Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy | Noam Chomsky

Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy | Noam Chomsky | Thought-provoking read...for anyone.

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Failed States: The...

	Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy Noam Chomsky Metropolitan Books, 2006 - 314 pages average customer review:based on 98 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Useful study of the US state's activities

In this brilliant new book, Chomsky examines the US state and its credentials as a democracy. He concludes that it abuses its power and assaults democracy at home and abroad. He shows how it regards itself as `beyond the reach of domestic or international law, and hence free to carry out aggression and violence'.

He looks at `the increasing threat of destruction caused by US state power', when it opposes a Palestinian state, supports Israel's illegal occupation and settlements, illegally attacks Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq, and threatens Iran and the DPRK.

The US state asserts that it alone has the right to attack whoever it wants. In response, the UN High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change concluded in 2004, "the risk to the global order and the norm of nonintervention on which it continues to be based is simply too great for the legality of unilateral preventive action, as distinct from collectively endorsed action, to be accepted."

The US state also insists that it alone has the right to develop nuclear weapons. So in November 2004, it cast the sole vote against the proposed Fission Material Cutoff Treaty. 147 states voted for it and two abstained, Israel and Britain. Blair's representative ludicrously claimed that the resolution "divided the international community at a time when progress should be a prime objective."

Chomsky quotes some surprising people who recognise that other nations have the right to develop nuclear power and nuclear deterrents. Henry Kissinger, when his friend the Shah was misruling Iran, said, the "introduction of nuclear power will both provide for the growing needs of Iran's economy and free remaining oil reserves for export or conversion to petrochemicals."

South Korea's President Roh Moo-hyun said, "North Korea professes that nuclear capabilities are a deterrent for defending itself from external aggression. In this particular case it is true and undeniable that there is a considerable element of rationality in North Korea's claim."

As in all Chomsky's best books, he deploys an extraordinary range of references, brilliantly exposing official lies. Once again, he has produced a timely and useful book.

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Thought-provoking read...for anyone.

Chomsky provides yet another thoughtful and well-documented commentary on foreign and domestic policy. It's necessary that citizens read this kind of work to know the realities of the world we live in. This book does not provide the most well-rounded argument; however, it does provide a great lesson: educate yourself on the issues. The media and government will not spoon feed you all the information. In fact they will instead spin information to achieve their own agenda. So we owe it to ourselves as country to enter the political arena with our own opinions, not the opinion of the media or politicians, and demand how we want this country to be run. That, after all, is what democracy is all about.

The lesson we learn from Chomsky is to always read between the lines; ask yourself, "what am I not being told?" And the same rules should apply to his work as well. So unlike some other reviewers here, I don't think Chomsky is trying to convince us of his political point of view, rather he is trying to open our eyes to the facts that we haven't been told and that haven't been made readily available to us.

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chevez thinks this is fair and balanced

Is Chomsky as skewed as the conservatives maintain, or to put it differently, as right as Hugo Chavez maintains (although Chavez evidently thinks Chomsky's dead)?

Chomsky is certainly in command of his facts. Never has anyone marshaled so many per page, and aligned them with such lapidary force. His prose is unadorned and crystal clear. His work is far from being, as columnist Mark Steyn wrote recently, `unreadable,' unless Steyn means unreadably depressing. If there is a stylistic fault, it may be that the author's use of irony is too unrelieved and becomes lugubrious in the long run. Also that his books may be repetitive: it seems to me that this one very closely resembles the one other book by Chomsky that I have read. Still, Chomsky now and then gets off a mordant line worthy of Woody Allen, and the passage of time allows Chomsky to update his jokes. But it seems to me there are factual faults here and there.

Chomsky maintains that the Bush doctrine of democratizing the Middle East was seized upon only after the `main cause' of WMD proved bankrupt. But suppose the WMD had been found--were the Americans to remove them, thank Saddam, and then leave?

Chomsky also maintains that the US's involvement in Iraq might not have been if the national product were `pickles and lettuce' rather than petroleum. But even the neocons admit that oil had a lot to do with the invasion, since after all the Iraqi oil is of no small value to the US and to the world and of course to the Iraqis. The reported Wolfowitz story has long been that WMD was just the most pressing and most obvious reason for the invasion.

Chomsky criticizes the US for its unilateral intervention into Iraq in violation of UN statutes, as if UN charters were graven tablets that can never be violated by a single nation or small coalition. Would Chomsky oppose UN or unilateral US involvement in Sudan and Darfur because the sovereign nation of Sudan forbade it, thereby tying the UN's hands? He doesn't say, though this would seem to be an obvious example of the out-of-datedness and uselessness of the UN. To be sure, one waits with hope, but also some skepticism, to see if UNIFIL keeps the peace in Lebanon.

Chomsky maintains that the `war on terror' is a ploy of the US government, much like that of the `Soviet menace', to serve as an excuse to rouse its population in support of activities that shore up American power. No doubt there's truth in that, but isn't terrorism still a real threat? Those airplanes were real enough, as were Communists.

Chomsky notes that Hugo Chavez has `noticeably' improved the lot of Venezuelan poor by implementing with Fidel Castro a health policy whereby Cuban doctors do work that evidently Venezuelan MDs won't or can't do. But Chomsky does not mention that in the opinions of some, Chavez is damaging his country by discouraging foreign investment in its oil industry and allowing its oil infrastructure to decay, nor that the country has 85 percent of its people living in poverty, a condition Hugo has done little to alleviate.

Chapter 5 of Chomsky's book, concerning the Middle East, occupies pgs. 166-204. How biased is this section? In a word, mucho. Hamas and Hezobollah are described solely as freedom, resistance, and democratic movements. There is no mention of Hezbollah's leader Nasrallah who hijacked the Lebanese government of PM Saniora this July and took Lebanon to war against Israel by killing and kidnapping Israeli soldiers. No mention that Hamas under perhaps its Syrian wing had done the same to Israeli soldiers in Gaza. No mention of the thousands upon thousands of missiles Hezbollah had and still has stockpiled against a war with Israel and launched against her for over thirty days beginning in July. No mention of Hamas' continual rocket fire into Israel. No mention of Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon except as an Israeli defeat, no mention of its withdrawal from Gaza except as a prelude to building up the West Bank. No mention of any ties of either Hezbollah or Hamas to Syria and Iran. According to Chomsky, all Middle Eastern problems are the result of an expansionist Israel and its backer the USA. This is jaw-dropping in its bias.

Chomsky states several times that the UN is a tool of the superpower US. This is obviously a fantasy, as see Chavez's, Ahmadinejad's, and even Chirac's recent and past behavior at Turtle Bay. The US has not controlled the Security Counsel, according to another book I read (William Buckley's *Delegate's Odyssey*), since 1958.

In Iraq, Chomsky maintains that the overwhelming democratic will of the people is that the US withdraw, but that the US will not do so until it can turn Iraq into a client state, belying its democracy program. I don't fault Chomsky much here, but he does not mention that Iraqi leaders have asked the US to stay to help stop sectarian violence. Nor does he elaborate on the likely immediate result of a quick US withdrawal, which would surely be an increase in sectarianism and violence.

What's mainly wrong with Chomsky, I think, is not that his facts are wrong. If so many as he has at his command were wrong, he would be seriously delusional. What's wrong is that he piles them so unrelievedly on the anti-American side of any equation. He forgets nothing shady from the American past, and forgives nothing. In discussing modern US imperialism, he does not fail to look back at its roots in the destruction of the Seminole Indians, just so we don't forget. Of course, he could attack any nation this way, and indeed does mention now and then the atrocities of the Soviet Union and Mao's China. But his main target remains the US, with Israel as a sideline. He simply holds America and Israel to higher level, it seems, and takes the transgressions of these nations as more regrettable and more heinous than those of other countries. Call Chomsky a perfectionist, then. But at the end the reader looks for balance.

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