'The US is an indicted terrorist state'

November 11 2001 at 07:01PM



Madras, India - The bombing of Afghanistan was a greater crime than the September 11 US terror attacks, noted American social critic and philosopher Noam Chomsky told a seminar here on Sunday.

He said the Western approach to the Afghan conflict was both "shortsighted" and "catastrophic".

"The United States is an indicted terrorist state," Chomsky said. It had committed several acts of aggression against other nations and frequently violated all canons of international law. He said it had no moral right to be a critic of terrorism, having committed the same crimes.

"The US has trained groups of terrorists to overthrow governments found to be inconvenient to its interests and replace them with its own lackeys," Chomsky said.

He added that the US did not bother to get the sanction of the UN Security Council for its war on Afghanistan. "Despite knowing it was easily obtainable, it did not get the sanction only because it did not want to acknowledge such a need and thereby compromise on its own right to act unilaterally."

He added that globalisation, "as passionately promoted" by the Western world, only led to a further divide between the haves and have-nots.

"Globalisation is a conspiracy of the Western elite to establish private tyrannies across the world," said Chomsky.

The globalisation process invariably benefited a small community, even within a prosperous nation like the US.

"The argument that globalisation will promote prosperity is only a myth," said Chomsky.

"In the backdrop of such pressures being exerted on the rest of the world by affluent Western powers, the future of the masses can only be guaranteed by popular movements championing human rights and environmental issues."

He said "US hegemony" had increased with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of a unipolar world.

"During the existence of the Soviet Union, the rest of the world had some manoeuvring space between the two superpowers, and the Non-Aligned Movement gathered strength.

"Also, the victims of one superpower managed to get support from the other."

Saying the US was not a democracy, Chomsky said it was dominated by the rich, who indoctrinated society with "a consumerist culture".

Chomsky is one of America's most prominent political dissidents. - Sapa-AFP



http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=3&art_id=ct20011111190122948U232530&set_id=1