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2. Thomas Jefferson, the most forthcoming of the founding fathers, said we shall drive them, the savages, we shall drive them with the beasts of the forests into the stony mountains.
3. Furthermore, Jefferson went on, our new nation will be the nest from which all America, north and south, is to be peopled.
4. Expansion is the path to security. It means we take over the world, we take over space, we take over the galaxy.
5. There's no limit to how much you have to expand to guarantee security.
6. And that's been the principle from the beginning.
7. That's Noam Chomsky, and this is Alternative Radio.
8. I'm David Barsamian.
9. This edition of AR features Noam Chomsky on the origins of U.S. imperialism.
10. One way to understand how the United States operates around the world is the Godfather model.
11. Obey the dawn and you'll be well rewarded. Cross him up and it's lights out. The U.S. maintains its
12. global power out of the barrel of a gun. Of course, for rhetorical purposes, Washington is dedicated
13. to human rights, freedom, and democracy. In practice, it implements mafia-type rules.
14. In its origins, the Founding Fathers emulated Britain. By the end of World War II, the Union
15. Jack was replaced by the Stars and Stripes and America ruled the waves. It invades, bombs,
16. and occupies countries, imposes sanctions and blockades, and kidnaps and assassinates leaders.
17. Noam Chomsky says, since its founding, America has scarcely had a year without resorting to violence.
18. Our guest today is Noam Chomsky, the legendary MIT professor who has led a most extraordinary life.
19. In addition to his pioneering work in linguistics, he's been a leading voice for peace and social justice for many decades.
20. This classic from the AR archives was recorded at Boston University in 2008.
21. It's remarkable in many ways how it has stood the test of time.
22. The names and dates have changed, but the overall framework remains largely intact.
23. And now, Noam Chomsky, Origins of U.S. Imperialism.
24. I've been asked to talk about modern-day American imperialism.
25. That's a rather challenging task.
26. In fact, talking about American imperialism is a little bit like talking about triangular triangles.
27. The United States is the one country that exists, as far as I know, and ever has, that was founded as an empire explicitly.
28. According to the founding fathers, when the country was founded, it was a nascent empire.
29. That's George Washington.
30. Modern American imperialism is just a later phase of a process that has continued from the first moment without a break going in a very steady line So we looking at one phase in a process that was initiated when the country was founded and has never changed The model for the founding fathers borrowed from Britain at that time
31. was the Roman Empire, and they wanted to emulate it.
32. Even before the revolution, these notions were very much alive.
33. Benjamin Franklin, 25 years before the revolution,
34. complained to the British that they were imposing limits on the expansion of the colonies.
35. And he objected to this, borrowing from Machiavelli.
36. He admonished the British, quoting him,
37. that a prince that acquires new territories and removes the natives to give his people room
38. will be remembered as the father of the nation.
39. And George Washington agreed.
40. He wanted to be the father of the nation.
41. His view was that the gradual extension of our settlement will as certainly cause the savage as the wolf to retire, both being beasts of prey, though they differ in shape.
42. Thomas Jefferson, the most forthcoming of the founding fathers, said we shall drive them, the savages, we shall drive them with the beasts of the forests into the stony mountains,
43. and the country will ultimately be free of blot or mixture, meaning red or black.
44. It wasn't quite achieved, but that was the goal.
45. Furthermore, Jefferson went on, our new nation will be the nest from which all America,
46. north and south, is to be peopled, displacing not only the red men here,
47. but the Spanish-speaking population to the south and anyone else who happened to be around.
48. There was a deterrent to those glorious aims, mainly Britain.
49. Britain was the most powerful military force in the world at the time,
50. and it did prevent the steps that the founding fathers attempted to take.
51. In particular, it blocked the invasion of Canada.
52. The first attempted invasion of Canada was before the Revolution, and there were several others later.
53. But it was always blocked by British force, which is why Canada exists.
54. The United States did not actually recognize Canada's existence until after the First World War.
55. Another goal that was blocked by British force was Cuba.
56. Again, the founding fathers regarded the taking over of Cuba
57. as essential to the survival of the nascent empire,
58. but the British fleet was in the way, and they were too powerful,
59. just like the Russians blocked John F. Kennedy's invasions.
60. However, they understood that it would sooner or later come.
61. The great grand strategist John Quincy Adams,
62. the sort of intellectual father of Manifest Destiny,
63. he pointed out in the 1820s that we just have to wait.
64. He said Cuba will sooner or later fall into our hands by the laws of political gravitation,
65. just as an apple falls from the tree.
66. What he meant is that over time the United States would become more powerful,
67. Britain would become weaker, and the deterrent would be overcome, which in fact finally happened.
68. And we should not ignore these early events. They are very much related to current history.
69. That made very clear by scholarship on current affairs So the major scholarly work on the Bush Doctrine George W Bush Doctrine the preemptive war doctrine major work is by John Lewis Gaddis who the
70. most respected historian of the Cold War period. It's on the roots of the Bush Doctrine.
71. And he traces it right back to John Quincy Adams, who is his hero, in particular to
72. Andrew Jackson's invasion of Florida, which conquered Florida from the Spanish. And that was
73. strongly approved by then Secretary of State Adams in a famous state paper in which he advocated the
74. principle of preemptive war on the basis of the thesis that expansion is the path to security.
75. So if we want to be secure, after all, we want to defend ourselves, we have to expand.
76. At that time, expand into Florida.
77. We were being threatened by what were called runaway slaves and lawless Indians who were in the way.
78. They were threatening us by their existence, by barring our expansion.
79. And as Gaddis points out, there's a straight line from that to George Bush.
80. now expansion is the path to security.
81. It means we take over the world, we take over space,
82. take over the galaxy.
83. There's no limit to how much you have to expand to guarantee security.
84. And that's been the principle from the beginning.
85. Gaddis is a good historian,
86. and he cites the right sources on the so-called Seminole War,
87. Jackson's conquest of Florida.
88. But he doesn't bother telling us what the sources say.
89. and it's worth looking at what they say.
90. They describe it as a war of murder and plunder and extermination,
91. driving out the indigenous population.
92. There were pretexts made, but they were so flimsy
93. that nobody paid much attention to them.
94. It was also the first executive war in violation of the Constitution,
95. setting a precedent which has been followed ever since.
96. There was no congressional authorization.
97. it's all
98. Adams lied through his teeth to Congress
99. I mean it's all very familiar
100. so Gaddis is correct
101. it is the model for the Bush
102. doctrine he approves of both of them
103. but that's a moral judgment
104. but his analysis
105. correct yes
106. what's happening now traces right back to the
107. wars of extermination
108. and plunder and murder
109. and lying and deceit
110. and so on executive wars
111. that John Quincy Adams was the great spokesman for.
112. Adams, incidentally, later in his life regretted this
113. after his own contributions were well in the past.
114. He condemned the Mexican War as an executive war
115. and a terrible precedent.
116. It wasn't a precedent.
117. He'd established the precedent.
118. And he also expressed remorse over what he called that hapless race of Native Americans,
119. which we are exterminating with such merciless and perfidious cruelty.
120. They knew what they were doing.
121. Contemporary history likes to prettify it,
122. but if you read the descriptions and the observations by the people who were involved,
123. they knew exactly what they were doing.
124. He expressed regret for it, but of course his own role was long past.
125. It commonly argued that American imperialism began in 1898 That when the U did finally succeed in conquering Cuba what called in history books liberating Cuba
126. namely intervening in order to prevent Cuba from liberating itself from Spain
127. and turning it into a virtual colony as it remained until 1959,
128. setting off hysteria in the United States, which hasn't ended yet.
129. also conquering, taking over Hawaii
130. which was stolen by force and guile from its population
131. Puerto Rico, another colony
132. soon moving to the Philippines
133. and liberating the Philippines
134. also liberating a couple of hundred thousand souls
135. to heaven in the process
136. and again the reverberations of that
137. extend right to the present
138. but the belief that the imperial thrust started in 1898
139. is an example of what historians of empire call the salt water fallacy,
140. the belief that you have an empire if you cross salt water.
141. In fact, if the Mississippi River were as wide as the Irish Sea,
142. the imperial thrust would have started much earlier,
143. but that's an irrelevance.
144. I mean, expanding over settled territory is no different from expanding over the waters.
145. So what happened in 1898 was just an extension of the process that began when the nascent empire, as it saw itself, was formed in its first moments.
146. A lot of this starts right in New England with New England merchants who wanted to, you know, very eager to take over the Pacific trade, the fabulous markets of China, which were always in their minds, which meant conquering the Northwest so you can control the ports and so on, meant kicking the British out and others out and so on.
147. that went on from right here.
148. The goal was William Seward,
149. Secretary of State in the 1860s,
150. pointed out that the central figure
151. in American imperialism,
152. that we have to gain command of the Empire of the Seas.
153. We've conquered the continent.
154. We're going to settle, take it over.
155. Monroe Doctrine was a declaration
156. that we'll take it over.
157. Everybody else keep out.
158. and the process of doing so continued through the 19th century and beyond until today.
159. But now we have to have command of the seas,
160. and that meant when the time was ripe, 30 years later,
161. when the apple started to fall from the tree,
162. given relative power, proceeding overseas to the overseas empire.
163. But it's basically no different than the earlier steps.
164. The leading philosophical imperialist, Brooks Adams, he pointed out that this is 1895, we're just on the verge of moving overseas extensively, that all Asia must be reduced to our economic system.
165. The Pacific must be turned into an inland sea, just like the Caribbean had been.
166. And there's no reason, he said, why the United States should not become a greater seat of wealth and power than ever was England, Rome, or Constantinople.
167. Well, again, there was a deterrent.
168. The European powers wanted a piece of the action in East Asia, and Japan by then was becoming a formidable force.
169. So it was necessary to explore more complex modes of game.
170. in command of turning the Pacific into an inland sea and going on.
171. And that was lucidly explained by Woodrow Wilson,
172. who is one of the most brutal and vicious interventionists in American history.
173. The probable permanent destruction of Haiti is one of his many accomplishments.
174. Those of you who study international relations theory or read about it
175. know that there's a notion of Wilsonian idealism.
176. The fact that that notion can exist is a very interesting commentary on our intellectual culture and scholarly culture.
177. If you look at his actual actions, fine words are easy enough.
178. But these are some of his fine words, which he was smart enough not to put into print.
179. He just wrote them for himself.
180. He said, since trade ignores national boundaries and the manufacturer insists on having the world as a market,
181. The flag of his nation must follow him, and the doors of the nations which are closed against him must be battered down,
182. even if the sovereignty of unwilling nations be outraged in the process.
183. No useful corner of the world may be overlooked or left unused.
184. That's 1907.
185. There's a current version of that, a crude version by Thomas Friedman, who says that McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, meaning the U.S. Air Force.
186. Well, that's a crude version of Wilson's point.
187. They got about batted down the doors by force and threat, and no corner of the world must be left unused, no useful corner.
188. There was a watershed in this process at the time of the Second World War.
189. At the time of the Second World War, the U.S. already had by far the largest economy in the world
190. and had for a long time, but it wasn't a major player in world affairs.
191. Britain was the leading player, France second, the United States lagging.
192. It controlled the hemisphere, had made forays into the Pacific, but it was not the leading player.
193. However, during the war, U.S. planners understood that the war was going to end with the U.S., the world-dominant power.
194. However, it turned out other competitors were going to destroy themselves and each other, and the U.S. would be left alone.
195. In fact, the U.S. gained enormously from the war.
196. Industrial production virtually quadrupled.
197. The war ended the Depression.
198. New Deal measures hadn't done so.
199. At the end of the war, the U.S. had literally half the world's wealth.
200. and competitors were virtually either damaged or destroyed,
201. and incomparable security.
202. Controlled the Western Hemisphere, controlled both oceans,
203. controlled the opposite side of both oceans,
204. just nothing remotely like it in history.
205. And during the war, planners understood that something like that was going to turn out.
206. It was obvious from the nature of the war.
207. From 1939 to 1945, there were high-level meetings, regular meetings, of the State Department planners and the Council on Foreign Relations, the sort of main external non-governmental input into foreign policy.
208. And they laid careful plans for the world that they expected to emerge.
209. It was a world they said in which the United States will hold unquestioned power and will ensure the limitation of any exercise of sovereignty by states that might interfere with U global designs Incidentally I not quoting neocons I quoting the Roosevelt administration the peak of American liberalism
210. They called for what they called an integrated policy to achieve military
211. and economic supremacy for the United States and bar any exercise of sovereignty
212. by anyone who would interfere with it.
213. And they would do this in a region that they called the Grand Area.
214. Well, in the early part of the war, 1939 to 1943, the Grand Area was defined as the Western Hemisphere routinely,
215. the former British Empire, which the U.S. would take over, and the Far East.
216. That would be the Grand Area.
217. They assumed at the time that there would be a German-led world, the rest.
218. So there would be a non-German world, that's us, and a German world.
219. As the Russians gradually ground down the Nazi armies after 1942, it became pretty clear that there wouldn't be a German world.
220. So the Grand Area was expanded to be as much of the world as could be controlled, limitless.
221. That's simply pursuing the old position that expansion is the path to security for the nascent empire of 1776.
222. These policies were laid down during the war, but then they were implemented right after the war.
223. In fact, now that we have available in the classified record the planning documents of the late 1940s,
224. it turns out they're very similar to the wartime planning.
225. One of the leading figures was George Kennan, who was head of the State Department policy planning staff.
226. He wrote one of his many important papers in 1948.
227. PPS 23, if you want to look it up, noted that the United States has half the world's wealth but only 6% of its population.
228. And our primary goal in foreign policy must be, as he put it, to maintain this disparity.
229. and in order to do so
230. we must put aside all vague and idealistic slogans
231. about democracy and human rights
232. those are for public propaganda
233. and colleges and so on
234. but we must put those aside
235. and keep to pure power concepts
236. there's no other way to maintain the disparity
237. and then in the same paper and elsewhere
238. he and his staff went through the world
239. assigned to each part of the world what would be what they called its function
240. within this global system in which the U.S. would have unchallenged power, unquestioned power.
241. So Latin America and the Middle East, the Middle East obviously would provide the energy resources
242. that we would control, gradually pushing out Britain, throwing out France immediately
243. and pushing out Britain slowly over the years
244. and turning it into essentially a junior partner,
245. as the British Foreign Office ruefully described their role at that time.
246. Latin America we simply control.
247. That's our little region over here,
248. which has never bothered anyone, as Secretary of War Stimson said.
249. So Latin America we keep, the Middle East we control.
250. Southeast Asia, its function was to provide resources
251. and raw materials to the former colonial powers.
252. And so Kennan went through the world and assigned them its function,
253. and there's no time to go through it,
254. but if you ever want an education on hysterical jingoist fanaticism you really should read their documents If you studied these issues you heard of at least NSE 68
255. which is discussed by everyone, but its rhetoric is omitted.
256. And you have to look at its rhetoric to see what's going on
257. in these crazed heads of the great thinkers.
258. Well, anyway, what do we do about Latin America?
259. Well, Kennan was pretty explicit about that, too.
260. He said in Latin America we should prefer police states.
261. The reason is, and he said, that harsh government measures of repression should cause no qualms
262. as long as the results are on balance favorable to our interests,
263. in particular as long as we guarantee the protection of our resources.
264. Our resources happen to be somewhere else, but that's a historical accident.
265. They're our resources, and we have to protect them.
266. And if you have to do it by the mailed fist, okay, that's the way you do it.
267. There is a long, ugly history.
268. There's no time to go through it.
269. But the Cold War history essentially follows this pattern.
270. The Cold War was a kind of a tacit compact between the superpower and the smaller power, the United States and Russia.
271. The compact was that the United States would be free to carry out violence and terror and atrocities limitless in its own domains,
272. and the Russians would be able to run their own dungeon without too much U.S. interference.
273. So the Cold War, in effect, was a war of the United States against the Third World
274. and of Russia against its much smaller domains in Eastern Europe.
275. And the events of the Cold War illustrate that.
276. Each great power used the other's threats as a pretext for repression and violence and destruction.
277. The United States way more than Russia, if you look at the record, reflecting its relative power.
278. But that's essentially the picture.
279. In fact, for the United States, the Cold War was basically a war against independent nationalism in the Third World, what was called radical nationalism.
280. Radical means doesn't follow orders.
281. So this constant struggle against radical nationalism, and particularly a leading thesis all the way through, is that even the smallest place, if it becomes independent, is a serious danger.
282. It's what Henry Kissinger called a virus that might infect others, like even a tiny place, you know, Grenada or something.
283. If it has successful independent development, others might get the idea that we can follow the rot-wool spread, as Acheson put it.
284. So you've got to stamp it out right at the source.
285. It's not a novel idea.
286. Any mafia don will explain it to you.
287. The godfather does not tolerate it when some small storekeeper doesn't pay protection money.
288. Not that he needs the money, but it's kind of like a bad idea.
289. Others might get the idea.
290. and in particular small, weak countries,
291. we have to crush them with particular violence.
292. It's easy, you know, nobody can stop you.
293. And others get the point.
294. That's a large part of international affairs right to the present.
295. Well, to learn about what the Cold War was about,
296. the obvious place to look is what happened when it ended.
297. Okay, so November 1989, the Berlin Wall fell,
298. the Soviet Union soon collapsed.
299. So what did the United States do?
300. How did it react I mean the pretext for everything that had happened in the past was you know the Russian monster the monolithic and ruthless conspiracy attempting to take over the world as John F Kennedy called it Well now the monolithic and ruthless conspiracy was gone So what do we do Well it turns out what we do is exactly the same thing
301. but with different pretexts.
302. And that was made clear instantly.
303. A couple of weeks after the Berlin Wall fell,
304. the United States invaded Panama,
305. killing unknown numbers of people.
306. We don't count our victims,
307. according to Panamanian human rights groups,
308. maybe a couple of thousand people.
309. The Panamanians take this seriously.
310. In fact, last December, they once again declared a national day of mourning, referring to the invasion.
311. I don't even think it made the newspapers here.
312. And when you crush ants in your path, you don't pay much attention to what they may have to say about it.
313. But they invaded Panama, had to veto some Security Council resolutions.
314. The point of the invasion was to kidnap a kind of a minor thug, Noriega, who was kidnapped, brought to the United States, tried, sentenced for crimes that were real.
315. But he had committed them when he was on the CIA payroll, almost without exception.
316. Small footnote.
317. But for that, we had to invade Panama and kill however many people it was, a couple of thousand probably.
318. and install a government of bankers and narco-traffickers
319. that drug trafficking shut up and so on.
320. But it was a successful invasion and applauded here.
321. It was kind of a footnote to history.
322. That's the kind of thing the U.S. does in its domains all the time.
323. But it was a little different.
324. For one thing, the pretexts were different.
325. This time it wasn't we were defending ourselves against the Russians.
326. It was we were defending ourselves against the Hispanic narco-traffickers
327. traffickers who were going to come and shoot up our kids and destroy the country and so on.
328. And in fact, Noriega was a minor narco-trafficker who had mostly been working for the CIA.
329. But he became unacceptable when he started dragging his feet on following orders, like he
330. didn't participate enthusiastically enough in the U.S. terrorist war against Nicaragua and so on.
331. So he obviously had to go. Well, one difference was that it had different pretexts. Another was
332. that the United States was much freer to act.
333. That was pointed out right away by Elliot Abrams,
334. who's now back in office running Middle East Affairs.
335. He pointed out right away that the invasion of Panama
336. was different from what had preceded
337. because we didn't have to be concerned
338. about the Russians stirring up trouble somewhere in the world.
339. We were free to use force without impediment.
340. And the correct observation goes on right until today.
341. Many of the violent acts that the U.S. has carried out since then,
342. it would have hesitated seriously about if there was a deterrent.
343. But now there are no deterrents anymore, so you do what you like.
344. That was a change.
345. Again, if you want to learn more about what the Cold War was about,
346. have a look at the documents that were produced right afterwards.
347. This is George Bush I.
348. Early 1990, he gave his new budget request.
349. There was a new national security strategy,
350. and they described what the post-Cold War world would be.
351. It turns out exactly as before.
352. We still have to have a huge, massive military force,
353. but we have to maintain what they call the defense industrial base.
354. That's a euphemism for high-tech industry.
355. For the public, talk about our belief in free trade and free enterprise,
356. but anyone who knows anything about the U.S. economy
357. knows it's based extensively on the state sector.
358. High-tech industry is very largely within the state sector,
359. and it's typically under Pentagon cover
360. as long as it's electronics-based.
361. And that's called the defense industrial base.
362. So we have to maintain the huge...
363. huge public subsidy to high-tech industry called the Defense Industrial Base.
364. We have to have a massive military, but it has different targets.
365. As they pointed out, before this, we were aimed at a weapons-rich target, namely Russia.
366. Now we're aiming at a target-rich region, namely the Third World.
367. So that's what we need the major military forces for.
368. In fact, that's pretty much what it was in the past, too, but now it's openly conceded.
369. With regard to the Middle East specifically, we have to maintain intervention forces directed at the Middle East.
370. And then comes this interesting comment.
371. We need the same intervention forces directed at the Middle East where the problems that we faced could not have been laid at the Kremlin's door.
372. Okay, so sorry, folks.
373. We've been lying to you for the last 50 years claiming we're defending ourselves against the Russians.
374. But now that the Russians aren't there, it turns out the problems couldn't have been laid at the Kremlin's door, which is correct.
375. The problems were independent nationalism, and they continue to be so.
376. But now it's, as I said, open and clear because the pretext is gone.
377. You're listening to Noam Chomsky on the origins of U.S. imperialism.
378. This is Independent Alternative Radio.
379. For copies of this program, call us 1-800-444-1977 or go to our website, alternativeradio.org.
380. We have to also be concerned now about what they call the technological sophistication of third world powers.
381. It's a really overwhelming threat.
382. Kind of like Hillary Clinton a day or two ago saying that if Iran attacks Israel with nuclear weapons, it will obliterate Iran.
383. The chance of Iran attacking Israel with nuclear weapons is somewhere below an asteroid hitting Israel.
384. But it doesn't matter.
385. It's a nice throwaway line.
386. But that's the kind of threat we have to worry about.
387. It's kind of like Ronald Reagan in 1985 strapping on his cowboy boots
388. and declaring a state of national emergency because of the threat posed to the national security of the United States
389. by the government of Nicaragua, which was only two days away from Harlingen, Texas.
390. So we really had to tremble in terror.
391. Well, that's standard.
392. It had to increase after the end of the Cold War with the main pretexts gone, and it has.
393. this is all consistent with a conception of aggression that has developed through the period
394. and right up till today.
395. Aggression has a meaning, but that meaning doesn't apply to us.
396. By U.S. leaders, aggression means resistance.
397. So anyone who resists the United States is guilty of aggression.
398. And that makes sense if we own the world.
399. So any act of resistance is aggression against us.
400. So when the U.S. invaded South Vietnam in the early 1960s under Kennedy, Kennedy said we're defending ourselves against what he called the assault from within.
401. And the leading liberal, like Adlai Stevenson, described it as internal aggression.
402. So internal aggression by South Vietnamese against us, and of course we're there by right because we own the world.
403. and that continues right to the present
404. so I keep a lot of time
405. because nothing much changed
406. and come right up till today so the big problem of the Middle East now the growing aggressiveness of Iran that what causing the problems of the Middle East Well you know aggression has
407. a meaning. It means sending your armed forces into the territory of some other state.
408. When the latest case of Iranian aggression was a couple of centuries ago,
409. unless we count Iranian aggression that was carried out under the Shah, which we approved of,
410. the tyrant who we imposed conquered a couple of Arab islands, but that was okay.
411. But nevertheless, we have to defend ourselves against Iranian aggression in Iraq, in Lebanon, and in Gaza,
412. where Iran is carrying out aggression, meaning people there are doing things we don't like,
413. and Russia isn't around, so we'll blame it on Iran.
414. That's aggression.
415. If somebody was looking at this who hadn't been adequately brainwashed by a good Western education,
416. they would collapse in ridicule.
417. I mean, yes, there are foreign fighters in Iraq
418. and plenty of foreign arms in there,
419. namely from the country that invaded Iraq.
420. But they're not foreign.
421. Remember, they're indigenous
422. because we're indigenous everywhere.
423. That follows from owning the world,
424. going back to the nascent empire.
425. It's spread.
426. So therefore, we're not foreign fighters there
427. or anywhere else.
428. We're indigenous.
429. And it's the foreign fighters who have to be stopped.
430. You'll notice that there's a serious logical fallacy in what I've just been saying.
431. It overlooks two fundamental principles, which are the crucial principles of world order.
432. The rest is footnotes.
433. The first principle is that we own the world and Iran doesn't.
434. So, therefore, the principles don't apply to us.
435. They only apply to others.
436. And kind of a corollary to that is that everything we do is necessarily with the best of intentions.
437. That's a tautology.
438. You don't have to give evidence or arguments.
439. And that's a constant feature of the intellectual culture, almost without exception, across the spectrum.
440. So, for example, during the invasion of Vietnam, I hope I don't have to describe it to you,
441. but it killed several million people, destroyed three countries.
442. It was just a monstrous atrocity.
443. There was vast discussion of it, mainstream discussion.
444. But if you look closely, you'll find that there was never a principled critique of the war.
445. That was not permissible.
446. Just keep to the kind of left critical end, and the rest gets worse.
447. At the end of the war, Anthony Lewis of the New York Times wrapped it up.
448. He said, speaking from the left liberal extreme,
449. that the United States entered the war with blundering efforts to do good.
450. Notice, efforts to do good is a tautology.
451. We did it, so therefore it's efforts to do good.
452. So it's not saying anything.
453. Blundering, because it didn't work as well as they wanted, at least.
454. It worked pretty well, but not as well as they wanted.
455. So we started with blundering efforts to do good,
456. but by 1969 it was clear that we could not establish democracy in South Vietnam
457. at a cost acceptable to ourselves.
458. Well, established democracy in South Vietnam is on a par with some Soviet commissar
459. saying that Stalin was trying to establish democracy in Eastern Europe.
460. But that doesn't matter. It's us, so we were doing.
461. But the problem with it was the cost to us.
462. So that meant we had to sort of start pulling out.
463. Well, that's the critique at the very left end.
464. I'll take one more example.
465. The leading American liberal historian,
466. maybe the most famous historian of his generation, Arthur Schlesinger,
467. who was at first a super hawk like the whole Kennedy administration was no alternative to victory in their invasion of South Vietnam which is what it was But by the late 60s he was having second thoughts and he wrote a book expressing them
468. He said, we all pray that the hawks will be correct in hoping that the surge of the day,
469. a big influx of troops, will be successful.
470. And if they are, we will be praising the wisdom and statesmanship of the American government
471. in winning the war.
472. and he was aware of what it was.
473. He said, leaving a land of wreck and ruin
474. with its institutions destroyed may never recover,
475. but we'll nevertheless be praising the wisdom
476. and the statesmanship of the American government
477. and we pray that they're right, the hawks.
478. But he said they probably aren't right.
479. It's probably going to be too costly for us.
480. No question about the cost to the Vietnamese,
481. a land of wreck and ruin.
482. So therefore, maybe we ought to rethink it.
483. Well, that's the criticism at the critical end of the spectrum,
484. the dovish critical end.
485. Then from there on over to the jingoist end of the spectrum, you have a kind of a debate.
486. Could we have won with more force or was it a lost cause anyway and so on?
487. It's rather striking that the population is out of this.
488. So in 1969, the year that Lewis pointed to, 70% of the population thought that the war was fundamentally wrong and immoral, not a mistake.
489. try to find anything in the literature of educated sectors
490. that says it was anything but a mistake,
491. that it was fundamentally wrong and immoral.
492. That's not unusual.
493. Internally, the government was aware of this.
494. One of the things that is not taught but should be read,
495. because it's very illuminating,
496. is the final part of the Pentagon Papers.
497. Pentagon Papers are not declassified archives.
498. They are stolen archives,
499. so we know a better idea of what they were thinking.
500. The Pentagon favors end in 1968, right after the Tet Offensive in January 1968,
501. which convinced the business world this is going to cost us too much.
502. We better start winding it down.
503. There was a request from the government to send another couple hundred thousand troops to Vietnam,
504. but they were dubious about doing it and didn't do it finally
505. because they were afraid that there would be an uprising in the United States,
506. a popular uprising of unprecedented proportions,
507. and they would need the troops for civil disorder control
508. because of protests among underprivileged people, women, youth, and others
509. who just weren't going to take anymore.
510. They didn't admit that they were listening, but they were, and they always do.
511. if they needed the troops for control, and they sort of slowly started backing off.
512. Another six years of war devastated Laos and Cambodia and much of Vietnam,
513. but at least they started winding down.
514. Well, that was 1969.
515. Notice that you can take the rhetoric about the Vietnam War
516. and translate it almost verbatim into discussion of the Iraq War.
517. There is no principled critique within the mainstream.
518. By principled critique, I mean the kind of critique that we would carry out reflexively and do when somebody else commits aggression.
519. Let's say when the Russians invade Czechoslovakia or Afghanistan or Chechnya,
520. we don't ask, is it too costly if David Petraeus could achieve anything in Iraq like what Putin achieved in Chechnya?
521. He'd probably be crowned king or something like that.
522. But nevertheless, we condemn it, rightly.
523. Doesn't matter whether it worked or not or whether it was costly to them or not.
524. Or when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait killing probably a fraction of the number of people that Bush killed a couple of months earlier when he invaded Panama But we nevertheless denounce it as aggression
525. That's a principled objection.
526. But when we carry out aggression, it's inconceivable.
527. And that goes back to the principles that I mentioned.
528. We own the world, and everything we do is by definition good in intention.
529. So the worst that it can be is what Barack Obama calls a strategic blunder or what Hillary Clinton calls getting into a civil war which we can't win.
530. In fact, Iraqis overwhelmingly blame the civil war on us, but that's irrelevant too.
531. That's the level of critique, and it follows from the principles that I mentioned.
532. And it governs news coverage too, in fact, pretty openly.
533. Here's John Byrne, most respected correspondent in Iraq.
534. He says that the United States is the prominent economic, political, and military power in the world
535. and has been the greatest force for stability in the world, certainly since World War II.
536. It would be a dark day if the outcome in Iraq were to destroy the credibility of American power
537. to destroy America's willingness to use its power in the world to achieve good,
538. to fight back against totalitarianism, authoritarianism, gross human rights abuses.
539. In other words, that's the framework of reporting.
540. Reporting must be cheering for the home team.
541. Nothing else is conceivable because of the depth of these principles
542. which are instilled into people in the educational system and propaganda.
543. You can't see the world in any other terms.
544. So it's neutral, objective reporting to say we're cheering for the home team.
545. And it's quite open.
546. It's interesting that he said it so clearly, but he says that's particularly true, he says, in the Middle East.
547. Notice that it makes not the slightest difference what the people of the world or the Middle East think.
548. That's not relevant, or for that matter, what the people in the United States think.
549. So the Vietnam War was benign efforts to do good,
550. which were too costly to us,
551. even when 70% of the population said
552. that's fundamentally wrong and immoral, not a mistake.
553. The population here is as irrelevant as the population in the rest of the world,
554. unless you're frightened of them
555. and you have to keep your troops here for civil disorder control.
556. What do people think?
557. Well, what people think we know from international polls
558. that are regularly taken.
559. They think that the United States
560. is the most frightening, dangerous country in the world.
561. Not John Burns' line.
562. And there's overwhelming opposition to U.S. force.
563. There is almost everywhere.
564. It's also true of the Middle East,
565. and there's nothing new about it.
566. Our current George Bush, after 9-11,
567. asked why do they hate us,
568. and went on, they hate our freedoms, and so on.
569. You remember that.
570. What the press should have reported
571. is that he was just repeating a question that President Eisenhower asked in 1958.
572. Eisenhower asked his staff,
573. why is there a campaign of hatred against us among the people of the Middle East?
574. And the National Security Council, the highest planning agency, had provided an answer.
575. He said the people in the Middle East, their perception is that the United States supports brutal tyrannies,
576. and blocks democracy and development,
577. and does so because we want control of their oil.
578. And then they went on to say,
579. yeah, perception's more or less correct,
580. and that's the way it ought to be.
581. So therefore,
582. pain of hatred against us. And so it continues. After 9-11, the Wall Street Journal, to its credit,
583. conducted some polls in the Middle East. They didn't care about the general population,
584. what's demeaningly called the Arab street. They polled what they called moneyed Muslims,
585. bankers, managers of multinational corporations, you know, kind of guys we like. And they found
586. pretty much the same thing as 1958.
587. They don't have any objection to neoliberalism or any of this stuff.
588. In fact, they love it.
589. But they condemn the United States for supporting harsh, tyrannical regimes,
590. which it does, and opposing democracy and development, which it does,
591. because we want to control their energy resources.
592. By 2001, they had other objections,
593. namely Israel's U.S. back to vicious repression and dispossession of Palestinians, which is ongoing,
594. and also the sanctions against Iraq.
595. The sanctions against Iraq didn't get much play here because we don't pay attention to our crimes.
596. That's crucial.
597. That's part of the principle that everything we do is good.
598. But they do pay attention.
599. In fact, we know a lot about them, or we can if we want to.
600. We do not want to publicize our genocidal actions.
601. But people in the Middle East noticed and didn't like it,
602. and that increased the campaign of hatred among the moneyed Muslims, our friends there.
603. Don't have to think about the others.
604. But it doesn't matter what they think.
605. The same is true of the invasion of Iraq.
606. The Iraqis regard it as worse than the Mongol invasions.
607. You know, the great success story of Petraeus is to establish warlord armies,
608. which will probably tear the country up in the future.
609. You know, there's been massive ethnic cleansing.
610. And that's been accelerated by the Petraeus strategy
611. of building essentially walled communities.
612. Well, what does the public think about all these things?
613. Well, we know about Iraq.
614. The public wants to get out, but they're irrelevant.
615. What about Iran?
616. The next major crisis looming,
617. which will make Iraq look like a tea party if they go through with it.
618. There are opinions about this.
619. There's the opinion of American elites, which you can read, say, in the New York Times or Washington Post or liberal journals and so on.
620. They'll tell you that Iran is defying the world by enriching uranium.
621. Well, exactly who is the world?
622. Okay, well, we can find out.
623. There is an organization called G77, 130 countries, includes the vast majority of the people of the world.
624. They vigorously support Iran's right to all the rights guaranteed by the Non-Proliferation Treaty,
625. including enriching uranium for nuclear power.
626. So they're not part of the world.
627. What about the American population?
628. An overwhelming majority of the American population agrees with G77,
629. namely that Iran should have the right to produce nuclear energy but not nuclear weapons.
630. So the American population is not part of the world.
631. So non-aligned countries are not part of the world.
632. American population is not part of the world.
633. Obviously, Iranians are not part of the world.
634. So who's left?
635. Well, the world consists of people who follow Washington's orders.
636. You can't say it includes the United States
637. because the overwhelming majority of Americans are not part of the world.
638. They oppose this, just as on many other issues.
639. And that goes on without comment, you know,
640. correctly if we're cheerleaders for the home team,
641. And that's the framework for discussion.
642. Is there a solution to the crisis with Iran which is extremely serious If the U goes through with its plans like I said it might make Iraq look like a tea party
643. Well, there are solutions, potential solutions.
644. One of them is what I just said,
645. that Iran should have the rights of any signer of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
646. Israel, Pakistan, and India also ought to have those rights
647. if they sign the treaty.
648. Since they haven't done it, they don't have those rights.
649. But, of course, they're doing it because we say it's okay.
650. But that's the opinion of the large majority of Americans.
651. And the same large majority, this runs around 75%, says that a nuclear weapons-free zone should be established in the region,
652. including Iran, Israel, American forces deployed there, and so on.
653. Well, that would end the crisis.
654. Is that possible?
655. Well, it's supported by the large majority of Americans, but as I mentioned, they're not part of the world.
656. It's Iran's official policy, but they're not part of the world.
657. The U.S. and Britain are formally committed to it, in fact, more so than any other powers,
658. for a very simple reason, which we would read about if we had a free press.
659. When the United States and Britain went to war with Iraq and tried to find a thin legal cover for it,
660. They appealed to UN Security Council Resolution 687 of 1991, which ordered Iraq to get rid of its weapons of mass destruction.
661. And as you remember, Britain and the United States claimed they hadn't lived up to it.
662. Well, you know, you're all literate.
663. You can read Resolution 687.
664. It commits the United States and Britain to work to establish a nuclear-free weapon zone in the Middle East.
665. So if you can appeal to it as a justification for aggression, you're compelled to follow its provisions.
666. But to point that out would be really to break the rules.
667. You can, again, do a Google search and see if you can find anyone near the mainstream who's ever bothered to point this out.
668. Another way to move towards a solution would be to end the threats against Iran.
669. The threats, if anyone cares, are a violation of the UN Charter,
670. but for outlaw states, that's irrelevant.
671. Again, the large majority of the American population
672. thinks we should end the threats
673. and move to normal diplomatic relations with Iran.
674. Well, if these steps were taken, the crisis would essentially be over.
675. So we can ask, who's defying the world
676. if the world includes its people, including the American people?
677. And the answer is very simple and straightforward.
678. Those who are defying the world are the ones in power in Washington and in London
679. and in the editorial offices and the university faculties and so on.
680. They're defying the world.
681. But not Iran, not on these issues.
682. And, in fact, it's a serious matter because it could lead to a total disaster.
683. And the same is true on other issues.
684. So the other major live issue in the Middle East is Israel-Palestine.
685. Well, what does the world think about this?
686. There is an international consensus supported by about two-thirds of the American population,
687. supported by former non-aligned countries, supported by the Arab world,
688. formally at least supported by Europe, obviously Latin America.
689. In fact, everyone, Iran supports it, Hamas supports it.
690. It's for a two-state settlement on the international borders,
691. meaning pre-June 1967 borders with minor modifications.
692. Who opposes that?
693. Well, for the last 30 years, the United States has opposed it, and it continues to oppose it.
694. And Israel of course opposes it though if the U would support it Israel would necessarily go along So the problem is right in Washington This begins in 1976 when the U vetoed the first Security Council resolution
695. calling for a settlement in these terms.
696. It was introduced by the Arab states, backed by the PLO.
697. Actually, it even goes back earlier to 1971 when President Sadat of Egypt
698. offered Israel a full peace treaty in return for withdrawal from occupied territories.
699. What he cared about was withdrawal from the Sinai, where Israel was kicking out thousands of peasants and settling.
700. He didn't say anything about the Palestinians.
701. They were not an issue at the time.
702. Israel recognized it as a genuine peace offer and decided to reject it.
703. They made a fateful decision preferring expansion to security.
704. Peace treaty with Egypt would have ended security problems.
705. The important question is what would happen in the United States.
706. the godfather. There was a battle, a bureaucratic internal battle in the United States. Kissinger
707. won, and the U.S. followed his policy, which he called stalemate, meaning no negotiations,
708. just force. That set the stage for the 1973 war and on to a whole list of horrors since.
709. And up till today, the United States and Israel have been leading the rejectionist camp. By now,
710. they are the rejectionist camp, not the U.S. population, but the government. So who's defying
711. the world on this issue? Is there a possible settlement? Sure there is, but it resides here.
712. In fact, on issue after issue, the major problems happen to be right here, which is a very optimistic
713. conclusion, because it means that we can do something about it. It's here that we can have
714. an influence, not elsewhere.
715. That was Noam Chomsky on the origins of U.S. imperialism.
716. This classic from the AR archives was recorded at Boston University in 2008.
717. Noam Chomsky, the legendary MIT professor, has been a leading voice for peace and social justice for many decades.
718. This program is produced by Alternative Radio, an independent nonprofit in our 40th year.
719. We're supported solely by individuals just like you.
720. We feature such voices as Arundhati Roy, Taimur Rehman, Chris Hedges, and Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz.
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722. To access our complete audio and book catalog, just go to our website, AlternativeRadio.org.
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724. For copies of today's program, Noam Chomsky on the Origins of U.S. Imperialism,
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727. That's 1-800-444-1977.
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732. Joe Rich is our general manager and editor I David Bar Thank you for listening
733. We go out with Sonny Rollins, the tenor saxophonist great performing What Is There To Say.
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745. A Midsummer Night's Dream is back.
746. Alongside Romeo and Juliet, Treasure Island, Noel Coward's Waiting in the Wings,
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