Monica Blowinsky XXX
2004-02-07 03:23:49 UTC
{{{ Noam Chomsky's Satanic Verses }}}
By Paul Crespo
January 29, 2004
Noam Chomsky - the deranged Marxoid from MIT - is enjoying a kind of
revival with recent interviews in the New York Times and a book review
of his latest screed that while dismissing its lunatic conclusions
pays it respect as an argument that should be taken seriously. (?!!!)
The Bush-hating Times no doubt finds rationality in Chomsky's devil
theory of history which casts America as the Great Satan and all
purpose explanation of what's wrong in the world.
It seems an appropriate time, therefore, to take a look at one of his
earlier books -- and one of the few that comes close to actually being
a book - and not just an interview collection of "Chomsky Says." This
1985
text Turning the Tide covers a variety of topics including the arms
race, nuclear freeze movement and domestic policy. But most of its
focus is on US policy toward Latin America - especially Ronald
Reagan's successful efforts to halt communist subversion and expansion
in Central America -- which he refers to as an American "terror war."
Actually Chomsky has the annoying habit of referring to almost
everything the US does internationally as a "terror war" or
"terrorism" or "state terrorism," greatly diminishing the impact or
validity any of his points may have.
Turning the Tide is divided into five chapters. The first three
concentrating on Central America tend to overlap and repeat
themselves-in fact much of his work is highly repetitive. They include
such choice section headings as: "The planning of [US] state terror,
"Planning for hegemony," "The system applied: Torturing El Salvador,"
"Torturing Nicaragua," "Torturing Hispaniola," and most creatively,
"Torturing Guatemala." Chomsky, it seems is fascinated by the alleged
"torturing" of entire countries.
In the fourth chapter he focuses on national security policy and
describes "The race to destruction," and the "drift toward global war"
which according to Chomsky is a "result of US government programs that
have little to do with security, but are deeply rooted in the
structure of power in our society..." One section is titled:
"Containing the anti-Fascist resistance: From death camps to death
squads" and describes his standard US-Nazi analogy. To Chomsky anyone
the US opposes (or is opposed to the US) is anti-Fascist ipso-facto
because the US and its allies in his view are Fascist.
His final chapter turns from foreign policy to the domestic US scene
and "the dedicated efforts that have been taken by dominant elites to
overcome the democratic revival of the 1960's " Chomsky believes his
fellow counterculture pseudo-Marxist radicals were the vanguard of
this "democratic revival."
While Chomsky dishes a great deal of dirt on all prior US presidents,
Reagan - who Chomsky considers a simpleton likening his pronouncements
to the "random babbling of a young child"-- was nevertheless far more
evil in intent and results than all his predecessors and deserves
special opprobrium.
With regard to Reagan and Central America, Chomsky's main thesis is
that Reagan was simply continuing a long-term policy on behalf of evil
American economic elites to suppress the region's indigenous people
and control its "vast" natural resources- apparently often in the
strategically significant form of bananas. In Chomsky's world the more
insignificant the country, the more important it is to the evil elites
who dominate US foreign policy - "the weaker and poorer a country is,
the more dangerous it is as an example." This theory of the "dangerous
example" animates much of his views on US policy toward the
hemisphere.
In Chomsky's mind, despite the strategic oil resources of the Middle
East, mineral wealth of Africa, and other valuable resources of the
Far East, the US has spent "billions of dollars" and immense effort to
rape, murder and pillage the people of Latin American countries such
as Nicaragua and El Salvador, that by his own admission could
disappear and American business would never notice.
Why American elites would spend decades and billions of dollars in
savage wars of repression to destroy countries when they could more
easily and cheaply gain their resources through trade is never really
addressed. But according to Chomsky these insignificant countries
were close to home and were in the process of creating successful
alternative models of economic development that didn't require US
business and investment.
Chomsky of course disregards the fact that all socialist experiments
have been proven total disasters and have brought only food rationing,
repression, death and famine to the guinea pig populations who
suffered
under them. In his view the potential success alone of these
"dangerous examples" was a mortal threat to elite American interests
requiring an unrelenting and savage US response.
One of the first things one is struck by when reading Chomsky is the
propagandistic nature of his effort and his shrill, pedantic and often
times snide tone. His work is also extraordinarily dense and generally
a chore to read. He packs detailed anecdotes, facts and figures among
his diatribes in an almost overwhelming manner. The sympathetic
reader's conclusion: there is simply so much evidence; Chomsky must be
a genius and his conclusions irrefutable. Chomsky's intent may also be
to inundate his critics in order to produce sheer physical and mental
exhaustion if not ultimately ideological surrender.
In Turning the Tide Chomsky focuses most of his one-sided ire at US
actions in El Salvador and Nicaragua, but also delves on Guatemala and
Hispaniola (Haiti and Dominican Republic), detailing an alleged
pattern of savage US intervention and rabid, systematic looting and
domination. In chapter 2 he describes his important Fifth Freedom
theory which provides the intellectual framework for much of his
foreign policy analysis.
To the Four Freedoms articulated by Franklin Roosevelt (freedom of
expression and religion and freedom from want and fear) Chomsky adds
what he considers the American elite's secret yet overriding Fifth
Freedom - "the freedom to rob and exploit."
To him the "preservation of the Fifth Freedom, by whatever means are
feasible" is a "guiding geopolitical conception" in US planning. But
this idea is even more than a planning premise. To Chomsky this evil
secret principle is "an invariant core, deeply rooted in the basic
institutions of American society." It virtually defines US foreign
policy. Hence all US actions in Latin America are seen through the
prism of his Fifth Freedom thesis.
He also picks and chooses quotes and references to show a uniform
thought process in a homogenous, unified American business-government
elite. To Chomsky there are no competing interests or internal
political debates in the United States; only one state-business
conglomerate with a fixed, eternal goal of domination.
And while this Fifth Freedom supposedly is a secret principle, Chomsky
selectively accesses some previously classified US government
documents to buttress his argument that all US policy is based on this
principle. Most significant in his writings is his extensive George
Kennan misquote from State Department Policy Planning Study 23.
In the real world (rather than Chomsky's delusion one) the passage
Chomsky quotes from explains Kennan's realpolitik approach to
preserving US national security interests and containing of Soviet
communism in the Far East. But this widely used quote is taken out of
context and misinterpreted. By
omitting key elements, Chomsky grossly distorts Kennan's intent and
globalizes his conclusions.
Chomsky quotes Kennan as follows:
" we have about 50% of the world's wealth, but only 6.3% of its
population...In this situation we cannot fail to be the object of envy
and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a
pattern of
relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of
disparity without positive detriment to or national security. To do
so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming;
and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our
immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we
can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction We
should cease to talk about vague and -- for the Far East -- unreal
objectives such as human rights, the raising of standards of living,
and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have
to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by
idealistic slogans the better."
Despite the fact that Kennan argues against being "hampered by
idealistic slogans" in this secret document, Chomsky immediately notes
that "the idealistic slogans' must constantly be trumpeted by US
elites in public in order to pacify the domestic population " But that
is Chomsky speaking not Kennan. By describing Kennan's ideas this way,
Chomsky makes it appear that Kennan is arguing that human rights are
just US slogans and should be ignored in order to maintain US wealth.
Unfortunately when reading Chomsky the truth is almost invariably lost
in what Chomsky dishonestly leaves out of his quotes. In this case it
is an entire paragraph detailing Kennan's pessimistic but realistic
view that US wealth would provoke envy and resentment no matter what
we did and that because of problems of population growth and food
supply (especially in India and China) that many countries in Asia
would fall into the Soviet sphere regardless of US policy or focus on
human rights. To Kennan global
wealth disparity was a sad fact of life not a goal to achieve.
Kennan's stated emphasis in the paragraph leading to the above quote
is: "It is urgently necessary that we recognize our own limitations as
a moral and ideological force among the Asiatic peoples." As such he
urges restraint in our policies toward Asia and counsels the US to
leave most of mainland Asia alone and focus on keeping Japan and the
Philippines firmly in the US sphere as bulwarks of US security in
Asia. A foreign policy realist Kennan argued regularly against the
trumpeting of idealistic slogans in favor of pursuing realistic
politics. These are far from the views presented by Chomsky.
Immediately following the Kennan quote Chomsky uses a quote from the
1984 bipartisan Kissinger Commission report that states "the
international purposes of the United States in the late 20th century
are cooperation, not hegemony or domination; partnership, not
confrontation; a decent life for all, not exploitation." But since
this was in a public document, the quote is spun by Chomsky as an
example of the public trumpeting of insincere "idealistic slogans."
For Chomsky there is a quote to fit his every argument, even if he has
to twist or parse the quote to make it fit or simply define it as he
wishes. He accepts at face value those statements that he agrees with
or that support his point directly, and when they do not, he simply
discounts or interprets them as examples of disinformation.
If one is able to get beyond all this the next hurdle one faces is
that despite his intellectual pretensions Chomsky is not a reliable
source of historical information or a serious political scientist. On
the contrary, a
reader would be well served to fact check every citation and find
proper context whenever reading Chomsky. A linguist by training, he is
extremely adept at pointing out sometimes valid omissions and
inaccuracies in the works of his opponents, but considering his own
highly selective use of citations as noted above, one-sided analysis,
conclusion by inference and association as well as outright distortion
and omission of fact---it is surprising so many on the left and
elsewhere consider him a serious academic.
Chomsky's sloppy use of citations and documentation is a serious flaw
in his work and hampers the readers' ability to confirm or evaluate
the context or validity of his research. In one example on page 4 of
"Turning the Tide," Chomsky states that "the United Fruit Company
client took power [in Honduras] in 1932 and hand-in hand with United
Fruit ruled his country for the next seventeen years.'" Who actually
said this? We don't know. His source is the 1985 book "The end and
the beginning: the Nicaraguan
Revolution" written by John Booth. But no where does Chomsky say who
the quote came from or why it is authoritative rather than simply
conjecture or opinion.
Sometimes Chomsky's quotes contradict his main points; as when he is
arguing that the malevolence of the US embargo against the Sandinistas
is "fully in accord with our operative values, throughout our
history." But his source, James Austin of the Harvard Business School,
admits in the same quote that the worse effects of this embargo are on
the "US-made potable water system and Nicaraguan hospitals which rely
on US equipment." (Italics added).
Apparently Chomsky misses the irony of including admissions of US-made
potable water systems and the supply of US medical equipment to
augment claims of our historically "inhumane" and "morally
reprehensible" actions against the poor people of Nicaragua. How does
Chomsky reconcile his view of
our perennial aggression against Nicaragua with the fact that
Nicaragua's medical system and water supply was almost all made in the
USA? He doesn't seem even to notice the contradiction.
One of Chomsky's key techniques is to make the US operate in a global
vacuum so it appears omnipotent and omni-malevolent. Hence for Chomsky
the world revolves simply and entirely around the United States which
is guilty of most of the world's ills. Other countries, including
those of Western Europe and especially the Soviet Union are but a
backdrop or bit players in a historical drama totally dominated by the
American colossus.
This may be due to the fact that as one reviewer notes "Chomsky is a
critic, not a policy-maker, a whistle-blower rather than a strategist
furnished with alternatives." But this is an understatement. Part of
Chomsky's worldview is based on the idea that self-criticism is the
highest form of moral value. Of course this self-criticism applies to
criticizing ONLY the United States ad nauseum as the "proxy self" but
not to Chomsky ever criticizing himself or the left when it is wrong.
His continuing apologetics for Cambodia's
genocidal communist leader Pol Pot is a case in point.
Most of the other countries Chomsky discusses, such as Vietnam,
Nicaragua, Cuba, etc. are never anything more than innocent victims of
American "savagery." Their actions are wholly reactive to US
initiatives. They never have any autonomous foreign policies. His is a
negative-ethnocentrism on a grand scale. There is never mention of the
plans or stratagems of countries other than the US or those controlled
by the US such as Israel or our "neo-Nazi" South American allies.
Often he refers to the Soviet bloc as "so-called" communist states.
When he does mention a geopolitically significant country such as the
Soviet Union it generally is to systematically apologize and
rationalize its perceived negative behavior and show the hypocrisy of
US policy toward the "alleged" enemy. Rarely does Chomsky acknowledge,
much less describe in detail, any evil conducted by the Soviet Union,
Castro or the Sandinistas such as the millions tortured and murdered
in the Soviet Gulag or Stalin's purges, Castro's soccer field show
trials and mass executions or Sandinista
atrocities.
Though he occasionally makes a denunciation of the Soviets it is
usually done simply pro-forma and as a way to create a moral
equivalence between the US and USSR. As when he states about the
Soviet Union on page 218: "Reagan's Evil Empire is exactly that, as is
its American counterpart." More often the Soviet Union is described as
well-intentioned and acting defensively, whereas the US is always
cynical and malevolent.
In chapter four Chomsky does a few references to Soviet flaws but also
quotes Soviet leaders or the state press with a total lack of critical
analysis. This approach contrasts sharply with the critical if not
hostile
and disbelieving approach he takes with almost all US government,
media or business sources and statements.
On page 179 he quotes Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko as saying
"we are prepared to go even further-to agree on banning in general the
use of force both in space, and from space against earth." While
taking Gromyko's obvious propaganda statement at face value he then
refers to the Reagan
administration as being "strongly opposed to this hopeful
development."
He then quotes without questioning Radio Moscow (the Kremlin's
official state controlled media) as saying that the Soviet idea is "to
conclude an agreement to prevent militarization of outer space " Of
course to Chomsky unlike his view of US statements, Soviet statements
are never considered simply as the trumpeting of idealistic slogans."
Shortly thereafter Chomsky refers to an "evasive" Times report on the
same topic-evasive because it did not see the Soviet proposal and US
reaction in the same pro-Soviet light as Chomsky. When US press
reports what Chomsky believes is correct he describes it as
"accurate," but when it does not, he calls it an example of the US
propaganda press and refers to it as "evasive," "self-censoring" or
misleading."
In his arrogant and delusional perspective only Chomsky sees the truth
which is obscured by American "corporate propaganda" and
"self-censorship." The majority of Americans are simply pawns and
dupes.
In chapter five he argues that there has been an orchestrated massive
campaign to squelch the "democratic revival" of the 1960s. The fact
that the supposedly repressed counter-culture leftists he speaks of
gradually came to dominate academia, the media and much of mainstream
American popular culture since the 1960s appears irrelevant to him. In
fact he denies this reality as vehemently as he denies the atrocities
of Cambodia's "killing fields."
Instead he uses his "propaganda model" to show that Americans are
systematically kept from hearing the truth through a
corporate-controlled propaganda conspiracy, despite the fact that that
his own popularity among the intellectual "avant-garde" seems to
disprove his thesis.
So Chomsky argues that from the 1960s onward the "business classes
moved effectively to extend their already massive (italics added)
dominance over universities and the media " Adding that "well-funded
reactionary jingoist ("conservative") journals are now widespread in
an effort to counter threats to intellectual independence " But, if
there is such massive "business" dominance over the universities and
media, why is there a need for such a campaign to counter "threats of
intellectual independence?" Conveniently according to Chomsky, it is
because that dominance is "always deemed inadequate" by the generic
and all-encompassing US elite he simply calls "business." As with the
US itself, nothing is ever enough for these business elites - their
voracious appetite for total control is insatiable.
Meanwhile he claims that the paranoid vision of "Marxist-controlled"
universities is "comical" but not limited to the "totalitarian right,"
noting a New York Times Book Review article written by a person
Chomsky describes a "respected liberal intellectual historian"
(identified in the footnotes as John Patrick Diggins) that also argues
that Marxism "has come close to being the dominant ideology in the
academic world." Yet rather than analyze or and refute the arguments
made by this "respected liberal intellectual," Chomsky simply
dismisses them as "so remote from reality as to defy rational
discussion." Many points that contradict Chomsky's views are discarded
that way.
Chomsky adds that Diggins's view "can only be understood as a
reflection of the fear that if heresy is granted even a tiny opening,
all is lost." Why this respected liberal intellectual would suffer
from such a paranoid fear, is left unexplained. This condescending
dismissal without discussion of the counterarguments of opposing views
is another major flaw in Chomsky's pseudo-scholarly approach.
Chomsky's faults also include his obsessive need to revel in
ad-hominem attacks, overstatement and misstatement. He refers to even
the most innocuous foes as a "fanatics," the slightest inaccuracy in
opponent's argument as "frauds" and "lies." But his obsession with
exaggeration and hyperbole is most troubling.
Beginning in the first pages of "Turning the tide" Chomsky uses an
overwhelming and repetitively mind-numbing number of graphic anecdotes
describing alleged massacres, tortures and murders by Nicaraguan
anti-communist rebels ("contras') or by Central American governments
allied with the US. These often unsubstantiated vignettes are always
brutal and disturbing. He provides lurid details about decapitations,
bloody rapes and the sadistic butchering of children.
On page 11 he quotes from a report that a witness had returned to a
battlefield and found what the Contras had allegedly done to one
victim including "cut his throat, then cut open his stomach and left
his intestines
hanging out on the ground like a string." They also reportedly opened
up another victim "and took out his intestines and cut off his
testicles."
Beyond the gruesome descriptions though, when we look at his source,
we find it was a "fact-finding mission" conducted by a US law firm
representing Nicaraguan interests." Chomsky uses that euphemism to
avoid saying the firm represented the Sandinista government. The
"report" could thus be seen as
part of the firm's public relations effort on behalf of the
Sandinistas and probably should not be considered impartial or
credible.
Later Chomsky notes that a mother describes how her husband, a lay
pastor, and her five children were kidnapped and when she found them
the next day "they were all cut up. Their ears were pulled off, their
throats were cut, their noses and other parts cut off." Since Chomsky
is writing about Contra atrocities one assumes this is simply another
example, but this is never stated directly. And worse yet, there is no
direct citation for this quote. As is the case for many of Chomsky's
quotes and references, there are specific citations above and below
this quote but nothing to determine where this specific quote came
from. It is virtually impossible to correctly identify many of
Chomsky's references.
The citations he does use correctly are often from mainstream leftist
newspapers such as the UK's Guardian, or obscure local sources such as
a Peruvian church-based publication or other leftist "human rights
groups." Never does he acknowledge that these may be questionable, or
biased sources. Yet, according to Tim Brown a fellow of Stanford
University's Hoover Institution, many of these so-called atrocities
were deliberate fabrications and deserved a much more skeptical
reading. He states:
"I was personally witness to literally hundreds of instances in which
international human rights activists condemned alleged human rights
violations by anti-Communist guerrillas that were later proven to have
been fabrications. Recently, the former military commander of the FMLN
of El Salvador has explained very carefully and on the record to me
just how this was done and how easy it was for them to manipulate the
American human rights establishment because their fabrications were
always accepted without
question by their American sympathizers."
Brown adds:
"His comments are corroborated by the written contemporary record.
According to existing archives, a very high percentage, perhaps 40%,
of all official FMLN members were assigned by the party to human
rights missions, including the planting of fabricated stories, because
the FMLN understood that they might never win militarily but could do
so on the political front. This made their propaganda war even more
important than their military effort. That they were so successful in
doing so was a direct function of the willingness
of their sympathizers to accept their fabrications or exaggerations
without checking the sources."
Chomsky can certainly fall into this category.
And apparently these alleged crimes by US proxies are always brutal
and gratuitously sadistic. None of America's victims are simply shot
or executed. They are all systematically tortured and destroyed in
ways Nazis would be proud. And this is not surprising since according
to Chomsky many of America's "allies" in Latin America and elsewhere
are in fact Nazis or neo-Nazis as when he refers to our "various
clients, particularly Argentine neo-Nazis" (when Argentina was under
military rule).
Thus equating the US and Nazi Germany in Chapter four Chomsky actually
details his view that the US conspired with German Nazis to create a
new post-war global fascist alliance. On page 200 he states "The
postwar US project of crushing the anti-fascist resistance [all
communists automatically fall into this category] with Nazi assistance
establishes a direct link between Nazi Germany and the killing fields
in Central America." In developing this conspiracy Chomsky generally
ignores the decisive American role in defeating Nazi Germany as when
he notes "US solicitude and care for useful Nazi gangsters as Europe
was liberated from Hitler." As if Europe was "liberated" by itself.
And of course according to Chomsky, these Central American killing
fields are always attributed somehow - though never quite sure how -
to the US. When he can't make some sort of direct connection between
the actual perpetrators and the US or US forces he simply defaults to
referring to "US proxies." Thus he constantly refers to "US-backed"
"US-supplied" or "US- trained" forces. Sometimes even the simple use
of "US-made" equipment (such as a radio) by any of these "proxies" is
enough to infer American complicity
in war crimes.
On page 6 Chomsky cites Charles Clements, a "committed pacifist" and
former US Air Force pilot who had been sent to a psychiatric hospital
after refusing to fly missions in Vietnam, as a witness to many of
these types of US proxy atrocities in El Salvador in 1982-83. Chomsky
speaks for Clements throughout. He begins by noting "the strafing by
US-supplied [Italics added] jets aimed specifically against
defenseless peasants."
This is followed by stating that the "worst atrocities were carried
out by US-trained elite battalions and by air and artillery units
employing tactics designed by US forces in Vietnam and taught by US
advisors." According to Chomsky, simply being US-trained or using
basic military tactics employed and taught by the US, any alleged
atrocities conducted by Salvadorian forces were directly attributable
to the US.
He adds further that that Clements, "using a US-made scanner could
hear the voices of American advisers directing troops on their mass
murder mission." Since none of this a quote, Chomsky cleverly and
disingenuously confuses what Clements actually said with Chomsky's own
interpretation and commentary
and totally obscures the distinction between what may have been normal
combat and alleged war crimes.
As the above noted example demonstrates, he rarely substantiates how
the forces in question were US-backed or trained. An expert
propagandist, Chomsky will often mingle truth with half-truth with
generalization and inference. As with the above-noted example he will
also make references to actions of specific US-trained battalions in
El Salvador after describing numerous alleged brutalities by other
un-named "US-backed" forces. The reader is expected to assume they're
all the same.
Chomsky's work is littered with left wing sources such as the Nation,
the Guardian or openly Marxist human rights groups. When "mainstream"
or reputable media, academic or other sources contradict his
worldview, he simply reverts to his argument that we can't believe
these sources.
When referring to Nicaragua, he revels in alleged "contra' crimes as
well as the Crimes of the prior dictator Anastasio Somoza, but ignores
the thousands of Nicaraguans who were imprisoned, tortured, or
executed by their new communist masters as they attempted to protect
their private property, or who simply committed the crime of owning
private property. In "Remembering Sandinista Genocide," Jamie Glazov
writes:
According to the Nicaraguan Commission of Jurists, the Sandinistas
carried out over 8,000 political executions within three years of the
revolution. The number of "anti-revolutionary" Nicaraguans who had
"disappeared" in Sandinista hands or had died "trying to escape" were
numbered in the thousands. By 1983, the number of political prisoners
in the Sandinista's' ruthless tyranny was estimated at 20,000. Torture
was institutionalized.
Chomsky also fails to note that unlike the Somoza regime, the
Sandinistas did not leave the native populations on the Atlantic coast
of Nicaragua in peace. All Nicaraguans were forced to take part in
their Marxist experiment.
Glazov adds:
"Thus, in perfect Khmer Rouge style, the Sandinistas inflicted a
ruthless forcible relocation of tens of thousands of Indians from
their land. Like Stalin, they used state-created famine as a weapon
against these "enemies of the people."
The Organization of American States and the Nicaraguan Human Rights
organization have found that a large number of clandestine cemeteries
from the Contra War period have been excavated in Nicaragua and
several hundred bodies exhumed and examined by forensic pathologists.
In every case the bodies were confirmed to be the remains of victims
of Sandinista Army atrocities.
These include documented examples of clandestine cemeteries at Jalapa,
Corinto Finca, Cerro de Mocoron, Santa Matilde, Cano del Aislado,
Murra, and Loma Chata. There are many others. Yet Chomsky conveniently
ignore this evidence condemning the Sandinistas.
After communism's global collapse there have been scores sources
painting a clearer picture of the scale of leftist deception and
delusion regarding the real effects of decades of socialist
experimentation. Unfortunately, Chomsky continues to ignore the
evidence.
The fact is that in this political work (as opposed perhaps to his
actual specialty in linguistics) Chomsky is not an academic or a
fair-minded intellectual. He does not research evidence and then find
a model that best
describes it. Instead, he is a propagandist who has created his
fanciful models such as the Fifth Freedom and propaganda model, and
simply looks for evidence to support it, ignoring, discarding or
dismissing all other contrary evidence. The evidence he does use is
highly selective, often taken out of context, uncritical when
referring to America's enemies and disingenuous and misleading when
applied to the US. Too often it is impossible to confirm what sources
he was using.
In typical propagandist style, he seamlessly co-mingles many elements
of fact and truth with speculation, conjecture, misquotes,
interpretation and commentary, never identifying where one ends and
the other begins. Focusing almost exclusively on monolithic US actions
and flaws he creates a virtual parallel universe that ignores the true
motivations and intentions of adversaries, simplifies and demonizes US
motives and intentions and provides a thoroughly one-sided and
distorted reality. Sadly, many on the left live in this Chomsky
fantasy world.
Paul Crespo is a political analyst, columnist and former member of The
Miami Herald editorial board. An adjunct faculty member in the
political science department at the University of Miami, he is also a
Senior Fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in
Washington, DC. He served as a US Marine Corps officer on three
continents. A graduate of the Georgetown University School of Foreign
Service, he has advanced degrees from London and Cambridge
Universities in the UK.
By Paul Crespo
January 29, 2004
Noam Chomsky - the deranged Marxoid from MIT - is enjoying a kind of
revival with recent interviews in the New York Times and a book review
of his latest screed that while dismissing its lunatic conclusions
pays it respect as an argument that should be taken seriously. (?!!!)
The Bush-hating Times no doubt finds rationality in Chomsky's devil
theory of history which casts America as the Great Satan and all
purpose explanation of what's wrong in the world.
It seems an appropriate time, therefore, to take a look at one of his
earlier books -- and one of the few that comes close to actually being
a book - and not just an interview collection of "Chomsky Says." This
1985
text Turning the Tide covers a variety of topics including the arms
race, nuclear freeze movement and domestic policy. But most of its
focus is on US policy toward Latin America - especially Ronald
Reagan's successful efforts to halt communist subversion and expansion
in Central America -- which he refers to as an American "terror war."
Actually Chomsky has the annoying habit of referring to almost
everything the US does internationally as a "terror war" or
"terrorism" or "state terrorism," greatly diminishing the impact or
validity any of his points may have.
Turning the Tide is divided into five chapters. The first three
concentrating on Central America tend to overlap and repeat
themselves-in fact much of his work is highly repetitive. They include
such choice section headings as: "The planning of [US] state terror,
"Planning for hegemony," "The system applied: Torturing El Salvador,"
"Torturing Nicaragua," "Torturing Hispaniola," and most creatively,
"Torturing Guatemala." Chomsky, it seems is fascinated by the alleged
"torturing" of entire countries.
In the fourth chapter he focuses on national security policy and
describes "The race to destruction," and the "drift toward global war"
which according to Chomsky is a "result of US government programs that
have little to do with security, but are deeply rooted in the
structure of power in our society..." One section is titled:
"Containing the anti-Fascist resistance: From death camps to death
squads" and describes his standard US-Nazi analogy. To Chomsky anyone
the US opposes (or is opposed to the US) is anti-Fascist ipso-facto
because the US and its allies in his view are Fascist.
His final chapter turns from foreign policy to the domestic US scene
and "the dedicated efforts that have been taken by dominant elites to
overcome the democratic revival of the 1960's " Chomsky believes his
fellow counterculture pseudo-Marxist radicals were the vanguard of
this "democratic revival."
While Chomsky dishes a great deal of dirt on all prior US presidents,
Reagan - who Chomsky considers a simpleton likening his pronouncements
to the "random babbling of a young child"-- was nevertheless far more
evil in intent and results than all his predecessors and deserves
special opprobrium.
With regard to Reagan and Central America, Chomsky's main thesis is
that Reagan was simply continuing a long-term policy on behalf of evil
American economic elites to suppress the region's indigenous people
and control its "vast" natural resources- apparently often in the
strategically significant form of bananas. In Chomsky's world the more
insignificant the country, the more important it is to the evil elites
who dominate US foreign policy - "the weaker and poorer a country is,
the more dangerous it is as an example." This theory of the "dangerous
example" animates much of his views on US policy toward the
hemisphere.
In Chomsky's mind, despite the strategic oil resources of the Middle
East, mineral wealth of Africa, and other valuable resources of the
Far East, the US has spent "billions of dollars" and immense effort to
rape, murder and pillage the people of Latin American countries such
as Nicaragua and El Salvador, that by his own admission could
disappear and American business would never notice.
Why American elites would spend decades and billions of dollars in
savage wars of repression to destroy countries when they could more
easily and cheaply gain their resources through trade is never really
addressed. But according to Chomsky these insignificant countries
were close to home and were in the process of creating successful
alternative models of economic development that didn't require US
business and investment.
Chomsky of course disregards the fact that all socialist experiments
have been proven total disasters and have brought only food rationing,
repression, death and famine to the guinea pig populations who
suffered
under them. In his view the potential success alone of these
"dangerous examples" was a mortal threat to elite American interests
requiring an unrelenting and savage US response.
One of the first things one is struck by when reading Chomsky is the
propagandistic nature of his effort and his shrill, pedantic and often
times snide tone. His work is also extraordinarily dense and generally
a chore to read. He packs detailed anecdotes, facts and figures among
his diatribes in an almost overwhelming manner. The sympathetic
reader's conclusion: there is simply so much evidence; Chomsky must be
a genius and his conclusions irrefutable. Chomsky's intent may also be
to inundate his critics in order to produce sheer physical and mental
exhaustion if not ultimately ideological surrender.
In Turning the Tide Chomsky focuses most of his one-sided ire at US
actions in El Salvador and Nicaragua, but also delves on Guatemala and
Hispaniola (Haiti and Dominican Republic), detailing an alleged
pattern of savage US intervention and rabid, systematic looting and
domination. In chapter 2 he describes his important Fifth Freedom
theory which provides the intellectual framework for much of his
foreign policy analysis.
To the Four Freedoms articulated by Franklin Roosevelt (freedom of
expression and religion and freedom from want and fear) Chomsky adds
what he considers the American elite's secret yet overriding Fifth
Freedom - "the freedom to rob and exploit."
To him the "preservation of the Fifth Freedom, by whatever means are
feasible" is a "guiding geopolitical conception" in US planning. But
this idea is even more than a planning premise. To Chomsky this evil
secret principle is "an invariant core, deeply rooted in the basic
institutions of American society." It virtually defines US foreign
policy. Hence all US actions in Latin America are seen through the
prism of his Fifth Freedom thesis.
He also picks and chooses quotes and references to show a uniform
thought process in a homogenous, unified American business-government
elite. To Chomsky there are no competing interests or internal
political debates in the United States; only one state-business
conglomerate with a fixed, eternal goal of domination.
And while this Fifth Freedom supposedly is a secret principle, Chomsky
selectively accesses some previously classified US government
documents to buttress his argument that all US policy is based on this
principle. Most significant in his writings is his extensive George
Kennan misquote from State Department Policy Planning Study 23.
In the real world (rather than Chomsky's delusion one) the passage
Chomsky quotes from explains Kennan's realpolitik approach to
preserving US national security interests and containing of Soviet
communism in the Far East. But this widely used quote is taken out of
context and misinterpreted. By
omitting key elements, Chomsky grossly distorts Kennan's intent and
globalizes his conclusions.
Chomsky quotes Kennan as follows:
" we have about 50% of the world's wealth, but only 6.3% of its
population...In this situation we cannot fail to be the object of envy
and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a
pattern of
relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of
disparity without positive detriment to or national security. To do
so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming;
and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our
immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we
can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction We
should cease to talk about vague and -- for the Far East -- unreal
objectives such as human rights, the raising of standards of living,
and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have
to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by
idealistic slogans the better."
Despite the fact that Kennan argues against being "hampered by
idealistic slogans" in this secret document, Chomsky immediately notes
that "the idealistic slogans' must constantly be trumpeted by US
elites in public in order to pacify the domestic population " But that
is Chomsky speaking not Kennan. By describing Kennan's ideas this way,
Chomsky makes it appear that Kennan is arguing that human rights are
just US slogans and should be ignored in order to maintain US wealth.
Unfortunately when reading Chomsky the truth is almost invariably lost
in what Chomsky dishonestly leaves out of his quotes. In this case it
is an entire paragraph detailing Kennan's pessimistic but realistic
view that US wealth would provoke envy and resentment no matter what
we did and that because of problems of population growth and food
supply (especially in India and China) that many countries in Asia
would fall into the Soviet sphere regardless of US policy or focus on
human rights. To Kennan global
wealth disparity was a sad fact of life not a goal to achieve.
Kennan's stated emphasis in the paragraph leading to the above quote
is: "It is urgently necessary that we recognize our own limitations as
a moral and ideological force among the Asiatic peoples." As such he
urges restraint in our policies toward Asia and counsels the US to
leave most of mainland Asia alone and focus on keeping Japan and the
Philippines firmly in the US sphere as bulwarks of US security in
Asia. A foreign policy realist Kennan argued regularly against the
trumpeting of idealistic slogans in favor of pursuing realistic
politics. These are far from the views presented by Chomsky.
Immediately following the Kennan quote Chomsky uses a quote from the
1984 bipartisan Kissinger Commission report that states "the
international purposes of the United States in the late 20th century
are cooperation, not hegemony or domination; partnership, not
confrontation; a decent life for all, not exploitation." But since
this was in a public document, the quote is spun by Chomsky as an
example of the public trumpeting of insincere "idealistic slogans."
For Chomsky there is a quote to fit his every argument, even if he has
to twist or parse the quote to make it fit or simply define it as he
wishes. He accepts at face value those statements that he agrees with
or that support his point directly, and when they do not, he simply
discounts or interprets them as examples of disinformation.
If one is able to get beyond all this the next hurdle one faces is
that despite his intellectual pretensions Chomsky is not a reliable
source of historical information or a serious political scientist. On
the contrary, a
reader would be well served to fact check every citation and find
proper context whenever reading Chomsky. A linguist by training, he is
extremely adept at pointing out sometimes valid omissions and
inaccuracies in the works of his opponents, but considering his own
highly selective use of citations as noted above, one-sided analysis,
conclusion by inference and association as well as outright distortion
and omission of fact---it is surprising so many on the left and
elsewhere consider him a serious academic.
Chomsky's sloppy use of citations and documentation is a serious flaw
in his work and hampers the readers' ability to confirm or evaluate
the context or validity of his research. In one example on page 4 of
"Turning the Tide," Chomsky states that "the United Fruit Company
client took power [in Honduras] in 1932 and hand-in hand with United
Fruit ruled his country for the next seventeen years.'" Who actually
said this? We don't know. His source is the 1985 book "The end and
the beginning: the Nicaraguan
Revolution" written by John Booth. But no where does Chomsky say who
the quote came from or why it is authoritative rather than simply
conjecture or opinion.
Sometimes Chomsky's quotes contradict his main points; as when he is
arguing that the malevolence of the US embargo against the Sandinistas
is "fully in accord with our operative values, throughout our
history." But his source, James Austin of the Harvard Business School,
admits in the same quote that the worse effects of this embargo are on
the "US-made potable water system and Nicaraguan hospitals which rely
on US equipment." (Italics added).
Apparently Chomsky misses the irony of including admissions of US-made
potable water systems and the supply of US medical equipment to
augment claims of our historically "inhumane" and "morally
reprehensible" actions against the poor people of Nicaragua. How does
Chomsky reconcile his view of
our perennial aggression against Nicaragua with the fact that
Nicaragua's medical system and water supply was almost all made in the
USA? He doesn't seem even to notice the contradiction.
One of Chomsky's key techniques is to make the US operate in a global
vacuum so it appears omnipotent and omni-malevolent. Hence for Chomsky
the world revolves simply and entirely around the United States which
is guilty of most of the world's ills. Other countries, including
those of Western Europe and especially the Soviet Union are but a
backdrop or bit players in a historical drama totally dominated by the
American colossus.
This may be due to the fact that as one reviewer notes "Chomsky is a
critic, not a policy-maker, a whistle-blower rather than a strategist
furnished with alternatives." But this is an understatement. Part of
Chomsky's worldview is based on the idea that self-criticism is the
highest form of moral value. Of course this self-criticism applies to
criticizing ONLY the United States ad nauseum as the "proxy self" but
not to Chomsky ever criticizing himself or the left when it is wrong.
His continuing apologetics for Cambodia's
genocidal communist leader Pol Pot is a case in point.
Most of the other countries Chomsky discusses, such as Vietnam,
Nicaragua, Cuba, etc. are never anything more than innocent victims of
American "savagery." Their actions are wholly reactive to US
initiatives. They never have any autonomous foreign policies. His is a
negative-ethnocentrism on a grand scale. There is never mention of the
plans or stratagems of countries other than the US or those controlled
by the US such as Israel or our "neo-Nazi" South American allies.
Often he refers to the Soviet bloc as "so-called" communist states.
When he does mention a geopolitically significant country such as the
Soviet Union it generally is to systematically apologize and
rationalize its perceived negative behavior and show the hypocrisy of
US policy toward the "alleged" enemy. Rarely does Chomsky acknowledge,
much less describe in detail, any evil conducted by the Soviet Union,
Castro or the Sandinistas such as the millions tortured and murdered
in the Soviet Gulag or Stalin's purges, Castro's soccer field show
trials and mass executions or Sandinista
atrocities.
Though he occasionally makes a denunciation of the Soviets it is
usually done simply pro-forma and as a way to create a moral
equivalence between the US and USSR. As when he states about the
Soviet Union on page 218: "Reagan's Evil Empire is exactly that, as is
its American counterpart." More often the Soviet Union is described as
well-intentioned and acting defensively, whereas the US is always
cynical and malevolent.
In chapter four Chomsky does a few references to Soviet flaws but also
quotes Soviet leaders or the state press with a total lack of critical
analysis. This approach contrasts sharply with the critical if not
hostile
and disbelieving approach he takes with almost all US government,
media or business sources and statements.
On page 179 he quotes Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko as saying
"we are prepared to go even further-to agree on banning in general the
use of force both in space, and from space against earth." While
taking Gromyko's obvious propaganda statement at face value he then
refers to the Reagan
administration as being "strongly opposed to this hopeful
development."
He then quotes without questioning Radio Moscow (the Kremlin's
official state controlled media) as saying that the Soviet idea is "to
conclude an agreement to prevent militarization of outer space " Of
course to Chomsky unlike his view of US statements, Soviet statements
are never considered simply as the trumpeting of idealistic slogans."
Shortly thereafter Chomsky refers to an "evasive" Times report on the
same topic-evasive because it did not see the Soviet proposal and US
reaction in the same pro-Soviet light as Chomsky. When US press
reports what Chomsky believes is correct he describes it as
"accurate," but when it does not, he calls it an example of the US
propaganda press and refers to it as "evasive," "self-censoring" or
misleading."
In his arrogant and delusional perspective only Chomsky sees the truth
which is obscured by American "corporate propaganda" and
"self-censorship." The majority of Americans are simply pawns and
dupes.
In chapter five he argues that there has been an orchestrated massive
campaign to squelch the "democratic revival" of the 1960s. The fact
that the supposedly repressed counter-culture leftists he speaks of
gradually came to dominate academia, the media and much of mainstream
American popular culture since the 1960s appears irrelevant to him. In
fact he denies this reality as vehemently as he denies the atrocities
of Cambodia's "killing fields."
Instead he uses his "propaganda model" to show that Americans are
systematically kept from hearing the truth through a
corporate-controlled propaganda conspiracy, despite the fact that that
his own popularity among the intellectual "avant-garde" seems to
disprove his thesis.
So Chomsky argues that from the 1960s onward the "business classes
moved effectively to extend their already massive (italics added)
dominance over universities and the media " Adding that "well-funded
reactionary jingoist ("conservative") journals are now widespread in
an effort to counter threats to intellectual independence " But, if
there is such massive "business" dominance over the universities and
media, why is there a need for such a campaign to counter "threats of
intellectual independence?" Conveniently according to Chomsky, it is
because that dominance is "always deemed inadequate" by the generic
and all-encompassing US elite he simply calls "business." As with the
US itself, nothing is ever enough for these business elites - their
voracious appetite for total control is insatiable.
Meanwhile he claims that the paranoid vision of "Marxist-controlled"
universities is "comical" but not limited to the "totalitarian right,"
noting a New York Times Book Review article written by a person
Chomsky describes a "respected liberal intellectual historian"
(identified in the footnotes as John Patrick Diggins) that also argues
that Marxism "has come close to being the dominant ideology in the
academic world." Yet rather than analyze or and refute the arguments
made by this "respected liberal intellectual," Chomsky simply
dismisses them as "so remote from reality as to defy rational
discussion." Many points that contradict Chomsky's views are discarded
that way.
Chomsky adds that Diggins's view "can only be understood as a
reflection of the fear that if heresy is granted even a tiny opening,
all is lost." Why this respected liberal intellectual would suffer
from such a paranoid fear, is left unexplained. This condescending
dismissal without discussion of the counterarguments of opposing views
is another major flaw in Chomsky's pseudo-scholarly approach.
Chomsky's faults also include his obsessive need to revel in
ad-hominem attacks, overstatement and misstatement. He refers to even
the most innocuous foes as a "fanatics," the slightest inaccuracy in
opponent's argument as "frauds" and "lies." But his obsession with
exaggeration and hyperbole is most troubling.
Beginning in the first pages of "Turning the tide" Chomsky uses an
overwhelming and repetitively mind-numbing number of graphic anecdotes
describing alleged massacres, tortures and murders by Nicaraguan
anti-communist rebels ("contras') or by Central American governments
allied with the US. These often unsubstantiated vignettes are always
brutal and disturbing. He provides lurid details about decapitations,
bloody rapes and the sadistic butchering of children.
On page 11 he quotes from a report that a witness had returned to a
battlefield and found what the Contras had allegedly done to one
victim including "cut his throat, then cut open his stomach and left
his intestines
hanging out on the ground like a string." They also reportedly opened
up another victim "and took out his intestines and cut off his
testicles."
Beyond the gruesome descriptions though, when we look at his source,
we find it was a "fact-finding mission" conducted by a US law firm
representing Nicaraguan interests." Chomsky uses that euphemism to
avoid saying the firm represented the Sandinista government. The
"report" could thus be seen as
part of the firm's public relations effort on behalf of the
Sandinistas and probably should not be considered impartial or
credible.
Later Chomsky notes that a mother describes how her husband, a lay
pastor, and her five children were kidnapped and when she found them
the next day "they were all cut up. Their ears were pulled off, their
throats were cut, their noses and other parts cut off." Since Chomsky
is writing about Contra atrocities one assumes this is simply another
example, but this is never stated directly. And worse yet, there is no
direct citation for this quote. As is the case for many of Chomsky's
quotes and references, there are specific citations above and below
this quote but nothing to determine where this specific quote came
from. It is virtually impossible to correctly identify many of
Chomsky's references.
The citations he does use correctly are often from mainstream leftist
newspapers such as the UK's Guardian, or obscure local sources such as
a Peruvian church-based publication or other leftist "human rights
groups." Never does he acknowledge that these may be questionable, or
biased sources. Yet, according to Tim Brown a fellow of Stanford
University's Hoover Institution, many of these so-called atrocities
were deliberate fabrications and deserved a much more skeptical
reading. He states:
"I was personally witness to literally hundreds of instances in which
international human rights activists condemned alleged human rights
violations by anti-Communist guerrillas that were later proven to have
been fabrications. Recently, the former military commander of the FMLN
of El Salvador has explained very carefully and on the record to me
just how this was done and how easy it was for them to manipulate the
American human rights establishment because their fabrications were
always accepted without
question by their American sympathizers."
Brown adds:
"His comments are corroborated by the written contemporary record.
According to existing archives, a very high percentage, perhaps 40%,
of all official FMLN members were assigned by the party to human
rights missions, including the planting of fabricated stories, because
the FMLN understood that they might never win militarily but could do
so on the political front. This made their propaganda war even more
important than their military effort. That they were so successful in
doing so was a direct function of the willingness
of their sympathizers to accept their fabrications or exaggerations
without checking the sources."
Chomsky can certainly fall into this category.
And apparently these alleged crimes by US proxies are always brutal
and gratuitously sadistic. None of America's victims are simply shot
or executed. They are all systematically tortured and destroyed in
ways Nazis would be proud. And this is not surprising since according
to Chomsky many of America's "allies" in Latin America and elsewhere
are in fact Nazis or neo-Nazis as when he refers to our "various
clients, particularly Argentine neo-Nazis" (when Argentina was under
military rule).
Thus equating the US and Nazi Germany in Chapter four Chomsky actually
details his view that the US conspired with German Nazis to create a
new post-war global fascist alliance. On page 200 he states "The
postwar US project of crushing the anti-fascist resistance [all
communists automatically fall into this category] with Nazi assistance
establishes a direct link between Nazi Germany and the killing fields
in Central America." In developing this conspiracy Chomsky generally
ignores the decisive American role in defeating Nazi Germany as when
he notes "US solicitude and care for useful Nazi gangsters as Europe
was liberated from Hitler." As if Europe was "liberated" by itself.
And of course according to Chomsky, these Central American killing
fields are always attributed somehow - though never quite sure how -
to the US. When he can't make some sort of direct connection between
the actual perpetrators and the US or US forces he simply defaults to
referring to "US proxies." Thus he constantly refers to "US-backed"
"US-supplied" or "US- trained" forces. Sometimes even the simple use
of "US-made" equipment (such as a radio) by any of these "proxies" is
enough to infer American complicity
in war crimes.
On page 6 Chomsky cites Charles Clements, a "committed pacifist" and
former US Air Force pilot who had been sent to a psychiatric hospital
after refusing to fly missions in Vietnam, as a witness to many of
these types of US proxy atrocities in El Salvador in 1982-83. Chomsky
speaks for Clements throughout. He begins by noting "the strafing by
US-supplied [Italics added] jets aimed specifically against
defenseless peasants."
This is followed by stating that the "worst atrocities were carried
out by US-trained elite battalions and by air and artillery units
employing tactics designed by US forces in Vietnam and taught by US
advisors." According to Chomsky, simply being US-trained or using
basic military tactics employed and taught by the US, any alleged
atrocities conducted by Salvadorian forces were directly attributable
to the US.
He adds further that that Clements, "using a US-made scanner could
hear the voices of American advisers directing troops on their mass
murder mission." Since none of this a quote, Chomsky cleverly and
disingenuously confuses what Clements actually said with Chomsky's own
interpretation and commentary
and totally obscures the distinction between what may have been normal
combat and alleged war crimes.
As the above noted example demonstrates, he rarely substantiates how
the forces in question were US-backed or trained. An expert
propagandist, Chomsky will often mingle truth with half-truth with
generalization and inference. As with the above-noted example he will
also make references to actions of specific US-trained battalions in
El Salvador after describing numerous alleged brutalities by other
un-named "US-backed" forces. The reader is expected to assume they're
all the same.
Chomsky's work is littered with left wing sources such as the Nation,
the Guardian or openly Marxist human rights groups. When "mainstream"
or reputable media, academic or other sources contradict his
worldview, he simply reverts to his argument that we can't believe
these sources.
When referring to Nicaragua, he revels in alleged "contra' crimes as
well as the Crimes of the prior dictator Anastasio Somoza, but ignores
the thousands of Nicaraguans who were imprisoned, tortured, or
executed by their new communist masters as they attempted to protect
their private property, or who simply committed the crime of owning
private property. In "Remembering Sandinista Genocide," Jamie Glazov
writes:
According to the Nicaraguan Commission of Jurists, the Sandinistas
carried out over 8,000 political executions within three years of the
revolution. The number of "anti-revolutionary" Nicaraguans who had
"disappeared" in Sandinista hands or had died "trying to escape" were
numbered in the thousands. By 1983, the number of political prisoners
in the Sandinista's' ruthless tyranny was estimated at 20,000. Torture
was institutionalized.
Chomsky also fails to note that unlike the Somoza regime, the
Sandinistas did not leave the native populations on the Atlantic coast
of Nicaragua in peace. All Nicaraguans were forced to take part in
their Marxist experiment.
Glazov adds:
"Thus, in perfect Khmer Rouge style, the Sandinistas inflicted a
ruthless forcible relocation of tens of thousands of Indians from
their land. Like Stalin, they used state-created famine as a weapon
against these "enemies of the people."
The Organization of American States and the Nicaraguan Human Rights
organization have found that a large number of clandestine cemeteries
from the Contra War period have been excavated in Nicaragua and
several hundred bodies exhumed and examined by forensic pathologists.
In every case the bodies were confirmed to be the remains of victims
of Sandinista Army atrocities.
These include documented examples of clandestine cemeteries at Jalapa,
Corinto Finca, Cerro de Mocoron, Santa Matilde, Cano del Aislado,
Murra, and Loma Chata. There are many others. Yet Chomsky conveniently
ignore this evidence condemning the Sandinistas.
After communism's global collapse there have been scores sources
painting a clearer picture of the scale of leftist deception and
delusion regarding the real effects of decades of socialist
experimentation. Unfortunately, Chomsky continues to ignore the
evidence.
The fact is that in this political work (as opposed perhaps to his
actual specialty in linguistics) Chomsky is not an academic or a
fair-minded intellectual. He does not research evidence and then find
a model that best
describes it. Instead, he is a propagandist who has created his
fanciful models such as the Fifth Freedom and propaganda model, and
simply looks for evidence to support it, ignoring, discarding or
dismissing all other contrary evidence. The evidence he does use is
highly selective, often taken out of context, uncritical when
referring to America's enemies and disingenuous and misleading when
applied to the US. Too often it is impossible to confirm what sources
he was using.
In typical propagandist style, he seamlessly co-mingles many elements
of fact and truth with speculation, conjecture, misquotes,
interpretation and commentary, never identifying where one ends and
the other begins. Focusing almost exclusively on monolithic US actions
and flaws he creates a virtual parallel universe that ignores the true
motivations and intentions of adversaries, simplifies and demonizes US
motives and intentions and provides a thoroughly one-sided and
distorted reality. Sadly, many on the left live in this Chomsky
fantasy world.
Paul Crespo is a political analyst, columnist and former member of The
Miami Herald editorial board. An adjunct faculty member in the
political science department at the University of Miami, he is also a
Senior Fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in
Washington, DC. He served as a US Marine Corps officer on three
continents. A graduate of the Georgetown University School of Foreign
Service, he has advanced degrees from London and Cambridge
Universities in the UK.
--
Left-wing liberals are EVERYTHING they accuse the right of being. They
are mean, vicious, hateful, greedy, cold-hearted, closed-minded,
selfish, intolerant, bigoted and racist.
Left-wing liberals are EVERYTHING they accuse the right of being. They
are mean, vicious, hateful, greedy, cold-hearted, closed-minded,
selfish, intolerant, bigoted and racist.