Intervju

Här tänkte jag dela med mig av en av mina absoluta favoritintervjuer någonsin.

Noam Chomsky On the Middle East

and the US War on Terrorism

Dissident Voice

July 28, 2002

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http://dissidentvoice.org/Articles/Chomsky_DV-HotType.htm



Utdrag ur intervjun mellan Noam Chomsky och Evan Solomon

ES: It's no great secret that we function by self-interest. Self-interest is part of foreign policy. We're here to protect our policy, protect the interests of our policy, in this case of the Americans.

Chomsky: Was the self-interest of the American people served by slaughters in southeastern Turkey, or by destroying Vietnam, or by turning El Salvador and Guatemala into cemeteries?

Was the self-interest of the American people served by that? No. The self-interest served by that is foreign policy elites and the power-centers they represent, which are not protecting the American people, they're protecting their own power, profit, dominance and hegemony, like others around the world.

And they count on intellectuals of the Robert Kaplan type to applaud any atrocity they carry out.

ES: How do you respond to the following attitude: We don't want to live with them, we don't want to negotiate with them, we must destroy them, make war against the Taliban, justify the war against the Al Aqsa brigades, we see the faces of our enemies and we should do anything to root them out. How do you respond to that?

Chomsky: I respond to that by saying that there are many evil forces in the world. If we want to stop atrocities, I think it's a great idea to reduce the level of atrocities and violence around the world. The easiest way to do it, simple, is to stop participating in it. If we stop participating in it, we will already reduce the levels of atrocities and violence enormously.

And if we can ever reach the moral level, minimum moral level, of terminating our own massive participation in atrocities, then we can move to another question of what we do about the atrocities of others. And I think it's right to deal with them. So, for example, in the case of I don't want to go off in hysterical rhetoric about we've seen the enemy and this and that, that's childish games that you see in fairy tales.

If we're talking about the real world again, we're back to what Michael Howard was talking about. Yes, there is an enemy. There are people who carry out crimes against humanity. And there are ways to deal with crimes. Not by bombing another country and putting millions of people at the risk of starvation, that's not the way to deal with crimes.

When the U.S. was condemned for international terrorism in Nicaragua, then dismissed the condemnation of the court, and then escalated the crimes and vetoed a security counsel resolution calling on the US to observe international law, the right reaction for Nicaragua was not to say, "we have seen the enemy and have to destroy them, so therefore, let's set off bombs in Washington." The right response was not to reproduce this ridiculous, childish rhetoric. And nobody believes that it was. But if it's wrong for them, it's wrong for us. Again, by elementary moral standards. So, we should ask what's right for them, and what should be right for us. And I think, they couldn't do what was right for them because we blocked it, we're too powerful. But we could do what was right for them and we never even considered it. We're too powerful. Because we don't rise to that minimal moral level. And unless we do, we have no right to talk about good policy, bad policy, right or wrong.

ES: We don't have the right to even talk about it?

Chomsky: Of course not. If you can't rise to the most elementary moral level, you shouldn't even talk about it.

ES: So there's no real policy -

Chomsky: Yes, there is. See, I admire right-wing fanatics who come out straight and say, "Look, I have the power, and nobody's going to stop me, I'll do what I want." That's admirable. They're honest. OK. And in fact, we have two choices, really. We really have two simple choices. Either we can say, look I'm going to be willing to enter the moral agreement. I'm going to be willing to rise to the most minimal moral level, that of the gospels, in fact. I'm going to be willing to do that and in that case, I'm going to apply to myself the same standards I apply to others. That's one choice. The other choice is simple. I'm a Nazi. I've got the force. I've got the power. I'll do whatever I want. If you get in my way, I'll smash you.