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Stupidity abounds on the 9/11 nonsense and this helps clarify. Unfortunately, most people simply WILL not learn. Another 9/11 was the assassination of Allende of Chile, by US, and the killing that took place would amount to the equivalent of 12 million people in the United States. We don’t care. People prefer their ignorance and always will. Not until the poverty rate keeps increasing to the point where masses have no choice but to attack will there be any change.
However, here is a depiction of the last R. debate, followed by an interview with Noam Chomsky.
Noam Chomsky on the 9/11 Decade and the Assassination of Osama Bin Laden: Was There an Alternative?
Ten years ago, at a time when lawmakers from both sides of the aisle joined together to authorize endless war, Noam Chomsky’s was the leading voice to call for the United States to rethink its actions in the Middle East and across the globe. His 2001 book, simply titled "9-11," became a surprise bestseller. The book collected a series of interviews Chomsky had given on the roots of the 9/11 attacks and his prescription for a just response. A decade later, Chomsky has just released an updated version titled "9-11: Was There an Alternative?" which refers to the U.S. assassination of Osama bin Laden and the continuity Chomsky sees between the Bush administration’s foreign policy and President Obama’s. "Right at this moment, Obama has succeeded in descending even below George W. Bush in approval in the Arab world," says Noam Chomsky. "The policies change, but they’re hostile. We should understand where atrocities come from. They don’t come from nowhere. And if we’re serious, we should try to do something about what is the basis for them." [includes rush transcript]Filed under Noam Chomsky, 9/11, 9/11 anniversary, War on Terror, Iraq, Afghanistan, Bush, Obama, Author Interviews
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Noam Chomsky, author and Institute Professor Emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he taught for more than 50 years. He is author of dozens of books. An updated edition of his book 9-11 has just been published, called 9-11: Was There an Alternative?
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Rush Transcript
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Related Links
- Democracy Now!’s Archive of Reports of the September 11, 2001 Attacks and Its Aftermath
- Noam Chomsky’s Official Website
- See all of Noam Chomsky’s interviews on Democracy Now! over the years
- "9-11: Was There an Alternative?" By Noam Chomsky. (Seven Stories Press, 2011)
In the months after 9/11, as the Bush administration attacked Afghanistan and geared up for the invasion of Iraq, Noam Chomsky released a small book that provided the definitive counter-narrative to the jingoism of the time. The book was called simply 9-11, a collected series of interviews Chomsky had given on the roots of the 9/11 attacks and his prescription for a just response. At a time when lawmakers from both sides of the aisle joined together to authorize endless war, Chomsky’s was the leading voice to call for a look in the mirror, for a rethinking of U.S. actions in the Middle East and across the globe. 9-11 went on to become a surprise bestseller.
Ten years later, Professor Chomsky has just released an updated version. It’s called 9-11: Was There an Alternative? "Was there an alternative?" refers to the U.S. assassination of Osama bin Laden and the continuity Chomsky sees between the Bush administration’s foreign policy and President Obama’s.
Today, we’ll speak with Noam Chomsky about the decade since 9/11, at a time when the U.S. is at war in several areas, at home in continued economic turmoil. Noam Chomsky has just returned from Iceland and Norway. He’s joining us from Boston, Massachussetts. And I’m joined here in New York for this interview by Democracy Now! producer Aaron Maté, who covered the thwarted Gaza-bound aid flotilla in Greece.
Welcome, Aaron, joining me in this interview. It’s good to have you with us.
AARON MATÉ: Thanks, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: And thanks so much, Noam Chomsky, for being with us so soon after you’ve come back from your trip. Noam, why don’t we begin with this new book? You wrote 9-11 10 years ago, what become the definitive counter-narrative at the time. What did you feel was important to understand then, and now, with Was There an Alternative?
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, as you mentioned, it wasn’t really a book, it was a collection of interviews, the ones that we were able to get transcripts for. Some of them we couldn’t.
There were a number of things that I thought had to be pointed out. By now, I think they’re hardly even controversial. But one was that the claim that the U.S. was being attacked because, as the president put it, they hate our freedoms was completely untenable. They hated our policy. In fact, it would be more accurate to say we hate their freedoms. There’s plenty of documentation about that, going back to the 1950s. Shortly after the president’s speech, the Pentagon had a study of this, and they concluded, yes, it’s not that they hate our freedoms, it’s they hate our policies.
And as I say, evidence about that is enormous, back to the '50s. So, for example, in 1958, President Eisenhower, in internal documents long since released, asked his—raised the question with his staff about why there's a campaign of hatred against us in the Arab world. He said, not from the governments, but from the people. And the National Security Council, major planning body, had just released a study on this in which they said that they concluded that there’s a perception in the Arab world that the United States supports harsh, oppressive dictatorships and that the U.S. blocks democracy and development and that we do it because we want to keep control over their energy resources. And it went on to say that this is fairly accurate, and that’s pretty much what we should be doing, as long as the populations are kept quiet.
And so it goes on. I won’t run through the details, but so it goes on until the present. In fact, right at this moment, Obama has succeeded in descending even below George W. Bush in approval in the Arab world. It’s minuscule, few percent. And it’s the policies, same—the policies change, but they’re hostile. So, one thing is, we should understand where atrocities come from. They don’t come from nowhere. And if we’re serious, we should try to do something about what is the basis for them.
That’s been—the other issue, which was important, or I think we have a lot more evidence about it now, is that there probably were much more constructive alternatives. The attack, the attack on the—the 9/11 attack was pretty harshly criticized in the—throughout the Muslim world, but particularly in the jihadi movement—you know, fatwas from leading clerics, harsh condemnation. It would have been—it’s very likely that it would have been possible, then, to split the jihadi movement, to isolate al-Qaeda, to move to apprehend the suspects—and, of course, in our system of justice, theoretically, people are suspects unless they’re—until they’re sentenced—so, to apprehend the suspects, treat it as a criminal action, try to make use of the fact that there were—that there was tremendous antagonism to this even among the jihadi movement, and move on to a much more constructive relationship with the general Muslim-Arab world.
Well, that path wasn’t taken. The path that was taken was to lash out of violently, first in Afghanistan, then in Iraq. That simply was kind of following Osama bin Laden’s playbook. Actually, that was pointed out pretty quickly by people like Michael Scheuer, the—he didn’t identify himself then, has since—the CIA—head of the CIA task force that was tracking bin Laden. He ended up concluding the United States is bin Laden’s best ally. We’re helping—his goal was to mobilize the Muslim world around the fear that the United States was attacking Islam, was carrying out a crusade, they have to defend themselves. And we helped. The invasion of Iraq, particularly, gave a big shot in the arm to the jihadi extremists. It was predicted by U.S. and British intelligence agencies—that’s been released since—that the attack on Iraq would increase terror, and it did, by a factor of seven the first year, according to RAND Corporation quasi-governmental statistics.
Well, that’s what happens when you lash out violently without seeking to understand the nature of what’s happening and pursuing the options for diplomatic, peaceful, negotiated settlements, and treating crimes as crimes. When there’s a crime, you try to identify the likely perpetrators, apprehend them, bring them to—bring them to a fair trial. I mean, that—it’s very likely that that could have been done at the times. We don’t know. There were tentative offers from the Taliban to allow a trial of bin Laden. It was not pursued. It was—the U.S. just dismissed it: "We don’t talk to you." Well, could that have succeeded? We can only speculate.
It truly could have been done on May 2nd, when U.S. commandos, Navy SEALs, apprehended bin Laden—defenseless, was with his wife, no arms—apprehended him and assassinated him, then dumped his body at sea. That’s kind of an action which is just bound to increase speculation, cynicism, doubt—quite different from what in fact should have been done. Actually, one of the leading British legal specialists, civil libertarian, who incidentally approved of the action, nevertheless pointed out that the way it was carried out was criminal and dangerous in its implications. He compared it to the treatment of the far more horrendous war criminals after the Second World War. He pointed out that the British government wanted to just kill the Nazi leaders, but the U.S. government, or Truman, insisted that they be tried. They followed. And, in fact, then came the Nuremberg trials, which, you know, had their flaws, but at least did bring out in public the nature of the crimes. They also led to a quite an important conclusion by the chief prosecutor, U.S. chief prosecutor, Justice Robert Jackson. He informed the tribunal, in rather eloquent words, that, as he put it, we were handing these defendants a "poisoned chalice," and if we ever sip from it, if we ever commit such crimes as aggression, one of the major crimes, then we must suffer the same punishment, or else, essentially, the trial is a farce. And that’s a choice we’ve had to make since. Not the right answer, in my opinion.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Noam Chomsky, Professor Emeritus at MIT. He has a new book out, 10 years after his book 9-11. It is called 9-11: Was There an Alternative?, with a new essay written after the assassination of Osama bin Laden. We’ll come back to this discussion in a minute.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: Our guest for the hour is MIT professor Noam Chomsky. His latest book is called 9-11: Was There an Alternative? That last question, "Was there an alternative?," referring to the assassination of Osama bin Laden. Aaron?
AARON MATÉ: Well, Noam, you mentioned the changes in discourse between 10 years ago and today. And actually, this issue of the reasons behind 9/11 came up last night at the Republican presidential debate. Congress Member Ron Paul of Texas drew boos from the crowd and a rebuke from other candidates on the podium when he criticized U.S. foreign policy in discussing the roots of 9/11.
REP. RON PAUL: We’re under great threat because we occupy so many countries. We’re in 130 countries. We have 900 bases around the world. We’re going broke. The purpose of al-Qaeda was to attack us, invite us over there, where they can target us. And they have been doing it. They have more attacks against us and the American interests per month than occurred in all the years before 9/11. But we’re there, occupying their land. And if we think that we can do that and not have retaliation, we’re kidding ourselves. We have to be honest with ourselves. What would we do if another country, say China, did to us what we do to all those countries over there?
So, this whole idea that the whole Muslim world is responsible for this and they’re attacking us because we’re free and prosperous, that is just not true. Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda have been explicit. They have been explicit, and they wrote and said that we attacked—we attacked America because you had bases on our holy land in Saudi Arabia, you do not give Palestinians a fair treatment, and you have been bombing—I didn’t say that, I’m trying to get you to understand what the motive was behind the bombing. At the same time, we had been bombing and killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis for 10 years. Would you be annoyed? If you’re not annoyed, then there’s some problem.
AARON MATÉ: That was Republican Congress Member Ron Paul of Texas speaking last night at the Republican presidential debate. Noam Chomsky, your response?NOAM CHOMSKY: I think what he said is completely uncontroversial. You can read it in government documents. You can find it in polls. Maybe people don’t like to hear it, but, as I mentioned before, it goes back to the 1950s. Actually, right after 9/11, the Wall Street Journal, to its credit, did a study of privileged Muslims, sometimes called "monied Muslims," people in the Muslim world who are deeply embedded in the U.S. global project—lawyers, directors of multinational corporations and so on, not the general population. And it was very much like what Eisenhower had—was concerned about, and the National Security Council, in the 1950s. There was a lot of antagonism to—a lot of antagonism to U.S. policy in the region, partly support of dictators blocking democracy and development, just as the National Security Council concluded in 1958.
Also, by then, by 2001, there were much more specific things: very much a lot of anger about the U.S. backing for the way—Israeli occupation of the Occupied Territories, settlements, the bitter oppression of the Palestinians, and also, something that isn’t discussed much here but meant a lot there—and remember, these are privileged Muslims, leaders of—those who kind of carry out, implement the general U.S. economic and social policies in the region. The other thing, besides the Israeli—support of Israeli crimes, was the sanctions against Iraq. This was 2001, remember. The sanctions against Iraq were brutal and destructive. They killed hundreds of thousands of people. Both of the international diplomats who administered the Oil-for-Food program, distinguished international diplomats—Denis Halliday, Hans von Sponeck, in sequence—both of them resigned in protest because they regarded the sanctions as genocidal. They were carrying out a kind of a mass slaughter of Iraqis. They were strengthening Saddam Hussein. They were compelling the population to rely on him just for survival. And these were major crimes of the 1990s. And privileged Muslims, monied Muslims, in the Saudi Arabia, elsewhere, were bitterly opposed to this, not because they hate our freedoms, because they don’t like murderous and brutal policies.
The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us. Noam Chomsky: U.S. to Veto Palestinian Statehood Bid Despite "Overwhelming International Consensus"
Filed under Gaza Flotilla, Noam Chomsky, Middle East, Israel, Gaza
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Noam Chomsky, author and Institute Professor Emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he taught for more than 50 years. He is author of dozens of books. An updated edition of his book 9-11 has just been published, called 9-11: Was There an Alternative?
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Rush Transcript
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As the Palestinian Authority launched its bid for statehood recognition at the U.N. last week, the Obama administration confirmed it would veto any statehood measure that came before the Security Council. This is State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland.
VICTORIA NULAND: It should not come as a shock to anyone in this room that the U.S. opposes a move in New York by the Palestinians to try to establish a state that can only be achieved through negotiations. So, yes, if something comes to a vote in the U.N. Security Council, the U.S. will veto.
AMY GOODMAN: And President Obama has affirmed this. Noam Chomsky, your response?NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, unfortunately, it’s quite consistent with past practice. The list of U.S. vetoes at the Security Council to protect Israeli aggression and occupation is huge. The most recent one, which actually got some attention because it was so outlandish, was last February, when Obama vetoed a Security Council resolution endorsing official U.S. policy. Look at the resolution. Its core part was opposing expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. That’s supposed to be U.S. policy. Obama vetoed it. If the Palestinians do bring the issue to the Security Council and the U.S. vetoes it, it will be just another indication of the real unwillingness to permit a settlement of this issue, in terms of what has been for a long time an overwhelming international consensus.
And this goes back a long time. The first relevant U.S. veto was in January 1976, 35 years ago. The major Arab states, so-called confrontation states—Syria, Egypt, Jordan—brought a resolution to the Security Council calling for a two-state settlement on the international border. And then the resolution incorporated the basic wording of U.N. 242, which everyone agrees, at least in theory, is the basic Security Council document, called for recognition of the rights of every state in the region—that would include Israel, a new Palestinian state—to exist in peace and security within secure and recognized boundaries—wording approximately like that. U.S. vetoed it. Another veto in 1980, a similar resolution. A long series since of—then things shifted to the General Assembly, where there are almost annual votes with, you know, numbers like 150 to three, and so on—U.S., Israel, sometimes a Pacific island, El Salvador. And this is just continuing right up to the present.
There are pretty ugly ones, too. The U.S. has blocked ceasefire efforts at the time of Israeli attacks. In fact, Obama himself—you can take a look at his—I don’t know if he still has it, but in his website prior to the election, there was a section on the Middle East. And it’s worth looking at. It gives you an indication of what’s been happening since. It’s full of, you know, adoration of Israel. You expect that. Practically not a word about the Palestinians, a few phrases saying maybe they should have some rights. But that was right in the middle of the latest Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 2006, a brutal, murderous invasion, without any credible pretext—you can go into that—actually, the fifth such invasion. And Obama took pride, in his webpage, in having co-sponsored a Senate resolution, right in the middle of the invasion, insisting that nothing be done to impede Israel’s attack in Lebanon and that the U.S. should censure and maybe sanction anyone who tried to interfere with it—Iran and Syria. So, let them—they must be able to go on to achieve their objectives, of killing a thousand Lebanese, again, destroying a strong a large part of the country, and so on. That’s Obama. When he—during the—after he was elected, Israel attacked Gaza, major attack on Gaza, late December 2008 right through January 2009. Obama was—I’m sure your listeners are familiar with that horrible, atrocious attack. The United States blocked efforts at the Security Council to establish a ceasefire to end the atrocities. Obama was repeatedly asked would he say something about it. His answer was, "There’s only one president. I can’t say anything about it." He was saying all sorts of other things, but not this.
AARON MATÉ: And Noam—
NOAM CHOMSKY: Actually, his—
AARON MATÉ: Noam—
NOAM CHOMSKY: —campaign—
AARON MATÉ: We only have a few minutes, so I want to cut you off to get in a few more questions—
NOAM CHOMSKY: OK.
AARON MATÉ: —actually, one last question—
NOAM CHOMSKY: OK.
AARON MATÉ: —if we have time, which is that you’ve written about what it would mean for Israel and the U.S. if this statehood bid is passed at the U.N. And, of course, this debate is coming up very soon, scheduled to take place at the General Assembly in the coming weeks. What would it mean if the U.N. passes statehood for the Palestinians?
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, that’s really up to us to decide. I mean, it could be—there could be a very harsh reaction on the part of the United States and Israel. The Congress, U.S. Congress, has already declared that it’s going to cut off funding, wants to cut off funding to the Palestinian Authority. Israel controls much of their funds through control of customs, transfer of finance. They all go through Israel. They could cut it off. The Palestinians could be in very serious economic trouble, financial trouble, if the U.S. and Israel, acting jointly, react to any kind of statehood bid by simply cutting off the funding on which they rely. Israel, for decades, has prevented any independent development, serious economic development, in the territories. There is—you know, the numbers show economic growth. It’s highly reliant on outside aid. It’s very artificial. And that could be a very serious blow to the Palestinians. The role that Egypt plays will also be significant, especially with regard to Gaza. My guess is that some kind of compromise position will be worked out, which will provide enhanced observer status to the Palestinians at the United Nations, maybe short of what would trigger U.S. and Israel from simply pulling out the rug from under their survival. It could be worse than that, in fact.
AMY GOODMAN: Noam, we have to leave it there. We have to leave it there for the global show, but we’re going to continue, and people can go to our website for our web exclusive at democracynow.org. Noam Chomsky, Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His latest book is 9-11: Was There an Alternative? You can go to our website for our other web exclusive, "9/11 Decade," that showcases our vast archive of in-depth reporting over the last decade.
The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us. 
