BARSAMIAN: Well, let's talk about the topic of collateral language. In recent years, the Pentagon and then the media have adopted this term, "collateral damage" to describe the death of civilians. Talk about the role of language in shaping and forming people's understanding of events.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, it's, you know, it's as old as history. There's nothing much to do with language. Language is the way we interact and communicate, so naturally, the means of communication and the conceptual background that's behind it, which is more important, are used to try to shape attitudes and opinions and induce conformity and subordination. This has been true forever, but it became and organized and very self-conscious industry, really in the last century. And not surprisingly it was created in the more democratic societies, so the first coordinated propaganda ministry, called the ministry of information was in Britain during the first world war. It had the task, as they put it, of controlling the mind of the world. And what they were particularly concerned with was the mind of America, and more specifically, the mind of American intellectuals. They thought if they could convince American intellectuals of the nobility of the British war effort, then American intellectuals could succeed in driving the basically pacifist population of the United States, which didn't want to have anything to do with European wars, rightly, to drive them into a fit of fanaticism and hysteria which would get them to join the war and Britain needed U.S. backing. So Britain had its ministry of information, aimed primarily at American leaders, and the U.S. and the Wilson administration reacted by setting up the first state propaganda agency here, called the Committee on Public Information.

This is already Orwellian, of course, we don't even have to comment on what a committee on public information is, but it succeeded. It succeeded brilliantly, in fact, mainly with liberal American intellectuals, people of the John Dewey circle, who actually took pride in the fact that for the first time in history, according to their picture, a wartime fanaticism was created, and not by military leaders and politicians, but by the more responsible, serious members of the community, namely, thoughtful intellectuals. And they did organize a campaign of propaganda which within a few months did succeed in turning a relatively pacifist population into raving anti-German fanatics who wanted to destroy everything German. I mean it reached a point where the Boston Symphony Orchestra couldn't t play Bach, you know. It...the country was driven into a hysteria, and it did enable Wilson to...Wilson had won the election on the slogan, "Peace without victory." But within a couple of months, he turned the country into fanatics who wanted to win victory and destroy everything German, and no peace.

And that had an impact. The members of the committee of Wilson's propaganda agency, included people like Edward Bernais, who became the guru of the public relations industry, and Walter Lippmann, the leading public intellectual of the 20th century, the most respected media figure. And they very explicitly drew from that experience. Look at their writings in the 1920s. They said, "OK, we've learned from this that you can control the public mind. You can control attitudes and opinions. You can...that's where Lippmann used, said, "We can manufacture consent by the means of propaganda." Bernais said, the more intelligent members of the community can drive the population into whatever they want by what he called, "engineering of consent." It was the essence of democracy, he said, both of them held.

And it also led to the rise of the public relations industry. I mean it sort of existed before, but it was very impressed by this achievement, and from that comes the enormous public relations industry, which was based on an interesting conception. It's interesting to look at the thinking back in the 20's, when it really got started. This was the period of Taylorism in industry. When workers were being trained to be robots, every motion controlled. Move to the left here, and so on and so forth, and that was extremely impressive. It created a highly efficient industry, with human beings being turned into automata. Bolsheviks were very impressed with it too. They tried to duplicate it, in fact they tried throughout the world.

But the thought control experts realized that you could not only have what was called "on job control," but also "off job control." Off job control means turn people into robots for the rest of their lives, so control them off job by inducing a philosophy of futility, focusing people on the superficial things of life, like fashionable consumption, and basically get them out of our hair. Let the people who're supposed to run the show do it without any interference from the mass of the population, who have no business in the public arena. And from that comes enormous industries, ranging from advertising to universities. All committed, very consciously, to the conception that you must control attitudes and opinions because the people are just too dangerous.

Actually, they have good constitutional sources for that. The founding of the country was based on the principle, the Madisonian principle, that the people are just too dangerous. Power has to be in the hands of what Madison called, "the wealth of the nation," people who respect property and its rights, and are willing to protect the minority of the opulent from the majority. The majority have to be fragmented somehow.

But by the 1920s, this became highly self-conscious, and major industry, and it's particularly striking that it developed in the more democratic societies. It was later duplicated. They tried to duplicate it in Germany, in Bolshevik Russia and South Africa, and elsewhere, but it was always quite explicitly on the mostly American model. And why in the democratic societies? There's good reason for that. If you can control people by force, it's not so important to control what they think and feel, but if you lose the capacity to control people by force, it becomes more necessary to control attitudes and opinions, and brings us right up to the present.

By now, it's not so much government agenciesÑit was to some extent, like Reagan had a, what they called, an Office of Public Diplomacy. But by that time, the public was no longer willing to accept state propaganda agencies, so the Reagan Office of Public Diplomacy was declared illegal and had to go in round about ways. But instead of this, what took over instead was private tyrannies, you know, corporate systems, which play the role of controlling opinions and attitudes, not taking orders from the government, but closely linked to it, of course. And that's our contemporary system. Extremely self-conscious. You don't have to speculate much about what they're doing because they're kind enough to tell you in industry publications and so on. And also in the academic literature.

So you go back to say the 1930's, one of the, perhaps the founder of modern, a good bit of modern political science, a liberal, progressive, Wilsonian, Harold Glasswell, 1933, wrote an article called "Propaganda." People used the term freely then, before the connotations that came from the Nazis, so it was just openly called propaganda. Now there are various euphemisms. He wrote an article called, "Propaganda" in the encyclopedia of Social Sciences, a major publication, in which the message was that we should notÑall of these are quotes incidentallyÑ we should not succumb to democratic dogmatism, about people being the best judges of their own interests. They're not. We are. And since people are too stupid and ignorant to understand their best interests, for their own benefit, because we're great humanitarians, we must marginalize and control them, and the best means is propaganda.

There's nothing negative about propaganda, he said, it's as neutral as a pump handle. You can use it for good or for evil, and since we're noble, wonderful people, we'll use it for good, to ensure that the stupid, ignorant masses remain marginalized and separated from any decision-making capacity. And that's in the hands of us, and we're good by definition, so we'll do the best for everyone. And that includes world government, domestic control, and so on.

This is not the right wing that I'm talking about. These are the liberal, progressive intellectuals. In fact, the Leninist doctrines are about the same. There're very close similarities. The Nazis also picked it up. If you read Mein Kampf, Hitler was very impressed with American propaganda. He argued, not without reason, that that's what won the first world war, and vowed that next time around the Germans would be ready too, and developed their own propaganda systems modeled on the democracies. The Russians tried it, but it was too crude to be effective. South Africa used it, others right up to the present, but the real forefront is the United States because it's the most free and democratic society. And it's just much more important to control attitudes and opinions.

BARSAMIAN: A couple of quotes actually from Mein Kampf, from Hitler's book. "The broad mass of a nation will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one." Then he added, "by shrewd and constant application of propaganda, heaven can be presented to the people as hell, and vice versa, the wretchedest existence as a paradise." Can you make the leap from propaganda then and its origins to what's going on today with what is called operation Iraqi Freedom?

CHOMSKY: You can read it in this morning's New York Times. This is Saturday, April 51h. This morning's New York Times in the inside, there is an interesting article about Carl Rove, the President's manager, basically, minder is what they'd call it in Iraq, the one that teaches him what to say and do. He's theÑand it describes what he's doing now, Carl Rove. He's not directly involved in the war planning, but neither is Bush, this is in the hands of other people, but his goal is to present the president as a powerful wartime leader, aimed at the next presidential election, so that the Republicans can push through their domestic agenda, which is what he concentrates on, which means tax cutsÑthey say for the economy, but they mean for the rich. Tax cuts for the rich and other programs which he doesn't bother enumeratingÑbut which are designed, if you look at them, to benefit an extremely small sector of the ultra-wealthy and privileged, and will have the effect of harming the mass of the population.

But more significant than thatÑit's not outlined in the articleÑis to try to destroy the institutional basis for social support systems. So try to eliminate things like schools and social security and anything that may be, that's based on the conception that people have to have some concern for one another. That's a horrible idea which has to driven out of people's minds, the idea that you should have sympathy and solidarity, that you should care whether the disabled widow across the town is able to eat, that has to be driven out of people's minds. The best way to control, for off job control, is to turn people into creatures who are focused solely on maximizing their own consumption and have no concern for anyone else. And the problem with things like schools or social security or anything else, is it is based on natural human emotions, that you do care about other people. And that must be drive from people's minds. That's a large part of the domestic agenda, quite apart from just shifting wealth and power even more than it is now toward narrow sectors. And the way to achieve thatÑsince people are not going to accept itÑthe way to achieve it, and it's stated explicitly, is to make people afraid.

If people are frightened that their security is threatened, they'll gravitate towards the strong leaders, like Hitler. But they'll trust the Republicans to protect them from enemies, and therefore suppress their own concerns and interests. They'll be able to drive through the domestic agenda, maybe even institutionalize it, so it will be very hard to reconstruct, and we have to do it by presenting the president as a very powerful wartime leader, succeeding in overcoming this awesome foe, which of course is chosen because it barely exists and can be crushed in no time.

BARSAMIAN: Iraq.

CHOMSKY: Iraq. And that's the... It's laid out pretty explicitly. I mean, you know, not in precisely the words I just used, but the message is very clear. So, yeah, that's what you do. And it's aimed at the next presidential election. That's a large part of this war.

BARSAMIAN: Clearly there's a huge gap on the Iraq war between U.S. public opinion and, literally, the rest of the world. Do you attribute that to propaganda?

CHOMSKY: There's just no question about it. You can trace it precisely. The campaign about Iraq took off last September. That was so obvious it s even discussed in mainstream publications like the chief political analyst for UPI, Martin Siefe has a long article describing how it's done. I mean it's transparent. In September, which happened to be the opening of the mid-term Congressional campaign, that's when the drumbeat of wartime propaganda began, and it had a couple of constant themes, like Hitler, a few big lies. One big lie is that Iraq is an imminent threat to the security of the United States. We've got to stop 'em now or they're going to destroy us tomorrow. The second big lie is that Iraq was behind September 11. Nobody says it straight out, kind of insinuated, they were responsible. The next one is they're planning new such atrocities, and therefore we've got to stop 'em now or we're really in danger.

Well, take a look at the polls. They reflect the propaganda very directly. The propaganda's distributed by the media. They don't make it up. They just distribute it. Attribute it to high government officials or whatever you like. But the campaign was reflected very quickly in the polls by September, and since then roughly 60%--oscillating around thatÑof the population believes that Iraq is a threat to our security. Congress, if you look at the declaration of October when they authorized the president to use force said Iraq is a threat to the security of the United States. By now about half the population, maybe more by now, believes that Iraq was responsible for September 11, that Iraqis were on the planes, that they're planning new ones. These attitudes are closely correlated to support for war, and it makes sense. If you believe that Iraq is an imminent threat to our security, and was responsible for the September 11 atrocities and is planning new ones, then it makes sense to say, "Let's go to war to stop them."

Now there's no one else in the world that believes any of this. No country where Iraq is regarded a threat to their security. I mean Kuwait and Iran which were both invaded by Iraq, they don't regard Iraq as a threat to their security. It's ridiculous. I mean Iraq's the weakest country in the region, and as a result of the sanctions, which have killed hundred of thousands of people, about two-thirds of the populations on the edge of starvation, the country has the weakest economy and the weakest military force in the region. It's economy and its military expenditures are about a third those of Kuwait which has 10% of its population, and well below others.

And, of course, everybody in the region knows there is a superpower thereÑan offshore U.S. military baseÑIsrael which has hundreds of nuclear weapons, and massive armed forces and totally dominates anything, but Iraq is one of the weakest countries there.

After the U.S. takes it over, it's very likely that it will increase its military forces, and maybe even develop weapons of mass destruction, just to counterbalances other states in the region. It's very possible. So they're not afraid of it. They may hate Saddam, I'm saying they're not afraid of him. For the past five years, in fact, they've been trying hard to reintegrate Iraq back into their own system, over strong U.S. objections. The U.S. doesn't want that to happen. Only in the United States is there fear or any of these beliefs, and you can trace the growth of the beliefs to the propaganda.

So after September 1 1, the percentage of the population polled who thought that Iraq was involved was, I think, 3%. By now it's over half, maybe 60%. These are real achievements in propaganda. Not the first time. It's kind of like the first World War. It's pretty much what the Wilson administration succeeded in doing within a few months, and there're plenty of cases since.

It's interesting that the United States is so susceptible to this. There's a background, a cultural background, which is interesting, but whatever the reasons are for it, the United States happens to be a very frightened country. By comparative standards, levels of fear here of almost everythingÑyou know, crime, aliens, you pick itÑare just off the spectrum. You can inquire into the reasons, but the background is there. The people in Washington know it very well. It's kind of obscured, but should be in front of everyone's attention. These are the people who ran the country in the Reagan-first Bush AdministrationÑalmost the same peopleÑand they're replaying the script. They pursued very repressive domestic programs which harmed the population and which were very unpopular, and they succeeded in staying in political power by pushing the panic button every year. They're doing the same thing now. In the United States, it's not hard to do.

BARSAMIAN: I'm interested that you usually define things with a tremendous amount of clarity and precision, yet you say conditionally that there's something in the American character that lends itself...

CHOMSKY: The culture.

BARSAMIAN: What is it that lends it, that makes it susceptible to propaganda?

CHOMSKY: That's a good question. I don't say that it's more susceptible for propaganda. It s more susceptible to fear. It's a frightened country, and the reasons for this are... I don't frankly understand it. But they're there, and they go way back in American history.

BARSAMIAN: Then if the fear is there then propaganda becomes relatively easy. ..

CHOMSKY: Certain kinds of propaganda become much easier to implement. Frightening people is much easier. Look, when my kids were in school 40 years ago, they literally were being taught to hide under desks to protect them from an atomic bomb. Elsewhere in the world, this isn't even a joke. Actually, there's a comment that ought to be famous by a Mexican ambassador back at that time. Kennedy was trying to organize the hemisphere to support his terrorist attacks against Cuba which were very severe. He had a major campaign of terrorism going on against Cuba and economic warfare to try to strangle it, and he was trying to organize the hemisphere to back it. Well, the U.S. is very influential, and the hemisphere countries just have to do what they're told or they're in bad trouble, but Mexico refused to go along and the Mexican ambassador said, "It I try to tell people in Mexico that Cuba's a threat to our security, 40 million Mexicans will die laughing." Well, in the United States, people don't die laughing. People are afraid of everything.

Take, say, crime. It's not much different. The United States is kind of like other industrial societies, kind of toward the high end, but not off the spectrum. Fear of crime is much higher in the United States than other countries, Even things like belief in aliens. If you go to Europe, and you ask people, "Are there aliens among you?" they won't even know what you're talking about. Here it's probably half the population.

BARSAMIAN: But don't you think media culture contributes to that? All the TV shows? All the movies?

CHOMSKY: Probably. But there's a background of fear which is exploited, and it goes pretty far back. It probably has to do with conquest of the continent where you had to exterminate the native population, slavery where you had to control a population that was regarded as dangerous cause you never knew when they were gonna turn on you. And it may just be a reflection of the enormous security. The security of the United States is beyond anyone else. The United States controls the hemisphere, controls both oceans, controls the opposite sides of both oceans, never been threatened. The last time the U.S. was threatened was the war of 1812. Since then it just conquers others, and some how this engenders a sense that somebody's going to come after us. So the country ends up being very frightened.

BARSAMIAN: Bush gave his first prime time press conference on Thursday, March 6, the first in a year and a half, and it was actually a pre-scripted press conference where people knew in advance who was going to be called on. So there was no spontaneity whatsoever, . A studs of the transcript reveals again a constant repetition of certain phrases: Iraq, Saddam Hussein, threat, increasing threat, deep threat, 9/11, terrorism, the twin towers, just repeated over and over again. On Monday, just a few days later, there was a sharp spike in public opinion in polls in the United States, showing that Americans believe by large numbers now, a majority, that Iraq was connected to 9/11.

CHOMSKY: Yes, but this has been happening since September. You're right. These are very carefully programmed events. It's like television ads. The public relations industry is a huge industry, plenty of experience in this. Everything is programmed. Reagan was carefully programmed. Everyone knew that if he got off his note cards he had to quick shut him up because he was going to say something insane, but he was a media figure. This Administration also has a collection of highly crafted media figures. George Bush is created to be the simple, honest, you know...

BARSAMIAN: straight talking...

CHOMSKY: religious, straight-talking man of gut instincts, you know, deep morality, good and evil, kind of caricature of a children's fairy tales and so on. All that is very carefully crafted. Colin Powell is crafted to be the moderate, multi-lateralist, committed to diplomacy, and so on. There's not a particle of evidence for any of that. His record is horrendous. And that means that when he stands up and says, "Well, we have to go to war," then that really shows that no matter how far out you go people agree. It's all very carefully done.

The real change was September. That's when the poll results indicate, quickly indicate, the fear, the belief in Iraqi participation. It has to keep being reinforced because otherwise it will just drop off. The point is these claims are so outlandish that it's very hard to expect people to sustain them unless you keep driving it home, and that's what advertising is about. It's the same as if you're trying to sell cars. That's what you have to do. If you're trying to drive people to become mindless consumers whose lives are focused on maxing out their credit cards and having the highest work load in the industrial world, so they don't interfere with you when you're running the world, you have to keep at them from infancy, and you have to do it here too. It is, indeed, a major industry. The government is part of it. The media go along, participate in it, and it has effects.

This is not the only time. Take a look at the 1988 political campaign. How did George Bush get elected? Well, Willie Horton. They invented a...

BARSAMIAN: The African American.

CHOMSKY: The African American criminal's going~ to come and rape your daughter. They didn't say it in those words, but it was constantly insinuated, and it did shift public attitudes. Actually, one of the most spectacular cases was September 1989. Through the 1980s, to maintain power, they had to maintain constant fear. One of them was the drug war. Now the drug war gets re-declared every few years, but a striking case was September, 1989. Actually, that one I looked at closely. Before the campaign... Bush started this Hispanic narco-traffickers are gonna destroy us line, started in September. Before that, concern about drugs was there, but it was low. It wasn't ranked high among concerns. By the end of the month, it was the top concern of the public. Massive publicity, coverage of the threat of drugs was greater than coverage of all national affairs for the month, a lot of media hysteria. It was all a build up to the invasion of Panama.

BARSAMIAN: Which occurred in December.

CHOMSKY: In December. It changed concern. I mean fear of drugs is another index of the difference between the United States and similar societies. I mean drug us is about the same here as anywhere else, but fear of drugs is off the spectrum, and it does get stimulated by government media campaigns. This one was particularly spectacular because it was so fast and effective, and they know that, especially the people in Washington right now. They know it. There's a reason Karl Rove is the most important person in the administration. He is the public relations expert in charge of crafting the images, so you can drive through the domestic agendas, carry out the international policies by frightening people, and they're creating the impression that a powerful leader's going to save you from imminent destruction.

Actually, in this morning's Times they virtually say it. Because it's very hard to keep hidden, but, yes, and it is second nature. It was, as you say, recognized by Hitler and the basis for Nazi propaganda, but using explicitly the Wilson administration as a model.

BARSAMIAN: How does one recognize propaganda, and what would some techniques in terms of resisting it?

CHOMSKY: There's no techniques. Just ordinary commonsense. I mean if you hear that Iraq is a threat to our existence, but Kuwait doesn't seem to regard it as a threat to its existence, and nobody else in the world does, then any sane person will begin to ask, "OK, where's the evidence?" As soon as you ask where's the evidence, it collapses instantly. But you have to be willing to develop an attitude of critical examination of whatever is presented to you. Anything. I mean it should be ordinary sanity.

Of course the whole educational system and the whole media system, a lot of it is sort of driven by the demand to drive that out of your mind. So you're taught to be a passive, obedient follower. And unless you can break out of those habits, you're a victim of propaganda, but it's not that hard to break out. I mean the same right through the 80s. In 1985, Reagan declared a national emergency in the United States because of the threat to the security of the United States posed by the government of Nicaragua which was two days from Harlingen, Texas, was planning to take over the hemisphere. Take a look at that national emergency declaration of 1985 which was renewed annually as a way of building up support for the U.S. war on Nicaragua. It's almost the same wording as the Congressional declaration of October, 2002, almost the same. Just replace Nicaragua by Iraq.

Well, how much critical intelligence does it take to determine how much of a threat Nicaragua is to the existence of the United States? Again, people outside just look at this in wonder, and don't understand it. Right through the 1980s, the tourist industry in Europe collapsed every few years because Americans were so frightened by one of these spikes that you mentioned that they were afraid to go to Europe. Because they thought if you go to Europe, there'll be some Arab there who's going to try to kill you. Well, Europeans don't know what to make of this. How can a country be so frightened of something that's completely nonexistent that they're afraid to travel to Europe?

BARSAMIAN: That's happening again right now.

CHOMSKY: It's happening again right now. Yeah. But if you ask, "How do you break out of this?" Just use your ordinary intelligence. There's not a special technique. Just be willing to examine what's presented to you with ordinary commonsense, skeptical intelligence. Read what's presented to you the way you'd read Iraqi propaganda. You have to have techniques for deciding that the Minster of Information in Iraq isn't to be trusted? Well, look at yourself the same way. If you're willing to look into the mirror, that's the major achievement that has to be made. Be willing to look into the mirror. If you're willing to apply to yourself the same standards you're willing to apply to others, you've won. From then on it's easy.

BARSAMIAN: One of the new lexical constructions that I'd like you to comment on is "embedded journalist."

CHOMSKY: That's an interesting one. It's interesting that journalists are willing to accept it. I mean no honest journalist would be willing to describe himself or herself as "embedded." To say, "I'm an embedded journalist" is to say, "I'm a government propagandist." But it's accepted and it helps implant the conception that anything we do is right and just, so therefore, if you're embedded in an American unit, you're objective.

Actually, the same thing showed up in the Peter Arnett case in some ways even more dramatically in the Peter Arnett case. I mean Peter Arnett is an experienced, respected journalist with a lot of achievements to his credit. He's hated here, precisely for that reason. Same reason Robert Fisk is hated.

BARSAMIAN: Fisk being British, Arnett being from New Zealand.

CHOMSKY: Fisk is by far the most experienced, most respected Middle East journalist. He's been there forever. He's done excellent work. He knows the region. He's a terrific reporter. He's despised here. You barely ever see a word of his. If he's mentioned, he's denounced. Well, the reason is, he's just too independent. He won't be an embedded journalist. Peter Arnett is condemned because he gave an interview on Iraqi television. Is anybody condemned for giving an interview on U.S. television? No, that's wonderful! Now, you know that is somebody's looking at this from the outside, imagine some Martian who has the concept of independent journalism, well, you know, giving an interview on U.S. television is the same as giving one on Iraqi television.

In fact it's worse. It's not a symmetrical situation. The U.S. is invading Iraq! It's as open an act of aggression as there's been in modern history. It's not even concealed. Just an open act of aggression, a major war crime. That's the major crime for which the Nazis were hanged at Nuremberg, the act of aggression. Everything else was secondary. Here's a clear and open example of it. No pretense of anything else. I mean there's a pretense, but there's always a pretense. The pretenses are no more convincing than Hitler's.

Actually, to claim that there's symmetry is already wrong, but let's put that aside. From an outside point of view, an independent journalist giving an interview over the television of the invading forces and giving an interview over the television of the invaded country, shouldn't be any different. Here's it's described as treachery. He's abandoned his journalistic integrity, and so on and so on. Well, you know that what that demonstrates about U.S. journalism is astonishing. Actually, there's an article this week by one of the best American journalists who's there, one of the least used, Charles Glass, whose a Middle East correspondent with tremendous experience. He's now ABC correspondent in Iraq, except that they almost never use him. He's got an article in the London Review in which he points out that, he says the United States must be the only country in the world where someone could be called a terrorist for defending his own country from attack. He's sitting there in Iraq, and he's watching this with wonder. And, in fact, anybody who's a little bit displaced from the United States and its system of indoctrination has to observe this with wonder. Actually, all over the world it's creating an enormous fear and hatred of the United States. This is everywhere.

BARSAMIAN: We'll talk about that in a moment. The attack on Afghanistan in October of 2001, generated a couple of these interesting terms and you've commented on them. One was the very operation itself, "Enduring Freedom" and the other is "unlawful combatant," truly an innovation in international jurisprudence.

CHOMSKY: It's an innovation since the postwar period. After the second World War there was a relatively new framework of international laws established, including the Geneva Conventions, and they do not permit any such concept as the "enemy combatant" in the way it's used here. You can have prisoners of war, but there's no new category. Actually, it's an old category, pre-World War II, when you were allowed to do just about anything. But under the Geneva Conventions, which were established to criminalize formally the crimes of the Nazis, this was changed. So prisoners of war are supposed to have special status, and so on and so forth. The Bush Administration is, with the cooperation of the media and the courts, is going back to the pre-World War II period when there was no serious framework of international law dealing with crimes against humanity and crimes of war, and is declaring the right, not only to carry out aggressive war, but to classify people it bombs and captures as some new category who are entitled to no rights.

In fact they've gone well beyond that. The Administration has now claimed the right to take people here, including American citizens, to place them in confinement indefinitely, without access to families and lawyers and to keep them there with no charges, until the president decides that the war against terrorÑor whatever he wants to call itÑis over. I mean that's unheard of, and it's been to some extent accepted by the courts, and they're in fact going beyond. The new, what's called Patriot Two~ct, which has so far not been ratified, but it was leakedÑ it's inside the Justice Department, but it was leaked, and by now there's a couple articles by law professors and others about it in the press. It's astonishing! They're claiming the right to remove citizenship, the fundamental right, if the Attorney General infersÑthey don't have to have any evidenceÑjust infers that the person is involved in actions that might be harmful to the United States. I mean you have to go back to totalitarian states to find anything like this.

Enemy combatant is one. The treatment of people in. . . The idea of. . . What's going on in Guantanamo is a gross violation of the most elementary principles of international humanitarian law since World War II, that is, since these crimes were formally criminalized in reaction to the Nazis. Look back at, say, Winston Churchill right in the middle of the war. He condemned the use of executive power to imprison people without charge as the most odious of crimes found only in Nazi and communist societies. Well, there's a bust of him looking at George Bush every day, but they might pay attention to his words, and Britain was in a little, rather desperate straits at the time, not like the United States. BARSAMIAN: What do you make of British prime minister Tony Blair being quoted on Nightline on March 315t, saying, "this is not an invasion," the attack on Iraq.

CHOMSKY: Tony Blair is a good propaganda agent for the United States. He's articulate. His sentences fall together. He's a nice... Apparently, people like the way he looks. He's following the position that Britain has taken, self-consciously, since the end of second World War. During the second World War, Britain recognizedÑwe have plenty of internal documents about it. They recognized what was obvious. Britain had been the world dominant power, and was not going to be after the second World War. The U.S. was going to be, and Britain had to make a choice. Is it going to be another country? Or is it going to be what they call the junior partner of the United States. Well, it accepted the role of junior partner, and that's what it's been since then. I mean, Britain has been kicked in the face, over and over again, in a most disgraceful way, and they sit there quietly and take it, and say, "OK, we'll be the junior partner. We will bring to what's called the coalition, our experience of centuries of brutalizing and murdering foreign people. We're good at that. We've got centuries of experience, and what Lloyd George called, 'Bombing the niggers.' We know how to bomb the niggers. We've got centuries of experience in it. We'll contribute that to the coalition. We'll be the junior partner. We'll get a couple of... some privileges out of it..." And that's the British role.

BARSAMIAN: They were bombing niggers in Iraq in the early 1920's...

CHOMSKY: That's where it came from. Lloyd George was talking about bombing the niggers in Iraq. If you look at the context, it's interesting...

BARSAMIAN: Using mustard gas, I believe...

CHOMSKY: That was Winston Churchill. He thought we ought to use poison gas, bombing the niggers wasn't enough. You had to use poison gas too. But Britain which ran the region did just what the U.S. is doing now. It undermined international conventions banning the use of air power against civilians because that's what it was using in Iraq. Lloyd George's comment, to quote it accurately, "We have to reserve the right to bomb niggers." And what he was doing was applauding the British government for undermining an international convention against the use of air craft against civilians because we have to reserve the right to bomb niggers, and England has plenty of experience in that. And real moral principles like that are lasting. They don't change. It's the same now.

BARSAMIAN: Often, at the talks you give, there's a constant question that's always asked, and that is, "What should I do?" This is what you hear in American audiences. We heard it last night in Denver on April fourth, for example.

CHOMSKY: You're right. It's American audiences. You never hear it in the third world.

BARSAMIAN: What not?

CHOMSKY: Because they... When you go to Turkey or Columbia or Brazil or somewhere else, they don't ask you what should I do. They tell you what they're doing Like you go to a landless... When I went to Porto Allegre, the first I went to was a landless, a compesino meeting. . .

BARSAMIAN: Via Compesina.

CHOMSKY: Yeah, Via Compesina at the landless workers farm. They don't ask me what they should do. They were describing what they were doing. You know, these are poor oppressed people, living under horrendous conditions. They'd never dream of asking you what to do. They do it. It's only in highly privileged cultures that people ask "What should I do?" We have every option open to us. None of the problems that are faced by people in, you know, intellectuals in Turkey, or compesinos in Brazil or an!,thing like this. We can do anything. But what people here are trained to believe is we have to have something to do that will be easy, that will work very fast, and then we can go back to our ordinary lives. And it doesn't work that way. If you want to do something, you're going to have to be dedicated, committed, at it, day after day. You know exactly what it is: It's educational programs, it's organizing, it's activism. That's the way things change. You want something that's going to be a magic key that will enable you to go back to watching television tomorrow? It's not there. And it's true this question is constantly asked in highly privileged sectors. Nowhere else.

BARSAMIAN: We're running out of time, unfortunately, but let's close with this particular question. You were an active and early dissident in the 1960's opposing U.S. intervention in Indochina. You have now this perspective of what was going on then, and what is going on now. Could you kind of tell listeners how dissent has evolved in the United States.

CHOMSKY: It's kind of interesting. Actually, there was another article in The New York Times this morning which gives an interesting perspective about it. It's describing how the professors are antiwar activists, but the students aren't. Not like it used to be when the students were antiwar activists. That's an interesting conception of the past. What the reporter's talking about is that around 1970, that's true, but by 1970 students were active antiwar protesters, but that's after eight years of a U.S. war against South Vietnam. which had by then extended to all of Indochina which had practically wiped the place out. In the early years of the warÑit was announced in 1962ÑU.S. planes are bombing South Vietnam, napalm was authorized, chemical warfare to destroy food crops, programs to drive millions of people into strategic hamlets, which are essentially concentration camps. All public. No protest. Impossible to get anybody to talk about it. For years, even in a place like Boston, a liberal city, you couldn't have public meetings against the war because they would be broken up by students, with the support of the media. You have to have hundreds of state police around to allow the speakers like me unscathed. Protests came after years and years of war. By then, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed. Country's been wiped out. Then you started getting protests, but all of that's wiped out of history. Because it tells too much of the truth. It involved years and years or hard work of plenty of people, mostly young which finally ended up getting a protest movement.

Now it's far beyond that, but The New York Times reporter can't understand it. I'm sure the reporter's being very honest. Another report is saying exactly what, I think, she was taught. You know, that there was a huge antiwar movement and so on and so forth because the actual history has to be wiped out of people's consciousness. You cannot learn that dedicated, committed effort can bring about significant changes of consciousness and understanding. That's a very dangerous thought to allow people to have, and therefore it's wiped out of history. And what you know about the tail end after it's all done, and you say "well, how come it's not like that now?" You know, after eight years of war.

BARSAMIAN: The voice of Noam Chomsky, MIT professor, political activist and author, is in Boulder to help celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of KGNU community radio. Thanks so much for joining us.

And thanks to Linda H. for transcribing this interview.