Part 5, NOAM CHOMSKY: The New World Order
November 23, 1991
NOAM CHOMSKY:
Well, it's all particularly important right now for several reasons. For
one thing, the social and economic catastrophe that resulted from the Reagan-Bush programs
is getting harder and harder to put to the side. More and more people see it. And that
means that efforts at diversion are needed -- and rapid and increasing ones.
Secondly, it's also necessary to divert attention away from these foreign policy triumphs
that have supposedly shown what great people we are, and have led to the Bush rhetoric. In
fact, every one of them has been a complete catastrophe from the point of view of any
human value, at least. That's true of Grenada, and Panama, and most strikingly, recently,
the Gulf.
It's not too pretty to look at the Gulf after our great triumph there, and
notice a couple hundred thousand corpses, an ecological disaster, Saddam Hussein firmly in
power, thanks to the support given to him by George Bush and Norman Schwarzkopf who backed
his crushing of the popular rebellions -- the Kurdish and Shiite rebellions. In fact, for
once I should say -- I've got to give the press credit -- the chief diplomatic
correspondent of the New York Times (that's a technical term meaning "State
Department spokesman in the New York Times") Thomas Friedman, had an accurate
description of what happened. He said that right after the .... You know, George Bush was
out fishing, and Norman Schwarzkopf was patting himself on the back .... at the time when
Saddam Hussein was authorized to take care of the rascal multitude, the explanation that
was given by Friedman expressing the State Department's position was that the United
States was seeking to restore what he called "the best of all worlds." The best
of all worlds would be a takeover by some Iraqi generals who would wield the iron fist,
much as Saddam Hussein did in the period up until his one mistake in life; namely, when he
stepped on U.S. toes on August 2nd, 1990 .... wield the iron fist, as Saddam Hussein had
done, much to the satisfaction of the U.S. allies, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, and, of
course, the boss in Washington. Well, that's essentially correct.
It would be a little embarrassing to just restore Saddam Hussein after the fuss.
But we need a clone. We've got to find somebody exactly like him. And surely, we don't
want to allow anything as dangerous as a democracy opening in the Middle East any more
than we want a democracy opening in Latin America -- or, for that matter, in the United
States. And if the way to block it is by supporting Saddam Hussein's iron fist, well you
know, in the interests of what's called pragmatism, that's what we have to do. Pragmatism
is a nice technical term that means doing anything you feel like doing for your own
interests. And, therefore, we pursue pragmatism. And that even overcomes our high
moral commitments to human rights, and so on and so forth.
So there is a need to divert attention. But still, it leaves kind of a bad
taste. I mean, maybe the smart guys understand that this is the right thing to do. But the
population, having been aroused to considerable hysteria over the need to destroy the
Beast of Baghdad, has kind of a tough time figuring out these subtle points about why
we're supporting him while he's massacring everybody in sight. So you've got to overcome
that somehow.
There also are regional problems. The Arab tyrannies that lined up in the Gulf
crusade -- these are what the British imperialists, in their day, called "the Arab
facade" that manages the local oil system in the interests of the imperial powers.
The British view was that we should veil absorption of the colonies behind constitutional
fictions such as "buffer state" or "sphere of influence", and so on.
But, of course, as Lord Lloyd George put it, in complimenting the British on blocking an
international disarmament agreement, he said: "We have to reserve the right to bomb
the niggers." That's sort of the bottom line. So you "reserve the right to bomb
the niggers", but you've got to have this "Arab facade" out there, that you
can sort of pretend they're countries, but they're actually managing the local wealth for
you. And those guys have a problem too. Any tyranny too has to preserve a certain degree
of credibility with their population. And if they are exposed as agents of the United
States in restoring the traditional Anglo-American condominium over the wealth that lies
under the ground in the Arab world, that won't be so good for them. So they need
something.
Thirdly, continuing with the urgency of the peace process, so-called, there is,
in fact, a window of opportunity. That's not a joke. It is, in fact, correct. Bush
is largely correct in saying that "what we say goes." And, in fact, that means
that what you see in the Gulf is what we say because that's what we want. We hold all the
cards. And now that "what we say goes," we can ram through traditional U.S.
policy -- which takes us to the second point.
What are traditional U.S. policies? And: Is there a break with them? Of
course, the way in which we're going to get credit for this, and the "Arab
facade" is going to get some credibility is by dealing with the festering Palestinian
problem. The simple answer to what U.S. traditional policy is is very straightforward. It
has been the adamant and inflexible opposition to the peace process.
Now, before I continue, I have to make a side comment on political discourse.
Every political discourse has two meanings. It has a dictionary-meaning. And it has what
we might call the PC-meaning --the "politically correct" meaning. That is, the
meaning that's used to advance power ends. They're always different. So, for example,
"terrorism" in the dictionary-meaning is what the Army manual says: "the
use or threat of force to advance political ends." But in the PC-meaning of the
word, "international terrorism" is: "the threat or use of force to
implement political ends," when it's carried out by others -- not when it's carried
out by the United States or [its] client states. Then, it has another name. It's
called "retaliation" or "defense of freedom" or something like that.
The same is true of the term, "democracy". There's a dictionary-meaning in which
a state is democratic to the extent that the population has some meaningful way of
participating in managing their own affairs. But then there's the PC-meaning, in which
"democracy" means "the rule by elements who appreciate the transcendent
need of those who own American society and who, therefore, must govern it." I borrow
one of the favorite maxims of the founding fathers. That's the principle on which the
country was founded. And only those who understand that are capable of participating in
"democracy" in the PC-sense.
Well, the same is true with the term "peace process." There's the
dictionary-meaning in which the "peace process" means something like
"efforts to advance peace." And then there's the PC-meaning in which the
"peace process" refers to whatever the U.S. happens to be doing at the moment.
If what the U.S. happens to be doing at the moment is undermining the peace process and
barring the peace process at every turn -- that's the "peace process."
Actually, it's all quite simple once you understand the rules. The reason
for institutions like universities is to teach you the rules. So don't forget to do your
homework. But once you figure all this stuff out, you can play the game rather well.
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