Part 4, NOAM CHOMSKY: The New World Order
November 23, 1991
NOAM CHOMSKY:
Now, there were some things that were not discussed. At least I didn't see them
discussed. For example, one thing NOT discussed was the worst air tragedy of the decade.
That was the bombing of an Air India plane in 1985 which killed three hundred and
twenty-nine people. There's a book by Leslie and Andrew Cockburn called, "OUT OF
CONTROL" which discusses some of the background for this. Apparently, the two
people who bombed it were trained in a paramilitary training camp in Alabama. This was
supposedly a sting operation that went out of control. The fact that the U.S. had been
involved in training the people who bombed it was acknowledged a couple of months later by
the Attorney-General, Edwin Meese, in India, who sort of promised the Indians that we
would be careful to see that that doesn't happen again. But that was not a "horrific
symbol of international terrorism" in that you don't have huge squads of thousands of
people scouring the region to see what sensors you can discover, and so on and so forth.
That one I didn't see mentioned, though it's the worse air tragedy of the decade.
There was some mention of another air tragedy -- the downing of an Iranian
commercial jet with two hundred and ninety people killed. That's also more than "the
most horrific symbol of terrorism of the decade." That was described, for example, by
the Middle East correspondent of the Boston Globe, Mary Curdias[sp], as she put it,
"the accidental downing of the Iranian passenger plane by the U.S.S. Vincennes"
which was part of a naval armada that had been sent by George Bush to help out his pal,
Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq War. And, in fact, the shooting down of this plane was a
rather decisive event in ending the war on Iraqi (meaning U.S.) terms.
A question one might ask is: How can the news columns (these are news columns,
remember) be so sure that it was an accidental downing? Well, of course, there's an easy
answer to that. The U.S. did it, and therefore, it follows that it was an accidental
downing, just as U.S. international terrorism is laudable. It's low-intensity conflict; a
good thing. It's not terrorism. However, not everyone agrees. Again, there's a spectrum of
opinion. In this case, for example, one of the people who does NOT agree is U.S. Navy
Commander David Carlson -- who was the commander of the vessel right nearby the Vincennes
-- who wrote an article in the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings in which he describes (I'm
quoting it now) how he "wondered aloud in disbelief as they watched the Vincennes
shoot down what was perfectly obviously a commercial airliner, a passenger jet, taking off
at a commercial corridor."
And his assumption is that this is out of a need to prove the viability of its
high-tech missile system.
Well, the commander of the Vincennes didn't go completely unpunished. The
President reacted. He granted him the Legion of Merit Award, along with the
officer-in-charge of shooting down the commercial airliner (I'm quoting from the
citation), "for exceptionally meritorious conduct and outstanding service, and for
the calm and professional atmosphere under his command in the Gulf."
The shooting down of the airliner was not mentioned in the citation, although
that's the only known action of the Vincennes.
The media kept a dutiful silence about this, at least at home. In more
civilized parts of the World like, for example, Malaysia, Third World journals were quite
open about reporting the facts, including the Legion of Merit award, in reviews of U.S.
international terrorism which, they don't understand, is only low-intensity conflict, and
accidental.
Libya's response to these charges was a call for a hearing by the World Court or
some other international inquiry, a call that was regarded as reasonable by the Arab
League. But it was, of course, dismissed here, without any discussion, as utter nonsense.
That's what's known as "invigoration of international institutions," just as
what I just described is what's known as "the abandonment of the double
standard."
For those who are willing to consider fact, what I've just mentioned is like a
crumb from a mountain of evidence that illustrates what a Salvadoran Jesuit journal
recently described as "the ominous halo of hypocrisy covering U.S. statements and
actions" -- an "ominous halo of hypocrisy" that sickens and disgusts any
honest person who suffers through the daily output of the commissar culture. That's a
major element of the "New World Order", just as it was an element of the old
world order.
Well, let's put that aside and turn to the third feature which that lead article
in the Journal of Palestine Studies finds so encouraging, along with most other opinion:
"the personal commitment of the President to a just and comprehensive
settlement." Let me now review at least what I think is happening.
It seems to me that three major questions arise about what's going on right now.
One is: Why is it happening now? Why this big diplomatic flurry right now? Two: Is there a
break with traditional American policy? And three: What about the apparent conflict
between the United States and Israel?
Let's start with the first: Why right now? And in fact, we might turn back to
page one of the Boston Globe which has that lead story about the U.S. charges against
Libya. That's the lead story, and, by accident or because they've got a subversive in the
editorial board or something, there's an adjacent story next to it which discusses White
House concern over polls that show that George Bush is falling rapidly because of the
problems with the domestic economy. Well, could there be a correlation between those
facts? Actually, there could be! The story of the past ten years --the major story of the
last ten years is the huge assault against the general public, which you're familiar with
-- the huge transfer of resources from a large majority of the public, in fact, to
wealthy, privileged sectors -- investors, and so on.
Now when a state is involved in policies of that kind, it's necessary to divert
the public -- the ignorant and meddling outsiders -- somehow, so that they won't pay
attention to what's going on around them. And that's true whether it's a totalitarian
state or a democratic state. And there aren't a lot of ways to do this. Two of the
ways are to inspire fear of terrible enemies who are about to destroy us. And that's got
to be accompanied by awe for our amazing leaders who rise just in time, and save us from
destruction so that we can, once again, be standing tall, as Ronald Reagan put it when he
succeeded in overcoming the threat to our existence from Grenada, if you can remember that
far back.
In fact, this is pretty much the story of the last ten years. About every
year or two, there's some fantastic threat to our existence. But then, with incredible
heroism, our leader somehow beats it down. And that's a natural concomitant of the social
policies that are being carried out domestically. You'd find that in any state. Just as
another natural concomitant is various devices to set sectors of the targeted populations
-- most of the population .... set them against each other so that they hate each other,
and so on, instead of having them paying attention to what's going on. This is all pretty
standard.
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