Noam Chomsky in an interview condemned the Russian attack on Ukraine. He said it is not only morally wrong, but a violation of international law.
He also said that Russia has not done anything that the USA has not done. The invasion of Iraq was no less wrong than the invasion of Ukraine. The bombing of Fallujah caused at least as much death and suffering as the bombing of Mariupol’.
Neither the Russia nor the USA accepts the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. In 1984, the court condemned the United States for mining the harbors of Nicaragua as part of its covert war against that country, the U.S. government shrugged off that decision.
In 2002, the U.S. Congress passed a law authorizing the U.S. government to take military again to prevent any American or allied citizen from being tried as a war criminal. President Biden has no standing to call for President Putin to be tried for violating international law the USA does not respect.
I believe that many consider it out of bounds for me, or for Prof. Chomsky, to weigh the crimes of the U.S. government in the same balance as the crimes of other governments. This is “moral equivalence” or “whataboutism.” Instead you’re supposed to be silent about U.S. crimes unless you have first researched and condemned every other wrong that may have been worse.
It can be argued that a murderer who kills one person is less of a murderer who kills ten people, but the first is a murderer just the same. And the fact that one murderer gets away with their crime does not generate an entitlement to commit murder.
None of this is a justification for the invasion of Ukraine. The ordinary people of Ukraine did not invade Iraq and Afghanistan. They are not responsible for the persecution of Julian Assange. They do not deserve to be killed, maimed and terrorized because of what the U.S. government has done.
The U.S. government has an obligation to provide the Ukrainians with the means to defend themselves, Chomsky said. But he said it also has a duty to try to bring both sides to the negotiating table before Ukraine is completely ruined. He’s right.
LINKS
Noam Chomsky, Jeremy Scahill on the Russia-Ukraine War, an interview for The Intercept.
Noam Chomsky on How To Prevent World War III, an interview for Current Affairs. [Added 04/20/2022]