NOAM CHOMSKY: WHY ISN'T IRAQ IN THE 2008 ELECTION?

Noam Chomsky, professor emeritus at MIT, has long been considered one of the most brilliant minds in America. His book, "Manufacturing Consent," co-authered with Professor Edward Hermann, professor emeritus of the University of Pennsylvania, spelled out how the corporate media controls what the American public reads, sees and hears from news organizations.

In this article, Chomsky asks the question: "Why Isn't Iraq in the 2008 Election," and he answers the question in a way only Chomsky could answer it.


Noam Chomsky: Why Isn't Iraq in the 2008 Election?

By Noam Chomsky, Democracy Now!Posted on March 3, 2008, Printed on March 3, 2008

http://www.alternet.org/story/78408/

The following speech, transcribed by Democracy Now!, was delivered by Chomsky in Massachussetts at an event sponsored by Bikes Not Bombs.

Not very long ago, as you all recall, it was taken for granted that the Iraq war would be the central issue in the 2008 election, as it was in the midterm election two years ago. However, it's virtually disappeared off the radar screen, which has solicited some puzzlement among the punditry.

Actually, the reason is not very obscure. It was cogently explained forty years ago, when the US invasion of South Vietnam was in its fourth year and the surge of that day was about to add another 100,000 troops to the 175,000 already there, while South Vietnam was being bombed to shreds at triple the level of the bombing of the north and the war was expanding to the rest of Indochina.

However, the war was not going very well, so the former hawks were shifting towards doubts, among them the distinguished historian Arthur Schlesinger, maybe the most distinguished historian of his generation, a Kennedy adviser, who -- when he and Kennedy, other Kennedy liberals were beginning to -- reluctantly beginning to shift from a dedication to victory to a more dovish position.

And Schlesinger explained the reasons. He explained that -- I'll quote him now -- "Of course, we all pray that the hawks are right in thinking that the surge of that day will work. And if it does, we may all be saluting the wisdom and statesmanship of the American government in winning a victory in a land that we have turned," he said, "to wreck and ruin. But the surge probably won't work, at an acceptable cost to us, so perhaps strategy should be rethought."

Well, the reasoning and the underlying attitudes carry over with almost no change to the critical commentary on the US invasion of Iraq today.

And it is a land of wreck and ruin.

You've already heard a few words; I don't have to review the facts. The highly regarded British polling agency, Oxford Research Bureau, has just updated its estimate of deaths.

Their new estimate a couple of days ago is 1.3 million. That's excluding two of the most violent provinces, Karbala and Anbar. On the side, it's kind of intriguing to observe the ferocity of the debate over the actual number of deaths. There's an assumption on the part of the hawks that if we only killed a couple hundred thousand people, it would be OK, so we shouldn't accept the higher estimates.

You can go along with that if you like.

Uncontroversially, there are over two million displaced within Iraq. Thanks to the generosity of Jordan and Syria, the millions of refugees who have fled the wreckage of Iraq aren't totally wiped out. That includes most of the professional classes. But that welcome is fading, because Jordan and Syria receive no support from the perpetrators of the crimes in Washington and London, and therefore they cannot accept that huge burden for very long. It's going to leave those two-and-a-half million refugees who fled in even more desperate straits.

The sectarian warfare that was created by the invasion never -- nothing like that had ever existed before. That has devastated the country, as you know. Much of the country has been subjected to quite brutal ethnic cleansing and left in the hands of warlords and militias.

That's the primary thrust of the current counterinsurgency strategy that's developed by the revered "Lord Petraeus," I guess we should describe him, considering the way he's treated.

He won his fame by pacifying Mosul a couple of years ago. It's now the scene of some of the most extreme violence in the country.

Click on link above to read the full Noam Chomsky story.