Chomsky on AlJazeera

I'm out of the country for a week, so in the meantime, enjoy this great interview with Noam Chomksy on AlJazeera's "Inside USA". Chomsky talks about the US election, Barak Obama, the current state of Iraq, and the legacy of the Bush administration.

American Empire: plus ca change

A common misconception, at least in mainstream western discourse, is that the Presidency of Bush II is a kind of aberration in the broader history of US foreign policy. The word "empire" has become so commonplace over the last 8 years that one could easily forget how marginal its usage was in polite discussion, before the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. Talk of "American Imperialism", until that point, was strictly the preserve of irrelevant people; like the Western political left, and the millions of people across the third world who don't have the luxury of living under illusions about such matters.

But the Bush Presidency is no mere "imperial moment". Rather, it is simply a particularly bold expression of drives and instincts that are intrinsic to the nature of power itself. As such, the urge to accumulate, to dominate, runs as a core theme right through the history of the United States government; as it has through the stories of powerful governments across time (including our own, of course).

As Howard Zinn points out in the video below, the protestation oft-heard around 2001-2002 that the US has no history of imperialism, is a preposterous denial of history itself. Did Europeans always live on the American continent? Did 13 states on the Eastern Seaboard become 50 merely by accident? Were wars like Vietnam, or covert actions to replace democratically elected centre-left governments in Chile, Guatemala and Iran with right-wing dictatorships, really no more than acts of "self defence"?

So the thought that a future Presidency of Barak Obama, or anyone else, might awaken the United States government from its temporary imperial episode, and return it to its natural state of enlightened liberal munificence, was always far less than misguided optimism. It represented a fundamental misreading of the nature of power in general, and US power in particular. US imperialism is more than the whim of the current president and his entourage. It is a network of interlocking state and commercial actors and institutions, an ideological tradition, a political modus operandi, and a system of checks and balances underwriting the interests of power.

This is not to say that individual agency is irrelevant; within the overall framework, it is human beings that make the decisions. Had Al Gore been president, the US would probably not have invaded Iraq. Around a million Iraqis (according to the best estimates available) would still be alive today. One in six of them would not be refugees. So the differences are non-trivial, and it is the self-indulgence of intellectual and moral laziness to say that each presidential candidate would be equally as bad as another.

But while human beings make the policy decisions on a day to day basis, they do so within the confines of a framework that they, their peers and their predecessors have created; a framework that circumscribes the choices available, even the choices that rise to the level of consideration. A person that the system has allowed to reach the level of the presidency, having passed the tests of ability to raise corporate funds for campaigning, having withstood the ideological demands of the commercial media, and having internalised the ideological assumptions adhered to by the governing class in general, will be unlikely to so much as consider certain policy options, whether or not they are morally compelling on an objective basis, if they do not accord with the perceived interests of US power.

Powerful mechanisms exist to filter out those who would challenge power in any meaningful way long before they get anywhere near the levers of influence. That Obama has come so close to the White House already, and with such relative ease, should already raise a question mark over whether he will really bring, to quote his campaign slogan, "change you can believe in".

As Noam Chomsky notes here, while a President Obama would make certain tactical changes in US foreign policy to bring it back to the operational methods of the pre-Bush era, the over-arching tradition of US global dominance will remain firmly in place. Obama's talk of the US playing a "leadership" role in the world, a standard imperial conceit, should make that abundantly clear.

What should make it clearer still is Obama's declaration last week (partially backed away from subsequently, but with the substance remaining) that Jerusalem would be the undivided capital of Israel under any future settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is a fact that Israel has no legal or moral claim to East Jerusalem: a fact affirmed by regular votes of 180odd to 6 in the UN General Assembly (the US, Israel and some Pacific atolls voting against) and by the World Court in 2004. East Jerusalem is illegally occupied territory, and contrary to Obama's claim, Israel has no more legitimate claim to "sovereignty" over it than it does over the Gaza strip, the West Bank, or Belgium. The assumption that it is for a nominee for US President to summarily take land from one people and give it to another, in defiance of international law - thus destroying the Palestinian's chances of ever having a viable state, which would be impossible without the heartland of East Jerusalem - is an assumption that is imperial to its fingertips.

The imperial policies that would remain in place under an Obama presidency are no mere detail that can be brushed aside by saying that "at least he's not George Bush". Certainly not to the Palestinians, who will apparently continue to bleed to death as a nation while the crippling US-Israeli embargo, imposed on them as punishment for voting the wrong way in the elections of January 2006 and supported by Obama, continues well after the day in January 2008 when Obama brings "hope" to Washington.

The fact is that American imperialism began long before George W Bush, and will continue long after he's gone. Unless of course, we all choose to do something about it.

2nd worst President ever?

A recent poll of 109 US historians showed 61 per cent viewing George Bush as the worst President ever, and a practically unanimous 98 per cent describing his administration as a failure.

Said one:

"No individual president can compare to the second Bush. Glib, contemptuous, ignorant, incurious, a dupe of anyone who humors his deluded belief in his heroic self, he has bankrupted the country with his disastrous war and his tax breaks for the rich, trampled on the Bill of Rights, appointed foxes in every henhouse, compounded the terrorist threat, turned a blind eye to torture and corruption and a looming ecological disaster, and squandered the rest of the world’s goodwill. In short, no other president’s faults have had so deleterious an effect on not only the country but the world at large"

Its tempting in light of this to view the post-Bush era as offering the prospect of some form of redemption for the United States government, least implausibly under the Presidency of Barack Obama. But as Clive Crook implies, this is not a good election to win, precisely because of this expectation that the end of Bush will be the end of the problems he created. In fact, the end of Bush will be the start of a hard process of paying the costs of his presidency; both for imperialists and for the victims of imperialism.

For example, it is highly unlikely that any Democratic President will raise taxes on America's wealthy to anything like the extent required to offset (a) the estimated trillions lost on the Iraq war and (b) the credit binge of the last 8 years. Probably much of the fiscal belt-tightening will be borne by the middle and lower classes, who will also be suffering from the US mortgage crisis and from the recession more generally. The next President will either have to continue Bush's fiscal recklessness or - and this is far more probable - be the person who makes the US public pay the consequences of that recklessness. Having to choose between being an idiot and being the bad guy is not a good position to be in.

The other main reason this is not a good election to win is Iraq. The "surge" of extra US troops into Iraq was supposed to reap political benefits for the US project. Without those having materialised, the escalation has served only to press the pause button on (the very worst of) a conflict which, as we've seen in Basra and Baghdad recently and as we will probably see in Kirkuk sooner rather than later, is a long way from being over. Much bloodletting will take place on the next President's watch, and their ability to blame it on Bush will diminish rapidly as time passes.

More broadly, Bush is passing to his successor a strategic catch-22 where failure appears to be the only option for the American Empire. I am assuming that, whoever wins the election, the central assumption that the US has the divinly-ordained right to run the world (provide "leadership" as its called) will continue to define US policy, albeit with some tactical modification. In that case, the bind the next President will be in is this: leave Iraq and you abandon a key square on the oil and gas chessboard to (at least) one of your bitterest rivals (Iran definitely, plus Russia and China in all likelihood); stay, and you continue to lose an unwinnable war, and continue to pay the fiscal consequences of doing so in a time of economic calamity.

In short, there is real scope for the next Presidency to end up being one that is seen as a very serious failure, and not entirely through fault of its own. A variety of disastrous consequences from the administration of Bush the Worst will be reaped by (in descending order of tragedy from high to zero) the people of Iraq, the people of the United States and the imperial project of the US governing class. Bottom line: this will not all be over come January 2007.

Obama on race and foreign policy

Further to my post of yesterday, you can watch Obama's whole speech on the comments of his former pastor here.

The Israel line is almost a throwaway one. The speech focuses on the issue of race domestically in the US. Obama had been called upon to condemn his former pastor, who had said "God Damn America" for the way it had treated, and continues to treat, its black citizens. Obama spent a few minutes doing so, but spent the bulk of the speech putting Rev.Wright's comments in the context of the grave, historic injustices of the African-American experience.And then he went further, identifying the problems that face America's white working class, and noting that the political solutions for all those who are not getting their fair share of America's prosperity - black and white - lie in recognising their common interests and utilising their collective strength.

So on race, and Wright's comments on race, Obama had it both ways. And I don't necessarily mean that as a criticism. While condemning Wright's specific words, Obama made it clear that those words were rooted in a clearly understandable source of anger. Personally, I think words of condemnation for Wright would have stuck in my throat. His anger at the situation of Black Americans was perfectly justified. But perhaps Obama sees this as a battle one can afford to lose, in the interests of winning the wider conceptual war.

However, that was all in respect of Wright's comments on domestic policy. In respect of his comments on foreign policy, which is what yesterday's post was about, Obama's condemnation goes entirely unqualified. If he had given as gentle and as eloquent a contextualisation of what Wright had said about US crimes overseas as he had on the subject of race politics in the US, my criticism here would have been muted. But in a 40 minute speech, Obama offered a swift condemnation, and no explanation whatever, of why Wright would view 9/11 as a consequence (albeit a disgusting and inexcusable one) of decades of US aggression abroad.

One of the deepest roots of the imperialist "war on terror" - whether as a mistake from a US point of view or as a crime from an objectively moral point of view - is the failure, or even the refusal, to understand the malignant role the US has played in the lives of so many people across the world. Hence the idea that "they" could only possibly "hate us" because "they hate our freedoms". Hence the idea that our new set of military adventures abroad could only be a good thing for all concerned, save for "the bad guys". Failure to so much as acknowledge that America has done wrong after catastrophic wrong to others, continuing to indulge in jingoistic conceits about the greatest country on Earth, as Obama does with something approaching a casual abandon, is akin to being an 'enabler' to an alcoholic, when what he needs is not just one more drink for the road, but a long, hard look in the mirror.

There is a danger when liberals draw lines in the sand, demarcating what one can and can not say politically; as Obama did when he declared Wright's comments to be utterly beyond the pale. The danger is that things which urgently need to be said are rendered unsayable, and more importantly, unthinkable, on the grounds of political expediency. Obama's was about the most progressive speech I've heard from a major US politician in my lifetime. So much so that many mainstream commentators have described it as positively daring; courageous in its candour and frankness. If, even in a speech like that, the merest honest reflection on the unambiguously evil things that we know the US has done abroad is absolutely out of the question, then the US is a long, long way from a foreign policy that reaches so much as the lowest threshold of decency. If even Barak Obama can't tell the truth about America's role in the world, in a speech which was quite marvellous in parts, then who will? And if American politicians, even the most progressive of them, can't so much as acknowledge Americas past crimes, then what kind of "hope" do they really offer to the traditional victims, in Palestine, Iraq, Africa and elsewhere?

I'll say this much: if Obama can make a speech on foreign policy as (relatively) enlightened, honest, humane and forward thinking as this one was on race, then we may just be onto something with him. If he can't, or won't, then we should be even more reserved about his candidature than we ought to be already.

[Here's a useful assessment of Obama's evolving position on the Middle East, by Stephen Zunes of the University of San Francisco]

Obama and Wright: Beyond the Pale

Barak Obama yesterday described the "view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam" as "profoundly distorted".

Yet that "profoundly distorted" view is precisely the view of United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, John Dugard, as I noted here earlier this month. And as I've noted elsewhere, the view that Islamist terrorism is either exascerbated or caused by Western foreign policy is simply the consensus view of security agencies and experts across the board.

It says something rather frightening about how far to the right US political culture has gone, that views held by people as straightforwardly mainstream and liberal as John Dugard (not only a UN Special Rapporteur, but also a professor of international law who has served as a judge on the International Court of Justice) must be denounced and consigned to the fringes of debate, even by the most progressive Presidential candidate the US has produced in some time. But its a sad fact that, in relation to much of the rest of the world, American political debate simply occurs on another planet altogether.

I'd still prefer Obama to win the nomination, and the Presidency. But I have to say its very much a case of beggers can't be choosers. Perhaps a victory for him will bring us a little closer to the day where simple truths are not decried as obscenities in US political culture. But this latest from him, whether he really believes it or not, is very far from encouraging.

The Audacity of Barack Obama

The mood around the 2008 US Presidential campaign of Barack Obama, though it only begins officially today, has already reached hysteric levels. Just some quick thoughts on this.

At this early stage it seems prudent to point out the inherent irrationality of basing our assessment of a politician’s merits on some vague, warm rhetoric. The relaxed, affable, sax-playing Bill Clinton presided over the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, the larger proportion infants, during his term in office, as Western sanctions strangled Iraq’s civilian population (thus strengthening Saddam). When challenged on the fact that half a million dead Iraqi infants was more than had been killed at Hiroshima, Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeleine Albright famously said that the price was “worth it”. This may not sit well with our image of Clinton the man, but it happened nevertheless.

One could make similar points about Tony Blair, and the lesson, with both Obama and our own David Cameron, is to ignore the froth and look closely at what’s actually happening. Obama and Cameron are apparently afraid of us doing just that, which is why almost nothing of substance in terms of policy proposals is being offered by either of them as yet. However, if you look closely, you can glean an insight into the political character of each. In the case of Obama, this little quote from an NBC interview discussing Iraq, caught my eye:

“We’re not going to baby sit a civil war”

This statement would sound entirely natural coming from any conservative Republican, both in its callousness and in its casually racist contempt for the Iraqi “babies” that the American adult is being forced - by its own benign if misguided nature - to nursemaid. Indeed, it could have been uttered by just about any imperial policymaker airily dismissing trouble with the natives on the periphery since the dawn of human civilisation.

Indeed, those who see Obama as offering a complete break with the dark days of the hoary old Bush administration should consider who shares his propensity for infantilising the imperial subjects. Here’s another great liberal hope, Donald Rumsfeld:

“Getting Iraq straightened out… was like teaching a kid to ride a bike: ‘They're learning, and you're running down the street holding on to the back of the seat. You know that if you take your hand off they could fall, so you take a finger off and then two fingers, and pretty soon you're just barely touching it. You can't know when you're running down the street how many steps you're going to have to take. We can't know that, but we're off to a good start.”

And apparently, Rumsfeld’s old boss, who once marketed himself as a unifying, compassionate conservative, likes the analogy as well. This from May 2004:

“President Bush sought to rally Republican lawmakers around his Iraq plan Thursday, saying Iraqis are ready to "take the training wheels off" by assuming some political power. "He talked about 'time to take the training wheels off,'" said Rep. Deborah Pryce. "The Iraqi people have been in training, and now it's time for them to take the bike and go forward."”

The notion that the Iraqis are infantile, defective material unable or unwilling to make use of western munificence scarcely merits discussion, but for the record: the destruction of Iraqi society has come in no small part through our own actions. It was our sanctions and bombing of infrastructure that sent Iraq back into the third world, and the unprovoked invasion of 2003, the disastrous economic and political administration of the coalition, and the resulting chaos that turned it into a basket case.

All societies have sectarian and/or ethnic divisions, but they only come to blows when the social fabric unravels and the state itself fails. Plainly those individuals committing the sectarian killing in Iraq are responsible for their actions. But responsibility for the calamitous state of the country also falls on those states and statespersons whose backing of Saddam, sanctions, wars and general crimes and failures led to the destruction of the society and set the scene for the current bloodbath. Few societies could have suffered what Iraq has suffered at our hands in the past few decades without descending into bloody chaos.

To crown these achievements by elevating to the US Presidency a man who sees the destruction we have wrought as evidence of Iraqi infantilism, and to all but canonise the man as a liberal secular-saint, would be to dampen one of the few hopes that has arisen from the years since 9/11: namely that more people might have woken up to the real nature of western power. The emerging “Obamania” appears to teach us that many people have, sadly, learnt nothing at all from the events of recent years.

Update - 6 March 2007:

"How Barack Obama learned to love Israel" - Ali Abunimah