I WANT TO BE THE ANTI-CHOMSKY Or, perhaps, I want Chomsky to be considered the anti-Yousefzadeh.
Why? Well, I have my reasons.
This week, Noam Chomsky gained some attention from two articles, which I posted to
here and
here that portray the Lesser Intellect of our Age as the man he is--a man who possesses an implacable hatred of America, and who is religiously devoted to spreading that hatred as far and as wide as possible. Noam Chomsky has been very consistent in portraying America as the number one terrorist state in the world, saying that the terrorism of others pales in comparison to our supposed barbarism, and basically arguing that we had September 11th coming. Indeed, the only difference between September 11th and past atrocities, according to Chomsky, is that "for the first time, the guns were pointed the other way." In other words, for the first time, America is on a receiving end of an atrocity, instead of dealing atrocities out to others.
Despite the horror of the September 11th attacks, despite the wanton termination of innocent lives, Chomsky actually believes that an accidental and foolish bombardment of a Sudan aspirin factory in 1998 was an act of greater malevolence than September 11th. Why? It probably has something to do with the fact that America carried out the Sudan factory bombing, as opposed to being the victim of the September 11th terrorist attacks. This, despite the fact that the Sudan aspirin factory bombing was designed to kill as few civilians as possible, while September 11th was designed to kill as many as possible. Basically, as far as Noam Chomsky is concerned, if barbarism is visited upon America, it is deserved. But if America uses force, it is an unjustified barbarism, and an act of bloodshed whose murderous horror is unsurpassed since . . . well . . . since the last time America used force, no matter what the justification. The rampant moral hypocrisy of this position should be clear to even the blindest pair of eyes.
So why should we care what this crank says? Well, according to the stories I posted to, his book blaming America for September 11th is selling rather well. I imagine that the other side's books are selling better, but still, the fact that Chomsky's message is spreading should not be ignored. I hardly think that we will soon see the kind of protests against the war on terrorism that occurred during the Vietnam War, but you never know how quickly the ground might shift beneath our feet. A lot of people denigrate the antiwar left by equating their leaders to people like Neville Chamberlain, whose blindness to malevolent hegemonic designs was legendary. At least, however, Chamberlain suffered from a genuine blind spot. Chomsky, while virulent in his beliefs, is utterly dishonest about how he propagates them. And that makes him more dangerous.
Remember, this is a man who predicted that "millions" of Afghans would die under a US sponsored genocide. Remember, this is a man who used every brain cell at his command to try to excuse the horrendous autogenocide of the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s, and then, when the evidence was overwhelming and irrefutable, decided to blame America instead for the Killing Fields. This isn't just intellectual slovenliness. It is rampant intellectual dishonesty, unbecoming of any academic, or anyone aspiring to the high title "intellectual."
And yet, this charlatan of the ivory tower, this scam artist, is revered by his followers, who wave his pamphlets like so many Little Red Books, who swear by the truth of his falsehoods. Want to know something surprising? Noam Chomsky is the most quoted living intellectual, and sixth on the overall list of quoted intellectuals. Consider that
Chomsky has more people quoting him than does Cicero of ancient Rome. Think about that--it is an astonishing fact.
And he is gaining on Freud. While Robin Williams famously dismissed the father of psychoanalysis as "having ingested enough cocaine to kill a small horse," the fact is that passing Freud in total number of citations and mentions means that one's ideas are being propagated.
And here is where I have to pay credit to our modern day Beelzebub:
Avram Noam Chomsky works like a dog in trying to convert people to his point of view.
By all accounts, Chomsky pulls one 12 hour day after another in propagating his ideology. Whether it is letter writing, meeting with documentary film makers, speechmaking, interviews or teach-ins, Chomsky is peripatetic in trying to convince people of America's inherent guilt and evil. He will do anything, say anything, utilize any medium to try to get his message across. In making political dissent his avocation, Chomsky has pretty much even abandoned his own original field of study--linguistics--where he is considered the Galileo, the Copernicus, and the Einstein of the field for having displaced B.F. Skinner's theories of learned language acquisition with Chomsky's theory of a Universal Grammar, and a universal inherent ability to learn language. That is stunning to behold, and it is testament to Chomsky's dedication and devotion to his political cause. And don't think that old Noam isn't designing other ways to spread his message of hate. Don't think that he isn't searching out other media of communication. If one of his fervently loyal acolytes has not yet informed him of the magic of the Blogosphere, I would be shocked.
"http://www.noamchomsky.blogspot.com"? Don't laugh--it could happen.
That is how Chomsky gets all those citations. That is how he gets all of that attention. And that is how, in spite of the worst terrorist attack in history, an attack that ended the lives of 3,000 people in one instant, an attack that provoked widespread outrage, sympathy for America, and a bonding together in this country the likes of which most of us have never seen before, in spite of all of that, Chomsky is successfully selling a book that says it is all our fault, that we are to blame, that we shouldn't even go after the people who did this to us, that we should instead abandon our friends, abandon our values, and certainly abandon that evil Zionist entity that is weighing us down with its own depravity, and that we should just meekly take our punishment like the truant little country we are.
That such thoughts actually have any credence whatsoever is an obscenity. But they do, at least in some circles. And we have to face up to that and fight back. Because it is still possible, in the battle of ideas, to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
So, I want to be the anti-Chomsky. Or I want him to be the anti-Yousefzadeh. Whatever the case, I want to fight back.
I want to counter the Chomsky trope by pointing out that America is not the only country that has made mistakes in the past.
All countries have done things that they regret. Imperfection is not solely the province of the United States. Only a fool or a liar would believe that it is.
I want to point out Chomsky's disingenuous habit of demanding absolute and impossible standards of perfection (as Chomsky defines perfection) from America, and then stating that since America refused or failed to meet that unreasonable standard of perfection, it is
irretrievably and wholly evil. I want to point out that this is not the proper measure of a nation-state, by
any reasonable means. And I want to point out that Chomsky knows this, that it is all part of setting up his rhetorical straw man to knock down as a prelude to giving his brainwashing rant to a cult of personality so slavish and unthinking in its devotion to their master, that Mao Zedong, Nicolae Ceaucescu and Abimael Guzman would be envious beyond measure.
I want to point out that oftentimes, when the United States backed or backs a son-of-a-bitch in power, it was only because there was or there is an even worse son-of-a-bitch waiting in the wings. That is a fact of life that nation-states must deal with, and a fact of life that superpowers like the United States are especially confronted with. Statecraft often involves choices between Bad and Worse. And while you may not like Bad all that much, while you may despise Bad beyond measure, while Bad may make you ill, you still pick Bad over Worse without hesitation, everyday of the week, and twice on Sundays. That means the South Vietnamese government
was preferable to Ho Chi Minh. It means that Prince Nordam Sihanouk
was preferable to the Khmer Rouge. It means that Anastasio Somoza
was preferable to the Sandinistas. It means that Fulgencio Batista
was preferable to Fidel Casto. And yes, it means that Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi
Shahanshah was preferable to
Ayatollah-al-odhma Haj Seyyed Ruhollah Mostafavi, or as he is better known, Ruhollah Mussavi al-Khomeini: The Butcher of Iran
And I want to point out that all of this information, as persuasive as it is, is irrelevant in the end. Why? Because in the pantheon of nation-states, in the long history of hegemons, superpowers and empires, no country has surpassed America in her benevolence.
Name another country, another great power that so consistently showed or shows kindness and mercy to its enemies. Name another country that would have done what America did after World War II in Germany, in Italy, and in Japan--foresaking the temptation to impose a Carthaginean peace upon its enemies, and instead rebuilding them to the point where they would become economic competitors. Was there self-interest involved? Of course--America knew that a poor and destitute Germany, Italy and Japan would be much more susceptible to the siren song of communism. Of course there was a strategic interest in rebuilding our enemies. Of course everyone remembered the Treaty of Versailles, and how it gave the lie to World War I being the "war to end all wars."
Nevertheless, none of this changes the fact that such magnanimity and mercy has no equal or comparison in the annals of history. And it speaks to the greatness of the American people.
America's actions after World War II were not an isolated circumstance. We rebuilt the former Soviet Union after the downfall of communism. We rebuilt Eastern Europe after the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the dissipation of the Warsaw Pact. We started out our campaign in Afghanistan by giving the natives . . . food. As part of the war effort, our President encouraged us . . .
to write letters to Afghan children telling them that we care about them. We are rebuilding their country even now. We utterly cast aside geopolitical and geostrategic considerations, and picked the side of a tiny Jewish state over allying ourselves with tens of Arab states with the potential to cause countless energy problems for us. We did this despite the stern warnings of pan-Arabists in the State Department, and over the outrage of Secretary of State George Marshall, the great General who helped lead us to victory in World War II, who designed the Marshall Plan, who was first in the hearts of his countrymen, and who demanded that we not show Israel the same mercy and compassion that we showed Europe. George Marshall demanded that we not act like generous Americans towards the Israelis, despite the fact that we acted like generous Americans to our enemies in World War II. And we ignored him completely.
Why? Because America saw a people who were nearly exterminated, and who vowed "Never Again." And America, in its generosity and empathy, took that vow as its own. As a result, we have been dragged into a decades long quagmire that has outlasted the Cold War, and has caused America to be susceptible to Islamo-fascist terrorism. A hard path, to be sure. And yet, one that America would take again in a heartbeat.
Want more proof of American greatness? Think about the immediate temporal aftermath of September 11th, and try this thought experiment on for size. If a calamitous Islamo-fascist terrorist attack occurred in any other country with a large Muslim population, that Muslim population would have been the target of retaliatory attacks and witchhunts that no public official would have dared to speak out against. Think the French would have stood up for their Muslim population? Well, think again,
mon ami.
Yet, in America, even as we collected our wounded, searched for our missing, and grieved over our dead, we repeatedly counseled each other and ourselves not to take out our anger on American Muslims. Our own President, speaking to us while we were still digesting the awfulness of the attack, sternly warned against singling out American Muslims, Americans of Arab descent, or Americans of Iranian descent for ostracism, or for retaliation. The favorable view of American Muslims actually
increased after the September 11th attacks.
Increased! President Bush spent time engaging in public appearances designed to ensure that retaliation against American Muslims would be absolutely
verboten. Non-Muslim, non-Middle Eastern Americans reached out to their Muslim and Middle Eastern neighbors and sought to assure them that they would be safe. It got to the point that Muslim Americans spoke up, assured the country that they were fine, that there was nothing to worry about, that they felt safe and at home in America, and would we please get about the business of finding and killing the bastards that stirred up all this nonsense in the first place? In this act alone, in the hour of our deepest sorrow, America covered itself with honor and glory.
Did Noam Chomsky pay any attention to that? Are there any citations to statements of his marveling over this kind of magnanimity, this kind of generosity of spirit? They would count too in any effort to overtake Freud. I hope he knows that.
For all you arts, drama and literature fans out there, if you want to satisfy your muses, then go and see a work I view as the very symbol of America, however unorthodox a symbol it is. It's
The Mouse That Roared, a comic play and movie about a struggling tiny and fictitious country that decides to make war on America in order to lose deliberately, and then benefit from the traditional American practice of rebuilding and enriching its former enemies. Once you stop laughing, ask yourself whether it would work if, in the plot, any country other than America was used.
Don't feel bad. I didn't come up with any replacement countries either
Does the United States act in its own interests? Certainly. Is that the norm for nation-states? Of course--as a neoclassical realist, I will be the first to argue that states seek their own self-interests, that they desire security at the least, and hegemonic power where possible. But America is unique among nations because it balances its natural self-interests with an ethical concern about freedom and liberty in a manner that no other nation-state, and no other hegemonic power has ever matched.
And as I have said before, all of this is personal with me. America made itself a home to hundreds (and I do mean hundreds) of my relatives, and friends of my family. It made itself a home to me, the child of immigrants. America saved us from tyranny. America allowed us to be successful. America helped prevent the Nazis from gaining a foothold in our ancestral country back during World War II, and in doing so, it helped prevent the Holocaust from reaching Iranian Jews. From reaching my family. From perhaps obliviating my existence, and the existence of my loved ones. You think I'm not grateful? However tangential the assistance, I can never repay America for this one simple deed. Imagine how indebted I am when the balance is fully drawn up. There is no hope of my settling the account in full.
But at the very least, I can make a dent in my debt.
At the very least, I can be the anti-Chomsky.
Or he can be the anti-Yousefzadeh.
Or he can be the anti-
Reynolds, the anti-
Green, the anti-
Jones, the anti-
Sullivan, the anti-
Weevil, the anti-
Goldstein, the anti-
Rylander, the anti-
Ganz, the anti-
Johnson, the anti-
Warren, the anti-
Schreier, the anti-
Domenech, the anti-
Castel, the anti-
Elana and Andre S., the anti-
smart Rhodes Scholars, or the anti-
McArdle.
Hell, Chomsky can even be the anti-
Osama bin Laden, as confusing as that might be.
I really don't care what he's called.
Just as long as in the end, he is out-argued, out-proselytized, out-worked, out-thought, out-foxed, out-published, out-written, and just as long as he and his acolytes are completely, totally, and hopelessly outnumbered in the court of respectable public opinion. Let's see if the
BlogBook can't pass Freud in number of citations before that physically and intellectually decrepit academic poseur displaces him.
How's that for a challenge? I'm game if you are.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to write a
Tech Central Station article on how America can deter terrorist states. Hopefully, it will help in policymaking, at least somewhat.
I guess an anti-Chomsky's tasks are never complete. Nor should they be.
After all, there is a war to be won.
