Noam Chomsky in Acts of Aggression, by Noam Chomsky
On War & Peace:
US chartered UN & must follow UN decisions on Iraq
The debate over the Iraq crisis kept within rigid bounds that excluded the obvious answer: the US and UK should act in accord with their laws and treaty obligations. The relevant legal framework is formulated in the Charter of the United Nations,
which is recognized as the foundation of international law and world order, and which under the US Constitution is “the supreme law of the land.” The Charter states that “The Security Council shall determine the existence of any threat to the peace,
breach of peace, or act of aggression, and shall make recommendations, or decide what measures shall be taken.“ There are legitimate ways to react to the many threats to world peace. If Iraq’s neighbors feel threatened, they can approach the
Security Council to authorize appropriate measures to respond to the threat. If the US and Britain feel threatened, they can do the same. But no state has the authority to make its own determinations on these matters and to act as it chooses.
Source: Acts of Aggression, by Noam Chomsky, p. 15-16
Jul 2, 1999
On War & Peace:
Anyone threatened by Iraq can approach UN Security Council
There are legitimate ways to react to the many threats to world peace. If Iraq’s neighbors feel threatened, they can approach the Security Council to authorize a appropriate measures to respond to the threat. If the United States and Britain feel
threatened, they can do the same. But no state has the authority to make its own determinations on these matters and to act as it chooses; the United States and Britain would have no such authority even if their own hands were clean, hardly the case.
Source: Acts Of Aggression, by Noam Chomsky, p. 16
Jul 2, 2002
On War & Peace:
UN authorizing US force in Iraq allows Iran to use force
Suppose that the Security Council were to authorize the use of force to punish Iraq for violating the cease-fire UN Resolution 687. That authorization would apply to all states: for example, to Iran, which would therefore be entitled to invade southern
Iraq to sponsor a rebellion. Iran is a neighbor and victim of U.S.-backed Iraqi aggression and chemical warfare, and could claim, not implausibly, that its invasion would have some local support; the
United States and Britain can make no such claim.
Such Iranian actions, if imaginable, would never be tolerated, but would be far less outrageous than the plans of the self appointed enforcers.
It is hard to imagine such elementary observations entering public discussion in the United States and Britain.
Source: Acts of Aggression, by Noam Chomsky, p. 23
Jul 2, 2002
On Foreign Policy:
US regularly in contempt of international law
Contempt for the rule of law is deeply rooted in U.S. practice and intellectual culture. Recall, for example, the judgment of the World Court in 1986 condemning the United States for “unlawful use of force” against
Nicaragua, demanding that it desist and pay extensive reparations, and declaring all U.S. aid to the contras, whatever its character, to be “military aid,” not “humanitarian aid.” The Court was denounced on all sides for having discredited itself.
The terms of the judgment were not considered fit to print, and were ignored. The Democrat-controlled Congress immediately authorized new funds to step up the unlawful use f force. Washington vetoed a
Security Council resolution calling on all states to respect international law--not mentioning anyone, though the intent was clear.
Source: Acts of Aggression, by Noam Chomsky, p. 23-24
Jul 2, 2002
On Foreign Policy:
We should not invent enemies like “rogue states”
The basic conception is that although the Cold War is over, the US still has the responsibility to protect the world--but from what? Plainly it cannot be from the threat of “radical nationalism’--that is, unwillingness to submit to the will of the
powerful. Such ideas are only fit for internal planning documents, not the general public. From the early 1980s, the conventional technique for mass mobilization was losing its effectiveness: [Hence] Reagan’s ”evil empire.“ New enemies were needed.
Source: Acts of Aggression, by Noam Chomsky, p. 28
Jul 2, 2002
On Drugs:
Drug war has focused on blacks and Hispanics
At home, fear of crime--particularly drugs--was stimulated by “a variety of factors that have little or nothing to do with the crime itself,” the National Criminal Justice Commission concluded. The results have been described by criminologists as “the
American Gulag,” “the new American Apartheid,” with African Americans now a majority of prisoners for the first time in
U.S. history, imprisoned at well over seven times the rate of whites, completely out of the range of arrest rates, which themselves target blacks far out of proportion to drug use or trafficking.
Abroad, the threats were to be “international terrorism,” “Hispanic narcotraffickers,” and most serious of all, “rogue states.”
Source: Acts of Aggression, by Noam Chomsky, p. 28-29
Jul 2, 2002
On Foreign Policy:
Indonesia is a real “rogue state”, but we like their oil
Since 1991, Iraq has displaced Iran and Libya as the leading “rogue state.” Others have never entered the ranks. Perhaps the relevant case is Indonesia, which shifted from enemy to friend when General Suharto took power in 1965, presiding over an enormou
slaughter. Suharto killed 10,000 Indonesians just in the 1980s, according to Suharto, who wrote that “the corpses were left lying around as a form of shock therapy.” In Dec. 1975, the UN Security Council unanimously ordered
Indonesia to withdraw its invading forces from East Timor “without delay” and called upon “all States to respect the territorial integrity of East Timor as well as the inalienable rights of its people to self-determination.” The
US responded by (secretly) increasing shipments of arms to the aggressors.
The US also happily accepts the robbery of East Timor’s oil (with participation of a US company), in violation of any reasonable interpretation of international agreements.
Source: Acts of Aggression, by Noam Chomsky, p. 34-35
Jul 2, 2002
On Homeland Security:
US & UK have regularly used chemical & biological weapons
Recent US/UK toleration for poison gas and chemical warfare is not too surprising. In 1919, Winston Churchill was enthusiastic about the prospects of “using poisoned gas against uncivilized tribes”--Kurds and Afghans--and authorized the
RAF Middle East command to user chemical weapons “against recalcitrant Arabs as experiment,” dismissing objections by the India office as “unreasonable” and deploring the “squeamishness about the use of gas.”
The Kennedy administration pioneered the massive use of chemical weapons against civilians as it launched its attack against South Vietnam in 1961-1962. There has been much rightful concern about the effects on
U.S. soldiers, but not the incomparably worse effects on civilians.
There is also substantial evidence of U.S. use of biological weapons against Cuba, reported as minor news in 1977, and at worst only a small component of continuing U.S. terror.
Source: Acts of Aggression, by Noam Chomsky, p. 40-42
Jul 2, 2002
On War & Peace:
Iraq: Sanctions kill children
The United States and Britain are now engaged in a deadly form of biological warfare in Iraq. The destruction of infrastructure and banning of imports to repair it has caused disease, malnutrition, and early death on a huge scale, including
567,000 children by 1995, according to U.N. investigations; UNICEF reports 4,500 children dying a month in 1996. In a bitter condemnation of the sanctions (January 20, 1998), 54 Catholic Bishops quoted the Archbishop of the southern region of
Iraq, who reports that “epidemics rage, taking away infants and the sick by the thousands.”
The United States and
Britain have taken the lead in blocking aid programs--for example, delaying approval for ambulances on the grounds that they could be used to transport troops, barring insecticides to prevent spread of disease and spare parts for sanitation systems.
Source: Acts of Aggression, by Noam Chomsky, p. 42-43
Jul 2, 2002
On Homeland Security:
Powerful states define rogue states according to their needs
The concept “rogue state” is highly nuanced. Thus Cuba qualifies as a leading “rogue state” because of its alleged involvement in international terrorism, but the United States does not fall into the category despite its terrorist attacks against
Cuba for close to 40 years, apparently continuing through last summer.Cuba was a “rogue state” when its military forces were in Angola, backing the government against South African attacks supported by the United States.
South Africa, in contrast, was not a rogue state then, nor during the Reagan years, when it caused over $60 billion in damage and 1.5 million deaths in neighboring states, and with ample U.S./U.K. support.
The same exemption applies to Indonesia and many others. The criteria are fairly clear: a “rogue State” is not simply a criminal state, but one that defies the orders of the powerful--who are, of course, exempt.
Source: Acts of Aggression, by Noam Chomsky, p. 51-52
Jul 2, 2002
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