Chomsky's Half-Truths

by Leo Casey

There are two fundamental problems with Chomsky's responses to the World Trade Center mass murders.

The first problem regards the immediate statement he sent out by e-mail and then was widely circulated throughout the Internet. That statement captured the impulse of Chomsky's response: the first sentence condemned the acts, and then, without even so much as an expression of sympathy to the loved ones of the dead and wounded, as well as the survivors, the second sentence noted that the United States had committed acts which were of a more serious nature, using the bombing of the Sudanese pharmaceutical factory as an illustration.

It is vital to examine closely the rhetorical dimension of this form of a statement. It takes the classic "Yes, this is true, but..." form, in which the reader/hearer knows right away that what follows the "but" is the important part of the statement. What Chomsky immediately drew our attention to, following the WTC mass murders, was not the deeds themselves, but what he considered to be worse -- American acts. As one friend noted, this has all the sensitivity of putting up a picket line at a funeral.

What was worse was that the example Chomsky selected -- the bombing of the factory in the Sudan -- was most unfortunate. While that bombing was based on apparently faulty information that the factory was manufacturing chemical weapons, and need not be excused, it was also clearly undertaken at a time and in a way designed to minimize the loss of human life -- one night watchman died. But in hyperbolic exaggeration, Chomsky asserted that such an action was worse than the WTC mass murders, which was undertaken at a time and in a way to maximize the loss of innocent life, taking over 6000 at latest count, because untold thousands had died as a result of the loss of medicine. [As if medicine, unlike human life, could not be replaced. And the medicine produced at the factory were, by the Sudanese own account, standard antibiotic and anti-malarial medicines which could be replaced.]

What is apparent from this example and the way he used it is Chomsky's inability to maintain any reasonable perspective on American foreign policy, or to strike any reasonable balance with regard to the misdeeds of all actors on the world stage.

The second problem regards Chomsky's interview  In it, he recounts, with detail and precision, the wrongdoing in American foreign policy that might have motivated bin Laden's Al Qaeda terrorism network to commit mass murder in New York City and Washington DC on the 11th of September. There is half of a truth here: uncritical American support for the Sharon government in Israel and the blockade of Iraq almost certainly contributed to their antipathy to America. But it is, at best, a half-truth: Chomsky manages to avoid every possible motivation of Al Qaeda that would be to the credit of the United States, ignoring the significance of the appellation the 'great Satan' given to the US. There is no mention of the theocratic totalitarianism, put into practice by the Afghani Taliban and Sudanese sponsors of Al Qaeda, with the destruction of Bhuddist shrines and the compulsory forms of public identification [a new yellow 'Star of David'] for non-Moslems. No mention of death sentences for gay people and those who have sex outside marriage. No mention of splashing acid in the faces of women who do not wear veils, or outlawing women from all public life, including schools. No mention of the enslavement of the non-Moslems of the southern Sudan by the Sudanese state and Moslem fundamentalist leaders of northern Sudan. No mention of the complete abolition of freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, freedom of press, freedom of expression, equality before the law and due process of law.

Nor does Chomsky manage to deal with the fact that a final status peace settlement between Israel and Palestine would make it more -- not less --likely that Al Qaeda would engage in terrorism, since its goal is not a peace settlement, but the destruction of the Israeli state and the elimination of its people. In short, if the US and Israel were doing the right thing, the likelihood would be greater terror from Al Qaeda. 

Christopher Hitchens' turn of phrase "fascism with an Islamic face" captures a reality of Al Qaeda that explains a great deal of its antipathy toward the US, a reality with Chomsky manages to ignore. His truth is a half-truth.

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