{"id":403961,"date":"2010-03-08T14:21:40","date_gmt":"2010-03-08T19:21:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/?p=39935"},"modified":"2010-03-08T14:21:40","modified_gmt":"2010-03-08T19:21:40","slug":"chomsky-rates-obama%e2%80%99s-first-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/403961","title":{"rendered":"Chomsky rates Obama\u2019s first year"},"content":{"rendered":"

A crowd packed the Memorial Church at Harvard on Saturday (March 6) to hear Massachusetts Institute of Technology<\/a> linguist and activist Noam Chomsky<\/a> question U.S. foreign policy during the first year of the Obama administration, including its dogged opposition to Iran\u2019s efforts to harness nuclear energy.<\/p>\n

Sponsored by the Harvard Extension School\u2019s International Relations Club, the discussion also featured investigative journalist and author Amy Goodman<\/a>, host of public radio\u2019s \u201cDemocracy Now!\u201d<\/p>\n

Qualifying Goodman\u2019s introduction of him, Chomsky began by saying he was mentioned in a recent New York Times op-ed piece as \u201cone of the last stale holdovers\u201d of the 1960s. But his discussion points were decidedly topical.<\/p>\n

Comparing President Barack Obama with President George H.W. Bush, Chomsky noted that while Bush was criticized because he lacked \u201cthe vision thing,\u201d Obama \u201cis sort of the opposite \u2014 grand vision, real vision of what should be done, but he hasn\u2019t succeeded much in practice.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Iran, for example, he said that Brazil\u2019s failure to go along with the United States in supporting harsher sanctions has been called a refusal to \u201cgo along\u201d with the international community. But Chomsky called this \u201ca reflection of the depth of cultural imperialism. Who is the international community?\u201d he asked. \u201cIt\u2019s Washington, and whoever happens to agree with them.\u201d The \u201crest of the world,\u201d he maintained, has supported Iran\u2019s right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes, as did the majority of the American people before the \u201chuge mass of propaganda\u201d that has been promulgated on the topic since 2007.<\/p>\n

\u201cObama\u2019s vision is to reduce or remove nuclear weapons,\u201d Chomsky said. \u201cThat\u2019s the vision. What\u2019s the practice?\u201d<\/p>\n

A U.N. Security Council resolution called on all states to join the nonproliferation treaty \u201cwithout any threat of force,\u201d Chomsky said. But, he added, two countries \u2014 the United States and Israel \u2014 said they wanted to \u201ckeep all options open. That\u2019s a threat of force,\u201d particularly considering that the two countries have been carrying out field operations \u201cplainly aimed at Iran.\u201d<\/p>\n

These threats, Chomsky said, \u201chave the effect of inducing Iran to develop a deterrent,\u201d though he said Iran is not interested in beginning a nuclear war, because it \u201cwould be vaporized in five minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Iran is far from the only international issue that Obama has to contend with, of course. Chomsky also discussed India and Pakistan, saying that President Ronald Reagan\u2019s support of Pakistani dictators during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan helped to spread Saudi-funded \u201cmadrassas,\u201d or Islamic schools, in Pakistan. \u201cA strong jihadi tendency developed in Pakistan,\u201d he said, \u201cand that\u2019s part of what the world is facing today.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Obama administration, he said, has \u201cinformed India the resolution didn\u2019t apply to them. The more India increases its nuclear capacity, the more Pakistan does, and the threat of nuclear war has been quite close a couple of times.\u201d In refusing to join the nonproliferation treaty, Pakistan, India, and Israel acted with U.S. support, he said.<\/p>\n

When asked by Goodman about today\u2019s antiwar movement, Chomsky said it is stronger than the anti-Vietnam War movement was in the early 1960s. In 1962, when President John Kennedy \u201csent the Air Force to start bombing\u201d South Vietnam, causing a flood of refugees, he said, \u201cprotest was zero, literally. It was years before there was any sign of protest.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finally, he said, \u201cafter years, 1967-68 got a substantial antiwar movement. By then, South Vietnam was gone. Compare that to Iraq. There were huge protests before the war was actually launched. We now know [that President George W.] Bush and British Prime Minister Tony] Blair were just lying [in saying that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction], but I think demonstrations had an effect … I think [the Iraq war] was retarded by the antiwar movement.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chomsky also discussed the war in Afghanistan, the need for civilian trials for war criminals, the keeping of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, a multistate solution for Israel and Pakistan, and his belief that \u201cinternational affairs are run like the Mafia … Send in your goons to beat them to a pulp so everyone else gets the idea.\u201d<\/p>\n

His passion apparent, Chomsky concluded by discussing his own path toward activism. \u201cYou can\u2019t become involved part time,\u201d he said. \u201cGo to a demonstration and go home, nothing happens. Only by dedicated, diligent work\u201d can protesters\u2019 voices be heard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A crowd packed the Memorial Church at Harvard on Saturday (March 6) to hear Massachusetts Institute of Technology linguist and activist Noam Chomsky question U.S. foreign policy during the first year of the Obama administration, including its dogged opposition to Iran\u2019s efforts to harness nuclear energy. Sponsored by the Harvard Extension School\u2019s International Relations Club, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4175,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-403961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4175"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=403961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403961\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}