Noam Chomsky - How to Fight Terrorism? | Chomsky's Philosophy
Forgetting everything has been said, rising to minimal levels of morality, let's try to answer the question. Well, we can start by asking, how should the long series of countries around the world react to Western state terrorism? So, to take just take one uncontroversial case. How should Nicaragua react to US terrorism against Nicaragua? In that case is uncontroversial because we have a World Court decision, and we would have had a Security Council resolution except that the U.S. vetoed. So it's non-controversial. That is much worse than September 11th, you know, tens of thousands of people killed, country practically destroyed, may never recover. So how should Nicaragua have responded to U.S. terror? Well, one possibility is to bomb Washington. Did anybody believe that's the way they should have responded? Another might be saved bioterror, another maybe assassinate the president. Anybody believe that that's a proper response? I've never seen anybody believes it. I certainly don't believe it. Okay, but if we don't believe that that was the right response to our atrocities then it's not the right response to their atrocities, particularly when it's people who didn't do it, like people in Afghanistan had nothing to do with this. So the real question is should Nicaragua have set off bombs? And I don't know Oklahoma, or something, ridiculous. So, therefore, the entire Western response by Western standards is totally illegitimate. In fact, let's take contemporary terrorism.
Now plenty of it. When September 11th was a terrorist atrocity. So is the reaction to it. Literally literally by the literal meaning of the word terrorism as defined in u.s. official documents. Terrorism is the calculated use threat or use of violence to achieve political or other ends through intimidation or fear. All right, suppose you announce to people: we're going to continue to bomb you, unless you turn over to us, people, who we suspect of crimes, though we're not going to provide you with any evidence, and we're going to refuse negotiations, I'm quoting George Bush. That's terrorism, in the literal sense, extreme terrorism. Or let's go on a couple of weeks later, a few weeks later, end of October, the US and Britain change their war aims, they shifted it to change overthrowing the regime. So Admiral Boyce, the British Minister of Defence, announced to the people of Afghanistan, we are going to, you have to understand, that we're going to continue to bomb you until you get your leadership changed. Textbook illustration of terrorism. Okay what's the right response? Is it to assassinate Bush and Boyce, to bomb the United States and England? No, it's not. So any of the responses that are taken are obviously illegitimate, at least if we rise to minimal moral levels. Well how do you deal with it? Well, actually there are proposals that make some sense, like the Vatican, radicals in the Vatican, or takes a Foreign Affairs, you know its main establishment, Journal in the current issue it happens to have published an article which was actually written by Michael Howard, who is the preeminent Anglo-American military historian. It's got all the right credentials very supportive of the British Empire, thinks the American Empire is even more wonderful. So perfect person. Well on a major military historian what he says is
in the case of a criminal conspiracy, which is what this obviously was, the right approach is to carry out carefulpolice investigation, find evidence as to the perpetrators were. If it's international and you have the evidence go to an appropriate international authority, which could be say the Security Council. Under their authorization carry out actions, if they won't turn them over to you, which they might have, under their authorization carry out actions to find and apprehend the perpetrators, bring them to a international tribunal, where they can get a fair trial. Okay, well that's an approach, and in fact if we take that approach seriously, we would do the same thing to Admiral Boyce, Tony Blair, George Bush, Bill Clinton, George Bush the first, anyone else, the people who were running the current war on terrorism like Donald Rumsfeld, who was Ronald Reagan special adviser to the Middle East, when they were terrorizing the whole region, John Negroponte, who's running the diplomatic side of the current war on terrorism and was the proconsul in Honduras, organizing the contra armies attacking the garage WA for which the US was condemned by the World Court , and right down the list we do the same thing to them, that's assuming that we could reach minimal levels of morale, of moral integrity, and of course all of this is so remote from anything that you can even talk about in the West, that it's hard to say the words, but then there's a elementary conclusion that follows from that everyone in the West. I have to include myself here because I don't propose this either, everyone in the West is such a total hypocrite that for them even to talk about questions of right or wrong is a disgrace.
Noam Chomsky - How to Fight Terrorism?
Татьяна Яблокова
Created on October 14, 2024
Start designing with a free template
Discover more than 1500 professional designs like these:
View
Three Wise Men Letter
View
Halloween Invitation
View
Valentine's Letter
View
Children's Holiday Card
View
Happy Holidays Mobile Card
View
Christmas Invitation
View
Professional Christmas Greeting
Explore all templates
Transcript
Noam Chomsky - How to Fight Terrorism? | Chomsky's Philosophy
Forgetting everything has been said, rising to minimal levels of morality, let's try to answer the question. Well, we can start by asking, how should the long series of countries around the world react to Western state terrorism? So, to take just take one uncontroversial case. How should Nicaragua react to US terrorism against Nicaragua? In that case is uncontroversial because we have a World Court decision, and we would have had a Security Council resolution except that the U.S. vetoed. So it's non-controversial. That is much worse than September 11th, you know, tens of thousands of people killed, country practically destroyed, may never recover. So how should Nicaragua have responded to U.S. terror? Well, one possibility is to bomb Washington. Did anybody believe that's the way they should have responded? Another might be saved bioterror, another maybe assassinate the president. Anybody believe that that's a proper response? I've never seen anybody believes it. I certainly don't believe it. Okay, but if we don't believe that that was the right response to our atrocities then it's not the right response to their atrocities, particularly when it's people who didn't do it, like people in Afghanistan had nothing to do with this. So the real question is should Nicaragua have set off bombs? And I don't know Oklahoma, or something, ridiculous. So, therefore, the entire Western response by Western standards is totally illegitimate. In fact, let's take contemporary terrorism.
Now plenty of it. When September 11th was a terrorist atrocity. So is the reaction to it. Literally literally by the literal meaning of the word terrorism as defined in u.s. official documents. Terrorism is the calculated use threat or use of violence to achieve political or other ends through intimidation or fear. All right, suppose you announce to people: we're going to continue to bomb you, unless you turn over to us, people, who we suspect of crimes, though we're not going to provide you with any evidence, and we're going to refuse negotiations, I'm quoting George Bush. That's terrorism, in the literal sense, extreme terrorism. Or let's go on a couple of weeks later, a few weeks later, end of October, the US and Britain change their war aims, they shifted it to change overthrowing the regime. So Admiral Boyce, the British Minister of Defence, announced to the people of Afghanistan, we are going to, you have to understand, that we're going to continue to bomb you until you get your leadership changed. Textbook illustration of terrorism. Okay what's the right response? Is it to assassinate Bush and Boyce, to bomb the United States and England? No, it's not. So any of the responses that are taken are obviously illegitimate, at least if we rise to minimal moral levels. Well how do you deal with it? Well, actually there are proposals that make some sense, like the Vatican, radicals in the Vatican, or takes a Foreign Affairs, you know its main establishment, Journal in the current issue it happens to have published an article which was actually written by Michael Howard, who is the preeminent Anglo-American military historian. It's got all the right credentials very supportive of the British Empire, thinks the American Empire is even more wonderful. So perfect person. Well on a major military historian what he says is
in the case of a criminal conspiracy, which is what this obviously was, the right approach is to carry out carefulpolice investigation, find evidence as to the perpetrators were. If it's international and you have the evidence go to an appropriate international authority, which could be say the Security Council. Under their authorization carry out actions, if they won't turn them over to you, which they might have, under their authorization carry out actions to find and apprehend the perpetrators, bring them to a international tribunal, where they can get a fair trial. Okay, well that's an approach, and in fact if we take that approach seriously, we would do the same thing to Admiral Boyce, Tony Blair, George Bush, Bill Clinton, George Bush the first, anyone else, the people who were running the current war on terrorism like Donald Rumsfeld, who was Ronald Reagan special adviser to the Middle East, when they were terrorizing the whole region, John Negroponte, who's running the diplomatic side of the current war on terrorism and was the proconsul in Honduras, organizing the contra armies attacking the garage WA for which the US was condemned by the World Court , and right down the list we do the same thing to them, that's assuming that we could reach minimal levels of morale, of moral integrity, and of course all of this is so remote from anything that you can even talk about in the West, that it's hard to say the words, but then there's a elementary conclusion that follows from that everyone in the West. I have to include myself here because I don't propose this either, everyone in the West is such a total hypocrite that for them even to talk about questions of right or wrong is a disgrace.