Coming
Soon!
From Common Courage Press
Recent
Stories
July
25, 2003
Francis
A. Boyle
Impeaching Bush
David
Krieger
15 Questions
Harvey
Wasserman
Pat Robertson's Supreme Fatwah
Steve Dunifer
Seize the Airwaves!
Dan
Bacher
Federal Judge Throws Out Bush Salmon Plan for Klamath River
Kurt Nimmo
Bread, Circuses, Uday and Qusay
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Weblog
Website
of the Day
Stop the Wall!
July
24, 2003
Elaine
Cassel
Ashcroft Loses...Again
Robert
Fisk
The Ugly Story of Camp Cropper: The
US Torture Camp in Iraq
David
Lindorff
Dumb and Dumber in Iraq
Christopher
Brauchli
Ashcroft Demands Death Penalty in
Puerto Rico
David
Vest
Dylan in Bend
Tom Turnipseed
Killing Saddam & His Family Won't Stop Killing of US Troops
Douglas
Valentine
A Nation of Assassins
Stew Albert
Contract Killing
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Weblog
Website
of the Day
Report on Palestinian Child Prisoners
July
23, 2003
Uri
Avnery
Caesar's Favor
David
Lindorff
Lynne Stewart's Big Win: Ashcroft
Rebuked
Mano
Singham
Iraq's Missing WMD Scientists
Steve
Perry
Better Late Than Never: the Press, the Dems, and Bush's Lies
John Stanton
Avoiding Plato's Republic in America: Is Anarchy the Only Hope?
Patrick
Bond
Bush and South Africa: a Petro-Military-Commerce Mission
Harry Browne
A Victory for a Disarming Irishwoman
Paul
Beaulieu
When the WTO Comes to Montreal
Robert
Fisk
The Sons are Dead, But the Resistance
Will Grow
William
Witherup
Georgie Porgie
Website
of the Day
Lieberman & Falwell:
True Love at Last
July
22, 2003
Diane
Christian
Bad Guy / Good Guy: War Forces;
Peace Frees
Jeremy
Brecher
Solidarity and Student Protests in Iran
Steve
Kretzmann
and Jim Vallette
Plugging Iraq into Globalization
Sam
Smith
Greening the Golden Triangle
James
Plummer
Smile, You're on Federal Camera
Lucretia
Stewart
This Day Shall Not Define My Life:
January 18, 2003
Website
of the Day
Iraq Coalition Casualties
July
21, 2003
Edward
Said
Imperial Arrogance and the Vile Stereotyping
of Arabs
Ron
Jacobs
Shut Up and Shoot
Allan J.
Lichtman
Why is George Bush President?
Elaine
Cassel
How's the Occupation Going? Ask the People of Iraq
Christopher
Brauchli
History Recapitulates: Guantanamo and the Japanese Internment
Camps
Bruce
Jackson
Third and Arizona, Santa Monica
Website
of the Day
John Dean: Taking Apart Bush's State of the Union Speech, Claim
by Claim
July
19 / 20, 2003
Arthur
Mitzman
Will the Pax Americana be More Sustainable
Than the Dot.com Bubble?
Julian
Bond
We Shall be Heard
Cynthia
McKinney
Bush's Racial Politics at Home and Abroad
Mel
Goodman
What is to be Done with the CIA?
Jason Leopold
Tenet Blames Wolfowitz
Mickey
Z.
History Forgave Churchill
Doug Giebel
Impeachment as the Message
Jon
Brown
Whipping the Post
Mano Singham
Cheney's Oil Maps
Steven
Sherman
Nickle, Dimed and Slimed at UNC
Robin Philpot
Liberia: History Doesn't Repeat Itself, It Stutters
Khaldoun
Khelil
Capturing Friedman
Jeffrey
St. Clair
You Must Leave Home, Again: Gilad Atzmon's A Guide to the Perplexed
Lenni
Brenner
Sitting in with Mingus
Vanessa
Jones
Three Dog Night
Adam
Engel
Video Judas Video
Poets'
Basement
Foley, Smith and Curtis
Website
of the Weekend
Illegal Art
July
18, 2003
David
Vest
Drowning in Deep Doo-Doo
Rahul
Mahajan
Deceit Runs Deep
John Chuckman
Enron-style Management in a Dangerous World
Harold
A. Gould
The Bush-Musharraf Conclave
Alvaro
Angarita
In the Eye of the Storm: Colombia's War on Journalists
David
Grenier
Sovereignty and Solidarity in Indian Country...Rhode Island
Dave Lindorff
Bush and Hitler: a Response to the Wall Street Journal
Website
of the Day
Murder of a Whistleblower? Timeline in David Kelly Affair
July
17, 2003
Ron
Jacobs
Sometimes Even the President of the
United States Has to Stand Naked
Lisa
Walsh Thomas
Bush Country: the Venom and Adulation of Ignorance
Martin
Schwarz
Bush Pre-emptive Strike Doctrine is the Bane of Non-Proliferation
Watchdogs
Heidi
Lypps
Better Justice Through Chemistry? Forced
Drugging and the Supreme Court
Norman
Madarasz
Third Ways and Third Worlds: Lula at the Progressive Governance
Conference
Pankaj
Mehta
Criminalizing the Palestinian Solidarity Movement
Marjorie
Cohn
Bush, War Lies & Impeachment: the
Boy Who Cried Wolf
Hammond
Guthrie
(Dis) Intelligence Revisited
Website
of the Day
No Force, No Fraud: the Soul of Libertarianism
July
16, 2003
Jason
Leopold
Wolfowitz Told White House to Hype
Dubious Uranium Claims
William
Cook
Defining Terrorism from the Top Down
Elaine
Cassel
Judge Brinkema v. Ashcroft: She Whom
Must Not Be Obeyed
Jason
Leopold
How Can They Justify the War If WMDs Are Never Found?
Linda Heard
Bondage or Freedom?
Raymond
Barrett
From Detroit to Basra
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Back to the Future in Guatemala:
The Return of Gen. Ríos Montt
July
15, 2003
Kathleen
and Bill Christison
Why We Resigned from VIPS
Elaine
Cassel
Ashcroft's War on Legal Whistleblowers:
the Ordeal of Jesselyn Radack
Chris
Floyd
Barge Poles: Oil Wars and New Europe's Mercenaries
Jason
Leopold
CIA Warned White House Last October that Niger Docs were Forgeries
Gaius Publius
Considering the Obvious: Fool Us Once, Fool Us Twise...Please
John
Troyer
The Niger Syndrome
Becky Gillette
No Conspiracy at Coffeen Nature Preserve: a Response to David
Orrr
Uri
Avnery
The Bi-National State: The Wolf Shall
Dwell with the Lamb
Website
of the Day
Cost of Iraq War
July
14, 2003
Lisa
Taraki
Hot Days in Ramallah
Walter
Brasch
Bush: the Pretend Captain
SOA
Watch
Training Colombia's Killers in the US
Dan Bacher
Yurok Tribe Denounces Klamath River Salmon Killers
Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
Intelligence Unglued
Website
of the Day
Coalition for Democratic Rights and Civil Liberties
July 12 / 13, 2003
Arthur
Mitzman
The Double Wall Before the Future
Standard
Schaefer
The Coming Financial Reality: an
Interview with Michael Hudson
John Feffer
A Fearful Symmetry: Washington and Pyongyang
Ron
Jacobs
Shades of Gray in Iran
Elaine
Cassel
Judicial Terrorism Against the Bill of Rights
Tom
Stephens
Civil Liberties After 9/11
David Lindorff
New White House Slogan: "Case Closed. Just Move On"
Jason
Leopold
The Mini-War Against Iraq Prior to 9/11
Lee Sustar
What's Behind the Crisis in Liberia?
Mickey
Z.
AIDS Dissent and Africa
Sam Hamod
Semitic is a Language Group, Not a Race or Ethnic Group
Ramzy
Baroud
Awaiting Justice on an Old Blanket
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Savage Incongruities: the Photographic Life of Lee Miller
Adam
Engel
Parable of the Lobbyist
Robert
Sanders
A Review of Ralph Lopez's American Dream
Poets'
Basement
Albert, Witherup, Guthrie
July
11, 2003
Conn
Hallinan
The Coin of Empire
Tim
Wise
God Responds to Bush
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
The Two Faces of Bush in Africa
Edward
S. Herman
Whitewashing Sandra Day O'Connor
David Orr
Coffeen-gate: What's Going on at the Sierra Club Foundation?
David
Lindorff
An Iraq War & Occupation Glossary
Website
of the Day
Dead Malls
July
10, 2003
Ron
Jacobs
Dealing with the Devil: the Bloody
Profits of General Dynamics
Sean
Donahue
Bush and the Paramillitaries: Coddling Terrorists in Colombia
Yemi
Toure
Who Outted Bush in Afrika?
Robert
Jensen
Politics and Sustainability: an Interview
with Wes Jackson
Ali
Abunimah
US Leaves Injured Iraqis Untreated
Joanne
Mariner
Federal Courts, Not Military Commissions
Website
of the Day
Electronic Iraq
July
9, 2003
David
Lindorff
Is the Media Finally Turning on
Bush?
David
Krieger and Angela McCracken
10 Myths About Nuclear Weapons
Mickey
Z.
Why Speak Out?
Lee Sustar
The Great Medicare Fraud
John
Chuckman
The Worst Kind of Lie
Gary Leupp
"Pacifist" Japan and the Occupation of Iraq
Website
of the Day
Hail to the Thief:
Songs for the Bush Years
July
8, 2003
Elaine
Cassel
Bully on the Bench: the Pathological
Dissents of Scalia
Alan
Maass
Nights of Fire and Rage in Benton Harbor
Chris
Floyd
Troubled Sleep: Getting Used to the American Gulag
Linda
S. Heard
America's Kangaroo Justice
Brian
Cloughley
They Tell Lies to Nodders
Charles
Sullivan
Bush the Christian?
Saul
Landau
The Intelligence Culture in the National Security Age
Website
of the Day
Occupation Watch
July
7, 2003
William
Blum
The Anti-Empire Report
Harvey
Wasserman
The Nuke with a Hole in Its Head
Ramzy
Baroud
Peace for All the Wrong Reasons
Simon
Jones
What Progressives Should Think About
Iran
Lesley
McCulloch
Fear, Pain and Shame in Aceh
Uri
Avnery
The Draw
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 7/3
July
4 / 6, 2003
Patrick
Cockburn
Dead on the Fourth of July
Frederick
Douglass
What is Freedom to a Slave?
Martha
Honey
Bush and Africa: Racism, Exploitation
and Neglect
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Rat in the Grain: Amstutz and
the Looting of Iraqi Agriculture
Standard
Schaefer
Rule by Fed: Anyone But Greenspan in 2004
Lenni Brenner
Jefferson is for Today
Elaine
Cassel
Fucking Furious on the Fourth
Ben Tripp
How Free Are We?
Wayne
Madsen
A Sad Independence Day
John Stanton
Happy Birthday, America! 227 Years of War
Jim
Lobe
Bush's Surreal AIDS Appointment
John Blair
Return to Marble Hill: Indiana's Rusting Nuke
Lisa
Walsh Thomas
Heavy Reckoning at Qaim
David Vest
Wake Up and Smell the Dynamite
Adam
Engel
Queer as Grass
Poets'
Basement
Christian, Witherup, Albert & St. Clair
Website
of the Weekend
The Lipstick Librarian
Hot Stories
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
July
26, 2003
Degraded and Dishonest
Refuting
Brad Delong's Smear Job on Chomsky
By EDWARD S. HERMAN
In his "Thoughts" on Chomsky, under
the title "My
Very,Very Allergic Reaction to Noam Chomsky: Khmer Rouge, Faurisson,
Milosevic," Brad DeLong is long on name calling, smears
by selective choice of decontextualized words and sentences,
straightforward misrepresentation, and numerous assertions
unsupported by evidence. He is short on tolerance of viewpoints
that he doesn't like and very short on just plain intellectual
integrity. His preening self-regard and pomposity in straightening
out Chomsky and his misguided "surprising number" of
"followers" is also impressive.
In his first two paragraphs he makes
the point that Chomsky's admirers "form a kind of cult,"
but no evidence is given supporting this insult, which is a familiar
form of smear to denigrate people admiring someone with whom
one disagrees. He then compares teaching such folks to teaching
Plato to pigs. So his opening is pure name-calling.
In his next paragraph he tries to engage
in substance, and this effort is worth a close look. He says:
"Consider Chomsky's claim that: 'In the early 1990s, primarily
for cynical great power reasons, the U.S. selected Bosnian Muslims
as their Balkan clients' On its face this is ludicrous. When
the United States selects clients for cynical great power reasons
it selects strong clients-not ones whose unarmed men are rounded
up and shot by the thousands. And Bosnian Muslims as a key to
U.S. politico-military strategy in Europe? As Bismarck said more
than a century ago, 'There is nothing in the Balkans that is
worth the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier.' It holds true
today as well: the U.S, has no strategic or security interest
in the Balkans that is worth the death of a single Carolinian
fire-control technician. U.S. intervention in the Balkans in
the 1990s was 'humanitarian' in origin and intention (even if
we can argue about its effect). Only a nut-boy loon would argue
otherwise."
The first substantive statement in this
paragraph, that the United States always selects strong clients,
is truly "ludicrous": the United States supported the
Nicaraguan contras, Savimbi's UNITA in Angola, the little rag-tag
forces in Nicaragua that it organized to invade Guatemala in
1954, Somoza's Nicaragua, the Florida and Nicaragua-based invasion
force for the Bay of Pigs, the remnants of Chiang Kai Shek's
defeated army in northern Burma following the victory of the
communists in China in 1949, Chiang's Taiwan from 1949, the
Persian Gulf Emirates, and many other similarly "strong
clients." The implication that because the Bosnian Muslims
were shot in large numbers they couldn't have been U.S. clients
is not only a non sequitur, it also flies in the face
of massive evidence that they were U.S. clients, as any
serious book on the subject makes clear (e.g., Lord David Owen's
Balkan Odyssey, Susan Woodward's Balkan Tragedy,
or Diana Johnstone's Fools' Crusade). This client status
is not even controversial. DeLong's ignorance of this
subject area is apparently close to complete, as he fails to
note that our Bosnian clients also shot a lot of unarmed men,
and that we, in collaboration with the Saudis and Bin Laden ,
ferried massive supplies and mujahadin troops into Bosnia (as
described in detail in the Dutch report on Srebrenica) and bombed
the Serbs on behalf of our Bosnian Muslim client in the lead-up
to the Dayton agreement.
His next sentence about the Bosnian Muslims
as "a key to U.S. politico-military strategy in Europe"
misrepresents and therefore lies about Chomsky's language-Chomsky
didn't say "key...in Europe," he said merely that the
U.S. selected the Bosnian Muslims as clients in the Balkans,
a narrower statement. DeLong then gives his quote from Bismarck,
a phony parade of "learning" as we can't know whether
Bismarck was correct or whether he even believed what he said,
and what was true a century back might not be true now.
DeLong then goes on to say that it is
true today that the United States has no strategic or security
interest in the Balkans. It goes without saying that he doesn't
offer evidence on this point or discuss contrary facts and views.
Many analysts have pointed to:
(1) the huge U.S. military base built
in Kosovo, which must have some security interest function;
(2) the fact that the NATO intervention
destroyed the one independent political body in Europe not integrated
into the Western political economy--Yugoslavia--and facilitated
that integration;
(3) the importance of the Caspian oil
area and the interest of Western oil companies in possible Balkans
transport routes;
(4) the link between the Kosovo War
and the April 1999 celebration of the 50th anniversary of the
birth of NATO with an imminent NATO military triumph;
(5) the possible interest of the United
States in reasserting its domination of NATO by taking the lead
in the Balkans struggles; and
(6) the admissions by Clinton, Blair,
and Defense Secretary Cohen that the "credibility of NATO"
was a prime reason for the bombing.
But DeLong knows that all this is irrelevant
because the U.S. intervention was based on "humanitarian"
motives! This is one of those higher patriotic truths that DeLong
grasps by intuition. But although Clinton and Blair were proceeding
on the basis of humanitarian motives, you can be sure DeLong
will not stop to explain why both of these humanitarians were
consistent supporters of, and arms suppliers to, both Suharto
and the Turkish regime that was ethnic-cleansing Kurds throughout
the 1990s. The same Blair who fought for humanitarian ends with
Clinton in 1999 also claims to have been fighting for humanitarian
ends with Bush in Iraq in 2003. I wonder if DeLong buys that
patriotic line now, or is it only a highly moral Democrat like
Clinton who will pursue humanitarian ends? I should mention that
Andrew Bacevich's recent book, American Empire, highly
praised in the mainstream, asserts strongly that the United States
had no humanitarian concerns at all in its Balkans war-making
and that Clinton's resort to force was merely to establish "the
cohesion of NATO and the credibility of American power."
So who is the "nut-boy"-Chomsky,
or the man who misrepresents his target's language, regurgitates
foolish patriotic truths, displays abysmal ignorance on matters
on which he writes as if an authority, and rules out evidence
and rational discourse on these matters?
After this proof of Chomsky as a nut-boy,
DeLong has a few lines on what Chomsky admirers say when he presents
them with that nut-boy phrase on Bosnia. No quotes from the admirers,
just alleged paraphrases, with words like "Oil pipelines!"
with an exclamation point, but no serious analyses or answers-just
cute little putdowns.
One paraphrased reply mentions Chomsky's
"insights." DeLong then goes on as follows: "Insights?
Like his writing a preface for a book by Robert Faurisson,"
which he follows up with selective partial quotes like that Chomsky
said that Faurisson seemed to be "a relatively apolitical
liberal" and that Chomsky admitted to "no special
knowledge" of the topic Faurisson dealt with and hadn't
read anything by Faurisson "that suggests that the man was
pro-Nazi."
Neither Chomsky nor his "followers"
ever claimed these phrases were "insights"-that is
the trick of a smear artist, who searches for vulnerable language
in the target, takes the words out of context, and elevates them
to supposed "insights." Note too the illogic-it was
an alleged "insight" to write a "preface."
Note also the dishonesty in not mentioning that the preface was
only written as an independent avis and inserted in the
book as a preface without Chomsky's prior approval (see Chomsky's
"The
Right to Say It," The Nation, Feb. 28, 1981.
Most important in this phase of the smear
enterprise is DeLong's refusal to recognize that the avis
was solely a defense of the right of free speech and that from
beginning to end that was all the struggle was about for Chomsky.
It was certainly not about Faurisson's views or in any way a
defense of those views, and DeLong fails to mention that Faurisson
was dismissed from his job teaching French literature because
the authorities claimed they couldn't defend him against his
enemies, and he was brought to court not for his political views
but for "Falsification of History" (in the matter
of gas chambers) and for "allowing others" to use his
work for nefarious ends. This was a major civil liberties case
in which, for perhaps the first time in the West, a court decided
that the state has a right to determine historical truth.
DeLong wants to deflect attention from
this important issue to Faurisson's views, which he presents
in an unattributed quote which refers to Faurisson as "a
guy whose thesis seems to be" (and then comes a rhetorical
statement about a big lie). DeLong latches on to Chomsky phrases
in the avis that Faurisson seemed to be a "relatively
apolitical liberal," and was not necessarily pro-Nazi--a
view Chomsky arrived at after talking with several of Faurisson's
leading critics in France, who were unable to provide any credible
evidence of anti-Semitism or neo-Naziism--but DeLong fails to
note Chomsky's statement in the avis that Faurisson might
indeed be an anti-Semite or Nazi as claimed, but that that would
have no
bearing on the issue of freedom of speech. DeLong also fails
to mention Chomsky's repeated expressions of horror at the Holocaust
as "the most fantastic outburst of collective insanity in
human history" and his statement that we "lose our
humanity" if we even enter into debate with those who deny
or try to diminish Nazi crimes. Note also the dishonesty in suppressing
Chomsky's repeated statements that he has signed free speech
petitions for numerous Soviet bloc victims without knowing their
views, or even with an awareness of their obnoxiousness--which
he didn't mention-- but never suffered criticism, or DeLong-type
smear jobs, for not having researched the exact beliefs of these
civil liberties victims.
DeLong says, "Would it be better
not to misrepresent Faurisson's beliefs? Not to claim that he
is a relatively apolitical liberal? Not to say that you have
seen no evidence that Faurisson is pro-Nazi? It is, after all,
a much stronger defense of free speech to say that you are defending
a loathsome Holocaust-denier's right to free speech because free
speech is absolute, then to say that poor Faurisson-a relatively
apolitical liberal-is being persecuted for no reason other than
that some object to his (unspecified) 'conclusions'." As
noted, DeLong's statement that Chomsky "misrepresents Faurisson's
beliefs" is false. His second point is also false, because
if the free speech issue involves protection of a man accused
of "loathsome" views, who is being attacked for those
views, both the nature of those views and the fact that he is
being attacked for them are of some importance, even if they
are not central. But Chomsky made it clear that he thought the
views of civil liberties victims-loathsome or not-were irrelevant
in decisions as to whether they should be defended, a point that
every civil libertarian takes for granted. DeLong's smear objective
compels him to skirt around this principled position.
DeLong's last line is an obscurantist
masterpiece in which he stumbles over his own rhetorical effusion:
Faurisson was being "persecuted"--this is irony, suggesting
that he got what was coming to him, although DeLong is of course
a believer in free speech! And "some object to his (unspecified)
'conclusions'"-again, heavy-handed irony in which Faurisson's
evil views, that people like Chomsky are unwilling to openly
acknowledge or deny, are opposed by good people who have been
allegedly "persecuting" him. When he says that the
bad folks are complaining that Faurisson was persecuted "for
no other reason" than objections to his unspecified conclusions,
does he mean that there was another reason to go after him, or
is that just reinforcing the point that the "(unspecified)
conclusions" were quite enough?
As with Bosnia, DeLong gives a list of
three straw-person answers on Faurisson from Chomsky "supporters,"
again without citation or quotes, but with much sarcasm and sneers,
as he continues his hit-and-run smear job.
DeLong then takes up Chomsky's crimes
in treating Cambodia. He starts with a quote from our 1979 book
After the Cataclysm (ATC):
"If a serious study...is someday
undertaken, it may well be discoveredthat the Khmer Rouge programs
elicited a positive responsebecause they dealt with fundamental
problems rooted in the feudal past and exacerbated by the imperial
system.Such a study, however, has yet to be undertaken."
DeLong comments: "Reflect that it
was published three full years after the Cambodian Holocaust
of the Year Zero. Ask yourself whether this is an uncovering
or a covering of the crimes of an abominable regime." The
answer is that a single stripped-down quote taken out of context
and that speculates about what may come from a future study tells
nothing to an honest person. DeLong naturally fails to acknowledge
that our stated aim in the book was not to uncover crimes but
to see how the "facts have been interpreted, filtered, distorted
or modified by the ideological institutions of the West"
(ATC, vii). For DeLong, as for the mainstream, this was an illegitimate
objective.
DeLong seems to think that the "holocaust"
occurred instantaneously upon the takeover of the KR in 1975.
He pretends that full data on this closed regime were readily
available for a book published three years later. He fails to
mention that in speculating here Chomsky (and this writer, his
co-author) also raised the possibility that the worst charges
might also turn out to be true when all the facts are in, and
that we were drawing no conclusions about where the truth lies
in this range of descriptions (ATC, 293). He suppresses the fact
that our reference to the "positive response" was taken
mainly from Francois Ponchaud's Cambodge annee zero, where
Ponchaud speaks of the "genuine egalitarian revolution,"
the "new pride" of miserably oppressed peasants in
constructive work, and first time women's participation. Ponchaud's
book was widely cited as an authoritative source as well as a
condemnation of the KR, so citing it and acknowledging its finding
of positive features in the KR revolution wouldn't suit DeLong's
purpose; nor would Long attack Ponchaud as an apologist for the
"crimes of this abominable regime" although Ponchaud's
positive statements are unqualified, whereas DeLong goes into
a tantrum about a speculation of ours saying that these explicit
conclusions may turn out to be correct. We quoted similar material
from David Chandler and Richard Dudman, highly respected analysts
of Cambodia. DeLong suppresses our use of these sources as well
in order to make it appear that any positive notions were unique
to his smear target. He suppresses the fact that Ponchaud himself
complimented Chomsky for his "responsible attitude and precision
of thought" in his writings on Cambodia.
DeLong continues: "But it gets worse.
Go back to your Nation of 1977, and consider the paragraph"-then
quoting us that "Space limitations preclude a comprehensive
view," but that specialists writing in the Far Eastern
Economic Review, Economist, and Melbourne Journal
of Politics have studied the evidence and concluded "that
executions have numbered at most in the thousands" DeLong
then quotes at length an ally attacking these source references,
and DeLong himself says he looked through the Economist
and couldn't find anything written by the Economist staff
on the subject. "So why does Chomsky lie about these 'highly
qualified specialists'? The claim that it is 'space limitations'
rather than 'non-existence' that prevents their being named cannot
be a claim in good faith, can it? And why would anyone lie for
Pol Pot, unless they were either a nut-boy loon or were being
mendacious and malevolent in search of some sinister and secret
purpose?"
DeLong's statement that Chomsky lied
here is itself a plain lie. Our references were exactly correct.
DeLong couldn't find anything written by the Economist
"staff," but he knows full well that the reference
was to a letter to the editor, published in and therefore provided
by, the paper, by Cambodia demographer W. J. Sampson, an economist-statistician
who was living in Phnom Penh and worked in close contact with
the government's central statistics office. Sampson's work is
cited with respect by Nayan Chanda, at the time the most highly
respected journalist in Southeast Asia, writing for the Far
Eastern Economic Review (ATC, 231f). Sampson was at least
as "highly qualified [a] specialist" as anybody on
the staff of the Economist. DeLong knows that we cited
many other "highly qualified specialists" just one
year later in After the Cataclysm, so his sneer about
the "non-existence" of these sources is another dishonest
suppression and shows that his own "good faith" and
intellectual integrity are non-existent.
DeLong and his ally claim that Chomsky
said that Khmer Rouge killings were "at most in the thousands,"
and that Chomsky had implied that this was "a conclusion
of an article[by Nayan Chanda in] the Far Eastern Economic
Review." DeLong and friend also note that the author
Chanda says "the numbers killed are impossible to calculate."
DeLong's ally asserts that "Chomsky presented the Far
Eastern Economic Review as confidently denying the possibility
that killings were vastly higher, but Chanda specifically denies
such knowledge and confidence." First of all, we did not
attribute the "at most in the thousands" statement
to Chanda, but to Sampson. Second, we ourselves quoted Chanda's
statement that "the numbers killed are impossible to calculate,"
that DeLong implies we neglected (ATC, 229). Third, we quote
Chanda saying that the testimony from refugees and others "leaves
no doubt: the number of deaths has been terribly high" (229),
so the statement that Chomsky denied "the possibility that
killings were vastly higher" is another lie.
DeLong ends on Cambodia asserting that
"Chomsky not only said that there wasn't conclusive evidence
that the Khmer Rouge were genocidal butchers, he wrote-falsely-that
there was reliable evidence that they weren't genocidal butchers."
This is one more flat, outright lie. We never said, or hinted,
anything like this. We cited every serious source available at
the time on the KR killings, including Ben Kiernan, Michael Vickery,
Stephen Heder, David Chandler, Chanda, Ponchaud, and State department
Cambodia experts Charles Twining and Timothy Carney. We quoted
Twining's estimate of killings--in the "thousands or hundreds
of thousands," but with admitted difficulty in getting valid
numbers. We quoted Twining's superior Richard Holbrooke's estimate
of "tens if not hundreds of thousands " for "deaths"
from all causes. The State Department's Timothy Carney estimated
the deaths from "brutal, rapid change" (explicitly
not "mass genocide") as in the hundreds of thousands
(ATC, 159-160). We took no position on the accuracy of these
numbers, but did note that they were far below the widespread
mainstream claims of two million massacred. On DeLong principles,
the State Department analysts and Holbrooke are liars and apologists
for Pol Pot, downplaying the "conclusive evidence"
that he was a genocidal butcher.
DeLong never mentions that our book was
explicitly aimed at countering the huge and lie-rich propaganda
barrage on Cambodia that began upon the KR entry into Phnom Penh
in April 1975, a barrage and lies which only served a political
and ideological purpose and did not help the Cambodians in any
way whatsoever. DeLong of course ignores our comparative analysis
of the difference in treatment of Indonesia in East Timor and
Pol Pot in Cambodia. A larger fraction of the population of
East Timor died in the wake of the Indonesian aggression than
died in Cambodia under Pol Pot (where many of the deaths were
residuals of the starvation conditions facing the KR in April
1975). The East Timorese mass killings were positively supported
by the U.S. government, and in contrast with Pol Pot's killings
those in East Timor were readily subject to U.S. influence and
control. Brad DeLong does not condemn these killings as genocide
and assail its perpetrators and apologists for practical support
of genocide. Doesn't this make him an apologist for genocidal
butchers?
DeLong never mentions that estimates of the numbers killed by
the U.S. Air Force in its bombing of Cambodia from 1969 to 1975
run into the hundreds of thousands, which on his terms should
make Nixon and Kissinger into "genocidal butchers."
He has never so described them, nor assailed those who neglect
this "genocide." He never mentions that the United
States defended and supplied the KR after its ouster by the Vietnamese
in 1978, which allowed the KR to continue to attack Cambodians;
this doesn't elicit his indignation over support for genocidal
butchers. With a turn in U.S. policy toward China and the Khmer
Rouge in 1977-1978, we find Douglas Pike, former U.S. government
specialist on Vietnam, and later head of the University of California
Indochina Archives, writing in November 1979 about the "charismatic
leader" Pol Pot, leader of a "bloody but successful
peasant revolution with a substantial residue of popular support"
and where most of them "did not experience much in the
way of brutality." This great warmth toward the genocidal
butchers, long after the facts were in, and after the escalated
KR killings in 1977 and 1978, has produced no allergic reaction
in Brad DeLong.
In his book The Spirit and Structure of German Fascism,
in a chapter entitled "Science: Handmaiden of Inspired
Truth," Robert A. Brady noted how often scientists carelessly
"assume that the attempt to think rigorously in one field
automatically implies thinking rigorously whenever one thinks
about anything at all." When he does this "he is
merely allowing himself to abandon rational criteria in favor
of uncritical belief." Brady pointed out that such "uncritical
belief" is often the conventional wisdom, in which God
and country rank high. Could it be that just as Brad DeLong,
by an act of patriotic faith, explains Clinton's wars in the
Balkans as based on humanitarian motives, so also he offers implicit
apologetics for U.S. policy in Cambodia and East Timor based
on the same deep-seated chauvinistic biases? Could these underpin
his "allergic reaction" and intellectually degraded
and dishonest smear job on Chomsky?
Edward S. Herman
is Professor Emeritus of Finance at the Wharton School, University
of Pennsylvania, an economist and media analyst. He is author
of numerous books, including Corporate Control, Corporate Power
(1981), The
Real Terror Network (1982), Manufacturing
Consent (1988, with Noam Chomsky), Triumph
of the Market (1995), and The
Myth of The Liberal Media: an Edward Herman Reader (1999).
Weekend Edition Features for July 19 / 20, 2003
Arthur
Mitzman
Will the Pax Americana be More Sustainable
Than the Dot.com Bubble?
Julian
Bond
We Shall be Heard
Cynthia
McKinney
Bush's Racial Politics at Home and Abroad
Mel
Goodman
What is to be Done with the CIA?
Jason Leopold
Tenet Blames Wolfowitz
Mickey
Z.
History Forgave Churchill
Doug Giebel
Impeachment as the Message
Jon
Brown
Whipping the Post
Mano Singham
Cheney's Oil Maps
Steven
Sherman
Nickle, Dimed and Slimed at UNC
Robin Philpot
Liberia: History Doesn't Repeat Itself, It Stutters
Khaldoun
Khelil
Capturing Friedman
Jeffrey
St. Clair
You Must Leave Home, Again: Gilad Atzmon's A Guide to the Perplexed
Lenni
Brenner
Sitting in with Mingus
Vanessa
Jones
Three Dog Night
Adam
Engel
Video Judas Video
Poets'
Basement
Foley, Smith and Curtis
Website
of the Weekend
Illegal Art
Keep CounterPunch
Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
|