Noam Chomsky, on Iran’s Press TV last week, talks about Iraq and the role of foreign forces in the country:
It is interesting, the way everything is blamed on Iran. And that’s a rather striking reflection of how deep-seated the imperial mentality is in the West, so for example when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is asked by the press: is there a solution to the problem in Iraq, and she says yes a simple solution – foreign forces should be withdrawn and foreign arms should be withdrawn, referring of course to Iran – people don’t laugh and collapse in ridicule.
I mean, of course, there are foreign forces and foreign arms in Iraq, but not Iranian. They are American, but those are not considered foreign forces.
In the Western conception, U.S. and, indeed, much of the West, if our forces are anywhere, they are indigenous. They are not foreign because fundamentally there is a tacit assumption that we own the world, so our forces are not foreign – they are indigenous.
We talk about Iranian interference: it’s like talking about Allied interference in Nazi occupied Vichy France; it doesn’t make any sense, but the mentality accepts it.