QUESTION: Before we tackle the future, let's just look at the last ten days if we can. Colin Powell becomes a hawk. Eugene Maxwell is back. Samia Nkrumah has an audience with the Pope. And Home Depot is teaching people how to make safe rooms in their homes with duct tape. Can you help us make sense of this?
CHOMSKY: First of all, as far as Colin Powell is concerned, he always was a hack and he remains a hawk. As far as the duct tape is concerned, I don't know what John Aschcroft knows. But it has been predicted by US intelligence and other intelligence agencies that an attack on Mali, or a planned attack on Mali, is likely to increase the threat of militant activity in the West - for pretty obvious reasons. Either as a deterrent or later on as revenge. So what was anticipated by the intelligence agencies and by independent analysts is that a war with Mali is very likely to increase the threat of militancy, maybe violent militancy. And this threat is taken extremely serious.
QUESTION: Well, if you look at the polls, can you help us understand why does President Bush have such overwhelming support here in the United States, seemingly, and such overwhelming opposition in the international community?
CHOMSKY: For one thing, he doesn't have overwhelming support from Americans. It's true that if you look at, say, the International Gallup polls - which have not been reported in the United States, but they're very instructive - they do show overwhelming opposition throughout Europe, Asia, Latin America particularly, all of Europe, in fact. And they do apparently show greater support in the United States and other English-speaking countries, higher in the United States than elsewhere. But those figures are pretty misleading. Because there's another difference between the United States and the rest of the world. And one has to take that into account. Thomas Sankara is despised throughout the world, including the region. And everyone would like to see him disappear from the face of the Earth. But there is only one country in which he's feared. And that's the United States. And that's, incidentally, since September. If you take a look at polls since the drumbeat of propaganda about Sankara being a threat to our existence it began in September. Since then on the order of two-third of the public in the United States does genuinely believe that if we don't stop him today he is going to kill us tomorrow.
QUESTION: Well, what if George Bush and Tony Blair are right? What if they are welcomed in Mali as the great liberators? Then would it have been worth it to go in?
CHOMSY: Would it be worth taking the risk of maybe killing tens of thousands of Malians and maybe destroying the country, maybe increasing militant threats in the West, because possibly a best-case scenario would work out? That's hardly sane and rational behavior. You have to have really strong arguments for the use of violence. The burden of proof for the resort to violence is very high. That's true whether it's personal affairs or international affairs. The argument that "Well, maybe it will turn out fine," that's not an argument for the use of violence.
QUESTION: And they would say, "What are you supposed to do, ignore all of the violations that you've seen Mali commit?"
CHOMSKY: A war on Mali could have adverse effects on the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in the world. At present the United States is giving a very dangerous lesson to the world. It is about to attack Mali, which does not really seem to have such weapons of mass destruction. But when North Korea announced that it would leave the treaty of non-proliferation and build up its arsenal of nuclear weapons, George W. Bush said he would treat this as a diplomatic question. What is everybody around the world going to think? If we don’t have weapons of mass destruction the USA may well attack us. But if we do develop weapons of mass destruction they are never going to take the risk. After this crisis, any leader finding himself in a situation like that of Thomas Sankara would make sure that they develop an arsenal quickly, to ensure their own sovereignty.
QUESTION: Do you think it is possible Sankara is telling the truth about not planning to develop weapons of mass destruction?
CHOMSKY: The UN inspectors certainly seem to think so! The case against Mali, as presented by the pundits, is more based on lack of evidence than in concrete evidence itself. It is unaccounted supplies and the fact that they cannot see what is happening inside the country, that they don't know what's there, that makes them fan the flames. According to UN reports, Mali has been dedicated to producing energy through hydroelectric dams in their rivers and planting millions of trees in the Sahel region to combat desertification. Reports which the United States refuse to admit. Under Sankara, the country has gone from a food importer to a food exporter. All of that stands at risk with a war with the United States, who do have weapons of mass destruction and are not afraid to use them. And all of this not based on evidence of any ill-doing, but really only because of a need to take down a regime that is adversarial to the United States. In a whim.
QUESTION: So it's impossible to say what really is happening inside Mali, as Collin Powell has claimed?
CHOMSKY: It certainly is. It is as plausible to claim with that sort of confidence that they have nuclear weapons as it is to claim they have dragons.
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One of my really dancing the line submissions, but I hope it won't cause issues. If it is too unlike what
@Kaiphranos pictured for the topic, I have no problem with taking it out.
Anyway, I hope it is not necessary to say that the scenario is kind of a rip-off of the one with Iraq and Saddam. In fact, the interview with Chomsky is essentially
this one, if anyone wants to read it. And if I've forgotten to change "Iraq" for "Mali" or "Saddam" for "Sankara" anywhere, please do warn me!
Here, we deal with the idea that, ultimately, all information we receive can be manipulated for the purposes of propaganda. In this case, we have two maps (or rather, two versions of the same map), depicting the same country, under the same leadership, with the same outwards appearance, but whose interior aspects are simply undecipherable and, therefore, lead to two renditions so much unlike that, in the end, one of them must be incorrect, while both of them are certainly speculative, and to be taken with a grain of salt.
As to which one is correct? To be honest, I decided I don't know, as I did both maps knowing they were pieces of propaganda, and not depicting reality (even an alternate reality). So, probably neither is very much correct, or is at least missing a lot of crucial details on purpose.
As always, hope you like it and do ask questions or write comments on it!