In These Times Interview - Noam Chomsky

In These Times conducts an interview with the always interesting Noam Chomsky. It's rare that a philosopher/pundit is equally hated by both conservatives and liberals -- he must be doing something right.

Gunning for the Prize

An interview with Noam Chomsky
By Roger Bybee

U.S leaders and media have failed to offer a "principled critique" of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, Noam Chomsky says.

Noam Chomsky is one of the world’s most quoted people, but his forceful criticism of U.S. policy has often made him a pariah in U.S. media, which find his views far beyond the bounds of acceptable opinion. Even the liberal American Prospect, before opposition to the Iraq War became widespread, ran the headline, “Between Chomsky and Cheney” on its cover in March 2005.

As he does in this interview, Chomsky consistently steps outside the narrow confines of the conventional Democratic-Republican spectrum. He outlines how the Nuremburg Tribunals following World War II established principles under which U.S. officials — including Bush and Cheney — should be found guilty of war crimes for the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and challenges Barack Obama on whether his plan for Iraq will mean a real withdrawal of U.S. forces. And he questions whether elite politicians and media pundits will ever see U.S. foreign policy as anything other than benevolent.

Chomsky’s writings, which include dozens of books on U.S. foreign policy, are notable for his scrutiny of original government source materials, which locates damning admissions about the true goals of U.S. policy, and his careful distinction between the opinions of elite policy-makers and media and those of the majority of Americans.

Although he has stirred up enormous controversies, Chomsky is a soft-spoken, grandfatherly 79-year-old who first rose to prominence as a professor of linguistics at MIT. But during the Vietnam War, he emerged as one of the most provocative voices calling into account the U.S. government and the multinational corporations with which it is so closely aligned.

Go read the interview.

Key quote: "We can view the actions of others in terms of the principle we claim to uphold, but not our own actions."

Too bad he's dead right in that observation about American politics.

Tags: In These Times, Interview, Noam Chomsky, Gunning for the Prize, Roger Bybee, Politics, culture, society, George Bush, Dick Cheney, war crimes, U.S. policy