being equal, we should certainly focus primarily on our own, but since all else isn't equal, and since certain regimes are far worse than our own government, focus on them must be near the top of the list as well--if we profess to be concerned about humanity as a whole, and if we empathize with the sufferings of those under despotic or totalitarian forms of government. If we are merely trying to develop our own characters or system as best we can, I would agree with you, but I feel a common bond with the whole of humanity which will not allow me to ignore the sufferings of millions which are directly brought on by totalitarian governments. If some brutal bastard is causing this type of suffering on a large scale, and if we can do something to remedy the root of the problem, then I really think we, and the rest of the free world, should take matters in hand and act.

[MMMMMM]

It's disingenous of Chomsky to say that nobody but the USA fears Saddam--it's the USA and Israel that Saddam has called for jihad against. And if the Kuwaitis don't fear him it's only because they know the USA will defend them as it was before. Saddam hasn't threatened Europe--yet--so why should they fear him.

Just once I'd like to hear Chomsky loudly condemn Castro, China, North Korea, the Palestinian terrorist organizations, etc. Just once.

[brad]

'Just once I'd like to hear Chomsky loudly condemn Castro, China, North Korea, the Palestinian terrorist organizations, etc. Just once'

ill post something because i think youve got noam mischaracterized.

anyway once i was out of work and went to a party and this other person was out of work and i started lecturing him and telling him what he should do and then someone came over and pointed out that i was unemployed too and they started laughing at me ...

[brad]

Archive | ZNet

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Questions and Answers Following the Massey Lectures
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, December 1988

From the Necessary Illusions Page

The Massey Lectures given by Noam Chomsky were aired by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) from November 28 - December 2, 1988. Chomsky's book Necessary Illusions (South End Press, 1989) is based on those talks. These are some of the questions a panel of Canadian journalists asked Chomsky afterwards. Words that are unclear from the tape appear in round brackets. Editorial additions are indicated by square brackets.
DF = David Frum
PW = Peter Worthington, editor of the Ottawa Sun
KM = Kevin McMann,filmmaker and reporter
MD = Margaret Daley, CBC
Mod = Moderator
NC = Noam Chomsky


DF: You say that what the media do is to ignore certain kinds of atrocities that are committed by us and our friends and to play up enormously atrocities that are committed by them and our enemies. And you posit, in fact you say in the Massey Lectures, that there's a test of integrity and moral honesty which is to have a kind of equality of treatment of corpses.
NC: Equality of principles . . .
DF: I mean that every dead person should be in principle equal to every other dead person.
NC: That's not what I say. That's not what I say at all.
DF: I'm glad that's not what you say because that's not what you do.
NC: Of course it's not what I do. Nor would I say it. In fact I say the opposite. What I say is that we should be responsible for our own actions primarily. That's something quite different.
PW: But you were equating one (Polish) [priest] to one hundred priests.[1]
NC: I wasn't equating them. I was comparing the treatment of them. If you want my value judgement - we should give much more attention to one priest whom we've killed than to one hundred priests that they've killed. Notice that this is exactly the . . .
DF: That's not your method.
NC: That's exactly my method.
DF: Because your method is to ignore . . . not only to ignore the corpses that are created by them, but also to ignore the corpses that are created by neither side but are irrelevant to you're ideological . . .
NC: That's totally untrue.
DF: Well, let me give you an example.
NC: Okay.
DF: One of your own causes that you take very seriously is the cause of the Palestinians, and a Palestinian corpse weighs very heavily on your conscience, and yet a Kurdish corpse does not.
NC: That's not true at all. I've been involved with Kurdish support groups for years. That's absolutely false. I mean, just ask the people who are involved - you know, they come to me, I sign their petitions, and so on and so forth. In fact if you look at the things we've written . . . I mean, I'm not Amnesty International, I can't do everything, I'm a single person. But if you read, say, take a look, say, at the book that Edward Herman and I wrote on this topic. We wrote a book about this in 1979 [2]. In it we discuss three kinds of atrocities, not two, three kinds of bloodbaths. What we called benign bloodbaths - which nobody cares about, constructive bloodbaths - which are the ones we [the U.S.] like, and nefarious bloodbaths which are the ones that the bad guys do. Constructive bloodbaths are things like the Indonesian massacres, which we [the U.S.] supported. Nefarious bloodbaths are like, Pol Pot. But we also discussed ones that nobody cares about, like Burundi. For example, we have probably the only discussion in the literature, I guess, of the massacres that were going on in Burundi at that time. We probably have the only discussion in the literature, at least that I know of, of the massacres that were going on in Burma. Now, in fact, not only is what you say not true, but it's the opposite of the truth. We went out of our way to find the kinds of bloodbaths that are just ignored because nobody cares about them. Now again, let me stress, I'm not Amnesty International. I do not have the ludicrous egotism which makes me the arbiter of all atrocities over the world. I'm not trying to give an A to this country and a B minus to this country and so on. The principle that I think we ought to follow is not the one that you stated, it's the principle we rightly expect Soviet dissidents to follow. What principle do we expect Sakharov to follow, let's say? What lets us decide whether Sakharov's a moral person? I think he is. Sakharov does not treat every atrocity as identical. He has nothing to say about American atrocities. When he's asked, he says I don't know anything about them, I don't care about them. What he talks about are Soviet atrocities, and that's right. Because those are the ones that he's responsible for. You know, it's a very simple ethical point - you're responsible for the predictable consequences of your actions. You're not responsible for the predictable consequences of someone else's actions. Now, we understand this when we're talking about dissidents in the Soviet Union but we refuse to understand it when we're talking about ourselves for very good reasons. Commissars in the Soviet Union don't understand it about dissidents. Commissars in the Soviet Union attack Sakharov and other dissidents because they don't talk about American crimes. We understand exactly why that's just hypocrisy and cynicism when they do it and we should understand the same when we do it. Now the fact of the matter is that I spend a fair amount of effort on crimes of official enemies. There are a fair number of people in the United States and Canada, from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, who are there because of my personal activities on their behalf. But I don't take any pride in that particularly, I just do it because I'm interested in it. The most important thing, for me and for you, is to think about the consequences of your actions. What can you affect? Those are the ones you primarily ought to be concerned about. Of course every corpse is a corpse, but there are some you can affect and there are others you can't do much about. You know, like I can be worried about things that happened in the eighteenth century but I can't do much about them.
PW: It strikes me that you're a living refutation of the thesis that you can't get a certain point of view across. You've hardly been a shrinking violet over the past thirty years but it seems to me the effect of your theme has been virtually zilch except for a few of the elite who support it. It seems to me the great mass of the American people, the workers, either don't understand it or reject it totally.
NC: First of all I don't agree with your factual assumption. I think it's exactly the opposite of the truth.
PW: What factual assumption?
NC: What you said is . . . you said correctly that I haven't been a shrinking violet and you said the effect has been zilch except for elements of the elite. The facts are exactly the opposite. The effects on the elite are zero and the effects on the general population are not insignificant. Not just me. I'm one person. There are a lot of people doing this sort of thing and we have much greater outreach than we've ever had before. Not through the elite media. As I said before, I travel around the country all the time. I can't accept a fraction of the invitations that come. I'm booked up solidly two years in advance and I probably don't accept . . . maybe 10% of the invitations that come in.

[brad]

i remember listening to him (on audio recordings) and a lot of times hell say things like 'and n. korea is a horrible dicatatorship, tremendous human rights abuse, people are basically slaves, or serfs'

anyway ill post that when i find it or whatever. its just that its not his main point, that kind of stuff is a given.

[The_Baron]

Approved by the Joint Chiefs. Okay, what exactly was approved? An Implementation Study? A Feasability Study? Mission Tasking? Order of Battle? War Order? Operations Order?
Saying the JCS approved it doesn't say what action was approved. While I have no doubt we've had Chairmen of the JCS who've been fundamentally evil, I do know that they're universally inclined to covering their asses. Did JCS approve a Mission Development Team and then rescind the order? Did they approve the actual deployment of personel and materiel assets?
As I said before, I don't have the documents Bamford used and I seriously doubt he has all of the documentation involved in the operation development. Just as an example, when the 1/509 Airborne Combat Team deployed to Germany for their winter training exercies in 1982, I was exiled to the S2(Intelligence) shop for several days. The Batallion secure document index listed something like 14,500 separate pages of formal, written documentation. That was just the stuff that was classified high enough that it had to be stored or destroyed under direct supervision of the Bn. S2. Counting personel rosters, equipment maintanence orders, shipment orders and all of the rest of the paper crap needed for a batallion sized military operation, there was literally a stack of paper four or five sheets wide and over six feet tall. Several hundred pounds worth. And this was for an operation that takes place yearly and is prescheduled literally a decade in advance.
If you've got a list of Bamford's actual resources, I'd like to take a look at them.
As an aside, in 1983, there was an operation approved by the JCS as well as NATO High Command and the liaisons of non-affiliated nations to include the UN's Security Council.
I'm not certain of the operation's name though I believe it was , "Pipecap Racer". This operation mandated the deployment of a NATO aircraft sortie of four aircraft to deliver two B-61(Mod-7) set for yield onto Caserme Ederle, the SETAF Basic Load Storage Area and each of the Nike missile sites in northern Italy. This was to be followed on by a B-61(Mod-7) set to the highest yield fused for air burst to disperse the, "surviving infrastructural remnants", after the first bombs. That's something like 26 10kt nukes dropped at five to seven minute intervals in and around Vicenza and Verona, Italy. These were to be followed by 13(not sure how many missile sites there were so don't hold me to the exact number of warheads) 340+/-kt nukes dropped as air bursts five to seven minutes after the last of the ground bursts went off. Their purpose was to "sterilize" the NATO/SETAF facilities to prevent them from providing equipment or intelligence to Soviet forces in the event of an invasion. That's almost fifty low to medium yield nuclear bombs that were to be dropped on Italian population centers. This was not only approved by the Italian government, but was actually mandated by them. They were willing to accept the losses from the operation in question rather than risk the invading Soviet forces aquiring the equipment and personel assigned to those sites.
While I've never seen the Operation Plans, I have very little doubt there are equivalent operations laid out for every strategic military facility in the continental US. Given a government that will advocate the nuking of one of its allies as well as its own troops to prevent compromise by opposition forces, I have no doubt that somewhere in that government there are people who advocate lesser acts of aggression in order to precipitate a military action against an opposition force that's perceived to be developing a larger and more virulent threat.
Regardless, approval by the JCS doesn't say much more than somewhere in the E-Ring of the Pentagon, a signature went onto a piece of paper. What that paper was actually proposing is still up for grabs. For whatever it's worth, organizations such as the Rand Foundation are awarded tens of millions of dollars a year to do nothing but play, "what if", and then send their what-ifs off to some Colonel or General to develop a counter strategy. It's part of the nature of government since man first banded his clans and tribes into nations.
I'm not saying Bamford is wrong, he's very possibly right. I'm saying I don't have enough information to make a judgement as to exactly what it is that he's "exposed" to the people of the United States.

[brad]

basically it was a covert operation (note covert operation) to destroy US military equipment and personnel as well as US civilians in order to blame it on the cubans as the basis for an invasion of cuba.

approved by JCS who said hey, lets do it, who sent it up to sec def who vetoed it.

if you search web you can find documents and everything i dl'ed pdf file. (778k)

anyway youre right its just a preliminary thing but hey so was gulf of tonkin setup at one time and look what happened with that.

doesnt bother you that top military said, heh, lets kill americans to get everyone behind the (coming) war with cuba? they said lets do it, we're ready to implement, lets go. (and recommended they (jcs) be controlling agency in charge of (large covert and overt) operation)

[IrishHand]

Just once I'd like to hear Chomsky loudly condemn Castro, China, North Korea, the Palestinian terrorist organizations, etc. Just once.

What for? To make you feel better? God knows the Cubans, Chinese, North Koreans and Palestinians don't care what Chomsky says or thinks. The only people he has any reasonable hope of affecting in any way are Americans (and Canadians, I suppose - but we'll ignore that for the moment since they aren't on your 'evil-doers' list).

As he says in that above transcript, it's far more important to take ownership of your own actions than it is to start trying to control other countries into doing what you want. Of course, as we've seen, it's a lot easier (and far more profitable for wealthy Americans) to convince Americans that others do horrible things we need to put a stop to than it is to convince them that America does horrible things that we need to put a stop to.

In the end, you can make yourself a better person. You can try and force someone else to be a better person, but ultimately they need to make that choice for themselves.

Irish

[MMMMMM]

Well I believe you, it's just that everything I've ever seen of his seems pretty one-sided. I guess I somehow missed the other stuff.

[MMMMMM]

So Chomsky thinks Sakharov shouldn't criticize the USA and we shouldn't criticize the USSR, more or less? That's pure hogwash. We, and they, should criticize those most worthy of criticism...period. The worst human rights offenses should be criticized, wherever they occur.


Chomsky says his view is that we should give more attention to one priest we've killed than to 100 priests they've killed. What an arrogant, insensitive, non-empathetic view. The priest(s) don't care who killed them. My God. Empathize with the victims, for heaven's sake, Chomsky. And consider too that we just moight be able to stop them from killing the next 100 priests--if we apply some pressure.


Chomsky's view is a touch akin to this situation: you're walking home one evening and you see a little old lady being physically abused and intimidated by a young thug, who seems likely to rob and/or injure her. You have no cell phone and the streets seem pretty empty and you don't see any pay phones or open businesses nearby. Do you intervene? Or do you say to yourself you'd better find some way to improve yourself, since after all you've done some bad things lately, and it's only your actions you really have control over.

Granted, we can't right every wrong in the world or depose every petty tyrant. But we can call attention to the worst abuses and abusers, and put diplomatic pressure on them, and sometimes even use force if their evil is great enough and our power is sufficient. So Chomsky's attitude sounds great, but it doesn't really apply when the stakes get really high. It's one thing to shrug off a rude driver or an obnoxious drunk, and to take pleasure in our own resolve to be better ourselves. But when that drunk starts beating on a woman or a child out on the sidewalk in front of his house, and you're just standing right there, what do you do?

Chomsky's attitude is a cop-out. The worst tyrants require the loudest criticism and pressure--from everybody. Otherwise they will just go their merry way slaughtering, torturing, repressing, etc.

What was that quotation we've seen somewhere? Something like: All that tyranny needs in order to succeed is a tacit acquiescence.

[MMMMMM]

If it were just "making one's self a better person", I would agree with you close to 100%. But when it involves allowing the worst tyrants to abuse people on truly massive scales (through silence, indifference, or inaction), I have to differ.

[The_Baron]

Nowhere did I say it didn't bother me. It bothers the hell out of me. Regardless, having looked at the PDF file, I don't see the documentation necessary for official support of an operation as has been described. I'm not saying it didn't happen or it doesn't matter. I'm saying I don't have enough information to show that it ever amounted to anything beyond the JCS submitting something to SecDef and being told, "NO".
What I see is that the Commandant of the Marines mentioned that the plan was under the auspices of Title 10, 141(c) of the US Code which at the time covered the disclosure of identity of intelligence assets. The sheet indicates that this was applied and followed and the recommendation of the JCS to SecDef was limited to Paragraph 8 which discusses who's not supposed to see the document.
Again I'll say that I'm not saying it's not possible that such a plan actually evolved but from reading the documents you indicated, it shows that it hit JCS, was read and the only part of it that was approved was the part describing who doesn't get to see it. There's nothing there about which agency or organization would have overall control. There's nothing there about implementing any of the other paragraphs of the plan. In short, it gives some irksome suggestions as to how to provoke war with Cuba and stay in the good graces of the UN but nowhere does it say that any of these suggestions were even moved to the active planning stage.

[mattyou]

[andyfox]

No, it's not a narcissistic outlook. The government that was murdering its own citizens was the government of South Vietnam, the government we were defending. We aided a despotic and tyrannical government. My government lied to us, telling us we were defending freedom and democracy in a place where there was no freedom nor democracy.

Precisely because the world is full of bastards, precisely because Communists and Facists and other absolutists have ignored the welfare of people in order to "remake" society--this is the reason I want my country and its government to act in accord with its principles. Otherwise what difference would it make who won? If we act like Communists (or worse than Communists, as we did in Vietnam), we become unworthy of victory.

Lyndon Johnson campaigned as the peace candidate. Richard Nixon claimed he had a secret plan to end the war. They lied to us, murdering hundred of thousands of people deliberately and wantonly. Stalin and Mao and Ho Chi Minh didn't ask for my vote. Johnson and Nixon did. I have no say-so in whether or not Kim Jong-Il stays in power or exercises his power in accord with what I see as good and moral. Living in a democracy, I do have a say in whether or not George Bush stays in power or exercises his power in accord with what I see as good and moral.

It doesn't take much courage to criticize a Stalin or much perspicacity to recognize the evil of a Hitler. It does take both to recognize, and call out, when your own government is perpetrating the very evils we assume are only the province of the Stalins and the Hitlers. That's precisely what our government did in Vietnam. Chomsky was instrumental in revealing the nature of that evil.

[MMMMMM]

Our government might well have done much evil in Vietnam. I'm not a historical scholar of Vietnam so I can't say for sure to what degree.

I don't think it is appropriate to refrain from condemning other governments who do even worse than we do--after all, with enough international condemnation and pressure, we just might effect some changes over there-- even without having the vote in those countries. The people of those countries don't care how "moral" we are, they just want and need relief. Ignoring their silent suffering by virtue of our own silence shirks our human responsibilities, I believe.

We should try to change things, and policies, for the better right here at home where we have the most influence, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to change things elsewhere too, even with having lesser influence--especially if the sufferings caused by certain governments are great. I'm not saying to ignore our responsibilities to examine and reform in some ways, but I think focussing exclusively on our own end of things is a grave imbalance as long as there are Saddam Husseins and Kim Jong-ils in charge of countries: murdering, kidnapping, repressing and torturing their own citizens on a massive scale. Oh yes, and starving them to death too. To fail to address these horrific acts of enormous scale is an avoidance of our human responsibilities in my opinion.

If our past policies resulted in some large-scale abuses and tyrannies, then we should be glad to become made more aware of this. However that doesn't mean we should ignore other (even greater) current abuses and tyrannies--again, look to the people who are suffering under these conditions.

It is the common call of higher human values to resist brutality and tyranny, and I believe this call transcends national boundaries and racial and cultural distinctions.

[MMMMMM]

By the way, I realize that Chomsky qualified his statements somewhat by adding that we should do what we are able to do, and that we can effect more change at home. Well of course. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't press for changes and reforms elsewhere too, especially where most sorely needed, and where the peope are being tyrannized to the greatest extent.

I also think his 1-100 priests ratio is way off. Yes, I'd be pretty concerned if my government brutally slaughtered a million people. But I'd be even more concerned if any government brutally slaughtered 100 million people--and the suffering the first inflicted cannot be reasonably compared to the other. Just to show his ratio is way off.

[IrishHand]

It is the common call of higher human values to resist brutality and tyranny, and I believe this call transcends national boundaries and racial and cultural distinctions.

Clearly then you support my position that we should stop funding and supplying Israel's continuing practice of visiting brutality and tyranny upon their Palestinian neighbors. (And in turn, I shall support your position that we stop funding and supplying Arafat's continuing practice of visitiing brutality and tyranny upon his Israeli neighbors.) I'm glad we've come to this accomodation.

[MMMMMM]

No, because you are arbitrarily defining that as Israel's actions, and I disagree with that assessment because I feel that Israel is acting primarily in self-defense. However I doubt you would disagree that Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot were tyrants, or that Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong-il are today.

[Clarkmeister]

Thank you for verifying what I suggested in your thread below. Namely, that you would have loved the McCarthy era.

"You are a Communist" - ROFLMFAO. This isn't 1950 sir. LOLOLOLOL.

[brad]

'I don't think it is appropriate to refrain from condemning other governments who do even worse than we do--'

i hope you realize the straw man argument youve set up.

no one is saying we shouldnt criticize other governments and stuff.

fact is its propaganda any way you slice it when someone legitimately criticizes his own government and is met with 'but what about them, theyre worse!?'

[MMMMMM]

No, andyfox is pretty much saying the proper place for criticism is to criticize only our own. That's his opinion, and I happen to disagree with it, and my response to that view is the context my post was written in.

Another point is that you can't just take our country's actions out of context entirely and declare it a stand-alone list. Imagine if we did this regarding our actions in Europe during WWII. Does a list of "bad things" the USA did in wartime Europe exist? Certainly, and if we were to simply catalog it and examine it out of context it would appear pretty damning. So with regards to South America, the same principle must not be ignored. Here is an excerpt examining in more detail the involvement of the USA in Nicaragua, the role of the Sandinistas, and exposing some of Chomsky's half-truths or distortions:

(excerpt from an article by David Horowitz, Dec. 19, 2001) "The case referred to is what Chomsky calls "the Reagan-US war against Nicaragua which left tens of thousands of people dead, the country ruined, perhaps beyond recovery." In Chomsky’s view, the United States launched an unprovoked war of terror against Nicaragua in the 1980s, using a "mercenary army" (viz., the contras). When the Nicaraguan government lodged a complaint with the World Court about its support for the contras, the American government rejected the jurisdiction of the Court and thus – in Chomsky’s telling – the rule of international law itself.

Chomsky provides no sources for these claims because there are none. There is no truly international court, nor is there an international rule of law – there is only the rule of a law that sovereign states consent to when it is convenient to them. Moreover, there was no U.S. war against Nicaragua, let alone a terrorist war. The U.S. provided assistance to a peasant army resisting a Nicaraguan dictatorship that was supported politically, economically and militarily by the Soviet empire. The Sandinista dictators had usurped their power from a democratic coalition, stripped Nicaragua’s citizens of their political rights and – at the time of the conflict – were ruling by force. It was the Sandinistas who destroyed the Nicaraguan economy and provoked the contra peasant revolt by pursuing Soviet-style collectivization -- confiscation of small peasant holdings and their conversion into socialist collective farms. When the pressure of this peasant revolt and U.S. efforts forced the dictatorship to hold a free election on February 25, 1990, the Nicaraguan people voted the Sandinistas out of power by an overwhelming margin. The anti-Sandinista popular vote was 55%-41%.

The democracy that was created – along with free elections – and the rejection of the Sandinista party continue to this day. Meanwhile, the exit of the Sandinista leadership revealed that they were the ones who truly deserved the term "mercenaries," i.e., political thugs whose self-interest came before all others. Before surrendering power, in what their countrymen called the "piñata," the Sandinista ex-rulers fleeced their country of its remaining wealth, transferred government funds to hidden Swiss bank accounts, and appropriated hotels, industries and restaurants – to go along with the mansions they were already living in -- as their personal private properties.

Chomsky knows these facts but ignores them. On the other hand, several former members of the Sandinista dictatorship have themselves conceded the lies they propagated in power, which Chomsky repeats. In 1999, Sergio Ramirez, a Sandinista leader who was Vice President of the Sandinista regime wrote: "Let the record show that many landless peasants joined the contras or -- resolved not to be corralled into [agricultural cooperatives] -- became the contras’ social base of support…the ranks of the contra kept on growing, and by then its field commanders tended to be small farmers, many of them without any ties to Somoczismo, indeed, in many cases they supplanted the former National Guard officers who had been the movement’s original leaders." Ramirez’ belated honesty was endorsed by former Sandinista comandante and Minister of Agriculture, Jaime Wheelock and by Alejandro Bendana, the Sandinista’s top diplomatic spokesman, who wrote his own memoir (A Peasant Tragedy: Testimonies of the Resistance). Bendana admitted that the "contra army grew beyond … expectations not as a result of sophisticated recruitment campaigns in the countryside but mainly because of the impact on the small-holding peasant of the policies, limits and mistakes of the Sandinistas."

This reality is ignored in Chomsky’s misrepresentation of the conflict as between Nicaragua and the United States, in which the United States is the terrorist and the Sandinistas helpless victims. To establish his deception, Chomsky makes a tendentious mountain out of the molehill of Nicaragua’s complaint to the World Court and the Court’s adverse ruling against the United States. "The World Court accepted [Nicaragua’s] case, ruled in their favor, … condemned what they called the ‘unlawful use of force,’ which is another word for international terrorism by the United States." Well, outside the Chomsky cult, of course, unlawful use of force is not another word for terrorism.

In describing the World Court case, Chomsky ignores the Cold War context of the events -- the projection of Soviet power into the Western hemisphere, and into Nicaragua in particular. Long before they seized power, the Sandinista dictators were trained as revolutionaries in Moscow and Havana. The Soviet goal in supporting them, according to political scientist Alvin Z. Rubinstein (Moscow’s Third World Strategy, Princeton Univ. Press, 1988) was to create a Communist nation with the single largest military in the region. The fact that the Sandinistas were supporting and supplying Communist guerrilla wars in El Salvador and Guatemala at the time of these events was a key factor in determining U.S. policies.


Chomsky closes his eyes to the fact that the World Court is a creature of national governments, and consequently lacks any authority unless both parties to a dispute agree to give it authority. Jeanne Kirkpatrick, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. at the time Nicaragua submitted its case, dismissed the court as a "semi-legal, semi-juridical, semi-political body which nations sometimes accept and sometimes don’t." Even the Court itself recognizes this reality, and its own statutes expressly permit states to withdraw from its jurisdiction. At the time of the Sandinista suit, the Court in particular had no jurisdiction over any of the Soviet bloc police states, although these same regimes – in which the rule of law was entirely absent -- provided judges for the Court itself. Soviet foreign policy was then operating under the Brezhnev doctrine, which asserted a right to use force to keep a nation in the Communist orbit. Yet the Soviet bloc states regularly condemned America’s defensive responses to Soviet expansion as "aggression." If the United States acquiesced in World Court decisions, it would be bound by them and hence incapable of responding to hostile Soviet bloc actions.

In the Nicaragua case, as one of the dissenting judges on the Court (from Japan) remarked, "Nicaragua has not come to court with clean hands. On the contrary, as an aggressor, indirectly responsible – but ultimately responsible – for large numbers of deaths and widespread destruction in El Salvador, apparently much exceeding that which Nicaragua has sustained, Nicaragua’s hands are odiously unclean. Nicaragua has compounded its sins by misrepresenting them in court." The practical issue was whether the United States would surrender its own national interest to a Court composed of members who were not only hostile to American interests, but to the rule of law itself (among the latter China, Poland and Nigeria). The United States simply refused to accept the jurisdiction of a court composed of rival national interests. By ignoring these details, Chomsky is able to present the decision of a politicized and largely irrelevant institution as representing "the judgments of the highest international authorities" – and thus America as an outlaw state (therefore, in Chomsky’s loopy intellectual framework, a "terrorist" one as well).

Thus, the American-supported contra rebellion, which actually restored democracy to Nicaragua becomes, in Chomsky’s analysis, the "first terrorist war." On the other hand, actual terrorists like the Al Qaeda network are really freedom fighters, resisting a Nazi-like oppression." (end excerpt)

If you care to read the entire article, it provides further examination of some other Chomsky claims (regarding Afghanistan and the USA), and shows how he significantly distorts the actual picture (even more so than by taking the USA/Nicaragua matter out of context).

Note: I'm not saying everything we did in South America was fine; I'm saying that taking it out of context and ignoring certain important facts is misleading at best, deceptive at worst.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=4146

[brad]

actually thats alex jones's main problem with chomsky; he feels chomsky is a globalist shill whose agenda coincides with those in power, a one world government.

having said that the US did mine a nicaraguan harbor, which is a clear act of war.

also look milosevic and stuff in the world court or whatever, and the current stuff about the US adamant that its own soldiers be excluded from the court , etc. , etc.

[brad]

'No, andyfox is pretty much saying the proper place for criticism is to criticize only our own. '

i could be wrong , but i doubt it. in any case chomsky says that just because another country is acting worse is no excuse for our gov. not to clean up its act.

[IrishHand]

First of all, feel free to come up with arguments of your own rather than cut'n'pasting someone else's essay. It's easy to ignore people who post a half-dozen links to other sites. It's more irritating to scroll through a few pages that you feel makes some point you couldn't make yourself.

Secondly, when someone makes an argument you don't like, don't reshape it so you can argue against it.
'No, andyfox is pretty much saying the proper place for criticism is to criticize only our own.
No - actually he's saying that the primary place for criticism is to criticize our own. There isn't a person who's posted in this thread who believes we should ignore improper actions and atrocities elsewhere in the world. Some are just arguing - and rightly so - that our primary responsibility is within.

[MMMMMM]

Irish, your tone is a bit out of line here. I've come up with plenty of my own arguments for a couple of years on this board. I also cut & paste sometimes when the source will more accurately make certain points. When cutting and pasting, I try to make sure the excerpts are very relevant to the discussion at hand. In this case I thought the excerpts were quite relevant to Chomsky's claims and to the overall subject of this thread, and were concise. I'm sorry if you didn't think so.

If I've misinterpreted andyfox's intent or meaning, I apologize. It may be a matter of degree as to exactly what andyfox is saying. I didn't intentionally reshape anything (as you seem to be implying), although I may have misinterpreted his words. However I do feel, based on this and other threads, that he isn't merely saying the primary place for criticism is our own by a small margin, but that he's saying it quite emphatically--that it isn't close, in other words. I happen to feel that if the other party is actually performing far more heinous deeds on a much greater scale, then that tends to outweigh the directive to criticize and improve ourselves first. To the extent that greater and greater atrocities are being committed, the proper weighting continues to shift.

Unlike Chomsky, I feel that if "they" are killing 100 times more priests than "we" are, that "over there" should be the primary focus (to the extent that it is pragmatically possible)--if we are professing to care anything about the priests, that is.

[MMMMMM]

If that were all Chomsky was saying I wouldn't have a problem with it (unless it was merely a catalog of things taken out of context when the context actually makes significant difference). The problem is that I feel Chomsky is saying more than that, and is supporting some of his positions in an intellectually dishonest manner as well. Chomsky appears to me to have an agenda to unfairly portray the USA as the worst country in the world, and my impression is enhanced because the countries which actually are the worst and most guilty of human rights abuses do not receive commensurate criticism from him.

[brad]

like i said alex jones had chomsky on his show and pretty much totally trashed him although even alex jones admits that chomsky has some good points.

i think alex jones main fault finding of chomsky is his perception that chomsky may advocate a UN style solution or global rather than national sovereignty.

personally i find it more disturbing that a national guard officer is quoted in the detroit free press as saying 'we're prepared to shoot grandmothers if they run quarantine' (in the event of a bio attack and quarantine) than i am about china executing dissidents and selling thier organs. maybe its just me.

[MMMMMM]

I don't think it's just you...it's just that you live in the U.S. If you lived in China you would probably find the other more disturbing. That which seems more likely to affect us usually evokes the stronger emotional response. Considering things logically or morally, executing dissidents is far worse than planning to enforce a possibly necessary quarantine with lethal force as a last option.

[brad]

well its not the thing itself but rather the underlying philosophy.

new years eve party im talking to friend of friend who is a cop. i bring up alan dershowitz and his plan of 'torture warrants'. cop thinks its a good idea, says US is not a 3rd world country it 'wont be abused'. very disturbing i think. of course we wont know for 50 years.

[MMMMMM]

I agree it's a bit worrisome, but bear in mind that, at least in the interview with Dershowitz which I read, he was speaking of torture only in regards to obtaining information from terrorists--that instead of shipping them off to other countries for such purposes, maybe we should acknowledge it and get it out in the open, so to speak, with appropriate safeguards. He wasn't advocating it with regards to the general criminal or citizen populations. The cop you spoke with may not have realized this, and that to me is more worrisome than Dershowitz's position outlined above.

[cero_z]

"And if the Kuwaitis don't fear him it's only because they know the USA will defend them as it was before"
The "Kuwaitis" aren't grateful for our "defense", nor should they be. What we did to Kuwait and its people is equivalent to sinking their boat in order to evict pirates. Kuwait is in shambles as a result of our invasion.The Kuwaitis who are grateful are the staggeringly few royals who stood to lose their oil empire to Iraq.

[MMMMMM]

cero z: "Kuwait is in shambles as a result of our invasion."

Iraq, not the U.S.A., invaded Kuwait.

Given Saddam's record of atrocities inflicted on his own people, should it be supposed that if Saddam had overwhelmed Kuwait, that the common Kuwaiti people would have fared any better than his own people do under his despotic rule?

Here is an excerpt from a BBC news report, titled Kuwait's Hidden War Scars:

(excerpt)...The Kuwait National Museum was completely looted by the Iraqis

The museum's priceless collections of Islamic artefacts were looted and almost every room gutted by fire. Today, it is an eerie place, with pigeons flying around in the burnt-out rafters.

Out in the desert, a damaged pumping station in the Al Ahmadi field south of the capital is the only reminder of the hellish inferno left by Iraqi troops as they retreated.

More than 600 of Kuwait's oil wells were torched, on the orders of the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. But the wells have been repaired and are again flowing with the black liquid that is Kuwait's lifeblood.

Invasion trauma

A decade after the Iraqi invasion, those who have Kuwaiti citizenship have kept their place as one of the richest national groups in the world.


Scientists are still assessing the long-term impact on the environment and the nation's health. Cancer rates are on the increase, although they are still not sure of the cause.

The last 10 years has not just been about rebuilding Kuwait's infrastructure.

Many Kuwaitis are still struggling to deal with the effects of being tortured, while they were held prisoner, either in Kuwait or in Iraq.

"Everything in Kuwait, all the buildings, have been renovated, but the inside of the people needs time to be renovated," said Dr Abdullah al Hammadi, who runs the emirate's main torture rehabilitation centre.


Some 22,000 Kuwaitis were detained at some point during the occupation and today many are suffering from depression, anxiety attacks and other symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. Dr al Hammadi said a large number have resorted to drug and alcohol abuse.

22,000 Kuwaitis were detained by Iraquis and live with the consequences

His biggest worry is the incidence of behavioural problems among young people who were either tortured themselves or who witnessed others suffering such abuses.

"We've noticed in the last few years that crime and violence among Kuwaiti juveniles has increased," he said, adding that those involved are mostly young people who have had traumatic wartime experiences.

Worst of all, the doctor said, in some of these cases, juveniles have actually inflicted torture on their victims.


Some Kuwaiti families are trying to cope with another post-war trauma, of not knowing what has happened to their loved ones.

These are the relatives of the so-called "Missing", the 605 people Kuwait says Iraq is still holding. The "Missing" have become a highly emotive issue in the emirate.

Abdul Hameed al Attar, who has heard nothing of his son since he was arrested in the dying days of the occupation, said: "Even if he is dead, I want to see him."

Baghdad, however, has repeatedly denied holding anybody and has refused to cooperate with an international committee set up to resolve the issue.

It accuses Kuwait of failing to provide information on 1,150 Iraqis missing since 1991.

Iraq's intransigence on the issue, coupled with the belligerent statements it often makes about the emirate, means Kuwaitis are still deeply fearful of their northern neighbour.


Many people say they believe Saddam Hussein would try to invade again, if he had the chance.


Kuwait's Defence Minister, Sheikh Salem al Sabah
Only the continued presence of American and British troops, they say, prevents him from doing so. And you hear such fears expressed at the highest levels of government.

Kuwait's Defence Minister, Sheikh Salem al Sabah, made his feelings clear in an interview with BBC News Online.

Kuwaitis still fear the possiblity of another Iraqi invasion

Asked if the country still feels threatened by Iraq, he answered: "Yes we do, yes we do, yes we do.

"It is built in their mind and their thoughts that Kuwait is a part of Iraq, and Kuwait being rich and more advanced, with technologies and what have you, they feel jealous from it. And they will keep threatening the Kuwaiti security."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/861753.stm