Product Description

Noam Chomsky comments on terrorism, U.S. foreign policy, Osama bin Laden, and the long-term implications of America’s military response.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #356836 in Books
• Published on: 2001-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 128 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781583224892
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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From Library Journal
MIT-based Chomsky revolutionized linguistics in the late Fifties, but for nearly as long he has been better known as an energetic and constructive debunker of American establishment politics and behavior. However, the current Chomsky contributes nothing to the legacy he established decades ago. These two most recent productions do not reveal systematic efforts to sustain or develop any aspect of his prolifically expressed critique; indeed, they are not so much authored as collaged, with Chomsky's sanction, from talks, after-talk Q&As, and interviews with generally converted interlocutors. Understanding Power draws mainly on vintage utterances from the Nineties, and its most penetrating passage takes on, of all pressing matters, literary theory. Chomsky, who is relentless in condemning the media as incapable of any function other than converting the masses to elite desires, just as relentlessly samples mainstream reporting sources for instances of corporate and government ill doings. In trying to illustrate that he is not a crude conspiracy theorist, he conveys the opposite impression. The shorter 9-11 could not have been planned, of course, though it mostly consists of interviews conducted while the calendar still read September, suggesting both the urgency Chomsky felt to get his perspective on the record and his utter disinclination to reexamine any of his cemented opinions about world affairs. Chomsky condemns the attacks specifically and then suggests that the deaths are entirely the responsibility of capitalist globalization, which nonetheless he asserts is irrelevant to the September 11 actors. However, consistency is even less a priority for Chomsky than humility. Apparently, Chomsky believes that he has discovered the concept of blowback, not to mention imbalance in coverage of the perpetual Israeli-Palestinian murder-and-misery fetish. For him, a direct line runs from Reagan's mining of Nicaragua's harbors to the flying of commercial airliners into buildings. 9-11 is a worthwhile purchase for public libraries intent on demonstrating (or risking) balance; Understanding Power is not half as useful as Chomsky's earlier, authentic innovations in political literature, especially Manufacturing Consent (coauthored with Edward Herman). Libraries truly wishing to ensure representation of the most lucid nonconventional opinion should first check that their subscriptions to the Nation a proud carrier of Chomsky for 40 years are current. Scott H. Silverman, Bryn Mawr Coll. Lib., PA
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Review
Chomsky's latest book,..."9-11,"... is a badly needed corrective to news coverage of the present-day "war on terrorism." -- Review by Norman Solomon on Common Dreams website

About the Author
Noam Chomsky is a professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author most recently of Hegemony or Survival, 9/11, and Power and Terror.

Customer Reviews

There is an Alternative
Americans have a right to be mad-as-hell, but no right to bomb-the-hell out of anyone else. Nor do our politicians have the right to declare open-ended war against any country of their choosing. It's hard to keep perspective following an atrocity like the twin towers, but keep perspective we must if we are not to repeat the same slaughter of innocents as the perpetrators of the attack. Applying standards of procedural justice is crucial to a fair and effective reckoning. The atrocity should be treated as a crime against humanity, not as an opportunity to launch aggression against entries on an administration hit-list. As an international crime, the machinery of world justice should be brought to bear on the perpetrators wherever they may be hiding. They should be tried and punished in a world court of law, not in the dog cages of Guantanamo. What's good enough for victims in Kosovo should be good enough for victims in New York. The alternative, to wage war against suspect coutries without clear standards or honest diplomatic effort, will only prolong the suffering, create more enemies, and militarize our society. Is the unhobbled supremacy of Corporate America worth that price.

Chomsky makes the case in clear and consistent terms, refusing at the same time to undergo an historical lobotomy as prescribed by the president. Nor is the irony of an architect of global terrorism declaring war on itself lost on the author. Probably no word in our lifetime is now so exploited as that tortured term. Despite media filtration, there is an alternative, as Chomsky shows, to the present destructive course and its fog of misdirected jingoism. Though a quickie and somewhat disjointed booklet, 9-11 presents the kind of perspective unavailable in the mainstream, and for that reason should be read. The urgency becomes even greater as Bush and Company plot more conquests, more adventures, and more weapons of destruction, leading to who knows where. Though the president and his bullies would force a choosing of sides, there remains a more civilized path. The global community must insist upon it.

Asking the right questions.
Chomsky is disturbing to many people becasue he asks the difficult questions. When most of the U.S. media is focused on retaliation, bombs, attacking Afganistan,then looking for the next area in the world to bomb, Chomsky asks, Who is served by this response. The British govenment did not bomb Belfast in retaliation for the IRA attacks, or Boston, which was the source of most of the IRA funding. More to the point, however, is the history of Nicaragua where the U.S. was obviously the aggressor against a fellow republic and was condemmmed by the World Court for unlawful use of force, i.e., state terrorism. Then the U.S. and Israel vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution calling on the U.S. to desist. It is why the U.S. for the first time in history was not included among states which respect human rights in the last U.N. report. The brutal attack on the helpless population of Afganistan is not an action which shows the U.S. as a nation which respects international law or the integrity of others nations or its peoples. Nor has its purpose, the apprehension of Bin Laden, been accomplished.
Those who find Chomsky disturbing tend to be folks who do not read news or opinions outside the U.S. Dialogue on controversial international subjects tends to be circumscribed by the media in the U.S. and the limits clearly set out. Few students of history have read The Irish Soldiers of Mexico by Michael Hogan or the Open Veins of Latin America by Eduardo Galleano which are required reading for most international students. Both books show a history of U.S. forceful interventions which would certainly make reflective readers see more dimensions and more appropriate responses to terrorism than retaliation which results in the collateral damage of tens of thousands of innocent lives.

Essential background to current war
The only shortcoming of this book is its brevity. Luckily, however, the facts about American foreign policy that Chomsky alludes to here are thoroughly documented in his other work, spanning four decades (_Deterring Democracy_, _The Fateful Triangle_, and _The Culture of Terrorism_, for example). Thin as it is, this pamphlet provides more relevant background to understanding the crimes committed on September 11, 2001, and the current "war on terrorism" and on Afghanistan, than anything else published so far on these tragic events. As Chomsky persuasively demonstrates, the United States is no more engaged in a war on terrorism now than it was 20 years ago, when a different administration was pioneering today's foreign policy rhetoric. What we are engaged in is a war on those terrorists who oppose American interests, and it is not even clear that the methods chosen are effective to that end. If we are seriously interested in preventing a repetition of the 9-11 attacks, or worse things to come, then it is imperative that we look to the reasons why the United States is almost universally hated in the arab and Islamin world, and this implies certain very concrete changes that we should make in our policy toward the Middle East, such as ceasing our support for Israel's system of apartheid and lifting the genocidal sanctions on Iraq. Noam Chomsky is one of the leading experts on US Middle East Policy and especially the Palestinian question, so it is clear why he has a lot to say on these matters, and why we should listen to what he says carefully.