[Reader-list] Noam Chomsky interviewed by Amy Goodman of "Democracy Now"

[Venugopalan K M]

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Noam Chomsky  interviewed by Amy Goodman of "Democracy Now"

April 14, 2009

Full: <http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/21162>

AMY GOODMAN: Today, a conversation with one of the most important
dissident intellectuals of our time, Noam Chomsky, on the global
economic crisis, healthcare, the media, US foreign policy, the
expanding wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and resistance to American
empire. Noam Chomsky is a world-renowned linguist, philosopher, social
critic, and Institute Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology.  [...]

AMY GOODMAN: Do you think President Obama is any different than
President Bush when it comes to the economy? And if you were in the
Congress, would you have voted for the bailouts and the stimulus
packages?

NOAM CHOMSKY: He's different. I mean, first of all, there's a
rhetorical difference. But we have to distinguish the first and the
second Bush terms. They were different. I mean, the first Bush term
was so arrogant and abrasive and militaristic and dismissive of
everyone that they offended, they antagonized even allies, close
allies, and US prestige in the world plummeted to zero. Now, the
second Bush administration was more—moved more toward the center in
that respect, not entirely, but more, so some of the worst offenders,
like Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and others, were thrown out. I mean, they
couldn't throw out Dick Cheney, because he was the administration, so
they couldn't get rid of him. He stayed, but the others, a lot of
them, left. And they moved towards a somewhat more normal position.

And Obama is carrying that forward. He's a centrist Democrat. He never
really pretended to be anything else. And he's moving towards a kind
of a centrist position. He's very popular in Europe, not so much
because of him, but because he's not Bush. So there is the kind of
rhetoric that the European leaders and, in fact, the European
population tend to accept. In fact, you know, even in the Middle East,
where you'd think people would know better, they accept the illusions.
And they are illusions, because there's nothing to back them up. So,
yes, he is different from Bush.

Same—on the economy, well, you know, the current Obama-Geithner plan
is not very different from the Bush-Paulson plan. I mean, somewhat
different, but circumstances have changed. So, of course, it's
somewhat different. But it's still based on the principle that we have
to—somehow, the taxpayer has to rescue the institutions intact. They
have to remain intact, including the people who, you know, destroyed
the economy. In fact, they are the ones who Obama picked to fix it up.
[...]

AMY GOODMAN: Why do you think Obama chose to surround himself?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Because those are his beliefs. I mean, his support comes
from the—his constituency is basically the financial institutions.
Just take a look at the funding for his campaign. I mean, the final
figures haven't come out, but we have preliminary figures, and it
seems to be mostly financial institutions. I mean, the financial
institutions preferred him to McCain. They are the main funders for
both—you know, I mean, core funders for both parties, but considerably
more to Obama than McCain.

You can learn a lot from campaign contributions. In fact, one of the
best predictors of policy around is Thomas Ferguson's investment
theory of politics, as he calls it—very outstanding political
economist—which essentially—I mean, to say it in a sentence, he
describes elections as occasions in which groups of investors coalesce
and invest to control the state. And he takes a look at the formation
of campaign contributors, and it gives you a surprisingly good
prediction of what policies are going to be. It goes back a century,
New Deal and so on. So, yeah, it can predict pretty well what Obama is
going to do. There's nothing surprising about this. It's the norm in
what's called political democracy.  [...]

AMY GOODMAN: Your assessment of President Obama so far?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Frankly, I never had any expectations. I wrote about it
over a year ago. I thought then, and I think it's been confirmed, that
he's essentially a centrist Democrat. He's moving back—I mean, the
Bush administration was kind of off the spectrum, especially the first
term. So he's moving things back toward the center with a kind of a
public posture, which was recognized by the advertising industry.
That's why they gave him the award for best marketing campaign,
which—but as far as policy is concerned, unless he's under a lot of
pressure from activist sectors, he's not going to go beyond what he's
presented himself as in actual policy statements or cabinet choices
and so on: a centrist Democrat, going to basically continue Bush's
policies, maybe in a more modulated way.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you see Afghanistan becoming an ever-expanded war in
the next decade or so? Do you—now we're talking about doubling the US
troops there.

NOAM CHOMSKY: No, that's the way Obama and the Pentagon see it. In
fact, they say so: this is going to be a long war, it's going to be
extended, the US is going to take over the military side, and it's
going to expand it, it's going to expand into Pakistan. And, I mean,
we'll talk about development, but the focus will be on the military.
Obama, right now, is trying to get NATO to cooperate, but recognizing
that they're not going to send military forces. The populations are
opposed. [...]

AMY GOODMAN: The unmanned drones bombing Pakistan?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Yeah, drones. And that has effects. So a lot of the
worst fighting recently has been in the Bajaur province, right on the
border. It's in Pakistan's side. And militants in the area have
reported to the press that part of the reason is that an American
drone attack hit a madrasa, a school, and killed about eighty people.
Well, you know, they're "uncivilized barbarians"; they sort of don't
like that. So they reacted. And now, one of the militants has said,
"OK, we're going to bomb the White House," which is considered totally
outrageous. But, you know, if we kill as we like, there's going to be
a reaction.

AMY GOODMAN: Where do you see American empire in ten, twenty, thirty years?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Prediction in human affairs is a very low—has very
little success, too many complications. The United States, I think,
will come out of the economic crisis, very likely, as the dominant
superpower. There's a lot of talk about China and India, and it's
real, they're changing, but they're just not in the same league. I
mean, both China and India have enormous internal problems that the
West doesn't face.

You get kind of a picture of this by looking at the Human Development
Index of the United Nations. The last time I looked, India was about
125th or something. And I think China was about eightieth. And China
would be worse, I think, if it wasn't such a closed society. In India,
you sort of get better data, so you can see what's happening. China is
kind of closed. You don't see what's going on in the peasant areas,
which are in turmoil, you know. They have environmental problems. They
have huge—hundreds of millions of people are kind of like at the edge
of starvation.

We don't have—you know, we have problems, but not those problems. And
even the industrial growth, which is there—you know, for part of the
population, there's been improvement. But when you take, say, India,
where we know more, in the areas where high-tech industries
developed—and it's pretty impressive. I've visited some of the labs in
Hyderabad. You know, it's as good or better than MIT. But right
nearby, the rate of peasant suicides is going up, very sharply, in
fact. And it's the same source. It's the neoliberal policies, which
privilege a certain sector of the population and a certain—and let the
rest take care of themselves. [...]

AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky, Professor Emeritus at MIT, leading public
intellectual of our day. If you'd like to get a copy of the full
interview, part one and today's part two, with Noam Chomsky, you can
go to our website at democracynow.org