Free 9-11 by Noam Chomsky Page B

atrocities had achieved their goal. In 1999, Turkey fell from its position as the leading recipient of U.S. arms (Israel-Egypt aside), replaced byColombia, the worst human rights violator in the hemisphere in the 1990s and by far the leading recipient of U.S. arms and training, following a consistent pattern.
    In East Timor, the U.S. (and Britain) continued their support of the Indonesian aggressors, who had already wiped out about 1/3 of the population with their crucial help. That continued right through the atrocities of 1999, with thousands murdered even before the early September assault that drove 85 percent of the population from their homes and destroyed 70 percent of the country—while the Clinton administration kept to its position that “it is the responsibility of the government of Indonesia, and we don’t want to take that responsibility away from them.”
    That was September 8, well after the worst of the September atrocities had been reported. By then Clinton was coming under enormous pressure to do something to mitigate the atrocities, mainly from Australia but also from home. A few days later, the Clinton administration indicated to the Indonesian generals that the game was over. They instantly reversed course. They had been strongly insisting that they would never withdraw from East Timor, and they were in fact setting up defenses in Indonesian West Timor (using British jets, which Britain continued to send) to repel a possible intervention force. When Clinton gave the word, they reversed course 180 degrees and announced that they would withdraw, allowing an Australian-led UN peacekeeping force to enter unopposed by the army. The course of events reveals very graphically the latent power that was always available to Washington, and that could have been used to prevent twenty-five years ofvirtual genocide culminating in the new wave of atrocities from early 1999. Instead, successive U.S. administrations, joined by Britain and others in 1978 when atrocities were peaking, preferred to lend crucial support, military and diplomatic, to the killers—to “our kind of guy,” as the Clinton administration described the murderous President Suharto. These facts, clear and dramatic, identify starkly the prime locus of responsibility for these terrible crimes of twenty-five years—in fact, continuing in miserable refugee camps in Indonesian West Timor.
    We also learn a lot about Western civilization from the fact that this shameful record is hailed as evidence of our new dedication to “humanitarian intervention,” and a justification for the NATO bombing of Serbia.
    I have already mentioned the devastation of Iraqi civilian society, with about 1 million deaths, over half of them young children, according to reports that cannot simply be ignored.
    This is only a small sample.
    I am, frankly, surprised that the question can even be raised—particularly in France, which has made its own contributions to massive state terror and violence, surely not unfamiliar. [ Editor’s note: Chomsky is being interviewed by French media here, thus the references to France .]
    Are reactions unanimous in the U.S.? Do you share them, partly or completely?
    If you mean the reaction of outrage over the horrifying criminal assault, and sympathy for the victims, then the reactions are virtually unanimous everywhere, includingthe Muslim countries. Of course every sane person shares them completely, not “partly.” If you are referring to the calls for a murderous assault that will surely kill many innocent people—and, incidentally, answer bin Laden’s most fervent prayers—than there is no such “unanimous reaction,” despite superficial impressions that one might derive from watching TV. As for me, I join a great many others in opposing such actions. A great many.
    What majority sentiment is, no one can really say: it is too diffuse and complex. But “unanimous”? Surely not, except with regard to the nature of the