Once Again
"The Heretic" Takes the Empire to Task
As you read these
words, I have little doubt that The Grand Inquisitor for the Bush
regime is aching for a shot at The Empire's ultimate heretic. Noam
Chomsky has been a consistent
intellectual thorn in the collective sides of the Machiavellians
comprising the ruling
elite in the United
States for years. I recently
had the pleasure of reading his latest, Imperial Ambitions:
Conversation on the Post-9/11 World. Difficult as it is
to imagine (if one has read Chomsky), I breezed through the nine
chapters in about two hours. Throughout the 201 pages, interviewer
David Barsamian poses probing questions, which serve to pry open the
burgeoning treasure trove of knowledge and activate the analytical
juggernaut comprising Avram Noam Chomsky's brain. With little
prompting from Barsamian, Chomsky unleashes an onslaught of profound
insights into how the world has changed since 9/11, and on America's
role in shaping and effecting that change.
Glad he is
only a "part-timer"
Best known for his
contributions to the study of linguistics through his theory of
generative grammar, this Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology has been the most
intelligent, vehement critic of the US government during the current
and the preceding centuries. Consistently writing (and speaking
publicly) in a calm, thoughtful manner, for
years Professor Chomsky
charged America's ruling establishment and its
obedient press corps with some of the most heinous crimes against
humanity one could imagine. His political activism has spanned decades while
his impressive list of books assailing the US government
has continued to grow.
His perception, insight, and presentation of evidence to support his
dissidence are without equal. And activism is his
"hobby". I feel assured that there are many amongst
America's ruling elite who count their blessings that Dr. Chomsky has
focused so much of his attention on his linguistics studies.
A Dead
Civilian a Day Keeps the Terrorists at Bay?
"The
new doctrine was not one of preemptive war, which arguably falls
within some stretched interpretation of the UN Charter, but rather a
doctrine that doesn't begin to have any grounds in international law,
namely, preventive war. That is, the United States will rule the world
by force, and if there is any challenge to its domination---whether it
is perceived in the distance, invented, imagined, or whatever--then
the United States will have the right to destroy that challenge before
it becomes a threat. That's preventive war, not preemptive
war."
Chomsky goes on to
dissect the manner in which the Bush regime has implemented its
doctrine of preventive war and "normalized it". By virtue of
its sheer might and through the masterful propaganda which
convinced its citizenry that invading Iraq was necessary to defend the
"homeland", the United States has established such
a war of aggression as "acceptable behavior" for a
legitimate government. Essentially, Chomsky concludes that the Bush
administration, its collaborating wealthy elite and its supportive
corporate leviathans imposed their will to expand the American Empire
through instilling the fear in other nations that they could be in the
cross-hairs of an incredibly powerful military, and by shamelessly
telling unprecedented lies to the American people.
As a result, Chomsky
asserts, "George Bush
has succeeded within a year in converting the United States to a
country that is greatly feared, disliked, and even hated."
What's
happening on the home front?
Despite the
glowing reports in the mainstream media about the economy's health and
the woeful lack of honest coverage of the attack on democracy by
the Bush regime, the truths about both the soaring wealth gap and
the installation of tyrannical government mechanisms have been widely
disseminated on the Internet. Chomsky commented on both at one point
in the book when Barsamian asked him how the government could maintain
perpetual warfare against multiple nations:
"Meanwhile
they will have undermined social programs and diminished
democracy---which of course they hate---by transferring decisions out
of the public arena into private hands. Internally, the legacy they
leave will be painful and hard, but only for a majority of the
population. The people they're concerned about are going to be making
out like bandits, very much like during the Reagan years. Many of
the same people are in power now, after all."
Using the
formidable tool of his piercing insight, Dr. Chomsky penetrates deeply
into the lie-enshrouded Bush domestic agenda. Continuing to manipulate
Americans through fear (a legitimate fear spawned by the actual
collapse of the WTC and then elevated to an obscene level by
propaganda of Orwellian proportions), the Social Darwinists who hold
the reins of the US government continue in their "long
term effort to destroy the institutional basis for social support
systems, to eliminate the programs such as Social Security that are
based on the conception that people have to have some concern for one
another. The idea that we should feel sympathy and solidarity, that we
should care whether the disabled widow across town is able to eat, has
to be driven from our minds." Besides
severely minimizing or eliminating social programs, the ruling elites
have a more sinister agenda, which Dr. Chomsky unveils. Continued
implementation of this agenda will enable the Social Darwinists to
strip away social support systems while simultaneously enjoying the
consent of many Americans. They are targeting both the programs
and the impetus for their existence. Malevolent yet brilliant.
Speaking
of terrorism....
Through Barsamian's
prompting, Chomsky spends some time dissecting the phenomenon of fear
in the United States. As Chomsky notes, America is the most secure
nation in history. Readily capable of dominating the rest of the
world's combined militaries with its tremendous
arsenal while
occupying a land mass flanked
by vast oceans, America's citizenry has as
little to fear as
any nation on the globe. Dr. Chomsky notes that crime and drug abuse
rates in the United
States are
about the same as those in other industrialized nations. Yet many
Americans feel perpetually frightened and insecure.
Chomsky does not reach a definite conclusion on the
source of American anxiety, but does note that the US government
exploits this potent emotion in a powerful way by employing
propaganda through the mainstream media to shepherd its corrupt agenda
through America's "democratic system".
As is usually the
case, Chomsky comments extensively on the numerous acts of state
terrorism perpetrated by the US government over the years. He refers
to The Fog of War, a documentary in which
Robert McNamara agrees with General Curtis LeMay's statement that if
the US had lost WW II, they would have been prosecuted as war
criminals. Chomsky notes that as McNamara reflected on his role
as a key strategist in US imperialist actions which resulted
in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, he pondered,
"But what makes it immoral if you lose and not
immoral if you win?"
Referring to the
Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, Chomsky illustrates the point that the
since the Allies were the victors, they determined what constituted a
war crime. "The tribunal had to decide what
would be considered a war crime, and they made the operational
definition of a war crime anything the enemy did that the Allies
didn't do." Blessed with the self-granted
freedom to make up their own rules, the Allies determined that
bombing urban centers and killing hundreds of thousands of women and
children did not qualify as criminal behavior. Thus, the carefully
calculated firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo and the atomic bombings of
Nagasaki and Hiroshima went unpunished, reducing the Nuremberg and
Tokyo Tribunals to ludicrous acts of hypocrisy.
Building on the theme
of hypocrisy, Chomsky revisits the Bush regime's policy of preventive
war. He points out that Henry Kissinger approved of the doctrine
so long as it did not become "a universal principle
available to every nation." With the illegal Iraqi
invasion, the United States has established its perverse right to
invade a sovereign nation on a whim, but reserves that right as a
privilege granted only unto them.
Coupling with the
preventive war policy is the Bush regime's decree that "those
who harbor terrorists are as guilty as the terrorists
themselves." Examining this striking statement with
his penetrating analysis, Chomsky quickly discards nations that are "harboring
heads of state" because "if we
include them, the discussion reduces to absurdity in no time." Focusing
on "groups or individuals officially regarded as
terrorists", Chomsky cites several examples living
freely today within the United States. Orlando Bosch, who was involved
in destroying a Cuban airliner and killing 73 people, and whom the
Justice Department wanted to deport, was the recipient of a
presidential pardon at the behest of Florida Governor Jeb Bush.
Chomsky also points to Emmanuel Constant as a terrorist
finding safe harbor in the United States. Despite his murder of
several thousand Haitians, the United States will not extradite him.
Stretching back a bit
in history, Chomsky briefly discusses the Cold War. Embedded in this
discourse are more valuable nuggets of information. He reveals (based
on previously sealed documents in Russian archives) that the Russians
knew that the goal of the United States during the Cold War was "to
spend them (the Russians) into economic
destruction by compelling them to enter an arms race they couldn't
survive--remember, their economy was much smaller than ours."
As the military industrial complex was gearing up to become a
money-making machine for corporate America and its complicit
politicians, the United States chose to take the world to the brink of
nuclear war rather than attempting to negotiate a treaty with its
reluctant opponent in the arms race. How typical of the Empire.
He holds a
special place in his heart for our 40th president
"When enemies commit
crimes, they're crimes. In fact, we can exaggerate and lie about them
with complete impunity. When we commit crimes, they didn't happen. And
you see that very strikingly in the cult of Reagan worship, which was
created through a massive propaganda campaign. Reagan's regime was one
of murder, brutality, and violence, which devastated a number of
countries and probably left two hundred thousand people dead in Latin
America, with hundreds of thousands of orphans and widows. But this
can't be mentioned here. It didn't happen."
Professor Chomsky
elaborates on the deeply criminal nature of the Reagan administration. One
example he provides is John Negroponte, who is currently the
Director of National Intelligence for the United States, and who acted
as Reagan's "point man" as ambassador to Honduras. According
to Chomsky, Negoponte's tasks included supervising "the
camps in which the mercenary army was being trained, armed, and
organized to carry out the atrocities (in Nicaragua),
atrocities for which it was condemned by the World Court."
Chomsky also points out Reagan's policy of "constructive
engagement" with the government of South
Africa, in spite of its Apartheid policies, and the Reagan regime's
claim that Nelson Mandela's African National Congress was one
of the "more notorious terrorist groups" in the
world.
Chomsky arrives at
two particularly entertaining conclusions about Reagan:
1. "Again the kindest
thing you can say about Reagan is that he probably didn't know what he
was saying."
2. "Reagan was an
incredible coward."
He also observes that
Reagan was not a popular president. He cites Reagan's Gallup poll
ratings during his presidency as being "roughly
average, below every one of his successors, except for Bush II." Chomsky
points out that "by 1992, Reagan had become
the most unpopular living former president apart from Richard
Nixon." He uses the atrocities committed under
Reagan, the ineptitude of the man, and his lackluster poll results as
evidence of the power of the US propaganda machine, which has been
able to beatify this miscreant in the minds of many Americans.
Continuing his
discussion on the power and the mechanisms of "imperial
propaganda", Chomsky arrives at another
sparkling conclusion:
"It
was well understood, long before George Orwell, that memory must be
repressed. Not only memory but consciousness of what's happening right
in front of you must be repressed, because if the public comes to
understand what's being done in its name, it probably won't permit
it."
Erudition,
activism, and dissent are his hallmarks
The further I got
into Imperial Ambitions, the more I realized how far
Chomsky's knowledge base extends, and how much of his criticism of the
US government extends beyond foreign policy. For example, he comments
briefly on the surprisingly large and dangerous segment of the US
population which practices fundamentalist Christianity (the
Religious Right, if you will):
"There
is nothing like it in any other industrial country. And Bush has to
keep throwing these people red meat to keep them in line. While
they're getting shafted by Bush's economic and social policies, he's
got to make them think he's doing something for them. But throwing red
meat to that constituency is very dangerous for the world, because it
means violence and aggression, but also for the country, because it
means seriously harming civil liberties."
I know from
experience that it is virtually inevitable for readers to ask a writer
who advocates social justice (and writes in dissent against their
government) what people can do to evoke change. Professor Chomsky
addresses this issue at several points throughout the book. His
resounding theme is perseverance. He urges activists to participate in
protests, join groups or movements pushing for social change, educate
themselves and others, and employ the Constitutional rights available
to them before the Bush regime revokes them. The power of the
ruling elite lies in its ability to induce apathy in the population
with television and consumerism, to manipulate the under-educated
through propaganda, and to divide and conquer with hot-button issues
like abortion.
Chomsky states, "The
genius of American politics has been to marginalize and isolate
people." His suggestion is to take our cue
from movements like the Abolitionists. His message is that by working
together for the causes of peace and social justice, while persisting
in the face of incremental progress and powerful obstacles, we can
achieve our goals.
I highly recommend Imperial
Ambitions: Conversations on the Post 9/11 World. For those
who have not read Chomsky, this book would make an excellent primer.
It is much lighter reading than some of his others, and it captures
his thoughts on a diverse range of issues. I recommend that you
initiate your studies of Chomsky's unique viewpoint by starting with
this book. If you have read Chomsky, and you are like me, you can
scarcely get enough of his discerning commentary. If that is the case,
do not deprive yourself of Imperial Ambitions. This is
Chomsky at his finest.
Jason Miller is a 38 year old
activist writer with a degree in liberal arts. He works in
the transportation industry, and is a husband and a father to
three boys. His affiliations include Amnesty International,
the ACLU and the Americans United for Separation of Church and
State. He welcomes responses at willpowerful@hotmail.com
or comments on his blog at http://civillibertarian.blogspot.com/.
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