The Terrorist In The Mirror
Noam Chomsky brings some important facts and analysis to direct light with this piece in Counterpunch.
“Terror” is a term that rightly arouses strong emotions and deep concerns. The primary concern should, naturally, be to take measures to alleviate the threat, which has been severe in the past, and will be even more so in the future. To proceed in a serious way, we have to establish some guidelines. Here are a few simple ones:
(1) Facts matter, even if we do not like them.
(2) Elementary moral principles matter, even if they have consequences that we would prefer not to face.
(3) Relative clarity matters. It is pointless to seek a truly precise definition of “terror,” or of any other concept outside of the hard sciences and mathematics, often even there. But we should seek enough clarity at least to distinguish terror from two notions that lie uneasily at its borders: aggression and legitimate resistance.
If we accept these guidelines, there are quite constructive ways to deal with the problems of terrorism, which are quite severe. It’s commonly claimed that critics of ongoing policies do not present solutions. Check the record, and I think you will find that there is an accurate translation for that charge: “They present solutions, but I don’t like them.”
Suppose, then, that we accept these simple guidelines. Let’s turn to the “War on Terror.” Since facts matter, it matters that the War was not declared by George W. Bush on 9/11, but by the Reagan administration 20 years earlier.
They came into office declaring that their foreign policy would confront what the President called “the evil scourge of terrorism,” a plague spread by “depraved opponents of civilization itself” in “a return to barbarism in the modern age” (Secretary of State George Shultz). The campaign was directed to a particularly virulent form of the plague: state-directed international terrorism. The main focus was Central America and the Middle East, but it reached to southern Africa and Southeast Asia and beyond.
A second fact is that the war was declared and implemented by pretty much the same people who are conducting the re-declared war on terrorism.
on September 12th, 2006 at 2:53 am
AN OPEN LETTER SENT TO PROFESSOR NOAM CHOMSKY
Professor Chomsky,
I understand that you are a busy man - this I appreciate very much.
But if you could find the time to respond to my inquiries, I would be forever indebted to you as I am drastically seeking my own understanding of the world around you, our countrymen, and myself. Any responses will be featured alongside any posts on significant local blogs and media outlets, as likewise I have posted my initial inquiry.
I have read nearly all of your published (and unpublished) works and interviews, and solemnly regret I cannot afford MIT’s tuition rates.
God bless all true Americans,
Alek Mezera
09/11/06
Professor Chomsky,
It is understood by many (if not a majority) that the current administration has lead the American people astray. But further investigation would suggest that The Left is just as responsible for a manipulation of the American experience - via useful applications of the “memory hole” regarding American involvement with terrorist activities in Honduras, South America, Africa, Iraq, and the entire Middle East - beginning in 1979 (or before, depending on who you ask) during the Jimmy Carter administration – when then National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski successfully countered the USSR’s influence in the region with the ironically dubbed “Afghan Trap”. Unfortunately he did so by creating and funding our future Goldstein, Osama bin Laden. The Isrealican Republicratic party, at least throughout the past 60 years, has used corporate media structures and propaganda matrices to continually swing the balance of power from left to right, effectively maintaining polarization and narrow-minded political conflict.
On the fifth anniversary of 9/11, I watched an episode of Keith Olbermann’s “Countdown”, only after watching countless propaganda segments littered with Congressional advertisements regarding which party will keep America safest, and I couldn’t help but contextually interpret Mr. Olbermann’s remarks. He begged no revolutionary questions about the whitewashing of the events surrounding 9/11 by the “9/11 Commission”, the deliberate and thereby planned felling of WTC7 (admitted by the owner of the entire WTC, Larry Silverstein, to be a controlled demolition), or the Fascist implications of post-9/11 American domestic and foreign policies. Rather he chooses to blame the current administration for using 9/11 as a backdrop for photo-ops and television interviews, and doing nothing to honor the dead. Unfortunately, as one watches the segment, the responsible, critical individual and viewer must ask, “…what does Mr. Olbermann’s backdrop represent?” It looked to be a lot like Ground Zero.
So if The Left is touting the inverse of a “Rush Limbaugh”, whom in the world can you trust? If each side of this propaganda polarization spectrum is endorsing a Republicratic candidate, via the mainstream media and corporate public forums, then whom in the world do the American people vote for?
I am not a cynical man when I say that Noam Chomsky will not live forever; I am sure Mr. Chomsky, as any wise man, realizes that all of our days are numbered. I am however cynical when I imagine a world after men like him are gone. I am cynical when I imagine an America controlled by those obsessed with and featured in MTV’s “Sweet 16” and likewise “The Real World”, the “Big Brother 5” viewers, and/or the rabid sports fans. I am disgusted by the culture and the programming I often feel overwhelmed by. I am cynical when I imagine a world run by my generation. Was the American Revolution ever truly won? Or were we merely transformed from a slave state to a corporate state? If this is the case, Mr. Chomsky, I am wholeheartedly and honestly seeking guidance from a much wiser man than myself.
I feel in my heart that the climax is fast approaching.
Should I grab my gun, or my pencil?
Yours truly and without reservation,
Aleksandr David Mezera
on September 13th, 2006 at 8:49 pm
—–Original Message—–
From: Noam Chomsky
Sent: Tuesday, September 12, 2006 10:17 PM
To: Alek Mezera
Subject: Re: On the Fifth Anniversary
I read your thoughtful letter with much interest. I share your concern to gain better understanding of the world we live in — and for my generation, are bequeathing to our children and grandchildren, a painful legacy in many respects.
I’d like to be able to respond to your concerns, but can’t see a way to do so unless they are somewhat more focused. I don’t know exactly who you mean by “the left.” Don’t know who Olbermann is. As for the American revolution, it was quite an ambiguous affair. It’s useful to remember that the first free country of free men was not the US, but rather Haiti, 20 years after the liberation of the American colonies. The Alien and Sedition acts of the federalists were a harsh attack on democracy. And there have been many struggles since to enlarge the scope of freedom and justice — not without reversals, like the present period, but I don’t see any reason for despair.
Noam Chomsky
—– Original Message —–
From: Alek Mezera
To: Noam Chomsky
Sent: Wednesday, September 13, 2006 9:00 PM
Subject: RE: On the Fifth Anniversary
Professor Chomsky,
First, I extend my most sincere gratitude in regards to the timeliness and mere existence of your past response.
Please allow me to narrow my focus. You have said, “Resistance is feasible even for those who are not heroes by nature, and it is an obligation, I believe, for those who fear the consequences and detest the reality of the attempt to impose American hegemony.” I struggle with understanding the most effective avenue for this “resistance.” How can there be any smooth “Fabian” change in course for the American people when any position of influence in this one party system of ours is controlled by the corporate/political/media machine, and misinformation/disinformation increases daily?
And the machine is kicking it up a gear — big telecoms and cable providers are now grabbing (alarmingly effectively, with the help of Congressional malice, complacency and/or incompetence) at the last frontier for free speech and information sharing, the internet. For those that feel a sense of urgency, what can be done? Voting certainly doesn’t sooth my soul.
Again Professor Chomsky, thank you so much for your time thus far.
–
aleksandr david mezera
—–Original Message—–
From: Noam Chomsky
Sent: Wednesday, September 13, 2006 9:37 PM
To: Alek Mezera
Subject: Re: On the Fifth Anniversary
I receive a great many letters like yours from very sincere and admirable people, so I don’t doubt that the sentiments are genuine. Nevertheless, by comparative and historical standards, it’s hard not to see it as a tribute to the success of massive efforts to make people feel hopeless, powerless, alone — efforts that it is a lot easier to resist than torture chambers, secret police, paramilitary terror, and all the rest that people all over the world face, and don’t give up, or even ask what they can do, but rather do it.
No one ever said that opposition to concentrations of power and privilege is going to be easy. But consider how lucky we are in comparison with those who struggled to provide us with the legacy of freedom and privilege that we enjoy, and the vast range of opportunities it provides. Or in comparison, say, with the population of the poorest country in South America, Bolivia, who face incomparably more severe difficulties than we do, but were able to overcome them and to elect someone from their own ranks in an election that had real issues and popular engagement, not just on election day, but constantly. As they all understood, voting in a democratic society is only the culmination of ongoing activities. It’s a lot easier for us than for them, or for our predecessors. If we choose not to become engaged, and we don’t like the outcomes, we have no one to blame but ourselves.
Noam Chomsky