Re: War on Terror deaths Vs other War

On May 30, 8:05 pm, "Paul G." <carb...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On May 30, 4:23 pm, Bill C <tritonri...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:



You trot out ignorant, inaccurate shit like this:

Why do they call it a war? Iraqis only had sticks and stones to defend
themselves from the invasion.

That's called hyperbole. He just means they were WAY outgunned, and
they were. During the invasion, Iraqis were charging M1A1 tanks with
AK-47's. There is little practical difference between charging a tank
with a stick and charging a tank with small arms. Either way you are
going to get mowed down.

 They were very well equipped before the first fiasco, and pretty well
equipped going into this one. they are still well equipped, and
getting more sophisticated weapons every day.

Um... we're a superpower. They were a bombed-out third world country.
Both wars were like shooting fish in a barrel.
-Paul



An Hour With Noam Chomsky on Iraq, War Profiteers & The Media
In a recent speech at Columbia University, Noam Chomsky strongly
criticizes the Bush Administration’s war against Iraq. He speaks
against the power investors have over world affairs, the media’s
capitulation to them and much more. [includes transcript]


Today we spend the hour hearing a speech by famed linguist and
political activist: Professor Noam Chomsky.

This past November he delivered a speech entitled “After the War” to a
packed theater at Columbia University. The event was dedicated to the
memory of renowned scholar, activist and intellectual, Professor
Edward Said. He passed away earlier this year after a decade long
battle with leukemia.

In his speech, Chomsky strongly criticizes the Bush Administration’s
war against Iraq. He speaks against the power investors have over
world affairs, the media’s capitulation to them and much more.

Noam Chomsky is an institute professor and professor of linguistics at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author of
Hegemony or Survival: America? Quest For Global Dominance, 9-11, Power
and Terror and many other books. He spoke at Miller Theater on
November 20th, 2003.

Rush Transcript
This transcript is available free of charge. However, donations help
us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our
TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.
Donate - $25, $50, $100, More...
NOAM CHOMSKY: The first remark has to do with the title. The title
that was announced was after the war, which is a good topic. We should
be concerned with what is coming ahead, but any title like that,
especially in the United States requires kind of a word of caution.
There is a trap which is deeply rooted in the intellectual culture,
and we have to avoid it. The trap is the doctrine that I sometimes
call the doctrine of change of course. It’s a doctrine that’s invoked
every two or three years in the United States. The content of the
doctrine is yes, in the past, we did some wrong things because of our
innocence or out of inadvertence, but now that’s all over, so we can’t
not waste any more time on this boring, stale stuff, which
incidentally we suppressed and denied while it was happening, but must
now be effaced from history as we march forward to a glorious future.
And if you look, it is literally every two or three years that the
doctrine is invoked. There is a qualification. We are permitted, in
fact, required to recall with great horror the misdeeds of official
enemies, and we’re also required to admire with awe, our own
magnificent achievements in the past in both categories, relying in no
small measure on self-serving reconstructions, which quickly collapse
if you follow the path of paying attention to the facts, but
fortunately, that dangerous course is excluded by the convenient
doctrine of change of course, which blocks any such heresies. The
doctrine is entirely understandable on the part of those who are
engaged in criminal enterprises, which means just about any power
system, any system of concentrated power past and present, and of
course, it includes its acolytes, one of the major commitments of
respected intellectuals right throughout history is to be the acolytes
of the systems of power.

Since intellectuals write history, but it doesn’t look like that, you
have to be cautious about what people write about themselves. If you
look carefully, you will find that the course—the doctrine is
dishonest, cowardly, but has advantages. It does protect us from the
danger of understanding what’s happening before our eyes, and,
therefore, inducing the kind of conformism that is useful to systems
of power and domination. So, it has its advantages. In any event, the
word after in the title is appropriate but with some qualifications
that should be kept in mind. And what has happened before, if we
escape the domination of the doctrine, what has happened before can be
expected to persist for elementary reasons. Policies and actions are
rooted in institutions. There’s some variation, but limited. The
institutions are stable. Therefore, it’s only reasonable to expect the
policies and actions to persist, adopt adapted to circumstances. If
you want to understand anything about the world that is to come, and
have any influence on the way it evolves, more than useful to keep
this in mind. Well, let’s go to after the war. We might as well,
adopting the doctrine of change of course, we might as well start with
today. So, today our leader is in London. The mayor of London greeted
him by declaring that George Bush is the greatest threat to life on
the planet that we have most probably ever seen. As I walked in, I was
told by someone that they just heard over the radio that someone else
I forget who, announced that he is the most unwelcome visitor to
England since William the Conqueror. These sentiments are described
here as rather—met with some surprise, but that reflects again the
useful category of the useful quality of forgetting the recent past.
Similar sentiments have been very widely expressed since September,
2002, to some extent before, but particularly since then.

Within weeks after September, 2002, a crucial moment in world affairs,
within weeks even the mainstream U.S. press was compelled to report
that the world now regards George Bush as a greater threat to peace
than Saddam Hussein. That fact is an understatement because much as
Saddam Hussein was hated and reviled, he was not regarded as a threat.
Even by the countries that he had attacked, Iran and Kuwait, both of
which understood perfectly well that after a decade of sanctions that
had devastated the society, and after having been effectively
disarmed, however awful Saddam Hussein was, he wasn’t going to
threaten anybody. In fact, it was the weakest country in the region.
One of the reasons why it was attacked, it met the primary conditions
for target of attack, it was defenseless and known to be. In fact,
they had joined the other states in the region in trying to integrate
Iraq back into the region for several years over strong U.S.
objections. So, the statement, while correct is understated. These
kinds of reactions that you hear today and you have been hearing for
the past year if you pay attention, are as far as I’m aware, are
entirely without precedent. I can’t remember anything like them. And
how one decides to evaluate the sentiments that are expressed, one
thing is clear, no sane person should ignore them.

Just a couple of weeks ago, there was a European Union poll which
aroused some interest here. The poll was asking Europeans what they
thought was the greatest threat to world peace, and it turned ed out
that the United States was ranked right next to North Korea and Iraq,
same percentage. Well, that was felt to be a surprise, but it
shouldn’t have been a surprise, because that’s what polls have been
showing for a year, over a year, growing concern and fear that the
United States is out of control under the present leadership, and is a
tremendous threat to peace. Actually, the poll—the commentary on the
poll focused on something else, namely, the U.S., North Korea, and
Iran were ranked right below Israel, which was ranked as the greatest
threat to peace. But my strong suspicion is that that’s because the
questions in the poll were wrongly asked. You have to be really
careful reading polls. Israel in itself is not a threat–much of a
threat at all, but U.S. support for Israel is an enormous threat to
world peace. And I presume that that’s what people were answering.
However, the question was phrased, and if that’s correct, then the
major threat perceived to world peace in Europe are U.S. support for
Israel, which is the regional superpower and the U.S. actions
elsewhere in the world. Well, if that’s the right interpretation, then
the polls are reflecting an understanding of phenomena that are real
and important and widely understood. They were just pointed out in a
important book that is about to appear by Dilip Hero, one of the most
astute and knowledgeable commentator, historians dealing with the
contemporary Middle East and the international framework in which its
problems arise. What he says is–about–after the war, the book’s about
the Iraq war, and its consequences. He says, that has actually
happened in Iraq is something deadlier than the worst scenarios
sketched by the so-called liberal pessimists. The invasion of Iraq has
led to an alliance of Arab nationalism with Islamic militancy steering
both of them towards an amalgam, which is very ominous for the region
and in fact for the world. Again, today’s newspapers give you or
examples of that. That’s another contributing factor to this extremely
dangerous amalgam is U.S. support for Israel’s continued rejection of
a long-standing international consensus on a political settlement for
the Israel-Palestine issue, and its ongoing actions to undermine any
possibility that a political settlement can be reached. Always
crucially with decisive U.S. support, otherwise those actions are
impossible for. For 30 years now, the U.S. has been unilaterally, and
that’s worth stressing, unilaterally blocking the possibility of a
political settlement and providing the decisive diplomatic, economic
and military means that permit the actions that step by step make any
such settlement impossible. That’s dramatically true right now. It’s
all consistently suppressed in the doctrinal system, and now of
course, it’s to be–if even mentioned, eliminated from history by the
usual means, the convenient doctrine of change of course. Well, this
has been decisive for 30 years, and it’s going on, and we should pay
attention to it if we care about the future. Today’s news again gives
further reasons.

With regard to Iraq, the predictions before the war by intelligence
agencies and independent analysts were pretty uniform. It was
predicted that the invasion of Iraq would increase the threat of
terror, and would yield the amalgam that Dilip Hero is talking about.
It would increase the terror and of proliferation of the weapons of
mass destruction. The logic of that is straight-forward. If you
announce to people I’m going to come and attack you, at will without
any pretext, they don’t say thank you. Here’s’ my neck, cut it. What
they do is respond in some fashion. No one can respond to the United
States in military force. The U.S. spends about as much by now as the
rest of world combined, and it is far more technologically advanced,
so people turn to the weapons available to them, and the weak do have
weapons available to them. Two, in fact, terror and weapons of mass
destruction, which are now not that hard to construct. Sooner or later
it, will be united. For example, they might be united in a small
nuclear weapon sneaked into a New York Hotel room. Not at all out of
the question. And by inciting terror and inciting proliferation, as a
deterrent or for revenge, those probabilities are being increased.
Well, those were the predictions before the Iraq war, and there have
been—they have been verified, not surprisingly, since the war. It has
apparently been, according to specialists on the various countries
involved, stimulated proliferation, not surprisingly, and it has
certainly stimulated terror. The same intelligence agencies and
independent analysts are reporting a sharp spike in recruitment for Al
Qeada-style organizations, and if you pay attention and you observe an
increase of horrendous terrorist acts all over the world.

Exactly as predicted, the administration was certainly aware of this.
I mean they can figure it out themselves even without reading the
reports of their own intelligence agencies, and they don’t desire that
outcome, but they don’t care that much. It just has a low priority,
ranked alongside of other concerns. And those other concerns are not
insignificant. Some of them are domestic. These are not conservatives.
They are radical reactionary statists, who are dedicated to unraveling
the progressive achievements, legislation and actions of the past
century, and to do that, they have a very narrow hold on political
power. They must maintain it in order to carry out that program. You
see it day by day in the legislations produced and the actions
undertaken and they have an international program, which has been
announced, dominating the world by force, permanently, preventing any
challenge, and in particular, controlling the very crucial energy
resources of the world. Mostly in the Middle East, secondarily in
Central Asia and a few other places. Those are serious goals and they
are worth undertaking from the perspective of the policy managers,
even if it does increase the threat of destruction, in fact maybe the
destruction of the species, proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction, the stimulation of terror to which the population of the
United States will also be subject as before. How do Iraqis feel about
all of this? That’s critically important and much harder to determine.
It’s harder to determine the attitudes of people under military
occupation, but it’s not impossible. There’s a series of U.S.-run
polls taking place. They’re informative, so one recent poll actually
had a front page story in the New York Times, with a headline saying
that Iraqis are pleased to be rid of Saddam Hussein. Well, we didn’t
need a poll to tell us that. And presumably, although the question
wasn’t asked. Are they happy to be relieved of the murderous U.S.
sanctions, which had killed hundreds of thousands of people,
devastated the society, and reduced it to total ruin? That question
wasn’t asked because you’re not allowed to mention it. You’re not
allowed to mention that this took place. We don’t consider our own
massive crimes there. The doctrine of change, of course, is so extreme
that you don’t even mention it while it’s going on, let alone in the
past. So, that question wasn’t asked. And what that almost predictable
answer wasn’t mentioned. Also unmentioned is the fact that the
murderous sanctions are a large part of the reason why Iraqis were
unable to send Saddam Hussein to the same fate that greeted other
comparable monsters and tyrants and torturers who were also supported
by the people who are now in office in Washington, just as they
supported Saddam Hussein right through his worst atrocities and long
after the war with Iran.

There’s quite a rogue’s gallery of, Ceausescu of Romania, the Saddam
supported by the Reagan and Bush administrations right through the
last minute overthrown from within and the same is true of a long
list. The Marcos, Duvalier, Mubutu, Suharto, a long list, all strongly
supported, as long as they could maintain power, overthrown from
within, ranking easily many of them, with Saddam Hussein in brutality
and terror, but if you destroy a society, and you compel the society
to rely on the tyrant just for survival, and things like that are not
going to happen. This has been understood for a long time, and again,
those are some of the things that you just don’t mention just like you
don’t mention the effects of the sanctions. Well, there was more
interesting aspect of the poll in the headline. If you read down
further in the column, there were other results given.

One of the questions asked in the same poll was–people were asked for
their–how they evaluated foreign leaders, favorability ranking. Do you
have a favorable opinion of x, y and z? The one who ranked highest was
by far was French president Jacques Chirac. He was the international
symbol of opposition to the invasion. Well below him, you found Bush,
and even below him, the rather pathetic Blair, trailing behind. That
was reported without comment, although evidently, The New York Times
reporter had some–bothered him a little and he came back to it a
couple of weeks later and mentioned it in another context and had a
comment on it. He gave the figures. His comment was “go figure.” Well,
I’m not sure how exactly how to interpret that, but I presume what he
meant is crazy Arabs. Go figure. Here we liberate them, and they are
not thanking us for liberating them. What can it possibly mean, if
they regard Jacques Chirac as the most–give him the most highest
favorable ranking of any foreign leader. Well, you know, figure
Columbia students might be able to figure out a different
interpretation, but anyway for the Times it was, “go figure.” Turning
to another poll where this question was asked recently. How do you
regard the coalition forces? Are they an occupying force or a
liberating force? By five to one, they were called–an occupying force.
Should the coalition forces leave? By five to three, Iraqis wanted
them to leave. That’s a remarkable figure, because about 95% of the
population also reports that the security situation is much worse than
it was before the invasion. And the only thing that’s keeping any kind
of a lid on it is the occupying forces. But nevertheless, by a very
substantial majority, they want them to leave. Well, what does that
mean? Again, you can figure it out. Other polls ask people why did the
United States invade Iraq? Well, here it’s worth–in the United States,
there’s some straight answers. So the official reason that widely
repeated as long as you can hang on to, is that Iraq had weapons of
mass destruction and their links to terror, which was such a threat to
us that we had invade it.

And then there was a massive government propaganda campaign in
September of 2002 when the invasion was effectively announced and it
did drive a large part of the U.S. population completely off the
international spectrum. The United States was the only country where a
large part of the population was genuinely afraid of Saddam Hussein,
because of his weapons of mass destruction, and his links to terror.
It turns out that the people who had those attitudes, those attitudes
are strongly correlated with support for the war. Which is not in the
least surprising. If I believed those things, I would support the war,
too. I mean, if you believe that here is a murderous tyrant
accumulating weapons of mass destruction, responsible for 9-11, linked
to Al qaeda, planning new terror, we have to stop him in time, there’s
a rational decision to invade Iraq. Of course, there never was any
reason to believe there was a particle of truth to that. As I say, the
U.S. was alone in having any detectable part of the population even
have those opinions. Even in places like Iran and Kuwait. The lying
about that continues until the present. It doesn’t matter that it was
all debunked. So George Bush in his radio addresses a couple of weeks
ago, he continues to repeat that the U.S., I’m quoting him, “saved the
world from a tyrant, who was developing weapons of mass destruction,
and cultivating ties to terror.” Well, you know, nobody believes that,
including his speechwriter, but they know something else. They know
that if you keep repeating a lie long and loud enough, and nobody
takes you to account for it, it will become truth. There are plenty of
precedents for that. Not pretty ones to think about, but they’re there
and you know them so I won’t go on with it. It accounts for the
reactions that you hear around the world. The collapse of the official
stories about weapons of mass destruction and terror, they did have
consequences. In a fact, ominous consequences. The most significant
consequence of the collapse of the story about weapons of mass
destruction was that it changed the official doctrine. All of this is
taking place in the context of the national security strategy that was
announced in September, 2002. That strategy was based on the principle
that if a country has weapons of mass destruction, the United States
is entitled to attack it in anticipatory self-defense.

What’s called in the press and some commentary preemptive war but
that’s a total fabrication. It has nothing to do with preemptive war,
it’s just a euphemism for direct aggression. As Arthur Schelinger
pointed out, preemption means something and nothing like that. But
that was the doctrine, whenever you think about it, the doctrine has
been changed. With the discovery that there were no weapons of mass
destruction, the doctrine has been changed so that now the United
States has the right and authority, sovereign right, to attack any
country that has the intent and ability to develop weapons of mass
destruction. Okay. That’s a significant change, that lowers the wars
on aggression very significantly. And in fact, it makes it universal.
Every country has the ability to develop weapons of mass destruction,
any country with a high school chemistry and biology lab has the
capacity. Intent is in the eye of the beholder. You don’t need
evidence for it. So what that’s saying in effect is everybody’s liable
to attack. We have the sovereign right to attack anyone we want.
That’s a significant change in the doctrine. Even if it’s not reported
here, it’s noticed by the potential victims, and the potential victims
are now generalized–essentially universally. Another consequence of
the collapse of the official reasons is that there’s a new–you know,
there’s a new doctrine about why we went to war. It was a reflection
of what the press calls our yearning for democracy. That’s a term that
became prominent in the Reagan years, yearning for democracy. And so
we invaded Iraq in order to establish a democracy there, because our
yearning for democracy, and in fact, to democratize the Middle East
and so on. If you read the commentary on this, the press, journals and
0 on, I think you will discover that this assumption is close to
universal.

Even the critics, strongest critics say, yes, we invaded to create
democracy, but premature, can’t do it, circumstances are not right.
One criticism or another, sometimes the repetition of this assumption
reaches the level of really rapturous acclaim, fact that you may
remember from, you know, reading the North Korean press, if you look
at it. David Ignatius, the highly respected leading commentator in The
Washington Globe recently described the invasion of Iraq as the most
idealistic war fought in modern times, fought solely to bring
democracy to Iraq and the region and you know, how can you be more
noble than that? He was particularly impressed with Paul Wolfowitz,
the grand visionary of the yearning for democracy, who he describes as
a genuine intellectual whose heart bleeds for the oppressed in the
Muslim world, and who dreams of liberating it? So, presumably, that
explains his career, like his very strong support for Suharta in
Indonesia, one of the worst mass murderers and killers and aggressors.
Wolfowitz was ambassador to Indonesia, and he had full support for his
friend, Suharto, and that goes right up to 1997, a couple of months
before Suharta was overthrown by an internal revolution.

However, it’s only fair to say that Wolfowitz’s support for democracy
and yearning–you know, his heart bleeding for the tortured victims is
ecumenical. It’s not limited to Muslims. He had the same attitude–he
was the high official in the state department under Reagan concerned
with Asian affairs, and that support extended to the brutal, vicious
dictator–Chun, of South Korea, who despite the support of the Reagan
administration to the very end, was overthrown by a mass popular
movement in 1987. It extends to Marcos in the Philippines. The Reagan
administration was full of what they called love for Marcos and his
love of democracy, and that continued until he was overthrown to the
end. All of this is on Wolfowitz’s watch. And it continues, I won’t go
on with it. But all of this is irrelevant because of the convenient
doctrine of change of course. So, yes, he is a grand visionary who
loves democracy, and his heart bleeds for the victims of oppression,
and if there’s a record that shows precisely the opposite, it’s just
that boring old stuff which we forget about, because that’s now we’re
going on to the future. I don’t know how far back the doctrine of
change of course extends, but if it extend as few months, then there’s
some other things that you might mention. So, for example, Wolfowitz
dramatically illustrated his love of democracy earlier this year when
he berated the Turkish military for failing to intervene to prevent
the elected government from keeping to the position of 95% of the
population. About 95% of the population was opposed to participation
in the U.S. war in Iraq, and surprisingly, the elected government went
along with them, which caused absolute fury in the United States.
Powell instantly announced they were going to be harshly punished for
this, cutting back aid and so on. That they were denounced all over
the press. Former ambassador, Morton Abramowitz wrote an article
saying this proves that the government lacks democratic credentials
because it’s not listening to orders from Crawford and Washington.

It’s following 95% of the population, but Wolfowitz went even beyond
denouncing the military for not intervening, and demanding that they
apologize to the United States for this, and recognize that their duty
is, as he put it, to help the United States. Now, that’s real
commitment to democracy. That’s a couple of months ago. It’s an
extenuation of Wolfowitz, one might say this was in the midst of a
display of hatred and contempt for democracy of a sort that I have
never seen in the past. It was so obvious that you cannot ignore it,
all connected with the same insistence of a few governments on keeping
to the overwhelming position of their population. Bitterly condemned
for this across the spectrum. The ones that were hailed were the ones
disregarded even larger percentages of their population. They were the
bold new Europe, the wave of the future. A great Churchillian figures
like Burlesconi, for example. I have never seen anything like that.
And what’s astonishing and revealing to us, and important for the
future is that this display of total hatred for democracy went side by
side with a chorus of self-adulation about our yearning for democracy.
I mean, to be able to carry that off is a very impressive achievement,
not only of the media, but of educated intellectuals generally. I
think it would be hard to mimic that totalitarian state. You might
want to think about it and what it means.
.

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