Can Civilization Survive "Really Existing Capitalism"? An Interview With Noam Chomsky | Noam Chomsky interviewed by C.J. Polychroniou Becker
C.J. Polychroniou: In a nationally televised address on the eve of the
13th anniversary of the September 11th attacks on the United States,
Obama announced to the American people and the rest of the world that
the United States is going back to war in Iraq, this time against the
self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Is Iraq an
unfinished business of the US invasion of 2003, or is the situation
there merely the inevitable outcome of the strategic agenda of the
Empire of Chaos?
Noam Chomsky: "Inevitable" is a strong word, but the appearance of ISIS
and the general spread of radical jihadism is a fairly natural outgrowth
of Washington wielding its sledgehammer at the fragile society of Iraq,
which was barely hanging together after a decade of US-UK sanctions so
onerous that the respected international diplomats who administered them
via the UN both resigned in protest, charging that they were
"genocidal."
One of the most respected mainstream US Middle East analysts, former CIA
operative Graham Fuller, recently wrote that "I think the United States
is one of the key creators of [ISIS]. The United States did not plan
the formation of ISIS, but its destructive interventions in the Middle
East and the war in Iraq were the basic causes of the birth of ISIS."
