Đỗ Huyền My
(Sagittarius)
Điều hành viên
Sau đây là trích dẫn một cuộc tranh luận giữa hai học giả có tên tuổi người Mỹ về việc Mỹ can thiệp vũ trang vào Iraq để mọi người tham khảo.
The Great Debate on the War Against Iraq
- Bắt đầu Sagittarius
- Ngày bắt đầu
Đỗ Huyền My
Đỗ Huyền My
(Sagittarius)
Điều hành viên
The Anti-War Argument
Mark Danner
Staff Writer, The New Yorker
Professor of Journalism, University of California at Berkeley
Mark Danner:
Thank you Ken, and thank you students at Swarthmore, administration of Swarthmore, President Bloom, and also David Gelber at CBS News. Thank you for having this debate. It seems to be the function of an academic institution, one of its proudest functions in a time of national crisis, and we’re in a time of national crisis together. Together, we’ll try to understand exactly what our country, of which we are proud citizens, is doing and is about to do.
It looks like – in the coming weeks, and perhaps the next two weeks – that the United States will go to war. American soldiers, airmen, Marines will attack Iraq, bomb its cities, invade its territory, take it over, and occupy it for an indeterminate amount of time. It’s unclear how many people will die in this initial assault; it may be a very good war, a very lucky war in which a few thousand will die, or a few tens of thousands. It may be as lucky as the war in 1991, when perhaps 50,000 Iraqis died, according to the Defense Intelligence Agency. Or it may be much more complicated than that. In a month’s time, the American forces may well be surrounding Baghdad and laying siege to it. As a current military officer said to me recently, “Laying siege to Baghdad is like laying siege to Los Angeles. It is an awesome idea.”
It seems to me absolutely necessary and right that we should be sitting here before this goes on, trying to understand a few basic things about it. The most basic question, I think, as Ken very ably brought up in his introduction, is why. Why is this about to happen? I think it is no accident that, as Ken said, many of you have expressed confusion about the real reason for the war. Over the last weeks and months, we’ve heard the administration give a number of different reasons, most recently to bring democracy to the Middle East. At the beginning of the fall, it had a lot more to do with the threat posed by Iraq to the United States. I think one of the central issues on which my old friend Leon Wieseltier and I disagree is the degree of that threat, and I’d like to address that first.
Iraq is a miserable country of 23 million people. Its economy has shrunk by two-thirds in the last 20 years. It has no air force. It has a few missiles, which are currently being destroyed. It has an army that is a third of the size of the army it had 20 years ago – 400,000 troops. The United States is a country of 290 million, with the world’s leading military, with almost 2 million men and women under arms. It has the power to strike any nation on the face of the globe within hours, with an intercontinental missile force, an intercontinental force of bombers.
If President Bush decided right now to wipe out Iraq, to destroy every city and every Iraqi, it could be done in about 2-3 hours. How does Iraq threaten us? It is said that they threaten us with weapons of mass destruction. Iraq has no nuclear program; it was destroyed in the 1990s. Mohammed al-Baredai, the current inspector, has found no evidence whatsoever that the program has been reconstituted. It does, I would be willing to concede and stipulate, have some chemical weapons and some biological weapons. It also has a brutal dictator.
But, does it threaten the United States, and does the threat it brings to us merit a war, an attack, as I believe? Can that threat be dealt with through other means, and will the war itself bring much greater damage than any threat that Iraq could pose? What is the threat that Iraq poses to the United States right now?
We hear again and again that Iraq attacks its neighbors, that Iraq has gassed its own people. Iraq did attack its neighbors, once, in the early 80s – in 1980, it attacked Iran. The United States supported that attack. The United States was frightened of the Iranian Revolution and its expansion, and it supported that attack. It armed Iraq, flooded its economy with $3 billion worth of aid, and also gave them targeting information for their gas and chemical weapons. In 1988, the gassing of the Kurds, at that time, not only was the United States supporting Iraq.
Many of the officials who are now in office, who say that Iraq must be attacked because it is erratic, because it attacks its own people, were also in office at the time. Colin Powell was national security advisor, Don Rumsfeld was President Reagan’s envoy to Iraq, Wolfowitz was in office, Richard Perle – one can go down the list. It’s as if the United States vowed today to attack El Salvador because of what happened during the Reagan Administration, because of the massacres that it committed during the Reagan Administration.
What is the reason for this attack, or for this proposed attack? The United States is responding to 9/11 and it has, at the top of the administration, a division. Some people feel that Iraq will be, sometime in the future, a difficult regime in the Persian Gulf; that is, it will have to be confronted, and that the current situation politically in the United States, with many citizens deeply frightened after 9/11, offers a window of opportunity to launch a war against Iraq without immediate provocation. It’s very difficult, politically, to do in this country. Other officials, and we’ve recently seen them taking a more public role, like Paul Wolfowitz, most notably Douglas Fife, have an idea that to attack Iraq and occupy the country will be the beginning of democracy in the Middle East. We can get to this issue a little later in the debate.
Suffice it to say that the notion of the United States spreading democracy to the Middle East is a breathtakingly ambitious one. It will take years of occupation and, to me, it risks causing the kind of turmoil and revolt in other regimes that will bring more terrorism to our shores.
Let me add one thing. If a year and a half ago – after 19 religious zealots attacked the United States and tried to chase the United States out of the Middle East – if you had said then the natural response to that was to occupy a major Arab country, people would’ve said you were crazy; it’s political suicide.
Mark Danner
Staff Writer, The New Yorker
Professor of Journalism, University of California at Berkeley
Mark Danner:
Thank you Ken, and thank you students at Swarthmore, administration of Swarthmore, President Bloom, and also David Gelber at CBS News. Thank you for having this debate. It seems to be the function of an academic institution, one of its proudest functions in a time of national crisis, and we’re in a time of national crisis together. Together, we’ll try to understand exactly what our country, of which we are proud citizens, is doing and is about to do.
It looks like – in the coming weeks, and perhaps the next two weeks – that the United States will go to war. American soldiers, airmen, Marines will attack Iraq, bomb its cities, invade its territory, take it over, and occupy it for an indeterminate amount of time. It’s unclear how many people will die in this initial assault; it may be a very good war, a very lucky war in which a few thousand will die, or a few tens of thousands. It may be as lucky as the war in 1991, when perhaps 50,000 Iraqis died, according to the Defense Intelligence Agency. Or it may be much more complicated than that. In a month’s time, the American forces may well be surrounding Baghdad and laying siege to it. As a current military officer said to me recently, “Laying siege to Baghdad is like laying siege to Los Angeles. It is an awesome idea.”
It seems to me absolutely necessary and right that we should be sitting here before this goes on, trying to understand a few basic things about it. The most basic question, I think, as Ken very ably brought up in his introduction, is why. Why is this about to happen? I think it is no accident that, as Ken said, many of you have expressed confusion about the real reason for the war. Over the last weeks and months, we’ve heard the administration give a number of different reasons, most recently to bring democracy to the Middle East. At the beginning of the fall, it had a lot more to do with the threat posed by Iraq to the United States. I think one of the central issues on which my old friend Leon Wieseltier and I disagree is the degree of that threat, and I’d like to address that first.
Iraq is a miserable country of 23 million people. Its economy has shrunk by two-thirds in the last 20 years. It has no air force. It has a few missiles, which are currently being destroyed. It has an army that is a third of the size of the army it had 20 years ago – 400,000 troops. The United States is a country of 290 million, with the world’s leading military, with almost 2 million men and women under arms. It has the power to strike any nation on the face of the globe within hours, with an intercontinental missile force, an intercontinental force of bombers.
If President Bush decided right now to wipe out Iraq, to destroy every city and every Iraqi, it could be done in about 2-3 hours. How does Iraq threaten us? It is said that they threaten us with weapons of mass destruction. Iraq has no nuclear program; it was destroyed in the 1990s. Mohammed al-Baredai, the current inspector, has found no evidence whatsoever that the program has been reconstituted. It does, I would be willing to concede and stipulate, have some chemical weapons and some biological weapons. It also has a brutal dictator.
But, does it threaten the United States, and does the threat it brings to us merit a war, an attack, as I believe? Can that threat be dealt with through other means, and will the war itself bring much greater damage than any threat that Iraq could pose? What is the threat that Iraq poses to the United States right now?
We hear again and again that Iraq attacks its neighbors, that Iraq has gassed its own people. Iraq did attack its neighbors, once, in the early 80s – in 1980, it attacked Iran. The United States supported that attack. The United States was frightened of the Iranian Revolution and its expansion, and it supported that attack. It armed Iraq, flooded its economy with $3 billion worth of aid, and also gave them targeting information for their gas and chemical weapons. In 1988, the gassing of the Kurds, at that time, not only was the United States supporting Iraq.
Many of the officials who are now in office, who say that Iraq must be attacked because it is erratic, because it attacks its own people, were also in office at the time. Colin Powell was national security advisor, Don Rumsfeld was President Reagan’s envoy to Iraq, Wolfowitz was in office, Richard Perle – one can go down the list. It’s as if the United States vowed today to attack El Salvador because of what happened during the Reagan Administration, because of the massacres that it committed during the Reagan Administration.
What is the reason for this attack, or for this proposed attack? The United States is responding to 9/11 and it has, at the top of the administration, a division. Some people feel that Iraq will be, sometime in the future, a difficult regime in the Persian Gulf; that is, it will have to be confronted, and that the current situation politically in the United States, with many citizens deeply frightened after 9/11, offers a window of opportunity to launch a war against Iraq without immediate provocation. It’s very difficult, politically, to do in this country. Other officials, and we’ve recently seen them taking a more public role, like Paul Wolfowitz, most notably Douglas Fife, have an idea that to attack Iraq and occupy the country will be the beginning of democracy in the Middle East. We can get to this issue a little later in the debate.
Suffice it to say that the notion of the United States spreading democracy to the Middle East is a breathtakingly ambitious one. It will take years of occupation and, to me, it risks causing the kind of turmoil and revolt in other regimes that will bring more terrorism to our shores.
Let me add one thing. If a year and a half ago – after 19 religious zealots attacked the United States and tried to chase the United States out of the Middle East – if you had said then the natural response to that was to occupy a major Arab country, people would’ve said you were crazy; it’s political suicide.
Chỉnh sửa lần cuối:
Đỗ Huyền My
(Sagittarius)
Điều hành viên
The Pro-War Argument
Leon Wieseltier
Literary Editor, The New Republic
Leon Wieseltier:
There are two questions, I think, that all of us have been pondering. The first one is why is the Bush Administration proposing to launch this war? The second question is, should this war be launched? They’re not the same question. Sometimes somebody that one admires does something that one cannot support. Sometimes someone that one does not admire does something that one can support. I’d like to separate, at the outset, the question of the Bush Administration from the question of the merits of this war that they propose to fight in Iraq.
I’m not here to defend the Bush Administration; I want to be perfectly clear about that. In most of its policies, I find it somewhere between offensive and odious. I have no enthusiasm for the heartlessness of its economic policy, for its indifference to the environment, for its non-democratic feelings about the transparency of government, for its religiosity, for its bloodlust in capital punishment executions. None of this arouses any enthusiasm in me. However, I cannot allow my analysis of what I believe to be a serious threat emanating from Saddam Hussein to be shut down by my opposition to the Bush Administration on other grounds. It is possible for sophisticated people in a democracy to support certain things and oppose other things. In any event, we only have one president at a time.
I was a great supporter of American intervention in the Balkans in the 1990s, as was Mark; we were co-conspirators in this. I think that Bill Clinton will go to hell for taking two and a half years to get into Bosnia after not doing anything at all about Rwanda. I greatly admired Republican friends who despised Clinton, as much as some of us despise Bush, who were able to support the democratic intervention in the Balkans because they thought it was the right thing.
The reason I support the war in Iraq is essentially this, and I’ll have to speak briefly and therefore crudely. I believe that there is such a thing as an international emergency that requires the international community – whatever on earth that is. We’ll have to deal with that at some point tonight: to act, to rise up and stop acts of such criminality, acts of violence against innocent men, women and children that simply constitute a fundamental violation, not only of the peace, but of the standards of a civilized international life.
I do not believe that tyranny is one of those international emergencies; tyranny is as old as the hills, and it has to be fought indigenously. A true democracy needs indigenous roots, so force can sometimes help it along, as we discovered in Germany, Japan, Austria and other places. Nor do I believe that war itself constitutes such an international emergency, but there are two crimes, there are two heinous categories of acts, that I believe require, obligate, every civilized individual to oppose them, into doing something about them. They are genocide and the use of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons.
The remarkable thing about Saddam Hussein (he’s very distinguished in the field of evil) is that he has actually perpetrated both these international emergencies. He has used chemical weapons against soldiers; he has used chemical weapons against civilians. He started a war that lasted seven years that cost 1 million lives, at the end of which the border had not even changed. He invaded Kuwait. We now know, this is not speculation, that there are thousands, I repeat, thousands of tons of chemical agents in Iraq that are unaccounted for. We know, this is not speculation, that there are thousands of loiters of anthrax in Iraq that are unaccounted for.
The United Nations – that is to say, the international community – quite correctly, 12 years ago, and then again in [U.N. Resolution] 1441 recently, demanded that he disarm. We sent inspectors and he turned the inspections into a scavenger hunt. The inspections were not supposed to be a scavenger hunt; what the international community required of this man was that he make a strategic decision to disarm. This is a decision that, not only has he consistently refused to make, but that his refusal to make has enabled him to actually use his weapons, either actually, or for the purpose of the threat of terrorizing various opposition groups and ethnic groups in other states and so on. Saddam Hussein is the only figure in the discussion of the weapons of mass destruction, about whom all the chilling theories of deterrence and all the ominous scenarios of game theory do not apply, because he has already used them. He has already used them; he is the only figure in contemporary history of whom that can be said. This is not a small thing.
There are those who point out that the old scenarios of deterrence apply because he has never used them against people by whom he could be deterred. I will confess that that is attributing a little too much rationality after genocide, for my taste. In any event, even if Saddam Hussein is the rational actor that certain people who are opposed to the war think he is, he happens to have been a colossally, stupidly dangerous rational actor, who has committed two of the most extraordinary strategic miscalculations in modern history. The first one having to do with starting that ugly and unbelievable was with Iran, the second one having to do with the war with Kuwait.
Let me say a word about terrorism. I do not believe this war is about terrorism; I do not believe there is any direct link that has been demonstrated between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. But I will tell you this. Everything we know about this man, about what he has done in the past and about what he is capable of doing in the future, does not lead me to believe that there is some part of his conscience that would make it impossible for him to cooperate with terrorist groups of all kinds. He has already cooperated with a variety of terrorist groups, and there are thousands of tons of chemical agents that are unaccounted for.
A word about democratization: I do not believe, in the words of a famous folk singer in the 1960s, that we are the cops of the world. I do not think that democratization alone is a sufficient reason for the United States to launch a major war against a tyranny in the Middle East. But I do believe that the only real solution to the problem of proliferation is political development. That is to say, Saddam Hussein, I believe, for the sake of hundreds of thousands of innocent, not even necessarily American ones, because we are not the United States of America because we believe only in the welfare of ourselves. This is not just about the security of people who have an American passport; this is about the role that any large power, that claims to be a decent power and have a conscience, must play.
Leon Wieseltier
Literary Editor, The New Republic
Leon Wieseltier:
There are two questions, I think, that all of us have been pondering. The first one is why is the Bush Administration proposing to launch this war? The second question is, should this war be launched? They’re not the same question. Sometimes somebody that one admires does something that one cannot support. Sometimes someone that one does not admire does something that one can support. I’d like to separate, at the outset, the question of the Bush Administration from the question of the merits of this war that they propose to fight in Iraq.
I’m not here to defend the Bush Administration; I want to be perfectly clear about that. In most of its policies, I find it somewhere between offensive and odious. I have no enthusiasm for the heartlessness of its economic policy, for its indifference to the environment, for its non-democratic feelings about the transparency of government, for its religiosity, for its bloodlust in capital punishment executions. None of this arouses any enthusiasm in me. However, I cannot allow my analysis of what I believe to be a serious threat emanating from Saddam Hussein to be shut down by my opposition to the Bush Administration on other grounds. It is possible for sophisticated people in a democracy to support certain things and oppose other things. In any event, we only have one president at a time.
I was a great supporter of American intervention in the Balkans in the 1990s, as was Mark; we were co-conspirators in this. I think that Bill Clinton will go to hell for taking two and a half years to get into Bosnia after not doing anything at all about Rwanda. I greatly admired Republican friends who despised Clinton, as much as some of us despise Bush, who were able to support the democratic intervention in the Balkans because they thought it was the right thing.
The reason I support the war in Iraq is essentially this, and I’ll have to speak briefly and therefore crudely. I believe that there is such a thing as an international emergency that requires the international community – whatever on earth that is. We’ll have to deal with that at some point tonight: to act, to rise up and stop acts of such criminality, acts of violence against innocent men, women and children that simply constitute a fundamental violation, not only of the peace, but of the standards of a civilized international life.
I do not believe that tyranny is one of those international emergencies; tyranny is as old as the hills, and it has to be fought indigenously. A true democracy needs indigenous roots, so force can sometimes help it along, as we discovered in Germany, Japan, Austria and other places. Nor do I believe that war itself constitutes such an international emergency, but there are two crimes, there are two heinous categories of acts, that I believe require, obligate, every civilized individual to oppose them, into doing something about them. They are genocide and the use of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons.
The remarkable thing about Saddam Hussein (he’s very distinguished in the field of evil) is that he has actually perpetrated both these international emergencies. He has used chemical weapons against soldiers; he has used chemical weapons against civilians. He started a war that lasted seven years that cost 1 million lives, at the end of which the border had not even changed. He invaded Kuwait. We now know, this is not speculation, that there are thousands, I repeat, thousands of tons of chemical agents in Iraq that are unaccounted for. We know, this is not speculation, that there are thousands of loiters of anthrax in Iraq that are unaccounted for.
The United Nations – that is to say, the international community – quite correctly, 12 years ago, and then again in [U.N. Resolution] 1441 recently, demanded that he disarm. We sent inspectors and he turned the inspections into a scavenger hunt. The inspections were not supposed to be a scavenger hunt; what the international community required of this man was that he make a strategic decision to disarm. This is a decision that, not only has he consistently refused to make, but that his refusal to make has enabled him to actually use his weapons, either actually, or for the purpose of the threat of terrorizing various opposition groups and ethnic groups in other states and so on. Saddam Hussein is the only figure in the discussion of the weapons of mass destruction, about whom all the chilling theories of deterrence and all the ominous scenarios of game theory do not apply, because he has already used them. He has already used them; he is the only figure in contemporary history of whom that can be said. This is not a small thing.
There are those who point out that the old scenarios of deterrence apply because he has never used them against people by whom he could be deterred. I will confess that that is attributing a little too much rationality after genocide, for my taste. In any event, even if Saddam Hussein is the rational actor that certain people who are opposed to the war think he is, he happens to have been a colossally, stupidly dangerous rational actor, who has committed two of the most extraordinary strategic miscalculations in modern history. The first one having to do with starting that ugly and unbelievable was with Iran, the second one having to do with the war with Kuwait.
Let me say a word about terrorism. I do not believe this war is about terrorism; I do not believe there is any direct link that has been demonstrated between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. But I will tell you this. Everything we know about this man, about what he has done in the past and about what he is capable of doing in the future, does not lead me to believe that there is some part of his conscience that would make it impossible for him to cooperate with terrorist groups of all kinds. He has already cooperated with a variety of terrorist groups, and there are thousands of tons of chemical agents that are unaccounted for.
A word about democratization: I do not believe, in the words of a famous folk singer in the 1960s, that we are the cops of the world. I do not think that democratization alone is a sufficient reason for the United States to launch a major war against a tyranny in the Middle East. But I do believe that the only real solution to the problem of proliferation is political development. That is to say, Saddam Hussein, I believe, for the sake of hundreds of thousands of innocent, not even necessarily American ones, because we are not the United States of America because we believe only in the welfare of ourselves. This is not just about the security of people who have an American passport; this is about the role that any large power, that claims to be a decent power and have a conscience, must play.
Đỗ Huyền My
(Sagittarius)
Điều hành viên
For further reference, you can consult the complete transcript of this debate at:
http://www.swarthmore.edu/news/debate/index.html
Peace,
http://www.swarthmore.edu/news/debate/index.html
Peace,
Còn đây là bài viết của Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky: The case against U.S. adventurism in Iraq
Noam Chomsky
Published March 13, 2003 CHOM13
The most powerful state in history has proclaimed that it intends to control the world by force, the dimension in which it reigns supreme.
President Bush and his cohorts evidently believe that the means of violence in their hands are so extraordinary that they can dismiss anyone who stands in their way.
The consequences could be catastrophic in Iraq and around the world. The United States may reap a whirlwind of terrorist retaliation -- and step up the possibility of nuclear Armageddon.
Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and company are committed to an "imperial ambition," as G. John Ikenberry wrote in the September/October issue of Foreign Affairs -- "a unipolar world in which the United States has no peer competitor" and in which "no state or coalition could ever challenge it as global leader, protector and enforcer."
That ambition surely includes much expanded control over Persian Gulf resources and military bases to impose a preferred form of order in the region.
Even before the administration began beating the war drums against Iraq, there were plenty of warnings that U.S. adventurism would lead to proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, as well as terror, for deterrence or revenge.
Right now, Washington is teaching the world a dangerous lesson: If you want to defend yourself from us, you had better mimic North Korea and pose a credible threat. Otherwise we will demolish you.
There is good reason to believe that the war with Iraq is intended, in part, to demonstrate what lies ahead when the empire decides to strike a blow -- though "war" is hardly the proper term, given the gross mismatch of forces.
A flood of propaganda warns that if we do not stop Saddam Hussein today he will destroy us tomorrow.
Last October, when Congress granted the president the authority to go to war, it was "to defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq."
But no country in Iraq's neighborhood seems overly concerned about Saddam, much as they may hate the murderous tyrant.
Perhaps that is because the neighbors know that Iraq's people are at the edge of survival. Iraq has become one of the weakest states in the region. As a report from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences points out, Iraq's economy and military expenditures are a fraction of some of its neighbors'.
Indeed, in recent years, countries nearby have sought to reintegrate Iraq into the region, including Iran and Kuwait, both invaded by Iraq.
Saddam benefited from U.S. support through the war with Iran and beyond, up to the day of the invasion of Kuwait. Those responsible are largely back at the helm in Washington today.
President Ronald Reagan and the previous Bush administration provided aid to Saddam, along with the means to develop weapons of mass destruction, back when he was far more dangerous than he is now, and had already committed his worst crimes, like murdering thousands of Kurds with poison gas.
An end to Saddam's rule would lift a horrible burden from the people of Iraq. There is good reason to believe that he would suffer the fate of Nicolae Ceausescu and other vicious tyrants if Iraqi society were not devastated by harsh sanctions that force the population to rely on Saddam for survival while strengthening him and his clique.
Saddam remains a terrible threat to those within his reach. Today, his reach does not extend beyond his own domains, though it is likely that U.S. aggression could inspire a new generation of terrorists bent on revenge, and might induce Iraq to carry out terrorist actions suspected to be already in place.
Right now Saddam has every reason to keep under tight control any chemical and biological weapons that Iraq may have. He wouldn't provide such weapons to the Osama bin Ladens of the world, who represent a terrible threat to Saddam himself.
And administration hawks understand that, except as a last resort if attacked, Iraq is highly unlikely to use any weapons of mass destruction that it has -- and risk instant incineration.
Under attack, however, Iraqi society would collapse, including the controls over the weapons of mass destruction. These could be "privatized," as international security specialist Daniel Benjamin warns, and offered to the huge "market for unconventional weapons, where they will have no trouble finding buyers." That really is "a nightmare scenario," he says.
As for the fate of the people of Iraq in war, no one can predict with any confidence: not the CIA, not Rumsfeld, not those who claim to be experts on Iraq, no one.
But international relief agencies are preparing for the worst.
Studies by respected medical organizations estimate that the death toll could rise to the hundreds of thousands. Confidential U.N. documents warn that a war could trigger a "humanitarian emergency of exceptional scale" -- including the possibility that 30 percent of Iraqi children could die from malnutrition.
Today the administration doesn't seem to be heeding the international relief agency warnings about an attack's horrendous aftermath.
The potential disasters are among the many reasons why decent human beings do not contemplate the threat or use of violence, whether in personal life or international affairs, unless reasons have been offered that have overwhelming force. And surely nothing remotely like that justification has come forward.
Noam Chomsky is a political activist, professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of the bestseller "9-11." He wrote this article for the New York Times Syndicate.
Noam Chomsky: The case against U.S. adventurism in Iraq
Noam Chomsky
Published March 13, 2003 CHOM13
The most powerful state in history has proclaimed that it intends to control the world by force, the dimension in which it reigns supreme.
President Bush and his cohorts evidently believe that the means of violence in their hands are so extraordinary that they can dismiss anyone who stands in their way.
The consequences could be catastrophic in Iraq and around the world. The United States may reap a whirlwind of terrorist retaliation -- and step up the possibility of nuclear Armageddon.
Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and company are committed to an "imperial ambition," as G. John Ikenberry wrote in the September/October issue of Foreign Affairs -- "a unipolar world in which the United States has no peer competitor" and in which "no state or coalition could ever challenge it as global leader, protector and enforcer."
That ambition surely includes much expanded control over Persian Gulf resources and military bases to impose a preferred form of order in the region.
Even before the administration began beating the war drums against Iraq, there were plenty of warnings that U.S. adventurism would lead to proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, as well as terror, for deterrence or revenge.
Right now, Washington is teaching the world a dangerous lesson: If you want to defend yourself from us, you had better mimic North Korea and pose a credible threat. Otherwise we will demolish you.
There is good reason to believe that the war with Iraq is intended, in part, to demonstrate what lies ahead when the empire decides to strike a blow -- though "war" is hardly the proper term, given the gross mismatch of forces.
A flood of propaganda warns that if we do not stop Saddam Hussein today he will destroy us tomorrow.
Last October, when Congress granted the president the authority to go to war, it was "to defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq."
But no country in Iraq's neighborhood seems overly concerned about Saddam, much as they may hate the murderous tyrant.
Perhaps that is because the neighbors know that Iraq's people are at the edge of survival. Iraq has become one of the weakest states in the region. As a report from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences points out, Iraq's economy and military expenditures are a fraction of some of its neighbors'.
Indeed, in recent years, countries nearby have sought to reintegrate Iraq into the region, including Iran and Kuwait, both invaded by Iraq.
Saddam benefited from U.S. support through the war with Iran and beyond, up to the day of the invasion of Kuwait. Those responsible are largely back at the helm in Washington today.
President Ronald Reagan and the previous Bush administration provided aid to Saddam, along with the means to develop weapons of mass destruction, back when he was far more dangerous than he is now, and had already committed his worst crimes, like murdering thousands of Kurds with poison gas.
An end to Saddam's rule would lift a horrible burden from the people of Iraq. There is good reason to believe that he would suffer the fate of Nicolae Ceausescu and other vicious tyrants if Iraqi society were not devastated by harsh sanctions that force the population to rely on Saddam for survival while strengthening him and his clique.
Saddam remains a terrible threat to those within his reach. Today, his reach does not extend beyond his own domains, though it is likely that U.S. aggression could inspire a new generation of terrorists bent on revenge, and might induce Iraq to carry out terrorist actions suspected to be already in place.
Right now Saddam has every reason to keep under tight control any chemical and biological weapons that Iraq may have. He wouldn't provide such weapons to the Osama bin Ladens of the world, who represent a terrible threat to Saddam himself.
And administration hawks understand that, except as a last resort if attacked, Iraq is highly unlikely to use any weapons of mass destruction that it has -- and risk instant incineration.
Under attack, however, Iraqi society would collapse, including the controls over the weapons of mass destruction. These could be "privatized," as international security specialist Daniel Benjamin warns, and offered to the huge "market for unconventional weapons, where they will have no trouble finding buyers." That really is "a nightmare scenario," he says.
As for the fate of the people of Iraq in war, no one can predict with any confidence: not the CIA, not Rumsfeld, not those who claim to be experts on Iraq, no one.
But international relief agencies are preparing for the worst.
Studies by respected medical organizations estimate that the death toll could rise to the hundreds of thousands. Confidential U.N. documents warn that a war could trigger a "humanitarian emergency of exceptional scale" -- including the possibility that 30 percent of Iraqi children could die from malnutrition.
Today the administration doesn't seem to be heeding the international relief agency warnings about an attack's horrendous aftermath.
The potential disasters are among the many reasons why decent human beings do not contemplate the threat or use of violence, whether in personal life or international affairs, unless reasons have been offered that have overwhelming force. And surely nothing remotely like that justification has come forward.
Noam Chomsky is a political activist, professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of the bestseller "9-11." He wrote this article for the New York Times Syndicate.
Deep Concerns
by Noam Chomsky
March 20, 2003
At this grim moment, we can do nothing to stop the ongoing invasion. But that does not mean that the task is over for people who have some concern for justice, freedom, and human rights. Far from it. The tasks will be more urgent than before, whatever the outcome of the attack. And about that, no one has any idea: not the Pentagon, the CIA, or anyone else. Possibilities range from the horrifying humanitarian catastrophes of which aid and relief agencies that work in Iraq have been warning, to relatively benign outcomes – though even if not a hair is harmed on anyone’s head that will in no way mitigate the criminality of those willing to subject helpless people to such terrible risks, for their own shameful purposes.
As for the outcomes, it will be a long time before preliminary judgments can be made. One immediate task is to lend what weight we can to more benign outcomes. That means, primarily, caring for the needs of the victims, not just of this war but of Washington’s vicious and destructive sanctions regime of the past ten years, which has has devastated the civillian society, strengthened the ruling tyrant, and compelled the population to rely on him for survival. As has been pointed out for years, the sanctions therefore undermined the hope that Saddam Hussein would go the way of other murderous tyrants no less vicious than he. That includes a terrible rogues gallery of criminals who were also supported by those now at the helm in Washington, in many cases to the last days of their bloody rule: Ceausescu, to mention only one obvious and highly pertinent case.
Elementary decency would call for massive reparations from the US; lacking that, at least a flow of aid to Iraqis, so that they can rebuild what has been destroyed in their own way, not as dictated by people in Washington and Crawford whose higher faith is that power comes from the barrel of a gun.
But the issues are much more fundamental, and long range. Opposition to the invasion of Iraq has been entirely without historical precedent. That is why Bush had to meet his two cronies at a US military base on an island, where they would be safely removed from any mere people. The opposition may be focused on the invasion of Iraq, but its concerns go far beyond that. There is growing fear of US power, which is considered to be the greatest threat to peace in much of the world, probably by a large majority. And with the technology of destruction now at hand, rapidly becoming more lethal and ominous, threat to peace means threat to survival.
Fear of the US government is not based solely on this invasion, but on the background from which it arises: An openly-declared determination to rule the world by force, the one dimension in which US power is supreme, and to make sure that there will never be any challenge to that domination. Preventive wars are to be fought at will: Preventive, not Pre-emptive. Whatever the justifications for pre-emptive war might sometimes be, they do not hold for the very different category of preventive war: the use of military force to eliminate an imagined or invented threat. The openly-announced goal is to prevent any challenge to the “power, position, and prestige of the United States.” Such challenge, now or in the future, and any sign that it may emerge, will be met with overwhelming force by the rulers of the country that now apparently outspends the rest of the world combined on means of violence, and is forging new and very dangerous paths over near-unanimous world opposition: development of lethal weaponry in space, for example.
It is worth bearing in mind that the words I quoted are not those of Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld or other radical statist extremists now in charge. Rather, they are the words of the respected elder statesman Dean Acheson, 40 years ago, when he was a senior advisor to the Kennedy Administration. He was justifying US actions against Cuba – knowing that the international terrorist campaign aimed at “regime change” had just brought the world close to terminal nuclear war. Nevertheless, he instructed the American Society of International Law, no “legal issue” arises in the case of a US response to a challenge to its “power, position, and prestige,” specifically terrorist attacks and economic warfare against Cuba.
I bring this up as a reminder that the issues are deep-seated. The current administration is at the extremist end of the policy-planning spectrum, and its adventurism and penchant for violence are unusually dangerous. But the spectrum is not that broad, and unless these deeper issues are addressed, we can be confident that other ultrareactionary extremists will gain control of incredible means of devastation and repression.
The “imperial ambition” of the current power holders, as it is frankly called, has aroused shudders throughout the world, including the mainstream of the establishment at home. Elsewhere, of course, the reactions are far more fearful, particularly among the traditional victims. They know too much history, the hard way, to be comforted by exalted rhetoric. They have heard enough of that over the centuries as they were being beaten by the club called “civilization.” Just a few days ago, the head of the non-aligned movement, which includes the governments of most of the world’s population, described the Bush administration as more aggressive than Hitler. He happens to be very pro-American, and right in the middle of Washington’s international economic projects. And there is little doubt that he speaks for many of the traditional victims, and by now even for many of their traditional oppressors.
It is easy to go on, and important to think these matters through, with care and honesty.
Even before the Bush administration sharply escalated these fears in recent months, intelligence and international affairs specialists were informing anyone who wanted to listen that the policies Washington is pursuing are likely to lead to an increase in terror and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, for revenge or simply deterrence. There are two ways for Washington to respond to the threats engendered by its actions and startling proclamations. One way is to try to alleviate the threats by paying some attention to legitimate grievances, and by agreeing to become a civilized member of a world community, with some respect for world order and its institutions. The other way is to construct even more awesome engines of destruction and domination, so that any perceived challenge, however remote, can be crushed – provoking new and greater challenges. That way poses serious dangers to the people of the US and the world, and may, very possibly, lead to extinction of the species – not an idle speculation.
Terminal nuclear war has been avoided by near miracle in the past; a few months before Acheson’s speech, to mention one case that should be fresh in our minds today. Threats are severe and mounting. 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 citizens of the United States, who can shape the future.
Those are among the deep concerns that must, I think, be kept clearly in mind while watching events unfold in their unpredictable way as the most awesome military force in human history is unleashed against a defenseless enemy by a political leadership that has compiled a frightening record of destruction and barbarism since it took the reins of power over 20 years ago.
by Noam Chomsky
March 20, 2003
At this grim moment, we can do nothing to stop the ongoing invasion. But that does not mean that the task is over for people who have some concern for justice, freedom, and human rights. Far from it. The tasks will be more urgent than before, whatever the outcome of the attack. And about that, no one has any idea: not the Pentagon, the CIA, or anyone else. Possibilities range from the horrifying humanitarian catastrophes of which aid and relief agencies that work in Iraq have been warning, to relatively benign outcomes – though even if not a hair is harmed on anyone’s head that will in no way mitigate the criminality of those willing to subject helpless people to such terrible risks, for their own shameful purposes.
As for the outcomes, it will be a long time before preliminary judgments can be made. One immediate task is to lend what weight we can to more benign outcomes. That means, primarily, caring for the needs of the victims, not just of this war but of Washington’s vicious and destructive sanctions regime of the past ten years, which has has devastated the civillian society, strengthened the ruling tyrant, and compelled the population to rely on him for survival. As has been pointed out for years, the sanctions therefore undermined the hope that Saddam Hussein would go the way of other murderous tyrants no less vicious than he. That includes a terrible rogues gallery of criminals who were also supported by those now at the helm in Washington, in many cases to the last days of their bloody rule: Ceausescu, to mention only one obvious and highly pertinent case.
Elementary decency would call for massive reparations from the US; lacking that, at least a flow of aid to Iraqis, so that they can rebuild what has been destroyed in their own way, not as dictated by people in Washington and Crawford whose higher faith is that power comes from the barrel of a gun.
But the issues are much more fundamental, and long range. Opposition to the invasion of Iraq has been entirely without historical precedent. That is why Bush had to meet his two cronies at a US military base on an island, where they would be safely removed from any mere people. The opposition may be focused on the invasion of Iraq, but its concerns go far beyond that. There is growing fear of US power, which is considered to be the greatest threat to peace in much of the world, probably by a large majority. And with the technology of destruction now at hand, rapidly becoming more lethal and ominous, threat to peace means threat to survival.
Fear of the US government is not based solely on this invasion, but on the background from which it arises: An openly-declared determination to rule the world by force, the one dimension in which US power is supreme, and to make sure that there will never be any challenge to that domination. Preventive wars are to be fought at will: Preventive, not Pre-emptive. Whatever the justifications for pre-emptive war might sometimes be, they do not hold for the very different category of preventive war: the use of military force to eliminate an imagined or invented threat. The openly-announced goal is to prevent any challenge to the “power, position, and prestige of the United States.” Such challenge, now or in the future, and any sign that it may emerge, will be met with overwhelming force by the rulers of the country that now apparently outspends the rest of the world combined on means of violence, and is forging new and very dangerous paths over near-unanimous world opposition: development of lethal weaponry in space, for example.
It is worth bearing in mind that the words I quoted are not those of Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld or other radical statist extremists now in charge. Rather, they are the words of the respected elder statesman Dean Acheson, 40 years ago, when he was a senior advisor to the Kennedy Administration. He was justifying US actions against Cuba – knowing that the international terrorist campaign aimed at “regime change” had just brought the world close to terminal nuclear war. Nevertheless, he instructed the American Society of International Law, no “legal issue” arises in the case of a US response to a challenge to its “power, position, and prestige,” specifically terrorist attacks and economic warfare against Cuba.
I bring this up as a reminder that the issues are deep-seated. The current administration is at the extremist end of the policy-planning spectrum, and its adventurism and penchant for violence are unusually dangerous. But the spectrum is not that broad, and unless these deeper issues are addressed, we can be confident that other ultrareactionary extremists will gain control of incredible means of devastation and repression.
The “imperial ambition” of the current power holders, as it is frankly called, has aroused shudders throughout the world, including the mainstream of the establishment at home. Elsewhere, of course, the reactions are far more fearful, particularly among the traditional victims. They know too much history, the hard way, to be comforted by exalted rhetoric. They have heard enough of that over the centuries as they were being beaten by the club called “civilization.” Just a few days ago, the head of the non-aligned movement, which includes the governments of most of the world’s population, described the Bush administration as more aggressive than Hitler. He happens to be very pro-American, and right in the middle of Washington’s international economic projects. And there is little doubt that he speaks for many of the traditional victims, and by now even for many of their traditional oppressors.
It is easy to go on, and important to think these matters through, with care and honesty.
Even before the Bush administration sharply escalated these fears in recent months, intelligence and international affairs specialists were informing anyone who wanted to listen that the policies Washington is pursuing are likely to lead to an increase in terror and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, for revenge or simply deterrence. There are two ways for Washington to respond to the threats engendered by its actions and startling proclamations. One way is to try to alleviate the threats by paying some attention to legitimate grievances, and by agreeing to become a civilized member of a world community, with some respect for world order and its institutions. The other way is to construct even more awesome engines of destruction and domination, so that any perceived challenge, however remote, can be crushed – provoking new and greater challenges. That way poses serious dangers to the people of the US and the world, and may, very possibly, lead to extinction of the species – not an idle speculation.
Terminal nuclear war has been avoided by near miracle in the past; a few months before Acheson’s speech, to mention one case that should be fresh in our minds today. Threats are severe and mounting. 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 citizens of the United States, who can shape the future.
Those are among the deep concerns that must, I think, be kept clearly in mind while watching events unfold in their unpredictable way as the most awesome military force in human history is unleashed against a defenseless enemy by a political leadership that has compiled a frightening record of destruction and barbarism since it took the reins of power over 20 years ago.
A View from the Fourth Circle
For Arabs, a cruel echo of history
Rami G. Khouri
TO WASHINGTON and London, the attack against Iraq is part of a historical process to promote Arab peace, liberty and democracy. To most Arabs, it is a cruel reappearance of demons that have haunted them for centuries.
An Iraqi girl walks through the rubble of a building which was destroyed during a US-British air raid on Baghdad. Several explosions were heard in Baghdad on Tuesday and warplanes flew over the Iraqi capital in what seemed a new attack by US-led forces, a Reuters witness said (photo by Faleh Kheiber/Reuters)
A small minority of Arabs — mostly in Kuwait and other Gulf states that have suffered from Iraqi attacks — assists the United States today; the majority vehemently rejects the US military as an instrument for changing Middle Eastern regimes or reshaping our political landscape.
Of course, Arabs do not speak in a single voice. My own assessment is that most Arabs see this attack against Iraq as sinister in its intent, illegitimate, unprovoked, unnecessary, counterproductive for the US and destructive for the region. This comes on top of long-standing criticisms of America's pro-Israel policies. The result is the powerful anti-American current that predominates in this region.
An Iraqi youth cries as he runs past a burning car destroyed during a US-British air raid on Baghdad. At least 14 burnt corpses lay in a popular residential area of Baghdad, apparently killed in the US-led bombing or missile raid on Wednesday, Reuters Television correspondents said (Reuters photo)
Most Arab world analysts and citizens believe the US just wants to control Iraq's oil, secure a permanent Mideast foothold from which to dominate and pacify the region, and redraw the region's political map in favour of America and Israel. Steps along the way include securing permanent US military bases throughout the Middle East and directly occupying and retooling a powerful Arab country.
Washington is seen as exacting the biggest of double standards: it musters, for the second time, an Anglo-American armada to enforce UN resolutions in Iraq, while applying no comparable political, economic or military clout to implement 50-year-old UN resolutions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or others.
Washington is further criticised for unilaterally determining which regimes to change, along with when, how, why and by whom. Many Arabs fear that a regime change in Iraq will lead to continuing instability and violence. A shake-up of power structures and ethnic/national balances may spark new power and land grabs, jockeying for supremacy and possible ethnic cleansing, especially in northern Iraq and Turkey, southern Iraq and Iran, Israeli-occupied Palestinian lands and other contested areas.
For many Arabs, this revives historical ghosts from 1915-22, when British and French armies brazenly rearranged our region into strange-shaped countries with Euro-made power structures. The Arab view is that this was done mainly to protect Western colonial interests, divide up local spoils and promote Zionist national goals, largely ignoring indigenous Arab, Kurdish and other local interests. The consequences have been catastrophic: nearly a century of chronic wars and insurrections, unstable frontiers, underachieving and distorted economies, and the most persistent modern legacy of political autocracy anywhere on the planet.
This attack on Iraq may be novel and noble for Americans, but for many Arabs it is seen as yet another return of the Western armies that have regularly marched into our lands over the last two centuries to establish a political-economic order that is unsatisfactory to most of us, or to create a new political order aiming mainly to serve the interests of the US, Israel or the tiny elite of Western-created Arab wielders of power and amassers of wealth.
As we watch this war on television, most of us in the Arab world see just another Arab power being sacked by another Western armada; Arab armies and rich states watching helplessly or assisting the attackers; a US-backed Israel again battering Palestinians and taking more of their land; mass Arab anger and humiliation welling up, only to be suppressed by US-backed Arab regimes; and a hapless UN and its spirit of the rule of law expediently used, then discarded, by Washington.
This is the recurring historical horror show that most Arabs see as they watch the bombing of Baghdad. This terrible and haunting saga of Arab weakness, failure, vulnerability and chronic humiliation cumulatively has led to mass degradation and dehumanisation that leaves most Arabs numb in disbelief. We desperately want change, reform, democracy, prosperity and modernity, but few of us believe that this will come through the barrels of Western guns. Those guns have been firing at us for centuries, and all we have is continuing failure, perhaps now to be repeated in Iraq.
Wednesday, March 26, 2003
For Arabs, a cruel echo of history
Rami G. Khouri
TO WASHINGTON and London, the attack against Iraq is part of a historical process to promote Arab peace, liberty and democracy. To most Arabs, it is a cruel reappearance of demons that have haunted them for centuries.
An Iraqi girl walks through the rubble of a building which was destroyed during a US-British air raid on Baghdad. Several explosions were heard in Baghdad on Tuesday and warplanes flew over the Iraqi capital in what seemed a new attack by US-led forces, a Reuters witness said (photo by Faleh Kheiber/Reuters)
A small minority of Arabs — mostly in Kuwait and other Gulf states that have suffered from Iraqi attacks — assists the United States today; the majority vehemently rejects the US military as an instrument for changing Middle Eastern regimes or reshaping our political landscape.
Of course, Arabs do not speak in a single voice. My own assessment is that most Arabs see this attack against Iraq as sinister in its intent, illegitimate, unprovoked, unnecessary, counterproductive for the US and destructive for the region. This comes on top of long-standing criticisms of America's pro-Israel policies. The result is the powerful anti-American current that predominates in this region.
An Iraqi youth cries as he runs past a burning car destroyed during a US-British air raid on Baghdad. At least 14 burnt corpses lay in a popular residential area of Baghdad, apparently killed in the US-led bombing or missile raid on Wednesday, Reuters Television correspondents said (Reuters photo)
Most Arab world analysts and citizens believe the US just wants to control Iraq's oil, secure a permanent Mideast foothold from which to dominate and pacify the region, and redraw the region's political map in favour of America and Israel. Steps along the way include securing permanent US military bases throughout the Middle East and directly occupying and retooling a powerful Arab country.
Washington is seen as exacting the biggest of double standards: it musters, for the second time, an Anglo-American armada to enforce UN resolutions in Iraq, while applying no comparable political, economic or military clout to implement 50-year-old UN resolutions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or others.
Washington is further criticised for unilaterally determining which regimes to change, along with when, how, why and by whom. Many Arabs fear that a regime change in Iraq will lead to continuing instability and violence. A shake-up of power structures and ethnic/national balances may spark new power and land grabs, jockeying for supremacy and possible ethnic cleansing, especially in northern Iraq and Turkey, southern Iraq and Iran, Israeli-occupied Palestinian lands and other contested areas.
For many Arabs, this revives historical ghosts from 1915-22, when British and French armies brazenly rearranged our region into strange-shaped countries with Euro-made power structures. The Arab view is that this was done mainly to protect Western colonial interests, divide up local spoils and promote Zionist national goals, largely ignoring indigenous Arab, Kurdish and other local interests. The consequences have been catastrophic: nearly a century of chronic wars and insurrections, unstable frontiers, underachieving and distorted economies, and the most persistent modern legacy of political autocracy anywhere on the planet.
This attack on Iraq may be novel and noble for Americans, but for many Arabs it is seen as yet another return of the Western armies that have regularly marched into our lands over the last two centuries to establish a political-economic order that is unsatisfactory to most of us, or to create a new political order aiming mainly to serve the interests of the US, Israel or the tiny elite of Western-created Arab wielders of power and amassers of wealth.
As we watch this war on television, most of us in the Arab world see just another Arab power being sacked by another Western armada; Arab armies and rich states watching helplessly or assisting the attackers; a US-backed Israel again battering Palestinians and taking more of their land; mass Arab anger and humiliation welling up, only to be suppressed by US-backed Arab regimes; and a hapless UN and its spirit of the rule of law expediently used, then discarded, by Washington.
This is the recurring historical horror show that most Arabs see as they watch the bombing of Baghdad. This terrible and haunting saga of Arab weakness, failure, vulnerability and chronic humiliation cumulatively has led to mass degradation and dehumanisation that leaves most Arabs numb in disbelief. We desperately want change, reform, democracy, prosperity and modernity, but few of us believe that this will come through the barrels of Western guns. Those guns have been firing at us for centuries, and all we have is continuing failure, perhaps now to be repeated in Iraq.
Wednesday, March 26, 2003
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