Noam Chomsky on How the Military Is Bankrupting Us and Why Corporate Interests Want to Destroy Public Programs

Alternet.org

Editor’s note: The following is a transcript of a Noam Chomsky interview on Democracy Now! Chomsky covers a wide range of subjects, including the true cost of America’s empire, the significance of Obama’s recent jobs proposal, and the real reasons why corporate interests and conservatives are intent on demolishing wildly successful public programs like Social Security.

President Obama sent his new jobs proposal to Congress on Monday with a plan to pay for the $447 billion package by raising taxes on the wealthy. Noam Chomsky says, “The healthcare system…the huge military spending, the very low taxes for the rich [and corporations]…those are fundamental problems that have to be dealt with if there’s going to be anything like successful economic and social development in the United States.” As Republican presidential candidate, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, calls Social Security a “Ponzi scheme,” and Democrats buy into the narrative that the program is in crisis, Chomsky notes that “to worry about a possible problem 30 years from now, which can incidentally be fixed with a little bit of tampering here and there, as was done in 1983, to worry about that just makes absolutely no sense, unless you’re trying to destroy the program.”

AMY GOODMAN: Our guest for the hour is MIT professor Noam Chomsky. His latest book is called 9-11: Was There an Alternative? That last question, “Was there an alternative?,” referring to the assassination of Osama bin Laden. Aaron?

AARON MATÉ: Well, Noam, you mentioned the changes in discourse between 10 years ago and today. And actually, this issue of the reasons behind 9/11 came up Monday night at the Republican presidential debate. Congress Member Ron Paul of Texas drew boos from the crowd and a rebuke from other candidates on the podium when he criticized U.S. foreign policy in discussing the roots of 9/11.

REP. RON PAUL: We’re under great threat because we occupy so many countries. We’re in 130 countries. We have 900 bases around the world. We’re going broke. The purpose of al-Qaeda was to attack us, invite us over there, where they can target us. And they have been doing it. They have more attacks against us and the American interests per month than occurred in all the years before 9/11. But we’re there, occupying their land. And if we think that we can do that and not have retaliation, we’re kidding ourselves. We have to be honest with ourselves. What would we do if another country, say China, did to us what we do to all those countries over there?

So, this whole idea that the whole Muslim world is responsible for this and they’re attacking us because we’re free and prosperous, that is just not true. Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda have been explicit. They have been explicit, and they wrote and said that we attacked—we attacked America because you had bases on our holy land in Saudi Arabia, you do not give Palestinians a fair treatment, and you have been bombing—I didn’t say that, I’m trying to get you to understand what the motive was behind the bombing. At the same time, we had been bombing and killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis for 10 years. Would you be annoyed? If you’re not annoyed, then there’s some problem.

AARON MATÉ: That was Republican Congress Member Ron Paul of Texas speaking Monday night at the Republican presidential debate. Noam Chomsky, your response?

NOAM CHOMSKY: I think what he said is completely uncontroversial. You can read it in government documents. You can find it in polls. Maybe people don’t like to hear it, but, as I mentioned before, it goes back to the 1950s. Actually, right after 9/11, the Wall Street Journal, to its credit, did a study of privileged Muslims, sometimes called “monied Muslims,” people in the Muslim world who are deeply embedded in the U.S. global project—lawyers, directors of multinational corporations and so on, not the general population. And it was very much like what Eisenhower was concerned about, and the National Security Council, in the 1950s. There was a lot of antagonism to U.S. policy in the region, partly support of dictators blocking democracy and development, just as the National Security Council concluded in 1958.

Also, by 2001, there were much more specific things: very much a lot of anger about the U.S. backing for Israeli occupation of the Occupied Territories, settlements, the bitter oppression of the Palestinians, and also, something that isn’t discussed much here but meant a lot there—and remember, these are privileged Muslims, leaders —those who kind of carry out, implement the general U.S. economic and social policies in the region. The other thing, besides the support of Israeli crimes, was the sanctions against Iraq. This was 2001, remember. The sanctions against Iraq were brutal and destructive. They killed hundreds of thousands of people. Both of the international diplomats who administered the Oil-for-Food program, distinguished international diplomats—Denis Halliday, Hans von Sponeck, in sequence—both of them resigned in protest because they regarded the sanctions as genocidal. They were carrying out a kind of a mass slaughter of Iraqis. They were strengthening Saddam Hussein. They were compelling the population to rely on him just for survival. And these were major crimes of the 1990s. And privileged Muslims, monied Muslims, in the Saudi Arabia, elsewhere, were bitterly opposed to this, not because they hate our freedoms, because they don’t like murderous and brutal policies.

AARON MATÉ: Noam, before, you were quoting a CIA analyst saying that the U.S. had actually become Osama bin Laden’s biggest ally through being drawn into so many wars abroad, and talking about how all this engagement has undermined U.S. standing. What has this decade of war meant here at home for the domestic situation and how that relates to bin Laden’s goals of bleeding the United States?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Yeah, he was pretty explicit about that. He wanted to draw the United States into what intelligence agencies called a trap, which would inflame and incite hostility in the Muslim world, he hoped, help mobilize people for his cause—I don’t think that happened—but also bankrupt the U.S. at home. I mean, current estimates—there was a recent estimate, a study at Brown University, estimated the cost just of the two wars at about $4 trillion. If you count in the costs of, you know, homeland security and so on, probably doubles that. That’s pretty serious. Between the wars, the housing bubble and Bush’s tax cuts for the rich, that—it creates the economic crisis that we’re now in.

AMY GOODMAN: On Monday, President Obama sent his new jobs proposal to Congress. In a new challenge to Republicans, Obama said he would propose paying the $447 billion package by raising taxes on the wealthy. Around $400 billion would be raised by eliminating a number of deductions claimed by wealthy taxpayers. Obama discussed the bill in a White House speech.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: On Thursday, I told Congress that I’ll be sending them a bill called the American Jobs Act. Well, here it is. This is—this is a bill that will put people back to work all across the country. This is the bill that will help our economy in a moment of national crisis. This is a bill that is based on ideas from both Democrats and Republicans. And this is the bill that Congress needs to pass. No games, no politics, no delays. I’m sending this bill to Congress today, and they ought to pass it immediately.

AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky, what is your assessment of President Obama, whether we’re talking about his new jobs plan or whether we’re talking about his foreign policy?