Thanks to Rachel Neuwirth for bringing this to our attention

CHOMSKY IDENTIFIES "THE EVIL" THAT HAUNTS THE WORLD
by Amir Taheri
ASHARQ AL-AWSAT
http://www.benadorassociates.com/article/3089
April 4, 2004
THIS ARTICLE APPEARED IN ASHARQ AL-AWSAT ON MARCH 13, 2004

At the conclusion of his latest book, Noam Chomsky, quotes these lines from Bertrand Russell:

"After ages during which the earth produced harmless trilobites and butterflies, evolution
progressed to the point at which it has generated Neros, Genghis Khans, and Hitlers. This, however,
I believe, is a passing nightmare; in time the earth will become again incapable of supporting life,
and peace will return."

This is a fitting conclusion for a work that starts with another quotation- this time from the
biologist Ernst Mayr.

Chomsky summarises Mayr's view like this:

"The human form of intellectual organisation may not be favoured by selection. The history of life
on Earth refutes the claim that it is better to be smart than stupid, at least judging by biological
success: beetles and bacteria, for example, are vastly more successful than humans in terms of
survival."

Russell and Mayr, though trained scientists, belonged to what one might call the "romantic-tragic"
tradition of political thought.

Chomsky, an eminent linguistics professor, belongs to the same tradition.

If his latest book, "Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance", has any message is
this: the United States today is the most concrete example of what humans could achieve in terms of
economic and military power. And, yet, such is the flawed character of mankind, that all that power
is monopolised by a small stratum of society that uses it to impose "total dominance" on the globe.
And American "dominance", for reasons that Chomsky does not explain, threatens the survival of
mankind.

Before we examine Chomsky's thesis, let us briefly analyse the two pillars of his system, i.e. the
citations from Russell and Mayr.

The problem with Russell is twofold.

First, he compares trilobites and butterflies, which are species, with Neros, Genghis Khans and
Hitlers that are individual types within the human species. He might have as well mentioned Homer,
Hafez or Shakespeare, or Buddha, Mansur Hallaj, or Master Eckhardt. Or Marilyn Monroe, for that
matter.

The second problem with Russell's view, and the foundation of his pessimistic vision, is that he
regards peace as a passive state of non- being rather than an active process of becoming. He
dismisses the entire human experience as a "nightmare" that will be over when the earth, unable to
sustain human life, will condemn our species to extinction.

Mayr's vision also suffers from two flaws.

The first is that he believes that smartness, i.e. intelligence, and stupidity are uniform
abstractions common to all species. He does not understand that what is intelligent for beetles, for
example, may not be intelligent for buffalos or humans. The beetles have not survived because they
are stupid in human terms. They have survived because they are intelligent as beetles.

Thus the recipe for human survival is not, as Mayr suggests, to become stupid, so as to win the
favours of selection and ensure survival, but to expand the boundaries of human intelligence.

The approach of both Russell, a self proclaimed atheist, and Mayr is essentially religious, and more
specifically Christian. They both burden the human species with the "original sin" of either cruelty
or intelligence.

After all, Adam, according to the Christian narrative, was expelled from paradise because he and his
wife, Eve, tasted fruit of the tree of knowledge.

Chomsky's method is also religious, more precisely theological, inasmuch as he tries to find a
single all-encompassing cause for all the real or imagined failings of mankind that could one day
lead to the destruction of the human species, indeed of the earth itself. Monism, theory of a single
cause for everything, is the typical resort of religious minds: whatever happens is because God
wanted it.

Chomsky's position as a self-styled Jeremiah is underlined in his book's blurb: "From the world's
foremost intellectual activist, an irrefutable analysis (sic) of America's pursuit of total
domination and the catastrophic consequences that are sure to follow."

To be sure, Chomsky's monism is not theistic. Nor does he adopt the monisms of Russell and Mayr,
i.e. the wanton cruelty and/or diabolical intelligence of the human species.

Like Russell and Mayr, Chomsky is not concerned with the positive achievements of humanity. His
focus is what he believes to be man's evil deeds. Even then he is not concerned with the broader
sweep of human history but limits himself to the past two centuries, with special emphasis on the
past five or six decades. In that time-span, Chomsky believes that almost all the evil done in the
world, and to humanity, was, directly or indirectly, caused by the United States. Even when others
did evil, in Indonesia, Morocco, Turkey, or Iraq, to cite a few recent examples, they were "ordered"
or at least aided, by the United States.

The US, he tells us, began its existence by massacring the peaceful natives of North America. George
Washington and other American founding fathers were "terrorists" engaged in acts of genocide against
the Indians. (p.101)

The US then expanded southwards and westwards through a series of aggressions against Mexico, the
Spanish and French Empires in Central America, and Canada. The US then pillaged the New World's
natural resources with no regard for the environment, and thus created a powerful economy. Once that
was achieved, the US started planning global "hegemony", participating in two world wars and
numerous smaller conflicts across the globe.

Chomsky finds American fingerprints everywhere.

Hitler and Mussolini were helped achieve power with American, and in part, British, help. (p.67) And
who helped Stalin beat back the Nazi onslaught and survive? The US, of course! (pp.47 and 147)

The Korean War was caused not because Kim Il-sung tried to conquer the whole of the peninsula but
because the US wanted to impose its "dominance" in the Far East. (p.151)

The US is even blamed for the Algerian war of independence, presumably because France was a full
member of The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) at that time.

And why do you think the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979? Chomsky tells us that this was
the result of a plan worked out by President Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor Zbigniew
Bzrezinski who wanted to bleed the Soviets to death. (Pp.110-111)

Contrary to what some Arabs imagine, Israel is a pawn in Washington's hand. Chomsky writes:
"{Israel} has no alternative but serving as a US base in the region and complying with US demands."
(p.158) The Bush administration even dictates Israel's internal economic policies. (p. 180)

Chomsky claims that almost every evil character in the past century or so, anywhere in the world,
was installed in power or supported by the US.

So why did the US wage war against Hitler, Mussolini, the Japanese militarists, Slobodan Milosevic,
and most recently, Saddam Hussein?

Chomsky's answer is simple: they all initially worked for the US but had to be crushed when they
tried to act independently. The US wants total obedience: anyone that shows any sign of independence
is cut down.

In Chomsky's Manichaean world anyone who is opposed to the United States is good and anyone who
sympathises with it is evil. That belief leads Chomsky into strange assertions. He asserts that the
resistance movements against the Nazis were terrorists. He writes: "The partisans were directed from
London and did engage in terrorism." (P.189) The Afghan Mujhahedin who fought against Soviet
invaders were "saboteurs and terrorists" as were the Contras in Central America because they fought
anti-American regimes.

Saddam gassed the Kurds in response to "Kurdish terrorism" which, in turn, had been prompted by the
US. However, when the Kurds fight Turkey, an ally of the US, they become freedom fighters struggling
against a terrorist state.

According to Chomsky, Saddam's invasion of Kuwait in 1990 was a just punishment for the latter's
ingratitude towards Iraq. Saddam had protected Kuwait against Iranian aggression and was angered by
Kuwaiti moves that were designed to wreck Iraq's oil-based economy. (P.46)

While Chomsky insists that Saddam was no threat to anyone and thus unfairly included in the
so-called "Axis of Evil", he suggests his own alternative "Axis of Evil". This consists of Turkey,
Israel, and Morocco whom Chomsky blames for the worst cases of "state terrorism". (P.198) Those
three countries draw Chomsky's ire because they are allies of the US.

Chomsky portrays the defunct Soviet Union as a victim of American aggression. He tells us that
Communism was "never a military threat" to the United States. (P.66)

He praises Stalin, and even the sinister Lavrenti Beria, subsequently executed for his crimes, as
men of goodwill who proposed schemes that would have ensured peace in Europe. (Pp.223-224).

President Dwight Eisenhower rejected the Soviet peace proposals because that would have meant an end
to American "dominance" in Europe. Washington wanted to draw Moscow into an arms race in order to
destroy the USSR.

Chomsky ignores the fact that it was the USSR that almost always introduced new and deadlier weapons
in Europe, starting with supersonic fighters and ending with the SS-20 missiles. Chomsky also
forgets that what he calls "the arms race in the space" began with the USSR that sent the first
manned mission into the space.

The Taliban, having come into being by "American design", were evil when they were supported by the
US, but became good when they turned against it.

Chomsky opposed the war that toppled the Taliban and claims that the US wanted to invade Afghanistan
not to destroy Al Qaeda but to extend its "dominance" to Central Asia. (P.199) Once the Taliban had
turned against the US, toppling their regime became "a war crime". (P.200) (Chomsky had forecast
that six million Afghans would die as a result of the US intervention. The figure six million, of
course, was chosen to establish a parallel with the figure given for the Jewish victims of the Nazi
Holocaust.)

US help to the Colombian government's programme of eradicating cocaine cultivation is described as
"chemical warfare", because, Chomsky insists, other countries do not have the same right to use
fumigation to eliminate tobacco fields in the US state of North Carolina.

In other words even the drug barons are transformed into choir boys when they are attacked by the
US.

Chomsky tells us that the war in Kosovo was not about Serbs massacring ethnic Albanians but the
other way round. It was the ethnic Albanians, recruited, trained and organised by the CIA, who were
massacring the Serbs in Kosovo.

The US, and NATO, intervened to prevent Slobodan Milosevic from rushing to rescue his fellow Serbs
from massacre by "US-controlled terrorists". On Bosnia, too, Chomsky finds himself on the side of
the ethnic Serbs because the Muslims were supported by the United States and its "terrorist allies".

Faithful to the classical methods of religious propaganda, Chomsky does not allow the slightest
shade of grey in his black-and-white picture of existence.

He goes further than fellow-travellers like Russell who tried to establish a moral equivalence
between the Free World and its enemies, especially the USSR, during the Cold War. (Note that in the
quotation from Russell, cited above, there is no mention of Lenin, Stalin and Mao.) But Chomsky is
not satisfied with moral equivalence. He believes that, in any conflict involving the United States,
it is the American side that is evil.

He claims that the US and all its leaders, starting with Washington, as already noted, were evil
from the very beginning.

President James Monroe was evil because he declared a doctrine designed to prevent the European
colonial powers from returning to Latin America. President Theodore Roosevelt was evil because he
insisted that the US must carry a big stick.

Even the idealistic President Woodrow Wilson does not escape Chomsky's censure. Wilson is portrayed
as an arrogant racist who saw the US as a vanguard for human progress. (P.43)

President John F. Kennedy is presented as almost a lunatic who, through the Cuban missile crisis of
1962, pushed the world towards thermonuclear war. The world was saved by Nikita Khrushchev, the
Soviet leader, who proved to be a statesman. (Pp.74-75) Every US president since Kennedy is also
portrayed as an evil-doer of one kind or another, with Ronald Reagan and George W Bush getting the
sharpest lashes.

Even John Stuart Mill, the leading philosopher of Western liberalism, does not escape Chomsky's ire,
and is presented as a champion of colonialism. (Pp.44-45)

Chomsky makes too many factual errors to be enumerated here. His knowledge of the Middle East and
the Muslim countries is especially patchy, if not downright wrong.

But Chomsky's book, written in haste, suffers from more serious problems.

The first of these is his habit of arranging facts to suit his often contradictory claims.
Discussing many of the major issues of international life in the past century or so, Chomsky relies
on some 30 writers, most of them Americans. More than half of his current affair sources are traced
to just two newspapers: The New York Times and The Washington Post. Few people with opinions at
variance with Chomsky's certainties get a chance. Where he does not find any sources that he can
name, Chomsky uses a device dear to second-rate hacks. He mentions " respected commentators", "
impartial observers", "very well-informed sources", "internal sources"," most experts", and " noted
analysts".

A professional linguist, Chomsky knows how to use words to suit his purpose, whatever it happens to
be. For example, he avoids the term Cold War which would set the context for the US-USSR rivalry.
Nor does he describe the Communist Parties that existed all over the world by their name, preferring
to call them "mass-based parties of the poor".

Whatever the US does, even in self defence, is "crime" or "an act of terrorism". Whatever it foes to
do, is "a patriotic movement" or "popular resistance."

The US committed "a war crime" when it took military action against Canada in 1814. But Chomsky does
not remember that that was in response to the British attack on Washington, the capital of the newly
created United States, during which the White House was burned down.

Chomsky's use of the word "dominance" instead of domination is problematic, especially when he uses
it as a synonym for hegemony. (It is possible that his publishers suggested the word "dominance"
instead of hegemony because the general public might not understand the latter.)

Hegemony or survival does not represent the choice of an alternative. For there can be no hegemony
without survival, although there can be survival without hegemony. The domination of the
international space by one major power- ancient Persia, Rome , Britain , etc- at different times in
history, in no way threatened the survival of mankind.

The second problem is that Chomsky thinks the US has been, and is, able to do whatever it pleases,
ignoring the dialectics of any relationship.

For example he writes: Kennedy decided that Latin American armies be transformed into anti-guerrilla
forces.(P.192) It means that the governments, armies, and peoples of dozens of Latin American states
had no will of their own.

Chomsky is unable to conceive of a situation in which both the US and its adversary of the time
could be wrong. He cannot accept that the Taliban and Saddam Hussein do not become good because they
are attacked by the US.

The third problem is that Chomsky never explains why the US might want to impose its "dominance" or
hegemony, or whatever you like, on the world.

Some causes are hinted at, often like faint echoes of the old Leninist analysis of "Imperialism as
the highest stage of capitalism."

For example, Chomsky claims that the US abolished slavery not because it was an ethical goal, but
because New England capitalists wanted it. The Marshall Plan, which helped war-shattered Western
Europe rebuilt its economy, was designed to facilitate the penetration of US capital into the old
continent.

Chomsky also claims that the US is in search of military bases which, once secured, it will never
abandon. (He forgets that in 1966 the US immediately closed all its French bases when President
Charles De Gaulle demanded it. And in 1969 the US wound up its air base in Libya, without the
slightest hesitation at the behest of the new government in Tripoli.)

Chomsky's claim that the US is a "rogue state" determined to destroy "international law" is too
crude to merit lengthy rebuttal. He forgets that what is known as "international law" is itself an
American creation, along with a few allies such as Great Britain.

The United Nations, and the League of Nations before it, were fruits of American diplomacy. The same
is true of almost all other institutions of the "international system" that Chomsky believes the US
is out to destroy.

He also forgets that almost all of the thousands of international treaties, that impose limitations
to the sovereignty of individual states, came into being either on direct American initiative or
with active US participation.

The average American might be surprised to learn how much of the powers of its government have been
transferred to international authorities in the context of numerous treaties. And that in a global
system in which the most brutal regimes enjoy the same rights and privileges as the most democratic
states.

As expected, Chomsky claims that the US built up its military power not to defend legitimate
interests, indeed its national security, but to dominate the world.

But he forgets that the US has for years been pressing its European allies to increase their defence
expenditure in the context of the famous "burden sharing". As a percentage of GDP, American
expenditure on defence steadily declined between 1990 and 2000. What happened was that the European
allies, and Japan, reduced their defence expenditure at an even faster rate because they knew they
could continue to rely on the American security "umbrella".

Chomsky ends up by shooting himself in the foot.

He shows that the US today enjoys less of an economic "dominance" in the world than it did in 1945.
He also reminds us that even before the Second World War the US had been "by far the largest
economic power anywhere in the world."

In 1945 the US accounted for almost 50 per cent of the global gross domestic product (GDP). By 1975
that share had fallen to 25 per cent. In 2000 it was down to 18 per cent, slightly lower than the
European Union. Even in terms of foreign investment per head of the population the relative share of
the US has declined. That figure for the Dutch is almost twice that of the US while Britain and
Japan, Taiwan and South Koreas are also catching up.

All the new economic powers of the post-war world were helped by the US in the crucial phases of
their economic take-off, and emerged as its trading partners: Western Europe, Japan, South Korea,
Taiwan, Southeast Asia, and today China. Even the current "economic miracle" in India is, to some
measure, due to massive investments of American capital and technology.

But the biggest problem with Chomsky's book is that he offers no alternative to "evil" America. He
vaguely speaks of "world public opinion", by which he means the peace-marchers and the Porto Allegre
crowd, as "the second superpower", and says that a majority of mankind believe that US "dominance"
is the main threat to the world. Even if that were the case, we have to note that it is not enough
for something to be believed by large numbers of people, or, indeed by the entire humanity, for it
to be true.

It is Chomsky's final bouquet that is most surprising.

Having vilified George W Bush as the arch-villain of the modern world, Chomsky ends up by adopting
W's analysis almost word by word.

Like W, Chomsky tells us that the status quo, especially in the Middle East, is untenable, and that
the wave of democratisation must spread to the whole world. (P.215) which is precisely what George W
Bush asserts.

Also like Bush, Chomsky tells us that the spread of nuclear, and other weapons of mass destruction,
is a threat to mankind and must be stopped. (P.221) The difference is that Bush is trying to do
something about it while Chomsky seems to want those weapons to be denied only to the US and its
allies.

Finally, and perhaps, unwittingly, he echoes President Bush's claim that the US remains part of the
solution, often the main part, to all of the problems that the world faces. The difference is that
Chomsky seems to favour the disappearance of the US, or at least its withdrawal from the
international arena, while Bush proposes an active, some might say aggressive, American foreign
policy in pursuit of such goals as democratisation, trade liberalisation, and the inclusion of
isolated dictatorial states into the global system.

One thing is sure: mankind is not, as Russell and Mayr predicted, to disappear and leave the earth
to beetles and bacteria. Copyright Amir Taheri 2004

* HEGEMONY OR SURVIVAL:

America's Quest for Global Dominance

By: Noam Chomsky

278 pages, New York, London 2003