Bin Laden: The Story That Needs To Be Told

[C. G. Estabrook]

It's at once sweeping and vague to pronounce that "...the rest of
[Chomsky's] narrative is unbalanced," especially after the quote you
provide shows that the principal charge against him -- minimizing
Cambodian deaths -- is untrue.  I suggest people consult his extensive
writing on benign and malign blood-baths in Southeast Asia, along with the
articles by Ear and Kazin (whose background you uncharacteristically omit)
-- particularly in this week when the accounts of mass death are once
again being manipulated for propaganda purposes.  --CGE

On Thu, 13 Sep 2001, michael pugliese wrote:


>     For a nuanced, comprehensive review (221 pages) of Chomsky on
> Cambodia, as well as other scholars that are more expert specifically
> on the Khmer Rouge and Cambodia, a reminder of the Senior Thesis of a
> Cambodian-American, Sophal Ear, here at
> http://www.csua.berkeley.edu/~sophal "The Khmer Rouge Canon,
> 1975-1979." Thesis advisors were Ben Kiernan, a leftist that has
> authored a book for Verso on Cambodia in the 80's and written for the
> academic left, Journal of Contemporary Asia. Also, David Chandler,
> situated more on the liberal left and Douglas Pike, who most assuredly
> is not on the Left! (Pike wrote a study for RAND or the Pentagon
> published by MIT Press, in the mid 60's on the NLF. The first book I
> ever read by Chomsky , "American Power and the New Mandarins, " from
> the late 60's had pgs. and pgs. taking apart Pike on the NLF/VC.Still
> just like another right-winger here, Stephen Morris in, "Why Vietnam
> Invaded Cambodia: Political Culture and the Causes of War, " Stanford
> University Press, " which is based on Vietnamese and Soviet archives,
> sometimes 'ya gotta use the research of the right and then rework it
> though a left lens.)
>    To get back to Chomsky, even though in the second volume of his
> work with Edward Herman that South End Press published in the late
> 70's, he said words to the effect that , "Even though in the end the
> estimates of Khmer Rouge atrocities may approach the higher number of
> Ponchaud and Lacouture..." the rest of his narrative is unbalanced,
> relying on Gareth Porter, Hildebrand and Malcolm Caldwell. (Caldwell,
> btw, died under suspicious circumstances in Phnom Penh in '75. Author
> of a few books for Monthly Review Press and one from Zed Press on
> delinking that was on one of my college reading lists, I think in the
> class I took with Rob McBride, who had been close to the Weather
> Underground in the early 70's[ he has a brief scene in the documentary
> about the anti-war movement at Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, "The War
> At Home." He brought to our class many speakers from Prarie Fire
> Organizing Committee approved national liberation movements like the
> FNLC of the Congo.)
>    Last cite, critical review of the two volume Chomsky-Herman book,
> by Michael Kazin in Socialist Review, special double issue on American
> Politics, circa 1980. Focuses on critiquing the propaganda model.
> Other good pieces in that issue, btw, by David Plotke and Fred Block,
> if memory serves. Michael Pugliese