Noam Chomsky: Hezbollah's insistence on keeping its arms is justified

Hassan Nasrallah (left) talks to Noam Chomsky of MIT

http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/273

http://www.almanar.com.lb/story.aspx?Language=en&DSNO=649568

Moam Chomsky at Hezbollah Headquarters

No doubt that the meeting was striking. Noam Chomsky the US intellectual disregards US warnings of its nationals not to go to Lebanon, and goes to southern suburbs of Beirut the stronghold of Hezbollah, which is on the US terrorist list and meets its Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah. Chomsky, a wild critic of US foreign policy, said Hezbollah's insistence on keeping its arms is justified.

CHOMSKY clearly stated "I think Nasrallah has a reasoned argument and persuasive argument that they should be in the hands of Hezbollah (the arms) as a deterrent to potential aggression, and there is plenty of background reasons for that. So until, I think his position reporting it correctly and it seems to me reasonable position, is that until there is a general political settlement in the region, the threat of aggression and violence is reduced or eliminated there has to be a deterrent, and the Lebanese army can't be a deterrent."

When asked about the US list of terrorist states, he said if the US was to stick to the clear and precise definition of terrorism in its code of laws, it would be the leading terrorist state.

Chomsky said "... I've been writing about terrorism for the last 25 years, always using the official US definition, but that definition is unusable, and the reason is when you use that definition it turns out not surprisingly that the US is one of the leading terrorist states. And other states become terrorist or none terrorist depending on how they are relating to US goals."

He added "So for example Iraq was a terrorist state up until 1982. In 1982 it was removed from the list of terrorist states and the reason was that the Reagan administration wanted to provide Saddam Hussein with aid: means all equipments of mass destruction, weapons, and so on and therefore it was removed from the list of terrorist states. It was no longer a terrorist state. And the same goes for Syria. Syria has been on the terrorist list for a long time. But in 1994, I think it was that Clinton offered to remove Syria from the list of terrorist states if it agreed to US-Israeli proposals for the settlement of Golan Heights issue. Well Syria wanted to get its territory back so it stayed on the list of terrorist states."

Chomsky said he got what he expected from this meeting: a reasoned and intelligent analysis of the Lebanese situation and the international situation. He said he learned a lot of things that he wouldn't have known. Chomsky also visited Shatila camp of Palestinian refugees, the scene of the Israeli-led massacre in 1982.