Theos-Talk Archives (September 2001 Message tt00273)

Independent Media Center
www.indymedia.org

9-11: Noam Chomsky Interviews (english) Saturday 22 Sep 2001
author: Noam Chomsky

summary
Composite interview with Noam Chomsky compiled from various phone and other
interviews, including with the Greek, Spanish and French Press, concerning
the events of September 11, 2001.

web link
http://www.zmag.org/chomcalmint.htm


Composite interview with Noam Chomsky compiled from various phone and other
interviews, including with the Greek, Spanish and French Press, concerning
the events of September 11, 2001.

By Noam Chomsky

1) The fall of the Berlin Wall didn't claim any victims, but it did
profoundly change the geo-political scene. Do you think that last week's
attacks could have a similar effect?

The fall of the Berlin Wall was an event of great importance, and did change
the geopolitical scene, but not in the ways usually assumed, in my opinion.
I've tried to explain my reasons elsewhere, and won't go into it now.

The events of September 11 are something quite new in world affairs, not in
their scale and character, but in the target. For the US, this is the first
time since the War of 1812 that the national territory has been under
attack, even threat. Many commentators have brought up a Pearl Harbor
analogy, but that is quite misleading. On Dec. 7 1941, military bases in two
COLONIES were attacked. Not the national territory, which was never
threatened. During these years the US annihilated the indigenous population
(millions of people), conquered half of Mexico, intervened violently in the
surrounding region, conquered Hawaii and the Philippines (killing hundreds
of thousands of Filipinos), and in the past half century particularly,
extended its resort to force throughout much of the world. The number of
victims is colossal. For the first time, the guns have been directed the
other way. That is a dramatic change.

The same is true, even more dramatically, of Europe. Europe has suffered
murderous destruction, but from internal wars. Meanwhile European powers
conquered much of the world with extreme brutality. With the rarest of
exceptions, they were not under attack by their victims outside. England was
not attacked by India, or Belgium by the Congo, or Italy by Ethiopia . It is
not surprising, therefore, that Europe should be utterly shocked by the
terrorist crimes of Sept. 11. Again, not because of the scale, regrettably.

Exactly what this portends, no one can guess. But that it is something
strikingly new is quite clear.

2) My impression is that these attacks won't offer us new political scenery,
but that they rather confirm the existence of a problem inside the "Empire".
The problem concerns political authority and power. What do you think?

The likely perpetrators are a category of their own, but uncontroversially,
they draw support from a reservoir of bitterness and anger over US policies
in the region, extending those of earlier European masters. There certainly
is an issue of "political authority and power." In the wake of the attacks,
the _Wall Street Journal_ surveyed opinions of "moneyed Muslims" in the
region: bankers, professionals, businessmen with ties to the US. They
expressed dismay and anger about US support for harsh authoritarian states
and the barriers that Washington places against independent development and
political democracy by its policies of "propping up oppressive regimes."
Their primary concern, however, was different: Washington's policies towards
Iraq and towards Israel's military occupation. Among the great mass of poor
and suffering people, similar sentiments are much more bitter, and they are
also hardly pleased to see the wealth of the region flow to the West and to
small Western-oriented elites and corrupt and brutal rulers backed by
Western power. So there definitely are problems of authority and power. The
immediate US reaction is to deal with these problems by intensifying them.
That is, of course, not inevitable. A good deal depends on the outcome of
such considerations.

3) Is America having trouble governing the process of globalization - and I
don't mean just in terms of national security or intelligence systems?

The US doesn't govern the corporate globalization project, though it of
course has a primary role. These programs have been arousing enormous
opposition, primarily in the South, where mass protests could be suppressed
or ignored. In the past few years, the protests reached the rich countries
as well, and hence became the focus of great concern to the powerful, who
now feel themselves on the defensive, not without reason. There are very
substantial reasons for the worldwide opposition to the particular form of
investor-rights "globalization" that is being imposed, but this is not the
place to go into that.

4) "Intelligent Bombs" in Iraq, "humanitarian intervention" in Kosovo. The
USA never used the word "war" to describe that. Now they talking about war
against a nameless enemy. Why?

At first the US used the word "crusade," but it was quickly pointed out that
if they hope to enlist their allies in the Islamic world, that is a serious
mistake, for obvious reasons. The rhetoric therefore shifted to "war." The
Gulf war of 1991 was called a war. The bombing of Serbia was called a
"humanitarian intervention," by no means a novel usage. That was a standard
description of European imperialist ventures in the 19th century. To cite
some more recent examples, the major recent scholarly work on "humanitarian
intervention" cites three examples of "humanitarian intervention" in the
immediate pre-World War II period: Japan's invasion of Manchuria,
Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia, and Hitler's takeover of the Sudetenland.
The author of course is not suggesting that the term is apt; rather, that
the crimes were masked as "humanitarian." But the pretext of "humanitarian
intervention" cannot be used in the normal way in the present case. So we
are left with "war."

To call it a "war against terrorism," however, is simply more propaganda,
unless the "war" really does target terrorism. But that is plainly not
contemplated. Perhaps I may quote political scientist Michael Stohl: "We
must recognize that by convention -- and it must be emphasized _only_ by
convention -- great power use and the threat of the use of force is normally
described as coercive diplomacy and not as a form of terrorism," though it
commonly involves "the threat and often the use of violence for what would
be described as terroristic purposes were it not great powers who were
pursuing the very same tactic," in accord with the literal meaning of the
term. Under the (admittedly, unimaginable) circumstances that Western
intellectual culture were willing to adopt the literal meaning, the war
against terrorism would take quite a different form, along lines spelled out
in extensive detail in literature that does not enter the respectable canon.

5) Nato is keeping quiet until they find out whether the attack was internal
or external. How do you interpret this?

I do not think that that is the reason for Nato's hesitation. There is no
serious doubt that the attack was "external." I think the reasons are those
that European leaders are giving. They recognize, as does everyone with
close knowledge of the region, that a massive assault on a Muslim population
would be the answer to the prayers of Bin Laden and his associates, and
would lead the US and its allies into a "diabolical trap," as the French
foreign minister put it.

6) Could you say something about connivance and the role of American secret
service?

I don't quite understand the question. This attack was surely an enormous
shock and surprise to the intelligence services of the West, including those
of the US. The CIA did have a role, a major one in fact, but that was in the
1980s, when it joined Pakistani intelligence and others (Saudi Arabia,
Britain, etc.) in recruiting, training, and arming the most extreme Islamic
fundamentalists it could find to fight a "holy war" against the Russian
invaders of Afghanistan. After that war was over, the "Afghanis" (many not
Afghans, like Bin Laden) turned their attention elsewhere: to Chechnya and
Bosnia for example, where they may have received at least tacit US support.
And to their prime enemy, Saudi Arabia, and the United States, which Bin
Laden regards as having invaded Saudi Arabia much as Russia invaded
Afghanistan. A long story.

7) What consequences do you foresee for the Seattle movement? Do you think
it will be brought up short, or is it possible that it will gain momentum?

It is certainly a setback for the worldwide protests against corporate
globalization, which -- again -- did not begin in Seattle. Such terrorist
atrocities are a gift to the harshest and most repressive elements on all
sides, and are sure to be exploited -- already have been in fact -- to
accelerate the agenda of militarization, regimentation, reversal of social
democratic programs, transfer of wealth to narrow sectors, and undermining
democracy in any meaningful form. But that will not happen without
resistance, and I doubt that it will succeed, except in the short term.

8) What are the consequences for the Middle East? in particular for the
Israeli-palestinian conflict?

The atrocities of September 11 were a devastating blow for the Palestinians,
as they instantly recognized. Israel is openly exulting in the "window of
opportunity" it now has to crush Palestinians with impunity. In the first
few days after the Tuesday attack, Israeli tanks entered Palestinian cities
(Jenin, Jericho for the first time), several dozen Palestinians were killed,
and Israel's iron grip on the population tightened, exactly as would be
expected. Again, these are the common dynamics of a cycle of escalating
violence, familiar throughout the world: Northern Ireland, Israel-Palestine,
the Balkans, and elsewhere.

9) How do you judge the reaction of Americans? From over here they seemed
pretty cool-headed, but Saskia Sassen said in an interviw "We already feel
as though we are at war".

The immediate reaction was shock, horror, anger, fear, a desire for revenge.
But public opinion is mixed, and countercurrents did not take long to
develop. They are now even being recognized in mainstream commentary.
Today's newspapers, for example.

10) In an interview you gave to "La Jornada", you said that we are faced
with a new type of war. What exactly did you mean?

It is a new type of war for the reasons mentioned in response to question
(1): the guns are directed in a different direction, something quite new in
the history of Europe and its offshoots.

11) Are Arabs, now defined as necessarily fundamentalist, the west's new
enemy?

Certainly not. First of all, no one with even a shred of rationality defines
Arabs as "fundamentalist." Secondly, the US and the West generally have no
objection to religious fundamentalism as such. The US, in fact, is one of
the most extreme religious fundamentalist cultures in the world; not the
state, but the popular culture. In the Islamic world, the most extreme
fundamentalist state, apart from the Taliban, is Saudi Arabia, a US client
state since its origins. As we know, Islamic fundamentalist extremists were
US favorites in the 1980s, because they were the best killers who could be
found. In those years, a prime enemy of the US was the Catholic Church,
which had sinned grievously in Latin America by adopting "the preferential
option for the poor," and suffered bitterly for that crime. The West is
quite ecumenical in its choice of enemies. The criteria are subordination
and service to power, not religion.

12) Is the nation's so-called war on terrorism winnable? If yes, how? If no,
then what should the Bush administration do to prevent attacks like the ones
that struck New York and Washington?

I will not elaborate here, but if we want to consider this question
seriously, we should recognize that in much of the world the US is regarded
as a leading terrorist state, and with good reason. We might bear in mind,
for example, that the US was condemned by the World Court for "unlawful use
of force" (international terrorism) and then vetoed a Security Council
resolution calling on all states (meaning the US) to adhere to international
law. Only one of countless examples.

But to keep to the narrow question -- the terrorism of others directed
against us -- we know quite well how the problem should be addressed, if we
want to reduce the threat rather than escalate it. When IRA bombs were set
off in London, there was no call to bomb the US, the source of most of the
financial support for the IRA. Rather, efforts were made to deal with what
lay behind the resort to terror. When a federal building was blown up in
Oklahoma City, there were calls for bombing the Middle East, and it probably
would have happened if the source turned out to be there. When it was found
to be a militia-based bombing, there was no call to obliterate Montana and
Idaho. Rather, there was a search for the perpetrator, who was found,
brought to court and sentenced, and there were efforts to understand the
grievances that lie behind such crimes and to address the problems. Just
about every crime -- whether a robbery in the streets or colossal
atrocities -- has reasons, and commonly we find that some of them are
serious and should be addressed.

That is the course one follows if the intention is to reduce the probability
of further atrocities. There is another course: react with extreme violence,
and expect to escalate the cycle of violence, leading to still further
atrocities such as the one that is inciting the call for revenge. The
dynamic is very familiar.

13) What aspect or aspects of the story have been under-reported by the
mainstream press, and why is it important that they be paid more attention?

There are several fundamental questions:

First, what courses of action are open to us, and what are their likely
consequences. There has been virtually no discussion of the option of
adhering to the rule of law, as others do, for example Nicaragua, when it
responded to the US terrorist assault by going to the World Court and the UN
Security Council (failing, of course, but no one will bar such moves by the
US); or as England did in the case of the IRA, or as the US did when it was
found that the Oklahoma City bombing was domestic in origin. And innumerable
other cases. Rather, there has been a fairly solid drumbeat of calls for
violent reaction, with only scarce mention of the fact that this will not
only visit a terrible cost on wholly innocent victims, many of them Afghan
victims of the Taliban, but also that it will answer the most fervent
prayers of bin Laden and his network, as the US falls into the "diabolical
trap" they are laying, as the French Foreign Minister warned a few days ago,
and as every knowledgeable observer has been trying to make clear.

The second question is: "why?" The veteran British correspondent Robert
Fisk, one of the most respected experts on the region, has had innumerable
interviews, and he observes that almost no one is asking him that question.
To refuse to face this question is choose to increase significantly the
probability of further crimes of this kind. There have been some exceptions.
The Wall Street Journal, to its credit, has reviewed the opinions of
"moneyed Muslims": bankers, professionals, businessmen, people who are
pro-American but severely critical of US policies in the region, for reasons
that are familiar to anyone who has paid any attention. The feelings in the
streets are similar, though far more bitter and angry.

The bin Laden network itself falls into a different category, and in fact
its actions for 20 years have caused great harm to the poor and oppressed
people of the region, who are not the concern of the terrorist networks. But
they do draw from a reservoir of anger, fear, and desperation, which is why
they are praying for a violent US reaction, which will mobilize others to
their horrendous cause.

Such topics as these should occupy the front pages -- at least, if we hope
to reduce the cycle of violence rather than to escalate it.

14) How do you see the media coverage of this event? Is there a parallel to
the Gulf War in "manufacturing consent?"

Media coverage is not quite as uniform as Europeans seem to believe, perhaps
because they are keeping to the NYT, NPR, TV, and so on. Even the NYT
conceded, this morning, that attitudes in New York are quite unlike those
they have been conveying. It's a good story, also hinting at the fact that
the mainstream media have not been reporting this, which is not entirely
true, though it has been true, pretty much, of the NYT. But it is entirely
typical for the major media, and the intellectual classes generally, to line
up in support of power at a time of crisis and to try to mobilize the
population for the same cause. That was true, with almost hysterical
intensity, at the time of the bombing of Serbia. The Gulf war was not at all
unusual. To take an example that is remote enough so that we should be able
to look at it dispassionately, how did the intellectuals of Europe and North
America react to World War I -- across the political spectrum? Exceptions
are so few that we can virtually list them, and most of the most prominent
ended up in jail: Rosa Luxemburg, Bertrand Russell, Eugene Debs,...

15) Assuming that the terrorists chose the World Trade Center as a symbolic
target, how does globalization and cultural hegemony help create hatred
towards America.

This is an extremely convenient belief for Western intellectuals. It
absolves them of responsibility for the actions that actually do lie behind
the choice of the WTC. Was it bombed in 1993 because of concern over
globalization and cultural hegemony? A few days ago the Wall Street Journal
reported attitudes of rich and privileged Egyptians at a McDonald's
restaurant wearing stylish American clothes, etc., and bitterly critical of
the US for objective reasons of policy, which are well-known to those who
wish to know: they had a report a few days earlier on attitudes of bankers,
professionals, businessmen in the region, all pro-American, and harshly
critical of US policies. Is that concern over "globalization", McDonald's,
and jeans? Attitudes in the street are similar, but far more intense, and
have nothing at all to do with these fashionable excuses.

As for the bin Laden network, they have as little concern for globalization
and cultural hegemony as they do for the poor and oppressed people of the
Middle East who they have been severely harming for years. They tell us what
their concerns are loud and clear: they are fighting a Holy War against the
corrupt, repressive, and "un-Islamist" regimes of the region, and their
supporters, just as they fought a Holy War against the Russians in the 1980s
(and are now doing in Chechnya, Western China, Egypt (in this case since
1981, when they assassinated Sadat), and elsewhere. Bin Laden himself
probably never even heard of "globalization." Those who have interviewed him
in depth, like Robert Fisk, report that he knows virtually nothing of the
world, and doesn't care to. We can choose to ignore all the facts and
indulge in self-indulgent fantasies if we like, but at considerable risk to
ourselves, among others. Among other things, we can also ignore, if we
choose, the roots of the "Afghanis" such as bin Laden and his associates,
also not a secret.

16) Are the American people educated to see this? Is there an awareness of
cause and effect?

Unfortunately not, just as the European people are not. What is crucially
important for privileged elements in the Middle East region (and even more
so, on the streets) is scarcely understood here, particularly the most
striking example: the contrasting US policies towards Iraq and Israel's
military occupation. About the latter, the most important facts are scarcely
even reported, and are almost universally unknown, to elite intellectuals in
particular. Very easy to give examples. Can easily refer you to material in
print for many years, if you like, including right now.

17) How do you see the reaction of the American Government? Who's will are
they representing?

The US government, like others, primarily responds to centers of
concentrated domestic power. That should be a truism. Of course, there are
other influences, including popular currents -- that is true of all
societies, even brutal totalitarian systems, surely more democratic ones.
Insofar as we have information, the US government is now trying to exploit
the opportunity to ram through its own agenda: militarization, including
"missile defense," a code word for militarization of space; undermining
social democratic programs and concerns over the harsh effects of corporate
"globalization," or environmental issues, or health insurance, and so on;
instituting measures that will intensify the transfer of wealth to very
narrow sectors (e.g., eliminating the capital gains tax); regimenting the
society so as to eliminate discussion and protest. All normal, and entirely
natural. As for a response, they are, I presume, listening to the foreign
leaders, specialists on the Middle East, and I suppose their own
intelligence agencies, who are warning them that a massive military response
will answer bin Laden's prayers. But there are hawkish elements who want to
use the occasion to strike out at their enemies, with extreme violence, no
matter how many innocent people suffer, including people here and in Europe
who will be victims of the escalating cycle of violence. All again in a very
familiar dynamic. There are plenty of bin Ladens on both sides, as usual.

18) Economic globalization has spread the western model all over, and the
USA in primis have supported it, sometimes with questionable means, often
humiliating local cultures. Are we facing the consequences of the last
decades of american strategic policy? Is America an innocent victim?

This thesis is commonly in advanced. I don't agree. One reason is that the
western model -- notably, the US model -- is based on vast state
intervention into the economy. The "neoliberal rules" are like those of
earlier eras. They are double-edged: market discipline is good for you, but
not for me, except for temporary advantage, when I am in a good position to
win the competition.

Secondly, what happened on Sept. 11 has virtually nothing to do with
economic globalization, in my opinion. The reasons lie elsewhere. Nothing
can justify crimes such as those of Sept. 11, but we can think of the US as
an "innocent victim" only if we adopt the convenient path of ignoring the
actions of the US and its allies, which are, after all, hardly a secret.

19) Everybody agrees that nothing will be the same after 11th september,
form daily life with a restriction of rights up to global strategy with new
alliances and enemies. What is your opinion about this?

The horrendous terrorist attacks on Tuesday are something quite new in world
affairs, not in their scale and character, but in the target. For the US,
this is the first time since the War of 1812 that its national territory has
been under attack, even threat. Its colonies have been attacked, but not the
national territory itself. During these years the US virtually exterminated
the indigenous population, conquered half of Mexico, intervened violently in
the surrounding region, conquered Hawaii and the Philippines (killing
hundreds of thousands of Filipinos), and in the past half century
particularly, extended its resort to force throughout much of the world. The
number of victims is colossal. For the first time, the guns have been
directed the other way. The same is true, even more dramatically, of Europe.
Europe has suffered murderous destruction, but from internal wars, meanwhile
conquering much of the world with extreme brutality. But India did not
attack England, or the Congo Belgium, or the East Indies the Netherlands.
One can think of marginal exceptions, but this is truly novel in several
centuries of history -- not in scale, regrettably, but in the choice of
target.

I do not think it will lead to a long-term restriction of rights internally
in any serious sense. The cultural and institutional barriers to that are
too firmly rooted, I believe. If the US chooses to respond by escalating the
cycle of violence, answering the prayers of bin Laden and his associates,
then the consequences could be awesome. There are, of course, other ways,
lawful and constructive ones. And there are ample precedents for them. An
aroused public within the more free and democratic societies can direct
policies towards a much more humane and honorable course.

20) World-wide intelligence services and the international systems of
control (Echelon, for example) could not forsee what was going to happen,
even if the international islamic terrorism network was not unknown. How is
it possible that the Big Brother s eyes were shut? Do we have to fear, now a
Bigger Big Brother?

I frankly have never been overly impressed with concerns widely voiced in
Europe over Echelon as a system of control. As for world-wide intelligence
systems, their failures over the years have been colossal, a matter I and
others have written about, and that I cannot pursue here. That is true even
when the targets of concern are far easier to deal with than the bin Laden
network, presumed to be responsible for the Sept. 11 crimes. Surely one
would expect the network to be reasonably well understood by the CIA, French
intelligence, and others who participated in establishing it and nurtured it
as long as it was useful to them for a Holy War against the Russian enemy,
but even then they did not understand it well enough to prevent such events
as the assassination of President Sadat in 1981, the suicide bombing that
effectively drove the US military out of Lebanon in 1983, and many other
examples of what is called "blowback" in the literature on these topics.

By now the network is no doubt so decentralized, so lacking in hierarchical
structure, and so dispersed throughout much of the world as to have become
largely impenetrable. The intelligence services will no doubt be given
resources to try harder. But a serious effort to reduce the threat of this
kind of terrorism, as in innumerable other cases, requires an effort to
understand and to address the causes.

When a Federal Building was blown up in Oklahoma City, there were immediate
cries to bomb the Middle East. These terminated when it was discovered that
the perpetrator was from the US ultra-right militia movement. The reaction
was not to destroy Montana and Idaho, where the movements are based, but to
seek and capture the perpetrator, bring him to trial, and -- crucially --
explore the grievances that lie behind such crimes and to address the
problems. Just about every crime -- whether a robbery in the streets or
colossal atrocities -- has reasons, and commonly we find that some of them
are serious and should be addressed. Matters are no different in this
case -- at least, for those who are concerned to reduce the threat of
terrorist violence rather than to escalate it.

21) Bin Laden, the devil: is this an enemy or rather a brand, a sort of logo
which identifies and personalizes the evil?

Bin Laden may or may not be directly implicated in these acts, but it is
likely that the network in which he was a prime figure is -- that is, the
network established by the US and its allies for their own purposes and
supported as long as it served those purposes. It is much easier to
personalize the enemy, identified as the symbol of ultimate evil, than to
seek to understand what lies behind major atrocities. And there are,
naturally, very strong temptations to ignore one's own role -- which in this
case, is not difficult to unearth, and indeed is familiar to everyone who
has any familiarity with the region and its recent history.

22) Doesn't this war risk to become a new Vietnam? That trauma is still
alive.

That is an analogy that is often raised. It reveals, in my opinion, the
profound impact of several hundred years of imperial violence on the
intellectual and moral culture of the West. The war in Vietnam began as a US
attack against South Vietnam, which was always the main target of the US
wars, which ended by devastating much of Indochina. Unless we are willing to
face that elementary fact, we cannot talk seriously about the Vietnam wars.
It is true that the war proved costly to the US, though the impact on
Indochina was incomparably more awful. The invasion of Afghanistan also
proved costly to the USSR, but that is not the problem that comes to the
fore when we consider that crime.

23) Let's assume, for the sake of discussion, that bin Laden was behind the
events. If so, what reason might he have had? It certainly can't help poor
and disempowered people anywhere, much less Palestinians, so what is his
aim, if he planned the action?

One has to be cautious about this. According to Robert Fisk, who has
interviewed him repeatedly and at length, bin Laden shares the anger felt
throughout the region at US support for atrocities against Palestinians,
side by side with US devastation of Iraqi civilian society. That ranges from
rich to poor, across the political and other spectrums, and it would be
surprising if he didn't share the feelings.

Many who know the conditions well are also dubious about bin Laden's
capacity to plan that incredibly sophisticated operation from a cave
somewhere in Afghanistan. But that his network was involved is highly
plausible, and that he is an inspiration for them, also. These are
decentralized, non-hierarchic structures, probably with quite limited
communication links among them. It's entirely possible that bin Laden's
telling the truth when he says he didn't know about the operation, though he
is outspoken in approving of it.

All that aside, bin Laden has been quite clear about what he wants, not only
to any Westerners who want to interview him, like Fisk, but more importantly
to an Arab audience: on cassettes in Arabic that are circulating everywhere,
and that are much like what he tells Westerners, according to those who have
heard them. Adopting his framework for the sake of discussion, the prime
target is Saudi Arabia and other corrupt and repressive regimes of the
region, none of them truly "Islamic." And he and his network are intent on
supporting Muslims defending themselves against "infidels" wherever it may
be: Chechnya, Bosnia, Kashmir, Western China, Southeast Asia, North Africa,
maybe elsewhere. They fought and won a holy war to drive the Russians
(Europeans, in their view) out of Muslim Afghanistan, and they are even more
intent on driving the Americans out of Saudi Arabia, a far more important
country to them, as the site of the holiest places. His call for the
overthrow of corrupt and brutal regimes of gangsters and torturers resonates
quite widely, as does his indignation against the atrocities that he and
others attribute to the US, hardly without reason. It's entirely true that
his crimes are extremely harmful to the poorest and most oppressed people of
the region. The latest attacks, for example, were a crushing blow against
Palestinians. But what looks like sharp inconsistency from outside may be
perceived rather differently from within. By courageously fighting
oppressors, who are quite real, he may appear to be a hero, however harmful
his actions are to the poor majority. And if the US succeeds in killing him,
he may become even more powerful as a martyr whose voice will continue to be
heard on the cassettes that are circulating and through other means. He is,
after all, as much of a symbol as an objective force, both for the US and
probably much of the population.

There's every reason, I think, to take him at his word. And his crimes can
hardly come as a surprise to the CIA. "Blowback" from the radical Islamic
forces organized, armed, and trained by the US-Egypt-France-Pakistan and
others began almost at once, with the 1981 assassination of President Sadat
of Egypt, one of the most enthusiastic of the creators of the forces
assembled to fight a Holy War against the Russians. And has been continuing
since without let-up.

24) Again, if bin Laden planned these actions, and especially if popular
fears of more such actions come are credible, what is the proper approach to
reducing or eliminating the danger? What steps should be taken by the U.S.
or others, domestically or internationally? What would be the results of
those steps?

Every case is different, but let's take a few analogies. What was the right
way for Britain to deal with IRA bombs in London? One choice would have been
to send the RAF to bomb the source of their finances, places like Boston.
Putting aside feasibility, that would have been criminal idiocy. Another
possibility was to consider realistically the background concerns and
grievances, and to try to remedy them, while at the same time following the
rule of law to punish criminals. Makes a lot more sense, one would think. Or
take the bombing of the Federal building in Oklahoma City. There were
immediate calls for bombing the Middle East, and it probably would have
happened if even a remote hint of a link had been found. When it was found
to be a militia-based bombing, there was no call to obliterate Montana and
Idaho. Rather, there was a search for the perpetrator, who was found,
brought to court and sentenced, and to the extent that the reaction was
sensible, there were efforts to understand the grievances that lie behind
such crimes and to address the problems. Just about every crime -- whether a
robbery in the streets or colossal atrocities -- has reasons, and commonly
we find that some of them are serious and should be addressed. At least,
that is the course we follow if we have any concern for right and justice,
and hope to reduce the likelihood of further atrocities rather than increase
it. The same principles hold quite generally, with due attention to
variation of circumstances. Specifically, they hold in this case.

There are hysterical cries that we dare not look at the reasons that lie
behind criminal acts carried out by our enemies (it's fine in other cases)
because that amounts to condoning them. Aside from the transparent
absurdity, that stance is profoundly immoral, on the most elementary
grounds: it increases the likelihood of serious harm. And like other immoral
acts, we should ask what lies behind this disgraceful stance. The answers
often are not pretty.

25) What steps, in contrast, is the U.S. government seeking to undertake?
What will be the results, if they succeed in their plans?

What has been announced is a virtual declaration of war against all who do
not join Washington in its resort to violence, however it chooses. The
nations of the world face a "stark choice": join us in our crusade or "face
the certain prospect of death and destruction" (RW Apple, NYTimes, Sept.
14). Bush's rhetoric of Sept. 20 forcefully reiterates that stance. Taken
literally, it's virtually a declaration of war against much of the world.
But I am sure we should not take it literally. Government planners do not
want to undermine their own interests so grievously. What their actual plans
are, we do not know. But I suppose they will take to heart the warnings they
are receiving from foreign leaders, specialists in the region, and
presumably their own intelligence agencies that a massive military assault,
which will kill many innocent civilians -- not Taliban, but their victims --
will be the answer to bin Laden's prayers. Even if he himself is killed --
maybe even more so if he is killed -- a slaughter of innocents will only
intensify the feelings of anger, desperation and frustration that are
rampant in the region, and mobilize others to his horrendous cause. The US
will fall into a "diabolical trap" that bin Laden is setting, as the French
Foreign minister put it. He may well have used the words advisedly. He -- or
at least his intelligence agencies -- surely know that they were
instrumental in drawing the Russians into an "Afghan trap," as Carter's
National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski proudly informed the French
press, congratulating himself on having sprung the trap months before the
Russians actually invaded by arranging for US support for Mujahideen
fighting the government. Brzezinski may have been bragging about his own
brilliance in creating the monster that has been spreading death and
destruction through much of the Middle East, Africa, and beyond, including
New York City, but there's probably at least some truth to it.

What the Administration will do we don't know; it will depend in part at
least on the mood at home, which we can hope to influence. What the
consequences of their actions will be we also cannot say with much
confidence, any more than they can. But there are plausible estimates, and
unless the course of reason, law, and treaty obligations is pursued, the
prospects could be quite grim.

26) Many people say that the citizens of Arab nations should have taken
responsibility to remove terrorists from the planet, or governments that
support terrorists. How do you react?

It makes sense to call upon citizens to eliminate terrorists instead of
electing them to high office, lauding and rewarding them. But I would not
suggest that we should have "removed our elected officials, their advisers,
their intellectual claque, and their clients from the planet," or destroyed
our own and other Western governments because of their terrorist crimes and
their support for terrorists worldwide, including many who know fall into
the category of "terrorists" because they disobeyed orders: Saddam Hussein,
and many others before him. However, it is rather unfair to blame citizens
of harsh and brutal regimes that we support for not undertaking this
responsibility, when we do not do so under vastly more propitious
circumstances.

27) Many people say that all through history when a nation is attacked, it
attacks in kind. How do you react?

When countries are attacked they try to defend themselves, if they can.
According to the doctrine proposed, Nicaragua, South Vietnam, and numerous
others should have been sending suicide bombers to destroy the US from
within, Palestinians should be applauded for suicide bombings in Tel Aviv,
and on, and on. It is because this doctrine had brought Europe to virtual
self-annihilation after hundreds of years of savagery that the nations of
the world forged a different compact after World War II, establishing -- at
least formally -- the principle that the resort to force is barred except in
the case of self-defense against armed attack until the Security Council
acts to protect international peace and security. Specifically, retaliation
is barred. Since the US is not under armed attack, these considerations are
irrelevant -- at least, if we agree that the fundamental principles of
international law should apply to ourselves, not only to those we dislike.

International law aside, we have centuries of experience that tell us
exactly what this doctrine entails. And in a world with weapons of mass
destruction, what it entails is an imminent termination of the human
experiment -- which is, after all, why Europeans decided half a century ago
that the game of mutual slaughter in which they had been indulging for
centuries had better come to an end, or else.

28) Many people evince horrified anger at the expressions of anger at the
U.S. emanating from many parts of the world, including but not confined to
the mideast. The images of people celebrating the collapse of the World
Trade Center leave people wanting revenge. How do you react to that?

The US-backed army took control in Indonesia in 1965, organizing the
slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people, mostly landless peasants, in a
massacre that the CIA compared to the crimes of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao.
That led to uncontrolled euphoria in the West, a display of exuberance that
could not be contained, in the national media and elsewhere. Indonesian
peasants had not harmed us in any way. When Nicaragua finally succumbed to
the US assault, the mainstream press 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," leaving the victim "with wrecked
bridges, sabotaged power stations, and ruined farms," and thus providing the
U.S. candidate with "a winning issue": ending the "impoverishment of the
people of Nicaragua." We are "united in joy" at this outcome, as the New
York Times proclaimed. It's easy to continue.

Very few people around the world celebrated the crimes in New York;
overwhelmingly, they were deplored, even in places where people had been
ground underfoot by Washington's boots for a long, long time. But there were
undoubtedly feelings of anger at the US. However, I am aware of nothing as
grotesque as the two examples I just mentioned, or many more like them in
the West. Those who believe that reactions last week call for revenge should
be dedicating themselves to a campaign of mass destruction against their own
institutions, and themselves, if the reactions are based on any moral
principle.

29) Getting beyond these public reactions, in your view what are the actual
motivations operating in U.S. policy at this moment? What is the purpose of
the "war on terror," as proposed by Bush?

The "new war on terror" is neither "new" nor a "war on terror." We should
recall that the Reagan administration came to office 20 years ago
proclaiming that "international terrorism" would be a prime focus of our
foreign policy, and we must undertake a war to eliminate this "cancer," this
"plague" that was destroying civilization. It acted on that commitment by
organizing campaigns of international terrorism that were extraordinary in
scale and destruction, even leading to a World Court condemnation of the US,
while lending their support to innumerable others, for example, in southern
Africa, where Western-backed South African depredations killed a million and
a half people and caused $60 billion of damage during the Reagan years.
Hysteria over international terrorism peaked in the mid-80s, while the US
and its allies were well in the lead in spreading the cancer they were
demanding must be extirpated. If we choose, we can live in a world of
comforting illusion. Or we can look at recent history, at the institutional
structures that remain essentially unchanged, at the plans that are being
announced -- and answer the questions accordingly. I know of no reason to
suppose that there has been a sudden change in long-standing motivations or
policy goals, apart from tactical adjustments to changing circumstances.

We should also remember than one exalted task of intellectuals is to
proclaim every few years that we have "changed course," the past is behind
us and can be forgotten as we march on towards a glorious future. That is a
highly convenient stance, though hardly an admirable or sensible one.

30) Do you believe that most Americans will, as conditions permit more
detailed evaluation of options, accept that the solution to terror attacks
on civilians is more terror attacks on civilians, and that that solution to
fanaticism is surveillance and curtailed civil liberties?

I hope not, but we should not underestimate the capacity of well-run
propaganda systems to drive people to irrational, murderous, and suicidal
behavior. Take an example that is remote enough so that we should be able to
look at it with some dispassion: World War I. It can't have been that both
sides were engaged in a noble war for the highest objectives. But on both
sides, the soldiers marched off to mutual slaughter with enormous
exuberance, fortified by the cheers of the intellectual classes and those
who they helped mobilize, across the political spectrum, from left to right,
including the most powerful left political force in the world, in Germany.
Exceptions are so few that we can practically list them, and some of the
most prominent among them ended up in jail for questioning the nobility of
the enterprise: among them Rosa Luxemburg, Bertrand Russell, and Eugene
Debs. With the help of Wilson's propaganda agencies and the enthusiastic
support of liberal intellectuals, a pacifist country was turned in a few
months into raving anti-German hysterics, ready to take revenge on those who
had perpetrated savage crimes, many of them invented by the British Ministry
of Information. But that's by no means inevitable, and we should not
underestimate the civilizing effects of the popular struggles of recent
years. We need not stride resolutely towards catastrophe, merely because
those are the marching orders.

31) After the attack in the USA, Colin Powel said that the government will
revise the laws for terrorism, including the law of 1976 that does not
enable the american personel to kill or plan the murder of terrorists.
European Union is about to apply a new law on terrorism. Up to which point
will this attack constrict our freedom? For instance, does terrorist's
action give the right to any government to put us under surveillance, in
order to trace suspects and prevent future attacks?

A response that is too abstract may be misleading, so let us consider a
current and quite typical illustration of what such plans mean in practice.
This morning (Sept. 21), the New York Times ran an opinion piece by a
respected intellectual who is considered a moral leader (MIchael Walzer). He
called for an "ideological campaign to engage all the arguments and excuses
for terrorism and reject them"; since as he knows, there are no such
arguments and excuses for terrorism of the kind he has in mind, at least on
the part of anyone amenable to reason, this translates as a call to reject
efforts to explore the reasons that lie behind terrorist acts that are
directed against states he supports. He then proceeds, in conventional
fashion, to enlist himself among those who provide "arguments and excuses
for terrorism," tacitly endorsing political assassination, namely, Israeli
assassinations of Palestinians who it claims support terrorism; no evidence
is offered or considered necessary, and in many cases even the suspicions
appear groundless. US-supplied attack helicopters have been used for such
assassinations for 10 months. Walzer puts the word "assassination" in
quotes, indicating that in his view, the term is part of the "fervid and
highly distorted accounts of the blockade of Iraq and the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict." He is referring to criticism of US-backed
Israeli atrocities in the territories that have been under harsh and brutal
military occupation for almost 35 years, and of US policies that have
devastated the civilian society of Iraq (while strengthening Saddam
Hussein). Such criticisms are marginal in the US, but too much for him,
apparently. By "distorted accounts," perhaps Walzer has in mind occasional
references to the statement of Secretary of State Madeleine Albright over
national TV when she was asked about the estimates of 1/2 million deaths of
Iraqi children as a result of the sanctions regime. She recognized that such
consequences were a "hard choice" for her administration, but "we think the
price is worth it."

I mention this single example, easily multiplied, to illustrate the
substantive meaning of the relaxation of constraints on state action. We may
recall that violent and murderous states quite commonly justify their
actions as "counter-terrorism": for example, the Nazis fighting partisan
resistance. And such actions are commonly justified by respected
intellectuals.

To be sure, there are many factors to be considered in thinking about your
question. But the historical record is of overwhelming importance. At a very
general level, the question cannot be answered. It depends on specific
circumstances and specific proposals.

32) Bundestag in Germany already decided that German soldiers will join
american forces, although 80% of the german people do not agree with this,
according to a survey of the Forsa Institute. How do you comment this?


For the moment, European powers are hesitant about joining Washington's
crusade, fearing that by a massive assault against innocent civilians the US
will be falling into a "diabolical trap" set by bin Laden (in the words of
the French foreign minister), helping him to mobilize desperate and angry
people to his cause, with consequences that could be even more horrifying.

33) What do you think about the nations acting as a global community on war
time? It is not the first time that every country should be allied with USA,
otherwise it is considered an enemy, but now Afganistan is declaring the
same thing.


The Bush administration at once gave the nations of the world "a stark
choice": join us "or face the certain prospect of death and destruction" (NY
Times, Sept.14). It might be interesting to seek historical precedents.

The "global community" strongly opposes terror, including the massive terror
of the powerful states, and also the terrible crimes of Sept. 11. But the
"global community" does not act. When Western powers use the term
"international community," they are referring to themselves. For example,
NATO bombing of Serbia was undertaken by the "international community"
according to consistent Western rhetoric, although those who did not have
their heads buried in the sand knew that it was strongly opposed by most of
the world, often quite vocally. Those who do not support the actions of
wealth and power are not part of "the global community," just as "terrorism"
conventionally means "terrorism directed against us and our friends."

It is hardly surprising that Afghanistan is attempting to mimic the US,
calling on Muslims to support it. The scale, of course, is vastly smaller.
Even as remote as they are from the world outside, Taliban leaders
presumably know full well that the Islamic states are not their friends.
These states are prime targets of the radical Islamic forces organized and
trained by the CIA, Egypt, Pakistan and others to fight a Holy War against
Russia. These states have, in fact, been subjected to terrorist attack by
the radical Islamicist forces they helped to create ever since the
assassination of President Sadat of Egypt -- one of the most enthusiastic of
the creators -- 20 years ago.

34) According to you, an attack against Afganistan, is "a war against
terrorism"?

An attack against Afghanistan will probably kill a great many innocent
civilians, not Taliban but their victims, possibly enormous numbers in a
country where millions are already on the verge of death from starvation. It
will also answer bin Laden's most fervent prayers, as Washington is hearing
from foreign leaders, specialists on the region, and presumably its own
intelligence agencies. Such an attack will be a massive crime in itself, and
will very likely escalate the cycle of violence, including new acts of
terror directed against the West, possibly with consequences even more
horrifying than those of September 11. The dynamics are, after all, very
familiar.

35) Could you imagine how the situation would be if the terrorist's attack
in the USA had happened during the night, when very few people would be in
the WTC? In other words, if there were very few victims, would the American
government react in the same way? Up to what point is it influenced by the
symbolism of this disaster, the fact that the Pentagon and the Twin Towers
were hit?

I doubt that it would have made any difference. It would have been a
terrible crime even if the toll had been much smaller. The Pentagon is more
than a "symbol," for reasons that need no comment. As for the World Trade
Center, we scarcely know what the terrorists had in mind when they bombed it
in 1993 and destroyed it last week, but we can be quite confident that it
had little to do with such matters as "globalization," or "economic
imperialism," or "cultural values," matters that are utterly unfamiliar to
bin Laden and his associates and of no concern to them, just as they are,
evidently, not concerned by the fact that their atrocities over the years
have caused great harm to poor and oppressed people in the Muslim world and
elsewhere, again on September 11. Among the immediate victims are
Palestinians under military occupation, as they surely must have known.
Their concerns are different, and bin Laden, at least, has been eloquent
enough in expressing them in many interviews: to overthrow the corrupt and
repressive regimes of the Arab world and replace them with properly
"Islamic" regimes, to support Muslims in their struggles against "infidels"
in Saudi Arabia (which he regards as under US occupation), Chechnya, Bosnia,
western China, North Africa, and Southeast Asia; maybe elsewhere.

It is convenient for Western intellectuals to speak of "deeper causes" such
as hatred of Western values and progress. That is a useful way to avoid
questions about the origin of the bin Laden network itself, and about the
practices that lead to anger, fear and desperation throughout the region,
and provide a reservoir from which radical Islamicist terrorist cells can
sometimes draw. Since the answers to these questions are rather clear, and
are inconsistent with preferred doctrine, it is better to dismiss the
questions as "superficial" and "insignificant," and to turn to "deeper
causes" that are in fact more superficial even insofar as they are relevant.

36) Are we assisting to a war? Should we call it a war?

There is no precise definition of "war." People speak of the "war on
poverty," the "drug war," etc. What is taking shape is not a conflict among
states, though it could become one: the US has warned, loud and clear, that
the nations of the world face a "stark choice": join us in our crusade or
"face the certain prospect of death and destruction" (RW Apple, NYTimes,
Sept. 14). If the US literally follows through on that threat, or anything
like it, there will be war on an extraordinary scale. I think that is highly
unlikely, but not excluded.

37) Is it a conventional war? A new one, a crusade, as Mr. Bush said, or
simply an act of terror?

It is neither "new," nor a "war against terrorism." We should not forget
that the Reagan administration came into office 20 years ago announcing that
a primary focus of foreign policy would be the threat of "international
terrorism," and it reacted to this threat with programs of international
terrorism on a remarkable scale, even leading to a World Court condemnation
of the US for "unlawful use of force" (i.e., international terrorism).

What happened on Sept 11 was, unquestionably, a horrifying crime. There are
proper ways to respond to crimes, great or small, in accord with US domestic
and international law, and there are precedents; for example the one I just
mentioned. Nicaragua presumably could have reacted to Washington's terrorist
war by setting off bombs in Washington. Instead, it approached the World
Court, which issued the judgment that I just cited. The US of course
dismissed the Court with contempt. Its response was to escalate the
terrorist attack, and to veto a Security Council resolution calling on all
states to observe international law, then voting against a similar General
Assembly resolution (alone with Israel and El Salvador; the following year
Israel alone). The US could choose to adhere to its obligations under
international law as well, and of course would face no barriers. That is by
no means the only example. When the US attacked Sudan in 1998, destroying
the facilities that produce half its pharmaceutical supplies (which it could
not replenish), causing the death of unknown numbers of people, Sudan
approached the Security Council, but the US refused to permit even an
inquiry. When IRA bombs were set off in London, there was no call to bomb
the US, the source of most of the financial support for the IRA. Rather,
efforts were made to deal with what lay behind the resort to terror. When a
federal building was blown up in Oklahoma City, there were calls for bombing
the Middle East, and it probably would have happened if the source turned
out to be there. When it was found to be a militia-based bombing, there was
no call to obliterate Montana and Idaho, where most of the ultra-right
militias are based. Rather, there was a search for the perpetrator, who was
found, brought to court and sentenced, and there were efforts to understand
the grievances that lie behind such crimes and to address the problems. Just
about every crime -- whether a robbery in the streets or colossal
atrocities -- has reasons, and commonly we find that some of them are
serious and should be addressed.

These are the proper ways to respond to criminal acts, whether by
individuals or by states.

38) Can we talk of the clash between two civilizations?

This is fashionable talk, but it makes little sense. Suppose we briefly
review some familiar history.

The most populous Islamic state is Indonesia, a favorite of the US ever
since Suharto took power in 1965, as army-led massacres slaughtered hundreds
of thousands of people, mostly landless peasants, with the assistance of the
US and with an outburst of euphoria from the West that was unconstrained,
and is so embarrassing in retrospect that it has been effectively wiped out
of memory. Suharto remained "our kind of guy," as the Clinton administration
called him, as he compiled one of the most horrendous records of slaughter,
torture, and other abuses of the late 20th century. The most extreme Islamic
fundamentalist state, apart from the Taliban, is Saudi Arabia, a US client
since its founding. In the 1980s, the US along with Pakistani intelligence
(helped by Saudi Arabia, Britain, and others), recruited, armed, and trained
the most extreme Islamic fundamentalists they could find to cause maximal
harm to the Russians in Afghanistan. As Simon Jenkins observes in the
_London Times_, those efforts "destroyed a moderate regime and created a
fanatical one, from groups recklessly financed by the Americans." One of the
beneficiaries was Osama Bin Laden. Also in the 1980s, the US and UK gave
strong support to their friend and ally Saddam Hussein -- more secular, to
be sure, but on the Islamic side of the "clash" -- right through the period
of his worst atrocities, including the gassing of the Kurds, and beyond.

Also in the 1980s the US fought a major war in Central America, leaving some
200,000 tortured and mutilated corpses, millions of orphans and refugees,
and four countries devastated. A prime target of the US attack was the
Catholic Church, which had offended the self-described "civilized world" by
adopting "the preferential option for the poor."

In the early 90s, primarily for cynical great power reasons, the US selected
Bosnian Muslims as their Balkan clients, to their enormous harm.

Without continuing, exactly where do we find the divide between
"civilizations." Are we to conclude that there is a "clash of civilizations"
with the Catholic Church on one side, and the US and the most murderous and
fanatic religious fundamentalists of the Islamic world on the other side? I
do not of course suggest any such absurdity. But exactly what are we to
conclude, on rational grounds?



39) Do you think we are using the word civilization properly? Would a really
civilized world lead us to a global war like this?

It is said that Gandhi was once asked what he thought of Western
civilization, and answered that he felt it might be a good idea. No
civilized society would tolerate anything I have just mentioned, which is of
course only a tiny sample even of US history, and European history is even
worse. And surely no "civilized world" would plunge the world into a major
war instead of following the means prescribed by international law,
following ample precedents.

40) How do you see the imminent future? What do you expect to happen now?

The US might follow the course it has proclaimed, attacking Afghanistan and
probably killing a great many innocent civilians, not Taliban but their
victims, possibly enormous numbers in a country where millions are already
on the verge of death from starvation. By doing so, it will also answer bin
Laden's most fervent prayers, as Washington is hearing from foreign leaders,
specialists on the region, and presumably its own intelligence agencies.
Such an attack will be a massive crime in itself, and will very likely
escalate the cycle of violence, including new acts of terror directed
against the West, possibly with consequences even more horrifying than those
of September 11. The dynamics are, after all, very familiar.

Or, the US might heed the warnings that it is receiving, for example, from
the French foreign minister, who warned that the US would be falling into a
"diabolical trap" set by bin Laden if it massacred innocents in Afghanistan.

I would not venture a prediction. But there clearly are choices within the
spectrum just indicated.

41) Which political consequences do you believe this conflict will have in a
long term? What kind of world will our sons and daughters heritage from us?

That depends on which course is chosen. The consequences of one or another
choice are not certain, but we can make some rather plausible estimates.

42) What do you think the terrorists tried to do or say with the attacks?

I presume no one knows the answer better than the CIA, who helped establish
and train the terrorist networks, and has been well acquainted with them
since the first time that they turned against their creators, in 1981, when
they assassinated President Sadat of Egypt. Or two years later, when one
suicide bomber, perhaps with links to the same networks, drove the US
military out of Lebanon. And on many occasions since. They have also been
quite clear in articulating their goals, particularly bin Laden himself, in
many interviews over the past 10 years: to overthrow the corrupt and
repressive regimes of the Arab world and replace them with properly
"Islamic" regimes, to support Muslims in their struggles against "infidels"
in Saudi Arabia (which he regards as under US occupation), Chechnya, Bosnia,
western China, North Africa, and Southeast Asia; maybe elsewhere. Their
terrorist activities have been very harmful to the poor and oppressed
majority, but that is not their concern, and they know that they can draw
from the reservoir of desperation, fear, and anger that in significant
measure results from US policies, as people of the region, including the
most pro-American of them, are well aware.

43) The attacks have been called an act of hate. Where do you think this
hate comes from?

For the radical Islamists mobilized by the CIA and its associates, the hate
is just what they express. The US was happy to support their hatred and
violence when it was directed against US enemies; it is not happy when the
hatred it helped nurture is directed against the US and its allies, as it
has been, repeatedly, for 20 years. For the population of the region, quite
a distinct category, the reasons for their feelings are not obscure. The
sources of those sentiments are also quite well known. The Wall Street
Journal recently reviewed the attitudes of "moneyed Muslims": bankers,
professionals, businessmen, pro-American but severely critical of US
policies in the region. They deplored Washington's support for harsh and
repressive regime, its opposition to democratic tendencies, and the barriers
it places to independent economic development by "propping up oppressive
regimes." But their primary concern was Washington's decisive support for
Israel's harsh and brutal military occupation, a policy that is even more
shocking by contrast to the devastating US assault against the civilian
society of Iraq, a huge crime against innocent people that also happens to
strengthen Saddam Hussein. Similar sentiments prevail, though in much
harsher terms, among the great majority outside the narrow circles of
privilege. They do not, of course, share the comforting illusions prevalent
in the US about the "generous" and "magnanimous" offers at Camp David, let
alone other favored myths.

44) Do you think innocent people ad civilians are going to pay for the
attacks?

Yes, exactly as in the past. Who have been the victims of the crimes I have
already mentioned, a minuscule sample?

45) What do you think about the european attitude in the conflict?

Like virtually everyone, Europeans reacted with justified horror, shock, and
dismay to the terrorist atrocities. But for Europe and its Northamerican
offshoot, these came as a particular shock. The crimes have been described
as something new in modern history, and that is correct -- not in scale,
regrettably, but in the target. For the US, this is the first time since the
War of 1812 that its national territory has been under attack, even threat.
Its colonies have been attacked, but not the national territory itself.
During these years the US virtually exterminated the indigenous population,
conquered a large part of Mexico, intervened violently in the surrounding
region, conquered Hawaii and the Philippines (killing hundreds of thousands
of Filipinos), and in the past half century particularly, extended its
resort to force throughout much of the world. The number of victims is
colossal. For the first time, the guns have been directed the other way. The
same is true, even more dramatically, of Europe. Europe has suffered
murderous destruction, but from internal wars, meanwhile conquering much of
the world with extreme brutality. It has not been under attack by its
victims outside, with rare exceptions. It is therefore natural that NATO
should quickly rally to the support of the US; hundreds of years of imperial
violence have an enormous impact on the intellectual and moral culture.

Nevertheless, European leaders, and to some extent public commentary, have
been warning the US not to react with extreme violence. They have not, I
believe, gone as far as President Mubarrak of Egypt, who urged the US to
provide credible evidence before launching an attack, and to operate within
the framework of international law -- and recall that Egypt, one of the
initial creators of the terrorist networks, has suffered bitterly from its
atrocities for 20 years. However, Europe has been, so far, a restraining
force, with variations of course.

46) What do you suggest the citizens of the Western World could do to make
peace come back?

That depends what these citizens want. If they want an escalating cycle of
violence, in the familiar pattern, they should certainly call on the US to
fall into bin Laden's "diabolical trap" and massacre innocent civilians. If
they want to reduce the level of violence they should use their influence to
direct the great powers in a very different course, the one I outlined
earlier, which, again, has ample precedents. That includes a willingness to
examine what lies behind the atrocities. One often hears that we must not
consider these matters, because that would be justification for terrorism, a
position so foolish and destructive as scarcely to merit comment; but
unfortunately common (this morning's New York Times, Sept. 21, for example,
on the part of a respected intellectual). But if we do not wish to
contribute to escalating the cycle of violence, with targets among the rich
and powerful as well, that is exactly what we must do, as in all other
cases, including those familiar enough in Spain.

47) Who do you think is going to be benefited from this conflict?

Such atrocities commonly benefit the harshest and most repressive elements
on both sides, just as a massive retaliation against civilians is widely
expected to benefit the terrorist networks. In this case, the Sept. 11
atrocities were a crushing blow against Palestinians living under military
occupation, and Israel made no effort to conceal its satisfaction in
exploiting a "window of opportunity" (as it was openly described) to tighten
its grip on Palestinians. The Bush administration at once moved to exploit
the opportunity to ram through its own agenda: militarization, including
"missile defense," a code phrase for militarization of space; undermining
social democratic programs and concerns over environmental issues, the harsh
effects of corporate "globalization," and so on; instituting measures that
will intensify the transfer of wealth to very narrow sectors (e.g.,
eliminating the capital gains tax); regimenting the society so as to
eliminate discussion and protest. That is all natural, and to be expected.
Escalation of violence is likely to have similar effects, on all sides.
Again, the dynamics are familiar.

48) What did you think of these terrorist attacks? Where they predictible?

The attacks were an atrocious crime against humanity. No one seriously
doubts that. That something of this scale and sophistication could take
place, no one could have predicted. That includes the world's intelligence
agencies, which monitor very closely the activities of the terrorist
networks that are presumably responsible. Bear in mind as well that the
leading intelligence agencies know a great deal about the terror networks,
if only because they helped establish them and observed their criminal
activities closely while continuing to provide them with massive aid and
training. But although an assault of this nature was surely not anticipated,
that some kind of terrorist attack might take place is a surprise to no one
who has been paying attention to US policies in the Middle East region.


49) Did the US "ask for" these attacks? Are they a consequences of American
politics?

The attacks are not "consequences" of US policies in any direct sense. But
indirectly, of course they are consequences; that is not even controversial.
There seems little doubt that the perpetrators come from the terrorist
network that has its roots in the mercenary armies that were organized,
trained, and armed by the CIA, Pakistani intelligence, Egypt, Saudi Arabia,
and others (with initiatives from French intelligence too) in order to fight
a Holy War against the Russian invaders in Afghanistan. The backgrounds of
all of this remain somewhat murky. President Carter's National Security
Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, has boasted that he was responsible for
drawing the Russians into an "Afghan trap" (his words) by initiating support
for Mujahideen fighting the government in mid-1979, six months before the
Russian invasion. China and Iran were also apparently active in 1978-79 in
similar activities, joining later with the US-centered operation. It is
possible that Brzezinski is simply bragging about his brilliance in helping
unleash the monster that has been causing havoc around much of the world
since, but there may be something to his story. There is no doubt that these
operations were underway at an enormous scale from early 1980. And it is not
surprising that the CIA and its associates preferred the most extreme
radical elements that they could round up from North Africa, Saudi Arabia,
and elsewhere, to form the core of their "Afghanis," who were forged into a
mercenary army of hundreds of thousands, armed with advanced weapons. These
radical Islamists (called "fundamentalists," in much Western commentary)
were the most fanatic and dedicated killers. And the "blowback," to borrow
the CIA's term, began at once. In 1981, radical Islamists with "Afghani"
roots assassinated President Sadat of Egypt, one of the most enthusiastic
creators of the "Afghanis". In 1983, a single suicide bomber, possibly with
indirect links to the same growing networks, effectively drove the US
military out of Lebanon. Since then, particularly in the 1990s, they have
spread terror around much of the world. Their great triumph was driving the
Russians out of Afghanistan, at enormous cost. The end result was to
"destroy a moderate regime and create a fanatical one, from groups
recklessly financed by the Americans" (_London Times_ correspondent Simon
Jenkins, a specialist on the region; most of the funding was apparently
Saudi). "Afghanis" then joined Muslim forces fighting in Chechnya, Bosnia,
Kashmir, Western China (themselves veterans of the Chinese-inspired
campaigns), the Philippines, and elsewhere. They have carried out murderous
terror attacks in the countries where the regimes are their main enemies,
Saudi Arabia and Egypt. And in the 1990s, against the United States, which,
according to bin Laden and his associates, have been occupying Saudi Arabia
much as the Russians occupied Afghanistan, since the US established
permanent military bases there. And the US of course is the prime backer of
the corrupt and brutal Saudi regime, and others like it in the region --
none of them "Islamist" by the standards of the terrorist monster that was
created by the West for its own purposes.

Furthermore, as is common knowledge among anyone who pays attention to the
region, the terrorists draw from a reservoir of desperation, anger, and
frustration that extends from rich to poor, from secular to radical
Islamist. That it is rooted in no small measure in US policies is evident,
and constantly articulated to those willing to listen.

50) Why are the US so much hated in the Middle East? Support for Israeli
occupation, support of repressive Arab regimes, sanctions against civilian
populations in Irak, arrogance, US as a symbol (of what?), religious
reasons?


The _Wall Street Journal_ (Sept. 14) published a survey of opinions of
wealthy and privileged Muslims in the Gulf region (bankers, professionals,
businessmen with close links to the US). They strongly support the general
policies that the US is advancing throughout the world: corporate
globalization, and all the rest. But they bitterly resent US policies in the
Middle East. Their primary grievance is the massive US military, diplomatic,
and economic support for Israel's brutal military occupation, now in its
35th year, a stand that contrasts sharply in their minds with Washington's
attack against Iraqi civilian society, devastating it while strengthening
Saddam Hussein -- who, as they know, the US strongly supporter through his
worst atrocities, including the gassing of the Kurds. They also object
strenuously to US support for harsh, repressive and corrupt regimes
throughout the region, its opposition to democratic tendencies, and its
imposition of barriers against economic development by "propping up
oppressive regimes." Among the great majority of people suffering deep
poverty and oppression, similar sentiments are far more bitter. Though the
bin Laden network and others like them cause immense harm to the people of
the region, nonetheless their denunciation of the brutal and corrupt
regimes, and their condemnation of US policies, surely has ample resonance.

51) You said that the main practitioners of terrorism are countries like the
US which use violence for political motives. When and where?


I find the question baffling. The US is, after all, the only country
condemned by the World Court for international terrorism -- for "the
unlawful use of force" for political ends, as the Court put it, ordering the
US to terminate these crimes and pay substantial reparations. The US of
course dismissed the Court's judgment with contempt, reacting by escalating
the terrorist war against Nicaragua and vetoing a Security Council
resolution calling on all states to observe international law (and voting
alone, with Israel, against similar General Assembly resolutions). The
terrorist war expanded in accordance with the official policy of attacking
"soft targets" -- undefended civilian targets -- instead of engaging the
Nicaraguan army. That was only a small component of Washington's terrorist
wars in Central America in that terrible decade, leaving 200,000 corpses and
four countries in ruins. In the same years the US was carrying out
large-scale terrorism elsewhere, including the Middle East: to cite one
example, the car-bombing in Beirut in 1985 outside a Mosque, timed to kill
the maximum number of civilians, with 80 dead and 200 casualties, aimed at a
Muslim Sheikh, who escaped. And it supported much worse terror: for example,
Israel's invasion of Lebanon that killed some 18,000 Lebanese and
Palestinian civilians, not in self-defense, as was conceded at once; and the
vicious "iron fist" atrocities of the years that followed, directed against
"terrorist villagers," as Israel put it. And the subsequent invasions of
1993 and 1996, both strongly supported by the US (until the international
reaction to the Qana massacre in 1996, which caused Clinton to draw back).
The post-1982 toll in Lebanon alone is probably another 20,000 civlians. In
the 1990s, the US provided 80% of the arms for Turkey's vicious
counterinsurgency campaign against Kurds in its southeast region, killing
tens of thousands, driving 2-3 million out of their homes, leaving 3500
villages destroyed (10 times Kosovo under NATO bombs), and with every
imaginable atrocity. The arms flow had increased sharply in 1984 as Turkey
launched its terrorist attack and began to decline to previous levels only
in 1999, when the atrocities had achieved their goal. In 1999, Turkey fell
from its position as the leading recipient of US arms (Israel-Egypt aside),
replaced by Colombia, the worst human rights violator in the hemisphere in
the 1990s and by far the leading recipient of US arms and training,
following a consistent pattern. In East Timor, the US (and Britain)
continued their support of the Indonesian aggressors, which had already
wiped out about 1/3 of the population with their crucial help (France as
well). That continued right through the atrocities of 1999, with thousands
murdered even before the September assault that drove 85% of the population
from their homes and destroyed 70% of the country -- while the Clinton
administration kept to its position that it is the responsibility of the
Indonesians, and we don't want to take that away from them. It was only
after enormous pressure that the Administration informed the Indonesians
that the game was over, at which point they immediately withdrew, revealing
the latent power that was always there had the US not been committed to
support for Indonesian mass murderers. In 1998, in one of the minor episodes
of US terrorism, Clinton destroyed half the pharmaceutical supplies in Sudan
and the facilities for replenishing them, with a casualty toll that must be
enormous, though no one knows, because the US blocked a UN inquiry and
Western intellectuals evidently are not concerned about such trivialities:
similar attacks in France, or Israel, or the US would presumably lead to a
different reaction, though the comparison is unfair, because these are rich
countries with ample supplies that can easily be replenished. I have already
mentioned the devastation of Iraqi civilian society, with about 1 million
killed, over half of them young children -- "a very hard choice, but the
price - we think the price is worth it," as Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright explained on prime time TV a few years ago. This is only a small
sample.

I am, frankly, surprised that the question can even be raised --
particularly in France, which has made its own contributions to massive
state terror and violence, surely not unfamiliar.

52) You said if the Clinton doctrine on retaliation is to be taken
litterally, some countries would have the right to set off bombs in
Washington. Could you explain this?

I don't recall ever referring to a "Clinton doctrine on retaliation," but if
you have in mind official US policy, in all administrations, the explanation
seems transparent. Merely to take a single example -- uncontroversial
because of the World Court ruling -- according to US doctrine, after
Washington had rejected the orders of the World Court and the Security
Council, and escalated its terrorist war, Nicaragua should have set off
bombs in Washington. And after Washington's decisive support for Israeli
atrocities in Lebanon and the occupied territories, the victims should be
doing the same. And so on. This is just simple logic. If the doctrine is
accepted -- not just for ourself, but for others -- the conclusions follow
at once.

53) There are rather unanime reactions in the US? Do you share them, partly
or completely?


If you mean the reaction of outrage over the horrifying criminal assault,
and sympathy for the victims, then the reactions are virtually unanimous
everywhere, including the Muslim countries. Of course every sane person
shares them completely, not "partly." If you are referring to the calls for
a murderous assault that will surely kill many innocent people -- and,
incidentally, answer bin Laden's most fervent prayers -- than there is no
such "unanimous reaction," despite superficial impressions that one might
derive from watching TV. As for me, I join a great many others in opposing
such actions. A great many. The New York Times surveyed opinion in the
streets of New York, and at a memorial for the victims, discovering that the
sentiments expressed in words and in signs were overwhelmingly opposed to a
resort to violence. What majority sentiment is, no one can really say: it is
too diffuse and complex. But "unanimous"? Surely not, except with regard to
the nature of the crime.

54) What will be the consequences of these attacks? In the United States?
Concerning the civil liberties, Defense budget, others?


Such atrocities commonly benefit the harshest and most repressive elements
on both sides, just as a massive retaliation against civilians is widely
expected to benefit the terrorist networks. Predictably, the Bush
administration at once moved to exploit the opportunity to ram through its
own agenda: militarization, including "missile defense," a code phrase for
militarization of space; undermining social democratic programs and concerns
over environmental issues, the harsh effects of corporate "globalization,"
and so on; instituting measures that will intensify the transfer of wealth
to very narrow sectors (e.g., eliminating the capital gains tax);
regimenting the society so as to eliminate discussion and protest. That is
all natural, and to be expected. What the longer term consequences will be
depends, as always, on how the population responds after the initial shock
is absorbed and the efforts to inspire obedience become less effective. I
suspect that the society will prove rather resilient.

55) In other countries?


It depends which countries you mean. Surely many countries will rejoice at
the opportunity to enlist Washington's support for their own atrocities.
Commentators express much satisfaction that other countries are expressing
some willingness to join Washington's "crusade against evil," but they are
not explaining why. They surely know the reasons. US assistance is welcomed
by Russia for crushing Chechens, by China for its wars against Muslims in
Western China, by Indonesia for its continuing atrocities in Aceh and
elsewhere, by India for destroying resistance to its rule in largely-Muslim
Kashmir, and on, and on. If you have in mind the Middle East, the regimes
that are the targets of bin Laden's wrath and despised many of their own
citizens will be inclined to join Washington's assault against their
enemies, but they are also wary of the consequences. They doubtless agree
with Foreign Minister Vedrine about the "diabolical trap" laid by bin Laden,
who reiterated what has been stressed by specialists on the region and
presumably US intelligence agencies. They understand the likely consequences
of a ground war in Afghanistan, and understand as well that the massacre of
Afghanis -- not Taliban, but their victims -- will only help bin Laden and
others like him to enlist others in the horrendous cause, the familiar
dynamic of an escalating cycle of violence.

We cannot be confident about consequences, just as Washington planners
cannot be. But there are plausible assessments of the likely consequences of
the various choices that Washington and its allies might make.

56) What shoud the US government do now? What can they do? And the European
countries?

It should follow the rule of law and its treaty obligations, a course for
which there are ample precedents. For example the case of Nicaragua, just
mentioned -- and recall that the US attack against Nicaragua was a serious
affair, leaving tens of thousands killed and the country ruined. True,
Nicaragua's efforts to follow the rule of law were blocked by a violent
superpower, but no one will block the US. That is far from the only example.
If half the pharmaceutical facilities and supplies in the US were destroyed
by the bin Laden network, the crime would be considered horrendous, and
there might be a violent response. Sudan however, went to the UN, where it
was of course blocked by its attacker. When IRA bombs went off in London,
the government did not send the RAF to bomb the source of their finances;
where I live in Boston, for example. Even if that had been feasible, it
would have been criminal idiocy. A more constructive response was to
consider realistically the background concerns and grievances, and to try to
deal with them seriously, while at the same time following the rule of law
to punish criminals. Or take the bombing of the Federal building in Oklahoma
City. There were immediate calls for bombing the Middle East, and it
probably would have taken place if there had been even a remote hint of a
connection. When the perpetrator was found to be a militia sympathizer,
there was no call to obliterate Montana and Idaho and Texas, and other
places where the ultra-right militias are based. Rather, there was a search
for the perpetrator, who was found, brought to court and sentenced, and to
the extent that the reaction was sensible, there were efforts to understand
the grievances that lie behind such crimes and to address the problems.

Just about every crime -- whether a robbery in the streets or colossal
atrocities -- has reasons, and commonly we find that some of them are
serious and should be addressed. At least, that is the course we follow if
we have any concern for right and justice, and hope to reduce the likelihood
of further atrocities rather than increase it. The same principles hold
quite generally, with due attention to variation of circumstances.
Specifically, they hold in this case.

There are lawful and proper ways to proceed in the case of crimes, including
horrifying crimes of international terrorism -- of which this, regrettably,
is not the first example.

As for the European countries, they do not need my advice.

Noam Chomsky