In an interview with the Iranian-state run English language news network PressTV, activist and MIT linguistics professor Noam Chomsky compared former Secretary of State Colin Powell to Nazi war criminal Joachim von Ribbentrop.
“Yes, [starting a war of aggression] was a major factor in the hanging of Nazi war criminals,” Chomsky says in a clip of the interview, which was provided to The Daily Caller by the Middle East Media Research Institute.
“In fact, if you look closely, it seems more pertinent to the present. So von Ribbentrop, the Foreign Minister – one of the charges against him was that he supported a preemptive war against Norway. The Nazis knew that the British were thinking of invading from Norway, so they preempted it and established a quisling government there. That was one of the crimes against von Ribbentrop.”
“How about Colin Powell?” he then asks rhetorically. “He justified a preemptive war against no threat. So if von Ribbentrop was hanged…You know…Okay, fill it out.”
Later in the interview, Chomsky interprets an article by Slate’s Matthew Yglesias’ as an argument for comparing the U.S. to Nazi Germany.
“There was one interesting response [to the targeted killing of Osama bin Laden] from a well-known, left-liberal, young political analyst, Matthew Yglesias, who said this was extremely naïve, because the whole purpose of international law is to legitimize the use of force by the Western Powers – meaning the United States,” Chomsky said.
“Well, he is not wrong. It’s nice to have somebody say the words,” he continued. “But what he is saying is: ‘Look, forget all the rhetoric. This is pure farce. We are just like the Nazis. We do what we like.'”