Chomsky’s ‘Failed States’ succeeds in exposing 'democracy' scam

[WinterBybee]

By Roger Bybee

“Failed state” has become an insult very selectively used by US officials and pundits, hurled at backward nations whose out-of-touch rulers fail cynically to meet the needs of their own people, while operating as out-of-control states refusing to abide by international norms.

In his latest book, “Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy,” internationally-renowned scholar Noam Chomsky suggests that US citizens take a good look in the mirror. “If we do allow ourselves to do so, we should have little difficulty in finding the characteristics of ‘failed states’ right at home.” The pathetic government response to Hurricane Katrina provided the most haunting images of the Bush Administration’s disinterest in the plight of those who fall outside the circle of the truly wealthy.

A wide array of policies—on taxes, health, Social Security, and job-outsourcing agreements like NAFTA—illustrate a “democracy deficit” resulting in government neglect of the vast majority of Americans. There is a growing yet little-noticed gulf between the policies favored by most Americans and those championed by both the Bush administration and leading Democrats like Hillary Clinton.

For example, “67% of all Americans think it’s a good idea to guarantee healthcare for all US citizens, as Canada and Britain do, with just 27% dissenting,” reports Chomsky. But the leadership of both parties (and their leading contributors) are simply unwilling to contemplate such an approach (despite the immense benefits it would confer to most US firms’ economic competitiveness), and guaranteed healthcare is therefore disqualified as “lacking political support.” As in other failed states, says Chomsky, “The will of the people is banned from the political arena.”

But despite the corrosion of American democracy itself, many leading scholars and commentators have admired the “idealism” behind George W. Bush’s efforts to export “democracy” overseas, beginning in Iraq. As Chomsky points out, the notion of “democracy promotion” was a late arrival among Bush’s pretexts for US invasion and occupation of Iraq after weapons of mass destruction and Saddam’s links to international terror proved non-existent. Moreover, the US finally gave in to elections in Iraq only after turning aside Iraqis’ demands for the vote three times and expelling the troublesome Al Jazeera TV network (whose facilities the US had bombed in Afghanistan and Baghdad).

Given the consistent history of US support for brutal tyrannies (Iran, Guatemala, Indonesia, Chile, etc.) plus current alliances with dictatorships in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Uzbekistan, the notion of “democracy promotion” by the US thus has all the credibility of Enron’s Kenneth Lay offering lessons in “business ethics.”

In Chomsky’s view, US foreign policy has been closely and consistently aligned with the interests of transnational corporations, especially the oil industry. Some 70 years ago, strategic planners called the Mideast’s oil “a stupendous source of strategic power” and “one of the great material prizes in world history,” and US policy has been based on that view. With those immense stakes in sight, George W. Bush and his team launched the invasion and occupation of Iraq using the doctrine of “anticipatory self-defense” in the guise of “fighting terrorism.”

Shamelessly ignoring international law, US officials like Condoleeza Rice have put forth another doctrine to shore up the first: what Chomsky calls “the doctrine of self-exemption.” In Rice’s words, “each state is entitled to interpret itself.”

This doctrine of “self-exemption” from universal standards has paved the way for the horrors of US crimes at Falluja General Hospital, Abu Ghraib, “rendition,” and the killing of some 100,000 Iraqi civilians (according to the British medical journal Lancet.) The notion of “self-exemption” has been further extended by the Bush Administration to nuclear proliferation, global warming, and chemical and biological weapon controls.

Chomsky’s Failed States illuminates the chilling implications of these policies, yet continually reminds the reader with a note of hope, “Not only does the US government stand apart from the rest of the world on many crucial issues, but even from its own population.”


Roger Bybee is a Milwaukee-based writer and activist.

[FloridaPat]

1. Traitors in the gov't - almost everyone of them.

[xchrom]

2. day-um -- chomsky spankin butt!

take a good look in the mirror!

[enough]

3. An audio version of this book is available at

Audible.com (and perhaps elsewhere). I find I get more reading done by listening these days.

[LiberalUprising]

16. just picked up the audio version

$30 at Barnes & Noble

[Jim Sagle]

4. Chomsky ain 't nuthin' but chit.

[IndyOp]

7. What an erudite reply to Chomsky's assertions you've provided.

Care to elaborate?

[Tom Joad]

10. Mr. Sagle is the grand intellectual of the anti-Chomsky crowd at DU

why does he need to elaborate? There is nothing to elaborate on.
There are nearly 8,000 posts that are all pretty much the same.

[Moochy]

13. Indeed

Inuendo, stale claims of anti-semitism, and short one-liners are all that the Chomsky haters club seems to be able to hurl. How dare he question authority?? How dare he question Israel's policies... how dare he. He's a french nazi-lover!! etc.

meta-translation: Waah, he uses big words that make my tiny, mainstream-press addled brain brain ache.

[katinmn]

5. Thanks, WinterBybee

Great review!

[WinterBybee]

11. Thanks for the kind words!

[paparush]

6. Chomsky gave a GREAT interview on Democracy Now a few weeks ago...

Have a listen-
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/31/148...

[BREMPRO]

8. Chomsky is brilliant... he strips the propaganda away and leaves us with

The inconvenient truth....that we are a failed state, a rogue state, a harbor of state sponsored terrorism. We are a failing democracy, where the citizen's will is strangled by multi-national corporate elites and crooked politicians. Not the America I grew up believing in.

Thank you Mr. Bush for so blatently demonstrating our country's true nature, and thank you Mr Chomsky for unveiling the myths of our democracy. The truth shall set us free!!

Speech is only free, until you have to pay for it.

[Tom Joad]

9. Thanks for the post, and a hearty welcome to DU!

I think we are going to hear some good stuff from you.

[WinterBybee]

12. Thanks for the warm welcome...

Actually, we've been writing for DU for a bit more than a year--a couple pieces on the election built around responding to Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas?, the Terri Schiavo spectacle, Social Security, and a few other things. Best, Roger Bybee.

[LouisianaLiberal]

14. Well done.

[teryang]

15. Saw Chomsky presentation on just war to West Pointers in April

It was great. He ripped the just war theorists and also ripped the concept of "pre-emptive war."

It was very well received. I thought perhaps that his presentation was something unusual to happen at West Point. Anyone see this? It was re-broadcast yesterday.

[FULL_METAL_HAT]

17. where was it rebroadcast?

C-span?

[librechik]

18. we saw it--the cadets cheered him when he finished

we wept for their understanding and support--and their futures.

[Terran1212]

19. I'm almost through the book now

Wonderful piece