One wonders whether, when Chomsky was asked to speak at Westpoint, he recalled his statement that the Pentagon is "the most hideous institution on this earth" and, if so, whether he made the connection that the Pentagon has always been run by those whose values were shaped at West Point and its fellow service academies.
Late in my cadetship at the Virginia Military Institute, Allen Ginsberg, the Beat poet, was invited to speak at Washington and Lee University, the campus of which adjoins VMI. This was well after the cultural eruptions of the Sixties and sometime after the war in Vietnam had burned itself out. Ginsberg had somehow managed the transition from enfant terrible to eminence grise.
In order to attend the event at W&L's Lee Chapel, cadets were required to leave the Spartan setting of the famous military school wearing a semi-dress uniform of grey tunic, white trousers and spit-shined shoes. We stepped onto the adjoining grounds of the graceful, colonnaded Athens of a Southern school where we proceeded, along with several hundred W&L students, professors, and Lexington, Virginia townies, to pack the chapel in anticipation of the event.
And so it would probably be difficult to guess who would have been more struck by the surreal nature of the event – Ginsberg, chanting the passages of his famous poem "Howl" while sitting not ten feet from the catafalque where the body of Confederate general Robert E. Lee lay in repose, while hundreds of uniformly-dressed military school students sat listening with respectful curiosity; or the cadets themselves, to whom the words
Supercommunist pamphlets in Union Square weeping and undressing while the sirens of Los Alamos wailed them down, and wailed down Wall, and the Staten Island ferry also wailed
may have been somewhat puzzling, or to whom the words
who studied Plotinus Poe St. John of the Cross telepathy and bop kaballa because the cosmos instinctively vibrated at their feet in Kansas
may have seemed a bit arch; although to whom the words
who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of beer a sweetheart a package of cigarettes a candle and fell off the bed, and continued along the floor and down the hall and ended fainting on the wall
may have engendered a certain sympathetic resonance. Whether an inspection of the previously-mentioned catafalque would have revealed a General Lee rotating at a high number of revolutions per minute is a question which will have to remain unanswered for now, but as to the question of who might have felt more out of place – the cadets or Ginsberg – my vote would have to be cast in the direction of the bard of Haight-Ashbury.
I doubt that any of us cadets felt particularly overawed by the event, despite its massively countercultural tincture. For, perhaps more so than anywhere else, cadets at military schools are inculcated with the attitude that there are few points of view not worth considering. This is in keeping with the soldierly notion that a practiced curiosity about the world around one is a valuable tool for the assurance of survival.
Whether Ginsberg may have been flattered to see so many military novitiates giving attention to his inflamed and pulsating lyrics is a hard question to answer, but what he could not have known is that there is always a certain percentage of cadets at any military school who would be happy to spit-polish their shoes and sit through damn near anything in order to escape the confines of barracks life. Indeed, those who chafed under the special strictures of disciplinary room confinement would have been well-versed in the sub-sub-clause of the regulation book which spelled out that attendance at any gathering termed a "cultural event" would serve as an authorized avenue of temporary respite from their in-house detention.
Which brings us to MIT professor of linguistics and anti-Americanism Noam Chomsky and the recent invitation extended to him to speak at the United States Military Academy at West Point.
One wonders whether, when Chomsky was limousined onto the grounds of the great citadel-upon-the-Hudson, he recalled his statement that the Pentagon is "the most hideous institution on this earth" and, if so, whether he made the connection that the Pentagon has always been run by those whose values were shaped at West Point and its fellow service academies. Did he view, then, West Point as the sanctum sanctorum of those "absolutely American" values – I quote Theodore Roosevelt here – for which he has spewed out so much venomous contempt over the decades?
From the news stories I read, Chomsky was treated with respectful courtesy by the four hundred or so cadets, faculty and local civilians who turned out to listen to his talk. Of course, I did not need to read the reports to know that he was not subjected to demonstrations, catcalls, jeers, interruptions, physical assault or any other rude behavior. This is the sort of treatment reserved for conservative speakers invited to speak at rich kids' schools such as Yale or Duke, if they are allowed onto campus at all.
Chomsky's talk was along the usual lines: the American intervention in Iraq constitutes an unjust war, an act of aggression by the United States that most people in the world didn't support. It was as though the fact that Iraq had invaded Kuwait, the fact that Iraq had been thrown out of Kuwait by the United States, the fact that Iraq had been required to abide by terms of an armistice, and the fact that Iraq had violated the terms of that armistice on a wholesale basis were utterly irrelevant to the case.
It was as though the actions of American and British forces on the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944 ought to be labeled as naked aggression, as though nothing that had happened in Europe between 1935 and 1944 were relevant.
There was one point that Chomsky made which was a change from his past statements. He claimed, as he often has, that before the events of December 7, 1941, American journals were publicizing American efforts to produce planes that could burn Japan's wooden cities to the ground. Chomsky has in the past stated, to the outrage of many, that these articles actually justified the attack on Pearl Harbor, in that it was essentially preventive in nature and thus equivalent to American interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
However, at West Point he radically changed his "moral equivalence" tune: "Does that justify Pearl Harbor? Not in ten million years."
It's not too difficult to imagine why Chomsky reversed course. A great deal of it may have to do with the fact that, in the last couple of years, all of the public statements he has made in trying to draw parallels between the events of the Second World War and current events have been subjected to thorough scrutiny and public attack by those who know more about military history than he does. An article published on FrontPageMag.com, written by NYU linguistics professor Paul Postal, goes to great length to show that Chomsky's claim with regard to Pearl Harbor is absurd and bears no relation to the facts.
On the other hand, maybe the Great Dissenter was advised by his booking agent to play to his audience so as not to endanger his speaker's fee. After all, those thousands of dollars he was paid for a few hours of his time, invested in American corporations, as Chomsky is wont to do, could be put to profitable use.
Or maybe there's one other possibility. Chomsky and his ilk talk a lot about standing up for their principles and speaking truth to power. Perhaps they do, but neither he nor his followers have ever put their lives on the line to do it. Their 'champs de bataille' are the classroom, the boulevard, and the public park.
At West Point, one can never escape the presence of those who have put their lives on the line, or are willing to do so. Such people study there, or teach there, or are buried there. It would be awfully difficult to stand before an audience of such people and tell them that America deserved to be subjected to craven and wanton attack.
And so it may just be that, on the hallowed plains of West Point, in the presence of true valor and unstinting heroism, Noam Chomsky finally lost his nerve.
You have misrepresented Chomsky here, but I supposed that is to be expected. Maybe you are simply not capable of understanding the shades of grey that make up the views of this genuine intellectual. In fact maybe you are not capable of seeing any shades of grey whatsoever. I don’t know.
I will leave it to the genuinely open minded and curious to read Chomsky’s work for themselves, before taking the word of a comparatively unintellectual conservative on face value.
Of course by addressing West Point Chomsky is confronting the pawns of our imperialist game, but being a courageous and optimistic fellow he gave it a go anyway. If only our soldiers existed to defend us, and for no other reason, what a beautiful thing that would be.
I am proud to say that I too blame America first, whenever America is to blame. No one, except for right wing Islamic nutcases, think America deserves to be attacked. It’s just that those of us with a brain have done our best to find out why this has happened, above and beyond the standard Fox News sound bites.
If the basic thrust of Chomsky’s main argument is that America often acts in a deceptive, hypocritical and criminal way, then I have to say that I, and a hell of a lot of other people, completely agree. Now America is our home, not China, Russia or Saudi Arabia, and ordinary Americans have always seen it as their duty to stand up against injustice and deception wherever they find it. Conservatives however often attempt to distort anything that is not perceived as serving their interests, and they mock and despise anyone who seems more dedicated to the truth than any one particular country.
Gosh, Max, and here I was trying to be very specific and all you can manage to do is speak in generalities. I said that Chomsky has in the past stated that bombing Pearl Harbor was a good thing, or at least justificable, and when he stands in front of the folks at West Point he wussies out and reverses course. You say I’m not capable of understanding “shades of grey”. I say, What shades of grey? He totally reversed course! He’s not as brave as his little footsoldiers such as you like to pretend that he is. That’s all: inconsistent and easily intimidated. If you think I’m so intellectually inferior to the likes of you, just show me what I missed.
I think Max is obviously not dumb, and even has a bit of a flair for writing. Probably something poncey they taught him at VMI.
Parris Island teaches to eschew flourishes.
I am unaware of the earlier Pearl Harbor comments of Chomsky. Would someone provide a link to the actual Chomsky text which allegedly says the US deserved it?
Let’s say, for sake of argument, that he never really did say it. Let’s say he said something like “Considering that the US was building planes specifically designed to attack the Japanese mainland, it was not unforseeable that the Japanese would attack?”
If he actually said that, it would completely undermine your entire article, wouldn’t it?
A great Senator, Carl Schurz, during America’s imperialism of McKinley and Roosevelt, said “My Country Right or Wrong. When right, keep it right, when wrong, set it right.”
For purposes of comparison, Decatur was strictly unAmerican (he was, after all, a Greek, right?)
Let’s say that Chomsky _did_ reverse course 180 degrees. He’s said so much. Are you so f*cking perfect that you never learned more about a subject and changed your mind? Is one about face in his mind-boggingly large corpus an actual sign of weakness.
For my money, Marx was the best critic of early industrial capitalism, writing in the days when it was dangerous to do so. Even as his litany of symptoms in Das Kapital (Vol I) was accurate, it in no way proves his proscription, communism, was.
In a similar way, Chomsky is a terribly accurate critic of the hypocrisy and immorality of US foreign policy. Does that mean I want America to become anarcho-syndicalist? No. The ability to accurately divine problems is not the same as the ability to propose solutions.
F*ck anyone who says people who complain without proper solutions are out of line.
Here are some links to Chomsky’s previous comments on Pearl Harbor.
http://www.chomsky.info/books/dissent03.htm
http://www.chomsky.info/debates/19671215.htm
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=16201
In the first two links, Chomsky says that he origianlly wrote about it in the 1960s, but I couldn’t find those writings on the web. IF he did in fact write in the ’60s that the attack on Pearl Harbor was justified, well, that’s a dumb position, even a repulsive position. But hopefully if David Horowitz isn’t stuck to what he said 40 years ago, neither is Chomsky. His position in the top two links seems NOT to be saying that the Pearl Harbor attack was justified. Rather, he’s saying that it could be considered justified according to the doctrine of preventive war.
The third link is a David Horowitz piece that is even more full of logical gaps than his usual junk. Most pointedly, he spends a lot of time talking about how the US wasn’t a “real threat” to Japan in the 1940s, and concludes from this that the attack on Pearl Harbor was unilateral aggression. He seems to totally miss the fact that by this logic, the US attack on Iraq counts as unilateral aggression!
Anyway, John, I don’t really see your point, other than “Noam Chomsky might have said some dumb stuff a while ago.” What does that have to do with the problems of the doctrine of preventive war?
RG
Oh, that third link wasn’t actually Horowitz – it was the “article published on FrontPageMag.com, written by NYU linguistics professor Paul Postal, goes to great length to show that Chomsky’s claim with regard to Pearl Harbor is absurd and bears no relation to the facts” that John mentioned in his essay. I think this undermines John’s case even further – John, go back and closely read the paragraph in the article that quotes Chomsky. He’s NOT saying that the UN/Nurenburg doctrine justifies Pearl harbor – he’s clearly saying that the US doctrine of preventive war being okay when you think someone is going to attack you, if taken seriously and to its logical conclusion, would justify Pearl Harbor.
Unless I’m missing something Chomsky has said elsewhere that is out of line with his comments in these three links, it looks like you need to do your research better next time, John.
If this is “intellectual conservative”, it’s no wonder “conservatism” is losing ground in America.
You simply seek above to assassinate the person, not his views. Obviously, you try the former because you can’t touch the latter.
Try analyzing Chomsky’s analogy a bit. You might learn something. You need to.
I actually caught the question portion of Chomsky’s presentation on the tube.
I heard the “never in 10m million years” comment. I also heard alot of other
comments by the man on the subject of Iraq that seemed to be backed by well
researched facts. I am retired military (enlisted) and I have lived some
military history. I also know well how effective military training can be. A unit
must be cohesive and one of the ways to insure that it remains that way is to
label those who lack the right level of commitment with cowardice. I don’t see
Chomsky as a “chicken”. I also don’t believe he backed off because fear of
losing fees or return engagements. Maybe he saw these well trained yet naive
young men and thought he cut them some slack. Maybe he took the gig to try
to cause possibly one young man or woman to entertain some “critical thinking”.
For those of you who are having trouble finding the sources I used, just click on the link to
The Anti-Chomskyan Redoubt (above) and that will take you to the original article, which has hyperlinks to all the articles I refer to. It’s really not a mystery as to what Chomsky said and when he said it.
It’s unmistakable and impossible to refute the fact that Chomsky backed away from his “doctrine” in the presence of a USMA audience – Chomsky’s doctrine being that the U.S. deserved to be attacked at Pearl Harbor.
See below a verbatim quote:
Chomsky: The Japanese could read the US press, with its lurid discussion of how US bombing could exterminate this inferior and vicious race by burning down Japan’s wooden cities, and they knew that flying fortresses capable of bombing Japan from Pearl Harbor and Manila were coming off the Boeing Assembly line, so they “knew” that there was a serious threat of extermination, not just terror. Therefore, according to the “Bush doctrine,” shared by Kerry and elites generally, Japan had every right to bomb Pearl Harbor and Manila. In fact, they had a far stronger case than the one enunciated by Colin Powell, etc.: that “intent and ability” suffice to allow the US to attack a country, committing the “supreme crime” of Nuremberg, which encompasses all the evil that follows-the crime for which any participants, such as the German foreign minister, were hanged.”
Then read Postal’s article which showed what nonsense Chomsky’s statements are.
OK, having read all the comments, I now see why you folks are having a hard time
understanding the point of my article. Let’s see if this helps:
It is simply not true that anyone in either the American or Japanese high commands actually
believed that the US could conduct a devastating bombing campaign from Hawaii, the West
Coast, or anywhere else. It took years for the US to fight its way across the Pacific and set up
air bases. It was not until February 1945 that the US had an emergency landing base (Iwo Jima).
Therefore when Chomsky states that the Japanese would have been justified in pre-emptively
attacking the US because of this threat, then he is simply showing that he doesn’t understand
the logistics of an aerial bombing campaign. That was the point of Postal’s article: to show
that what Chomsky was basing his argument on was impossible. And so there was no
justification of the attack on Pearl Harbor based on “pre-emptiveness”.
Why didn’t Chomsky know these facts sixty or more years after the event? Because he is sloppy
with the facts, and makes them up if necessary. He’s not the “master of the facts” that some people
claim him to be. He also never admits he was wrong. If he’s proven wrong, he’ll adopt a new
position without ever acknowledging that he was mistaken.
And your comments reflect those of typical Chomsky supporters: Neither you nor Chomsky
ever gives the US a break on anything, or tries to put anything in a reasonable context, but when
Chomsky is criticized, you demand that he be cut all the slack in the world.
It’s two-faced as all-get-out. Anyone who refuses to admit that he was mistaken
is a moral coward, and moral cowardice is exactly the quality that Chomsky exhibited at
West Point.
Clear enough for you?
You and your site are clearly an electronic heir to those conservative ideological and political networks of policy journals, think tanks and university chairs who were underwritten a group of conservative multimillionaires (i.e. probably members of the Business Round-table) and subsequent foundations of the 70′s…so, as ha been made clear by previous comments in response to yours, that automatically precludes you from any kind of critical thinking.
What I find absolutely astounding is that Chomsky, America’s leading dissident, would even be asked to speak at West Point. That alone speaks volumes about what seems to be really going on.
In a culture where men are expected to fall on their swords rather then usher a dissenting word against its Governments decision makers (who for all intents and purposes are pro military), it was less about a critical dialogue with a guy whose spent his whole life bashing our government and by extension the hired gun protecting its interests, then an indictment of the Bush Administration and its foreign policy.
I listened to Chomsky’s talk; more was said through the plaque he received then anything he could have possibly uttered, cowardly or not.
Thank you for citing your source as to why you believe the following:
“It is simply not true that anyone in either the American or Japanese high commands actually believed that the US could conduct a devastating bombing campaign from Hawaii, the West Coast, or anywhere else.”
The articles that your source provided proved a very interesting read. Both articles describe in detail how the American bombing resources were being shifted towards the pacific and headed towards bases in the Philippines. According to your sources, there were even B-17s headed to Pearl Harbor on the day of the attack. One of the reasons the harbor was so surprised was because their radar thought the incoming Japanese were the scheduled arrival of the B-17 bombers! How these articles, that describe the re-arming and deploying of our bombers for the Pacific theater could possibly be used as a resource on why we weren’t preparing for a Pacific war should be a dictionary definition of the term “spin”.
Pre-emptive strikes are a funny thing, especially if you are a tiny country like Japan going against a giant like the US. As a super-power like us, a pre-emptive strike is done to minimize damage against an enemy by striking a crippling blow. For a small country to strike out against a much larger one, the decision is not to minimize damage, but to increase the small possibility of survival. The aggressor in either case must be sure that a conflict is unavoidable before making this decision. Of course the discussion of attacking Japan was public and easily accessible to Japanese spies and of course their attack was a pre-emptive one. And if you follow our current justifications for pre-emptive strikes, then of course it is justified. It is the responsibilities of our leaders to execute commands to protect the interests of our nation, but the equally-important responsibility of the intellectuals is to always question and debate these decisions. And, for better or worse, nobody does it better then Noam Chomsky.
My apologies for a 2nd posting but I feel I left out a key point in my last comment. It is important to note that Japan obviously saw the build up of American arms including the before-mentioned B-17s as a threat despite the fact that they did not have enough range to reach the Japanese home islands from the Philippines.
By the end of 1941 Japan had extended its empire through Korea and into China in the west, and the American bases in the Philippines were the only possible opposing force in the expanding Japanese South. There were countless important Japanese targets well within range of the B-17s now that the Japanese empire was in control of most of the eastern Pacific Rim countries. Fire bombing Japan was seen as an end-goal to stop the Japanese empire with the knowledge that military action would be required to get us within striking range. This was of-course before the completion of the Flying Fortress which had almost twice the flight range. Again, sorry for not including this with my original post.
I do know that Noam always refuses police escort, no matter where he speaks.
I would consider that to be very brave. Remember, this guy has many death threats
from the many crazy right loons that seem to become spores in this country.
As usual, Chomsky uses a thought experiment and it is taken out of context, by
an intellectually bankrupt little punk.
The Cadets treated Chomsky with class, because they know that this war is wrong. They can
feel it in their bones.
West Point yawned?
The clapping was great. They applauded him before he talked, after he talked, and after the questions.
It is deceitful to say West Point “yawned.”
Sadly, all but one of the questions seemed to be posed by people who hadn’t actually just sat through the speech!
#10
You seem to be assuming, John, that the Japanese High Command would pay attention to what they knew about actual US plans, compared to what they read in the press and knew about… namely, that planes billed as being able to level Japanese cities were being moved to the West Coast, in range.
He did not say in your quote that this justified Pearl Harbor, he said that it would have justified Pearl Harbor to someone who believed in Bush or Kerry’s theories of pre-emption.
JS Narins, http://www.chomsky.info/books/dissent03.htm is the link to Chomsky’s “Pearl Harbor,” excerpted from his book, Chronicles of Dissent: Interviews with David Barsamian, Common Courage Press, 1992. (http://www.commoncouragepress.com/index.cfm?action=book&bookid=008) .
When I heard Chomsky speak at the University of Virginia, the the that most stuck in my mind was a statement that challenges an accepted world view needs more than a sound bite. As Chomsky ends his interview about Pearl Harbor, “it’s a complicated story.”
I dont know why everyone in this posting is debating what he said about “just war,” “preventive war” or the comparison to Pearl Harbor and us attacking Japan. You people need to wake up and realize why he is using the guise of “preventive war or just war.” He’s using the same lie that Kerry, Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, and the prominent members of the Democratic Party used and are still using in their efforts against the current war in Iraq. Chomsky, like his communist allies, will will bring up and distort historical sayings and ideas to their own agenda. It all comes down to a critique of “white man’s burden” or “America’s imperialist capitalist foriegn policy. Chomsky and the radical left are all part of a much larger web to oppose and restrain America’s military in “justifiably” fighting Vietnam because we were fighting whe one of the main units of their web in the Vietcong to stop the domino effect that communism has. Their efforts have been very clear to fight their anti-american allies under Saddams Baath party regime and the Islamic totalitarians and use the leftist media now to continue this. In order to find out about a speaker you need to look at where he comes from and his stand on other issues. Its pretty easy to identify with his network of socialist from Mao, Castro, Vietnam, Cambodia, and the International Trotskyists, and other likewife nihilists of freedom. I am however for free speech, assembly, and association, and i just wish that the professors talked to the West Point cadets in their classroom and objectively debunked every comment he made (which Im sure was quiet easy)
He was clear as a bell at West Point, Beth, that never in a “million years” did it justify Pearl Harbor to him.
Your link is not to the text, but to a place where I could buy a book which might prove you right. I regret to inform you that I will not do so.
I notice you don’t defend the shameful lying of John Williamson, an allegedly “intellectual” “conservative.” The cadets cheered when Chomsky was done speaking. Loudly.
What I saw and heard was shocking.
Cadets enthusiastically and *cheering* Chomsky at the end of his presentation.
But, somehow, it’s no surprise that you just don’t get it.
A tidal wave is about to wash conservative agenda away, to be relegated to the dustbin of history.
Just keep on yawning.
this is a stupid argument. those of you who seek to disprove a man like chomsky are out of you minds. we are talking about a man who is responsible for the existence of certain fields of psychology (done by using unimaginable linguistic skills). i saw one person try to use a linguistics expert to thwart the argument of the mastermind of linguistics? doubtful… this is a man in which only our society attempts to discredit. some of you sit around talking about national pride and putting your life on the line. is someone who speaks peace going to go to war and put their life on the line? again, doubtful… others of you try to twist his words or fill his mouth with your own. you can call him a commie, an america-hater, a whole multitude of criticisms, but all you will be doing is calling him names with no supporting evidence. you can say he supports the bombing of pearl harbor or once did and i will say you are wrong. what he said is that he can understand why they did it. i am also willing to bet that he made that realization in the 50s or 60s, spoke a little about it, maybe mentioned it in an article or two. but he probably didn’t make the big connection until within the recent years. that’s not a 180 my friends. it is adding to the truth and realizing more. if you want to make fun of him, do so. but if you want to talk about facts, think about what declaring a just war really means and what actions it really takes to do so. if you haven’t already thought about it, you obviously didn’t pay attention during his speech at west point. you will find that there is little official record indicating tangible evidence for us to be at any of the wars we have been in over the last 50 or so years. remember: if we want to go to war over whims, the rest of the world can, too. those of you who see in black in white shouldn’t even attempt to understand the chomsky stance, anyway, so i don’t hold it against you.
I couldn’t hep but chime in here. I don’t consider myself an intellectual (no college education, probably had a B average in English throughout high school…), I’m just a conservative rube. But John, I don’t see any credibility in your attempt to make Noam Chomsky out to be a hypocrite, or to prove he’s ever said that the attack on Pearl Harbor was justified. Perhaps your commentary is satire? If so, then everyone can have a laugh on me, because I didn’t get it. But it’s pretty clear to a rube like me, that nothing that you’ve quoted indicates that Chomsky has ever thought that Pearl Harbor was justified. It’s hard for me to even put it into clearer words than what’s already on this webpage here… but I’ll give it a shot.
John, you say: “It’s unmistakable and impossible to refute the fact that Chomsky backed away from his “doctrine” in the presence of a USMA audience – Chomsky’s doctrine being that the U.S. deserved to be attacked at Pearl Harbor.” Then you give the actual quote from Chomsky to support what you claim (I’ll only requote part of it):
“The Japanese could read the US press, with its lurid discussion of how US bombing could exterminate this inferior and vicious race by burning down Japan’s wooden cities, and they knew that flying fortresses capable of bombing Japan from Pearl Harbor and Manila were coming off the Boeing Assembly line, so they “knew” that there was a serious threat of extermination, not just terror. Therefore, according to the “Bush doctrine,” shared by Kerry and elites generally, Japan had every right to bomb Pearl Harbor and Manila. ”
Surely you must have caught the phrase “Bush doctrine” which was in quotation marks? But you are claiming that Chomsky backed away from *his own* doctrine in his remarks at West Point. Obviously not the case. Chomsky is suggesting that if you subscribe to the “Bush doctrine” (which he obviously does NOT), and if you apply standards universally – to the leaders of all nations, past and present – then Japan was just as justified in attacking Pearl Harbor as Bush was in attacking Iraq. It’s pretty clear to me that Chomsky doesn’t think either was justified. I don’t see any reason to believe that he wouldn’t “in ten million years” (and he’s only 70-something years old) believe that Pearl Harbor was justified. I don’t agree with everything I’ve read from Chomsky, but I do find him to at least be honest. If you can come up with some other quote where Chomsky claims that his own beliefs lead him to think that Pearl Harbor was justified, then by all means post it here so we can really see what a two-faced person he is.
You are so adamant about your point to go on and say: “It’s two-faced as all-get-out. ” And then: “Clear enough for you?”
The only thing I’m unclear about is whether or not your comments are satire…. Incidentally, the entire talk can be watched via a Real audio/video stream here: http://www.booktv.org/ram/feature/0506/btv052706_4.ram . The cadets were very cordial and gave him a warm reaction, particularly at the very end when he was presented with a gift.
Williamson, you are either one of the most intellectually dishonest writers I’ve ever come across, or the most inept. I mean, I hate to use the word ‘stupid’, but seriously, in the quote you use to try and smear Chomsky as originally believing the Pearl Harbour attack to be justified, what part of “according to the ‘Bush doctrine’” don’t you understand?
Here’s the quote again:
Chomsky: Therefore, according to the “Bush doctrine” shared by Kerry and elites generally, Japan had every right to bomb Pearl Harbor and Manila.
Are you seriously claiming that you can not comprehend what he is saying here? In other words, do you seriously believe that Chomsky is arguing from a position of support of the “Bush doctrine”?
Seriously, man, whether you’re a liar or a fool, you certainly have no shame either way.
This is a terrible article.
I’m no defender of Noam Chomsky, and I think his analogizing the Iraq War to Pearl Harbor is foolish. But Williamson does a real disservice here. Other post have already showed how Williamson mischaracterized Chomsky’s initial position and then smugly accused him of recanting.
This article shows why people who don’t read well also don’t write well.
Also, his insinuations about Chomsky not risking his life for his cause are as cheap, vulgar and stupid as the “chickenhawk” accusation opponent of the Iraq War frequently level at its supporters.
Illiteracy, smugness, and dishonesty do not add up to an intelligent critique of Chomsky.
pwned
Hi, the argument regarding Pearl Harbor is truly disturbing, if it really illustrates the intellectual state of conservative theory today. Noam Chomsky has repeatedly stated that the Bush Doctrine could be invoked to justify the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He is most certainly NOT justifying the Bush Doctrine; he is illustrating how absurdly aggressive acts can be justified by invoking it. He is applying the principal of universality to ethical debate. He chose Pearl Harbor because it is one example of an attack that most assuredly should NOT be justified, to show how the doctrine cannot be invoked consistently by sane people. I’ve never before encountered such a ridiculous misinterpretation of his statements.