Posted by Tony from dsc04-lai-ca-3-12.rasserver.net (199.182.38.12) on Wednesday, November 27, 2002 at 2:01AM :
Dear friends,
One cannot accuse the Bush administration of any lack of clarity about its
"vision" for global
affairs.
This administration understands very well that in terms of military force the
United States stands
alone, beyond any conceivable challenge. And this administration has made it
crystal clear that
it intends to use this power to organize the world to satisfy the demands of the
narrow sector of
domestic power and privilege that it represents. In service of the same
interests, Bush and
company are quite openly conducting an assault against the domestic population.
They are
seeking to impose obedience by undermining civil liberties and fostering a
distorted brand of
patriotism that aims at suppressing democratic debate.
The Bush administration is also breaking new ground in the brazenness of its
contempt for
international law and treaty obligations. The language and processes of
multilateralism,
international rule of law, treaties, and international cooperation have been
thrown into the trash
heap of history: the Kyoto protocol, International Criminal Court, arms control
treaties, human
rights conditionality on U.S. military aid--indeed any impediment to
unconstrained U.S. force
and coercion. Emboldened by their historically unprecedented and rapidly
escalating military
hegemony, leading Bush planners make no secret of their intention to validate
the four-word
definition that George Bush Sr. gave to his new world order--"What we say goes."
There is only one deterrent to this mad and destructive course--the people of
the United
States.
There can be no more urgent task than to speak truth about power--the
destructive power
unleashed in the name of all the people of the United States. Speaking truth
about power
entails good research and analysis by U.S. progressives, and it means listening
to those
impacted by U.S. power abroad. Truth about power facilitates the essential
organizing and
advocacy needed to ensure that the immense resources of the U.S. can help create
a more
decent, livable world.
Since 1979 the Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC, on the internet at
www.irc-online.org)
has been doing just this. Now more than ever, the IRC needs your support to
continue this
important work, because never before has U.S. power been so widely projected and
unconstrained.
With long experience in U.S.-Latin American relations, the IRC has in the past
year launched
its new Americas Program (www.americaspolicy.org). This program is not only
critiquing how
the U.S. is wielding its weight in the region--meddling in domestic politics in
Bolivia and
Venezuela, supporting state-sponsored terror in Colombia, funding migrant
detention centers in
Guatemala, and pushing its now discredited neoliberal trade agenda--but is also
looking at how
citizens are fighting back and establishing alternatives.
Six years ago the IRC had a vision of creating "a citizen-based think tank
without walls."
Today that vision has been realized in the internationally renowned Foreign
Policy In Focus
project (www.fpif.org). Over the years, FPIF has demonstrated an admirable
capacity to
respond to global affairs crises with expert analysis based on sound progressive
principles.
Also, in the past year I applauded the IRC's launch of an "Outside the U.S."
component of
FPIF, which insures that perspectives from countries impacted by U.S. policies
become part of
the public debate.
A new IRC initiative, the Project on the Present Danger (www.presentdanger.org),
is a
campaign to build support for international cooperation and law as the proper
framework for
managing global affairs. We define the "present danger" as U.S. unilateralism
and U.S.
attacks on multilateral frameworks for peace and security. Over the past six
months, the IRC
has also covered new investigative and analytical ground in its focus on the
right-wing front
groups and ideologues that are shaping Bush's supremacist foreign policy.
As a member of the IRC's board of directors--and a long-time fan of its work--I
urge you to make
a donation in support of the IRC.
More than ever before, we need groups like the IRC speaking out, asking hard
questions,
tabling alternatives, and telling it like it is.
Sincerely,
Noam Chomsky
-- Tony
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