Why Isn't Iraq in the 2008 Election? By Noam Chomsky

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Why Isn't Iraq in the 2008 Election?
By Noam Chomsky

In a major address, Noam Chomsky says there has been little change in the conventional debate over a US invasion abroad: from Vietnam to Iraq, the two main political parties and political pundits differ only on the tactics of US goals, which are assumed to be legitimate. On the other hand, public opposition to war has also remained consistent, Chomsky says, but, whether Iraqi or American, ignored

"Not very long ago, as you all recall, it was taken for granted that the Iraq war would be the central issue in the 2008 election, as it was in the midterm election two years ago. However, it's virtually disappeared off the radar screen, which has solicited some puzzlement among the punditry."

"Actually, the reason is not very obscure. It was cogently explained forty years ago, when the US invasion of South Vietnam was in its fourth year and the surge of that day was about to add another 100,000 troops to the 175,000 already there, while South Vietnam was being bombed to shreds at triple the level of the bombing of the north and the war was expanding to the rest of Indochina. However, the war was not going very well, so the former hawks were shifting towards doubts, among them the distinguished historian Arthur Schlesinger, maybe the most distinguished historian of his generation, a Kennedy adviser, who -- when he and Kennedy, other Kennedy liberals were beginning to -- reluctantly beginning to shift from a dedication to victory to a more dovish position."

"And Schlesinger explained the reasons. He explained that -- I'll quote him now -- "Of course, we all pray that the hawks are right in thinking that the surge of that day will work. And if it does, we may all be saluting the wisdom and statesmanship of the American government in winning a victory in a land that we have turned," he said, "to wreck and ruin. But the surge probably won't work, at an acceptable cost to us, so perhaps strategy should be rethought.""

"Well, the reasoning and the underlying attitudes carry over with almost no change to the critical commentary on the US invasion of Iraq today. And it is a land of wreck and ruin. You've already heard a few words; I don't have to review the facts. The highly regarded British polling agency, Oxford Research Bureau, has just updated its estimate of deaths. Their new estimate a couple of days ago is 1.3 million. That's excluding two of the most violent provinces, Karbala and Anbar. On the side, it's kind of intriguing to observe the ferocity of the debate over the actual number of deaths. There's an assumption on the part of the hawks that if we only killed a couple hundred thousand people, it would be OK, so we shouldn't accept the higher estimates. You can go along with that if you like. Uncontroversially, there are over two million displaced within Iraq."

More:
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/2/26/noam_chomsky_why_is_iraq_missing

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