MIT linguistics professor and political activist Noam Chomsky is most recently known for references to his book by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's "Satan was here" speech to the United Nations. No stranger to stirring up controversy, his book Counter-Revolutionary Violence was pulled off the presses during the Vietnam War. But he just might top that one with his recent interview for the Excalibur Online, a publication of York University, Canada, where Chomsky affirms that by the very definition used by US officials, America is a "major sponsor of terrorism." As an example, he cites the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, where the Reagan administration funded and trained some of the most radical extremists it could find.
Has Noam, known for his extremely critical view of American foreign policy, gone too far? Will future generations agree with Chomsky's view, given the fact that the United States only recently (mid 20th century) eliminated racial segregation and was responsible for coining the phrase "the only good Indian is a dead Indian," while conducting a near genocide of its own indigenous people? Can a nation withstand such brutal honesty when it comes to its actions?
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Chomsky is an Idiot... by LordDilly :: NR8 :: Show
... or liar...
"If a serious study…is someday undertaken, it may well be discovered…that the Khmer Rouge programs elicited a positive response…because they dealt with fundamental problems rooted in the feudal past and exacerbated by the imperial system.… Such a study, however, has yet to be undertaken."
~~1979 After the Cataclysm
"...there are many other sources on recent events in Cambodia that have not been brought to the attention of the American reading public. Space limitations preclude a comprehensive review, but such journals as the Far Eastern Economic Review, the London Economist, the Melbourne Journal of Politics, and others elsewhere, have provided analyses by highly qualified specialists who have studied the full range of evidence available, and who concluded that executions have numbered at most in the thousands; that these were localized in areas of limited Khmer Rouge influence and unusual peasant discontent, where brutal revenge killings were aggravated by the threat of starvation resulting from the American destruction and killing."
~~1977 article from ''The Nation."
"...in comparison to the conditions imposed by US tyranny and violence, East Europe under Russian rule was practically a paradise."
~~ Letter reprinted in Alexander Cockburn, The Golden Age Is In Us (Verso, 1995), pp149-51.
"Also relevant is the history of collectivization in China, which, as compared with the Soviet Union, shows a much higher reliance on persuasion and mutual aid than on force and terror, and appears to have been more successful."
~~2002 American Power and the New Mandarins p137
"In a phenomenon that has few parallels in Western experience, there appear to have been close to zero retribution deaths in postwar Vietnam. This miracle of reconciliation and restraint... has been almost totally ignored."
~~ 1979 The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism
"The United States and Britain fought the war, of course, but not primarily against Nazi Germany. The war against Nazi Germany was fought by the Russians… you have to ask yourself whether the best way of getting rid of Hitler was to kill tens of millions of Russians. Maybe a better way was not supporting him in the first place, as Britain and the United States did."
and
"By Stalingrad in 1942, the Russians had turned back the German offensive, and it was pretty clear that Germany wasn’t going to win the war. Well, we’ve learned from the Russian archives that Britain and the US then began supporting armies established by Hitler to hold back the Russian advance. Tens of thousands of Russian troops were killed. Suppose you’re sitting in Auschwitz. Do you want the Russian troops to be held back?"
~~ March 31, 2003 The New Yorker
"I see no antisemitic implications in denial of the existence of gas chambers, or even denial of the holocaust."
~~ 1981 Quadrant
... so you'll excuse me if I don't really believe anything he says about the US as being "honest." Especially the part where Noam asserts that "the Reagan administration funded and trained some of the most radical extremists it could find." To recap history, CIA funding was funneled through the Pakistanis directly to the Afghan mujahideen, not the Arab volunteers and adventurists. Funny how Noam has no problem with the Soviets (his old drinking buddies) invading Afghanistan, but has a huge problem with the US helping the Afghanis fight back. Not to mention ol' Noam once said in 1971 "If it were true that the consequences of not using terror would be that the peasantry in Vietnam would continue to live in the state of the peasantry of the Philippines, then I think the use of terror would be justified." ~~ Dissent, Power, and Confrontation So I guess we can also add hypocrite to the list.