Creating Another World in a Time of War, Empire and Devastation
by Noam Chomsky Sunday December 24
This is the first time since the Spanish conquests, 500 years, that there has been real moves towards integration in South America. The countries have been very separated from one another. And integration is going to be a prerequisite for authentic independence. I mean, there have been — I’m sure you know — attempts at independence, but they’ve been crushed, often very violently, partly because of lack of regional support, because there was very little regional cooperation, so you can pick them off one by one. [see previously]
AMY GOODMAN: Today, we bring you world-renowned scholar and linguist Noam Chomsky, who spoke a few days ago in an event sponsored by Massachusetts Global Action. The speech was called “What’s Next? Creating Another World in a Time of War, Empire and Devastation.” It was held at the Emmanuel Church in Boston.
Chomsky is a professor of Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He recently returned from Latin America. He talked about the recent elections in the region, which have brought leftist governments to power that are challenging US foreign policy. Chomsky also talked about Iraq and Iran in the context of Latin America.
In this excerpt, he begins by analyzing the recently released Iraq Study Group report that was chaired by the former Secretary of State James Baker.
NOAM CHOMSKY: There are efforts to try to extricate the US from the US power — doesn’t matter much to the people, but US power — from the catastrophes it’s created for itself. The most recent such effort, right on the front pages now — so I’ll keep to that one — is the Baker-Hamilton report, the Iraq Study Group report, which has some interesting features. Very interesting.
For example, one of its — it doesn’t have much in the way of proposals — but the thinking is interesting. So here’s one paragraph, refers to recent polls in Iraq. The US government and polling agencies here take regular polls in Iraq. They care a lot about Iraqi opinion. And this points out that recent polling indicates that 79% of Iraqis have a mostly negative view of the influence that the United States has in their country, and 61% of Iraqis — includes Kurds — approve of attacks on US-led forces. Well, that’s clearly a problem. And we have to deal with that problem by changing tactics, so they’ll understand that we really love them and we’re trying to help them and they’ll stop thinking they ought to attack us and hating us, and so on. OK, that was the proposal.
There’s something missing. The same polls that they cited have some other information, for example, that two-thirds of the people of Baghdad want US troops out immediately, and about over three-quarters of the whole population, including Kurds, again, wants a firm timetable for withdrawal within a year or less. Well, that isn’t mentioned, because in our mission to bring democracy to the world, we don’t care about the opinions of people. They’re kind of irrelevant, so that isn’t mentioned. And, of course, there’s no timetable for withdrawal. That’s one of the options they rejected.
Also interesting is that the American people are treated the same way. A majority of people here are in favor of a firm timetable for withdrawal. But that’s irrelevant, too. In fact, back as far as April 2003, considerable majority of people here in the United States were in favor of keeping US troops there only if they were under UN supervision. The UN ought to take responsibility for security, for economic development, reconstruction, for democratic development, and so on. But that opinion was, of course, totally ignored and, to my knowledge, not even reported.