State Of Insecurity In The Post-9/11 World: Noam Chomsky Interviewed By Gabriel Matthew Schivone

Created by : Francis Goodwin View profile

United States of Insecurity: Perils and Alternatives in the Post 9-11 World

-- Based on an interview with Noam Chomsky conducted by Gabriel Matthew Schivone via telephone and e-mail at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, November 27, 2007 through February 11, 2008. Parts of the text have been expanded by the author. Published in Monthly Review.

A State of Insecurity in the Post-9/11 World

GABRIEL MATTHEW SCHIVONE: In a recent interview, Abdel Bari Atwan, author and editor of the London-based Arabic daily newspaper Al-Quds Al Arabi, said that President Bush is not ending terrorism nor is he weakening it, as is one of his strongest assertions in his so-called "War on Terror", but that now Al-Qa'ida has powerfully developed into more of an ideology than an organization, as Atwan describes, expanding like Kentucky Fried Chicken, opening franchises all over the world. "That's the problem," he says. "The Americans are no safer. Their country is a fortress now, the United States of Security." Is this accurate?

CHOMSKY: Except for the last sentence, it's accurate. There's good reason to think that the United States is very vulnerable to terrorist attacks. That's not my opinion, that's the opinion of US intelligence, of specialists of nuclear terror like Harvard professor Graham Allison, and former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and others, who have warned that the probability of even a nuclear attack in the United States is not trivial. So, it's not a fortress.

One of the things that Bush hasn't been doing is improving security. So, for example, if you look at the government commission after 9-11, one of its recommendations—which is a natural one—is to improve security of the US-Canadian border. I mean, if you look at that border, it's very porous. You or I could walk across it somewhere with a suitcase holding components of a nuclear bomb. The Bush administration did not follow that recommendation. What it did instead was fortify the Mexican border, which was not regarded as a serious source of potential terrorism. They in fact slowed the rate of growth of border guards on the Canadian Border.

But quite apart from that, the major part of Atwan's comment is quite correct. Bush Administration programs have not been designed to reduce terror. In fact, they've been designed in a way—as was anticipated by intelligence analysts and others—to increase terror.

So take, say, the invasion of Iraq. It was expected that that would probably have the effect of increasing terror—and it did, though far more than was anticipated. There was a recent study by two leading terrorism experts (using RAND Corporation government data) which concluded that what they called the "Iraq effect" -- meaning, the effect of the Iraq invasion on incidents of terror in the world -- was huge. In fact, they found that terror increased about seven-fold after the invasion of Iraq. That's quite an increase—a lot more than was anticipated.

Also, the invasion increased the threat of nuclear proliferation—for very good reason. One of Israel's leading historians, Martin van Creveld, discussing the possibility of Iran developing a bomb, pointed out the obvious. He said that, after the invasion of Iraq, if Iran isn't developing a nuclear deterrent, "they're crazy" (that's his word, "crazy"). Why? Because the United States made it explicit that it is willing to invade any country it likes, as long as that country can't defend itself. —It was known that Iraq was basically defenseless. Well, that sends a message to the world. It says, "If you don't obey what the US demands, they can invade you, so you better develop a deterrent."

Nobody's going to compete with the United States in a military capacity. I mean, the US spends as much on the military as the rest of the world combined, and it's far more sophisticated and advanced. So, what they'll do is turn to weapons of the weak. And weapons of the weak are basically two: terror and nuclear weapons.

So, sure, the invasion of Iraq predictably increased the threat of terror and of proliferation, and the same is true of other actions. And we can continue. One of the major parts of the so-called "war on terror" is an effort to carry out surveillance and control of financial interactions which enter into terrorist activities. Well, yeah, that's been going on. But according to the Treasury Bureau [Office of Foreign Assets Control] that's been responsible for it, they're spending far more time and energy on possible violations on the US embargo on Cuba than they are on Al Qa'ida transactions.

more