Noam Chomsky's statement on killing of Osama bin Laden

[Joseph Tracy]

Imperialists are Imperial beasts by nature. Most people just aren't. I'd be more inclined to  argue that man is a tribal beast by nature.  I think Chomsky's assumption is that you can act like and claim to be  be a  a constitutional democratic republic that is law centered and reliant on informed consent and open debate or you can be an omnivorous and amoral empire, but you you can't be or pretend to be both without constant and fundamental hypocrisy.  

The problem is that we are saying we are at war with terror while using tactics that are terrorism by any definition. If one accepts that every "sophisticated" person knows  that we are in fact ruled by an Orwellian elite, OK. But how many, sophisticated or not,  really accept that. Should we then, in order to "gain credibility", accept the absurdity of any attempt to speak plainly  or to  engage in corrective effort  against the perversion of constitutional and international law? 
On May 13, 2011, at 1:55 PM, Michael F wrote:

> When has International Law been anything other than a type or mode of
> imperialism? Man is an imperial beast by nature.  Chomsky needs to
> reread the Voegelin/Strauss/Kojeve dialogues.  Chomsky sounds like 20
> year old who has arrived at an elite U.S. College after spending his
> formidable years in a strict, fundamental ideological household. My
> bad, he is at an elite U.S. College and he did spend his younger years
> in a strict, fundamental ideological household.
> 
> He exhibits no theoretical or practical cognitive faculties. It's all
> driven by an assumption that natural man is inherently good, which is
> dangerous and naive. It works with ideologically thirsty undergrads,
> and that's about it.  How did he ever gain credibility outside of his
> trained field of Linguistics?
> 
> 
> 
> On Friday, May 13, 2011, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>> You obviously either didn't read the blog post I linked to, or chose
>> to ignore it.
>> 
>> On Fri, May 13, 2011 at 11:23 AM, cfabel <cfabel at sfasu.edu> wrote:
>>> I don't think, though I haven't looked lately, that "Assassination"  appears in the United Nations Charter, the Geneva Conventions, the Hague Conventions, international case law or the Statute of the International Criminal Court.
>>> 
>>> C. F. Abel
>>> Chair
>>> Department of Government
>>> Stephen F. Austin State University
>>> Nacogdoches, Texas 75962
>>> (936) 468-3903
>>