Review - Hegemony or Survival, by Noam Chomsky
Do they still allow Noam Chomsky on television anymore? Probably not on prime-time, news-time or on republican-owned stations -- Hell, probably not even on late-night. If you've read any of his political material, you would know why.
Main Thesis / Main Idea:
America's cut-throat foreign policy of military and economic imperialism is fueled by lies, creates enemies globally and ultimately puts not only their population, but the world's population, in real danger.
The truth is often harsh, but it's still the truth.
Not afraid to tell you what's really going on.
Full of quotable facts and incredible history.
Carries the obvious leftist bias.
When will the American public do something about this?
In "Hegemony or Survival", Chomsky offers another glaring indictment of American neocolonialism and isn't afraid to pull any punches. Wherever the American government sponsored terrorism sought to subjugate its own populace, Chomsky has taken footnotes. You really have to wonder how, if these facts exist, how are officials in the American government not in prison? Then again, maybe after reading this book, you don't wonder at all -- because it'll make perfect sense.
Ultimately, Chomsky's argument is that America's lust for complete global hegemony will usher in an era of worldly destruction. His point is that we can either have the death and destruction wrought on worldwide populace by American neocolonialism - or we can have survival.
To begin, Chomsky discusses what he usually proposes is the fourth branch of the government: the media. He states the obvious in that reasons for going to war in Iraq were part of a media blowout by the neocons to garner support from a recently-uberpatriotic populace. It's through this media-tale that war-hungry administrations can "manufacture consent" (a hallmark classic of Chomsky's literature canon).
"Also in September, a propaganda campaign was launched to depict Saddam Hussein as an imminent threat to the United States and to insinuate that he was responsible for the 9-11 atrocities and was planning others. The campaign, timed to the onset of the midterm congressional elections, was highly successful in shifting attitudes. It soon drove American public opinion off the global spectrum and helped the administration achieve electoral aims and establish Iraq as a proper test case for the newly announced doctrine of resort to force at will." (p. 3)
It is this notion of "preventive measures" that is so obviously prone to be taken advantage of that someone really needs to stop them. Chomsky's point is that anyone deemed a threat could have a fictitious reason (a fiction erected by the republican-driven media in America) to become an enemy.
"Virtually any country has the potential and ability to produce WMD, and intent is in the eye of the beholder. Hence the refined version of the grand strategy effectively grants Washington the right of arbitrary aggression." (p. 9)
"Within weeks, some 60 percent of Americans came to regard Saddam Hussein as "an immediate threat to the US" who must be removed quickly in self-defense. By March, almost half believed that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the 9-11 attacks and that the hijackers included Iraqis." (p. 12).
Do you ever watch those braindead commercials of people having insane amounts of fun while, let's say, drinking a can of Pepsi? And then wonder, "who is actually stupid enough to equate that much happiness with a can of soda..."? You have to wonder that in the same way you'd imagine American families watching the news and, all of a sudden, having complacent ambivalence toward Iraq turn to deep-seeded rage, loathing the Iraqi people and their savage leader that threatens freedom and democracy. You really have to wonder -- who are these people?
Chomsky almost begrudgingly admits that when Congress granted the president authority to go to war "to defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq" that it sounded eerily similar to the 1985 dialogue presented in defense of conflicts in Nicaragua. Reagan had then declared a state of national emergency (which was to be renewed annually) because the Nicaraguan policies and actions constituted a threat to the American people. Eerily similar.
What else is eery - and Chomsky is right on the money here - is that establishing what you can do to enemies but not establishing who those enemies are is a very effective form of conflict. That the American government has begun a precedent of preventive war means that the attacks they initiate can be that much more ambiguous and unjustified. They're not like "pre-emptive" strikes in which there can be direct evidence of an impending attack. Virtually any country has a potentially justifiable ability to produce either weapons of mass destruction or an intent to harm America -- intent which, as Chomsky notes, is easily within the eye of the beholder. Where this new "arbitrary aggression" policy will land America is uncertain, but path is going to be bloody and beneficialy only to Americans.
So who's going to champion such an absurd notion? Chomsky suggests that it's the rich -- the people who actually run the country.
As history has made abundantly clear, external conflict can be a great way to crush internal opposition -- and this is no less true of preventive war operating in tandem with the Patriot Act. If an enemy combatant is anyone who Washington "thinks" is a threat and the courts have previously ruled "that a wartime president can indefinitely detain a United States citizen captured as an enemy combatant on the battlefield and deny that person access to a lawyer"...then any citizen could potentially be taken away with no access to the outside world. One of the examples stated by Chomsky is Guantanamo Bay, an American "enemy combatants" prison in which numerous human rights violations have been systematically recorded and ignored.