Alam interviews NC

In the aftermath of September 11, the Bush administration has pursued an aggressively militaristic foreign policy marked by religious rhetoric and ambitiously imperial declarations. Is the social and ideological base and agenda of this administration uniquely rooted in the Christian Right, neoconservatism, and the less scrupulous sections of the corporate elite, or is this simply a more crass reflection of a prevailing consensus among an American elite emboldened by the emergence of America as the world's sole hegemon?

Chomsky: We do not have internal documents, so what we say about the details of planning and its motivation is necessarily speculative. However, I am inclined to believe that the Christian Right influence is not very great. It is possible that Bush is telling the truth when he rants about his born-again experiences and how he is driving Evil from the world, but I suspect he is just playing the role for which he is being trained by his handlers, and that the religious fanaticism is mostly part of a plan to throw a little red meat to a substantial constituency. The US is one of the most extreme religious fundamentalist societies in the world. It is hard to believe that the actual planners - Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Powell, etc. - take any of this seriously. As for "neoconservatism," it is not clear what the term is supposed to mean. In practice it is the program of radical statist reactionaries, who believe that the US should rule the world, by force if necessary, in the interests of the narrow sectors of concentrated private power and wealth that they represent, and that the powerful state they forge should serve those interests, not the interests of the public, who are to be frightened into submission while the progressive legislation and achievements of popular struggle of the past century are dismantled, along with the democratic culture that sustained them.