What's Happening? Boron Interviews Chomsky
Excerpts from Atilio Boron's interview with Noam Chomsky
June 14, 2003

Atilio A. Boron: Looking at the recent US policies in Iraq, What do you think was the real goal behind this war?

Noam Chomsky: Well, we can be quite confident on one thing. The reasons we are given can't possibly be the reasons. And we know that, because they are internally contradictory. So one day, Bush and Powell would claim that "the single question," as they put it, is whether Iraq would disarm and the next day they would say it doesn´t matter whether Iraq disarms because they will go on and invade anyway. And the next day would be that if Saddam and his group get out then the problem will be solved; and then, the next day for example, at the Azores, at the summit when they made an ultimatum to the United Nations, they said that even if Saddam and his group get out they would go on and invade anyway. And they went on like that. When people give you contradictory reasons every time they speak, all they are saying is: "don't believe a word I say". So we can dismiss the official reasons.

And the actual reasons I think are not very obscure. First of all, there´s a long standing interest. That does not account for the timing but it does account for the interest. And that is that Iraq has the second large oil reserves in the World and controlling Iraqi oil and even ending up probably with military bases in Iraq will place the United States in an extremely strong position to dominate the global energy system even more than it does today. That's a very powerful lever of world control, quite apart from the profits that comes from it. And the US probably doesn't intend to access the oil of Iraq; it intends to use primarily safer Atlantic basin resources for itself (Western Hemisphere, West Africa). But to control the oil has been a leading principle of US foreign policies since the Second World War, and Iraq is particularly significant in this respect. So that's a long standing interest. On the other hand it doesn't explain the timing.

If you want to look at the timing, I think that it became quite clear that the massive propaganda for the war began in September of last year, September 2002. Before that there was a condemnation of Iraq but no effort to whip people into war fever. So we asked what else happened then September 2002. Well, two important things happened. One was the opening of the mid term congressional campaign, and the Bush´s campaign manager, Karl Rove, was very clearly explaining what should be obvious to anybody anyway: that they could not possible enter the campaign with a focus on social and economic issues. The reason is that they are carrying out policies which are quite harmful to the general population and favorable to an extremely narrow sector of corporate power and the corrupt sectors as well, and they can't face the electorate on that. As he pointed out, if we can make the primary issue national security then we will be able win because people will -you know- flock to power if they feel frightened. And that is second nature to these people; that's the way they have ran the country -right through the 1980´s- with very unpopular domestic programs but accustomed to press into the panic button -Nicaragua, Grenada, crime, one thing after another. And Rove also pointed out that something similar would be needed for the presidential election.

And that's true and what they want do is not just to stay in office but they would like to institutionalize the very regressive program put forward domestically, a program which will basically unravel whatever is left of New Deal social democratic systems and turn the country almost completely into a passive undemocratic society, controlled totally by high concentration of capitals. This means slashing public medical assistance, social security; probably schools; and increasing state power. These people are not conservatives, they brought the country into a federal deficit with the largest increase in federal spending in 20 years, that is since their last term in office- and huge tax cuts for the rich, and they want to institutionalize these programs. They are seeking a "fiscal train wreck" that will make it impossible to fund the programs. They know they cannot face an election declaring that they want to destroy very popular programs, but they can throw up their hands in despair and say, "What can we do, there's no money," after they have made sure there would be no money by huge tax cuts for the rich and sharp increase in spending for military (including high tech industry) and other programs beneficial to corporate power and the wealthy. So that's the second, that's the domestic factor and in fact, there was a spectacular propaganda achievement on that. After the government-media propaganda campaign began in September they succeeded in convincing a majority of the population very quickly that Iraq was an imminent threat to the security of the United States, and even that Iraq was responsible for September 11th. I mean, there is not a grain of truth in all that, but by now majority of the population believes those things...

For the full text of the Chomsky interview visit: http://www.zmag.org/