NP Chomsky interview excerpts

[Doug Millison]

"When a Federal Building was blown up in Oklahoma
City, there were
immediate cries to bomb the Middle East. These
terminated when it was
discovered that the perpetrator was from the US
ultra-right militia
movement. The reaction was not to destroy Montana and
Idaho, where the
movements are based, but to seek and capture the
perpetrator, bring him
to trial, and -- crucially -- explore the grievances
that lie behind
such crimes and to address the problems. Just about
every crime --
whether a robbery in the streets or colossal
atrocities -- has reasons,
and commonly we find that some of them are serious and
should be
addressed. Matters are no different in this case -- at
least, for those
who are concerned to reduce the threat of terrorist
violence rather than
to escalate it. [...] Bin Laden may or may not be
directly implicated in these acts, but it is
likely that the network in which he was a prime figure
is -- that is,
the network established by the US and its allies for
their own purposes
and supported as long as it served those purposes. It
is much easier to
personalize the enemy, identified as the symbol of
ultimate evil, than
to seek to understand what lies behind major
atrocities. And there are,
naturally, very strong temptations to ignore one's own
role -- which in
this case, is not difficult to unearth, and indeed is
familiar to
everyone who has any familiarity with the region and
its recent history. [...] 

--Noam Chomsky, in an interview distributed yesterday
by Znet, http://www.zmag.org/reactionscalam.htm


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