the uses and abuses of the word “genocide.” They argue persuasively that the
label is highly politicized and that in the United States it is used by the
government, journalists, and academics to brand as evil those nations and
political movements that in one way or another interfere with the imperial
interests of U.S. capitalism. Thus the word “genocide” is seldom applied when the
perpetrators are U.S. allies (or even the United States itself), while it is used
almost indiscriminately when murders are committed or are alleged to have been
committed by enemies of the United States and U.S. business interests. One set
of rules applies to cases such as U.S. aggression in Vietnam, Israeli oppression of
Palestinians, Indonesian slaughter of so-called communists and the people of East
Timor, U.S. bombings in Serbia and Kosovo, the U.S. war of “liberation” in Iraq,
and mass murders committed by U.S. allies in Rwanda and the Republic of
Congo. Another set applies to cases such as Serbian aggression in Kosovo and
Bosnia, killings carried out by U.S. enemies in Rwanda and Darfur, Saddam
Hussein, any and all actions by Iran, and a host of others.
In 1973 Noam Chomsky and Herman wrote that the USA has "been the most
important single instigator, administrator and moral and material sustainer of
serious bloodbaths in the years that followed the Second World War." They cited
the cases of the Philippines (1898-73), Thailand (1946-73), Palestine (1948-),
Vietnam (1954-73), Central America (1954-), Indonesia (1965-69), Cambodia
(1965-73), East Pakistan (1971) and Burundi (1972), More recently, Iraq (1990), Rwanda (1994), the Democratic Republic of Congo [DRC] (1998-2007) and
Afghanistan
(2001-)
have
joined
the
grim
list.
Herman and Peterson examine killings in Sudan, Yugoslavia, Rwanda and the
DRC. They also study war crimes committed by US allies Israel, Croatia, the
Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, Turkey, Indonesia, El Salvador and Guatemala
This review is from:
Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy
(Hardcover)
Within the 900+ non-fiction books about information, intelligence, emerging
threats, and national security that I have reviewed for Amazon, I count many of
Noam Chomsky's books. As with others, there is some repetition here, and he
could have done a better job of reviewing the function and purpose of the state
before labeling the U.S. a failed state. I will say, before my concluding comment,
that all of my reading bears out Chomsky's inherent correctness.
Among
the
points
that
earned
a
note
on
my
flyleaf:
* US began with the genocide of the Indians, moved on to slavery, and now
condones
genocide
across
Africa
and
elsewhere.
* Quotes CIA Bin Laden analyst with appreciation in noting that all the US has to
do to stop the problems in the Middle East is wean itself from dictators and cheap
oil, remove its forces from the Muslim lands, and stop predatory capitalism.
Hmmmm. There just might be a moral point in there someplace!
* Chomsky asserts that history documents that preventive wars usually bring
about the outcomes they ostensibly seek to stop, and does very very well in
detailing how the US invasion allowed hundreds of missile and weapons sites to
be looted, moving many of the components of weapons of mass destruction into
unfriendly insurgent hands--precisely what we allegedly sought to prevent.
* The author recounts the varied facts that have emerged on how the US
specifically sought regime change, the British (at least those with integrity like
the Foreign Minister who quit) refused to go along with that, so Blair and Bush
together
concocted
pretexts.
* Chomsky confirms in this book what I have seen myself, which is that the only
part of the US Government that is "at war" is the U.S. Army and select portions of
the U.S. Air Force. The rest of the government is NOT at war, and simply
pursuing business as usual. Our war on terrorism is ineffective in the sense of
capturing specific terrorists, and counter-productive in the sense of producing
tens of thousands more--as Chomsky recounts in the book citing RAND and other
studies, 85% of the "foreign fighters" in Iraq were mobilized and radicalized by
the
US
invasion
of
Iraq.
* Chomsky is provocatively on target when he anticipates the emergence of a
Shiite regional power based on Iran that includes the Shiite controlled regions of
Iraq and Saudi Arabia--and in the latter, that happens to include the most
productive oil fields--in short, the extremist Republicans' worst nightmare.
* Chomsky harps,
sponsoring crimes
democracy (Iran,
dictators who will
interest
no doubt with reason, on the long record that the US has in
against humanity including regime changes that are against
Chile, Guatemala, Haiti, the list goes on) and in favor of
protect US private investment as the expense of the public
in
their
own
countries.
* Chomsky focuses a portion of the book on the crimes by Israel against the
Palestinians, although he does not appear to balance this by noting how illtreated the Palestinians have been by all the Arab nations. He emphatically and
deliberately identifies Bush with Hitler in that the two share a strain of "demonic
messiaism" and rely on "the big lie" that (if repeated often enough) will fool the
people. Goebbels would be proud of his kin in the White House, Karl Rove.
* Chomsky concludes the book by discussing the "democratic deficit" in the USA,
and while he is very much on point, he wanders somewhat. For a better
appreciation of why we allowed the extreme right to take over and ruin the
country, I recommend Jacob Hacker's OFF CENTER: The Republican Revolution
and the Erosion of American Democracy as well as other books on my democracy
list. As a moderate Republican, I can certify that the Republican party today is
run by thieves, lunatics, extremists, and -- in the case of John McCain -- born
again Bushophiles.
This book is, like, most of his books, a very long Op-Ed but with good
footnotes. We need to move toward more analysis and toward finding solutions.
Inspired by Chomsky and others, I am in the process of developing a monograph
that takes the top ten threats to global and national security identified by the
High-Level threat panel of the United Nations (with LtGen Dr. Brent Scowcroft as
the US representative), and showing that 80% of the information we need to
understand and address those threats is open source information (OSIF), not
secret information, on which we spend $60 billion a year. At the same time, we
are spending $500 billion a year on a heavy-metal military and missile defense,
when in fact inter-state conflict is only one of the ten threats, or 10%. We are
not, as a nation, trained, equipped, nor organized to do poverty, infectious
disease, environmental collapse, civil war, terrorism, or translational crime.
America is in effect, two Americas: a nation of sheep living for their next six pack,
and a very small exclusive group of perhaps 10,000 really rich people dominating
Wall Street, the energy companies, and a handful of other major corporate
networks. They are busy looting the Republic on the false assumption that they
will be able to retire to gated enclaves. They simply do not understand that within
twenty years there will be no place for them or their heirs to hide, and this will all
come back to haunt them.I would also say that I am more optimistic than
Chomsky. Collective Intelligence and a Citizens Party (as a second home party,
non-rival) are emergent, and technologies are coming out that will help eliminate
poverty and infectious disease while stabilizing the environment and population.
What we lack right now is moral strategic leadership. It is my hope that BushCheney have radicalized enough of the world so that we might thank them in
2008 for making possible the return of balanced centrist coalition leadership.
faisal@shonez.com.sa