of their own government's criminal actions around the world. Now, Nome Chomsky is of course the MIT linguistics professor who famously popularized the concept of manufacturing consent. For years he's written about how the West uses a propagandistic press to coerce its own citizens and how it uses covert forms of violence to maintain power around the world. Chomsky was overwhelmed with media requests about September 11, so his new book 9-11 is a collection of interviews that he gave in the following months. Now interestingly 9-11 has been a bestseller despite the fact that it's had a total lack of publicity. I met Nome Chomsky in Cambridge to talk about the post 9-11 world and how things have changed since then. But I began by asking him to explain how the war in Afghanistan is an example of how the US is in his mind a leading terrorist state. On October 12, I guess, a couple of days after the bombing started, Bush publicly announced to the Afghan people that we will continue to mom you unless your leadership turns over to us, people who we suspect of carrying out crimes, although we refuse to give you any evidence. And notice that that's a textbook illustration of international terrorism three weeks later by the end of October. The war aims had changed. Admiral Boyce, the British Defense Minister, he informed the Afghan population that we will continue to mom you until you change your leadership. That's an even more dramatic illustration of international terrorism. I said nothing to do with finding the criminals and bringing them to justice. If the United States is a leading terrorist state, if, as you say, Britain is another example of a terrorist state, how do you distinguish between that kind of what you describe as terrorism and what they are saying or some have been lied and who's a terrorist? Make the distinction. That's very simple. If they do it, it's terrorism. If we do it, it's counterterrorism. That's a historical universal. You go back to Nazi propaganda, say, most extreme mass murderers ever. If you look at Nazi propaganda, it's exactly what they said. They said they are defending the populations and the legitimate governments of Europe. Well, let's talk about in the Middle East, for example, where Sharon says, we are experiencing terrorist bombings and therefore we have to have a big operation in the West Bank and root out terrorism. And people say, hey, you're violating human rights. Yeah, this is the 35th year of a harsh, brutal, and vicious occupation, supported unilaterally by the United States, constant terror and atrocities. Suppose Palestinians say, well, we're under terrorist attack for 35 years. Therefore, we have a right to carry out suicide bombings. Do you accept this? Do you accept this? Does anybody accept it? Nobody accepts it. All right, then how come everyone accepts the Israeli claim to be doing it, which is much weaker claim? They are the military occupiers. Those who defend suicide bombing, and they're very few, I will leg to stand on. Those who defend the Israeli atrocities, including the US government, most intellectual opinion, good bit of the West generally, they don't have a leg to stand on either, and they have a much weaker position. You asked us after September 11th, one of your points is we got to look in the mirror we being America or the West. We got to look in the mirror at our own. Was that a way of saying, look, people like Ben Laden, are angry at us for good reason. No, I'm not saying that. In other words, is there a way to justify those? That's not what I was saying. The statement of mine that you just quoted is a very conservative statement. In fact, it was articulated by George Bush's favorite philosopher, Jesus Christ, who pointed out famously, defined the notion hypocrite. A hypocrite is a person who focuses on the other fellow crimes, and refuses to look at his own. I know that the US has committed atrocities. However, they did oust a more brutal regime, the Taliban. There was. That wasn't even a war in. There wasn't even a war in. Wasn't even a war in. But is that a moral thing to do? They did get rid of a brutal regime. There was a celebration in Ken. Good fine, let them bomb Israel and get rid of the brutal regime there. If we want to overthrow the regime of Uzbekistan, now a great favorite, but it happens to be not very different from the Taliban, the way to do it would not be to bomb Uzbekistan, but to support internal democratic forces and let them do it. And that generalizes around the world. Robert Kaplan, who writes about foreign policy, I spoke to him recently about his book, War Your Politics. And I put some of your points to him. He said, I wish no chance could have been with me in Romania in the 70s or the 80s. Adult choice of foreign policy is made on distinctions. The argument that Chomsky makes has no distinctions because there's a difference between the quantity and the kind of dictators that America supported and the quantity and the kind of things we went in communist world for 44 years. So let's take his example of Romania, Chachezcu, hideous regime, which he forgot to tell you, the United States supported, supported right till the end as did Britain. So the example that he gave is a perfect example. And it's a small example because we support much more brutal regimes. Sector's qualified US military. No, it doesn't. It doesn't. Look, the Taliban are a terrorist state. That fact doesn't disqualify them from bombing Washington. What disqualifies from doing that is even, there's even they were, Magandi, they shouldn't do it. Nobody except the ultra-right winged jingoists like Kaplan is comparing atrocities by various countries. What honest people are saying is that we should pay attention to our own crimes and stop committing them. This would be true even if we were killing one person. Okay, and it's even more true when we're killing millions of people. Do we need a, a, a, a, a, to do imaginary, a force, a, a central force? In this case, it's America, America because it's the superpower. To sometimes use unjust means in the service of just causes. What are the just cause is what was the just cause in for example, slaughtering courage in Southeast Turkey. What was the just cause? What was the just cause in supporting Siharto when he killed a couple hundred thousand landless peasants in Indonesia went on to become one of the biggest torturers in the world and then destroyed the slaughtered third of the population of East Timor. What was the just cause? What was the just cause when we invaded South Vietnam 40 years ago, ending up killing millions of people leaving the country devastated, still dying from chemical warfare. What was the just cause? Can I continue? Yeah, the just cause for people like Kaplan is we did it. Therefore it's a just cause. You can read that in the Nazi archives too. Of course we've had Kaplan on and there is a raging debate about the just cause of foreign policy. But when we come back, Nome Chomsky says that the US not only blocked Mideast peace and has always done so it actually escalates the violence and who are the war criminals guilty, Bush, Clinton, Kennedy, Eisenhower, all of them. Come on back from war Nome Chomsky.