attack on NC in American Prospect

[Mark Pavlick]

>
>http://www.prospect.org/webfeatures/2001/10/isaac-j-10-16.html
>
>
>October Web Features
>
>Thus Spake Noam
>
>10.16.01
>
>by Jeffrey C. Isaac
>
>
>
>The huge slaughter. . . in East Timor is (at least) comparable to 
>the terrible atrocities that can plausibly be attributed to 
>Milosevic in the earlier wars in Yugoslavia, and responsibility is 
>far easier to assign, with no complicating factors. If proponents of 
>the "repetition of Bosnia" thesis intend it seriously, they should 
>certainly have been calling for the bombing of Jakarta -- indeed 
>Washington and London -- in early 1999 so as not to allow in East 
>Timor a repetition of the crimes that Indonesia, the U.S., and the 
>UK, had perpetrated there for a quarter-century. And when the new 
>generation of leaders [an allusion to Clinton and Blair-J.I.] 
>refused to pursue this honorable course, they should have been 
>leading honest citizens to do so themselves, perhaps joining the Bin 
>Laden network. These conclusions follow straightforwardly, if we 
>assume that the thesis is intended as something more than 
>apologetics for state violence.
>
>These words appear on page 39 of Noam Chomsky's recent A New 
>Generation Draws the Line: Kosovo, East Timor and the Standards of 
>the West. In light of the terroristic mass murder of September 11, 
>and of the attention Chomsky's comments on that horror have 
>received, it is worth reflecting on these chillingly prescient words.
>
>First, in the name of an intellectual honesty that is remote from 
>Chomsky's own literary tactics, it must be noted that Chomsky does 
>not really support the conclusions drawn in the paragraph above -- 
>that Jakarta ought to be bombed along with Washington and London, 
>and that if the relevant governments forswear this task, then 
>citizens ought to be encouraged to do the bombing themselves, 
>"perhaps by joining the Bin Laden network." What he says is that 
>these conclusions follow straightforwardly if we assume that the 
>rationale for intervention in Kosovo was "something more than 
>apologetics for state violence." The burden of Chomsky's book -- 
>like The New Military Humanism and other essays -- is that the 
>Kosovo rationale is nothing more than apologetics for state 
>violence. So Chomsky, ever the logician, saves himself from the 
>provocative conclusions he offers, which are, in his text, only 
>frightening possibilities.
>
>But as we know now, the conclusions are no longer logical 
>possibilities. The conclusions have been drawn, and acted upon. And 
>the results of the syllogism are plain to see for anyone who has 
>seen photographs of the rubble to which Lower Manhattan and the 
>Pentagon have been reduced.
>
>The moral and criminal responsibility for this bit of practical 
>reasoning can be laid only at the feet of the perpetrators and the 
>network that supported and promoted their terror. But questions must 
>also be raised about the intellectual responsibility of the author 
>of a well-known essay on "The Responsibility of the Intellectuals" 
>-- Chomsky himself. These questions do not regard the actual 
>influence of his words on the atrocities that have taken place, but 
>rather the view of intellectual responsibility that could even 
>entertain words like those quoted above.
>
>Two things are notable about these words. The first is the symmetry 
>that Chomsky draws between the U.S.-led, NATO intervention in the 
>former Yugoslavia, and the possible bombing of Jakarta, Washington, 
>or London by states or by "honest citizens" acting as terrorists. 
>Chomsky makes no policy-relevant distinctions between the 
>circumstances surrounding the Indonesian government's brutal 
>repression of East Timor and those attending Milosevic's brutal 
>policy of "ethnic cleansing." More to the point, he sees no 
>difference between the brutal policies of these regimes, and the 
>policies of the United States and Great Britain. All are terroristic 
>policies pure and simple, and all deserve, in a manner of speaking, 
>a terroristic response. Those who live by the sword will die by the 
>sword. Simple.
>
>The second is the equanimity with which Chomsky draws his 
>provocative quasi-conclusion that Washington and London deserve the 
>terrorism of Bin Laden, and indeed, deserve for their very own 
>citizens to partake of this terrorism. Again Chomsky does not 
>endorse such terrorism. But, ever the analyst, he indicates that, 
>from his ever-so-acute analytical vantage point, there is a certain 
>justice to it. For the Clinton administration, in his view, is no 
>different than Bin Laden, and if its violence against Milosevic is 
>justified, then so, too, is the violence of Bin Laden's minions. If 
>citizens of the United States and Great Britain don't like these 
>conclusions, then that, Chomsky seems to be saying, is their 
>problem, not his.
>
>One wonders if Chomsky ever considered the possibility that someone 
>lacking in his own logical rigor might read his book and carelessly 
>draw the conclusion that the bombing of Washington is required. Or 
>that someone possessed of the requisite logic might believe the 
>rationale for the Kosovo intervention was something more than 
>"apologetics for state atrocities" -- perhaps even an effort on the 
>part of "Western" democracies to promote human rights and to limit 
>the power of despots to ravage their subjects in the name of blood, 
>soil, or Holy War -- and wished to kill not in the name of Chomsky's 
>effete logic, but in the name of something more powerful -- 
>ideological, anti-Western fanaticism? One wonders.
>
>What we do know is that in the wake of the September 11 terror 
>Chomsky has continued to insist on the equivalence of this terror 
>and U.S. policy, and to insist that the only thing new and 
>remarkable about this terror is that for the first time it was 
>enacted in Washington and New York. Here too, Chomsky is careful not 
>to condone or endorse the terror. And here, too, there is no reason 
>to doubt his sincerity. What he sincerely desires is an end to 
>American "imperialism." Ever the moralist, Chomsky fails here, as 
>elsewhere, to say anything about how this result might be brought 
>about in a reasonable way. This is not his conception of 
>intellectual responsibility. His conception of the responsibility of 
>the intellectual is to "speak truth to power," i.e., to relentlessly 
>denounce American imperialism and allow others to draw their own 
>conclusions.
>
>For years Chomsky has endlessly recycled the same litany of charges 
>against American foreign policy, refusing in the name of consistency 
>to admit any distinctions beyond the distinction between the evil 
>that is the United States and that which in his mind stands as the 
>antithesis of this evil. Ever the critic, Chomsky rarely if ever has 
>said what, in his mind, the antithesis to this American imperialism 
>is, leaving his critics to charge him with moral tone deafness and 
>with sheer political emptiness. Those who have charged Chomsky with 
>offering apologetics for Pol Pot or Khomeini or Hussein or Hamas or 
>Milosevic were only partly right. By implication he did offer such 
>apologies, through his questioning of all criticism of these 
>murderers, and through his likening of their murderous regimes to 
>the policies of the U.S. But this was always indirect. Chomsky has 
>never really said what he actually, really supports. About this he 
>has allowed his readers to wonder.
>
>Reading the comments above in the light of September 11 suggests 
>that perhaps we need no longer wonder. For these comments present an 
>answer. And that is, that there is no answer. The true dialectic, 
>for Chomsky, is not between the evils of American imperialism and 
>some good that might (in his mind) stand against it. The true 
>dialectic is between "American imperialism" and the terrorists and 
>tyrants who hate it. Chomsky does not need to descend from the 
>clouds and take sides in this struggle. He can simply observe that 
>"the chickens have come home to roost," and say "I told you so" 
>while the body count rises. It is for the rest of us, or at least 
>those who care, to worry about the plight of the Kosovars, or the 
>realistic policies that might actually bring peace to the Middle 
>East, or how to respond to a terrorism that rightly shocks, angers, 
>and frightens us, and rightly calls forth a decisive response.
>
>There is a word for Chomsky's stance, and it is not courageous 
>dissent or intellectual responsibility. It is cynicism.
>
>
>Jeffrey C. Isaac
>
>Copyright © 2001 by The American Prospect, Inc. Preferred Citation: 
>Jeffrey C. Isaac, "Thus Spake Noam ," The American Prospect Online, 
>October 16, 2001. This article may not be resold, reprinted, or 
>redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior written 
>permission from the author. Direct questions about permissions to 
>permissions at prospect.org.
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