Chomsky: The State and Morality
Readings and assignment for “Power and Terror”
Chomsky’s Ideas
Chomsky’s influence on the public
discussion of American foreign policy comes from the relentingly
consistent he applies a few moral principles and the techniques he uses to ensure
their consistent application. Here are a
few of the themes you will find in Chomsky:
- He applies the fundamental moral principle that
“what is judged as wrong for you, must also be judged as wrong for me.” In particular he applies this to the
question of State sponsored terrorism.
He begins by defining “terrorism” clearly and then uses the
definition to assess U.S. actions as well as those of the usual suspects
(e.g. Muslim militants). See reading 1 below. You can find another good example of
Chomsky’s consistency in the application of the Nuremburg Principles here:
www.chomsky.info/talks/1990----.htm
- Chomsky states that one is responsible for the
likely and foreseeable consequences of one’s actions. He has applied this principle in looking
at responsibility for the deaths of children in Iraq resulting from the U.S.-backed sanctions, and of
the thousand of Sudanese deaths that resulted from Clinton’s bombing of Sudan’s sole pharmaceutical factory. See
reading 2 and 3 below other examples.
- Chomsky argues that one bears greater moral
responsibility to speak and act when there is greater likelihood that this
will have a positive influence. See reading 3 below
- A very effective techniques used by Chomsky is to
apply his (and other’s) moral principles to a pair of basically equivalent
examples. He paired the U.S. policy on Cuba (a U.S. enemy) in the mid-1980s, under Reagan, with the
policies on El Salvador and Guatemala (U.S. allies, with notably greater incidents of human
rights violations than Cuba). See
www.chomsky.info/books/hegemony02.htm
Assignment
Find your own examples for
each of Chomsky’s ideas above. You can
use the readings below and some of the sources that follow. Cut and paste the section of Chomsky you have
chosen and give a brief (one paragraph) description of how it fits the
description.
If you are interested in reading more by or about Chomsky after the video
and assignment, you can find many of his articles, books and interviews online
at:
www.chomsky.info
A good, brief article about
his influence in the world is at: www.frontlineonnet.com/fl1825/18250040.htm
The library has the following
books by Chomsky:
Media Control
9-11
Hegemony or Survival
Understanding Power
As I say, this
would be headlines on Mars. A good Martian reporter would also want to clarify
a couple of basic ideas. First of all, he'd like to know what exactly is terrorism. And, secondly, what's the proper response to
it. Well, whatever the answer to the second question is, that proper response
must satisfy some moral truisms, and the Martian can easily discover what these
truisms are, at least as understood by the leaders of the self-declared war on
terrorism, because they tell us, they tell us constantly, that they are very
pious Christians, who therefore revere the Gospels, and have certainly
memorized the definition of "hypocrite" given prominently in the
Gospels-namely, the hypocrites are those who apply to others the standards that
they refuse to accept for themselves.
So the Martian
understands, then, that in order to rise to the absolutely minimal moral level
we have to agree, in fact insist, that if some act is right for us then it's right for others, and if it's wrong when others do it
then it's wrong when we do it. Now that's the most elementary of moral truisms,
and once the Martian realizes that, he can pack up his bags and go back to
Mars. Because his research task is over. He would be
unlikely to find a phrase, a single phrase in the vast coverage and commentary
about the war on terrorism that even begins to approach this minimal standard.
Don't take my word for it; try the experiment. I don't want to exaggerate-you
can probably find the phrase now and then, way out at the margins, though very
rarely.
Nevertheless,
this moral truism is recognized within the mainstream. It's understood to be an
extremely dangerous heresy, and therefore it's necessary to erect impregnable
barriers against it, even before anybody exhibits it, even though it's so rare.
In fact, there's even a technical vocabulary available in case anybody would dare
to engage in the heresy, to involve themselves in the heresy that we should
abide by moral truisms that we pretend to revere. The offenders are guilty of
something called moral relativism-that means the suggestion that we apply to
ourselves the standards we apply to others. Or maybe moral equivalence, which
is a term that was invented, I think, by Jeanne Kirkpatrick to ward off the
danger that somebody might dare to look at our own crimes.
Or maybe they're
carrying out the crime of America-bashing, or they're anti-Americans. Which is a rather interesting concept. The term is used
elsewhere only in totalitarian states, for example in Russia in the old days, where
anti-Sovietism was the highest crime. If somebody
were to publish a book in Italy, say, called The
Anti-Italians, you can imagine what the reaction would be in the streets of Milan and Rome, or in any country where
freedom and democracy were taken seriously.
An Unusable
Definition
But let's suppose
that the Martian isn't deterred by the inevitable tirades and stream of
vilification, and suppose he persists in keeping to the most elementary moral
truisms. Well, as I said, if he does that, he can just go home, but suppose out
of curiosity he decides to stay on and look a little bit further. So, what will
happen? Well, back to the question, what is terrorism?-an important one.
There is a
proper course for a serious Martian reporter to follow to find the answer to
that: Look at the people who declared the war on terrorism and see what they
say terrorism is; that's fair enough. And there is in fact an official
definition in the U.S. code and Army manuals,
and elsewhere. It is defined briefly. Terrorism, as I'm quoting, is defined as
"the calculated use of violence or the threat of violence to attain goals
that are political, religious or ideological in nature...through intimidation,
coercion or instilling fear." Well, that sounds simple; as far as I can
see, it's appropriate. But we constantly read that the problem of defining
terrorism is very vexing and complex, and the Martian
might wonder why that's true. And there's an answer.
The official
definition is unusable. It's unusable for two important reasons. First of all,
it's a very close paraphrase of official government policy-very close, in fact.
When it's government policy, it's called low-intensity conflict or counterterror.
Incidentally,
it's not just the United States. As far as I'm aware,
this practice is universal. Just as an example, back in the mid 1960s the Rand
Corporation, the research agency connected with the Pentagon mostly, published
a collection of interesting Japanese counterinsurgency manuals having to do
with the Japanese attack on Manchuria and North China in the 1930s. I was kind
of interested-I wrote an article on it at the time comparing the Japanese
counterinsurgency manuals with U.S. counterinsurgency manuals
for South Vietnam, which are virtually
identical. That article didn't fly too well, I should say.
Well, anyhow,
it's a fact, and as far as I know it's a universal fact. So
that's one reason you can't use the official definition. The other
reason you can't do it is much simpler: it just gives all the wrong answers,
radically so, as to who the terrorists are.
So therefore the
official definition has to be abandoned, and you have to search for some kind
of sophisticated definition that will give the right answers, and that's hard.
That's why you hear that it's such a difficult topic and big minds are
wrestling with it and so on.
Fortunately,
there is a solution. The solution is to define terrorism as the terrorism that
they carry out against us, whoever we happen to be. As far as I know, that's
universal-in journalism, in scholarship, and also I think it's a historical
universal; at least, I've never found any country that doesn't follow this
practice. So, fortunately, there's a way out of the problem. Well, with this
useful characterization of terrorism, we can then draw the standard conclusions
that you read all the time: namely, that we and our allies are the main victims
of terrorism, and that terrorism is a weapon of the weak.
Of course,
terrorism in the official sense is a weapon of the strong, like most weapons,
but it's a weapon of the weak, by definition, once you comprehend that
"terrorism" just means the terrorism that they carry out against us.
Then of course it's true by definition that terrorism is a weapon of the weak.
Reading 2: The CIA's
Intervention in Afghanistan from www.globalresearch.ca/articles/BRZ110A.html
An interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, President
Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser
According to this 1998
interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski,
the CIA's intervention in Afghanistan preceded the 1979 Soviet invasion. This decision of
the Carter Administration in 1979 to intervene and destabilise
Afghanistan is the root cause of Afghanistan's destruction as a nation.
Question: The former director
of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs ["From the Shadows"],
that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen
in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this
period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You
therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?
Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history,
CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is
to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the
first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president
in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a
Soviet military intervention.
Q: Despite this risk, you
were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this
Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?
B: It isn't quite that. We
didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the
probability that they would.
Q: When the Soviets justified
their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret
involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe them. However, there was a
basis of truth. You don't regret anything today?
B: Regret what? That secret
operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into
the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets
officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the
opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for
almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the
government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the
breakup of the Soviet empire.
Q: And neither do you regret
having supported the Islamic fundamentalism, having given arms and advice to
future terrorists?
B: What is most important to the
history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the
Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?
Reading 3:
Answering Some Queries About Moral Principles and
International Law from
What's the basis of valid moral principles?
Isn't the bombing a violation of international law? Is
anyone bringing charges? What are the reactions to that in the U.S.?
I'm afraid the first question
is not a "genuine question," though there is a huge literature, for
thousands of years, attempting to say at least something about these topics,
without much success. It is no more a "genuine question" than such
pseudo-questions as "why do things happen" -- far too broad to be
addressed seriously, and very poorly understood.
There are, however, a few
moral truisms that are relevant here. They hold for any person -- let's
consider one such person, call him/her X. The first truism is that X is
primarily responsible for the likely consequences of his/her own actions, or
inaction. The second is that X's concern for moral issues (crimes, etc.) should
vary in accordance with X's ability to have an effect (though that is of course
not the only factor). The two principles tend to correlate, even coincide, in
the conclusions that X will draw -- that is, if X is a moral agent, someone
worth paying attention to.
To illustrate, it may be
worthwhile to study the crimes of Genghis Khan, but there is little moral
significance to that; we can't do anything about them. Similarly, it is highly
worthwhile to attend to US-backed atrocities (say, in Turkey, or Colombia, or East
Timor, or Iraq, or many other places), because we are responsible
for the crimes and can do a lot about them -- very easily; namely, by
withdrawing our (often decisive) support. But attention to Pol
Pot's crimes, while a worthy enterprise (if done honestly, which was rarely the
case), had little if any moral significance because there was no hint of a
proposal as to what to do about them -- and when they were terminated, the US
was infuriated and severely punished the criminals (the Vietnamese) who carried
out the clearest case of "humanitarian intervention" since World War
II.
We understand these truisms
very well when we are thinking of others. Thus no one in the U.S. was impressed when Soviet commissars railed about U.S. crimes; we were much impressed, however, when
dissidents in the USSR condemned Soviet crimes. The reasons were the two moral truisms just
mentioned (which, as is commonly the case, coincided in their implications).
At this point it is useful to
recall a psychological truism. One of the hardest things to do is to look into
the mirror. It is also often the most important thing to do, because of the
moral truisms. And there are very powerful institutions (the entire doctrinal
system, in all of its aspects) that seek to protect people from engaging in
this difficult and crucially important task. Every society has its dissidents
and its commissars, and it's close to a historical law that the commissars are
highly praised and the dissidents bitterly condemned -- within the society,
that is; o the other hand for official enemies the situation is reversed.
It's also worthwhile to
recall other psychological truisms. Focussing
attention on the crimes of others often gives us a nice warm feeling of being
"good people," so different from those "bad people." That's
particularly true when there is nothing much we can do about the crimes of
others except to help make them far worse, from a distance. Then we can simply
wail without cost to ourselves. Looking at our own crimes is much harder, and
for those willing to do it, often carries costs, sometimes very severe costs.
That's typically been true of dissidents in US client states, like the murdered
Jesuit intellectuals in El Salvador. A useful experiment is to ask your friends to tell
you their names, or to ask them how much they have read of what they have
written, and then to compare the results with the same questions concerning
Soviet dissidents, who were not treated anywhere near as harshly in the
post-Stalin period. That's a way of looking in the mirror that can teach a lot,
about ourselves, and about our institutions.
These are matters that have
been endlessly discussed (see, e.g., the introduction to Herman's and my
"Political Economy of Human Rights"). They are so trivial that it is
kind of embarrassing to keep reiterating them. But perhaps that is useful as
well. The application of these truisms is extremely broad. I think that you
will easily find examples.