2) Abb1:if you’re a conformist who identifies with the US government, ‘the West’ and so on (like our friend pt here)

Hmm, did I miss something?

On the other hand this (2) is a comment from someone whose current hero is Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, so I guess we know his “angle”!

Congratulations, I really didn’t think you had it in you. Don’t backslide now though.

soru

Yes, now when you feel you found some kind of a contradiction where there’s none – now you can rest.

abb1 109: He is a critic who has an angle; you don’t like this angle – go read something else.

I think my work here is done.

soru

To Kamm, the really important point here is that someone reading Chomsky might think that Moynihan was actually gloating over the death toll. Oh, goodness no. He merely assisted the invasion knowing full well what was likely to follow.

Someday I might start up a blog devoted to intellectually and morally honest Chomsky-criticism, just to show what it would look like. He actually is wrong on some things, IMO. Pointing this out doesn’t seem like a very important task, so I probably won’t do it, but when I read threads like this I get the sense there’s a niche that needs filling and up to this point it’s been filled by obsessive Chomsky-hating hacks.

Why, obviously in places like Birma, where they drove the Western powers out. Everybody hated the British.

And what’s your objection to the phrase that “invasion was undertaken with the recognition that it might drive literally millions of people to starvation and death”? Read this: http://www.zmag.org/lakdawalalec.htm

Even before Sept. 11, the UN estimated that millions were being sustained, barely, by international food aid. On Sept. 16, the national press reported that Washington had “demanded [from Pakistan] the elimination of truck convoys that provide much of the food and other supplies to Afghanistan’s civilian population.”
…
The UN World Food Program and others were able to resume some food shipments in early October, but were forced to suspend deliveries and distribution when the bombing began on October 7, resuming them later at a much lower pace. A spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees warned that “We are facing a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions in Afghanistan with 7.5 million short of food and at risk of starvation,” while aid agencies leveled “scathing” condemnations of U.S. air drops that are barely concealed “propaganda tools” and may cause more harm than benefit, they warned.

http://blogs.zmag.org/node/2520

Key claim:

…[T]he invasion was not undertaken to overthrow the Taliban. That was an afterthought, added after three weeks of bombing. The second, and far more important reason [for the invasion], is that the invasion was undertaken with the recognition that it might drive literally millions of people to starvation and death, which makes it a major war crime.

I.E., the American campaign in Afghanistan was knowingly genocidal in purpose.

Among other gems of Chomskyan revisionism in this short piece:

the effect [of Pearl Harbor] was to drive the Western powers out of Asia (which is why Japan received plenty of local support), saving uncountable millions of lives and making it possible for the region to resume economic development after the imperial powers were kicked out.

Plenty of local support? From whom? the Chinese? the Koreans? the Filipinos?

[the U.S.] seriously undermined popular Iraqi efforts to overthrow Saddam from within

Happily, a commenter on the site effectively demolishes this pernicious nonsense, concluding… How many absurdities did Chomsky pack into a couple of paragraphs? I’ve lost count.

As a matter of record, many a war has been won by first sacking an incompetent leader[1].

Leo Amery, 1940, of Chamberlain:
You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go.

soru

1: others have been lost by a complete failure to answer the questions ‘who is our leader? or ‘why do we need a leader anyway?’.

Agreed. My only quarrel is with people who think that abhorring Bush requires embracing Chomsky (or his ilk).