Michael Parenti on terrorism, control, power, corruption and imperialism (one of my fav interviews)

[MikeWB]

Michael Parenti received a PhD in Political Science at Yale University. He is one of the nation's leading progressive thinkers, an uncompromising advocate for political and social justice. He has written sixteen books, including Democracy for the Few, Dirty Truths, and The Sword and the Dollar. His latest book, The Terrorism Trap: September 11 and Beyond, is published by City Lights Books. His website is www.michaelparenti.org.

David Ross is a grassroots activist who has worked on the Nader campaign, corporate accountability, U.S. imperialism, and environmental issues. He can be reached at mailto:daveross27@hotmail.com">daveross27@hotmail.com.

 

I'D LIKE to start out with the title of your new book. What do you mean by the terrorism "trap"?

THE ACTS of terrorism that took place on September 11 must be seen in a wider context. The reason these people attacked us are twofold. First there are the immediate causes. They're driven by an apocalyptic religious ideology. But at the same time the question comes up, "Why did they attack the United States?" Bush says it's because we're so free and prosperous. Well, Denmark is a lot freer and a lot more prosperous than we are, so is Sweden, so are a number of other Western European countries, but they are not being attacked in this same way. So we must try to look at the larger conditional causes of terrorism. The terrorist groups that have arisen in the Middle East and Central Asia have emerged from societies in which all popular coalitions and democratic movements have been destroyed by U.S. interventionism: Turkey, Yemen, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and others. In country after country where democratic forces have tried to mobilize for political and economic democracy, where student leaders, labor union leaders, farm and peasant communal collective leaders, independent journalist, liberal clergy, women's rights advocates, various groups of people who have fought for social change in a democratic direction, these reformist democratic forces have been the object of the worst sort of oppression over the last half century. Democratic interests have been destroyed or left with nothing to hold on to.

Finding their economies, their cultures, and their societies spinning or sinking beyond their grasp, finding themselves with no control over their lives, many of these people, in a mixture of hope and desperation, turn to a kind of totalizing religious solution. One that actually preaches direct action and revenge against the evil empire, in this case, as they see it, America. But it's really not America that's doing this to them, it's the U.S. ruling class. America itself is a entity of 260 million people, of many diverse groups most of whom do not want to see their tax dollars expended and the blood of their sons and daughters spilled in far off places, the names of which they don't even know, and usually cannot even find on the map. They wonder why so much is spent on war and so little on things like local education. Their schools are falling apart. The roof on the school is leaking and the kids don't have sufficient textbooks, and school materials. And that's not just in inner cities. I know schools in California, in suburban areas, where the art teachers go out with their own money and buy art supplies for the students because the budgets have been cut back so much. And they're wondering why we have so much public poverty and so much private wealth, so much civilian poverty and so much military glut and military wealth.

U.S. leaders have built military bases all over the world. It seems U.S. forces have got to be everywhere, all over the world, occupying countries from Bosnia to Macedonia, to Kosovo, to Afghanistan, to Tashkent, more and more places at the taxpayer's expense. Meanwhile the quality of life in the U.S. is being neglected and deteriorating. So it's not really true that Americans are clamoring for empire. Despite the monopoly propaganda of the corporate media and national security state, Americans do at times question the terrible costs and burdens of empire. But during times of crises, real or fabricated, our leaders manage to convince people to rally mindlessly around the flag, telling them, "this is for democracy," "this is for our national security," "we've got to do this to fight terrorism." Well, what's happened? U.S. forces went into Afghanistan, destroying much of that already battered country-all supposedly to catch Osama bin Laden. They never caught him, and now they say, "Oh that's not very important anyway, we don't really have to catch him." The White House is now predicting that  al Qaeda is planning some other terrorist strikes of major magnitude, coming soon. So what exactly was accomplished by waging war upon a weak impoverished battered country? People say, "Well what would you do?" I would go out and hunt the terrorist cells, specifically. I wouldn't go out and bomb whole cities and villages. That's like trying to catch a flea with a giant sledgehammer. But that policy has served George Bush and his reactionaries in Washington quite well under the guise of this terrorism battle. While the rest of us, you and I, saw September 11 as a horrible, horrible tragedy, they saw it as a golden opportunity and they've been pushing their reactionary agenda ever since. The first thing George II did to fight terrorism after September 11, was to call for an additional tax cut for the very rich. And the next thing he did was to jack up the military budget even more, another 50 billion until now it's close to 400 billion dollars. None of this enhances our security against terrorism.

 

WHAT ARE the real motives behind U.S. foreign policy?

I BELIEVE the real motives behind most of U.S foreign policy-these may not be the only concerns or the only interests-but the major basic motives as measured by the kinds of countries U.S. leaders support and the kinds of countries or political movements they try to destroy is to keep the world safe for the Fortune 500. To make sure that the transnational corporations and international global finance capital continues to control the land, labor, resources, and markets of most of the world, and ultimately, all of the world on terms that are extremely favorable to them. The goal is to destroy, to obliterate, to thwart any social movement or national leader who is trying for an alternative way of using the land, the labor, the natural resources, the markets, the capital of his or her country.

The most recent example is Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. Why is Chavez being portrayed as an unstable, wild-eyed demagogue? It's a very repetitive, rather obvious and predictable formula. A country tries to get out from under the U.S. global-dominated economic system. They want to develop their own society in their own way and you immediately begin to demonize their leaders. You talk about the leader being a "mercurial strong arm," "a strong man," "erratic," "dangerous," "a repressive autocrat," "another Hitler," "anti-American," and "anti-West." But it doesn't make somebody anti-American if they criticize U.S. policy and want to develop in their own way, a way that would be more beneficial for their people. If I criticize U.S policy and say, "I don't like what our leaders are doing in Iraq and Yugoslavia," "I don't like it bombing civilian populations," that doesn't make me anti-American. If I criticize what Israel is doing in the West Bank, in Jenin, in Hebron and other places, that doesn't make me anti-Jewish or anti-Semitic. That makes me anti- the particular leaders who are making the particular policies in Israel or in the U. S. right now.

I'm opposed to those policies. That's not being bigoted against America, or Israel, or France, or China. If I don't like Chinese policy in the business zones that they've set up and a number of areas, that doesn't mean I'm an anti-Asian, and a racist against the Chinese people. That is just a manipulative kind of labeling. To oppose the policies of a government does not mean you are against the country or the people that the government supposedly represents. Such opposition should be called what it really is: democracy, or democratic dissent, or having a critical perspective about what your leaders are doing. Either we have the right to democratic dissent and criticism of these policies or we all lie down and let the leader, the F