Noam Chomsky Quotes About War

• Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating in it.

  Noam Chomsky

  War, Stopping, Way

  "Power and Terror: Noam Chomsky in Our Times". Documentary, www.imdb.com. 2002.

• Wanton killing of innocent civilians is terrorism, not a war against terrorism.

  Noam Chomsky

  War, Terrorism, Killing

  "9-11". Book by Noam Chomsky, 2001.

• If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged.

  Noam Chomsky

  War, Law, President

  "Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media". Documentary, Biography, War, www.imdb.com. 1992.

• You never need an argument against the use of violence, you need an argument for it.

  Noam Chomsky

  Peace, War, Needs

  "Viewpoint: War would be insane" by Noam Chomsky, news.bbc.co.uk. February 12, 2003.

• If something is right (or wrong) for us, it’s right (or wrong) for others. It follows that if it’s wrong for Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, and a long list of others to bomb Washington and New York, then it’s wrong for Rumsfeld to bomb Afghanistan (on much flimsier pretexts), and he should be brought before war crimes trials.

  Noam Chomsky

  New York, War, Long

  "On Terrorism". Interview with John Bolender, chomsky.info. January, 2004.

• The point of public relations slogans like "Support Our Troops" is that they don't mean anything ... that's the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody is going to be against and I suppose everybody will be for, because nobody knows what it means, because it doesn't mean anything. But its crucial value is that it diverts your attention from a question that does mean something, do you support our policy? And that's the one you're not allowed to talk about.

  Noam Chomsky

  War, Mean, Media

  WBAI Radio Interview, January 1992.

• The first modern propaganda agency was the British Ministry of Information a century ago, which secretly defined its task as "to direct the thought of most of the world" - primarily progressive American intellectuals, who had to be mobilized to come to the aid of Britain during World War I.

  Noam Chomsky

  War, Agency, Tasks

  "How the Magna Carta became a Minor Carta, part 1" by Noam Chomsky, www.theguardian.com. July 24, 2012.

• Israel uses sophisticated attack jets and naval vessels to bomb densely-crowded refugee camps, schools, apartment blocks, mosques, and slums to attack a population that has no air force, no air defense, no navy, no heavy weapons, no artillery units, no mechanized armor, no command in control, no army and calls it a war.

  Noam Chomsky

  War, Block, Islamic

• To some degree it matters who's in office, but it matters more how much pressure they're under from the public.

  Noam Chomsky

  Peace, War, Office

• It is not a war. It is murder.

  Noam Chomsky

  War, Murder

• We don't use the term 'working class' here because it's a taboo term. You're supposed to say 'middle class,' because it helps diminish the understanding that there's a class war going on.

  Noam Chomsky

  War, Class, Understanding

• One of the questions asked in that study was, How many Vietnamese casualties would you estimate that there were during the Vietnam war? The average response on the part of Americans today is about 100,000. The official figure is about two million. The actual figure is probably three to four million. The people who conducted the study raised an appropriate question: What would we think about German political culture if, when you asked people today how many Jews died in the Holocaust, they estimated about 300,000? What would that tell us about German political culture?

  Noam Chomsky

  War, Thinking, Average

  "Media Control". Book by Noam Chomsky, 1991.

• There are many terrorist states in the world, but the United States is unusual in that it is officially committed to international terrorism.

  Noam Chomsky

  Peace, War, United States

  Noam Chomsky (2002). “Pirates and Emperors, Old and New: International Terrorism in the Real World”, p.122, South End Press

• The costs of the Bush-Obama wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are now estimated to run as high as $4.4 trillion - a major victory for Osama bin Laden, whose announced goal was to bankrupt America by drawing it into a trap. The 2011 military budget - almost matching that of the rest of the world combined - is higher in real terms than at any time since World War II and is slated to go even higher .

  Noam Chomsky

  Running, Military, Real

  Noam Chomsky (2016). “Who Rules the World?”, p.62, Metropolitan Books

• Hillary Clinton was the one pressing the hardest for bombing, and look at what happened. They not only destroyed the country, but Libya has become the center for jihad all over Africa and the Middle East. It's a total disaster in every respect, but it does not matter. Look at the so-called global war on terror.

  Noam Chomsky

  Country, War, Looks

  "Noam Chomsky: 'I have never seen such lunatics in the political system'". Interview with Simone Chun, www.salon.com. March 13, 2016.

• The war against working people should be understood to be a real war…. Specifically in the U.S., which happens to have a highly class-conscious business class…. And they have long seen themselves as fighting a bitter class war, except they don’t want anybody else to know about it.

  Noam Chomsky

  Real, War, Fighting

  Noam Chomsky (2004). “At War with Asia”, p.246, AK Press

• Our current prison state has the dual effect of getting rid of a superfluous population of basically unskilled workers (with a close race-class correlation), and also demonizing them... The drug war is basically for this - It has nothing to do with drugs, but it has plenty to do with criminalizing an unwanted population and scaring everybody else.

  Noam Chomsky

  War, Race, Class

• It is now well-known that the Taliban's creation was facilitated by the CIA and the ISI as part of the 1980s anti-Soviet war.

  Noam Chomsky

  War, Well Known, Creation

  Source: www.dawn.com

• There are two problems for our species' survival - nuclear war and environmental catastrophe - and we're hurtling towards them. Knowingly.

  Noam Chomsky

  War, Two, Survival

  "The NS Interview: Noam Chomsky". Interview with Alyssa Mcdonald, www.newstatesman.com. September 13, 2010.

• What's the purpose of NATO? Well actually we have an official answer. It isn't publicized much, but a couple of years ago, the secretary-general of NATO made a formal statement explaining the purpose of NATO in the post-Cold War world is to control global energy systems, pipelines, and sea lanes. That means it's a global system and of course he didn't say it, it's an intervention force under US command, as we've seen in case after case. So that's NATO.

  Noam Chomsky

  Couple, War, Mean

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• ...a very terrifying aspect of our society, and other societies, is the equanimity and the detachment with which sane, reasonable, sensible people can observe [war and human suffering]. I think that's more terrifying than the occasional Hitler ...or other that crop up - these people would not able to operate were it not for this apathy and equanimity - and therefore I think that it is in some sense the sane and reasonable and tolerant people who should share a very serious burden of guilt, that they very easily throw on the shoulders of others who seem more extreme and more violent.

  Noam Chomsky

  War, Thinking, People

• Now take a look at the way the Drug War is conducted over the past 40 years. It goes back farther, but start from 40 years ago: There's very little spent on prevention and treatment. There's a lot on policing, a ton of stuff on border control and a lot on out-of-country operations. And the effect on the availability of drugs is almost undetectable; drug prices don't change on measures of availability. So there are two possibilities: Either those conducting the Drug War are lunatics, or they have another purpose.

  Noam Chomsky

  Country, War, Past

  "Noam Sayin’?". Interview with T.A. Sedlak, chomsky.info. July 29, 2011.

• One of the dangers [that Donald Trump poses, due to the augmented risk of nuclear war] is unquestionable. Of the two existential threats - the threats to the termination of the species basically and most other species - one of them, climate change, on that I think there's no basis for discussion.

  Noam Chomsky

  War, Thinking, Two

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• It was right after Woodrow Wilson's first serious post-World War I repression, which deported thousands of people, effectively destroyed unions and independent press, and so on. Right after that, the anti-immigration law was passed that remained in place until the 1960s.

  Noam Chomsky

  War, Independent, Law

  Source: thehumanist.com

• The invasion of Iraq was simply a war crime. Straight-out war crime.

  Noam Chomsky

  War, Iraq, Invasion

  "On the Election". "Real Time" with Bill Maher, chomsky.info. November 10, 2004.

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