What Americans
Have Learnt - and not Learnt -
Since 9/11
by Noam Chomsky
September 11 shocked many Americans into an awareness that
they had better pay much closer attention to what the United States Government
does in the world and how it is perceived.
Many issues have been opened for discussion that were not
on the agenda before. That is all to the good.
It is also the merest sanity, if we hope to reduce the
likelihood of future atrocities. It may be comforting for Americans to pretend
that their enemies "hate our freedoms," as President Bush stated, but
it is hardly wise to ignore the real world, which conveys different lessons.
The President is not the first to ask: "Why do they
hate us?"
In a staff discussion 44 years ago, president Dwight
Eisenhower described "the campaign of hatred against us (in the Arab
world), not by the governments but by the people". His National Security
Council outlined the basic argument: the US supports corrupt and oppressive
governments and is "opposing political or economic progress" because
of its interest in controlling the oil resources of the region.
Post-September 11 surveys in the Arab world reveal that the
same reasons hold today, compounded with resentment over specific policies.
Strikingly, that is even true of privileged, Western-oriented sectors in the
region.
To cite just one recent example, in the August 1 issue of Far
Eastern Economic Review, internationally recognized regional specialist
Ahmed Rashid writes that, in Pakistan, "there is growing anger that US
support is allowing (Musharraf's) military regime to delay the promise of
democracy."
Today, Americans do themselves few favors by choosing to
believe that "they hate us" and "hate our freedoms". On the
contrary, these are people who like Americans and admire much about the US,
including its freedoms. What they hate is official policies that deny them the
freedoms to which they, too, aspire.
For such reasons, the post-September 11 rantings of Osama
bin Laden -- for example, about US support for corrupt and brutal regimes, or
about the US "invasion" of Saudi Arabia -- have a certain resonance,
even among those who despise and fear him. From resentment, anger and
frustration, terrorist bands hope to draw support and recruits.
We should also be aware that much of the world regards
Washington as a terrorist regime. In recent years, the US has taken or backed
actions in Colombia, Nicaragua, Panama, Sudan and Turkey, to name a few, that
meet official US definitions of "terrorism" -- that is, when
Americans apply the term to enemies.
In the most sober establishment journal, Foreign
Affairs, Samuel Huntington wrote in 1999: "While the US regularly
denounces various countries as 'rogue states', in the eyes of many countries it
is becoming the rogue superpower . . . the single greatest external threat to
their societies."
Such perceptions are not changed by the fact that on
September 11, for the first time, a Western country was subjected on home soil
to a horrendous terrorist attack of a kind all too familiar to victims of
Western power. The attack goes far beyond what is sometimes called the
"retail terror" of the IRA or Red Brigade.
The September 11 terrorism elicited harsh condemnation
throughout the world and an outpouring of sympathy for the innocent victims.
But with qualifications.
An international Gallup Poll in late
September found little support for "a military attack" by the US in
Afghanistan. In Latin America, the region with the most experience of US
intervention, support ranged from 2 per cent in Mexico to 16 per cent in Panama.
The present "campaign of hatred" in the Arab
world is, of course, also fueled by US policies towards Israel-Palestine and
Iraq. The US has provided the crucial support for Israel's harsh military
occupation, now in its 35th year.
One way for the US to lessen Israeli-Palestinian tension
would be to stop refusing to join the long-standing international consensus
that calls for recognition of the right of all states in the region to live in
peace and security, including a Palestinian state in the currently occupied
territories (perhaps with minor and mutual border adjustments).
In Iraq, a decade of harsh sanctions under US pressure has
strengthened Saddam while leading to the death of hundreds of thousands of
Iraqis - perhaps more people "than have been slain by all so-called
weapons of mass destruction throughout history," military analysts John
and Karl Mueller wrote in Foreign Affairs in 1999.
Washington's present justifications to attack Iraq have far
less credibility than when President Bush No. 1 was welcoming Saddam as an ally
and a trading partner after the Iraqi leader had committed his worst
brutalities -- as in Halabja, where Iraq attacked Kurds with poison gas in
1988. At the time, the murderer Saddam was more dangerous than he is today.
As for a US attack against Iraq, no one, including Defence
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, can realistically guess the possible costs and
consequences.
Radical Islamist extremists surely hope that an attack on
Iraq will kill many people and destroy much of the country, providing recruits
for terrorist actions.
They presumably also welcome the "Bush doctrine"
that proclaims the right of attack against potential threats, which are
virtually limitless. The President has announced that: "There's no telling
how many wars it will take to secure freedom in the homeland." That's
true.
Threats are everywhere, even at home. The prescription for
endless war poses a far greater danger to Americans than perceived enemies do,
for reasons the terrorist organizations understand very well.
Twenty years ago, the former head of Israeli military
intelligence, Yehoshaphat Harkabi, also a leading Arabist, made a point that
still holds true. "To offer an honorable solution to the Palestinians,
respecting their right to self-determination -- that is the solution of the
problem of terrorism," he said. "When the swamp disappears, there
will be no more mosquitoes."
At the time, Israel enjoyed the virtual immunity from
retaliation within the occupied territories that lasted until very recently.
But Harkabi's warning was apt, and the lesson applies more generally.
Well before September 11, it was understood that, with
modern technology, the rich and powerful would lose their near-monopoly of the
means of violence and could expect to suffer atrocities on home soil.
If America insists on creating more swamps, there will be
more mosquitoes, with awesome capacity for destruction.
If America devotes its resources to draining the swamps,
addressing the roots of the "campaigns of hatred," it can not only
reduce the threats it faces but also live up to ideals that it professes and
that are not beyond reach if Americans choose to take them seriously.
Noam
Chomsky is an internationally renowned
Professor of Linguistics at MIT, and is America's leading dissident
intellectual. He is the author of many books, including most recently 9-11
(Seven Stories Press, 2001), A New Generation Draws the Line (Verso, 2000),
The New Military Humanism (Common Courage, 1999), and The Fateful
Triangle: The United States, Israel & the Palestinians (South End
Press, new edition 1999).