"[Q: isn't there a certain calculus that someone who is sitting in the shoes of a Condoleezza Rice can make, that they're responsible for the best outcome for American citizens, and there's an upside of going into Iraq which is we get one of the greatest material possessions in world's history, and there're downsides which are: we upset the international community, and maybe there's more terrorism. Couldn't you envision a calculus where they say, sure, that's the reason, and it's a good reason, let's do it. What's the flaw in the calculus?] Oh, I think that's exactly their calculus. But then we ought to just be honest and say, "Look, we're a bunch of Nazis." So fine, let's just drop all the discussion, we save a lot of trees, we can throw out the newspapers and most of the scholarly literature, and just come out, state it straight, and tell the truth: we'll do whatever we want because we think we're going to gain by it. And incidentally, it's not American citizens who'll gain. They don't gain by this. It's narrow sectors of domestic power that the administration is serving with quite unusual dedication..."
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Academics from the United StatesHistorians from the United StatesJews from the United StatesLinguists from the United StatesSocial anarchists
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Talk titled "Why Iraq?" at Harvard University, November 4, 2002 .
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky
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Noam Chomsky
philosopher, linguist, political writer
1928 · United States
US-amerikanischer Sprachwissenschaftler und Autor
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