Chomsky Identifies "the Evil" That Haunts The World

[Leon]

I never took much notice of the fact that Chomsky is a "proffessional Linguist" until now ( please take note of the quotation marks). It certainly explains a lot, because one thing he's not is a credible historian or political scientist...nevertheless (thanks to his occupation) he certainly has a way with words.

This "proffessional linguist," who is in love with Stalin, would make an excellent writer for 'Pravda'.

Please read the following article -


CHOMSKY IDENTIFIES "THE EVIL" THAT HAUNTS THE WORLD
by Amir Taheri
ASHARQ AL-AWSAT
13 March 2004


THIS ARTICLE APPEARED IN ASHARQ AL-AWSAT ON MARCH 13, 2004

At the conclusion of his latest book, Noam Chomsky, quotes these lines from
Bertrand Russell:

"After ages during which the earth produced harmless trilobites and butterflies,
evolution progressed to the point at which it has generated Neros, Genghis
Khans, and Hitlers. This, however, I believe, is a passing nightmare; in time
the earth will become again incapable of supporting life, and peace will
return."

This is a fitting conclusion for a work that starts with another quotation- this
time from the biologist Ernst Mayr.

Chomsky summarises Mayr's view like this:

"The human form of intellectual organisation may not be favoured by selection.
The history of life on Earth refutes the claim that it is better to be smart
than stupid, at least judging by biological success: beetles and bacteria, for
example, are vastly more successful than humans in terms of survival."

Russell and Mayr, though trained scientists, belonged to what one might call the
"romantic-tragic" tradition of political thought.

Chomsky, an eminent linguistics professor, belongs to the same tradition.

If his latest book, "Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global
Dominance", has any message is this: the United States today is the most
concrete example of what humans could achieve in terms of economic and military
power. And, yet, such is the flawed character of mankind, that all that power is
monopolised by a small stratum of society that uses it to impose "total
dominance" on the globe. And American "dominance", for reasons that Chomsky does
not explain, threatens the survival of mankind.

Before we examine Chomsky's thesis, let us briefly analyse the two pillars of
his system, i.e. the citations from Russell and Mayr.

The problem with Russell is twofold.

First, he compares trilobites and butterflies, which are species, with Neros,
Genghis Khans and Hitlers that are individual types within the human species. He
might have as well mentioned Homer, Hafez or Shakespeare, or Buddha, Mansur
Hallaj, or Master Eckhardt. Or Marilyn Monroe, for that matter.

The second problem with Russell's view, and the foundation of his pessimistic
vision, is that he regards peace as a passive state of non- being rather than an
active process of becoming. He dismisses the entire human experience as a
"nightmare" that will be over when the earth, unable to sustain human life, will
condemn our species to extinction.

Mayr's vision also suffers from two flaws.

The first is that he believes that smartness, i.e. intelligence, and stupidity
are uniform abstractions common to all species. He does not understand that what
is intelligent for beetles, for example, may not be intelligent for buffalos or
humans. The beetles have not survived because they are stupid in human terms.
They have survived because they are intelligent as beetles.

Thus the recipe for human survival is not, as Mayr suggests, to become stupid,
so as to win the favours of selection and ensure survival, but to expand the
boundaries of human intelligence.

[Leon]

The approach of both Russell, a self proclaimed atheist, and Mayr is essentially
religious, and more specifically Christian. They both burden the human species
with the "original sin" of either cruelty or intelligence.

After all, Adam, according to the Christian narrative, was expelled from
paradise because he and his wife, Eve, tasted fruit of the tree of knowledge.

Chomsky's method is also religious, more precisely theological, inasmuch as he
tries to find a single all-encompassing cause for all the real or imagined
failings of mankind that could one day lead to the destruction of the human
species, indeed of the earth itself. Monism, theory of a single cause for
everything, is the typical resort of religious minds: whatever happens is
because God wanted it.

Chomsky's position as a self-styled Jeremiah is underlined in his book's blurb:
"From the world's foremost intellectual activist, an irrefutable analysis (sic)
of America's pursuit of total domination and the catastrophic consequences that
are sure to follow."

To be sure, Chomsky's monism is not theistic. Nor does he adopt the monisms of
Russell and Mayr, i.e. the wanton cruelty and/or diabolical intelligence of the
human species.

Like Russell and Mayr, Chomsky is not concerned with the positive achievements
of humanity. His focus is what he believes to be man's evil deeds. Even then he
is not concerned with the broader sweep of human history but limits himself to
the past two centuries, with special emphasis on the past five or six decades.
In that time-span, Chomsky believes that almost all the evil done in the world,
and to humanity, was, directly or indirectly, caused by the United States. Even
when others did evil, in Indonesia, Morocco, Turkey, or Iraq, to cite a few
recent examples, they were "ordered" or at least aided, by the United States.

The US, he tells us, began its existence by massacring the peaceful natives of
North America. George Washington and other American founding fathers were
"terrorists" engaged in acts of genocide against the Indians. (p.101)

The US then expanded southwards and westwards through a series of aggressions
against Mexico, the Spanish and French Empires in Central America, and Canada.
The US then pillaged the New World's natural resources with no regard for the
environment, and thus created a powerful economy. Once that was achieved, the US
started planning global "hegemony", participating in two world wars and numerous
smaller conflicts across the globe.

Chomsky finds American fingerprints everywhere.

Hitler and Mussolini were helped achieve power with American, and in part,
British, help. (p.67) And who helped Stalin beat back the Nazi onslaught and
survive? The US, of course! (pp.47 and 147)

The Korean War was caused not because Kim Il-sung tried to conquer the whole of
the peninsula but because the US wanted to impose its "dominance" in the Far
East. (p.151)

The US is even blamed for the Algerian war of independence, presumably because
France was a full member of The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) at
that time.

And why do you think the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979? Chomsky tells
us that this was the result of a plan worked out by President Jimmy Carter's
National Security Advisor Zbigniew Bzrezinski who wanted to bleed the Soviets to
death. (Pp.110-111)

Contrary to what some Arabs imagine, Israel is a pawn in Washington's hand.
Chomsky writes: "{Israel} has no alternative but serving as a US base in the
region and complying with US demands." (p.158) The Bush administration even
dictates Israel's internal economic policies. (p. 180)

Chomsky claims that almost every evil character in the past century or so,
anywhere in the world, was installed in power or supported by the US.

So why did the US wage war against Hitler, Mussolini, the Japanese militarists,
Slobodan Milosevic, and most recently, Saddam Hussein?

Chomsky's answer is simple: they all initially worked for the US but had to be
crushed when they tried to act independently. The US wants total obedience:
anyone that shows any sign of independence is cut down.

In Chomsky's Manichaean world anyone who is opposed to the United States is good
and anyone who sympathises with it is evil. That belief leads Chomsky into
strange assertions. He asserts that the resistance movements against the Nazis
were terrorists. He writes: "The partisans were directed from London and did
engage in terrorism." (P.189) The Afghan Mujhahedin who fought against Soviet
invaders were "saboteurs and terrorists" as were the Contras in Central America
because they fought anti-American regimes.

Saddam gassed the Kurds in response to "Kurdish terrorism" which, in turn, had
been prompted by the US. However, when the Kurds fight Turkey, an ally of the
US, they become freedom fighters struggling against a terrorist state.

According to Chomsky, Saddam's invasion of Kuwait in 1990 was a just punishment
for the latter's ingratitude towards Iraq. Saddam had protected Kuwait against
Iranian aggression and was angered by Kuwaiti moves that were designed to wreck
Iraq's oil-based economy. (P.46)

While Chomsky insists that Saddam was no threat to anyone and thus unfairly
included in the so-called "Axis of Evil", he suggests his own alternative "Axis
of Evil". This consists of Turkey, Israel, and Morocco whom Chomsky blames for
the worst cases of "state terrorism". (P.198) Those three countries draw
Chomsky's ire because they are allies of the US.

Chomsky portrays the defunct Soviet Union as a victim of American aggression. He
tells us that Communism was "never a military threat" to the United States.
(P.66)

He praises Stalin, and even the sinister Lavrenti Beria, subsequently executed
for his crimes, as men of goodwill who proposed schemes that would have ensured
peace in Europe. (Pp.223-224).

President Dwight Eisenhower rejected the Soviet peace proposals because that
would have meant an end to American "dominance" in Europe. Washington wanted to
draw Moscow into an arms race in order to destroy the USSR.

Chomsky ignores the fact that it was the USSR that almost always introduced new
and deadlier weapons in Europe, starting with supersonic fighters and ending
with the SS-20 missiles. Chomsky also forgets that what he calls "the arms race
in the space" began with the USSR that sent the first manned mission into the
space.

The Taliban, having come into being by "American design", were evil when they
were supported by the US, but became good when they turned against it.

Chomsky opposed the war that toppled the Taliban and claims that the US wanted
to invade Afghanistan not to destroy Al Qaeda but to extend its "dominance" to
Central Asia. (P.199) Once the Taliban had turned against the US, toppling their
regime became "a war crime". (P.200) (Chomsky had forecast that six million
Afghans would die as a result of the US intervention. The figure six million, of
course, was chosen to establish a parallel with the figure given for the Jewish
victims of the Nazi Holocaust.)

US help to the Colombian government's programme of eradicating cocaine
cultivation is described as "chemical warfare", because, Chomsky insists, other
countries do not have the same right to use fumigation to eliminate tobacco
fields in the US state of North Carolina.

In other words even the drug barons are transformed into choir boys when they
are attacked by the US.

Chomsky tells us that the war in Kosovo was not about Serbs massacring ethnic
Albanians but the other way round. It was the ethnic Albanians, recruited,
trained and organised by the CIA, who were massacring the Serbs in Kosovo.

The US, and NATO, intervened to prevent Slobodan Milosevic from rushing to
rescue his fellow Serbs from massacre by "US-controlled terrorists". On Bosnia,
too, Chomsky finds himself on the side of the ethnic Serbs because the Muslims
were supported by the United States and its "terrorist allies".

Faithful to the classical methods of religious propaganda, Chomsky does not
allow the slightest shade of grey in his black-and-white picture of existence.

[Leon]

He goes further than fellow-travellers like Russell who tried to establish a
moral equivalence between the Free World and its enemies, especially the USSR,
during the Cold War. (Note that in the quotation from Russell, cited above,
there is no mention of Lenin, Stalin and Mao.) But Chomsky is not satisfied with
moral equivalence. He believes that, in any conflict involving the United
States, it is the American side that is evil.

He claims that the US and all its leaders, starting with Washington, as already
noted, were evil from the very beginning.

President James Monroe was evil because he declared a doctrine designed to
prevent the European colonial powers from returning to Latin America. President
Theodore Roosevelt was evil because he insisted that the US must carry a big
stick.

Even the idealistic President Woodrow Wilson does not escape Chomsky's censure.
Wilson is portrayed as an arrogant racist who saw the US as a vanguard for human
progress. (P.43)

President John F. Kennedy is presented as almost a lunatic who, through the
Cuban missile crisis of 1962, pushed the world towards thermonuclear war. The
world was saved by Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet leader, who proved to be a
statesman. (Pp.74-75) Every US president since Kennedy is also portrayed as an
evil-doer of one kind or another, with Ronald Reagan and George W Bush getting
the sharpest lashes.

Even John Stuart Mill, the leading philosopher of Western liberalism, does not
escape Chomsky's ire, and is presented as a champion of colonialism. (Pp.44-45)

Chomsky makes too many factual errors to be enumerated here. His knowledge of
the Middle East and the Muslim countries is especially patchy, if not downright
wrong.

But Chomsky's book, written in haste, suffers from more serious problems.

The first of these is his habit of arranging facts to suit his often
contradictory claims. Discussing many of the major issues of international life
in the past century or so, Chomsky relies on some 30 writers, most of them
Americans. More than half of his current affair sources are traced to just two
newspapers: The New York Times and The Washington Post. Few people with opinions
at variance with Chomsky's certainties get a chance. Where he does not find any
sources that he can name, Chomsky uses a device dear to second-rate hacks. He
mentions " respected commentators", " impartial observers", "very well-informed
sources", "internal sources"," most experts", and " noted analysts".

A professional linguist, Chomsky knows how to use words to suit his purpose,
whatever it happens to be. For example, he avoids the term Cold War which would
set the context for the US-USSR rivalry. Nor does he describe the Communist
Parties that existed all over the world by their name, preferring to call them
"mass-based parties of the poor".

Whatever the US does, even in self defence, is "crime" or "an act of terrorism".
Whatever it foes to do, is "a patriotic movement" or "popular resistance."

The US committed "a war crime" when it took military action against Canada in
1814. But Chomsky does not remember that that was in response to the British
attack on Washington, the capital of the newly created United States, during
which the White House was burned down.

Chomsky's use of the word "dominance" instead of domination is problematic,
especially when he uses it as a synonym for hegemony. (It is possible that his
publishers suggested the word "dominance" instead of hegemony because the
general public might not understand the latter.)

Hegemony or survival does not represent the choice of an alternative. For there
can be no hegemony without survival, although there can be survival without
hegemony. The domination of the international space by one major power- ancient
Persia, Rome , Britain , etc- at different times in history, in no way
threatened the survival of mankind.

The second problem is that Chomsky thinks the US has been, and is, able to do
whatever it pleases, ignoring the dialectics of any relationship.

For example he writes: Kennedy decided that Latin American armies be transformed
into anti-guerrilla forces.(P.192) It means that the governments, armies, and
peoples of dozens of Latin American states had no will of their own.

Chomsky is unable to conceive of a situation in which both the US and its
adversary of the time could be wrong. He cannot accept that the Taliban and
Saddam Hussein do not become good because they are attacked by the US.

The third problem is that Chomsky never explains why the US might want to impose
its "dominance" or hegemony, or whatever you like, on the world.

Some causes are hinted at, often like faint echoes of the old Leninist analysis
of "Imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism."

For example, Chomsky claims that the US abolished slavery not because it was an
ethical goal, but because New England capitalists wanted it. The Marshall Plan,
which helped war-shattered Western Europe rebuilt its economy, was designed to
facilitate the penetration of US capital into the old continent.

[Leon]

Chomsky also claims that the US is in search of military bases which, once
secured, it will never abandon. (He forgets that in 1966 the US immediately
closed all its French bases when President Charles De Gaulle demanded it. And in
1969 the US wound up its air base in Libya, without the slightest hesitation at
the behest of the new government in Tripoli.)

Chomsky's claim that the US is a "rogue state" determined to destroy
"international law" is too crude to merit lengthy rebuttal. He forgets that what
is known as "international law" is itself an American creation, along with a few
allies such as Great Britain.

The United Nations, and the League of Nations before it, were fruits of American
diplomacy. The same is true of almost all other institutions of the
"international system" that Chomsky believes the US is out to destroy.

He also forgets that almost all of the thousands of international treaties, that
impose limitations to the sovereignty of individual states, came into being
either on direct American initiative or with active US participation.

The average American might be surprised to learn how much of the powers of its
government have been transferred to international authorities in the context of
numerous treaties. And that in a global system in which the most brutal regimes
enjoy the same rights and privileges as the most democratic states.

As expected, Chomsky claims that the US built up its military power not to
defend legitimate interests, indeed its national security, but to dominate the
world.

But he forgets that the US has for years been pressing its European allies to
increase their defence expenditure in the context of the famous "burden
sharing". As a percentage of GDP, American expenditure on defence steadily
declined between 1990 and 2000. What happened was that the European allies, and
Japan, reduced their defence expenditure at an even faster rate because they
knew they could continue to rely on the American security "umbrella".

Chomsky ends up by shooting himself in the foot.

He shows that the US today enjoys less of an economic "dominance" in the world
than it did in 1945. He also reminds us that even before the Second World War
the US had been "by far the largest economic power anywhere in the world."

In 1945 the US accounted for almost 50 per cent of the global gross domestic
product (GDP). By 1975 that share had fallen to 25 per cent. In 2000 it was down
to 18 per cent, slightly lower than the European Union. Even in terms of foreign
investment per head of the population the relative share of the US has declined.
That figure for the Dutch is almost twice that of the US while Britain and
Japan, Taiwan and South Koreas are also catching up.

All the new economic powers of the post-war world were helped by the US in the
crucial phases of their economic take-off, and emerged as its trading partners:
Western Europe, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Southeast Asia, and today China.
Even the current "economic miracle" in India is, to some measure, due to massive
investments of American capital and technology.

But the biggest problem with Chomsky's book is that he offers no alternative to
"evil" America. He vaguely speaks of "world public opinion", by which he means
the peace-marchers and the Porto Allegre crowd, as "the second superpower", and
says that a majority of mankind believe that US "dominance" is the main threat
to the world. Even if that were the case, we have to note that it is not enough
for something to be believed by large numbers of people, or, indeed by the
entire humanity, for it to be true.

It is Chomsky's final bouquet that is most surprising.

Having vilified George W Bush as the arch-villain of the modern world, Chomsky
ends up by adopting W's analysis almost word by word.

Like W, Chomsky tells us that the status quo, especially in the Middle East, is
untenable, and that the wave of democratisation must spread to the whole world.
(P.215) which is precisely what George W Bush asserts.

Also like Bush, Chomsky tells us that the spread of nuclear, and other weapons
of mass destruction, is a threat to mankind and must be stopped. (P.221) The
difference is that Bush is trying to do something about it while Chomsky seems
to want those weapons to be denied only to the US and its allies.

Finally, and perhaps, unwittingly, he echoes President Bush's claim that the US
remains part of the solution, often the main part, to all of the problems that
the world faces. The difference is that Chomsky seems to favour the
disappearance of the US, or at least its withdrawal from the international
arena, while Bush proposes an active, some might say aggressive, American
foreign policy in pursuit of such goals as democratisation, trade
liberalisation, and the inclusion of isolated dictatorial states into the global
system.

One thing is sure: mankind is not, as Russell and Mayr predicted, to disappear
and leave the earth to beetles and bacteria. Copyright Amir Taheri 2004

[Mil]

What a bunch of CR***P. I absolutely love these academics who really have a very distant view of reality. Chomsky would sh**t his pants if given responsiblity to govern or make any kind of national policy decisions.

[KSO]

Sometimes it's good to retire before you become old and inadequate...

[RichardP]

Originally posted by KSO
Sometimes it's good to retire before you become old and inadequate...

Chomsky, the darling of the impressionable left, isn’t the whiz, he and his true-believer groupies imagine him to be. An old adage, baffles brains comes to mind, whenever, reading or hearing Chomsky and/or his parroting disciples.

[Leon]

Ironically, as you can see this harsh critique of Chomsky comes from an Arab writer and was originally published in an Arabic publication.

[RichardP]

Originally posted by Leon
Ironically, as you can see this harsh critique of Chomsky comes from an Arab writer and was originally published in an Arabic publication.

It’s reassuring to know that some Arabs are also wise and intuitive, and can see beyond Chomsky’s smoke and mirrors of academic vanity.

[Mediocrates]

It's not ironic it's merely more antisemitism. They hate Chomsky too not because of who he his but because of what he is.

[Ahava]

I knew Chomsky was a radical but he is truly crazy...

[Mediocrates]

Which just proves that if you carry one with exactly the same nutzoid message long enough people make you a folk hero.

A close relative of mine, who used to run an inpatient rehab center and is a psychotherapist once commented "No one can outlast the tyranny of a neurotic. It's inexhaustible."

[Leon]

Originally posted by Mediocrates
It's not ironic it's merely more antisemitism. They hate Chomsky too not because of who he his but because of what he is.

Lets not jump to conclusions. Maybe I've misread this guy, but every time he makes a reference to Chomsky and Israel..he always sarcastcly refers to his (Chomsky's) assertion that Israel is just a pawn of the US.

One example:

"While Chomsky insists that Saddam was no threat to anyone and thus unfairly
included in the so-called "Axis of Evil", he suggests his own alternative "Axis
of Evil". This consists of Turkey, Israel, and Morocco whom Chomsky blames for
the worst cases of "state terrorism". (P.198) Those three countries draw Chomsky's ire because they are allies of the US."

[stop_terror]

Why are you using such outmoded propaganda in regards to Chomsky?Haven't you heard that the new target of elite propaganda is Islam? If you want to convince people that some terror is better or is less terrorist than others you might want to aviod the old Communist/Stalinist/Maoist label that isn't going to get much attention. Take some cues from the press. You should make up some phony past like Chomsky is a muslim or muslim-lover. That sounds like propaganda that's right up your alley and will attract your kind of crowd.
You also gave away your real gripe with Chomsky, which is:

It certainly explains a lot, because one thing he's not
is a credible historian or political scientist...nevertheless
(thanks to his occupation) he certainly has a way with
words.

It is not that stuff you made up about Stalin-lover (which oddly sounds similar to racist propaganda from the south). You elitist propagandists, or copy cats, can't stand that people without the proper credentials give detailed analysis and commentary on political and social issues. You should check out David Horowitz. He has some effective ideas on how to divert people from reading Professor Chomsky.

[Womble]

Chomsky is one of those professors whose Ph.D stands for "playing with half a deck".

Simply put, he is a conspiracy minded monomaniac, who is trying to create a historical narrative that would make the US responsible for all the world evils. He has been known for supporting the Khmer Rouge, btw, and other genocidal regimes. Chomsky's sympathy for Stalin is not surprising at all, many a lefty from his generation had a lot of trouble getting over the idealized image of Stalin's Soviet Union after the truth began coming to light (hell, even in Israel the MAPAI party "old guard" and the communists like Meir Wilner had trouble getting over their fascination with Stalinism; thankfully, they were faster learners than the Eurolefties.

Btw, Taheri is not an Arab, but an Iranian Muslim, an excellent writer, I must say.