The American population is probably the most frightened population in the world. ibid.
Not in the sense in which the general population can participate in determining policy. ibid.
The United States as it happens didn’t have much interest in or concern with Grenada until Maurice Bishop and the revolution of 1979 – that was under the Carter administration … Carter’s hostility took the standard pattern – it’s always two-pronged: military and economic … By 1983 Reagan invaded. Noam Chomsky, lecture 25th October 1993
The United States expelled or mostly exterminated the indigenous population, many millions of people, conquered half of Mexico, carried out degradations all over the region – Central America, sometimes beyond – conquered Hawaii and the Philippines killing several hundred thousand Filipinos … It was always killing someone else, fighting somewhere else. Noam Chomsky, lecture MIT October 2001, ‘The War on Terror’, Youtube 1.17.13
Terrorism works. It doesn’t fail, it works. Violence usually works … Primarily a weapon of the strong. ibid.
The United States had total control of their [Nicaraguan] airspace; they were overflying it, and using that to pass instructions to the terrorist army to enable them to attack soft targets … But the idea that Nicaragua should be permitted to defend its airspace against a superpower attack that is directing terrorist forces to attack under-defended civilian targets – that was considered in the United States outrageous and uniformly so. ibid.
The United States is the one country that exists as far as I know as ever has that was founded as an empire. Noam Chomsky, lecture Boston University, ‘American Imperialism’, Youtube 1.51.53
‘We shall drive them [the savages] with the beasts of the forests into the stony mountains, and the country will ultimately be free of blot or mixture.’ ibid. Jefferson
There’s no limit to how much you have to expand to guarantee liberty. ibid.
‘All Asia must be reduced to our economic system, the Pacific must be turned into an inland sea … and there is no reason why the United States should not become a greater siege of wealth and power than ever was England, Rome or Constantinople.’ ibid. Brooks Adams
Latin America we keep; the Middle East we control; South-East Asia: it’s function was to provide resources. ibid.
Their own resources and we have to protect them. ibid.
Even the small place if it becomes independent is a serious danger; it’s what Henry Kissinger called, ‘a virus that might infect others’. ibid.
You can take the rhetoric about the Vietnam war and translate it almost verbatim into the discussion of the Iraq war: there is no principled critique within the mainstream. ibid.
We own the world and everything we do is by definition good. ibid.
The world consists of people who follow America’s orders. ibid.
The United States was then engaged in throughout the world – one of the unpleasant little stories of post-war history which is not often told is that throughout the world from North Africa all the way around to South Korea the United States was engaged in exactly the same project namely destroying and eliminating the anti-fascist resistance and putting into power fascist and Nazi collaborators. Noam Chomsky, lecture 1985, ‘Lessons of Vietnam’
2001: The United States radically intervened in the election and warned Nicaragua that the Untied States would not accept the wrong outcome … all of this passes without comment. Noam Chomsky, lecture The History and Hypocrisy of the War on Terror, New York 2002
US Government propaganda tries to give the impression that aerial bombardment achieves near-surgical accuracy, so that military targets can be destroyed with minimal effect on civilians. Technical documents give a different picture. Noam Chomsky
We hate their freedom, and that’s a crucial part of policy and it continues. Noam Chomsky, KGNU Radio 25th January 2013, ‘Imperial Dangers Then and Now’
When the United States invades Iraq, kills a couple of hundred thousand people, generates millions of refugees, destroys the country, sets off a sectarian conflict that’s tearing Iraq and by now the whole region to shreds, and on the side increases terrorism worldwide by a factor of seven just in the first year – that’s stabilization, part of our mission that we must continue for the benefit of the world. Noam Chomsky, lecture The New School New York City, ‘On Power and Ideology’, Youtube 1.16.30
Within the Grand Area the United States would maintain unquestioned power with military and economic supremacy and it would ensure the limitation of any exercise of sovereignty by states that might interfere with its global designs. Noam Chomsky, lecture 7th June 2011, ‘The Evolving Global Order: Prospects and Opportunities’
At the end of the 23rd century America attempted to bring peace to the world by asking every nation on Earth to sign a peace treaty; any nation that refused, they invaded. Red Dwarf s12e1: Cured, BBC 2017
The United States was the hegemonic power in a system of world order. Samuel Huntington
Contrary to the lies that were told to the American people, Iraq had absolutely no connections to 9/11. Al Qaeda was despised by the regime in Iraq which was a secular regime not interested in religion as such. But they still wanted to go for it. And so they delayed it. They went into Afghanistan first. Now why did they decide to go for Iraq, that’s the interesting question. Tariq Ali, author The Clash of Fundamentalisms
The major reason to take Iraq was a display of imperial power. Tariq Ali
Before the operation, the city was [Fallujah] bombed to ‘encourage’ its evacuation, and shortly thereafter sealed off – any male of fighting age (ten years old and upwards by present occupation standards) was prevented from leaving. During that operation, white phosphorus was used against civilians since, as one US soldier explained, anything that walked or breathed was considered an enemy combatant. It is reasonable to suppose that some of the melted bodies discovered had suffered agonizing deaths as the material sizzled their flesh to the bone. Others may have been more lucky – if they inhaled the substance, it will have blistered their mouths, throats, and lungs, suffocating them to death before they had to suffer the pain of flesh melting away both inside and outside. It is indeed hard to overstate what was pitilessly inflicted on Fallujah: a hospital deliberately bombed; another occupied; more than half of the houses damaged or destroyed; 150,000 people obliged to flee to live in rough tents on the outskirts of the city as they were bombed and their water and electricity cut off; those returning to the devastated city were to be subjected to forced labour. While the US military only admitted to having killed 1,200 insurgents, initial civilian tolls were as high as 800. Lately, Iraqi NGOs and medical workers have estimated as many as 6,000 deaths, mostly civilians. Richard Seymour, article 26th November 2005, ‘The Genocidal Imagination of Christopher Hitchens’
It’s about Imperialism. It’s about abusing a nation’s natural resources. It’s about greed and power and it’s nothing about keeping America safe, or freedom and democracy for the Iraqi people. Cindy Sheehan, television interview
The problem the United States faces is that almost all of its invasions violate international law, and sometimes, as in the case of Iraq, in a blatant manner. So how do the political elite and the news media reconcile this contradiction? Simple: they ignore it. It is virtually unthinkable for a mainstream US reporter to even pursue this issue. John Nichols and Robert McChesney
It’s become the unlikely target and obsession of some of the world’s greatest empires and superpowers. Afghanistan: The Great Game – A Personal View by Rory Stewart I, BBC 2012
In 2001 an America-led Coalition invaded Afghanistan. ibid.
An un-winnable war. In the twenty-first century a US-led coalition attacked and is still mired there. In the nineteenth century it was the British Empire who invaded and suffered an agonising defeat. Afghanistan: The Great Game – A Personal View by Rory Stewart II, BBC 2012
A war costing $130 billion a year. ibid.
A plan to covertly supply weapons across the Pakistani border to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan – but only weapons that could not be traced back to the US. ibid.
It became the largest covert operation in US history. ibid.
The US soon faced the almost irresistible temptations of empire. ibid.
Afghanistan has been for so many men a place of heroism, self-sacrifice, yet in the end all this energy, all this courage, is in pursuit of something that is simply wrong. ibid.
What you see is American military hegemony covering 90% of the globe’s energy resources. Lt Col Karen Kwiatkowski