Chomsky Denounces Bush’s Handling of Conflict With Iraq

MIT Professor of Linguistics Noam Chomsky ridiculed the Bush administration’s foreign policy and attacked its aggressive handling of Iraq last night in a speech at the Kennedy School of Government’s ARCO Forum.

He said the administration is proceeding without clear evidence of Iraq’s ties to terrorism and is instead using war to establish the connection.

“We can create a link between Iraq and the war on terror if we want,” he said, “and the best way to do that is to attack Iraq.”

Chomsky’s speech attracted an overflow crowd to the Forum last night, one of the biggest audiences this year, according to Institute of Politics Director Daniel R. Glickman.

In his address, which was billed as an answer to the question “Why Iraq?”, Chomsky said President Bush is using the Iraq issue to forward a broader conservative agenda.

“It is the strategy of the right oligarchy to direct mass discontent into nationalism and fear,” he said. “This strategy has been working quite brilliantly—you can see it in the midterm elections.”

As to the administration’s choice of Iraq as the target, Chomsky credited the “stupendous strategic power” that control of Iraq’s oil reserve would confer.

He also attacked the Bush administration’s public reasons for the war—to eliminate that country’s potential stores of weapons of mass destruction.

“The only way to find everything is to destroy the entire country,” Chomsky said.

He claimed that “people in the region aren’t afraid of it,” saying that even the Israeli intelligence believes that Hussein would not furnish nuclear weapons in the next four or five years.

“Americans happen to be frightened of things more than any other people,” Chomsky said.

Furthermore, he accused the Bush administration and its predecessors of inconsistent and even hypocritical policies.

“While listing the crimes of Saddam Hussein, only three words are missing: ‘with our support’,” Chomsky said, citing the American government’s decision to support Hussein in an uprising in 1991 to maintain stability in the region.

There are many reasons not to attack Iraq, Chomsky said. He said a war could “ignite terrorist attacks” and “spawn a new generation of terrorists.”

He criticized the rationale for war as “insane” and wryly suggested a “less insane” alternative—provoking Iran into attacking Iraq.

“There would be no American or Israeli casualties,” he said. “There will be plenty of Iraqi and Iranian casualties, but that would be no concern.”

According to Chomsky, there are many other effective methods to curb terrorism besides waging what he said would be an inconclusive war. He cited the example of Germany, where he said the police have broken up “very significant al Qaeda rings.”