The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy

: "Noam Chomsky on Failed States

Professor Chomsky thinks that the United States is beginning to resemble a failed state that cannot protect its citizens from violence and has a government that regards itself as beyond the reach of domestic or international law.
Professor Noam Chomsky presents a series of solutions to help rescue the nation from turning into a failed state.
Transmission date: 03/31/06 Democracy Now!
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AMY GOODMAN: In this first broadcast interview upon publication of his book, Professor Noam Chomsky joins us today from Boston for the hour. We welcome you to Democracy Now!, Noam.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Glad to be with you again.
AMY GOODMAN: It's good to have you with us. Failed States, what do you mean?
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, over the years there have been a series of concepts developed to justify the use of force in international affairs for a long period. It was possible to justify it on the pretext, which usually turned out to have very little substance, that the U.S. was defending itself against the communist menace. By the 1980s, that was wearing pretty thin. The Reagan administration concocted a new category: terrorist states. They declared a war on terror as soon as they entered office in the early 1980s, 1981. ‘We have to defend ourselves from the plague of the modern age, return to barbarism, the evil scourge of terrorism,’ and so on, and particularly state-directed international terrorism.
A few years later -- this is Clinton -- Clinton devised the concept of rogue states. ‘It�"