THE DEVIL'S ACCOUNTANT.(Noam Chomsky criticizes foreign policy)

On Thursday evenings at M.I.T., Noam Chomsky, one of the greatest minds of the twentieth century and one of the most reviled, teaches a class about politics. There are nearly two hundred students and not enough chairs, so latecomers sit or lie down on the floor, which gives the class the air of a teach-in. On a recent evening, the students came to hear Chomsky speak about Iraq. He sat with his arms folded, a little hunched over on his stool, and began to talk into a microphone. He was wearing what he usually wears: shirt, sweater, jeans, sneakers. His hair curled toward the middle of his neck and looked as though he didn't pay it much attention. He spoke in a quiet monotone.

"When I look at the arguments for this war, I don't see anything I could even laugh at,"he said. "You don't undertake violence on the grounds that maybe by some miracle something good will come out of it. Yes, sometimes violence does lead to good things. The Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor led to many very good things. If you follow the trail, it led to kicking Europeans out of Asia--that saved tens of millions of lives in India alone. Do we celebrate that every year?”

Chomsky told the students that the current Administration was essentially the same as the first Bush Administration and the Reagan Administration, and therefore could not be trusted to replace a tyrant. "The first foreign leader invited to the White House by George Bush No. 1 was Mobutu, who was one of the worst gangsters in modern African history,"Chomsky said. "Another one they loved was General Suharto. His record easily compares with Saddam Hussein's. Another one they adored was Marcos of the Philippines. In every single one of these cases, the people now in Washington supported them right through their worst atrocities. Are these the people you would ask to bring freedom to Iraqis?"

A student wearing a red V-neck sweater raised his hand to ask a question. "I just was wondering whether this is really a strong argument if you are talking about the motives of the government,"he began, in a european accent.

"I'm talking about expectations,"Chomsky interrupted.

"If Saddam is a monster,"the student went on, "what does it matter, actually, who is going to get rid of him? If you look at the Second World War, the alliance with Stalin was also not a very nice thing, but it was absolutely necessary.”

"Well, let's pick a worse monster than Saddam Hussein,"Chomsky said. "Suppose we could get Saddam Hussein to conquer North Korea. Would you be in favor of it?"