AMY GOODMAN: How? How is he getting out of control?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, interesting ways. When President Obama was elected, Afghan President Karzai sent him a message, which, as far as I know, was unanswered, in which he pleaded with President Obama to stop killing Afghans. He also addressed a UN delegation and told them he wanted a timetable for the removal of foreign forces. Well, his popularity quickly plummeted. He used to be very much praised for his nice clothes and great demeanor and very much admired by the media and commentators. Now he’s sunk very low. He’s suddenly corrupt and so on.

AMY GOODMAN: You mean in the Western world, the Western press?

NOAM CHOMSKY: In the Western world, primarily in the United States, but in the West altogether. And it directly followed these expressions of opinion, which are very likely those of maybe a majority of Afghans, maybe even more.

In fact, he went even further. He said that he would invite Mullah Omar, the head of the Taliban, to Afghanistan to try to work out a solution. And he added, “The United States isn’t going to like this, but they have two choices: they can either accept it, or they can throw me out,” you know. In fact, that’s what they’re doing. There are now plans to replace President Karzai, to sort of push him upstairs and leave him in a—it’s assumed that he’ll win the next election, so put him in a symbolic position and impose, basically, a US-appointed surrogate who will essentially run the country, because that can’t be tolerated.

In any event, there are alternative proposals—they’re discussed here, they’re widely discussed in Afghanistan at the highest level and apparently among the population—to just move towards a peaceful settlement among Afghans and a regional settlement, which would take into consideration the concerns of the region’s neighboring powers.

AMY GOODMAN: Why do you think Obama is expanding this war? And do you call it “Obama’s war” now?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, this goes way back. I mean, the United States has sort of a comparative advantage in world affairs, namely, military might, not economic power, you know, not Treasury reserves. I mean, it’s a very powerful state, but, you know, it’s one of several. It’s comparable to Europe. It’s comparable to rising East Asia in, say, economic power. But in military power, it is supreme. The United States spends approximately as much as the rest of the world in military force. It’s far more technologically advanced. And when you have a comparative advantage, you tend to use it. So, policy decisions tend to drift towards where you’re strong. And where you’re strong is military force. It’s, you know, the old joke: if you have a hammer, everything you see is a nail. You know. And I think that’s very much of a driving force.

And there’s also a longstanding imperial mentality, which says we have to control and dominate. And in particular, we have to dominate energy resources. That goes way back. You know, after the Second World War, it’s been maybe the prime factor in US [inaudible]—

AMY GOODMAN: And the energy resources in Afghanistan?

NOAM CHOMSKY: No, they’re not in Afghanistan. They’re in—mostly in the Gulf, secondarily in Central Asia. But Afghanistan is right in the middle of this system. I mean, there is a pipeline question. How powerful it is, you can speculate. But there have been longstanding plans for a pipeline from Turkmenistan in Central Asia to India, which would go—TAPI, it’s called: Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India.

Now, that’s of significance to the United States for a number of reasons. For one thing, if it—it would run right through Afghanistan and through Kandahar province, one of the most conflicted areas. If it was established, it would, for one thing, reduce the reliance of the Central Asian states on Russia. So it would weaken their role. But more significant, it would bypass Iran. I mean, India needs energy, and the natural source is Iran. And, in fact, they’re discussing an Iran-to-India pipeline. But if you could get natural gas flowing from Central Asia to India, avoiding Iran, that would support the US policy, which is now very clear—in Obama’s case, it’s been made more concrete—of forming an alliance of regional states to oppose Iran.

In fact, that’s—John Kerry, the head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, recently made an important speech about that with regard to Israel-Palestine. He said we have to reconceptualize the issue so it’s not an Israel-Palestine problem, but rather, we’ll sort of put that to the side, and what we have to do is create an alliance of Israel and what are called the moderate Arab states. And “moderate” is a technical term, means they do what we say. And so, the moderate Arab states include the brutal Egyptian dictatorship, the radical fundamentalist dictatorship in Saudi Arabia, and so on. They are the moderates, and they have to join with Israel and us in an anti-Iranian alliance. And we have to, of course, break ongoing connections between Iran and India to the extent that we can and elsewhere. And that puts the Israel-Palestine problem—issue to the side.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to get to Israel-Palestine, but we have to break. And before we do, just a quick question. Do you think Obama should pull the troops out of Afghanistan immediately?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, you know, I think the Afghans should make that decision.

AMY GOODMAN: How?

NOAM CHOMSKY: They have ways. For example, what the peace movement calls for is their traditional way of making decisions: a loya jirga, major meeting of, you know, elders, other figures and so on, who will try to arrive at consensus on this with all the Afghans. And it should be their decision. I mean, we have no right to be there.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re on the road in Boston with Professor Noam Chomsky. We’re talking about, well, US global policy, from NATO to Afghanistan to the new government in Israel. Can you talk about Benjamin Netanyahu and what you see coming up?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, Benjamin Netanyahu is on the—you can’t say on the far right anymore, because the country has moved so far to the right that he’s almost centrist. To the far right is his foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, who has made his first pronouncement yesterday. He said that Israel has no responsibilities for any previous commitments, not the Annapolis commitment to eventually form some sort of Palestinian state, unclear what, only to the road map. Now, that’s what was reported yesterday in the press.

Now, what’s Israel’s commitment to the road map? He knows very well. The road map is the famous decision of the Quartet—US, Europe, Russia and the United Nations. A couple years ago, it sort of laid out vague plans for what ought to be done. It’s worth looking at them. But put that aside, because really it doesn’t matter, because as soon as the road map came out, Israel formally accepted it and instantly added fourteen reservations, which completely eviscerated it. One of the contributions of Jimmy Carter’s book on Israel-Palestine was that he was the first, I think, to give public attention to the Israeli reservations. They’re in an appendix to his book, bitterly condemned book, but nobody ever mentioned the one major contribution.

In effect, Israel said, “We’ll sign the road map, but we’re not going to observe it, because here’s the conditions.” So, for example, the condition—one condition is that nothing can happen until the Palestinians end, of course, all violence, but also all incitement, so anything critical of Israel. On the other hand, it added, nothing can stop Israel from carrying out violence and incitement. It was explicit, approximately those words. And so it continues. There can be no discussion of the existence of settlements, in fact, no discussion of anything that matters. That’s the road map. Now, the US supported that. That means both the US and Israel reject the road map. And Lieberman’s statement yesterday is, well, that’s our only commitment. You know, if we had a functioning media, those would be the headlines.

And there’s much more to this. You know, President Obama appointed a Middle East emissary, George Mitchell, who’s a reasonable choice if he’s allowed to do anything. So far, he’s only allowed to listen to almost everyone, not everyone. For example, he’s not allowed to listen to the elected government in Palestine, the Hamas-led government. Well, it would be hard to listen to them, because half of them are in Israeli prisons, but nevertheless, you know, they have voices. For example, they’ve supported the call for a two-state settlement that the United States and Israel have rejected. So they’ve joined the world on that.

But why are we not allowed to listen to Hamas? Well, because they don’t meet three conditions that were established. One is, they have to accept the road map, which we and Israel reject, but they have to accept it, otherwise we can’t allow them into the civilized world. The other is, they have to renounce violence. Well, we don’t have to discuss the question whether the United States and Israel renounce violence, so we can put that aside. Third, they have to recognize Israel, but, of course, we don’t have to recognize Palestine, nor does Israel. So they have to meet three conditions that we don’t meet and that Israel doesn’t meet. But again, that passes without comment.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you think President Obama’s role should be right now? What do you think would be the most effective action he could take?

NOAM CHOMSKY: He should join the world. There has been an overwhelming international consensus for over thirty years. It was made explicit in January 1976, when the Arab states brought a resolution to the Security Council calling for the establishment of two states on the international border, which indeed the international border, up until then, was recognized by the United States. It means the pre-June ’67 border. And official US terminology, when it was still part of the world in the late ’60s, was “with minor and mutual modifications,” so maybe straighten out some curves. Almost the entire world agrees with this. It has been blocked by the United States. The United States vetoed that resolution. It vetoed a similar one in 1980. I won’t run through the record, but it’s essentially the same up ’til now.

So what President Obama should do is, in fact, what President Clinton did in the last few weeks of his administration. It’s important to recognize what happened then. There were negotiations in Camp David in the summer of 2000, which collapsed. Clinton blamed Arafat, the head of the Palestinian delegation, for the breakdown, but he backed off of that pretty quickly. By December, he formerly recognized that the US-Israeli proposals at Camp David could not be accepted by any Palestinian, and he presented what he called his parameters, somewhat vague but more forthcoming. He then made a speech, an important speech, in which he said both sides have accepted the parameters, both sides have expressed reservations. Well, they met in Taba, Egypt, in January 2001, both sides, to iron out the reservations, and they came very close to an agreement, which was very close to the international consensus.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re just wrapping up right now, but I want to ask if you support a one- or two-state solution there?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Nobody supports—I mean, you can talk about a one-state solution, if you want. I think a better solution is a no-state solution. But this is pie in the sky. If you’re really in favor of a one-state solution, which in fact I’ve been all my life—accept a bi-national state, not one state—you have to give a path to get from here to there. Otherwise, it’s just talk. Now, the only path anyone has ever proposed—

AMY GOODMAN: We have ten seconds.

NOAM CHOMSKY: —is through two states as the first stage.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Noam Chomsky, our guest. Part two of our conversation, which we’ll play next week, will be on the global economic meltdown. Noam Chomsky, Professor Emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. We’re broadcasting from Boston.

Source: http://www.democracynow.org/

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