Interview With Noam Chomsky about US Warplans
Various questions are circulating among people worried about war. On
August 29, 2002, Michael Albert put some of these to Noam Chomsky, via email. Here are the questions and his responses...
1. Has Saddam Hussein been as evil as mainstream media says? Domestically? Internationally?
He is as evil as they come, ranking with Suharto and other monsters of the modern era. No one would want to be within his reach. But fortunately, his reach does not extend very far.
Internationally, Saddam invaded Iran (with Western support), and when that war was going badly turned to chemical weapons (also with Western support). He invaded Kuwait and was quickly driven out. A major concern in Washington right after the invasion was that Saddam would quickly withdraw, putting "his puppet in [and] everyone in the Arab world will be happy" (Colin Powell, then Chief of Staff). President Bush was concerned that Saudi Arabia might "bug out at the last minute and accept a puppet regime in Kuwait" unless the US prevented Iraqi withdrawal....
2. Looking into the future, is Saddam Hussein as dangerous as mainstream media says?
The world would be better off if he weren't there, no doubt about that. Surely Iraqis would. But he can't be anywhere near as dangerous as he was when the US and Britain were supporting him, even providing him with dual-use technology that he could use for nuclear and chemical weapons development, as he presumably did. 10 years ago the Senate Banking Committee hearings revealed that the Bush administration was granting licences for dual use technology and "materials which were later utilized by the Iraq regime for nuclear missile and chemical purposes." Later hearings added more, and there are press reports and a mainstream scholarly literature on the topic (as well as dissident literature).
The 1991 war was extremely destructive, and since then Iraq has been devastated by a decade of sanctions, which probably strengthened Saddam himself (by weakening possible resistance in a shattered society), but surely reduced very significantly his capacity for war-making or support for terror. Furthermore, since 1991 his regime has been constrained by "no fly zones," regular overflights and bombing, and very tight surveillance. Chances are that the events of Sept. 11 weakened him still further. If there are any links between Saddam and al-Qaeda, they would be far more difficult to maintain now because of the sharply intensified surveillance and controls. That aside, links are not very likely. Despite enormous efforts to tie Saddam to the 9-11 attacks, nothing has been found, which is not too surprising. Saddam and bin Laden were bitter enemies, and there's no particular reason to suppose that there have been any changes in that regard...
4. Some argue that there is ample justification for treating Iraq's potential for weapons of mass destruction differently from those of other countries because, under the terms of Security Council Resolution 687, agreed to by Saddam Hussein, Iraq is to be disarmed, in part as punishment for its flagrant violation of international law in invading Kuwait. Is the international community justified in trying to restrict Iraq's weapons of mass destruction? If one accepts this argument, as put, what would be the international ramifications? Is there a different version of this argument with better logic and methodology, and what would be its implications?
As noted, 687 has other provisions, rather significant ones.
The invasion of Kuwait is one of Saddam's lesser crimes. It is not very different from one of the footnotes to US crimes in its own traditional domains: the invasion of Panama a few months earlier, which didn't have even a marginally credible pretext. The main difference is that the US could veto Security Council resolutions condemning the invasion, disregard the harsh condemnations from the Latin American democracies (barely reported), and basically do what it liked. It's all removed from sanitized history for the same reasons. As I mentioned, Washington feared that Saddam would emulate the Panama invasion and worked hard to prevent it. In the region itself, the invasion of Kuwait, criminal as it was, doesn't compare with the US-supported Israeli invasion of Lebanon, which left some 20,000 dead. And it's embarrassingly easy to continue with much worse cases that we all know...
5. Hasn't the history of previous weapons inspections shown that weapons inspectors can be fooled, delayed, and otherwise prevented from actually accomplishing their task? Is there a viable inspections method or related policy, and could it be applied universally?
Sure they can be fooled. However, the weapons inspections were vastly more effective than bombing in destroying Iraq's military capacities, and appear to have been largely successful. Going a step beyond, when was the last time there was a meaningful (or any) international inspection of Israel's nuclear and (probably) chemical weapons facilities? Or those of the US? Inspection regimes should be established, and universalized, but that again requires US acquiescence.
6. During the recent Congressional hearings on Iraq, one witness stated that for inspections to be truly effective, a rapid reaction military force would be needed, so that Saddam Hussein could not prevent the inspectors from making a surprise visit to some site where improper activity was going on. The witness said there's no way Iraq would agree to this, but by demanding such a force the U.S. would seize the high moral ground. Is such a force a necessary component of an effective inspection regime? Would the U.S. be on high moral ground? What reciprocal demands might others reasonably make of us?
Is the goal propaganda ("seizing the high moral ground")? Or reducing the threat of weapons of mass destruction (WMD)? If the former, we can dismiss the matter. If the latter, some obvious questions arise. Weapons inspection appears to have been highly effective, even if imperfect. Scott Ritter's testimony on the topic is compelling, and I know of no serious refutation of it. Those who want to reduce the threat of WMD will, therefore, try to create the conditions for meaningful inspection, as required by resolution 687 and earlier ones, and supported by the actual international community. For some years, the US has sought in every way to block such eventualities. The inspections were used as a cover for spying on Iraq, with the open intent of overthrowing the regime and probably assassinating the leadership. Apart from the violation of elementary norms, these practices were sure to undermine the inspections regime, and to sharply reduce the likelihood that Iraq would accept inspections. Would Israel agree to inspection of its military facilities by spies for Hamas? In 1998, Clinton withdrew the inspectors in preparation for bombing -- acts that have been reconstructed in propaganda as Iraqi expulsion of the inspectors. The US-UK bombing was carefully timed to coincide with an emergency meeting of the Security Council on inspections, hence to demonstrate the utter contempt of the enforcers for the UN. And the bombing was another blow to the renewal of inspections. Since then, Washington has been insisting that even if Iraq accepts the most intrusive inspections by American spies seeking to prepare the ground for invasion, it will not make any difference. In Cheney's recent version, "A return of inspectors would provide no assurance whatsoever of [Saddam's] compliance with U.N. resolutions." This stance amounts to pleading with Iraq not to accept inspectors. It has been reported, not implausibly, that one reason why Washington forced out the highly respected director of the UN Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, Jose Bustani, was that he was seeking to arrange inspections of chemical weapons in Iraq, thus interfering with Washington's efforts to prevent WMD inspections. The hypocrisy was particularly stunning, mainstream commentators pointed out, after the Bush administration undermined the Chemical and Biological weapons conventions by refusing at the last minute to ratify enforcement protocols, in part because of its opposition to arms agreements, in part to protect commercial secrets of US corporations, and possibly in part to keep its own violations of the conventions from too much exposure (though some has already leaked).
So back to the first question: is the goal to block inspections, or to expedite them?...
Read it here:
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/11742