Noam Chomsky: Distorted Morality

[first lines]

Noam Chomsky:
[voiceover] The idea of the reason why the world is so disorderly is 'cause, you know, now with the cold war gone, you've got all these ethnic groups killing each other and so on. Well, as usual, it's always a good idea to start by asking about the facts. Whenever you hear anything said very confidently, the first thing that should come to mind is whether or not that's true.

Noam Chomsky:
The US is a powerful state, it's not like Libya. If Libya wants to carry out terrorist acts they hire, you know, some jackals or something. The US hires terrorist *states*. We are big guys!

Noam Chomsky:
There is an operational definition of "terrorism", the one that's actually used. It means "terror that *they* carry out *against us*". That's terror, and nothing else passes through the filter.

Noam Chomsky:
State terror is far worse than individual terror; for the obvious reason that states have means of violence that individuals don't have, or groups.

Noam Chomsky:
It's commonly said that terrorism is a weapon of the weak. That's completely false, at least if you accept the official US definition of terror. If you do that then terrorism is overwhelmingly the weapon of the strong, like most other weapons.

[last lines]

Noam Chomsky:
If we are honest, there is a dilemma: One possibility is just to acknowledge that we are total hypocrites, and then to at least have the decency to stop talking about things like human rights and right'n'wrong and good-and-evil and so on, and just say "ya, we're hypocrites, we have force and are gonna roll over you by force. Period. Let's forget about everything else." The other option is harder to pursue, but it's imperative unless we would like to contribute to still worse disasters that are likely to lie ahead. Thanks.