[D66] Noam Chomsky on WikiLeaks, Obama’s Targeted Assassinations and Latin America’s Break from the U.S.

[Antid Oto]

http://www.democracynow.org/2012/5/14/noam_chomsky_on_wikileaks_obamas_targeted

"If the Bush administration didn’t like somebody, they’d kidnap them and send
them to torture chambers," Chomsky says. "If the Obama administration decides
they don’t like somebody, they murder them."


AMY GOODMAN: We return to our interview with Noam Chomsky. I spoke with him last
week in the courtyard of the King Juan Carlos I Center at New York University. I
asked him about WikiLeaks.

NOAM CHOMSKY: I don’t see anything that’s come out on WikiLeaks that was a
legitimate secret. I mean, WikiLeaks is a service to the population. Assange
should get an award for—presidential medal of honor. He’s—the whole WikiLeaks
operation has helped inform people about what their elected representatives are
doing. That should be a wonderful thing to do, like—and it’s interesting.
Nothing really sensational has come out, but it is interesting to know, for
example, that when the Obama administration effectively supported the military
coup in Honduras that kicked out the democratic government and put in a—what
amounts to a military-backed government, that they knew exactly what they were
doing, because the embassy in—we learn from WikiLeaks that the embassy in
Honduras had presented a detailed analysis right at the beginning of the coup
that expelled the president and said, "Yeah, this is unconstitutional, it’s
illegal," you know, and so on. So, yes, they knew exactly what they were doing
when Obama and Clinton were saying, "Well, you know, it’s not that bad.
Everything is going fine," and so on.

Or, for example, when Anne Patterson, the ambassador to Pakistan—this is some of
the most interesting revelations. She supports U.S. policy in AfPak, Afghanistan
and Pakistan, but she did warn that U.S. policies of, you know, assassinations,
pressures on Pakistan, and so on, carry a real danger. They carry the danger of
radicalizing Pakistan and—where opposition to these policies is enormous, and
maybe creating even a situation where its nuclear facilities would be accessible
to jihadi elements. So it’s creating terrific danger. In fact, Pakistan is way
more dangerous to U.S. security than Afghanistan, which is nothing. Well, it’s
good to know that they were getting that information. They were getting that
information from analysts, you know, people who write about it and know about
it, but the fact that they were getting it from the embassy is significant, when
you think about how these policies were escalated. And, in fact, it’s quite
striking that the policies are undertaken in ways which almost—it’s almost as if
they’re consciously trying to increase the threat.

So, take, say, the assassination of Osama bin Laden. I mean, I’m a small
minority of people who think that was a crime. I don’t think you should have a
right to invade another country, apprehend a suspect—remember, he’s a suspect,
even if you think he’s guilty—apprehend him, after he’s apprehended and
defenseless, assassinate him and throw his body into the ocean. Yeah, civilized
countries don’t do that sort of thing. But—and notice that it was undertaken at
great risk. The Navy SEALs were under orders to fight their way out, if there
was a problem. If they had had to fight their way out, they would have gotten
air cover and probably intervention. We could have been at war with Pakistan.
Pakistan has a professional army. They’re dedicated to protecting the
sovereignty of the state, very dedicated to it, and they wouldn’t take this
lightly. A war with Pakistan would be an utter disaster. It’s one of the huge
nuclear facilities, laced with radical Islamic elements. They’re not a big part
of the population, but they’re all over. But they did it anyway. Then, right
after it, when Pakistan was, you know, totally outraged, we carried out more
drone attacks in Pakistan, almost—you know, it’s kind of astonishing when you
look at the planning, quite apart from the criminality.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you think of the U.S. increased reliance—President Obama
increasingly using drones to attack people in Pakistan, in Afghanistan, Yemen,
Somalia, and beyond?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Good comment about that made by Yochi Dreazen. He’s the military
correspondent—was the military correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, is now
for some other outfit, a military analyst. He pointed out accurately—this after
the killing of Osama bin Laden, which he approved of, but he said that there’s
an interesting difference between Bush and Obama. I mean, I’m now paraphrasing
in my own terms, not his terms, so the way I would have said it is: Bush—if
Bush, the Bush administration, didn’t like somebody, they’d kidnap them and send
them to torture chambers; if the Obama administration decides they don’t like
somebody, they murder them, so you don’t have to have torture chambers all over.

Actually, that tells us something else. Just take a look at the first Guantánamo
detainee to go to trial under Obama. Trial means military commission, whatever
that is. The first one was a very interesting case and tells us a lot. The first
one was Omar Khadr. And what was his crime? His crime was that when he was 15
years old, he tried to defend his village against an attack by U.S. forces in
Afghanistan. So that’s the crime, therefore he’s a terrorist. So he was sent to
Bagram, then to Guantánamo, eight years in these torture chambers. And then he
came up for trial under Obama. And he was given a choice: you can plead not
guilty and stay in Guantánamo for the rest of your life, or you can plead guilty
and get another eight years. So his lawyers advised him to plead guilty. Well,
that’s justice under our constitutional law president, for a 15-year-old kid
defending his village against an attacking army. And there was nothing said—the
worst part is, there’s nothing said about it.

Actually, the same is true of the Awlaki killing, you know, this American cleric
in Yemen who was killed by drones. He was killed. The guy next to him was
killed. Shortly after, his son was killed. Now, there was a little talk about
the fact that he was an American citizen: you shouldn’t just murder American
citizens. But, you know, the New York Times headline, for example, when he was
killed, said something like "West celebrates death of radical cleric." First of
all, it wasn’t death, it was murder. And the West celebrates the murder of a
suspect. He’s a suspect, after all. There was something done almost 800 years
ago called the Magna Carta, which is the foundation of Anglo-American law, that
says that no one shall be subjected to a violation of rights without due process
of law and a fair and speedy trial. It doesn’t say, if you think somebody’s a
suspect, you should kill them.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you think the media has improved at all, as you assess it over
these decades, right now?

NOAM CHOMSKY: I think it’s better than it was. I’m not a great fan of the media,
but I think, if you compare them to, say, the '50s and the ’60s, it's
considerably improved.

AMY GOODMAN: Because there’s competition and because people have access to other
information, it puts pressure on the establishment media?

NOAM CHOMSKY: I don’t think so. In fact, it’s more monopolized than it was then.
I think it’s because the country has changed. It’s a much more civilized country
than it was, I mean, if you think back what things were like in the '60s. And
first of all, you know, you have to—take, say, women's rights. I mean,
throughout American history, up 'til quite recently, under law, women were
basically property. They were the property of their fathers and their husbands.
I mean, in the early years of the country, the argument against women voting was
that it wouldn't be fair, because then the husband would get two votes, since
obviously the wife has to do what she’s told, you know. And, in fact, until the
1970s, women didn’t have a guaranteed right to serve on juries, because they
were considered—you know, couldn’t do that kind of thing. If you go back to the
universities in the early ’60s, my university, it was, you know, obedient,
deferential white males. All of that has changed.

It’s changed in many other respects. You mentioned gay rights. I mean, that
would have been—you know, you couldn’t even utter the words not many years ago.
And there are laws against sodomy, up until recently, maybe still. And it’s the
same in England. There was just a dramatic case there. I don’t know if you’ve
been following it. But one of the great mathematicians of the 20th century, Alan
Turing, who was also a British war hero—he’s the one who pretty much decrypted
the German codes and saved Britain from attack—well, he was a homosexual. In the
early 1950s—that’s against British law. Early 1950s, he was subjected to
treatment to cure him of this disease. The treatment was so grotesque, he
finally committed suicide. Well, that’s, you know, a long time ago, that’s 1954.
Now, Prime Minister Cameron was just asked whether time has come to issue a
belated pardon. It’s the hundredth anniversary of his birth. And he said, "No,
he violated British law. No pardon for that." So, OK, we killed—basically killed
this war hero and great mathematician because he was violating British law.
Well, you know, that’s—that’s changed a lot, maybe not in Cameron’s office,
but—and it’s changed in many ways. And that’s affected the media, because, you
know, the people working there, who—a lot of women, went through these experiences.

AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky, what gives you hope?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, lots of—right here, for example. Take the Occupy movement.
That’s very striking and dramatic. Or take where we are today. We’re in a
meeting of NACLA, North American Congress on Latin America. What’s happened in
Latin America in the last 10 years is just spectacular. I mean, in the last 10
years, for the first time in—since the Spanish and Portuguese conquerors—that’s
half a millennium—Latin America has freed itself, substantially freed itself
from Western domination and control, meaning mainly U.S.

In fact, there was a just very dramatic example of it just a couple of weeks ago
at the Cartagena hemispheric conference, which is very important. It was kind of
suppressed here. There was some Secret Service scandal, but there were really
interesting things that happened. This is a hemispheric conference. There were
two major issues. There was no declaration, because you couldn’t get agreement.
The two issues were Cuba and drugs. The whole hemisphere wants Cuba to be
admitted to the hemispheric—to the summit. The U.S. refused—U.S. and Canada
refused. On drugs, practically the whole hemisphere is pressing for
decriminalization, because they’re suffering the brunt of the—you know, they are
the ones who get hit in the solar plexus. The demand for drugs is here. The
supply of arms is here. And they suffer from it. So they want to move towards
decriminalization. U.S. and Canada refused.

U.S. and Canada are isolated in the hemisphere. And in fact, there’s a new
organization, just formed about a year ago, CELAC, which formally excludes the
U.S. and Canada, includes everyone else. It’s quite possible that that may
replace the Organization of American States, which is U.S.-run. One sign of it
is the U.S. has been essentially kicked out of its military bases in South
America. They’re also moving towards dealing with some of their internal
problems, which are severe.

And the other thing that’s exciting there is the role of popular movements. I
mean, there are mass popular movements of indigenous people, working people,
others who have just been—you know, who have been extremely successful in
substantially changing policy. That’s of historic significance.

AMY GOODMAN: So, the Occupy movement gives you hope. Latin America gives you hope.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Arab Spring. I mean, there are a lot of interesting things
happening in the world. But I think consciousness is changing on a lot of
things. I mentioned the attitudes of kids 18 to 24, which is pretty bad, but I
think that can be changed, too.

AMY GOODMAN: MIT Professor Noam Chomsky, world-renowned scholar, dissident and
linguist. He has taught more than half a century at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, where he’s Institute Professor and professor of linguistics. I
interviewed him last week here in New York at the 45th anniversary celebration
of NACLA, the North American Congress on Latin America, where he was being
honored. Noam Chomsky is the author of over a hundred books, most recently, Occupy.