The Stupidest Intellectual (re: Chomsky and His Ideas)

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Well the Belafonte suggestion wasn't made by the author of this article.

I think Belafonte's comment about Colin Powell was way off-base and racist, but that doesn't mean the right response is to tell him to apologize or pack his bags.


What about these points the author makes:

1) Chomsky holds up US actions for examination out of context and while ignoring the worse actions of others

2) Chomsky then condemns US actions by comparing them not to the actions of other large nations, but to some vague ideal which could only be realized in a much more utopian world--a world we aren't even close to actually living in. Since all nations face practical constraints which force them to act imperfectly, comparing the US to other large nations would be much more fair.

3) Chomsky blames the US for the corrupt or brutal actions of those nations we support--disregarding the fact that many of these nations were corrupt and brutal beforehand

4) Chomsky blames the US for defending itself

[IrishHand]

1) Not true. Chomsky condemns many nations for their actions. He merely asserts (correctly) that our primary obligation is to fix ourselves before we go around playing the international bully.

2) So what? Every nation should strive towards a more utopian society, no matter how far away that is.

3) Many were corrupt and brutal beforehand, but the fact that they're corrupt and brutal after US intervention speaks volumes about US foreign policy.

4) US hasn't been attacked since 1941, and I don't think he objected to that. Not sure what else you're referring to.

[nicky g]

Damn I wrote a point by point analysis of the article (I really honestly did) and then lost it as I was looking for typos by pressing delete, which for some reason sometimes also makes my browser go back a page (anyone know why)?
Anyway:

1) I don't see a problem with this; I don't have to say well sure the Washington sniper was bad but what about that Hitler guy? The US can be criticsied by someone who fully accepts that there are governments who behave/have behaved worse.

2. Maybe I'm an idealist, but when I compare what theUS did in for example, El Salvador, I'm comparing it quite simply to the US not doing it. I'm not saying " The US should have created Utopia in El Salvador". I'm saying "the US should have stayed the hell away from El Salvador and not fomented civil war adn installed a military dictatorship and funded death squads that killed tens of thousands of innocent people." Or in Vietnam, I'd be saying "the US should not have staged a pretext to intervene in Vietnam and kill 4 million people in order to prop up a dictatorial regime." Clearly pie in the sky.

3) Sometimes true, somtimes not. In Latin America the US put into place several brutal and corrupt regimes that would not have been there otherwise. Same in Indonesia. Similarly, being an ally of a corrupt foreign nation is not the same as propping up a dictatorship, eg Egypt.

4. Where does he do that? If you're talking about Iraq, I don't remember it ever attacking the US. I certainly don't remember Salvador Allende declaring war before he "committed suicide".

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Just to answer 4) now:

We were attacked on 9/11 and Chomsky thought it wrong of us to defend ourselves by going after our attackers in Afghanistan.

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The US in Central America was countering Soviet expansionism.

In El Salvador, those we supported were brutal, but they were also fighting another brutal group: the Soviet/Sandinista-backed communist guerillas. So, what about the murderous communist guerillas? We couldn't just have wished them away--that doesn't work.

In Vietnam, after we withdrew, the communists slaughtered millions between Vietnam and Southeast Asia. Should we have gotten involved in the first place? I'm not sure, but getting involved without a clear goal of winning the war (as opposed to merely stalemating the North Vietnamese) was a huge mistake.

[nicky g]

from http://www.lonelyplanet.com/destinat...or/history.htm

"In 1972, the military arrested and exiled the elected president and installed their own candidate in power. Guerrilla activity increased, and the government responded by unleashing 'death squads' who murdered, tortured or kidnapped thousands of Salvadorans.

In 1979, a junta of military and civilians overthrew the president and promised reforms. When these reforms were not met, opposition parties banded together under the party name Federación Democrático Revolucionario, of which the FMLN was the largest group. The successful revolution in Nicaragua in 1979 encouraged many Salvadorans to believe that armed struggle was the only way to secure reforms. When popular archbishop Oscar Romero was assassinated saying mass in 1980, his death sparked an armed insurrection.

FMLN guerrillas gained control of areas in the north and east of El Salvador and blew up bridges, destroyed power lines and burned coffee plantations in a bid to stifle the country's economy. The Reagan Administration, unnerved by the success of Nicaragua's socialist revolution, donated huge amounts of money to the Salvadoran government, and the military retaliated by decimating villages, causing 300,000 citizens to flee the country. In 1982, the extreme right ARENA party took power and death squads began targeting trade unionists and agrarian reformers.

...

"During the course of the 12-year war, an estimated 75,000 people were killed, and the US government donated a staggering US$6 billion to the Salvadoran government's war effort, despite knowledge of atrocities carried out by the military."

Clearly it was a complicated situation, but my vew is as follows: The guerillas, whatever their faults, represented the comibined opposition to the military regme and were fighting for the restorarion of democracy and in response to the murders of opposition figures. They were fighting against military dictators, which I regard as perfectly legitimate. Against them were US-backed death squads who killed anyone remotely regarded as "leftist", the vast majority of them civilians merely suspected of guerilla sympathies (and including 4 American nuns, who were raped and executed by US-funded murder squads). The guerillas were not on a par with the military death squads. Nor were they or the Sandanistas Soviet stooges; they were socialists, with popular support. They would have endangered little more than US investments, which isn't a reason for killing trades unionists in my opinion.

Your description of the Sandanistas as "brutal" is absurd. They overthrew the brutal US-backed military dictarship, implemented a popular revolution, and won the 1984 election by a massive majority. The US-funded contras were brutal. The Sandanistas rightly fought the contras but when they lost the elction in 1990 they stood aside, which doesn't strike me as a particularly authoriatarian or Soviet tactic. They were a democratic socialist party that have an enormous amount to be thanked for, including overthrowing a military dictatorship, massively increasing literacy rates and infectious disease immunisation in a desperately poor country, and successfully holding back the contras who would have imposed El Salvadorean style death squad rule across the country.

Whatever you think of either group the US should have been supporting democracy rather than, in Nicaragua's case, undermining an elected government through crippling economic blockades and murder squad insurgency, and in El Salvador's case, backing a military dictatorship in a brutal civil war.

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I guess that this will have to wait until next week when I will have some sources. My view is that the communist guerillas in El Salvador were also brutal, that the Saninistas supplied them with arms (and the Soviets supplied the Sandinistas with arms), that the Sandinistas forcibly collectived private property amounting to theft and looted the country when they departed, and that the grand design of the Soviets and Sandinistas was to import Soviet influence and military power into the Western hemisphere.

By the way Castro did things for education and health care too, but I'd rather be ignorant, unhealthy and free than live in a giant Soviet-style prison called Cuba.

[nicky g]

The difference is the Sandanistas held free elections, did what they did with a popular mandate, and stood down when they lost and no loner had that mandate. I think there are a lot of movements that ended up being forced into taking the Soviet dime by short-sighted US foreign policy; the Sandanistas certainly weren't a soviet-style regime. The problem with Cuba and Nicaragua was that the regimes before them were dictatorial and being propped up by the US; if the US hadn't supported Batista and treated Cuba like its private brothel there wouldn't have been a Castro.

[IrishHand]

Our "attackers" in 9/11 were dead on 9/11.

Furthermore, they were terrorists, and while Bush likes to go on about the "war" on terrorism, war is a state that exists between two nations. Frankly, I always thought it was a mistake to treat it as such - it legitimized what the terrorists did. Call it common terrorism, belittle it, then throw the full power of the the FBI, CIA and military into identifying and eliminating anyone involved - you can always give some evidence later on about why you blew up this guy's car, or why you fired a couple of cruise missiles into that guy's hut. Wasting billions of dollars invading a foreign country then propping up a weak regime doesn't make much sense unless you're actually thinking that it was that country's government which was responsible. (And given that the Taliban didn't even have the power to serve up bin Laden as an act of self-preservation, you've gotta be pretty dubious about any such claims.)

The reality is that this country hasn't had a real need to "defend itself" in the immediate sense since 1945, or in the potential sense since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Neither of our neighbors has the desire or means to attack us, and our Navy could repulse any sea-borne force with relative ease. Sure, some countries could attack us via ICBMs, but that's been a danger for many decades.

Terrorism is terrorism - it's nothing like war, nor should it be treated as such. Actually, quite often war invites terrorism, since occupied countries tend to be unhappy about their occupied state and since they have no military, they lash out the only way they can. Hmm...maybe the fact that we have military bases all over the Middle East contributes somewhat to the feeling of impotent rage against us prevalent in that part of the world which seems to inspire terrorist activities.

[MMMMMM]

IrishHand: "Our "attackers" in 9/11 were dead on 9/11."

Our attackers were the entire group called al Qaeda--and those who died attacking us were merely their emissaries.

Irish: "Furthermore, they were terrorists, and while Bush likes to go on about the "war" on terrorism, war is a state that exists between two nations."

You may not consider it war, but al Qaeda certainly does. Somehow I'm inclined to believe they really mean it. So I think we can throw your "legal definition" out the window.


IrishHand: "Hmm...maybe the fact that we have military bases all over the Middle East contributes somewhat to the feeling of impotent rage against us prevalent in that part of the world which seems to inspire terrorist activities."

Arab impotence and rage is self-inflicted due to their backwards religious/political system which stifles dissent, free speech, free thought and innovation. As long as they are ideologically trapped, they will remain financially trapped--despite their immense natural wealth. Even poor little South Korea, once devastated and as poor as any Arab state, and with far less natural wealth, has pulled far ahead of them. Their ideological backwardness is a trap of their own making.

It would be great to see them make some true progress and come into the modern world, ideologically speaking. A system of marriage of Church and State can't really do that, however. And with most Saudi college kids majoring in theology, just how competitive does that make them in the world economy?

We can lead them, but we can't make them drink of freedom.

Some are sadly beyond reformation. Indoctrinated heavily since youth, they are insanely and incurably fanatic. The more impotent we can make those who are truly dedicated to our destruction, the better. Much of the blame for this rests with the teachings of the Wahabbi death-cult, the official state religion of Saudi Arabia.

***** "Ah yes, we must attempt to mollify angry fanatics who seek our destruction because otherwise...they might get mad and seek our destruction." -Ann Coulter *******