{"id":82249,"date":"2016-10-31T12:00:44","date_gmt":"2016-10-31T12:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=82249"},"modified":"2016-10-30T15:44:44","modified_gmt":"2016-10-30T15:44:44","slug":"syria-a-grim-set-of-alternatives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/10\/syria-a-grim-set-of-alternatives\/","title":{"rendered":"Syria: A \u201cGrim\u201d Set of Alternatives"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"noam<\/a>28 Oct 2016 – <\/em>With the recent insertion of Russian military power into Syria and the continued use of American air power in the region, the situation in Syria has gotten tenser than ever, especially since the allegedly accidental September 17, 2016, attack<\/a> on a Syrian military position that killed dozens, followed by the dismissive comments about the incident that US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power made<\/a> at a UN press conference on September 17. Former acting CIA Director Michael Morell recently said<\/a>, \u201cThe Russians and Iranians need to pay a little price for their actions in support of Assad.\u201d<\/p>\n

In light of these developments, New York City teachers Saul Isaacson and Daniel Falcone recently sat down with Professor Noam Chomsky in his MIT office to discuss Syria and US foreign policy.<\/p>\n

Saul Isaacson:\u00a0In light of recent developments in the media propaganda blitz against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, are you concerned that a Clinton presidency would seek to confront Russia, on Syrian soil \u2014 are we now seeing the opening salvos?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Noam Chomsky:<\/strong> I pretty much doubt it. The Russians have an impregnable position. What they\u2019re doing is pretty horrible, but there\u2019s no way to impede it except by a nuclear war, which no one\u2019s going to do. So I think the West will watch.<\/p>\n

You don\u2019t see Syria as the next place to install a democracy or seek \u201cregime change,\u201d as they call it?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Only if you want to destroy the world. There is a major Russian military presence, and you can\u2019t confront that.<\/p>\n

So it\u2019s the old Cold War doctrine: when the Russians move one step forward, American policy must be prepared to move one step back, and vice versa. There is a great deal of concern among progressive writers that this doctrine will lead to a confrontation with the Russians.<\/strong><\/p>\n

There is, but I think it\u2019s misplaced. I mean, I don\u2019t like Clinton at all, but I think she\u2019s really being demonized. She\u2019s no worse than the European leaders, for example. So, for example, in Libya she was terrible, but [former French President Nicolas] Sarkozy and [former UK Prime Minister David] Cameron were worse. And on some things, she\u2019s surprisingly dovish\u2026. There\u2019s a leak of a private discussion that she had with a couple of anti-nuke people, national security specialists who were critical of the nuclear buildup \u2014 not [defense secretary for President Bill Clinton] William Perry, but [former Defense Department official] Andrew C. Weber \u2014 and she was probably accommodating to them, but the statements that she made were not bad \u2014 if you hold her feet to the fire and make her pursue that, it would make sense.<\/p>\n

So she expressed some skepticism about Obama\u2019s trillion-dollar nuclear modernization plan. She came out in opposition to the most dangerous part of it \u2014 the development of smaller nuclear-tip missiles, which can be adapted, scaled down for battlefield usage. She opposed that and made a couple of other reasonable comments, which were probably in reaction to her audience, since politicians say what people want to hear, but it\u2019s something that she could be pressed on by popular movements \u2014 \u201cOK, you\u2019re on the record for this, so stop this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Do you believe that Syria and Assad are being demonized as well by the press? Do you believe barrel bombs, for example, are dropped by Assad?<\/strong><\/p>\n

There\u2019s strong evidence for that. He\u2019s pretty horrible. In this case, I don\u2019t think he\u2019s really being demonized. It\u2019s pretty awful.<\/p>\n

Many observers are coming to the defense of Assad (for example, see Mike Whitney\u2019s discussion of Putin\u2019s \u201cprogress\u201d in Syria<\/a>) and saying this is not a place to build a new regime, and sometimes they give the example of Libya and Iraq.<\/strong><\/p>\n

That\u2019s a separate question. [Muammar] Gaddafi was not a nice guy either, but it was no reason to destroy the country. However, in this case, it\u2019s not even an option. Because if you tried anything like what was done in Libya, you\u2019d have a world war.<\/p>\n

Recently, Obama has sent something like 250 more troops to Iraq. I think there are 5,000 now. Does that concern you? As obviously there\u2019s a buildup to attack Mosul.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It does, but for reasons that actually were pretty well expressed in an op-ed in The New York Times by Jamal al-Dhari<\/a>. The fact is that when the US-backed forces attacked Ramadi and Fallujah, they practically destroyed them. Now these are the main Sunni cities. And Mosul is the last Sunni city. This is what he [said]: If you just wipe the place out<\/em>, it\u2019ll lay the basis for a much more vicious conflict. If you just destroy things without looking at the roots of what\u2019s there, it\u2019s just going to get worse. That\u2019s why ISIS grew out of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Smash up one thing, don\u2019t deal with the sources, the result will be worse.<\/p>\n

Are you hopeful that we\u2019re going to take a broader approach than just a military one under Hillary Clinton?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Not really, but it\u2019s not easy to say what to do. ISIS is pretty awful, but you just have to deal with the roots of it \u2026 the whole ethnic sectarian conflict, which was an outgrowth of the Iraq War. And the Sunni populations do feel threatened by the Shiite majority and the Shiite militias. And unless something is done to lead to an accommodation there, it\u2019ll be pretty brutal out there.<\/p>\n

Is there any hope for working with Russia on this?<\/strong><\/p>\n

There may be some hopes. In the case of Syria, there\u2019s simply no alternative (no realistic alternative, short of destroying Syria) to having some kind of transitional government with Assad certainly involved, maybe in power. It\u2019s ugly, but there\u2019s no alternative. My good friend [Gilbert Achcar] has an article in The Nation<\/a> [that] says \u2014 although he wrote it right before the cease-fire \u2014 that the cease-fire will never last, because as long as Assad remains in power, the opposition will continue to fight until the death of Syria. So he says we have to do something to get Assad out of power, but that can\u2019t be done. That\u2019s the problem.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s such a grim set of alternatives.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s pretty grim, yeah. And for Syria, it\u2019s just horrendous. And the one saving grace is, if you look at history, at the end of the First World War in Syria, it was just about as bad as what\u2019s happening now, and they probably had the worst casualties per capita of any country in the world during the First World War. It was very brutal, with hundreds of thousands killed. It was a much smaller country then, but they did recover somehow, so it\u2019s conceivable, but it\u2019s pretty awful. And it\u2019s just very hard to think of any recommendations. I mean, I don\u2019t know what Obama could\u2019ve done that\u2019s better [than] what he did do.<\/p>\n

____________________________________<\/p>\n

Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, logician, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes described as “the father of modern linguistics,” Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy, and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science. He has spent more than half a century at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he is Institute Professor Emeritus, and is the author of over 100 books on topics such as linguistics, war, politics, mass media,<\/em> US foreign policy, social issues, Latin American and European history, and more.<\/em><\/p>\n

Daniel Falcone is an independent journalist, interviewer, researcher, activist and teacher. He has a graduate degree in modern American history and first started interviewing public intellectuals Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky after September 11, 2001. He writes for several publications that cover current affairs, political science, history and education. He teaches and resides in New York City.<\/em><\/p>\n

Saul Isaacson studied at Columbia University and The University of Pennsylvania. He has taught English at Trinity School in New York for over two decades. Aside from his interest in current affairs, Isaacson is an avid supporter of film studies.<\/em><\/p>\n

Note: This interview has been edited for clarity and concision.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 zcomm.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

28 Oct 2016 – New York City teachers Saul Isaacson and Daniel Falcone recently sat down with Professor Noam Chomsky in his MIT office to discuss Syria and US foreign policy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[204],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-syria-in-context"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82249\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}