October 18, 2001 - Transcribed from audio recorded
at The Technology & Culture Forum at MIT
Ron likes to offer you a little
help to orientate yourself in this very long article - - so here is a
table of CHOMSKY'S 5 QUESTIONS with links which are working (!)
- And if you like to return to the table: everywhere you will find:
"Back to the Top":
. Everyone knows
it’s the TV people who run the world [crowd laughter]. I just got
orders that I’m supposed to be here, not there. Well the last talk I
gave at this forum was on a light pleasant topic. It was about how
humans are an endangered species and given the nature of their
institutions they are likely to destroy themselves in a fairly short
time. So this time there is a little relief and we have a pleasant
topic instead, the new war on terror. Unfortunately, the world keeps
coming up with things that make it more and more horrible as we
proceed.
Assume 2
Conditions for this Talk
I’m going to
assume 2 conditions for this talk.
The first one is
just what I assume to be recognition of fact. That is that the events
of September 11 were a horrendous atrocity probably the most
devastating instant human toll of any crime in history, outside of
war.
The second
assumption has to do with the goals. I’m assuming that our goal is
that we are interested in reducing the likelihood of such crimes
whether they are against us or against someone else.
If you don’t
accept those two assumptions, then what I say will not be addressed
to you. If we do accept them, then a number of questions arise,
closely related ones, which merit a good deal of thought.
The 5 Questions
One question, and
by far the most important one is what is happening right now? Implicit
in that is what can we do about it? The 2nd has to do with the very
common assumption that what happened on September 11 is a historic
event, one which will change history. I tend to agree with that. I
think it’s true. It was a historic event and the question we should
be asking is exactly why? The 3rd question has to do with the title,
The War Against Terrorism. Exactly what is it? And there is a related
question, namely what is terrorism? The 4th question which is
narrower but important has to do with the origins of the crimes of
September 11th. And the 5th question that I want to talk a little
about is what policy options there are in fighting this war against
terrorism and dealing with the situations that led to it.
I’ll say a few
things about each. Glad to go beyond in discussion and don’t hesitate
to bring up other questions. These are ones that come to my mind as
prominent but you may easily and plausibly have other choices.
Well let’s start
with right now. I’ll talk about the situation in Afghanistan. I’ll
just keep to uncontroversial sources like the New York Times [crowd
laughter]. According to the New York Times there are 7 to 8 million
people in Afghanistan on the verge of starvation. That was true
actually before September 11th. They were surviving on international
aid. On September 16th, the Times reported, I’m quoting it, that the
United States demanded from Pakistan the elimination of truck convoys
that provide much of the food and other supplies to Afghanistan’s
civilian population. As far as I could determine there was no
reaction in the United States or for that matter in Europe. I was on
national radio all over Europe the next day. There was no reaction in
the United States or in Europe to my knowledge to the demand to
impose massive starvation on millions of people. The threat of
military strikes right after September…..around that time forced the
removal of international aid workers that crippled the assistance
programs. Actually, I am quoting again from the New York Times. Refugees
reaching Pakistan after arduous journeys from AF are describing
scenes of desperation and fear at home as the threat of American led
military attacks turns their long running misery into a potential
catastrophe. The country was on a lifeline and we just cut the line. Quoting
an evacuated aid worker, in the New York Times Magazine.
The World Food
Program, the UN program, which is the main one by far, were able to
resume after 3 weeks in early October, they began to resume at a
lower level, resume food shipments. They don’t have international aid
workers within, so the distribution system is hampered. That was
suspended as soon as the bombing began. They then resumed but at a
lower pace while aid agencies leveled scathing condemnations of US
airdrops, condemning them as propaganda tools which are probably
doing more harm than good. That happens to be quoting the London
Financial Times but it is easy to continue. After the first week of
bombing, the New York Times reported on a back page inside a column
on something else, that by the arithmetic of the United Nations there
will soon be 7.5 million Afghans in acute need of even a loaf of
bread and there are only a few weeks left before the harsh winter
will make deliveries to many areas totally impossible, continuing to
quote, but with bombs falling the delivery rate is down to ½ of what
is needed. Casual comment. Which tells us that Western civilization
is anticipating the slaughter of, well do the arithmetic, 3-4 million
people or something like that. On the same day, the leader of Western
civilization dismissed with contempt, once again, offers of
negotiation for delivery of the alleged target, Osama bin Laden, and
a request for some evidence to substantiate the demand for total
capitulation. It was dismissed. On the same day the Special
Rapporteur of the UN in charge of food pleaded with the United States
to stop the bombing to try to save millions of victims. As far as I’m
aware that was unreported. That was Monday. Yesterday the major aid
agencies OXFAM and Christian Aid and others joined in that plea. You
can’t find a report in the New York Times. There was a line in the
Boston Globe, hidden in a story about another topic, Kashmir.
Silent Genocide
Well we could
easily go on….but all of that….first of all indicates to us what’s
happening. Looks like what’s happening is some sort of silent
genocide. It also gives a good deal of insight into the elite
culture, the culture that we are part of. It indicates that whatever,
what will happen we don’t know, but plans are being made and programs
implemented on the assumption that they may lead to the death of
several million people in the next couple of weeks….very casually
with no comment, no particular thought about it, that’s just kind of
normal, here and in a good part of Europe. Not in the rest of the
world. In fact not even in much of Europe. So if you read the Irish
press or the press in Scotland…that close, reactions are very
different. Well that’s what’s happening now. What’s happening now is
very much under our control. We can do a lot to affect what’s
happening. And that’s roughly it.
Alright let’s
turn to the slightly more abstract question, forgetting for the
moment that we are in the midst of apparently trying to murder 3 or 4
million people, not Taliban of course, their victims. Let’s go
back…turn to the question of the historic event that took place on
September 11th. As I said, I think that’s correct. It was a historic
event. Not unfortunately because of its scale, unpleasant to think
about, but in terms of the scale it’s not that unusual. I did say
it’s the worst…probably the worst instant human toll of any crime. And
that may be true. But there are terrorist crimes with effects a bit
more drawn out that are more extreme, unfortunately. Nevertheless,
it’s a historic event because there was a change. The change was the
direction in which the guns were pointed. That’s new. Radically new. So,
take US history.
The last time
that the national territory of the United States was under attack, or
for that matter, even threatened was when the British burned down
Washington in 1814. There have been many…it was common to bring up
Pearl Harbor but that’s not a good analogy. The Japanese, what ever
you think about it, the Japanese bombed military bases in 2 US
colonies not the national territory; colonies which had been taken
from their inhabitants in not a very pretty way. This is the national
territory that’s been attacked on a large scale, you can find a few
fringe examples but this is unique.
During these
close to 200 years, we, the United States expelled or mostly
exterminated the indigenous population, that’s many millions of
people, conquered half of Mexico, carried out depredations all over
the region, Caribbean and Central America, sometimes beyond,
conquered Hawaii and the Philippines, killing several 100,000
Filipinos in the process. Since the Second World War, it has extended
its reach around the world in ways I don’t have to describe. But it
was always killing someone else, the fighting was somewhere else, it
was others who were getting slaughtered. Not here. Not the national
territory.
Europe
In the case of
Europe, the change is even more dramatic because its history is even
more horrendous than ours. We are an offshoot of Europe, basically. For
hundreds of years, Europe has been casually slaughtering people all
over the world. That’s how they conquered the world, not by handing
out candy to babies. During this period, Europe did suffer murderous
wars, but that was European killers murdering one another. The main
sport of Europe for hundreds of years was slaughtering one another. The
only reason that it came to an end in 1945, was….it had nothing to do
with Democracy or not making war with each other and other
fashionable notions. It had to do with the fact that everyone
understood that the next time they play the game it was going to be
the end for the world. Because the Europeans, including us, had
developed such massive weapons of destruction that that game just
have to be over. And it goes back hundreds of years. In the 17th
century, about probably 40% of the entire population of Germany was wiped
out in one war.
But during this
whole bloody murderous period, it was Europeans slaughtering each
other, and Europeans slaughtering people elsewhere. The Congo didn’t
attack Belgium, India didn’t attack England, Algeria didn’t attack
France. It’s uniform. There are again small exceptions, but pretty
small in scale, certainly invisible in the scale of what Europe and
us were doing to the rest of the world. This is the first change. The
first time that the guns have been pointed the other way. And in my opinion
that’s probably why you see such different reactions on the two sides
of the Irish Sea which I have noticed, incidentally, in many
interviews on both sides, national radio on both sides. The world
looks very different depending on whether you are holding the lash or
whether you are being whipped by it for hundreds of years, very
different. So I think the shock and surprise in Europe and its
offshoots, like here, is very understandable. It is a historic event
but regrettably not in scale, in something else and a reason why the
rest of the world…most of the rest of the world looks at it quite
differently. Not lacking sympathy for the victims of the atrocity or
being horrified by them, that’s almost uniform, but viewing it from a
different perspective. Something we might want to understand.
Well, let’s go to
the third question, ‘What is the war against terrorism?’ and a side
question, ‘What’s terrorism?’. The war against terrorism has been
described in high places as a struggle against a plague, a cancer
which is spread by barbarians, by “depraved opponents of civilization
itself.” That’s a feeling that I share. The words I’m quoting,
however, happen to be from 20 years ago. Those are…that’s President
Reagan and his Secretary of State. The Reagan administration came
into office 20 years ago declaring that the war against international
terrorism would be the core of our foreign policy….describing it in
terms of the kind I just mentioned and others. And it was the core of
our foreign policy. The Reagan administration responded to this
plague spread by depraved opponents of civilization itself by
creating an extraordinary international terrorist network, totally
unprecedented in scale, which carried out massive atrocities all over
the world, primarily….well, partly nearby, but not only there. I
won’t run through the record, you’re all educated people, so I’m sure
you learned about it in High School. [crowd laughter]
Reagan-US War Against
Nicaragua
But I’ll just
mention one case which is totally uncontroversial, so we might as
well not argue about it, by no means the most extreme but
uncontroversial. It’s uncontroversial because of the judgments of the
highest international authorities the International Court of Justice,
the World Court, and the UN Security Council. So this one is
uncontroversial, at least among people who have some minimal concern
for international law, human rights, justice and other things like
that. And now I’ll leave you an exercise. You can estimate the size
of that category by simply asking how often this uncontroversial case
has been mentioned in the commentary of the last month. And it’s a
particularly relevant one, not only because it is uncontroversial,
but because it does offer a precedent as to how a law abiding state
would respond to…did respond in fact to international terrorism,
which is uncontroversial. And was even more extreme than the events
of September 11th. I’m talking about the Reagan-US war against
Nicaragua which left tens of thousands of people dead, the country
ruined, perhaps beyond recovery.
Nicaragua did
respond. They
didn’t respond by setting off bombs in Washington. They responded by
taking it to the World Court, presenting a case, they had no problem
putting together evidence. The World Court accepted their case, ruled
in their favor, ordered the…condemned what they called the “unlawful
use of force,” which is another word for international terrorism, by
the United States, ordered the United States to terminate the crime
and to pay massive reparations. The United States, of course,
dismissed the court judgment with total contempt and announced that
it would not accept the jurisdiction of the court henceforth. Then
Nicaragua then went to the UN Security Council which considered a
resolution calling on all states to observe international law. No one
was mentioned but everyone understood. The United States vetoed the
resolution. It now stands as the only state on record which has both
been condemned by the World Court for international terrorism and has
vetoed a Security Council resolution calling on states to observe
international law. Nicaragua then went to the General Assembly where
there is technically no veto but a negative US vote amounts to a
veto. It passed a similar resolution with only the United States,
Israel, and El Salvador opposed. The following year again, this time
the United States could only rally Israel to the cause, so 2 votes
opposed to observing international law. At that point, Nicaragua
couldn’t do anything lawful. It tried all the measures. They don’t
work in a world that is ruled by force.
This case is
uncontroversial but it’s by no means the most extreme. We gain a lot
of insight into our own culture and society and what’s happening now
by asking ‘how much we know about all this? How much we talk about
it? How much you learn about it in school? How much it’s all over the
front pages?’ And this is only the beginning. The United States
responded to the World Court and the Security Council by immediately
escalating the war very quickly, that was a bipartisan decision
incidentally. The terms of the war were also changed. For the first
time there were official orders given…official orders to the
terrorist army to attack what are called “soft targets,” meaning
undefended civilian targets, and to keep away from the Nicaraguan
army. They were able to do that because the United States had total
control of the air over Nicaragua and the mercenary army was supplied
with advanced communication equipment, it wasn’t a guerilla army in
the normal sense and could get instructions about the disposition of
the Nicaraguan army forces so they could attack agricultural
collectives, health clinics, and so on…soft targets with impunity. Those
were the official orders.
What was the
reaction? It was known. There was a reaction to it. The policy was
regarded as sensible by left liberal opinion. So Michael Kinsley who
represents the left in mainstream discussion, wrote an article in
which he said that we shouldn’t be too quick to criticize this policy
as Human Rights Watch had just done. He said a “sensible policy” must
“meet the test of cost benefit analysis” -- that is, I’m quoting now,
that is the analysis of “the amount of blood and misery that will be
poured in, and the likelihood that democracy will emerge at the other
end.” Democracy as the US understands the term, which is graphically
illustrated in the surrounding countries. Notice that it is axiomatic
that the United States, US elites, have the right to conduct the
analysis and to pursue the project if it passes their tests. And it
did pass their tests. It worked. When Nicaragua finally succumbed to
superpower assault, commentators openly and cheerfully lauded the
success of the methods that were adopted and described them
accurately. So I’ll quote Time Magazine just to pick one. They lauded
the success of the methods adopted: “to wreck the economy and
prosecute a long and deadly proxy war until the exhausted natives
overthrow the unwanted government themselves,” with a cost to us that
is “minimal,” and leaving the victims “with wrecked bridges,
sabotaged power stations, and ruined farms,” and thus providing the
US candidate with a “winning issue”: “ending the impoverishment of
the people of Nicaragua.” The New York Times had a headline saying
“Americans United in Joy” at this outcome.
That is the
culture in which we live and it reveals several facts. One is the
fact that terrorism works. It doesn’t fail. It works. Violence
usually works. That’s world history. Secondly, it’s a very serious
analytic error to say, as is commonly done, that terrorism is the
weapon of the weak. Like other means of violence, it’s primarily a
weapon of the strong, overwhelmingly, in fact. It is held to be a
weapon of the weak because the strong also control the doctrinal
systems and their terror doesn’t count as terror. Now that’s close to
universal. I can’t think of a historical exception, even the worst
mass murderers view the world that way. So pick the Nazis. They
weren’t carrying out terror in occupied Europe. They were protecting
the local population from the terrorisms of the partisans. And like
other resistance movements, there was terrorism. The Nazis were
carrying out counter terror. Furthermore, the United States
essentially agreed with that. After the war, the US army did
extensive studies of Nazi counter terror operations in Europe. First
I should say that the US picked them up and began carrying them out
itself, often against the same targets, the former resistance. But
the military also studied the Nazi methods published interesting
studies, sometimes critical of them because they were inefficiently
carried out, so a critical analysis, you didn’t do this right, you
did that right, but those methods with the advice of Wermacht officers
who were brought over here became the manuals of counter insurgency,
of counter terror, of low intensity conflict, as it is called, and
are the manuals, and are the procedures that are being used. So it’s
not just that the Nazis did it. It’s that it was regarded as the
right thing to do by the leaders of western civilization, that is us,
who then proceeded to do it themselves. Terrorism is not the weapon
of the weak. It is the weapon of those who are against ‘us’ whoever
‘us’ happens to be. And if you can find a historical exception to
that, I’d be interested in seeing it.
Nature of our
Culture – How We Regard Terrorism
Well, an
interesting indication of the nature of our culture, our high
culture, is the way in which all of this is regarded. One way it’s
regarded is just suppressing it. So almost nobody has ever heard of
it. And the power of American propaganda and doctrine is so strong
that even among the victims it’s barely known. I mean, when you talk
about this to people in Argentina, you have to remind them. Oh, yeh,
that happened, we forgot about it. It’s deeply suppressed. The sheer
consequences of the monopoly of violence can be very powerful in
ideological and other terms.
The Idea that
Nicaragua Might Have The Right To Defend Itself
Well, one
illuminating aspect of our own attitude toward terrorism is the
reaction to the idea that Nicaragua might have the right to defend
itself. Actually I went through this in some detail with database
searches and that sort of thing. The idea that Nicaragua might have
the right to defend itself was considered outrageous. There is
virtually nothing in mainstream commentary indicating that Nicaragua
might have that right. And that fact was exploited by the Reagan
administration and its propaganda in an interesting way. Those of you
who were around in that time will remember that they periodically
floated rumors that the Nicaraguans were getting MIG jets, jets from
Russia. At that point the hawks and the doves split. The hawks said,
‘ok, let’s bomb ‘em.’ The doves said, `wait a minute, let’s see if
the rumors are true. And if the rumors are true, then let’s bomb
them. Because they are a threat to the United States.’ Why,
incidentally were they getting MIGs. Well they tried to get jet
planes from European countries but the United States put pressure on
its allies so that it wouldn’t send them means of defense because
they wanted them to turn to the Russians. That’s good for propaganda
purposes. Then they become a threat to us. Remember, they were just 2
days march from Harlingen, Texas. We actually declared a national
emergency in 1985 to protect the country from the threat of
Nicaragua. And it stayed in force. So it was much better for them to
get arms from the Russians. Why would they want jet planes? Well, for
the reasons I already mentioned. The United States had total control
over their airspace, was over flying it and using that to provide
instructions to the terrorist army to enable them to attack soft
targets without running into the army that might defend them. Everyone
knew that that was the reason. They are not going to use their jet
planes for anything else. But the idea that Nicaragua should be
permitted to defend its airspace against a superpower attack that is
directing terrorist forces to attack undefended civilian targets,
that was considered in the United States as outrageous and uniformly
so. Exceptions are so slight, you know I can practically list them. I
don’t suggest that you take my word for this. Have a look. That
includes our own senators, incidentally.
Honduras – The
Appointment of John Negroponte as Ambassador to the United Nations
Another
illustration of how we regard terrorism is happening right now. The
US has just appointed an ambassador to the United Nations to lead the
war against terrorism a couple weeks ago. Who is he? Well, his name
is John Negroponte. He was the US ambassador in the fiefdom, which is
what it is, of Honduras in the early 1980’s. There was a little fuss
made about the fact that he must have been aware, as he certainly was,
of the large-scale murders and other atrocities that were being
carried out by the security forces in Honduras that we were
supporting. But that’s a small part of it. As proconsul of Honduras,
as he was called there, he was the local supervisor for the terrorist
war based in Honduras, for which his government was condemned by the
world court and then the Security Council in a vetoed resolution. And
he was just appointed as the UN Ambassador to lead the war against
terror. Another small experiment you can do is check and see what the
reaction was to this. Well, I will tell you what you are going to
find, but find it for yourself. Now that tells us a lot about the war
against terrorism and a lot about ourselves.
After the United
States took over the country again under the conditions that were so
graphically described by the press, the country was pretty much
destroyed in the 1980’s, but it has totally collapsed since in every
respect just about. Economically it has declined sharply since the US
take over, democratically and in every other respect. It’s now the
second poorest country in the Hemisphere. I should say….I’m not going
to talk about it, but I mentioned that I picked up Nicaragua because
it is an uncontroversial case. If you look at the other states in the
region, the state terror was far more extreme and it again traces
back to Washington and that’s by no means all.
US & UK
Backed South African Attacks
It was happening
elsewhere in the world too, take say Africa. During the Reagan years
alone, South African attacks, backed by the United States and
Britain, US/UK-backed South African attacks against the neighboring
countries killed about a million and a half people and left 60
billion dollars in damage and countries destroyed. And if we go
around the world, we can add more examples.
Now that was the
first war against terror of which I’ve given a small sample. Are we
supposed to pay attention to that? Or kind of think that that might
be relevant? After all it’s not exactly ancient history. Well,
evidently not as you can tell by looking at the current discussion of
the war on terror which has been the leading topic for the last
month.
I mentioned that
Nicaragua has now become the 2nd poorest country in the hemisphere. What’s
the poorest country? Well that’s of course Haiti which also happens
to be the victim of most US intervention in the 20th century by a
long shot. We left it totally devastated. It’s the poorest country. Nicaragua
is second ranked in degree of US intervention in the 20th century. It
is the 2nd poorest. Actually, it is vying with Guatemala. They
interchange every year or two as to who’s the second poorest. And
they also vie as to who is the leading target of US military
intervention. We’re supposed to think that all of this is some sort
of accident. That is has nothing to do with anything that happened in
history. Maybe.
Colombia and
Turkey
The worst human
rights violator in the 1990’s is Colombia, by a long shot. It’s also
the, by far, the leading recipient of US military aid in the 1990’s
maintaining the terror and human rights violations. In 1999, Colombia
replaced Turkey as the leading recipient of US arms worldwide, that
is excluding Israel and Egypt which are a separate category. And that
tells us a lot more about the war on terror right now, in fact.
Why was Turkey
getting such a huge flow of US arms? Well if you take a look at the
flow of US arms to Turkey, Turkey always got a lot of US arms. It’s
strategically placed, a member of NATO, and so on. But the arms flow
to Turkey went up very sharply in 1984. It didn’t have anything to do
with the cold war. I mean Russian was collapsing. And it stayed high
from 1984 to 1999 when it reduced and it was replaced in the lead by
Colombia. What happened from 1984 to 1999? Well, in 1984, [Turkey]
launched a major terrorist war against Kurds in southeastern Turkey. And
that’s when US aid went up, military aid. And this was not pistols. This
was jet planes, tanks, military training, and so on. And it stayed
high as the atrocities escalated through the 1990’s. Aid followed it.
The peak year was 1997. In 1997, US military aid to Turkey was more
than in the entire period 1950 to 1983, that is the cold war period,
which is an indication of how much the cold war has affected policy. And
the results were awesome. This led to 2-3 million refugees. Some of
the worst ethnic cleansing of the late 1990’s. Tens of thousands of
people killed, 3500 towns and villages destroyed, way more than Kosovo,
even under NATO bombs. And the United States was providing 80% of the
arms, increasing as the atrocities increased, peaking in 1997. It
declined in 1999 because, once again, terror worked as it usually
does when carried out by its major agents, mainly the powerful. So by
1999, Turkish terror, called of course counter-terror, but as I said,
that’s universal, it worked. Therefore Turkey was replaced by
Colombia which had not yet succeeded in its terrorist war. And
therefore had to move into first place as recipient of US arms.
Self
Congratulation on the Part of Western Intellectuals
Well, what makes
this all particularly striking is that all of this was taking place
right in the midst of a huge flood of self-congratulation on the part
of Western intellectuals which probably has no counterpart in
history. I mean you all remember it. It was just a couple years ago. Massive
self-adulation about how for the first time in history we are so
magnificent; that we are standing up for principles and values;
dedicated to ending inhumanity everywhere in the new era of
this-and-that, and so-on-and-so-forth. And we certainly can’t
tolerate atrocities right near the borders of NATO. That was repeated
over and over. Only within the borders of NATO where we can not only
can tolerate much worse atrocities but contribute to them. Another
insight into Western civilization and our own, is how often was this
brought up? Try to look. I won’t repeat it. But it’s instructive. It’s
a pretty impressive feat for a propaganda system to carry this off in
a free society. It’s pretty amazing. I don’t think you could do this
in a totalitarian state.
And Turkey is
very grateful. Just a few days ago, Prime Minister Ecevit announced
that Turkey would join the coalition against terror, very
enthusiastically, even more so than others. In fact, he said they
would contribute troops which others have not willing to do. And he
explained why. He said, We owe a debt of gratitude to the United
States because the United States was the only country that was
willing to contribute so massively to our own, in his words
“counter-terrorist” war, that is to our own massive ethnic cleansing
and atrocities and terror. Other countries helped a little, but they
stayed back. The United States, on the other hand, contributed
enthusiastically and decisively and was able to do so because of the
silence, servility might be the right word, of the educated classes
who could easily find out about it. It’s a free country after all. You
can read human rights reports. You can read all sorts of stuff. But
we chose to contribute to the atrocities and Turkey is very happy,
they owe us a debt of gratitude for that and therefore will
contribute troops just as during the war in Serbia. Turkey was very
much praised for using its F-16’s which we supplied it to bomb Serbia
exactly as it had been doing with the same planes against its own
population up until the time when it finally succeeded in crushing
internal terror as they called it. And as usual, as always,
resistance does include terror. Its true of the American Revolution. That’s
true of every case I know. Just as its true that those who have a
monopoly of violence talk about themselves as carrying out counter
terror.
The Coalition –
Including Algeria, Russia, China, Indonesia
Now that’s pretty
impressive and that has to do with the coalition that is now being
organized to fight the war against terror. And it’s very interesting
to see how that coalition is being described. So have a look at this
morning’s Christian Science Monitor. That’s a good newspaper. One of
the best international newspapers, with real coverage of the world. The
lead story, the front-page story, is about how the United States, you
know people used to dislike the United States but now they are
beginning to respect it, and they are very happy about the way that
the US is leading the war against terror. And the prime example, well
in fact the only serious example, the others are a joke, is Algeria. Turns
out that Algeria is very enthusiastic about the US war against
terror. The person who wrote the article is an expert on Africa. He
must know that Algeria is one of the most vicious terrorist states in
the world and has been carrying out horrendous terror against its own
population in the past couple of years, in fact. For a while, this
was under wraps. But it was finally exposed in France by defectors
from the Algerian army. It’s all over the place there and in England
and so on. But here, we’re very proud because one of the worst
terrorist states in the world is now enthusiastically welcoming the
US war on terror and in fact is cheering on the United States to lead
the war. That shows how popular we are getting.
And if you look
at the coalition that is being formed against terror it tells you a
lot more. A leading member of the coalition is Russia which is
delighted to have the United States support its murderous terrorist
war in Chechnya instead of occasionally criticizing it in the
background. China is joining enthusiastically. It’s delighted to have
support for the atrocities it’s carrying out in western China
against, what it called, Muslim secessionists. Turkey, as I
mentioned, is very happy with the war against terror. They are
experts. Algeria, Indonesia delighted to have even more US support
for atrocities it is carrying out in Ache and elsewhere. Now we can
run through the list, the list of the states that have joined the
coalition against terror is quite impressive. They have a
characteristic in common. They are certainly among the leading
terrorist states in the world. And they happen to be led by the world
champion.
What is
Terrorism?
Well that brings
us back to the question, what is terrorism? I have been assuming we
understand it. Well, what is it? Well, there happen to be some easy
answers to this. There is an official definition. You can find it in
the US code or in US army manuals. A brief statement of it taken from
a US army manual, is fair enough, is that terror is the calculated
use of violence or the threat of violence to attain political or
religious ideological goals through intimidation, coercion, or
instilling fear. That’s terrorism. That’s a fair enough definition. I
think it is reasonable to accept that. The problem is that it can’t
be accepted because if you accept that, all the wrong consequences
follow. For example, all the consequences I have just been reviewing.
Now there is a major effort right now at the UN to try to develop a
comprehensive treaty on terrorism. When Kofi Annan got the Nobel
prize the other day, you will notice he was reported as saying that
we should stop wasting time on this and really get down to it.
But there’s a
problem. If you use the official definition of terrorism in the
comprehensive treaty you are going to get completely the wrong
results. So that can’t be done. In fact, it is even worse than that. If
you take a look at the definition of Low Intensity Warfare which is
official US policy you find that it is a very close paraphrase of
what I just read. In fact, Low Intensity Conflict is just another
name for terrorism. That’s why all countries, as far as I know, call
whatever horrendous acts they are carrying out, counter terrorism. We
happen to call it Counter Insurgency or Low Intensity Conflict. So
that’s a serious problem. You can’t use the actual definitions. You’ve
got to carefully find a definition that doesn’t have all the wrong
consequences.
Why did the
United States and Israel Vote Against a Major Resolution Condemning
Terrorism?
There are some
other problems. Some of them came up in December 1987, at the peak of
the first war on terrorism, that’s when the furor over the plague was
peaking. The United Nations General Assembly passed a very strong
resolution against terrorism, condemning the plague in the strongest
terms, calling on every state to fight against it in every possible
way. It passed unanimously. One country, Honduras abstained. Two
votes against; the usual two, United States and Israel. Why should
the United States and Israel vote against a major resolution
condemning terrorism in the strongest terms, in fact pretty much the
terms that the Reagan administration was using? Well, there is a
reason. There is one paragraph in that long resolution which says
that nothing in this resolution infringes on the rights of people
struggling against racist and colonialist regimes or foreign military
occupation to continue with their resistance with the assistance of
others, other states, states outside in their just cause. Well, the
United States and Israel can’t accept that. The main reason that they
couldn’t at the time was because of South Africa. South Africa was an
ally, officially called an ally. There was a terrorist force in South
Africa. It was called the African National Congress. They were a
terrorist force officially. South Africa in contrast was an ally and
we certainly couldn’t support actions by a terrorist group struggling
against a racist regime. That would be impossible.
And of course
there is another one. Namely the Israeli occupied territories, now
going into its 35th year. Supported primarily by the United States in
blocking a diplomatic settlement for 30 years now, still is. And you
can’t have that. There is another one at the time. Israel was
occupying Southern Lebanon and was being combated by what the US
calls a terrorist force, Hizbullah, which in fact succeeded in
driving Israel out of Lebanon. And we can’t allow anyone to struggle
against a military occupation when it is one that we support so
therefore the US and Israel had to vote against the major UN
resolution on terrorism. And I mentioned before that a US vote
against…is essentially a veto. Which is only half the story. It also
vetoes it from history. So none of this was every reported and none
of it appeared in the annals of terrorism. If you look at the
scholarly work on terrorism and so on, nothing that I just mentioned
appears. The reason is that it has got the wrong people holding the
guns. You have to carefully hone the definitions and the scholarship
and so on so that you come out with the right conclusions; otherwise
it is not respectable scholarship and honorable journalism. Well,
these are some of problems that are hampering the effort to develop a
comprehensive treaty against terrorism. Maybe we should have an
academic conference or something to try to see if we can figure out a
way of defining terrorism so that it comes out with just the right
answers, not the wrong answers. That won’t be easy.
4. What are the
Origins of the September 11 Crime?Back to the top
Well, let’s drop
that and turn to the 4th question, What are the origins of the
September 11 crimes? Here we have to make a distinction between 2
categories which shouldn’t be run together. One is the actual agents
of the crime, the other is kind of a reservoir of at least sympathy,
sometimes support that they appeal to even among people who very much
oppose the criminals and the actions. And those are 2 different
things.
Category 1: The
Likely Perpetrators
Well, with regard
to the perpetrators, in a certain sense we are not really clear. The
United States either is unable or unwilling to provide any evidence,
any meaningful evidence. There was a sort of a play a week or two ago
when Tony Blair was set up to try to present it. I don’t exactly know
what the purpose of this was. Maybe so that the US could look as though
it’s holding back on some secret evidence that it can’t reveal or
that Tony Blair could strike proper Churchillian poses or something
or other. Whatever the PR [public relations] reasons were, he gave a
presentation which was in serious circles considered so absurd that
it was barely even mentioned. So the Wall Street Journal, for
example, one of the more serious papers had a small story on page 12,
I think, in which they pointed out that there was not much evidence
and then they quoted some high US official as saying that it didn’t
matter whether there was any evidence because they were going to do
it anyway. So why bother with the evidence? The more ideological
press, like the New York Times and others, they had big front-page
headlines. But the Wall Street Journal reaction was reasonable and if
you look at the so-called evidence you can see why. But let’s assume
that it’s true. It is astonishing to me how weak the evidence was. I
sort of thought you could do better than that without any
intelligence service [audience laughter]. In fact, remember this was
after weeks of the most intensive investigation in history of all the
intelligence services of the western world working overtime trying to
put something together. And it was a prima facie, it was a very
strong case even before you had anything. And it ended up about where
it started, with a prima facie case. So let’s assume that it is true.
So let’s assume that, it looked obvious the first day, still does,
that the actual perpetrators come from the radical Islamic, here
called, fundamentalist networks of which the bin Laden network is
undoubtedly a significant part. Whether they were involved or not
nobody knows. It doesn’t really matter much.
Where did they
come from?
That’s the
background, those networks. Well, where do they come from? We know
all about that. Nobody knows about that better than the CIA because
it helped organize them and it nurtured them for a long time. They
were brought together in the 1980’s actually by the CIA and its
associates elsewhere: Pakistan, Britain, France, Saudi Arabia, Egypt,
China was involved, they may have been involved a little bit earlier,
maybe by 1978. The idea was to try to harass the Russians, the common
enemy. According to President Carter’s National Security Advisor,
Zbigniew Brzezinski, the US got involved in mid 1979. Do you
remember, just to put the dates right, that Russia invaded
Afghanistan in December 1979. Ok. According to Brzezinski, the US
support for the mojahedin fighting against the government began 6
months earlier. He is very proud of that. He says we drew the
Russians into, in his words, an Afghan trap, by supporting the
mojahedin, getting them to invade, getting them into the trap. Now
then we could develop this terrific mercenary army. Not a small one,
maybe 100,000 men or so bringing together the best killers they could
find, who were radical Islamist fanatics from around North Africa,
Saudi Arabia….anywhere they could find them. They were often called
the Afghanis but many of them, like bin Laden, were not Afghans. They
were brought by the CIA and its friends from elsewhere. Whether
Brzezinski is telling the truth or not, I don’t know. He may have
been bragging, he is apparently very proud of it, knowing the
consequences incidentally. But maybe it’s true. We’ll know
someday if the documents are ever released. Anyway, that’s his
perception. By January 1980 it is not even in doubt that the US was
organizing the Afghanis and this massive military force to try to
cause the Russians maximal trouble. It was a legitimate thing for the
Afghans to fight the Russian invasion. But the US intervention was
not helping the Afghans. In fact, it helped destroy the country and
much more. The Afghanis, so called, had their own...it did force the
Russians to withdrew, finally. Although many analysts believe that it
probably delayed their withdrawal because they were trying to get out
of it. Anyway, whatever, they did withdraw.
Meanwhile, the terrorist forces that the CIA was organizing,
arming, and training were pursuing their own agenda, right away. It
was no secret. One of the first acts was in 1981 when they
assassinated the President of Egypt, who was one of the most
enthusiastic of their creators. In 1983, one suicide bomber, who may
or may not have been connected, it’s pretty shadowy, nobody knows.
But one suicide bomber drove the US army-military out of Lebanon. And
it continued. They have their own agenda. The US was happy to
mobilize them to fight its cause but meanwhile they are doing their
own thing. They were clear very about it. After 1989, when the
Russians had withdrawn, they simply turned elsewhere. Since then they
have been fighting in Chechnya, Western China, Bosnia, Kashmir, South
East Asia, North Africa, all over the place.
The Are Telling Us What They Think
They are telling us just what they think. The United States wants
to silence the one free television channel in the Arab world because
it’s broadcasting a whole range of things from Powell over to Osama
bin Laden. So the US is now joining the repressive regimes of the
Arab world that try to shut it up. But if you listen to it, if you
listen to what bin Laden says, it’s worth it. There is plenty of
interviews. And there are plenty of interviews by leading Western
reporters, if you don’t want to listen to his own voice, Robert Fisk
and others. And what he has been saying is pretty consistent for a
long time. He’s not the only one but maybe he is the most eloquent.
It’s not only consistent over a long time, it is consistent with
their actions. So there is every reason to take it seriously. Their
prime enemy is what they call the corrupt and oppressive
authoritarian brutal regimes of the Arab world and when the say that
they get quite a resonance in the region. They also want to defend
and they want to replace them by properly Islamist governments.
That’s where they lose the people of the region. But up till then,
they are with them. From their point of view, even Saudi Arabia, the
most extreme fundamentalist state in the world, I suppose, short of
the Taliban, which is an offshoot, even that’s not Islamist enough
for them. Ok, at that point, they get very little support, but up
until that point they get plenty of support. Also they want to defend
Muslims elsewhere. They hate the Russians like poison, but as soon as
the Russians pulled out of Afghanistan, they stopped carrying out
terrorist acts in Russia as they had been doing with CIA backing
before that within Russia, not just in Afghanistan. They did move
over to Chechnya. But there they are defending Muslims against a
Russian invasion. Same with all the other places I mentioned. From
their point of view, they are defending the Muslims against the
infidels. And they are very clear about it and that is what they have
been doing.
Now why did they turn against the United States? Well that had to
do with what they call the US invasion of Saudi Arabia. In 1990, the
US established permanent military bases in Saudi Arabia which from
their point of view is comparable to a Russian invasion of
Afghanistan except that Saudi Arabia is way more important. That’s
the home of the holiest sites of Islam. And that is when their
activities turned against the Unites States. If you recall, in 1993
they tried to blow up the World Trade Center. Got part of the way,
but not the whole way and that was only part of it. The plans were to
blow up the UN building, the Holland and Lincoln tunnels, the FBI
building. I think there were others on the list. Well, they sort of
got part way, but not all the way. One person who is jailed for that,
finally, among the people who were jailed, was a Egyptian cleric who
had been brought into the United States over the objections of the
Immigration Service, thanks to the intervention of the CIA which
wanted to help out their friend. A couple years later he was blowing
up the World Trade Center. And this has been going on all over. I’m
not going to run through the list but it’s, if you want to understand
it, it’s consistent. It’s a consistent picture. It’s described in
words. It’s revealed in practice for 20 years. There is no reason not
to take it seriously. That’s the first category, the likely
perpetrators.
Category 2: What about the reservoir of support?
What about the reservoir of support? Well, it’s not hard to find
out what that is. One of the good things that has happened since
September 11 is that some of the press and some of the discussion has
begun to open up to some of these things. The best one to my
knowledge is the Wall Street Journal which right away began to run,
within a couple of days, serious reports, searching serious reports,
on the reasons why the people of the region, even though they hate
bin Laden and despise everything he is doing, nevertheless support
him in many ways and even regard him as the conscience of Islam, as
one said. Now the Wall Street Journal and others, they are not
surveying public opinion. They are surveying the opinion of their
friends: bankers, professionals, international lawyers, businessmen
tied to the United States, people who they interview in MacDonalds
restaurant, which is an elegant restaurant there, wearing fancy
American clothes. That’s the people they are interviewing because
they want to find out what their attitudes are. And their attitudes
are very explicit and very clear and in many ways consonant with the
message of bin Laden and others. They are very angry at the United
States because of its support of authoritarian and brutal regimes;
its intervention to block any move towards democracy; its
intervention to stop economic development; its policies of
devastating the civilian societies of Iraq while strengthening Saddam
Hussein; and they remember, even if we prefer not to, that the United
States and Britain supported Saddam Hussein right through his worst
atrocities, including the gassing of the Kurds, bin Laden brings that
up constantly, and they know it even if we don’t want to. And of
course their support for the Israeli military occupation which is
harsh and brutal. It is now in its 35th year. The US has been providing
the overwhelming economic, military, and diplomatic support for it,
and still does. And they know that and they don’t like it. Especially
when that is paired with US policy towards Iraq, towards the Iraqi
civilian society which is getting destroyed. Ok, those are the
reasons roughly. And when bin Laden gives those reasons, people
recognize it and support it.
Now that’s not the way people here like to think about it, at
least educated liberal opinion. They like the following line which
has been all over the press, mostly from left liberals, incidentally.
I have not done a real study but I think right wing opinion has
generally been more honest. But if you look at say at the New York
Times at the first op-ed they ran by Ronald Steel, serious left
liberal intellectual. He asks Why do they hate us? This is the same
day, I think, that the Wall Street Journal was running the survey on
why they hate us. So he says “They hate us because we champion a new
world order of capitalism, individualism, secularism, and democracy
that should be the norm everywhere.” That’s why they hate us. The
same day the Wall Street Journal is surveying the opinions of
bankers, professionals, international lawyers and saying `look, we
hate you because you are blocking democracy, you are preventing
economic development, you are supporting brutal regimes, terrorist
regimes and you are doing these horrible things in the region.’ A
couple days later, Anthony Lewis, way out on the left, explained that
the terrorist seek only “apocalyptic nihilism,” nothing more and
nothing we do matters. The only consequence of our actions, he says,
that could be harmful is that it makes it harder for Arabs to join in
the coalition’s anti-terrorism effort. But beyond that, everything we
do is irrelevant.
Well, you know, that’s got the advantage of being sort of
comforting. It makes you feel good about yourself, and how wonderful
you are. It enables us to evade the consequences of our actions. It
has a couple of defects. One is it is at totalWell, you know, that’s
got the advantage of being sort of comforting. It makes you feel good
about yourself, and how wonderful you are. It enables us to evade the
consequences of our actions. It has a couple of defects. One is it is
at total variance with everything we know. And another defect is that
it is a perfect way to ensure that you escalate the cycle of
violence. If you want to live with your head buried in the sand and
pretend they hate us because they’re opposed to globalization, that’s
why they killed Sadat 20 years ago, and fought the Russians, tried to
blow up the World Trade Center in 1993. And these are all people who
are in the midst of … corporate globalization but if you want to
believe that, yeh…comforting. And it is a great way to make sure that
violence escalates. That’s tribal violence. You did something to me,
I’ll do something worse to you. I don’t care what the reasons are. We
just keep going that way. And that’s a way to do it. Pretty much
straight, left-liberal opinion.
What are the policy options? Well, there are a number. A narrow
policy option from the beginning was to follow the advice of really
far out radicals like the Pope [audience laughter]. The Vatican
immediately said look it’s a horrible terrorist crime. In the case of
crime, you try to find the perpetrators, you bring them to justice,
you try them. You don’t kill innocent civilians. Like if somebody
robs my house and I think the guy who did it is probably in the neighborhood
across the street, I don’t go out with an assault rifle and kill
everyone in that neighborhood. That’s not the way you deal with
crime, whether it’s a small crime like this one or really massive one
like the US terrorist war against Nicaragua, even worse ones and
others in between. And there are plenty of precedents for that. In
fact, I mentioned a precedent, Nicaragua, a lawful, a law abiding
state, that’s why presumably we had to destroy it, which followed the
right principles. Now of course, it didn’t get anywhere because it
was running up against a power that wouldn’t allow lawful procedures
to be followed. But if the United States tried to pursue them, nobody
would stop them. In fact, everyone would applaud. And there are
plenty of other precedents.
IRA Bombs in London
When the IRA set off bombs in London, which is pretty serious
business, Britain could have, apart from the fact that it was
unfeasible, let’s put that aside, one possible response would have
been to destroy Boston which is the source of most of the financing.
And of course to wipe out West Belfast. Well, you know, quite apart
from the feasibility, it would have been criminal idiocy. The way to
deal with it was pretty much what they did. You know, find the
perpetrators; bring them to trial; and look for the reasons. Because
these things don’t come out of nowhere. They come from something.
Whether it is a crime in the streets or a monstrous terrorist crime
or anything else. There’s reasons. And usually if you look at the
reasons, some of them are legitimate and ought to be addressed,
independently of the crime, they ought to be addressed because they
are legitimate. And that’s the way to deal with it. There are many
such examples.
But there are problems with that. One problem is that the United
States does not recognize the jurisdiction of international
institutions. So it can’t go to them. It has rejected the
jurisdiction of the World Court. It has refused to ratify the
International Criminal Court. It is powerful enough to set up a new
court if it wants so that wouldn’t stop anything. But there is a
problem with any kind of a court, mainly you need evidence. You go to
any kind of court, you need some kind of evidence. Not Tony Blair
talking about it on television. And that’s very hard. It may be
impossible to find.
Leaderless Resistance
You know, it could be that the people who did it, killed
themselves. Nobody knows this better than the CIA. These are
decentralized, nonhierarchic networks. They follow a principle that
is called Leaderless Resistance. That’s the principle that has been
developed by the Christian Right terrorists in the United States.
It’s called Leaderless Resistance. You have small groups that do
things. They don’t talk to anybody else. There is a kind of general
background of assumptions and then you do it. Actually people in the
anti war movement are very familiar with it. We used to call it
affinity groups. If you assume correctly that whatever group you are
in is being penetrated by the FBI, when something serious is
happening, you don’t do it in a meeting. You do it with some people
you know and trust, an affinity group and then it doesn’t get
penetrated. That’s one of the reasons why the FBI has never been able
to figure out what’s going on in any of the popular movements. And
other intelligence agencies are the same. They can’t. That’s
leaderless resistance or affinity groups, and decentralized networks
are extremely hard to penetrate. And it’s quite possible that they
just don’t know. When Osama bin Laden claims he wasn’t involved,
that’s entirely possible. In fact, it’s pretty hard to imagine how a
guy in a cave in Afghanistan, who doesn’t even have a radio or a
telephone could have planned a highly sophisticated operation like
that. Chances are it’s part of the background. You know, like other
leaderless resistance terrorist groups. Which means it’s going to be
extremely difficult to find evidence.
And the US doesn’t want to present evidence because it wants to be
able to do it, to act without evidence. That’s a crucial part of the
reaction. You will notice that the US did not ask for Security
Council authorization which they probably could have gotten this
time, not for pretty reasons, but because the other permanent members
of the Security Council are also terrorist states. They are happy to
join a coalition against what they call terror, namely in support of
their own terror. Like Russia wasn’t going to veto, they love it. So
the US probably could have gotten Security Council authorization but
it didn’t want it. And it didn’t want it because it follows a
long-standing principle which is not George Bush, it was explicit in
the Clinton administration, articulated and goes back much further
and that is that we have the right to act unilaterally. We don’t want
international authorization because we act unilaterally and therefore
we don’t want it. We don’t care about evidence. We don’t care about
negotiation. We don’t care about treaties. We are the strongest guy
around; the toughest thug on the block. We do what we want.
Authorization is a bad thing and therefore must be avoided. There is
even a name for it in the technical literature. It’s called
establishing credibility. You have to establish credibility. That’s
an important factor in many policies. It was the official reason
given for the war in the Balkans and the most plausible reason.
You want to know what credibility means, ask your favorite Mafia
Don. He’ll explain to you what credibility means. And it’s the same
in international affairs, except it’s talked about in universities
using big words, and that sort of thing. But it’s basically the same
principle. And it makes sense. And it usually works. The main
historian who has written about this in the last couple years is
Charles Tilly with a book called Coercion, Capital, and European
States. He points out that violence has been the leading principle of
Europe for hundreds of years and the reason is because it works. You
know, it’s very reasonable. It almost always works. When you have an
overwhelming predominance of violence and a culture of violence
behind it. So therefore it makes sense to follow it. Well, those are
all problems in pursuing lawful paths. And if you did try to follow
them you’d really open some very dangerous doors. Like the US is
demanding that the Taliban hand over Osama bin Laden. And they are
responding in a way which is regarded as totally absurd and
outlandish in the west, namely they are saying, Ok, but first give us
some evidence. In the west, that is considered ludicrous. It’s a sign
of their criminality. How can they ask for evidence? I mean if
somebody asked us to hand someone over, we’d do it tomorrow. We
wouldn’t ask for any evidence. [crowd laughter].
Haiti
In fact it is easy to prove that. We don’t have to make up cases.
So for example, for the last several years, Haiti has been requesting
the United States to extradite Emmanuel Constant. He is a major
killer. He is one of the leading figures in the slaughter of maybe 4000
or 5000 people in the years in the mid 1990’s, under the military
junta, which incidentally was being, not so tacitly, supported by the
Bush and the Clinton administrations contrary to illusions. Anyway he
is a leading killer. They have plenty of evidence. No problem about
evidence. He has already been brought to trial and sentenced in Haiti
and they are asking the United States to turn him over. Well, I mean
do your own research. See how much discussion there has been of that.
Actually Haiti renewed the request a couple of weeks ago. It wasn’t
even mentioned. Why should we turn over a convicted killer who was
largely responsible for killing 4000 or 5000 people a couple of years
ago. In fact, if we do turn him over, who knows what he would say.
Maybe he’ll say that he was being funded and helped by the CIA, which
is probably true. We don’t want to open that door. And he is not he
only one.
Costa Rica
I mean, for the last about 15 years, Costa Rica which is the
democratic prize, has been trying to get the United States to hand
over a John Hull, a US land owner in Costa Rica, who they charge with
terrorist crimes. He was using his land, they claim with good
evidence as a base for the US war against Nicaragua, which is not a
controversial conclusion, remember. There is the World Court and
Security Council behind it. So they have been trying to get the
United States to hand him over. Hear about that one? No.
They did actually confiscate the land of another American
landholder, John Hamilton. Paid compensation, offered compensation.
The US refused. Turned his land over into a national park because his
land was also being used as a base for the US attack against
Nicaragua. Costa Rica was punished for that one. They were punished
by withholding aid. We don’t accept that kind of insubordination from
allies. And we can go on. If you open the door to questions about
extradition it leads in very unpleasant directions. So that can’t be
done.
Well, what about the reactions in Afghanistan. The initial
proposal, the initial rhetoric was for a massive assault which would
kill many people visibly and also an attack on other countries in the
region. Well the Bush administration wisely backed off from that. They
were being told by every foreign leader, NATO, everyone else, every
specialist, I suppose, their own intelligence agencies that that
would be the stupidest thing they could possibly do. It would simply
be like opening recruiting offices for bin Laden all over the region.
That’s exactly what he wants. And it would be extremely harmful to
their own interests. So they backed off that one. And they are
turning to what I described earlier which is a kind of silent
genocide. It’s a…. well, I already said what I think about it. I
don’t think anything more has to be said. You can figure it out if
you do the arithmetic.
A sensible proposal which is kind of on the verge of being
considered, but it has been sensible all along, and it is being
raised, called for by expatriate Afghans and allegedly tribal leaders
internally, is for a UN initiative, which would keep the Russians and
Americans out of it, totally. These are the 2 countries that have
practically wiped the country out in the last 20 years. They should
be out of it. They should provide massive reparations. But that’s
their only role. A UN initiative to bring together elements within
Afghanistan that would try to construct something from the wreckage.
It’s conceivable that that could work, with plenty of support and no
interference. If the US insists on running it, we might as well quit.
We have a historical record on that one.
You will notice that the name of this operation….remember that at
first it was going to be a Crusade but they backed off that because
PR (public relations) agents told them that that wouldn’t work
[audience laughter]. And then it was going to be Infinite Justice,
but the PR agents said, wait a minute, you are sounding like you are
divinity. So that wouldn’t work. And then it was changed to enduring
freedom. We know what that means. But nobody has yet pointed out,
fortunately, that there is an ambiguity there. To endure means to
suffer. [audience laughter]. And a there are plenty of people around
the world who have endured what we call freedom. Again, fortunately
we have a very well-behaved educated class so nobody has yet pointed
out this ambiguity. But if its done there will be another problem to
deal with. But if we can back off enough so that some more or less
independent agency, maybe the UN, maybe credible NGO’s (non
governmental organizations) can take the lead in trying to
reconstruct something from the wreckage, with plenty of assistance
and we owe it to them. Them maybe something would come out. Beyond
that, there are other problems.
We certainly want to reduce the level of terror, certainly not
escalate it. There is one easy way to do that and therefore it is
never discussed. Namely stop participating in it. That would
automatically reduce the level of terror enormously. But that you
can’t discuss. Well we ought to make it possible to discuss it. So
that’s one easy way to reduce the level of terror.
Beyond that, we should rethink the kinds of policies, and
Afghanistan is not the only one, in which we organize and train
terrorist armies. That has effects. We’re seeing some of these
effects now. September 11th is one. Rethink it.
Rethink the policies that are creating a reservoir of support.
Exactly what the bankers, lawyers and so on are saying in places like
Saudi Arabia. On the streets it’s much more bitter, as you can
imagine. That’s possible. You know, those policies aren’t graven in
stone.
And further more there are
opportunities. It’s hard to find many rays of light in the last
couple of weeks but one of them is that there is an increased
openness. Lots of issues are open for discussion, even in elite
circles, certainly among the general public, that were not a couple
of weeks ago. That’s dramatically the case. I mean, if a newspaper
like USA Today can run a very good article, a serious article, on
life in the Gaza Strip…there has been a change. The things I
mentioned in the Wall Street Journal…that’s change. And among the
general public, I think there is much more openness and willingness
to think about things that were under the rug and so on. These are
opportunities and they should be used, at least by people who accept
the goal of trying to reduce the level of violence and terror,
including potential threats that are extremely severe and could make
even September 11th pale into insignificance. Thanks
