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The case against US adventurism in Iraq (Noam Chomsky, 3/19/03, Pakistan Daily Times)

The most powerful state in history has proclaimed that it intends to control the world by force, the dimension in which it reigns supreme.

President Bush and his cohorts evidently believe that the means of violence in their hands are so extraordinary that they can dismiss anyone who stands in their way.

The consequences could be catastrophic in Iraq and around the world. The United States may reap a whirlwind of terrorist retaliation and step up the possibility of nuclear Armageddon.

Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and company are committed to an ?imperial ambition,? as G. John Ikenberry wrote in the September/October issue of Foreign Affairs ?a unipolar world in which the United States has no peer competitor? and in which ?no state or coalition could ever challenge it as global leader, protector and enforcer.?

That ambition surely includes much expanded control over Persian Gulf resources and military bases to impose a preferred form of order in the region.

Even before the administration began beating the war drums against Iraq, there were plenty of warnings that US adventurism would lead to proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, as well as terror, for deterrence or revenge.

Right now, Washington is teaching the world a dangerous lesson: If you want to defend yourself from us, you had better mimic North Korea and pose a credible threat. Otherwise we will demolish you.

One of the most interesting things about Mr. Chomsky--I first noticed it when trying to read Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians--is that it's possible for anyone of either conservative or merely patriotic sentiment to concede his entire factual argument and still come down on the opposite side of the issues he raises. For the most part, this essay is a case in point. All of the terrors he summons may well come to pass, yet how does that change the moral case for deposing Saddam?

On the other hand, his point about N. Korea is valid and is the main reason that we have to dispatch Kim Jong-il even if it leads to a limited nuclear exchange. Our nukes must be a deterrent to other people acquiring nukes, otherwise their nukes will serve as a deterrent to our policing of their behavior.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 18, 2003 7:01 PM