Chomsky: Egypt uprising and the U.S. 'usual playbook'

Great interview. This point by Chomsky provides the best perspective on the current "debate" in the West whether any democracy which would allow the Muslim Brotherhood to come to power would be a good or a bad thing "for the region," meaning, for Isreal and the U.S.:

"Saudi Arabia—the king of Saudi Arabia has been, along with Israel, the strongest supporter, most outspoken supporter of Mubarak. And the Saudi Arabian case should remind us of something about the regular commentary on this issue. The standard line and commentary is that, of course, we love democracy, but for pragmatic reasons we must sometimes reluctantly oppose it, in this case because of the threat of radical Islamists, the Muslim Brotherhood. Well, you know, there's maybe some—whatever one thinks of that. Take a look at Saudi Arabia. That's the leading center of radical Islamist ideology. That's been the source of it for years. The United States has—it's also the support of Islamic terror, the source for Islamic terror or the ideology that supports it. That's the leading U.S. ally, and has been for a long, long time."

He goes on to say basically the same thing about Pakistan, another U.S. "ally" going back to Reagan, whose people hate us and make terror plots against us:

"The population [of Pakistan] is passionately anti-American, increasingly so, largely, as she [the U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan in leaked WikiLeaks cables] points out, as a result of U.S. actions in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, the pressure on the Pakistani military to invade the tribal zones, the drone attacks and so on. And she goes on to say that this may even lead to the—what is in fact the ultimate nightmare, that Pakistan's enormous nuclear facilities, which incidentally are being increased faster than anywhere else in the world, that these—there might be leakage of fissile materials into the hands of the radical Islamists, who are growing in strength and gaining popular support as a result of—in part, as a result of actions that we're taking.

"Well, this goes back to—this didn't happen overnight. The major factor behind this is the rule of the dictator Zia-ul-Haq back in the 1980s. He was the one who carried out radical Islamization of Pakistan, with Saudi funding. He set up these extremist madrassas. The young lawyers who were in the streets recently shouting their support for the assassin of the political figure who opposed the blasphemy laws, they're a product of those madrassas. Who supported him? Ronald Reagan. He was Reagan's favorite dictator in the region. Well, you know, events have consequences. You support radical Islamization, and there are consequences. But the talk about concern about the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, whatever its reality, is a little bit ironic, when you observe that the U.S. and, I should say, Britain, as well, have traditionally supported radical Islam, in part, sometimes as a barrier to secular nationalism."


Chomsky: Why the Mideast Turmoil Is a Direct Threat to the American Empire
An interview with Noam Chomsky about what this means for the future of the Middle East and U.S. foreign policy in the region.
By Amy Goodman
February 3, 2011 Democracy Now

URL: http://www.alternet.org/story/149786/chomsky:_why_the_mideast_turmoil_is_a_direct_threat_to_the_american_empire?page=1