Archive for the 'Foreign policy' Category

Chomsky on U.S. policy toward Iran

Published
by
Christiaan
on 26 November, 2007
in Foreign policy, Imperialism, Iran, Propaganda, US foreign policy and United States
. 3 Comments

Paul Jay interviews Noam Chomksy on U.S. policy toward Iran:

Suppose it was true that Iran is helping insurgents in Iraq. I mean, wasn’t the United States helping insurgents when the Russians invaded Afghanistan? Did we think there was anything wrong with that? I mean, Iraq’s a country that was invaded and is under military occupation. You can’t have a serious discussion about whether someone else is interfering in it. The basic assumption underlying the discussion is that we own the world.”

It’s all just a big misunderstanding

Published
by
Christiaan
on 21 May, 2006
in Analysis, Books, Foreign policy, Imperialism, Politics, Repression and US foreign policy
. 1 Comment

Kirk MacGibbon, a New Zealander living in New York, says that Kiwi’s are prejudice against Americans and that this comes from, amongst other things, “their limited understanding of American foreign policy.”

But we’re not the only ones to lack understanding. Much of the world misunderstands U.S. foreign policy, especially those who have to deal with it at the end of a gun barrel. Ordinary people just don’t seem to get that the U.S. meddles in and destroys their lives for their own good.

While the self-appointed World Ideology Police “fight terrorism,” or “rid the world of weapons of mass destruction” or, my personal favourite, “spread democracy and freedom,” the world stands by and simply misunderstands, or even fights back.

Worse still, it actually presumes to discuss such small inconveniences as:

  • The genocide of the indigenous people of North America
  • Murderous and cowardly bombing campaigns, including the hundreds of thousands bombed in Vietnam and Cambodia, and the hundreds of thousands fire bombed and nuclear bombed in Japan
  • The long record of sponsoring crimes against humanity including regime changes that are against democracy (Iran, Chile, Guatemala, Haiti, the list goes on) and the support of dictators who protect U.S. private investment at the expense of the public interest in their own countries (aka predatory capitalism)
  • Hostility towards and repression of alternative models of development that might challenge the “Washington Consensus” (again, a long list, see books below)
  • The reserving for itself alone the right to wage permanent war on the world and justify it under a doctrine of “anticipatory self-defense” or preventive war.
  • The reassertion of imperial power and the vitiation of international law.
  • The encouragement given to other countries to develop nuclear weapons and terrorist networks as a deterent to U.S. aggression
  • The use of Depleted Uranium tipped munitions, cluster bombs, fire bombs (aka Napalm) and now the prospect of new nuclear weapons
  • Torture
  • And oil (presumably we’re meant to believe the U.S. would have invaded Iraq had their economy been based on cabbage and potatoes)

And then the U.S. produces Presidents with attitudes like this:

I will never apologise for the United States of America, ever. I don’t care what it has done. I don’t care what the facts are.
—George WH Bush, Newsweek, 15 August, 1988

This was in regard to the shooting down of an Iranian civilian airliner on 3 July, 1988 by the USS Vincennes. All 290 civilian people in the aircraft were killed. The plane was on a routine flight in a commercial corridor in Iranian airspace.

But you see, it’s all because:

The United States is good.
We try to do our best everywhere.
—Madeleine Albright, The Washington Post, 23 October, 1999

Problem is the facts speak for themselves, or sometimes even those in power do:

In 1996, Madeleine Albright, then the U.S. Secretary of State (i.e. head of foreign affairs), was asked by Leslie Stahl on Sixty Minutes what she felt about the fact that half a million Iraqi children had died as a result of U.S.-led economic sanctions. Albright replied, “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price—we think the price is worth it.”

The following quote from a U.S. strategic planner in 1948 sums things up pretty well (paraphrased ruthlessly):

We have about 50% of the world’s wealth but only 6.3 of its population … In this situation … our real task in the coming period … is to maintain this position of disparity.
—George F. Kennan, 28 February, 1948

Perhaps if Mr MacGibbon spent less time hanging out in New York eateries watching Faux News and listening to those who hold the gun or stuff their faces while others do and instead travelled the world to talk to those at the end of the gun barrel he might come to a better misunderstanding of U.S. foreign policy like the rest of us.

Recommended reading: