A look back at some of the most incisive
remarks from one of the nation's most controversial thinkers
By Laura Gottesdiener,
Alternet
This article originally appeared on AlterNet.
Noam
Chomsky is an expert on many matters — linguistics, how our economy
functions, and propaganda, among others. One area where his wisdom
especially shines through is in articulating the structure and
functioning of the American empire. Chomsky has been speaking and
publishing on the topic since the ’60s. Below are seven powerful quotes
on the evils, atrocities and ironies of the American empire taken from
his personal site and from a fan-curated website dedicated to collecting
Chomsky‘s observations.
1.
[In early 2007] there was a new rash of articles and headlines on the
front page about the “Chinese military build-up.” The Pentagon claimed
that China had increased its offensive military capacity — with 400
missiles, which could be nuclear armed. Then we had a debate about
whether that proves China is trying to conquer the world or the numbers
are wrong, or something. Just a little footnote. How many offensive
nuclear armed missiles does the United States have? Well, it turns out
to be 10,000. China may now have maybe 400, if you believe the hawks.
That proves that they are trying to conquer the world.
It turns
out, if you read the international press closely, that the reason China
is building up its military capacity is not only because of U.S.
aggressiveness all over the place, but the fact that the United States
has improved its targeting capacities so it can now destroy missile
sites in a much more sophisticated fashion wherever they are, even if
they are mobile. So who is trying to conquer the world? Well, obviously
the Chinese because since we own it, they are trying to conquer it. It’s
all too easy to continue with this indefinitely. Just pick your topic.
It’s a good exercise to try. This simple principle, “we own the world,”
is sufficient to explain a lot of the discussion about foreign affairs. —
from “
We Own the World” January 1, 2008.
2.
“Could we stop the militarization of space? It certainly looks like we
could. The reason is that the U.S. is alone, literally alone, in
pressing for it. The entire world is opposed, because they’re scared,
mainly. The U.S. is way ahead. If other countries are not willing to
even dream of full-spectrum dominance and world control, they’re way too
far behind; they will react, undoubtedly. But they’d like to cut it
off. And there are several treaties, which are in fact already in place,
that are supported literally by the entire world and that the U.S. is
trying to overturn. One is the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which bans
placing weapons in outer space. Everyone signed it, including the United
States. Nobody has tried to put weapons in outer space. It has been
observed and would be easily detected if anyone broke it. In 1999, the
treaty came up at the UN General Assembly, and the vote was around 163
to 0 with 2 abstentions, the U.S. and Israel, which votes automatically
with the U.S.” –
“Militarizing Space ‘to protect U.S. interests and investment,” International Socialist Review Issue 19, July-August 2001
3.
“Globalization is the result of powerful governments, especially that
of the United States, pushing trade deals and other accords down the
throats of the world’s people to make it easier for corporations and the
wealthy to dominate the economies of nations around the world without
having obligations to the peoples of those nations.” —
“Profit Over People: Neoliberalism and the Global Order”
4.
“[The U.S. still names] military helicopter gunships after victims of
genocide. Nobody bats an eyelash about that: Blackhawk. Apache. And
Comanche. If the Luftwaffe named its military helicopters Jew and Gypsy,
I suppose people would notice.” —
“Propaganda and the Public Mind: Conversations With Noam Chomsky and David Barsamian”
5.
“If something is right (or wrong) for us, it’s right (or wrong) for
others. It follows that if it’s wrong for Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, and a
long list of others to bomb Washington and New York, then it’s wrong for
Rumsfeld to bomb Afghanistan (on much flimsier pretexts), and he should
be brought before war crimes trials.” –
“On Terrorism,” Noam Chomsky interviewed by John Bolender, Jump Arts Journal, January 2004.
6.
“Suppose that, say, China established military bases in Colombia to
carry out chemical warfare in Kentucky and North Carolina to destroy
this lethal crop [tobacco] that is killing huge numbers of Chinese.” –
Noam Chomsky on the irony of the drug war waged by the United States in Central and South America.
7.
The U.S. is, of course, concerned over Iranian power. That is one
reason why the U.S. turned to active support for Iraq in the late stages
of the Iraq-Iran war, with a decisive effect on the outcome, and why
Washington continued its active courtship of Saddam Hussein until he
interfered with U.S. plans for the region in August 1990. U.S. concerns
over Iranian power were also reflected in the decision to support
Saddam’s murderous assault against the Shiite population of southern
Iraq in March 1991, immediately after the fighting stopped. A narrow
reason was fear that Iran, a Shiite state, might exert influence over
Iraqi Shiites. A more general reason was the threat to “stability” that a
successful popular revolution might pose: to translate into English,
the threat that it might inspire democratizing tendencies that would
undermine the array of dictatorships that the U.S. relies on to control
the people of the region.
Recall that Washington’s support for its
former friend was more than tacit; the U.S. military command even
denied rebelling Iraqi officers access to captured Iraqi equipment as
the slaughter of the Shiite population proceeded under Stormin’ Norman’s
steely gaze. — “
Stability,” excerpted from “The Fateful Triangle
,” 1999
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