Evan Solomon: I want to start off by reading a quotation from your most recent compendium of interviews, "9-11". You wrote: "If the U.S. chooses to respond to the attacks of September 11th by escalating the cycle of violence, which is most likely what Bin Laden and his associates hope for, the consequences could be awesome." Now, the U.S. did.
Noam Chomsky: They didn't.
ES: You don't think they did?
NC: You have to remember when that was. That was late September. At that point, the Bush administration was talking as though they were going to carry out a massive bombing campaign against the civilian population with no thought about the consequences. They were being told at the time, from every source, European leaders, intelligence agencies, I'm sure their own as well, that if they did that it would be a gift to Bin Laden. That's exactly what he wanted. The French Foreign minister called it an Afghan trap.
ES: But they did go into Afghanistan.
NC: No, they didn't. They did it in a way that would keep the attack on the population silent. They focused the bombing on military forces, Taliban military forces primarily, not on a massive attack. They didn't carry out a massive attack against a civilian population. Actually, they did, but it was indirect. It was through increasing the threat of starvation and death from disease. Their own estimates were that they were putting a couple of million people at risk of starvation, and that's probably correct. But that's silent, you don't see people die of starvation...
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