In late April, the world’s foremost intellectual addressed a group of future US soldiers:
The U.S. Military Academy at West Point was host last night to one of the world’s foremost critics of American foreign policy.
Noam Chomsky, the Institute Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, spoke at the academy as part of its Distinguished Lecture Series.
More than 500 people attended the lecture, most of them cadets who could someday serve in the Iraq war.
Last night, they heard the gray-haired scholar explain that, in his view, that the war in Iraq is unjust.
Chomsky, who spoke on the issue in response to a question from a cadet, said that while the war could be called preventive, it was still an act of aggression by the United States that most people in the world didn’t support.
He added that Iran might legitimately have grounds for its own preventive war.
“If preventative war is legitimate under these circumstances, it’s legitimate for everybody,” he said.
Chomsky raises an important point. Current Western “logic” dictates the notion of pre-emptive war as legitimate and acceptable. What if Iran, North Korea, Syria, and a host of other nations decided similarly? Washington, London and Canberra would never accept this, of course, refusing to see the profound hypocrisy in their position; Western exceptionalism is notorious throughout the developing world.
i have managed to hook up my own ‘rightwing mouthpiece machine’ which i call ‘the captain’
marvelous machine it is, it doesnt need any processing power because it ignores all information and does no actual thinking,
and i think this is an ideal story to test feed a few key words in and get a statement…
well i think it went a bit off topic to be honest,
and it definately threw that big word in to try and prove its intellectual superiority which is not a good sign,
over all though i think its functioning reasonably well,
feedback welcome
Very funny Smiths. Right on the mark with that one.
Who would ever have thought Chomsky would be invited to speak at Wetspoint? What a great moment.
Chomsky’s point is so obvious, yet he has to explain it to these poor souls who put their lives on the line.
The hipocrisy is astounding. The US sees as perfeclty legitimate, it’s manipulation and control of Latin America, which it considers it;s domain, yet any effort by Iran to ifluence what is taking place over it’s border is regarded as meddling and running interference.
But nations, of course, have national interests. They are rarely intellectually “fair” to those other nations they label as enemies.
Before attacking a country a nation needs reason’s it can sell to its own public and (usually) the world at large.
The President of Iran (through his speeches) is giving Israel (and its big brotheer the US) saleable reasons to attack.
Why is he doing this? What kind of preventative war can he wage against them?
Addamo
You are so naive. You clearly have no clue what role Chomsky plays in Pentagon and CIA propoganda.
Antony
If those countries started a war, they have Iraq to look forward to, except much worse. The ball is in their court.
i did such a double take when i first read this. i would really like to know which DoD and pentagram players made this happen. go noam!
remember kids: aggression, bombing, invasion etc are always ok when the White Man does it to poor brown people. been that way since…well, most of white history. and like the guy cheney shot in the face, brown folks are expected to apologize for getting in the way of all those bullets.
Viva
Do I detect a conspiracy theory? Go on, say it. Chomsky is a CIA operative right Viva?
oncce again viva, making strange statements,
anyone that claims to ‘know’ how the cia and pentagon manage chomsky and calls someone naive in this regard is just talking like a wanker,
whatever aspects of US policy chomsky misses he has probably done more to open the minds of uni students and young radicals questioning hegemony than any other man in the last 30 years,
if the book that started me on this course, ‘manufacturing consent’ is CIA propoganda then i am a monkeys uncle,
i really wonder about you viva
Chomsky’s point is a good one but it is one made repeatedly several years ago by plenty of people, me included.
To wingnut commandoes who demanded we all fall into line behind a policy of pre-emption I used to ask ‘if China is wearing the pants in 20 years, you’d still be OK with the pre-emption concept eh?’ The subject changed or they disappeared.
Chomsky’s failure to confirm the Mearsheimer Walt thesis (another set of contentions lots of us have been discussing for years, here as much as anywhere else) is one of his only blind spots for me. An understandable one, but unfortunately for his credibility as a balanced analyst, it’s a biggie.