Because We Say So by Noam Chomsky Read Free Book Online

West, lucidly articulated by Gen. Lee Butler, former head of the U.S. Strategic Command: “It is dangerous in the extreme that in the cauldron of animosities that we call the Middle East,” one nation should arm itself with nuclear weapons, which “inspires other nations to do so.”
    Butler is not referring to Iran, but to Israel, which is regarded in the Arab countries and in Europe as posing thegreatest threat to peace. In the Arab world, the United States is ranked second as a threat, while Iran, though disliked, is far less feared. Indeed in many polls majorities hold that the region would be more secure if Iran had nuclear weapons to balance the threats they perceive.
    If Iran is indeed moving toward nuclear-weapons capability—this is still unknown to U.S. intelligence—that may be because it is “inspired to do so” by the U.S.-Israeli threats, regularly issued in explicit violation of the U.N. Charter.
    Why then is Iran the greatest threat to world peace, as seen in official Western discourse? The primary reason is acknowledged by U.S. military and intelligence and their Israeli counterparts: Iran might deter the resort to force by the United States and Israel.
    Furthermore, Iran must be punished for its “successful defiance,” which was Washington’s charge against Cuba half a century ago, and still the driving force for the U.S. assault against Cuba that continues despite international condemnation.
    Other events featured on the front pages might also benefit from a different perspective. Suppose that Julian Assange had leaked Russian documents revealing important information that Moscow wanted to conceal from the public, and that circumstances were otherwise identical.
    Sweden would not hesitate to pursue its sole announced concern, accepting the offer to interrogate Assange in London. It would declare that if Assange returned to Sweden (as he has agreed to do), he would not be extradited to Russia, where chances of a fair trial would be slight.
    Sweden would be honored for this principled stand. Assange would be praised for performing a public service—which, of course, would not obviate the need to take the accusations against him as seriously as in all such cases.

    The most prominent news story of the day here is the U.S. election. An appropriate perspective was provided by former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who held that “We may have democracy in this country, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.”
    Guided by that insight, coverage of the election should focus on the impact of wealth on policy, extensively analyzed in the recent study A FFLUENCE AND I NFLUENCE : E CONOMIC I NEQUALITY AND P OLITICAL P OWER IN A MERICA by Martin Gilens. He found that the vast majority are “powerless to shape government policy” when their preferences diverge from those of the affluent, who pretty much get what they want when it matters to them.
    Small wonder, then, that in a recent ranking of the 31 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in terms of social justice, the United States placed 27th, despite its extraordinary advantages.
    Or that rational treatment of issues tends to evaporate in the electoral campaign, in ways sometimes verging on comedy.
    To take one case, Paul Krugman reports that the much-admired Big Thinker of the Republican Party, Paul Ryan, declares that he derives his ideas about the financial system from a character in a fantasy novel— A TLAS S HRUGGED —who calls for the use of gold coins instead of paper currency.
    It only remains to draw from a really distinguished writer, Jonathan Swift. In G ULLIVER ‘ S T RAVELS , his sages of Lagado carry all their goods with them in packs on their backs, and thus could use them for barter without the encumbrance of gold. Then the economy and democracy could truly flourish—and best of all, inequality would sharply decline, a gift to the spirit of Justice