From: sarahtnin@yahoo.com   
      
   copyright 2001 Numb Magazine   
      
   The Naked Emperor:   
      
   Jewel Welter Interviews the Very Clothed Noam Chomsky   
      
      
      
      
      
   Massachusetts Institute of Technology linguistics professor Noam Chomsky is   
   well acquainted with the controversy's seeds.  A quick perusal of Internet   
   keywords associated with his name reveals designations like dissident,   
   socialist, radical, modern Copernicus, anarchist, scholar, and critical   
   thinker.  Indeed, a brief conversation shows Chomsky as these terms and   
   more.  Critics occasionally mistake Chomsky's stoicism for aggression.  In   
   actuality, his outward pugnacity shrouds his unfeigned candor in discussing   
   global affairs.   
      
   During the fall of 2001, Chomsky toured India.  His trip coincided with   
   September 11, 2001, the day a group of men hijacked two jet planes and   
   crashed into the World Trade Center.  The eleventh shocked American citizens   
   whose grasp of world events depended upon information the media relayed   
   through television.  For political analysts like Noam Chomsky, the eleventh   
   was a spoke in a wheel of long-spinning persecution.  Since its origins, the   
   United States forcefully obliterated opponents to its aim of world   
   superiority.  What writer Rudyard Kipling characterized as the "White Man's   
   Burden" symbolized the United States' pattern of oppressing newly conquered   
   territories.  European despots displayed values to the original colonists   
   that later filtered into American policy.   
      
   United States government is technically an oligarchy.  An oligarchy's   
   political structure authorizes a small party of individuals to govern the   
   daily lives of the larger citizenry.  If the United States operated as a   
   democracy, congressional sessions would last years since government   
   assemblies require each person's presence.  Efficiency demands the   
   concentration of power into an easily manageable body of persons; however,   
   efficiency cannot explain the atrocities the US administration has committed   
   and then, distorted to deceive the populace.   
      
   President George W. Bush's Junior's "War on Terrorism" resembles President   
   John F. Kennedy's vow to "end Communism" by siding with South Vietnam   
   against North Vietnam.  North Vietnam's population consisted of impoverished   
   herders and farmers, similar to Afghanistan's population.  Culturally, South   
   and North Vietnam were bound to clash because of South Vietnam's vastly   
   different and prosperous merchant economy and politicians like Bao Dai and   
   Ngo Dinh Diem.  South Vietnamese Ho Chi Minh became American Enemy Number   
   One, instead of a dynamic man fighting to free his homeland from outside   
   interference.  Years before the Vietnam War, France's colonialist regime   
   controlled Vietnam.  Minh believed Vietnam needed a chance to heal, rather   
   than ruled by another tyrannical power with European roots (like the US).   
      
   Suspected mastermind Osama bin Laden has supplanted Minh as American Enemy   
   Number One.  "Bin Laden," says Chomsky, "proclaims that violence is   
   justified in self-defense against the infidels who invade and occupy Muslim   
   lands like Bosnia, Egypt and Saudi Arabia--and against the brutal and   
   corrupt governments they impose there.  Not so differently, Bush maintains   
   that violence is justified to drive terrorism and evil from American lands.   
   To Bush, American lands are the world and not just territories marked as   
   American by ownership.  That Bush can speak so casually of violence should   
   be alarming to Americans as should the sacrifice of civilians on both   
   sides."   
      
   The largest part of the people killed on the eleventh were common   
   workers--people with vocations like secretary, firefighter, police officer,   
   maintenance worker, and rescue volunteer.  If the crash's perpetrators   
   wanted to punish the American government, killing overwhelming numbers of   
   the working classes, rather than government personnel, was not effective.   
   Sadly and ironically, the people slain after Bush Junior's Afghanistan   
   bombings were civilians.   
      
   During the interview, Chomsky says that the eleventh's large-scale loss was   
   unmistakably appalling.  Additionally, the bombings correlated to the US   
   overseas policies, like President William Clinton's decision to bomb Sudan   
   and the more than 500,000 Iraqi people killed since 1998.  Of Sudan's   
   bombing, Chomsky observes, "The atrocity destroyed half the pharmaceutical   
   supplies of a poor African country and those agencies assisting Sudan's   
   population with a grievous human toll.  The United States blocked specific   
   figures for the death toll when the UN inquired of figures.  Few were   
   interested enough to further pursue the matter, so the number remains   
   undocumented."  The factory in Sudan supplied medicines to keep such   
   illnesses as tuberculosis and malaria from infecting the Sudanese   
   population.  Since the bombing, the death toll has increased because of the   
   lack of medical treatment--with numbers more shocking than the eleventh's   
   reported figures.   
      
   Nevertheless, the eleventh was a roar from a monster created by Presidents   
   George H. W. Bush Senior and Ronald Reagan.  Reagan signed National Security   
   Decision Directive 166, which covertly supplied more than 65,000 tons of   
   munitions and CIA personnel to the Pakistani Mujahideen.  Directive 166   
   sought to combat the threat of Communism.  The Bush Administration, in 1989,   
   also offered $1 billion in aid to Iraq's Ministry of Industry and Military   
   Production.  Reagan and Bush Senior helped build bin Laden's al Quaida   
   Network, the Taliban, and Saddam Hussein.   
      
   Bush Junior's "War on Terrorism" is as faulty as Kennedy's war to "stop   
   Communism."  Terrorism and Communism are ideas, and therefore, cannot be   
   stopped.  Stopping terrorism requires the systematic decimation of material   
   referencing terrorism and the people practicing or conceptually   
   understanding terrorism.  Had outsiders not attacked the United States on   
   native soil, perhaps Bush Junior would not be fighting terrorism.  When the   
   Taliban ordered the destruction of two 2,000 years old Buddhist statues in   
   Ghorband Valley, Afghanistan, and Amnesty International pleaded for   
   assistance for abused Afghan women, Bush did not offer sympathy or support.   
   Apparently, Bush Junior's "War on Terrorism" is a selective war.   
      
   Chomsky reveals, "The eleventh was the first time the United States was   
   attacked on the mainland since the British burned down Washington in 1814.   
   The instances of the United States waging a home front battle have been few   
   since the US's inception, due largely to the US policy of invading outside   
   territories.  History has shown that oppressive groups using unnecessary and   
   brutal force to accomplish an end become the victims of their wrongdoing."   
      
   A classic example of Chomsky's assertion is the once great Roman Empire,   
   which lacked the administrative structure to govern its new territories.   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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