Noam Chomsky: ‘We should apply to ourselves the same standards we apply to others–in fact, more stringent ones.'” (cc photo: Syracuse Peace Council)
I was recently reading a Noam Chomsky lecture from 2004 where he speaks about terrorism, human rights and the concept of universality:
One moral truism that should be uncontroversial is the principle of universality: We should apply to ourselves the same standards we apply to others–in fact, more stringent ones.
Chomsky’s point is that Western elites carve out an obvious exception for themselves–they deem their own countries “to be uniquely exempt from the principle of universality…. The crimes of enemies take place; our own do not, by virtue of our exemption from the most elementary of moral truisms.”
I thought of this as I read the Washington Post‘s editorial (8/29/14) condemning Russian President Vladimir Putin’s actions in Ukraine, which the Ukrainian government and other observers are calling a military invasion:
If any international norm can still be called uncontroversial, it is the stricture against cross-border aggression by one sovereign state against another. Certainly any failure to enforce it in one place invites violations elsewhere.
The paper cannot possibly mean this to be taken literally, for it amounts to a call for someone to stop the United States.
Of course, their words are not to be taken literally. The paper has been highly critical of the White House’s decision to withdraw troops from Iraq and Afghanistan (most recently last week); they would prefer prolonging those conflicts. The paper’s advocacy for US wars during the Bush years is well-documented; it ran a couple dozen editorials in support of the Iraq invasion, which one should agree was an act of “cross-border aggression.”
The other US wars of the moment, waged via drones and airstrikes, receive enthusiastic support from the Post. And it has been one of the most enthusiastic supporters of striking Syria. The record–of which one could say plenty more–speaks for itself.
It is difficult to find a coherent explanation for the Post‘s apparent position that Putin’s aggression so obviously violates “international norms” that are “uncontroversial,” but US warmaking is, if anything, insufficiently aggressive. Unless you accept that the kind of people who edit the Washington Post are the kind of people who do not believe that “universal norms” apply to everyone.
I would add that we in the USA need to be more concerned about aggression by the USA than by aggression by any other nation or state, since as citizens we have more power to move this country towards non-violence than we do any other nation. I know that is a monumental task, but it is our proper one. As long as we exempt ourselves from our proclaimed standards, we cannot expect anyone else around the world to become less aggressive. Shall we continue to be such monumental hypocrites? It is critically important for us and the rest of the world that we do stop.
Cross-border aggressions by the U.S. are so routine that hardly anyone* bothers to keep track of them, and Beltway media like the Washington Post nearly always support them. How could they be controversial?
(* One writer who does keep track of them is William Blum:
http://williamblum.org/books/killing-hope )
Only God may judge us
And that’s strictly an advisory opinion
Mr. Chomsky has been the rare progressive voice in an era when we’re stuck with lib media that actually implicitly supports the right wing agenda, esp. on socioeconomic issues. And even Mr. Chomsky has become restrained in addressing these issues in recent years, because of the (real) class war. Our government and culture remains war-obsessed in every respect, and when it comes to actual military ventures, the costs alone are steadily bringing about the collapse of the US. The middle class gladly sacrificed the poor, moving those public dollars into maintaining our wars, while the middle class sits back in the evening to watch the results on TV. Meanwhile, the war on our poor has been very much like setting off a bomb in the basement of an apartment building. The building (our middle class) still stands, but the damaged basement is ignored. While the tenants are busy with other things, the basement continues to crumble, and ultimately, the building will collapse. Mr. Chomsky’s works of some years ago addressed these issues.
“Chomsky’s point is that Western elites carve out an obvious exception for themselves–they deem their own countries “to be uniquely exempt from the principle of universality….”
That’s called privilege.
Privi- from the same root as private, and -lege from the same root as legislate.
So the Privileged Western elite operate under under special private laws that don’t apply to anyone else.
WAR is PEACE…
” War, however, is no
longer the desperate, annihilating struggle that it was in the early decades of the twentieth century. It is a warfare of limited aims between combatants who are unable to destroy one another, have no material cause for fighting and are not divided by any genuine ideological difference. This is not to say that either the conduct of war, or the prevailing attitude towards it, has become less bloodthirsty or more chivalrous. On the contrary, war hysteria is continuous and universal in all countries, and such acts as raping, looting, the slaughter of children, the reduction of whole populations to slavery, and reprisals against prisoners which extend even to boiling and burying alive, are looked upon as normal, and, when they are committed by one’s own side and not by the enemy, meritorious. But in a physical sense war involves very small numbers of people, mostly highly-trained specialists, and causes comparatively few.
casualties.”
……
It is deliberate policy to keep even the favoured groups somewhere near the brink of hardship, because a general state of scarcity increases the importance of small privileges and thus magnifies the distinction between one group and another. By the standards of the early twentieth century, even a member of the Inner Party lives an austere, laborious kind of life. Nevertheless, the few luxuries that he does enjoy his large, well-appointed flat, the better texture of his clothes, the better quality of his food and drink and tobacco, his two or three servants, his private motor-car or helicopter–set him in a different world from a member of the Outer Party, and the members of the Outer Party have a similar advantage in comparison with the submerged masses whom we call ‘the proles’. The social atmosphere is that of a besieged city, where the possession of a lump of horseflesh makes the difference between wealth and poverty. And at the same time the consciousness of being at war, and therefore in danger, makes the handing-over of all power to a small caste seem the natural, unavoidable condition of survival.”
I agree with the idea that US has crossed the international norms many times , but that does not make it right for Russia to invade Ukraine , two wrongs do not make a right .
As far as Syria is concerned , the vacuum created by withdrawing support from the opposition, keeping the balance of fear and destruction between the Assad regime and the opposition is what created the current problems there .
It is difficult to find a coherent explanation for the Post’s apparent position
How about: hypocrisy
Gee, for a second after reading the headline to this post, I thought the WP was actually going to run a piece by Chomsky. As if.
John Philip Sousa should demand his march back.
Although often mistaken as personal hypocrisy, the typical American attitude toward themselves v/s the rest of the world is actually a form of government induced mental illness on a national scale.
The US government is full of examples of ‘do as we say, not as we do.”
One internal aspect of the USA which our media refuses to discuss is the fact that there are other country’s operating aid programs for poverty in the USA. This should make citizens of the USA embarrassed for our government’s treatment of the poor.
Rules don’t apply to the “Cock of the Walk”, but they do apply to rest of the flock.
In late August 2014 WaPo has the umbrage, the audacity, the guileless and unmitigated gall, the will to suicide of necessity collective, to announce with a straight face, “If any international norm can still be called uncontroversial, it is the stricture against cross-border aggression by one sovereign state against another.”
Pity the “the middle class [that] gladly sacrificed the poor,” for the economic elite are in the process of doing the same to the middle class. Instant karma? I don’t believe it’s true that the majority of “the middle class sits back in the evening to watch the results [of US imperial hubris] on TV.” As Chomsky himself has repeatedly noted, the majority of Americans are far to the left of the economic and political elite. And hey, much of the middle class, the poor too for that matter, are so busy keeping body and soul together, they certainly are doing more than just sitting back and watching the results on TV. I’m sure many of those the commenter alludes to are as horrified at what we see in our future as the rest of us.
Due respect to Ahmed Sakkal, does he not read Dave Lindorff? The US fomented the Ukrainian revolution for a capitalist west resource grab. In doing so, it deposed a democratically elected president. Corrupt? Perhaps. But what government isn’t? And in the event the new government is more corrupt than the old. Ukraine has long been, if not corporeally than in spirit, part of Russia. It is not Putin that is the aggressor in Ukraine, but NATO. NATO promised, swear to god, cross my heart, hope to die, not to expand “one inch” east of the unified Germany upon the collapse of the Soviet Union. Today it is in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuanian, and encroaching upon the very border of the Soviet Union. That’s the Atlantic part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The current government brings to power Nazi thugs and other anti-Semites, who wage what amounts to war on ethnic Russians. But it’s not the United States that is the aggressor in Ukraine. Not NATO. How could it be? We in the United States have a propaganda factory that would make Izvestia envious. It is Putin that is the aggressor. And World War 3 can commence. And fear not, given the recklessness of the United States, it will be a nuclear one, so that we don’t have to have the resentment that any other creature save perhaps the cockroach will survive us.
There were non-cited precedents here, like the Golden Rule (Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.), Kant’s Categorical Imperative: Act as you would want everyone in the world to act, more or less.
Of course, individuals make these determinations, not countries. Nations always have some glass walls.