I just shared with you a poll about what normal Americans think about killing Osama bin Laden. Here’s what Noam Chomsky thinks:
We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush’s compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic. Uncontroversially, his crimes vastly exceed bin Laden’s…
“Uncontroversially,” he said. Which sort of makes him demonstrably, inarguably, objectively — that is to say, “uncontroversially” — wrong, doesn’t it?
As usual.
Ran across that this morning, and had been meaning to share it with you all day. Talk about your outliers. Talk about your people who are very, very lucky that they live in this particular country — or in a pluralistic liberal democracy, in any case.
Chomsky ended his statement with,
There is much more to say, but even the most obvious and elementary facts should provide us with a good deal to think about.
Yep.
As you may know, bin Laden was a Chomsky admirer. Liked to quote him.
Related Posts
You may wonder why I would even take notice of what Noam Chomsky thinks about anything. Well, I wouldn’t, but…
Years and years ago, some folks over at USC (actually, I don’t think the group was university-affiliated, but we did meet in a classroom there, if I remember correctly) asked me to attend the showing of a film about Chomsky’s theories that the news media are a grand right-wing conspiracy (or something along those lines; I’ve forgotten the details).
I had watched the film ahead of time, and had sort of expected everyone to join me in laughing at how utterly absurd the premise was. At least, though, it was refreshing. I was so accustomed to hearing from nuts on the right about the grand LIBERAL media conspiracy that it was at least somewhat entertaining to hear such a vehement assertion of the exact opposite.
They didn’t laugh (and I now realize that it was naive of me to think they would; it’s just that before the 8 years of Bush Derangement Syndrome, I wasn’t exposed to that much wacko stuff from the left in my day-to-day worklife). In fact, pretty much everybody in the room but me regarded Chomsky’s claims as gospel truth.
So… knowing there are such attitudes actually in existence in this community, I thought I’d take note of what Chomsky had to say on the big topic of the day.
“Colorless green ideas sleep furiously”–now there’s a tweet for you. Chomsky should stick to linguistics, methinks.
That said, for those of us who believe even one of the Bush wars was not justified, Chomsky has a valid point. *If* Bush was responsible for an unjust war, those deaths are on him as surely as the 9/11 deaths are on bin Laden.
Now, everyone chime in on whether the proposed conditional is true….
(and drive those page views!)
Exactly what I was thinking — that he should stick to linguistics. Sort of the way Paul Krugman should stick to economics. Just because one is brilliant in one field doesn’t mean you have anything all that helpful to contribute to the political sphere. At the same time, people who have no particular erudition in any academic field can have very profound things to say about politics…
And if I were just trying to drive page views, I’d tell you what Katy Perry thinks… Chomsky isn’t nearly as hot (sorry, Noam).
Noam Chomsky… from Chicago, he owes me money.
Krugman has been proven by a study at Hamilton College to be the most accurate in his predictions.Followed by Mo Dowd.
Liberals were more accurate than conservatives, as a whole.
I know you don’t understand this very well, but sometimes we’re just right.
Call me Cassandra.
Chomsky has a point. Bush did engage in an illegal war. Of course as an American I couldn’t condone the kidnaping and killing of the idiot. Still, as an exercise in logic it does have merit.
“Sort of the way Paul Krugman should stick to economics. Just because one is brilliant in one field doesn’t mean you have anything all that helpful to contribute to the political sphere.”
Sorry, but I don’t see how one would separate the two. Much of our national and local political dialogue is basically about economics of one kind or another.
That’s a big ‘if’, Kathryn.
Those with analytical minds could entertain themselves for years with the internal debate, but I suspect most people would decide based on their political leanings.
What is so funny to me about this is that Hamilton College is just about as conservative as Lexington County, but in a different, more establishment kind of way.
I remember the day Joe Bidden came to speak. The hall was fairly full, but began to empty with each bombastic comment. I left, too.
Critical thinking is a skill not practiced nearly enough, or wide enough.
Sometimes you have to move away from cold, calculating statistics to arrive at a conclusion. This is a perfect example. If you adhere strictly to logic Chomsky has a pretty good argument. Bush lied to Congress and the American people which ultimately led to US involvement in an illegal and immoral war against a harmless nation. This despicable action needlessly resulted in the loss of hundreds of thousands of people and wrecked a nation for a generation.
Yet for all his many, many, many faults as a president and a human being George W. Bush is not the pure evil maniac that Osama Bin Laden was. His intentions were certainly not to kill on the massive scale that a more intelligent person could have easily predicted would have occured. His intent was to bring a more benign government to Iraq. His hoped for end result was to reduce terrorism and bring about a more peaceful situation to the region.
So no I don’t countenance the same commando style raid on the Bush compound in Texas. Bush is a disgrace but he falls short of the pure evil of a Osama bin Laden. It’s a good thing both are out of power. Thankfully our election process was all we needed to end the “reign of error” perpetrated on the world by George W. Bush. Only a commando style raid as brilliant as the one we saw last week could have worked to free the world from the evil of Osama Bin Laden. Sadly folks like Chomsky don’t understand the difference.
Chomsky goes too far of course, but as with many provocative thinkers, there’s a kernel of truth somewhere way down in there, it’s just hopeless to persuade anybody because it’s lost in a morass of anger which seems to trigger a wave of insupportable assertions.
The fundamental truth that is way down in there somewhere is that too often, we as Americans do not hold ourselves to the same standard of behavior we insist upon from the rest of the world; we excuse outrages of various degrees committed by us in the name of so-called exceptionalism; much of our relative national security and prosperity has been bought with the blood of innocent civilians in far-flung corners of the world, not as part of an “evil” plan for world conquest per se, but simply as hapless fodder for our own creature comforts, our ability to consume far more than our share of resources, build far more than our share of weapons, suck up far more than our share of the world’s oxygen (figuratively speaking). Does that make us the equivalent of Nazis, or OBL, as Chomsky would suggest? No, but a nation that truly would live up to the ideals of the Founding Fathers would also not shy away from occasionally confronting the harsh truth about itself, and correcting course when necessary. For me, the promise of America (and where I differ from Chomsky) is that we have managed to do that self-correction from time to time and I still have optimism that we have that ability. Brad says Chomsky is lucky to live in a tolerant liberal democracy, and he’s right; but a liberal democracy is also equally lucky to have voices on the extremes, and I’d even include Glenn Beck in that. Even in the easy dismissal of such ideas, they force us to reconfirm core ideas that help bind us together as a society.
@Brad
What I don’t think you seem to grasp is that creating a law to enforce someone’s idea of “protecting people from themselves” isn’t simply a piece of paper. It’s an ongoing action involving enforcement, prosecution, and punishment. It becomes one more thing for police to handle when there are far more important tasks at hand. I find it truly sad that our police organizations claim they cannot enforce existing immigration laws but will have the time to determine if Billy Bob Jr. had taken an ATV safety course and is wearing a helmet.
I would have no issue with the government spending the money it will spend on the ATV law ENFORCEMENT on EDUCATION instead. That’s the difference between freedom and the nanny-state.
Not only is Krugman at the top of the Hamilton College study of accurate prognosticators, Lindsey Graham and Thomas Friedman are at the bottom. Hardley ever right, those guys.
I don’t think America became incredibly hypocritical in defending its ideals until Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld and their neo-con friends said torture was A-OK. Kind of like, let’s sink down to the level of the people who want us dead. That’s the best way to defend what we say we believe in, becoming one of them?
To me, the ATV law is just a child protection law. I would have been fine with no law if parents whose children are killed in ATV accidents were routinely prosecuted under those laws instead. However, cops and solicitors seem to let it pass. I do not believe parents have the right to do whatever they want with their kids, to be as thoughtlessly negligent as they can be. Kid are not property and need to be protected, even from their parents.
Phillip, the idea that this nation does not contemplate, debate, doubt, argue, rethink and correct its actions CONSTANTLY with an obsessive eye to living up to its ideals is patent nonsense. As Mick Jagger, impersonating Keith Richards, once said to Mike Myers, who was impersonating Jagger (one of the funniest things ever on SNL), that it typical “liberal claptrap.” It’s axiomatic, accepted without question, on the left, and it’s one of the reasons I cannot count myself a liberal or a Democrat. It completely ignores the evidence of what we have before us every day.
And I am not thankful for people like Chomsky or Beck. Neither of them contributes anything good to the debate. Yes, it makes even Bud agree with me that assassinating the former president would be a bad thing, but that’s a benefit of rather thin substance, and not worth celebrating. I knew that Bud was a decent sort without it. Chomsky is NOT a decent sort, and neither is Beck. They are malicious forces in this world.
Yes, the principle you set out is sound. One reason you seldom hear me worry a bit about our civil liberties is that I know that as long as a huge portion of our electorate adheres to absurdly over-the-top worrying about our civil liberties, there is never the slightest danger that they are in the least bit of peril.
But that, too, can be taken to extremes that outweigh the benefits. For instance, Mark Sanford’s insistence that the ATV safety bill was just too much a threat to our “freedoms.” Thank goodness that not even Nikki Haley is that extreme.
But Noam Chomsky and Glenn Beck ARE too extreme, and the fact that anyone would give either any credence is very harmful to the deliberative process upon which our republic is based.
Martin, maybe you can help me out. I asked this question of Kathryn, but never got an answer:
Predictions about WHAT? I followed the link that Kathryn gave me when she first brought this up the other day, but didn’t find anything about what these folks were prognisticating about. War? Peace? The economy? Football? The weather?
What are we talking about here?
Chomsky is full of **it! Bin Laden was not a head of state, so the assination of Bush analogy is false. The attack on 9/11 was not the first time that bin Laden attacked us; in fact, 9/11 was the second attack on the World Trade Center, the first was the truck bomb in 1993; there was the attack on the USS Cole, the attacks on the embassies in Africa.
The US had plenty of reason to eliminate alQaeda and its leader.
Before we go too far afield I have to suggest that George W. Bush belongs in the group with Chomsky and Beck. His advocacy of pre-emptive war and torture puts him in very bad company. Hopefully he can fade into oblivion along with others who abused their power.
As I pointed out, the content of the published prognostications is irrelevant–they also ran the numbers excluding major political races and they held up. Since when does Paul Krugman write about anything other than politics and the economy? Certainly not football or the weather. Krugman writes serious political and economic commentary.
Your studied ignorance is like the people who aver that they aren’t prejudiced–they don’t care whether you’re green or purple–because so many people ARE green or purple, right?
Yes, the principle you set out is sound. One reason you seldom hear me worry a bit about our civil liberties is that I know that as long as a huge portion of our electorate adheres to absurdly over-the-top worrying about our civil liberties, there is never the slightest danger that they are in the least bit of peril.
-Brad
Does that mean you’re ok with laws that result in long-term incarceration for drug offenses? Seems like we lost the battle of liberty on that one.
“For me, the promise of America (and where I differ from Chomsky) is that we have managed to do that self-correction from time to time and I still have optimism that we have that ability.” So that’s at least one liberal who doesn’t accept “without question” the idea that this nation cannot or does not re-examine itself with an eye towards living up to its ideals.
The only difference in our views is one of degree: I would say that real course corrections happen more slowly over longer time span, and what you call the “constant” rethinking or debating “obsession” with living up to its ideals, I would call more tinkering around the edges. The fundamental Big Picture contradictions in the American experiment, especially in the late 20th/early 21st centuries, are still with us, the balance between capitalism and democracy, the inherent tensions between the two. Libertarians tend to believe they are handmaidens to each other; liberals tend to worry more that unchecked Capitalism with a big C tends to lead towards ever-greater concentration of power and a society for which increasingly, money equals power, with the attendant degradation of “big D” Democracy.
Well, of COURSE “course corrections” take place slowly. And so they should, generally speaking. Consistency is important. That’s one reason why I value the fact that most presidents, for instance, are highly respectful of precedent when it comes to, say, foreign policy. Not as much so as the Supreme Court, of course, but there is great continuity, and needs to be, in relations between nations. Allies and enemies and those in-between need to know what to expect.
That’s why so many people in this country and outside of it were so upset with Bush about the Iraq invasion. He did the unexpected. I don’t mean we didn’t know a year before that we were going to invade — we did. But over time, it was a relatively (historically speaking) sudden and quickly-executed change of approach. Everybody was comfortable with just containing Saddam, as we had done for 12 years, and Bush said no, let’s go after him.
Of course, once he DID that, there was no going back — or if there was, it had to be executed gradually (as is now happening with our withdrawal, along a timeline not all that different than if Bush were still president). It’s a restoration of continuity and stability. After having created a radically different reality, we didn’t jerk the rug out on that precipitously. Which is good, and important.
Obama is more careful than that. He wasn’t going to let all the Iraqi people who came out and voted and joined a government and took risks on the basis of our presence there be betrayed by a sudden pullout (that is to say, a sudden completion of the pullout that was already under way) on Day One of his presidency.
This is why he’s being careful not to overcommit himself on the planned Afghan pullout, either. And that’s good.
But I’m on a tangent now. My point was that actually changes of course are things you need to be very careful about, and they do tend to happen gradually.
But the challenging and the debating and the questioning and the rethinking — that is perpetual. It never stops, not in this country. And eventually, it can effect actual change.
And Kathryn — studied ignorance? Studied ignorance? What does that mean? I’m perfectly serious here.
I suppose if you think of yourself as a liberal, that’s all you need to know — “Hey, liberals are smarter. Well, I knew that. I’m satisfied. Good study.”
But if you do NOT consider yourself to be liberal or conservative, in each case, you ask about the substance of the argument. And for me, any study that just blithely tells me that either liberals or conservatives are generally right is most likely very flawed. Because in my experience, neither is true.
And to elaborate: If “pronosticating” were something I associated with any of these people, I might get what is being said here. But I can’t think of ANYTHING that Krugman or Dowd or Graham or any other person you’ve mentioned has made predictions about. I really can’t. Predictions or prognostications or prophesying are not things I associate with these people.
It’s not studied ignorance. It’s ignorance, period. I don’t know what you’re talking about. So I don’t know what to think of it. I don’t know why I have trouble getting that across…
What was the study measuring? What was it looking at? Throw me a bone here.
Oh, and to what Bud said — generally speaking, I don’t think we should lock up anyone who does not present a physical danger. That means we should no more lock up routine drug offenders (as opposed to dealers who enforce turf with violence or some such) than, say, embezzlers or other white-collar criminals.
Fine them. Put them on community service. Keep them on strict probation. But it seems to me that locking them up punishes society almost as much as it punishes them.
Mind you, I base this less on concern for the liberties of criminals than with the fact that giving someone a bed (admittedly under lousy conditions) and three meals for years on end seems an impractical (and expensive) way to punish wrongdoing.
Of course, I make it sound simple, but it isn’t. For instance — sometimes murderers are not a threat to society. Many murderers are not a threat to anyone except the person they killed, under the specific circumstances under which they killed them.
But how do you reliably divine who is going to kill again, and who is not? So yeah, people who have killed probably have to be locked up for a very long time.
But somebody who sold an ounce of cannabis is not someone we need to house in prison. Where Bud and I disagree is that I believe it SHOULD be illegal, though.
In law school, we used to spend tons of time and wine on the question of punishing killers–is the guy who kills his wife in cold blood to avoid paying alimony worse than the guy who has a temper and goes too far in knocking her around a bit?
Why should marijuana be illegal? It’s no worse than alcohol, and unlike cigarettes, has some proven medical benefits?
If anyone is interested in understanding the distortions and contorted reasoning of Noam Chomsky – “one of the finest minds of the twentieth century” ;-), I strongly recommend “The Anti-Chomsky Reader” (2004, Encounter Books). My favorite chapter is (on account of my own interests) “A Corrupted Linguistics”, in which Robert Levine and Paul Postal take apart his linguistic theories (which prove to be no more honest than anything else he’s ever produced). Here’s a link to the book: http://www.encounterbooks.com/books/antichomskyreader/