NP Another Left academic describes Chomsky's responses to 11/9 as"misguided"

[barbara100 at jps.net]

What, you think you can slip this past us because Doug's away on holiday?!
Not so fast.  This article is so weak it's maddening.  A simple English
major like me could take it on, and this guy (the author) is trying to put
it up against the likes of Noam Chomsky, Linguistics professor at MIT--Have
you heard that man talk? he's fucking brilliant! And his impenetrable calm,
cool, and matter-of-fact demeanor makes him all the more convincing.  What's
this guy got to say for himself?  'Noam and Pilger, you sorry old
complainers, you're so full of shit'--yada, yada, yada--doesn't say a damn
thing to defend his own horrific position!  'Yes, well, sometimes innocent
people get hurt in the chase for the criminal. It's a necessary evil.' What
a dumb argument in itself, but it's especially dumb because Noam Chomsky
uses it himself in a dramatically different and far more effective way.  As
Chomsky said in one of his recent lectures, 'the police would never consider
wiping out a whole neighborhood in the apprehension of a criminal if they
knew him to be hiding in a certain part of town.'  I'm sure, some cops might
want to, but they can't willingly and knowingly kill a whole bunch of
innocent people to get at one bad guy.  I even heard on my local news
recently that the police department is being pressured to slow down their
car chases, rely more on the helicopters, because the public started
complaining their kids were getting mowed down by speeding cop cars.  We
can't have the innocent public put at risk now can we? Not here in America,
where our voice (in numbers) is heard.

Yes, well, about that article--'Evidence, evidence, evidence'--if the author
knew anything at all about Noam Chomsky he'd know that all of his current
argument is based on the idea that Osama bin Laden is guilty of the crime.
He never tried to convince anyone otherwise.  His only point in bringing up
the 'evidence' issue earlier was the arrogance of the US's demand that
Afghanistan give up the perpetrator without providing even a shred of
evidence.  'How dare those little brown rag-headed bastards ask US/us for
proof!'  Can'cha just hear him? in that down-home Texas drawwwl?  You can
almost see his bowed legs and the guns at his hip, even that brown tobacco
spittle dripping from his chin.

So in addition to 'evidence', the author tries to convince us what a evil
man Osama bin Laden is.  That's  a given, and I don't know why he would
waste his breath trying to convince anybody.  Well, yes I do know why--he
wants to vilify Osama bin Laden as much as possible so he can make it seem
that by not supporting a war against him, you somehow side with him.  This
guy is really lame.  Noam Chomsky and John Pilger do not "absolve the
perpetrators of their crime."  They advocate strong police action to
apprehend Osama bin Laden.  And they advocate negotiation before aggression.
And it's obvious from earlier reports that the Taliban was willing to
negotiate.  Had we sat down with them at the bargaining table, put the fear
of bombs into them there instead of the battlefield, we may well have had
him by now. Who knows now.  But it was damn well worth a try.  At the very
least we could have had him in a 3rd-party country.  And better there than
holed up in a cave still, with untold numbers dead.

"Their distant voices of rage are now heard; the daily horrors in faraway
brutalised places have at last come home." (www.johnpilger.com)"

The author tries to say this statement by Pilger "absolves" the terrorists.
It does no such thing.  No one on the left is proposing 'let it go,' or
'turn the other cheek.'  Not even me.   Everybody wants 'something' done.
But while we're working on that, they want to seek to understand what's in
the terrorist's minds, and far more importantly, what's in the minds of
those who 'sympathize' with them.  In other words they're asking 'Why do
they hate us.'  They're good and humble enough men to recognize that their
perceptions are the not only ones in this world that matter.  (And they're
realistic enough to know it's ain't because they despise 'freedom,' but
because they want some of it for themselves.)  All of the Lefties want to
'get' Osama bin Laden.  They just don't want to bomb 4000 and starve 7.5
million to do it.  It's a simple difference of how 'bad' they want to get
him.  (Ha!)

If Pilger's "implication is clear" it's not to "lessen[] the moral
responsibility of bin Laden's group for its own actions";  it is to admit
that we 'reap what we sow.'  And he's trying to tell us it would be a good
idea if we begin to plant more 'friendly' varieties.  On curbing the spread
of religious fundamentalism, for example--some of those Middle-Eastern
countries are too poor to afford public education, and the only free or
reduced-priced schools available for most people there are the infamous
maddrasses, where little Muslim children are taught early on to hate the
West.  Well maybe, just maybe, if the West would let them a little economic
self-sufficiency and not let the Fortune 500 hog up all of their resources,
those countries might afford a better form of education. Or perhaps if the
West might promote instead of hinder more free and domocratic societies,
those people might not have cause to resent our meddling so. Pilger and
Chomsky aren't as interested in finding blame with the US nearly so much as
they're seeking to affect real and positive change, for us all.  They seems
to recognize too that what we do MATTERS.

Barbara


----- Original Message -----
From: jbor <jbor at bigpond.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Saturday, December 29, 2001 3:29 PM
Subject: NP Another Left academic describes Chomsky's responses to 11/9
as"misguided"


>
>                        'Stuck in Noam-man's land'
>                                   by
>                             David McKnight
>
> Liberal-Left critics such as Noam Chomsky and John Pilger believe
everything
> awful in the world is created by the US, writes David McKnight. Their
attack
> on America's "war against terrorism" is as misguided as it is out of date.
[...]
> When the Left tries to respond to September 11, it often falls into a kind
of popular "social science theorising". In > trying to explain the roots of
events in history, the Left (or parts of it represented by people like John
Pilger and > > Noam Chomsky) almost appears to absolve the perpetrators of
their crime.

> Pilger, for example, describes a litany of US and British crimes and then
refers to Islamic fundamentalist groups in > this way: "Their distant voices
of rage are now heard; the daily horrors in faraway brutalised places have
at last   > come home." (www.johnpilger.com)

> His implication is clear: the US and Britain are completely responsible
for the rise of Muslim fundamentalism and   > are now getting their reward.
The idea that the US "caused" Muslim fundamentalism is reductionist
> and wrong, apart from lessening the moral responsibility of bin Laden's
group for its own actions.
[...]
> His implication is clear: the US and Britain are completely responsible
for the rise of Muslim fundamentalism and
> are now getting their reward. The idea that the US "caused" Muslim
fundamentalism is reductionist and wrong,
> apart from lessening the moral responsibility of bin Laden's group for its
own actions.
[...]
> But there are significant differences from previous situations and the
> liberal-Left is in danger of mechanically applying political formulas
> crafted in a different period rather than responses based on a concrete
> examination of current circumstances.
[...]
>But to have a trial, you must have an accused in the dock. This entails the
global equivalent of police raiding the >hide-out of the criminal. The
police may do this with or without a warrant and people may get hurt during
the raid. >But a violent confrontation is sometimes unavoidable in
apprehending criminals.

> [...]
>
> Continues at
>
> http://www.smh.com.au/news/0112/29/spectrum/spectrum5.html
>
> best
>
>
>
>