QUESTION: Professor Chomsky, do you think you overestimated the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan? Pakistan News Service has you saying on a November trip to Pakistan, only ten days before the bombing, the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization had warned that over seven million people would face starvation in Afghanistan if military action was initiated.
CHOMSKY: I wasn't overestimating it. I was quoting the Food and Agricultural Organization.
QUESTION: But you give the impression that the bombing alone would endanger the lives of seven million people.
CHOMSKY: I didn't give that impression at all. What I said is that, before the bombing, there were, according to UN estimates, about five million people facing starvation. According to the New York Times, the effect of the threat of bombing, let alone the bombing, would be to place an additional two and a half million people at risk. They were quoting UN sources. And I quoted them. If it's an overestimate, it's not mine. It's the overestimate of the New York Times, the Food and Agricultural Organization, the World Food Program, and others. There's a separate question: did it happen? Totally separate. Interesting and important question but it's not the basis on which we carry out--
QUESTION: So you were still right to issue the warning--?
CHOMSKY: I was right to quote the warnings of every international authority on the basis of which the actions were undertaken and commentary was made. And, furthermore, I was right to point out the elementary truism that we evaluate the actions, and the commentary on them, on the basis of the expectations on which the actions were taken. Now, there's a separate question -- important separate question: what are the effects? Well, what I said at the same point is: we'll never know.
QUESTION: Well, the effects, according to Oxfam, are that for some the dangers have receded -- for others, they've got worse.
CHOMSKY: Exactly.
QUESTION: It's a mixed and complex picture.
CHOMSKY: Let's first establish the fact, which is elementary, that whatever the consequences are -- and they're important -- they're completely irrelevant to this issue. Okay, having established that, let's look at the consequences. The consequences, first of all, are mixed and, secondly, the point that I made in the book, back in October, is, I believe, correct. They will never be investigated. I hope I'm wrong about that. As I said there, I hope that we will break the historical pattern, a very overwhelming historical pattern, and actually look at the consequences of our own actions. That almost never happens.
QUESTION: It's happened in many-- It's happened over Kosovo, it's happened over the Balkans--
CHOMSKY: Excuse me, that's someone else's crimes. You investigate, laser-like, other people's crimes but you don't investigate your own. The Kosovo case is quite dramatic.
QUESTION: The War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague looked at investigating NATO and its actions in Kosovo.
CHOMSKY: For a few days. And you notice what happened? [The tribunal's chief prosecutor] Carla del Ponte brought it up for a few days. She was immediately informed in the strongest terms that you'd better not do that and she backed off.
QUESTION: As [former chief prosecutor] Louise Arbour had been warned before her.
CHOMSKY: "You better not do it" and they backed off immediately.
QUESTION: Why do you say they backed off immediately? She said there wasn't a case to [warrant it?].
CHOMSKY: That's backing off.
QUESTION: That's saying there isn't a case to [?]. It's not necessarily caving into pressure, is it?
CHOMSKY: Really? I mean, it's not necessarily that but, in fact, the course of events was: They announced that they were thinking of looking into NATO crimes. There was a statement -- I think it was from [NATO spokesperson] Jamie Shea, who was asked about it -- saying that "we fund the tribunal, they're not gonna look into our crimes." An American congressman in Canada was asked about it and he said if they start looking into NATO crimes, we will take the United Nations buildings apart brick by brick.
QUESTION: That's bombast, isn't it?
CHOMSKY: Is it? A few days later, they said, "Well, there aren't any NATO crimes." But, going back to your question, they did not investigate NATO crimes.
QUESTION: To your satisfaction.
CHOMSKY: They didn't do it, period. They said they're not gonna do it.
QUESTION: Because we're running out of time, I just want to ask you what you think your questioning has achieved [since September 11th?]... What do you think you've achieved?
CHOMSKY: Well, look, I mean, I don't attribute it to myself, of course, but, in the United States and wherever I've been-- Well, let's take the United States. In the United States, there is a level of questioning, openness, protest, and concern about these actions which is beyond anything in my memory at any remotely comparable stage of a military confrontation.
QUESTION: You're encouraged by this?
CHOMSKY: Yeah, I think it's a sign of the increased civilization of the American population. Just as the human rights culture is.
QUESTION: So [the situation?] isn't as bleak as you thought it was?
CHOMSKY: It's not as bleak as I thought it was forty years ago. In fact, what I've insisted over and over again, and I think is true, is that the effect of the popular activism of the last forty years has been to make the country a much more civilized place.
[BBC, February 27, 2002]
On Fri, 15 Mar 2002, Luke Weiger wrote:
> I seem to remember Chomsky crying wolf about the humanitarian disaster
> that the US was attempting to quietly inflict on Afghanistan... and
> ignoring the fact that US intervention likely helped alleviate the
> famine alluded to, I can't recall Walzer saying anything half as
> stupid...