it. And it is
setting up confrontations right now, very
explicitly. Part of the reason is strategic,
geopolitical, economic, but part of the reason is
the mafia complex. They have to be punished for
disobeying us.
Shank:
Venezuela has been successfully defiant,
with President Hugo Chavez making a swing towards
socialism. Where are they on our list?
Chomsky: They're very high.
The United States sponsored and
supported a military coup to
overthrow the government. In fact, that's its
last, most recent effort in what used to be a
conventional resort to such measures.
Shank: But why haven't we
turned our sights more toward Venezuela?
Chomsky: Oh, they're there.
There's a constant stream of abuse and attack by
the government and therefore the media, who are
almost reflexively against Venezuela. For several
reasons. Venezuela is independent. It's
diversifying its exports to a limited extent,
instead of just being dependent on exports to the
United States. And it's initiating moves toward
Latin American integration and independence. It's
what they call a Bolivarian alternative, and the
United States doesn't like any of that.
This again is defiance of US policies
going back to the Monroe Doctrine. There's now a
standard interpretation of this trend in Latin
America, another kind of party line. With rare
exceptions, Latin America is all moving to the
left, from Venezuela to Argentina, but there's a
good left and a bad left. The good left is
[Peruvian President Alan] Garcia and Lula
[Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva],
and then there's the bad left, which is Chavez,
[Bolivian President Evo] Morales, maybe
[Ecuadorean President Rafael] Correa. And that's
the split.
In order to maintain that
position, it's necessary to resort to some fancy
footwork. For example, it's necessary not to
report the fact that when Lula was re-elected in
October, his first foreign trip and one of his
first acts was to visit Caracas to support Chavez
and his electoral campaign and to dedicate a joint
Venezuelan-Brazilian project on the Orinoco River,
to talk about new projects and so on.
It's
necessary not to report the fact that a couple of
weeks later in Cochabamba, Bolivia, which is the
heart of the bad guys, there was a meeting of all
South American leaders. There had been bad blood
between Chavez and Garcia, but it was apparently
patched up. They laid plans for pretty
constructive South American integration, but that
just doesn't fit the US agenda. So it wasn't
reported.
Shank: How is the
political deadlock in Lebanon impacting the US
government's decision potentially to go to war
with Iran? Is there a relationship at all?
Chomsky: There's a
relationship. I presume part of the reason for the
US-Israel invasion of Lebanon in July - and it was
US-Israeli, the Lebanese are correct in calling it
that - I suppose was that Hezbollah is considered
a deterrent to a potential US-Israeli attack on
Iran. It had a deterrent capacity, ie rockets. And
the goal, I presume, was to wipe out the deterrent
so as to free up the United States and Israel for
an eventual attack on Iran. That's at least part
of the reason.
The official reason given
for the invasion can't be taken seriously for a
moment. That's the capture of two Israeli soldiers
and the killing of a couple others. For decades
Israel has been capturing and kidnapping Lebanese
and Palestinian refugees on the high seas, from
Cyprus to Lebanon, killing them in Lebanon,
bringing them to Israel, holding them as hostages.
It's been going on for decades - has anybody
called for an invasion of Israel?
Of
course, Israel doesn't want any competition in the
region. But there's no principled basis for the
massive attack on Lebanon, which was horrendous.
In fact, one of the last acts of the US-Israeli
invasion, right after the ceasefire was announced
but before it was implemented, was to saturate
much of the south with cluster bombs. There's no
military purpose for that; the war was over, the
ceasefire was coming.
UN de-mining groups
that are working there say that the scale is
unprecedented. It's much worse than any other
place they've worked: Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq,
anywhere. There are supposed to be about 1 million
bomblets left there. A large percentage of them
don't explode until you pick them up, a child
picks them up or a farmer hits it with a hoe or
something. So what it does basically is make the
south uninhabitable until the mining teams, for
which the United States and Israel don't
contribute, clean it up. This is arable land. It
means that farmers can't go back; it means that it
may undermine a potential Hezbollah deterrent.
They apparently have pretty much withdrawn from
the south, according to the UN.
You can't
mention Hezbollah in the US media without putting
in the context of "Iranian-supported Hezbollah".
That's its name. Its name is "Iranian-supported
Hezbollah". It gets Iranian support. But you can
mention Israel without saying US-supported Israel.
So this is more tacit propaganda. The idea that
Hezbollah is acting as an agent of Iran is very
dubious. It's not accepted by specialists on Iran
or specialists on Hezbollah. But it's the party
line. Or sometimes you can put in Syria, ie
"Syrian-supported Hezbollah", but since Syria is
of less interest now, you have to emphasize
Iranian support.
Shank: How
can the US government think an attack on Iran is
feasible given troop availability, troop capacity,
and public sentiment?
Chomsky: As far as I'm
aware, the military in the United States thinks
it's crazy. And from whatever leaks we have from
intelligence, the intelligence community thinks
it's outlandish, but not impossible. If you look
at people who have really been involved in the
Pentagon's strategic planning for years, people
like [retired US Air Force colonel] Sam Gardiner,
they point out that there are things that possibly
could be done.
I don't think any of the
outside commentators, at least as far as I'm
aware, have taken very seriously the idea of
bombing nuclear facilities. They say if there will
be bombing it'll be carpet bombing. So get the
nuclear facilities but get the rest of the country
too, with one exception. By accident of geography,
the world's major oil resources are in
Shi'ite-dominated areas. Iran's oil is
concentrated right near the Gulf, which happens to
be an Arab area, not Persian.
Khuzestan is
Arab, has been loyal to Iran, fought with Iran,
not Iraq, during the Iran-Iraq War. This is a
potential source of dissension. I would be amazed
if there isn't an attempt going on to stir up
secessionist elements in Khuzestan. US forces
right across the border in Iraq, including the
surge, are available potentially to "defend" an
independent Khuzestan against Iran, which is the
way it would be put, if they can carry it off.
Shank: Do you think that's
what the surge was for?
Chomsky: That's one
possibility. There was a release of a Pentagon
war-gaming report, in December 2004, with Gardiner
leading it. It was released and published in The
Atlantic Monthly. They couldn't come up with a
proposal that didn't lead to disaster, but one of
the things they considered was maintaining troop
presence in Iraq beyond what's to be used in Iraq
for troop replacement and so on, and use them for
a potential land move in Iran - presumably
Khuzestan, where the oil is. If you could carry
that off, you could just bomb the rest of the
country to dust.
Again, I would be amazed
if there aren't efforts to sponsor secessionist
movements elsewhere, among the Azeri population,
for example. It's a very complex ethnic mix in
Iran; much of the population isn't Persian. There
are secessionist tendencies anyway and almost
certainly, without knowing any of the facts, the
United States is trying to stir them up, to break
the country
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