Mystery interviewee

Lol.

I can honestly say that this is the first time I have been on the receiving end of a charge of unwillingness to criticise Noam Chomsky.

Not “criticise” – to say a bad word, you idiot.

Interesting Freudian in the misspelling of Chomsky. “Nim Chimpsky” was a chimpanzee taught to use words in a linguistics experiment in the 1970s.

Actually, Chomsky is an anarchist. That’s exactly the opposite of totalitarianism.

Jet, that’s plain daft:

“Reading Chomsky’s political viewpoints McGonagall’s doggerel is enough to make anyone on the right a mindless hater of all those on the left Scottish poets.

Makes as much sense.

What makes Chomsky special is that he’s (rightfully) so damned widely respected in academia for his contributions. But let’s not make this about Chomsky. My point was that Jamie Glazov’s brain was fried because he’s focused only on the nuts on the left, with their horrifying support of unheard of evil that was communism in the 20th century. I was that way too until I came to CrookedTimber and learned that the left wasn’t full of foaming at the mouth, post-Enlightenment, kill-liberty-in-the-name-of-equity, socialists.

‘I am not sure it is correct to state Chomsky has an ideology, what he has is more of a job description, or career path.’

Well Chomsky is now retired (or at least semi-retired), so his books and interviews are clearly not going to affect his career (or job description) any more. But are you suggesting that Chomsky’s primary (or perhaps sole) motivation for writing his political books is money?

What makes Chomsky special is that he’s (rightfully) so damned widely respected in academia for his contributions.

Jet, you’re obviously not a linguist. Well, you might be one, in Boston. Chomsky is as likely to be reviled for his linguistics as praised these days. If Chomsky’s politics drive you nuts, I recommend a glance at The Minimalist Program.

I was that way too until I came to CrookedTimber and learned that the left wasn’t full of foaming at the mouth, post-Enlightenment, kill-liberty-in-the-name-of-equity, socialists.

You’ve lived a sheltered life. Even growing up with foaming-at-the-mouth socialist parents, I still knew that most conservatives were just people trying to keep ahead of their bills like the rest of us.

Neil, fair enough. He made some substantial contributions to our understanding of formal grammars. I wouldn’t go overboard about it though – he’s not up there with luminaries like Turing & Church, McCarthy, or Knuth.

Chomsky’s transformational grammars have been all-but abandoned as a model for human languages.

That is true only in a very limited sense. Of course Chomsky’s model (as the one he specifically designed) have been abandonned (not surprising, he devised them 50 years ago) but the line of thinking he initiated is still very much alive and dynamic. For this reason, I believe it is an understatement to say that “he made some substantial contributions to our understanding of formal grammars”. He is one of the greatest linguist of all time.

Likewise, Weil’s Foundations of Algebraic Geometry have been abandonned (much more completely than Chomsky’s models, and that’s an understatement) but that doesn’t stop him being one of the greatest mathematician of all time. Ditto for De Broglie’s model of quantum mechanics etc.

“En sciences seulement peut-on brûler ce que l’on adore” or so Bachelard said, I believe…

Reading Chomsky’s political viewpoints is enough to make anyone on the right a mindless hater of all those on the left.

Amen to that. And he might have added, “Mindlessly unwilling to reject or oppose Bush’s destructively inept fanaticism”.

‘I am not sure it is correct to state Chomsky has an ideology, what he has is more of a job description, or career path.’

As often, I’m not sure what the fuck soru is trying to say. His career path is linguistics, where he’s an icon. His politics is mostly self-financed, I’m pretty sure.

I was that way too until I came to CrookedTimber and learned that the left wasn’t full of foaming at the mouth, post-Enlightenment, kill-liberty-in-the-name-of-equity, socialists.

Everyone’s flattered, obviously, but if the last part is supposed to apply to Chomsky then you apparently know nothing about what his views actually are.

He never retracted his 1979 writings about the Khmer Rouge because he was careful to leave all possibilities open–he said they might have only killed thousands (as apparently the French Resistance did after WWII, according to some) or they might have killed on a genocidal scale. Chomsky himself seemed to lean towards a middle (and too low) figure at the time, judging from the fact that he said the killings in East Timor and Cambodia were on the same scale. Turns out they were on the same per capita scale, but Cambodia is ten times bigger. His main point, which was correct and virtually ignored by all his critics, is that the Western press paid a great deal of attention to the atrocities in Cambodia and very little to the atrocities in East Timor, where the US and other Western countries were supporting Indonesia.

Since about 1980 Chomsky has referred to the Cambodian genocide under Pol Pot pretty much like everyone else.

It is always a highlight of my day when I get to be the first poster to refer to Chomsky as a “cunning linguist”.

“cunning linguist”

*groan!* You realise that’s only the four or five hundredth time I’ve heard that one. Thank God puns don’t translate.

Next, someone’s going to mention how the titles of all of Chomsky’s key linguistics books (Government and Binding, Barriers, Minimalism) sound oppressive.

Also, as far as I can tell, mention of the “cunning linguist” pun is strictly taboo among linguists. It’s so hackneyed that among ourselves we refuse to acknowledge its existence, even if only to say how hackneyed it is.

Going on from what Steve said, what scares me most about the Chomsky haters is the charges of treason, “hating America” or intellectual dishonesty which are invariably implied. This is an inability to respond rationally (what Brad Delong calls his “allergic reaction” to Chomsky) and in good faith, to serious criticism. It is a distinctive aspect of the currect US political culture and it is a dangerous malaise.

Also, is it possible that what winds up “libertarians” about Chomsky is that he is a real anarchist rather than a Herbert Kornfeldesque wannabe?

Chomsky’s biggest failing is he loves America too much. His is the most resilient of patriotic illusions, that some day Americans will be granted a fresh start in the world. You call that Jewish?

is main point, which was correct and virtually ignored by all his critics, is that the Western press paid a great deal of attention to the atrocities in Cambodia and very little to the atrocities in East Timor, where the US and other Western countries were supporting Indonesia.

The claim being made by the person I’m specifically disagreeing with was not merely that Chomsky was _sometimes_ right, but that his method of analysis, correctly applied, would _always_ produce useful results.

Horoscopes are right _sometimes_.

As, to simplify only slightly, his method consists of saying ‘look, he is a politician, his lips are moving, he is lying’, it should not surprising that that claim doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. For example, it produced basically the same analysis of the Suharto-era genocide of East Timor as of the later Australian-led UN intervention. Both involved elected politicians making speeches advocating a particular policy, with that policy being selected according to unmentioned economic and strategic goals and constraints, and with both speeches using much of the same phrases, the same terminology.

I don’t think a Chomskian analysis could detect a difference even in principle between those two cases.

cue Chomsky-disciples: ‘but they are the same, Chomsky proved it’

cue Kamm: only by ommitting the word ‘not’ in a quotation from a speech given by the australian deputy cultural attache to Sweden in 1976.

(debate continues for 364 posts, none of which mentions the people of Timor again).

soru

Also, as far as I can tell, mention of the “cunning linguist” pun is strictly taboo among linguists. It’s so hackneyed that among ourselves we refuse to acknowledge its existence, even if only to say how hackneyed it is.

The last time I was confronted with it (at a Scrabble tournament), it was quite fortunate for me that the offender was a professional pianist.

Pithlord, your attacks on Chomsky are probably more effective with people who, unlike me, haven’t read most of his political writings. You’re right that he’s never taken back what he said in the 1979 book, and I already dealt with that in the previous post. But he didn’t say that the people “had it coming”–instead, he said the Khmer Rouge were guilty of serious and gruesome atrocities.

As for “Manufacturing Consent”, I own the late 80’s edition and in it he explicitly refers to the Khmer Rouge atrocities as genocide. He also refers to the earlier period of American bombing as genocidal, but on a somewhat lesser scale. He uses the somewhat lower estimate of Michael Vickery (700,000 excess deaths under the Khmer Rouge) to the more widely accepted (and I presume more accurate) figure of 1.7 million that Ben Kiernan gives, but it would sort of weaken the claim that Chomsky defended the Khmer Rouge once people realize it boils down to a statistical argument of 700,000 vs. 1.7 million.
He does rehash the press criticisms he made in the late 70’s–to me this has always been among the weakest portions of his overall critique of the press, since in the end the mainstream press did get the essential fact of what happened in Cambodia in the late 70’s correct. He’d do better to stick to criticism of how poorly they covered East Timor.

Chomsky is far from perfect, IMO, but he’s also pretty far from resembling the caricature his critics usually paint of him.

Soru, I might reply if I had any idea what you’re saying. But maybe I wouldn’t. Chomsky-bashing is so boring and so beside the point. What I usually do these days is never cite the man at all, because there’s no need to. You don’t need Chomsky to show US policy in Southeast Asia was immoral, you don’t need him to show that US policy in Latin America was immoral, you don’t need him to show US policy in Africa was immoral (and a good thing too, because he’s never written much about Africa) and you don’t need him to show that US policy in the Mideast was and is immoral. And with the advent of blogs, you don’t need him to get an alternative perspective from the mainstream press. A lot of us first learned to distrust the mainstream press and our government by reading him, but he’s just not that central or necessary for us leftwing moonbats anymore.

You shining wit.

As regards the Khmer Rouge, a number of Western governments

A comparison between “Western governments” and « Notre Prophète Noam » ? Quel blasphême! (Benedictum Nomen Sanctum eius.) I’m off to torch the Australian consulate!

. A lot of us first learned to distrust the mainstream press and our government by reading him, but he’s just not that central or necessary for us leftwing moonbats anymore.

That was pretty much what I was saying – it’s only abb1 around here that is a chomskybot.

Don’t mistake my occasional attempts to deprogram him with a generalised attack on people who are not.

With you, I am sure I could have an entirely different argument:-0

soru

As, to simplify only slightly, his method consists of saying ‘look, he is a politician, his lips are moving, he is lying’, it should not surprising that that claim doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

You have a peculiar use of slightly, soru. What Chomsky says (not only him incidently) is that vast systems of concentrated power should be expected to distort the truth in their interests. In particular, their claim of benevolent intents should be considered with extreme suspicion. That seems to be a truism to me, and it is massively backed up by evidence. Thus, “whenever you hear anything said very confidently the first thing that should come to mind is, wait a minute, is that true?”. Another truism to me.

but that his method of analysis, correctly applied, would always produce useful results

That you should be reflexively suspicious of any statement coming from someone in a position of authority is certainly a method of analysis that has produced magnificent results in the scientific field. I don’t see why it shouldn’t work in others.

Is Chomsky a genius in political sciences? No, he is a clear and consistent thinker, that’s all. He is also quite enjoyable to listen to. And he is a superb linguist.

That seems to be a truism to me

To you, to me, to probably 99% of Kansas second year students. They were certainly the first political books I ever read.

No, he is a clear and consistent thinker, that’s all.

By that, I assume you means he agrees with you.

To drag things back on topic, see if you still have that opinion of him after reading a few choice details from:
http://oliverkamm.typepad.com/blog/

Chomsky is to leftist politics as Velikovsky is to planetary science. It looks like it, but it is not it.

soru

No, he is a clear and consistent thinker, that’s all.
By that, I assume you means he agrees with you.

Well, some of us are capable of recognizing a consistent thinker even if this person disagrees with us. To substantiate my claim, I believe (from the limited knowledge I have of his works) that Samuel Huntington is a consistent thinker. I happen to disagree with his thesis. Same with, say, Robert Nozick, Émile Durkheim, Ernst Cassirer, you name it.

I followed your link to Oliver Kamm blog but no critic of Chomsky was apparent on the front page (to be fair, they were remarks about his linguistics, but this is the natural an expected course of science, one day, Chomsky’s model will be as completely forgotten as Weil’s Foundations are now). If you have a clear and precise critic, I assume you can make it for yourself anyway. But I will reiterate Donald Johnson’s warning: I have actually read some of Chomsky’s books, so saying that he is an apologist for dictators will not be enough.

“Beacoup de choses deviennent plus claires si l’on fait l’hypothèse que les gens ne lisent pas” as Pierre Bourdieu used to say, with his usual sarcasms.

I have actually read some of Chomsky’s books, so saying that he is an apologist for dictators will not be enough.

Z, try this:

http://oliverkamm.typepad.com/blog/2006/01/chomskys_selfre.html

Thanks for the link pt. If I understand correctly, Kamm accuses Chomsky of taking remarks out of their context and Chomsky then provided the context (in the link given by abb1). I would need to read the full text in discussion to form a correct opinion, but from this very limited material, it is Kamm and not Chomsky that appears to be imprecise in his quotations.

@soru “his state, hence his complicity”. This might be due to my imperfect command of the english language, but it seems reasonnable to me that “his” is in reference to Moynihan, not Kamm, as Moynihan is the reference of him and his in the two prior occurences of this pronoun while Kamm is always referred as Kamm (and is referred to between commas). That’s how I understood the sentece anyway. But let us suppose you were right and Chomsky referred to Kamm as an American while he is not (I assume he is not, I don’t know him). So that is a mistake, but not a very serious one, I daresay I hope you can produce something a bit more substantial.

Should I provide an example? Chomsky seems to endorse the view that organized power systems reflect the interest of the elite. If this is true, then why are political systems so widely different around the world? That I believe is a serious shortcoming of what I know of his work. The question of who said what in an exchange of letters to Prospect is not.

Z, I find myself unable to follow your point: “Chomsky seems to endorse the view that organized power systems reflect the interest of the elite. If this is true, then why are political systems so widely different around the world?” Animal physiology, to give one example, reflects the need of animals to eat and avoid being eaten. All animals share those needs, including us. There are millions of possible forms which meet those needs. And there are lots of ways to exercise power.

Anyway, I was searching for material on Chomsky’s views on the Khmer Rouge and came across The Chorus and Cassandra:

Still, Chomsky was unmistakably on the left, though he scorned the sectarians and the know-alls. In those days [1969], also, you could read him everywhere; his name had a kind of cachet. He was interviewed with respect on television and radio, though more often abroad than in America. He was a seminal contributor to The New York Review of Books. His predictions about a widening of the Indochina war, and a consequent narrowing of the choices between a Sovietization of the peninsula and an utter devastation of it, now seem almost banal in their accuracy. Nineteen sixty-nine was before Nixon’s “madman theory,” before Kissinger’s “decent interval,” before the Christmas bombing, the Church Committee, the “plumbers,” and all the rest of it. Tumultuous as it seemed at the time, the period in retrospect appears an age of innocence. The odd thing — and I wonder why it didn’t occur to me more forcefully then — was that, the more Chomsky was vindicated, the less he seemed to command “respect.” To the extent that I reflected about this at all, I put it down to shifts in fashion (“Chomsky? — a sixties figure”), to the crisis undergone by many superficial antiwar commentators when the American war was succeeded by Spartan regimes (of which more later), and to the fact that Chomsky had started to criticize the Israelis, seldom a prudent course for those seeking the contemplative life.

Xxxxx Xxxxxxx and Peter Collier were wrong, in the syndicated article announcing their joint conversion to neoconservatism, to say that Chomsky hailed the advent of the Khmer Rouge as “a new era of economic development and social justice.” The Khmer Rouge took power in 1975. In 1972, Chomsky wrote an introduction to Dr. Malcolm Caldwell’s collection of interviews with Prince Norodom Sihanouk. In this introduction, he expressed not the prediction but the pious hope that Sihanouk and his supporters might preserve Cambodia for “a new era of economic development and social justice.” You could say that this was naive of Chomsky, who did not predict the 1973 carpet-bombing campaign or the resultant rise of a primitive, chauvinist guerrilla movement. But any irony here would appear to be at the expense of Xxxxxxx and Collier. And the funny thing is that, if they had the words right, they must have had access to the book. And if they had access to the book…. Well, many things are forgiven those who see the error of their formerly radical ways.

The blanked out name is of course Dr Glazov’s colleague and the proprietor of FrontPage, David Horowitz. The author is Christopher Hitchens.

All that the man does is compile facts reported on page 7 in the newspaper.

Fifi, as Kamm and others have repeatedly shown, what Chomsky does is pretend to compile facts. When anyone tries to check those facts, he finds them to have been misrepresented, distorted or simply fabricated. Chomsky relies on people being too lazy to check. It’s only recently, with the availability of easy fact-checking via the Internet, that the scale of Chomsky’s deceptions has become apparent.

Z:

Are you being obtuse?

1. Kamm quoted Chomsky as saying “what is needed [in the US] is a kind of denazification.”

2. Chomsky claimed that his words were taken out of context, and that what he really said was: “We have to ask ourselves whether what is needed in the US is dissent or denazification”.

3. So Kamm went to the trouble of quoting the entire passage, in which, after posing the rhetorical question above, he concludes (as Kamm said at the start): “To me it seems that what is needed is a kind of denazification.”

For other CT readers, here is the entire argument, as meticulously chronicled by Kamm:

The full quotation runs: “We have to ask ourselves whether what is needed in the United States is dissent or denazification. The question is a debatable one. Reasonable people may differ. The fact that the question is even debatable is a terrifying thing. To me it seems that what is needed is a kind of denazification.” Chomsky quotes only the first sentence, suggesting agnosticism on whether the US needed “denazification,” and omits the fifth, where he makes precisely that judgement. He withholds this information from Prospect’s readers to complain baselessly of misquotation. “The world’s top public intellectual responds to accusations of dishonesty,” indeed.

Here is the link, once again:

http://oliverkamm.typepad.com/blog/2006/01/chomskys_selfre.html

I don’t normally do ‘Chomsky defending’ but work is particularly dull at the moment so WTF.

Anyway, just so we can avoid the problem of ‘misquoting’ let’s hear all of what Kamm has to say.

‘I shall deal only with Chomsky’s dishonesty. These posts slightly repeat each other in the opening; that is because I wish them to stand independently, as I hope one of them at least (the third) will be widely circulated around the Internet and in print. The reason should be obvious when you read it: in responding to a charge of dishonesty in his use of source materials, Chomsky has – in all the absurdly self-defeating places to do it – told an easily-demonstrable fib, and I do not wish him to get away with it.

Chomsky writes:

To demonstrate “a particularly dishonest handling of source material,” Kamm alleges that, “[Chomsky] manipulates a self-mocking reference in the memoirs of the then US ambassador to the UN… to yield the conclusion that Moynihan took pride in Nazi-like policies.” The topic is Indonesia’s 1975 invasion of East Timor, condemned by the security council, which ordered Indonesia to withdraw, to no effect. Moynihan explains why: “The US wished things to turn out as they did, and worked to bring this about. The department of state desired that the UN prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. This task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success.” He then refers to reports that within two months 60,000 people had been killed, “10 per cent of the population, almost the proportion of casualties experienced by the Soviet Union during the second world war”—at the hands of Nazi Germany. His comparison, not mine, as Kamm pretends.
I make no defence of US acquiescence in the annexation of East Timor. In my original article, I commented that this was an issue on which Chomsky’s advocacy in the 1970s had been right, and in my book Anti-Totalitarianism I refer to East Timor as an instance where “the pursuit of a stable balance of power [in US Cold War realpolitik] had some horrendous casualties”. The casualties of the Indonesian conquest numbered some 50,000 deliberately killed and a similar number dead owing to “resettlement” policies – fewer than Chomsky says, but an appalling historical episode nonetheless. [This estimate, taking account of population statistics, is given by Robert H. Cribb, “How Many Deaths? Problems in the Statistics of Massacre in Indonesia (1965-66) and East Timor (1975-1980)”, in Ingrid Wessel and Georgia Wimhofer, eds., Violence in Indonesia, 2001, pp. 82-98.’

There is then some extraneous material and Kamm then continues:

‘The passage Chomsky quotes by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, US Ambassador to the UN under President Nixon, comes from Moynihan’s memoir, A Dangerous Place, 1978, p. 247. Here it is, expanded:

[S]uch was the power of the anticolonial idea that great powers from outside a region had relatively little influence unless they were prepared to use force. China altogether backed Fretilin [a Marxist group that had seized power] in Timor, and lost. In Spanish Sahara, Russia just as completely backed Algeria, and its front, known as Polisario, and lost. In both instances the United States wished things to turn out as they did, and worked to bring this about. The Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. This task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success.
It is clear from this context what Moynihan is referring to when he says “the United States wished things to turn out as they did”: the defeat of Chinese and Soviet clients in, respectively, Timor and Spanish Sahara. ‘

Now, what Kamm is saying here is that Moynihan believed that Fretilin (i.e. the Timorese resistance) were Maoist totalitarians, paid for by the Chinese. Moreover he strongly implies that he agrees with Moynihan.

Has Kamm ever offered any evidence for this extraordinary statement?

Moreover, despite his pious talking about mistakes, if anyone knows anything about Kamm it is that he is the self-proclaimed leader of the ‘anti-totalitarian’ left. Therefore, since China at that time was unquestionably totalitarian, presumably to oppose totalitarianism was to oppose Chinese ‘clients’. Therefore, presumably, Kamm agrees with Moynihan that Indonesia did the right (i.e. anti-totalitarian) thing in conquering East Timor in order to defeat the terrifying might of Fretilin Maoism.

Or am I missing something here?

(Incidentally, here is another telling of the story: ‘After 400 years as an impoverished outpost of the Portuguese empire, East Timor opened a stormy new chapter in its history in 1974. In April of that year, a cartel of left-leaning generals overthrew the Portuguese dictator Marcelo Caetano in Lisbon. The new regime made it known that it would free the remaining scraps of Portugal’s once-extensive colonial empire: Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bassau, and East Timor.

In anticipation of independence, two major political parties quickly emerged in East Timor: the Timorese Democratic Union (UDT) and the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor (FRETILIN). In January 1975, the two parties formed a coalition and prepared for statehood.

Sadly, Indonesia, East Timor’s powerful neighbor, had other plans. Directed by military leaders who were determined to control East Timor, Indonesian agents sabotaged the region’s peaceful progress toward independence. In May 1975, Indonesian operatives persuaded the UDK to withdraw from the coalition. In August, convinced that any independent East Timorese regime which included the leftist FRETILIN would not be permitted by its Indonesian neighbors, the UDT seized power.

FRETILIN fought back. Supported by the majority of East Timorese civilians, it quickly gained control. UDT forces and their families (about 2,500 refugees) were driven over the border into Indonesian West Timor. During the fighting, the last remaining Portuguese administrators fled. ‘)

http://www.motherjones.com/news/special_reports/east_timor/dossier/

Not only ommiting the context, but also misrepresenting his reaction to the Nazi-style museum exhibit as the “diagnosis … central to Chomsky’s political output”.

Ah, yes, we’ve already had Abb1; was wondering how long it would take for Brendan to come to Chomsky’s “rescue”:

One last example (from Kamm of Dec.12, 2005)I make no defence of US acquiescence in the annexation of East Timor. In my original article, I commented that this was an issue on which Chomsky’s advocacy in the 1970s had been right, and in my book Anti-Totalitarianism I refer to East Timor as an instance where “the pursuit of a stable balance of power [in US Cold War realpolitik] had some horrendous casualties”. The casualties of the Indonesian conquest numbered some 50,000 deliberately killed and a similar number dead owing to “resettlement” policies – fewer than Chomsky says, but an appalling historical episode nonetheless. [This estimate, taking account of population statistics, is given by Robert H. Cribb, “How Many Deaths? Problems in the Statistics of Massacre in Indonesia (1965-66) and East Timor (1975-1980)”, in Ingrid Wessel and Georgia Wimhofer, eds., Violence in Indonesia, 2001, pp. 82-98.] My political criticism of Chomsky on this issue is not that he condemned the invasion and publicised its consequences – he was right to do so – but that he has ever after used the case of East Timor as one of (in the words of Francis Wheen) “an inexhaustible hoard of analogies and precedents that allow him to avoid the immediate issue” – such as the urgency of Western intervention to stop genocide in the Balkans. My criticism of him in this post, however, concerns his use of source material.

Read what follows (or read the voluminous debunking of Chomsky done not only by Kamm but by Brad DeLong [http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/archives/000155.html], Shalom Lappin [http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2005/10/chomskys_record.html] and many others)…

http://oliverkamm.typepad.com/blog/2005/12/chomsky_replies.html

Yes no doubt Chomsky has gotten footnotes wrong on occasion or even omitted ulterior facts subsequently unearthed by the Dan Rather Fact Check Brigade and introduced into evidence in academic freedom hearings held in Frontpagemag comments, and, really, people with integrity hate it when lefty lies are let happen — I mean, grrr — but his suggestion America might benefit more from dissent in the apparatus of government is not a dispute over information about circumstances that exist or events that occurred but instead disagreement whether de-Nazification is the right term for it or that the American apparatchiki deserve a solemn apology because Kamm didn’t apologize for them hard enough.

Soru, of course you can’t get far by arguing about words used by actors to justify their actions. You quote the authors to support and illustrate your analysis. Then, inevitably, some idiot starts complaining about the quotations while avoiding the substance. Then suddenly it’s all about quotations.

Pt, I don’t understand why using analogies and precedents is a bad thing all of a sudden. What should we use instead of analogies and precedents to analyse, say, Western intervention “to stop genocide in the Balkans” – official propaganda? Just them saying that this is an “intervention to stop genocide” is enough for you? Come on. That’s exactly what we’re talking about here – cut the crap, get the facts and use logic.

Read what follows (or read the voluminous debunking of Chomsky done not only by Kamm but by Brad DeLong [http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/archives/000155.html

I don’t expect you to reevaluate Kamm’s integrity or take Chomsky more seriously for making claims that are at least as intellectually honest as DeLong’s, and honestly I don’t care enough about American political camp to take sides in its tedious Chomsky de-purification rituals, but it would be to your credit if you didn’t expose while ridiculing others as Chomskybots your own political pretensions when you write with a straight face ‘debunking.’ You should write ‘fisking’ instead to remove all doubt where you’re coming from.

Fifi, I never used the term “Chomskybots”

Pt, the first paragraph in my comment properly quotes soru, establishing context, something Chomskyphobes and hatchet men are frequently accused of missing, for what follows, which is the next paragraph, the one that follows the first, as if by magic, which is read more apt in context, by which I mean at least in order, the second paragraph following the first and both of them appearing at the end of a contiguous block of comments written in ceremonial precession, as if they too were related somehow in the discussion.

(you seem to have a bit of trouble reading, eh?),

I certainly have more trouble reading than you do projecting.

Pt, I don’t understand why using analogies and precedents is a bad thing all of a sudden. What should we use instead of analogies and precedents to analyse, say, Western intervention “to stop genocide in the Balkans” – official propaganda?

Have you considered, just as a hypothetical idea, the idea of using evidence? You could ask the people on the ground, could look at photos and videos, study and sift offical and newly commisisoned statistics.

Open the graves, count the corpses. Modern forensics can do some remarkable things.

Then say, you could hold a big tribunal, and try the guilty parties. Think something like that could be conceivable?

Chomsky doesn’t:

http://www.glypx.com/BalkanWitness/hoare.htm
Chomsky claimed in 2000 that “there is little likelihood that the Tribunal will pay attention to its 150-page ‘Indictment Operation Storm: A Prima Facie Case’, reviewing the war crimes committed by Croatian forces that drove some 200,000 Serbs from Krajina in August 1995 with crucial US involvement”

Do you think he was right on that point?

soru

Pt, the first paragraph in my comment properly quotes soru

Nope, it [#71] quotes me [#65]. Still having trouble reading, eh? Even your hero does a better job at obfuscation.

soru, I’m sure you understand the difference between ‘unlikely’ and ‘inconceivable’. I’m sure you can also point to lots of examples where the leaders of forces allied to the US have been successfully convicted of war crimes. Right?

Ah, my bad then. I won’t quibble the exact propaganda terms that you employ. What’s important is they mean the same thing and make the same fatuous associations as Chomskybot. So you’re still a jerk.

Read what follows (or read the voluminous debunking of Chomsky done not only by Kamm but by Brad DeLong [http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/archives/000155.html

“I don’t expect you to reevaluate Kamm’s integrity or take Chomsky more seriously for making claims that are at least as intellectually honest as DeLong’s, and honestly I don’t care enough about American political camp to take sides in its tedious Chomsky purification rituals, but it would be to your credit if you didn’t expose while ridiculing others as college sophomores your own political pretensions when you write with a straight face ‘debunking.’ You should write ‘fisking’ instead to remove all doubt where you’re coming from.”

I see what you mean, pt, the substitution of ‘college sophomores’ for ‘Chomskybots’ changes everything.

I wonder… here, let’s try

Read what follows (or read the voluminous debunking of Chomsky done not only by Kamm but by Brad DeLong [http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/archives/000155.html

“I don’t expect you to reevaluate Kamm’s integrity or take Chomsky more seriously for making claims that are at least as intellectually honest as DeLong’s, and honestly I don’t care enough about American political camp to take sides in its tedious Chomsky purification rituals, but it would be to your credit if you didn’t expose while ridiculing others as neutral greys your own political pretensions when you write with a straight face ‘debunking.’ You should write ‘fisking’ instead to remove all doubt where you’re coming from.”

Wow, it’s like I don’t even know you.

Just dropping in to see if this vat is ready to be corked … sniff-sniff-sniff … hmmm, bouquet seems a bit mildewy … sniff-sniff … acetic acid? … sniff … vinegar!!!

In a society where left of Clinton is sin, feeling lied to by Chomsky must surely feel empty for you.

Fifi: What?

A fraud. Wonderful. I’m no fan of Chomsky’s quintessentially American political values but you are unlikely to make an impression on my by smearing an honest critic of American foreign policy with free form national chauvinist left rhetoric that’s impossible to verify or distinguish from purported liberals too ashamed of their intellectual pedigree to challenge the right’s unflinching jibber-jabber in advance of militarist policies abroad that have declined US influence precipitously and turned everyone against everyone else at home.

“One of the preconditions for a left wing/social democratic/whatever party ever coming to exist in the US is to clear that political space of the frauds, charlatans and nutters who currently occupy it.”

You’re the ugly guy at the graduation ball waiting for the homecoming queen to ask him to dance.

Have you considered, just as a hypothetical idea, the idea of using evidence?

But Soru, precedents are the evidence. This is how science works. You study and analyse the phenomenon and you come up with a hypothesis. You study and analyse events in Vietnam, Nicaragua, E.Timor and so on to predict what’s likely to happen in Iraq. That’s elementary.

What’s your method: to listen what your politicians say and check it against your gut feeling?

I’m no fan of Chomsky’s quintessentially American political values but you are unlikely to make an impression on my by smearing an honest critic of American foreign policy with free form national chauvinist left rhetoric that’s impossible to verify or distinguish from purported liberals too ashamed of their intellectual pedigree to challenge the right’s unflinching jibber-jabber in advance of militarist policies abroad that have declined US influence precipitously and turned everyone against everyone else at home.

Huh?

We appreciate that English may not be your first (or even second) language, Fifi, but I don’t think Noam’s theory of generative grammar includes gibberish.

You would study Vitenam and Nicaragua because they are examples of US interventions, as is Iraq. Since one of the things you want to predict is ‘how will the US act?’, one of the most useful things to study is ‘how has the US acted before?’.
Post-invasion, it does make sense to study Iraq, rather than precedents. Study the number of people that have died since the invasion, the number of WMDs found, the level of electricity generation and oil production…

Priorities, people. When Chomsky makes shit up, the worst that can happen is that he looks like an ass. When Chimpy and his minions make shit up, people die. It’s an understatement to say that the current epidemic of “truthiness” is not primarly a left-wing problem.

I can appreciate a little joke at my expense, pt, but the royal we gives me heebie-jeebies. Everyone would benefit if you resisted anticipating authority’s wishes and spoke only for your own fatuousness.

Sure. It’s all Bush’s fault, if not for Bush “we” would be bombing and torturing stupid third-worlders into appreciation of capitalism, freedom, democracy and American benevolence the right way…

Btw, a couple of bloggers have pointed to a rather remarkable new article (mainly on the overthrow of the Taliban) by St. Noam on his home site…

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.

The point Chomsky was making about Moynihan in “Towards a New Cold War”, page 339, is that Moynihan knew what the consequences of the Indonesian invasion were and given Indonesia’s earlier history of wiping leftists out in the mid-60’s, he had to have known even before the invasion what the consequences would be. So when Moynihan supported Indonesia in the UN, he was knowingly helping a murderous government launch a war of aggression which would likely turn genocidal. Moynihan, as Chomsky points out, had a reputation as a firebrand who was harshly critical of the hypocrites and monsters who filled the UN. One would have expected a man who felt that way to have resigned in self-disgust and then spent the rest of his life trying to atone, but people like that don’t seem to rise very far in our political system, with the possible exception of Jimmy Carter.

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.

I’m not sure Chomsky needs criticism, unless there are factual mistakes, of course, but most of the criticism is focused on his rhetoric. He is a critic who has an angle; you don’t like this angle – go read something else. You want to read mainstream US analysis of the 1970s E.Timor-Indonesia-US events or Khmer Rouge or whatever – go to the library, you’ll find it there easily.

I think my work here is done.

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

Why, I said right from the beginning that the guy has an angle.

I’m just saying that if you’re looking from the same angle, then you probably won’t find too much to criticize, and if you’re a conformist who identifies with the US government, ‘the West’ and so on (like our friend pt here), then Chomsky to you is like that Danish cartoonist to a Saudi imam.