Chomsky on Liberal Administrations
In a recent (Nov. 2010) interview, Noam Chomsky gives us a history lesson regarding an unfortunate misunderstanding of liberal administrations.
He discusses Roosevelt and his "planners" who designated an area called the "Grand Arena" which had to be "dominated" by the US. He talks about "later liberal administrations" which contended that "if we control the Middle East, we can control the world--that's where the energy resources are." He alludes to "high-level planning meetings in State Department, Council on Foreign Relations, and so on" and the idea that there can be no "exercises of sovereignty that interfere with that dominance."
Sure sounds familiar !
The interviewer concurs that (with regards to the Obama administration), "the underlying assumption, that the US needs to project power around the globe, really doesn't seem to have changed." Then the idea of attacking Iran comes up, which Chomsky calls a "very serious threat". Then he says this:
"But the threat is Obama, too. You don't have to go to the neocons. I mean, Obama has significantly increased the US military threat to Iran. So take, say, the island of Diego Garcia, an important island. It's a major US military base, one of the major bases for bombing the Middle East and Central Asia. The British--it was a British island--they kicked the population out so that the US could develop a military base there. And it's big. Obama has substantially increased it. There hasn't been reporting about this, unfortunately, but he about a year ago established facilities for nuclear submarines--which means with nuclear-tipped missiles--to be there. He's sharply increased the number of what are called deep penetration ordnance, sometimes called bunker busters, the biggest bombs in the arsenal short of nuclear weapons, which are designed to go deep underground to destroy targets. He's sent hundreds there. In fact, that was a Bush program, but it kind of languished. As soon as Obama came into office, he very sharply stepped up production, now deployment. The--I think about a quarter of the world's aircraft carriers (almost all of them--the big ones are almost all US) are in the Arabian Sea. That's a--in fact, Iran is completely surrounded by US military bases. And the threat of attack is constant. The phrase that's used is all options are open, meaning we can attack if we like." (entire transcript and video here - http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=5870)
Remember, Chomsky predicted the Obama administration would be " like another Bush administration" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVVDNIeQ77I&feature=related) before Obama was even inaugurated.
Just more proof - red and blue, both thick in the stew.