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There's
Good Reason to Fear US
by
Noam Chomsky
September
8, 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.
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 Power
and Terror (Seven Stories Press, 2003), 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).
* Iraq: Invasion
That Will Live in Infamy
* Campus
Activism and the Unpredictability of History
* The Case
Against US Adventurism in Iraq
* Why
Not Let Iran Institute Democracy in Iraq?
* What
Americans Have Learnt - and not Learnt - Since 9/11
* Noam
Chomsky On the Middle East and the US War on Terrorism
* Iraq
and the US Imperial Grand Strategy