by Charles
Last Thursday, in another lapse into Hugonoia, the Chavez goverment expelled a U.S. Embassy military official from Venezuela. Friday, Donald Rumsfeld unhelpfully triggered Godwin’s Law, mentioning that both Chavez and Hitler were "elected legally". Then the United States responded by expelling a "senior Venezuelan diplomat". Over the course of his administration, Chavez has used fears of a U.S. invasion to strengthen his military arsenal, and Rumsfeld’s words will give Chavez that much more of an excuse. Chavez is also not above triggering Godwin’s Law:
"The imperialist, genocidal, fascist attitude of the U.S. president has no limits. I think Hitler would be like a suckling baby next to George W. Bush," Chavez said from a stage decorated with a huge red image of himself as a young soldier.
Why pay attention to Venezuela? The prime reason is O-I-L. With the world’s fifth largest proven oil reserves, Venezuela is a geological lottery winner and, because of this, its president has more influence than he otherwise would or should have. [Update: To be clear, "should" is my personal opinion.] A secure oil supply is in the United States’ national interest, and Venezuela has played a major role. In 2004, the U.S. imported 12.8 millions barrels of crude oil and finished petroleum products per day, of which Venezuela supplied 11.8% (Venezuela is our fourth largest source of imported oil, behind Canada, Mexico and Saudi Arabia). At 551 million barrels per year and prices at $60 per barrel, that means the Venezuelan goverment–via its state-owned oil company, PDVSA–receives over $33 billion in revenues from the United States (or more accurately, from oil firms in the U.S.). Total Venezuelan oil revenues in 2005 were $85 billion, so the amount from the U.S. could be much higher. We are dependent on oil, so therefore we are dependent on Venezuelan oil.
But looking at it another way, the United States is in Venezuela’s national interest. The CIA World Factbook:
Venezuela continues to be highly dependent on the petroleum sector, accounting for roughly one-third of GDP, around 80% of export earnings, and over half of government operating revenues.
Venezuela produces 3.1 million barrels per day, of which 2.1 million are exported. That means that nearly 25% of government operating revenues are financed by American-based oil enterprises, and 16% of their GDP can be traced back to the United States. Venezuela is further invested in the United States because of CITGO, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of PDVSA, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Venezuelan goverment. The next time you fill your tank at the local 7-Eleven, de facto CEO Hugo Chavez should say gracias to you for adding a few more petrodollars to his government’s coffers.
But rather than gracias, the sentiments Chavez expresses towards the United States are closer to vete a cingar (WARNING: This R-rated link is not workplace safe). Chavez’s rhetoric is virtually indistinguishable from Castro’s, and if it just stayed there, Chavez would be just another loudmouth ingrate. And an entertaining one at that, since he apparently likes to parade American nutters through Caracas such as Harry Belafonte and Cindy Sheehan, giving them media platforms to bash Bush. But Chavez doesn’t stop just there.
While Chavez refers to himself as a Bolivarian, his movement is morphing from democratic socialism to a South American flavor of communism, inspired in part by the anti-American writings of Noam Chomsky. Call it Bolivarmunism. Chavez’s "new socialist revolution" looks much like Cuba 2.0, and we are subsidizing a good chunk of it. Anti-American tirades don’t hurt Chavez since he can play the nationalism and victim cards to his home audience, and he makes oil traders abroad nervous, thereby raising oil prices and further enriching the Chavez regime. It’s a win-win situation for the increasingly dictatorial president.
In 1992, Chavez’s attempted a military coup d’etat and failed. Opting for Plan B, he was elected president in December 1998 and has since wrought his revolution by changing the system from within. There’s nothing wrong with implementing social reforms and other good works, and Venezuela definitely needed more than a few. The problem is how Chavez has been doing it, which is by eroding his country’s democratic institutions, using dollops of populism and largesse and other means to get his way. From Foreign Policy:
Chavez has achieved absolute control of all state institutions that might check his power. In 1999, he engineered a new constitution that did away with the Senate, thereby reducing from two to one the number of chambers with which he must negotiate. Because Chavez only has a limited majority in this unicameral legislature, he revised the rules of congress so that major legislation can pass with only a simple, rather than a two-thirds, majority.
Chavez has also become commander in chief twice over. With the traditional army, he has achieved unrivaled political control. His 1999 constitution did away with congressional oversight of military affairs, a change that allowed him to purge disloyal generals and promote friendly ones. But commanding one armed force was not enough for Chavez. So in 2004, he began assembling a parallel army of urban reservists, whose membership he hopes to expand from 100,000 members to 2 million. In Columbia, 10,000 right-wing paramilitary forces significantly influence the course of the domestic war against guerillas. Two million reservists may mean never having to be in the opposition.
As important, Chavez controls the institute that supervises elections, the National Electoral Council, and the gigantic state-owed oil company, PDVSA, which provides most of the government’s revenues. A Chavez-controlled election body ensures that voting irregularities committed by the state are overlooked. A Chavez-controlled oil industry allows the state to spend at will, which comes in handy during election season.
Chavez thus controls the legislature, the Supreme Court, two armed forces, the only important source of state revenue, and the institution that monitors electoral rules. As if that weren’t enough, a new media law allows the state to supervise media content, and a revised criminal code permits the state to imprison any citizen for showing "disrespect" toward government officials. By compiling and posting on the Internet lists of voters and their political tendencies–including whether they signed a petition for a recall referendum in 2004–Venezuela has achieved reverse accountability. The state is watching and punishing citizens for political actions it disapproves of rather than the other way around. If democracy requires checks on the power of incumbents, Venezuela doesn’t come close.
Human Rights Watch has made similar observations of his more recent actions:
Since winning a national referendum on his presidency in 2004, Hugo Chávez and his majority coalition in Congress have taken steps to undermine the independence of the country’s judiciary by packing the Supreme Court with their allies. They have also enacted legislation that seriously threatens press freedoms and freedom of expression. Several high profile members of civil society have faced prosecution on highly dubious charges, and human rights defenders have been repeatedly accused by government officials of conspiring against the nation. Police violence, torture, and abusive prison conditions are also among the country’s most serious human rights problems.
Communist dictator is as communist dictator says and does. Economically, Venezuela is repressed and moving toward further repression. Examples abound:
- By withholding permits to mining firms, then expropriating the mines because of idleness, Chavez found a nifty to nationalize gold and diamond mines.
- Reaffirming the basic principles of Econ 201, there is no coffee on supermarket shelves because of price controls. According to BBC: "Since 2003, President Chavez has maintained a strict price regime on some basic foods like coffee, beans, sugar and powdered milk." The Guardian reported that "some supermarkets in the capital, Caracas, said they had also run out of sugar, chicken, powdered milk and maize." The Chavez response? More federal control: "In response, President Chávez has said that he might be forced to nationalise the coffee industry."
- Electricity rates have also been frozen since 2003. The result? Power failures are up 69%.
- Chavez is launching a five-year plan to eradicate poverty, using a combination of oil profits and social activists to grow the size of centralized government. After all, five-year plans worked so well in China, North Korea and Soviet Russia.
- The main Caracas bridge to somewhere now goes nowhere. They’ve known about the problems with the bridge (the only major artery that connects Caracas to the coastal lowlands and international airport) for twenty years, but nothing has been done on Hugo’s six-year watch. He owns this one, and it’s not going to get fixed until mid-2007 at the earliest (cite).
- Chavez is confiscating "unproductive" or "not legally held" farmland without compensation, even though the ranches are working farms, many with chains of title that go back to the 1800s (cite). Last September, Chavez vowed to accelerate his "land redistribution" mission.
- Forcing offshore oil companies into new contracts and a new tax regime on short notice, according to the Economist.
- Confiscation of paper firm Venepal: "According to Conindustria, Venezuela’s industrialists’ organisation, around 40% of the country’s 11,000 industrial concerns have gone bust since Mr Chávez came to power. He recently threatened to expropriate some 700 idle firms, along with more than 1,000 working below capacity, unless their owners resumed full production. One large company, the paper firm Venepal (now Invepal), was confiscated earlier this year and put back into operation with government money under a co-management scheme. Many state-owned enterprises are now attempting to implement different forms of workers’ control, with mixed results. Nowhere, though, has the state relinquished its majority stake."
- Chavez is planning on requiring that all privately-owned banks appoint two "state representatives" to their boards.
Such is what happens when a dictatorial president believes that the choice is "either capitalism, which is the road to hell, or socialism, for those who want to build the kingdom of God here on Earth." The disintegrating freedoms of the Venezuelan people are a matter of general concern for the United States, just as are the scant freedoms in Iran and Saudi Arabia and other unfree countries. But the more direct concern is Chavez’s deliberate spreading of anti-Americanism and his brand of communism to the region, and his using oil wealth to do it. While Chavez frequently rails at the U.S. for meddling in South American affairs, Chavez meddles in the affairs of his South American neighbors:
- At Chavez’s request, the unicameral legislature added an eighth star to its flag. The first seven represent Venezuela’s seven provinces, and the new addition represents approximate half of neighboring Guyana, a sovereign nation. The folks at the World Socialism Forum should change their chants from "Imperialism No! Socialism Yes" to "Venezuelan Imperialism Yes! Socialism Yes!" Guyanans should worry. Just imagine the outcry if Bush proposed–and a Republican Congress passed–a law whiched added two stars to its flag to represent British Columbia and Alberta, and an amendment that forbade Americans from waving their own flags in public.
- In Peru, Chavez is meddling in the country’s electoral campaign. Fortunately, it’s backfiring.
- Bolivia: Compadre Evo Morales was elected president last December with the help of Chavez. Morales is a self-proclaimed Chavez stooge, referring to Hugo as "mi comandante". More from BBC here.
- Colombia. Chavez has ties to FARC, a U.S. recognized terrorist organization, although it’s hard to know how strong those ties are.
- Nicaragua, where Chavez has "stumped for Marxist Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega and offered him cheap oil."
- Brazil, where Chavez supports the Landless Workers Movement, which is pushing for "dramatic land redistribution", to be followed by dramatic Zimbabwean-like poverty and hyper-inflation.
- Ecuador, where its newspaper El Comercio "recently reported that members of an underground leftist movement there had received weapons training in Venezuela."
- Mexico, where "there are published reports that the Venezuelan Embassy has become a hub for antigovernment activities." More from El Universal.
- In the United States. Play ball with Hugo and get cheap oil. Delahunt is one of Chavez’s most prominent American apologists, and there are concerns that Chavez is using CITGO as a political tool in America.
(Cites for some of the above quotes here, and more on Chavez extending his chavismo here.)
Measure Chavez also by the countries whom he strengthens ties with.
- North Korea, in ideological solidarity.
- Cuba, his closest ally.
- When Saddam was in power, Chavez was the first democratically elected head of state to visit Iraq since the 1991 Gulf War.
- Zimbabwe, where there is much love between the dictators.
No surprise that his alliances with the scum governments of the world are only matched by his scum rhetoric:
A day after the September 11 terrorist attacks, President Chavez declared that "The United States brought the attacks upon itself, for their arrogant imperialist foreign policy." Chavez also described the U.S. military response to bin Laden as "terrorism," claiming that he saw no difference between the invasion of Afghanistan and the September 11 terrorist attacks.
So what to do with the Chavez regime? There’s not much to do. Keep a close watch, strengthen ties with other Latin American nations, continue to pursue freedom and democracy wherever possible, watch history run its course, hope that a coherent opposition party can arise, and help the Venezuelan people pick up the pieces after Chavez runs his country into the ground. It’s already perceived as 130th least corrupt, and things could get ugly if oil prices take a fall. The Economist calls him more of a troublemaker than a threat, which sounds about right, unless he gets a nuke, then the balance of South American power is changed forever.
(Big hat tips to Caracas Chronicles, Devil’s Excrement and Publius Pundit.)
CB, your first link doesn’t work. And why is the expulsion clearly paranoid, if that’s what you mean? (Yes, have just read the first para. so far.)
We wait with bated breath for the usual congo line of Leftists to queue up to make excuses for Chavez.
The single sole reason for their doing this is his anti-American rhetoric. Take that away and he’s just another Latin Amercian fascist.
But even that can be forgiven (or pretended away) if you’re sufficiently anti-American.
And with that, HoCB christens another ship of the line.
“…, its president has more influence than he otherwise […] should have.”
What’s the metric for this, exactly? I’m really curious. Is there a list somewhere of authorized power that he’s exceeding, or what?
It’s a serious question. What, exactly, do you mean by this, Charles?
I’m not a fan of Chavez, although I do think he has some canny political sense. The giving cut-rate fuel to Bronx tenements and such shows that.
On the other hand, please don’t ask me, or even tie me down, and ask me to listen to his multi-hour-long speeches, at which he rivals Castro for length (somebody should lock them in a room together and see which one talks the other to death).
But this: “…since he apparently likes to parade American nutters through Caracas such as Harry Belafonte and Cindy Sheehan….”
Say what you want, but you have to admit that Belafonte sings sings a better version of “Day-0” than Cindy S. ever will.
am, it’s conga line, not congo line.
I don’t think it’s cingar. The Mexicans, at least, pronounce it chingar.
Jeez louise, Charles, what are you thinking putting a link in like the one you did to vete a cingar? Did you notice the pictures on the side? I’m not a prude, but doing something like that makes me think that you really don’t think what you are linking to.
Ooh, “using fears of a US invasion to boost his defences” is he? No doubt we’ll soon be hearing from the Bushies about his balsa wood anthrax-filled drones aimed at Manhattan. And those speculations about links to terrorism will soon become “confirmed facts” in the neocon’s hands. And he’s got our oil. Where have I heard all this before?
Look, this leftie is no fan of Chavez and I agree his reign is likely to end in tears for the Venezualans, with or without US “help”. That said, the social and economic grievances that got him elected are very real, the Supreme court he has subverted was incredibly partisan, the generals he replaced were reasonably suspected of sympathy with the aborted coup against him, he faces opponents who have not scrupled themselves to use extra-constitutional means and he is undoubtedly still popular – he doesn’t need to rig elections, at least yet. He’s bad enough without lumping him in with the true monsters.
Just stay sensible on this, Charles, when your ideological buddies start whipping up the war fever again.
American nutters such as Harry Belafonte and Cindy Sheehan
Nice, CB. Very classy. Yeah, suck it up, Cindy. Jeez, so you lost a son in a dubious war. It’s no biggie.
And the Human Rights Watch piece is rich in subtle wit.
Since winning a national referendum on his presidency in 2004, Hugo Chávez and his majority coalition in Congress have taken steps to undermine the independence of the country’s judiciary by packing the Supreme Court with their allies.
No! The scoundrels!
They have also enacted legislation that seriously threatens press freedoms and freedom of expression.
Good God!
Several high profile members of civil society
or “nutters” as we call them
have faced prosecution on highly dubious charges, and human rights defenders have been repeatedly accused by government officials of conspiring against the nation.
Or being ‘objectively pro-terrorist’.
Police violence, torture, and abusive prison conditions are also among the country’s most serious human rights problems.
How different, how very different from the home life etc.
ajay, you said exactly what I thought – Bush is Chavez but in a prettier dress.
With the republican party in its current manifestation, we too have a unicameral legislature, and Bush doesn’t even have to negotiate.
Jake
ajay and Jake: I’m with you guys. Chavez is the S. American flip side to W.
It is amazing to look into a future South American, Cuba lead coalition to reduse the US involvement in South America. The inability of the US to secure its boarders will have Thousands of South American Support should problems persist and escalate. The “REAL” concern of South American Communism style governments is growing the will undermine 100 years of efforts to push the South American nations to become more American, stay weak and supply cheap labor and goods to America. The US must chage its internal policy’s so that leaderhship not control is used in improving policy’s in South America as well as the rest of the world. The US is moving into a new Century with increasing threats from around the world and it is a fact even with Democracy we are seeing Evil, Dictators and Organisations can still take power through Democracy. It takes more time but I believe it also creates a deeper, stronger government which is not what America intended when we started promoting Free Democracy.
America needs some improvements and quick or we will see South America as a real US threat very soon.
I appreciate your reporting and information.
Excellent, excellent post, Charles. Well done.
Friday, Donald Rumsfeld unhelpfully triggered Godwin’s Law, mentioning that both Chavez and Hitler were “elected legally”.
Hey, it’s *very* helpful!
Anything to remind those silly Bush-haters of differences between Hitler and Bush!
LJ, clearly Charles included the link as an intentional provocation to any theocrats who might be reading. Maybe he means to publish it fifty times a day for the next thirty years.
What’s embarassing is that it shows that von doesn’t actually click on the links.
PS, You’re still using “Godwin’s Law” wrong. It doesn’t “trigger” anything, nor does it get triggered. It’s a statement of probability.
A couple of quibbles, Charles: One minor:
A usage like: “(Venezuela is our fourth largest oil importer, behind Canada, Mexico and Saudi Arabia)” is ungrammatical: it should read “Venezuela is our fourth-largest source of oil imports…” or something.
One not-so-minor:
If Hugo Chavez is this awful Dire Evil Dictator; how do you explain the fact that the people of Venezuela have voted him into power by such obvious margins, twice, in elections which are at least as fair as any in Latin America (I know, low bar to hurdle)?
This isn’t, pace am, a “defense” of Chavez and his “Bolivarian” folderol, btw: just a reminder that sociopolitical analyses, especially of foreign countries, aren’t always as simple as CB might think.
Hitler never was elected with a majority. The “election” that brought his party 44% of the vote was held after he was appointed chancellor, and in an environment of violence and intimidation.
Of course, I wouldn’t expect the Defense Secretary of the USA to know such a thing. No one in this administration appears to know much history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler#Reichstag_Fire_and_the_March_election
There was a good article about Chavez in the New York Review of Books last October, at this site
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18302
I think there was one in a recent issue of the Smithsonian as well.
The problem I have with CB’s post is the lack of context. The class war in Venezuela was, as is usually the case, launched by the ruling elites that oppose Chavez and despise the poor. Chavez is authoritarian and a danger to Venezuelan democracy, but the US has no credibility in Latin America or the Caribbean for obvious reasons, most recently the role of the Bush Administration in encouraging the thugs that overthrew Aristide. (The NYT had a front page story on this a week ago Sunday. It hasn’t gotten much attention. Bush did another evil thing. Ho, hum, so hard to keep up with them all.) And when there was a military coup that briefly toppled Chavez a few years back and “even the liberal NYT” initially cheered it, which probably shows how some of the ruling elite in our country really think when they aren’t careful to veil their thoughts.
Let the majority of the poor people organize against Chavez if his revolution starts to fall apart. I don’t notice much US concern for the poor in Latin America, except when a leftist is responsible, so if Chavez’s policies cause economic collapse there will be plenty of time then for us to pretend we care. Then the morally repugnant elites can take over again and we can go back to ignoring the plight of the poor–that’s how it went after the Sandinistas lost power in Nicaragua.
Haven’t read all of this yet, but wasn’t the expulsion for spying, and isn’t this the routine action in these cases? Was the individual expelled involved in espionage? I don’t know, and neither does Charles, but I would be quite surprised (and suspect Charles would be also) if we didn’t have some espionage activities in Venezuela.
The real offense is that Chavez isn’t our son-of-a-bitch. The US has no policy of opposing evil guys just because they are evil, and , when it suited our purposes, we have opposed and even destroyed good governments. Chavez’s offense is that he isn’t in our pocket.
His other offense is that he is competing with us for influence in Central and South America. He does this by appealing to the genuine need for reform. Perhaps he is a genuine reformer, prehaps not. The one thing we can know for sure is that we are not promoters of reform in those countries. Maybe if we were we would win the competition with guys like Chavez.
rilke,
The first link worked fine for me. I used the term hugonoia because of his frequent fearmongerish statements about U.S. invasions and plots to unseat him. Seems like he comes out with this about every week or so.
What’s the metric for this, exactly? I’m really curious. Is there a list somewhere of authorized power that he’s exceeding, or what?
Who said anything about “authorized power”, Gary? If I recall, I thought I used the word influence. Without oil revenues, Chavez has that much less mad money to play with, and that much fewer resources for spreading his ideology, for meddling in the affairs of this Latin American neighbors, and for propping up Castro and his regime, etc. That said, his “authorized power” is significantly greater today than it was back in 1999, especially now that there are fewer checks on that power. Today, he has plenty of hard-to-exceed “authorized power”.
No! The scoundrels!
There’s court-packing, and then there’s court-packing, ajay. Imagine the reaction if Bush somehow found a way to increase the U.S. Supreme Court to 14, then appoint Harriet Miers and four other cronies to the five new positions, then force Ginsburg and Breyer to step down so he could appoint two more cronies. If that were to happen, you’d have two sides to the same coin. Perspective is a good thing.
It’s kind of sweet to hear CB sternly point out that Castro is a Commie, and Chavez is becoming a Commie, and Sheehan/Belafonte/
Chomsky are Commie-symps.
In our IronMan Age of GSAVE/WOT-ever, when we’re reliably informed that islamofascism is ever so much more a grave and growing threat than the Axis and the Commies combined (which is why we have to toss what’s left of our checks and balances, not to mention our civil liberties, in order to fight it), – it’s rather nostalgic to see CB play the Commie Card.
First – Stop referencing to Godwin’s Law if you don’t know what it is (hint: wikipedia).
Second – The conditions that brought Chavez to power were completely forseeable. US economic interests sided with wealthy elites who screwed the poor, and the poor elected somebody to screw the wealthy elites. It’s bad, but it’s not surprising. The solution is to avoid creating the problem in the first place. Now it’s here all we can do is try to minimize the damage until this phase is played out, and try to ensure that the pendulum doesn’t swing too far back the other way.
This is what leftists mean when they talk about root causes: Allow economic interests to screw people over and eventually the resentment builds up to the point where it leads to violence. Too often the people who lead the revolutions are lousy managers (and egomaniacs, but that’s a different problem). Lousy management leads to economic and social problems, and the leader responds by grabbing more power instead of changing policies. This pattern is repeated over and over again, yet somehow we just don’t learn from it.
Finally – there is a delusion within the right that material success is somehow related to merit. I disagree with this analysis even in the ideal case of a truly free and fair market, but that’s an argument for another day. Applied to a grossly unfree and unfair market in which aristocrats who have inherited wealth taken by force and fraud (i.e. pretty much all of South and Central America) are able to use their access to political power to game the system so as to keep the poor from improving their lot (must have cheap labor) you have a straightforward alliance of the strong against the weak. Neither the peasants nor the aristocrats are idiots: both know how the system works, and who is backing the status quo. The US will never have easy relations with these countries unless it either commits to crushing the peasants or to building a truly free and fair socioeconomic system. I know what my preference is.
And the link indeed works for me now.
It might have been “hugonoia”, but it might have been the guy in question was in fact acting beyond diplomatic bounds, true? I assume from your perspective it’s a good thing for the admin to have agents there looking into the options – maybe even from my perspective that’s so (assuming competent agents).
CB: “I used the term hugonoia because of his frequent fearmongerish statements about U.S. invasions and plots to unseat him. Seems like he comes out with this about every week or so.”
Not that we in the US aren’t accustomed to fearmongering on an almost weekly basis.
Re the court packing, you are of course correct. Not that I imagine there would be any effective opposition from the Republican controlled Congress if Bush did attempt that. But there is a distinction to be made.
What is interesting is your, once again, subtle (well maybe not that subtle), reintroduction of the nuke theme. Since you previously decided that Iran would be the willing supplier, even though this time you admit that their relationship as far as known only extends to OPEC, I am curious as to why you actually think that is that much of a threat.
You asked what we (meaning I presume the US) can do about all this, you say “not much”. The real question is why should we do anything?
To me, it seems this adminsitration makes arbitrary decisions on who we like and don’t like, and once a country or leader is on the “DO NOT LIKE” list, we do everything in our power to not only antagonize and alienate him, but everybody else. Not the best foreign policy IMHO.
You’re right, Jay. The oil import phraseology felt clunky when I wrote it. Fixed.
That Chavez was popularly elected does immunize him from criticism. Bush won by three million last time around. Hamas did OK, too.
Donald, criticism of Chavez does not mean support of the opposition. They lost for a reason back in 1999 and they’ve been losing ever since, partly because they do represent the old oligarchy and partly because they seem unable to coalesce around a person or platform that would resonate. Being “anti” just isn’t good enough (where have I heard that before?).
Venezuela is a geological lottery winner and, because of this, its president has more influence than he otherwise would or should have. A secure oil supply is in the United States’ national interest
As if the US wasn’t a geological lotter winner, pot meet kettle. And O-I-L is only important because the US won’t get off their collective asses and explore all the other options instead of just the easiest.
And speaking of “national interests” how about honoring “world interests” where 5% of the world’s population produces 35% of it’s greenhouse gasses while refusing to even sign the Kyoto agreement. That term ‘national interests’ is a loaded ugly one and usually suggests someone with a different passport is about to die or be invaded because we won’t use or brains to think up better solutions.
sorry for the deletion.
john miller: To me, it seems this adminsitration makes arbitrary decisions on who we like and don’t like, and once a country or leader is on the “DO NOT LIKE” list, we do everything in our power to not only antagonize and alienate him, but everybody else.
I don’t think it’s in the least arbitrary, John. I think you can spell it O-I-L.
What if Venezuela goes off the petrodollar standard and decides to sell oil for euros? Suddenly, the US has to buy euros with dollars in order to buy oil from Venezuela.
(Or, more likely, suddenly Hugo Chavez is assassinated and there is a military CIA-backed coup, with a general in charge who is very, very anxious to do just what the US tells him to do.)
What if Iran decides to do the same? What if all major oil-producing countries decided to do this?
These are serious issues, on which the US economy really depends. But that’s not on the Bush administration’s talking points bulletin, is it?
italics off?
Uhhh, BD: I have to assume here that the deletion of the word “not” in your formulation:
“That Chavez was popularly elected does immunize him from criticism.”
was mere typo, and not some sort of weird Freudian slip – especially as you follow it up with a mention of Bush (criticism of whom I will be only too pleased to supply)
Inherit the Wind.
we are reaping what we have sowed. and conservatives like cb, whose policy analysis frequently appears to be no more profound than to try to stand astride the tracks of other countries’ road to the future and yell “stop”, worries about the consolidation of power in the executive of a foreign country.
umm, how ’bout the consolidation of power in the executive of THIS country?
still worried about Castro? then lift the embargo. he has defined himself by his successful opposition to the US. you flood his country with Wal-Marts, allow the import of Cuban cigars and a middle class opposition will spring up overnight.
worried about Venezuela? Invite Chavez to the White House. Publicly ask him if Venezuela will provide low-cost fuel to support a broad winter fuel assistance program, and offer him something he wants in return. Set up spanish-language NPR and BBC radio broadcasts in country.
He is no worse and certainly much better than most leaders in Central and Southern America over the last, say, 100 years. If he wants to define himself by opposition to the US, the best way to pull his teeth is to not oppose him.
this sentence from CB — “its president has more influence than he … should have” — is a little disconcerting. who, precisely, decides how much influence any individual should have. Frex, i’ll bet that any number of Brits thought the same thing of Ghandi (oops, Gandhi) more than once.
Barry: Hitler never was elected with a majority. The “election” that brought his party 44% of the vote was held after he was appointed chancellor, and in an environment of violence and intimidation.
Okay, okay, I take it back–Bush and Hitler *are* similar.
Jes, you are right, it is not necessarily arbitrary. The rest still follows.
And they are also making some of our friends nervous.
My son told me an anecdote about when he was at advanced officer training. They bring in guest lecturers from other miltaries around the world. The was a general (I believe) from an African country with whom we have good relations who was quite blunt with our military officers.
Basically he said that when Bush used his famous “If you are not with us, you are against us” phrase, he scared a lot fo countries that may generally agree with us in many things, but may disagree in particulars.
CB may talk about Chavez being blustery, but in a contest, our fearless leader would be a close match.
Jes,
I really think the whole “price oil in euros” business is overdone. First, it’s unlikely. A commodity like oil, sold in big international markets, pretty much has to be priced in a single currency. With the US (and Canada and Mexico) major producers there is strong pressure for that to be dollars. Similarly, the fact that the US is a huge consumer makes dollar pricing likely to stay in place.
Second, I’m not sure where the supposed massive damage to the US economy would come from. Perhaps I’m overlooking some of the consequences.
Bernard, such self-doubt is admirable, but I’d say you’ve pretty much got it right.
Bernard,
The claim for massive damage comes from thinking that other consumer nations will hold less of their reserves in dollars and more in Euros. If that occurs (especially by Japan or China), the market for T-bills is reduced, the Federal deficit will increase markedly and US interest rates will rise.
I am not convinced that a change in which currency oil is sold at, by itself, will do this, as the cost of converting T-bills to Euros is not much different than converting T-bills to dollars. On the other hand, it may provide an impetus for economies thinking of doing this already (e.g., to diversify their portfolios against fluctuations in the currency markets) to do it sooner rather than later.
But looking at it another way, the United States is in Venezuela’s national interest.
yeah because it would be SO hard to find someone else to buy oil. they definitely need us more than we need them…. right. keep dreaming.
I tried to turn off the italics in that last post… believe me, I really tried.
The claim for massive damage comes from thinking that other consumer nations will hold less of their reserves in dollars and more in Euros. If that occurs (especially by Japan or China), the market for T-bills is reduced, the Federal deficit will increase markedly and US interest rates will rise.
There’s a bit more to it than that. The money owed to those that finance the US deficit is repaid in US dollars. That means when the US dollar significantly devalues, those who hold US debt take a bath. If the dollar starts to drop, they will attempt to sell their debt at a reduced cost, further reducing the value of the dollar. Add to that the incentive for various national banks to dump their dollars before others and you have the equivalent of an interesting international game of Prisoner’s Dilemna.
Of course, a tanking US economy will also tank the global economy, so there would probably be a significant effort to keep the dollar up.
How will it turn out? Dunno. But there’s more than just oil at stake.
yeah because it would be SO hard to find someone else to buy oil. they definitely need us more than we need them…
It’s a little complicated than that, Bill. Venezuela’s oil is sour crude (lots of sulfur in it), and it takes major changes and boatloads of cash for a refinery to switch gears and convert it to petrol. Also, CITGO is a major profit center for Chavez. In a lot of ways, we’re stuck with Venezuela and they’re stuck with us.
“The money owed to those that finance the US deficit is repaid in US dollars. That means when the US dollar significantly devalues, those who hold US debt take a bath.”
True, but this does not apply to US citizens, who still own the bulk of T-bills.
“If the dollar starts to drop, they will attempt to sell their debt at a reduced cost, further reducing the value of the dollar. Add to that the incentive for various national banks to dump their dollars before others and you have the equivalent of an interesting international game of Prisoner’s Dilemna.”
Agreed, but I don’t see this happening solely due to the change in the currency in which oil contracts are denominated. As I said before, I can see it leading a party thinking of dumping dollars already to do it faster, knowing there will be less of a market for buying dollars, but I don’t think it is enough by itself to start an avalanche of selloffs (or using CB’s predilection for coining new and scary words, a sellvalance).
inspired in part by the anti-American writings of Noam Chomsky.
I don’t much care for Chavez and I’m fairly indifferent to Chomsky, but really, Charlie, could you write a wingnuttier sentence? 20 bucks says you can’t prove Chomsky or his writings are “anti-American.” Partly, I think, because the phrase is nearly meaningless, partly because it sounds like something you just pulled out of your nether regions.
From where I sit Chavez looks just like a left-wing version of George W. Bush. (Except Chavez hasn’t attacked another country yet.)
Similarly, the fact that the US is a huge consumer makes dollar pricing likely to stay in place.
Not if the countries who decide on the pricing want to make the US take a bath.
…I don’t think it is enough by itself to start an avalanche of selloffs
I think you mean “a tsunami of selloffs.”
True, but this does not apply to US citizens, who still own the bulk of T-bills.
But US debt is at $8 trillion. About $44 of that is foreign-owned.
Agreed, but I don’t see this happening solely due to the change in the currency in which oil contracts are denominated.
I wouldn’t underestimate the effect of changing the world’s oil float. And as Iran plans to open an oil exchange in March that deals entirely in Euros, we may see the fallout this year.
Chomsky is anti-American in the sense that I am–if you loathe much of what American foreign policy has been like, then you are “anti-American” in some limited sense. The usefulness of the epithet is that the harsh critic of American foreign policy can be lumped in with people who hate everything about the US and even with people who fly planes into buildings. And it’s the kiss of death in politics. I’m not running for anything and never will, but it’d be pretty hard to win any election outside some lefty enclave once the “anti-American” label has been slapped on, and a casual self-labeling of the sort I’ve just done to myself would be the end of my hypothetical political career. It might even be the end of someone’s career as a mainstream pundit. You’d be exiled to Chomskyland.
But those pragmatic political considerations aside, I think any decent person who examines US behavior in Latin America over the past several decades ought to be “anti-American” in the limited sense of the term.
…inspired in part by the anti-American writings of Noam Chomsky.
I’m interested in this one as well, particualrily since Charles has gone to some lengths to show that Chavez is authoritarian, and Chomsky is an anarchist. You don’t get much more anti-authoritarian than anarchist, so I’m not sure how Chavez is influenced by his writings.
Charles, could you provide the source for this?
Me: About $44 of that is foreign-owned.
Oops. make that 44%. If foreign debt was about $44, I’d pay it off myself just as a favour to my US friends.
Jes,
Not really, as the currency that would be converted to Euros in order to buy oil is not great, and should not, by itself affect the exchange rates much. On the other hand, I think the most likely reason for a sellvalanche (spelling corrected) is as a way for China to get leverage over us in a more direct dispute (perhaps over Taiwan, or even Iran, who sells China much of its oil).
++ungood,
44% sounds high to me (I recall it more like 30%, although my figures may be a couple of years old). In any event, the bulk (as in the majority) is still owned by US citizens.
“Not if the countries who decide on the pricing want to make the US take a bath.”
What does this mean? Which countries? China? That would hurt their economy even more. Who?
Which price? Oil? This is very cryptic. All this worrying about what type of bills people pay for oil with has pretty much no basis in real economics. If Iran or Venezuela chooses to only accept the Zimbabwe dollar ($Z), it would provide a minor boost to Zimbabwe because it has almost no economy. People would convert to $Z for buying oil and then they would convert it right back to whatever else they needed to buy other useful things. Currency reserves aren’t what you typically use to buy oil.
So what to do with the Chavez regime? There’s not much to do. Keep a close watch, strengthen ties with other Latin American nations, continue to pursue freedom and democracy wherever possible,…
Though if the people in Venezuela keep stubbornly voting for the wrong guy, then I suppose “freedom and democracy” aren’t so very “possible.”
I used the term hugonoia because of his frequent fearmongerish statements about U.S. invasions and plots to unseat him. Seems like he comes out with this about every week or so.
Yeah, what a feverish imagination that Chavez has. It’s not like we’ve been mucking about south of the Rio Grande since Teddy Roosevelt’s day, or anything. Or that we helped sponsor one coup against Chavez already. Sometimes even the paranoid have enemies, you know.
It’s a little complicated than that, Bill. Venezuela’s oil is sour crude (lots of sulfur in it), and it takes major changes and boatloads of cash for a refinery to switch gears and convert it to petrol. Also, CITGO is a major profit center for Chavez. In a lot of ways, we’re stuck with Venezuela and they’re stuck with us.
Huh… learn something new everyday.
But if we’re stuck with them and he’s stuck with us, why the bitching? The people there like him. Isn’t that’s what’s more important than anything? They have to live with him in a more real way than we do. And his country isn’t exporting terrorists like another well known oil producer for the US (hint: rhymes with Baudi Bababia) who also happens to MORE of a dictator than Chavez is, at least Chavez was elected. At least with Venezuela we aren’t bankrolling the same people who slammed a couple of planes into us. Maybe I’m over looking something or being to simplistic but I fail to see this as a crisis. If a country wants to move towards socialism isn’t that their decision to make as country? How is it ours to make for them? Why do we care so much when we turn a blind eye to the middle east?
I’d rather see my money go to venezuela than the middle east.
Why do we care so much when we turn a blind eye to middle east dictators we are friendly with?
is what i meant to say
“Influence” is power. If it weren’t, you wouldn’t care, would you? You’re not speaking of, say, his “influence” over choice of baby names in Venuezela, but of his political “influence” elsewhere in South America and the world.
Be that as it may, I’ll happily refer strictly to “influence,” to be clear.
So:
“…, its president has more influence than he otherwise […] should have.”
Where does the “should” come from? According to what or whom or why? What’s the metric? Where is the baseline and what gives it authority?
“Without oil revenues, Chavez has that much less mad money to play with, and that much fewer resources for spreading his ideology, for meddling in the affairs of this Latin American neighbors, and for propping up Castro and his regime, etc.”
So? Where does the “should” come from? How is what you say relevant to my question? Is there some baseline of proper influence that “should[n’t]” be influenced by natural resources of a country? I’m completely not understanding what logic or measure is at work here.
Please explain?
“First – Stop referencing to Godwin’s Law if you don’t know what it is (hint: wikipedia).”
Much better source: Jargon File:
JayC: “If Hugo Chavez is this awful Dire Evil Dictator; how do you explain the fact that the people of Venezuela have voted him into power by such obvious margins, twice, in elections which are at least as fair as any in Latin America (I know, low bar to hurdle)?”
Familiarity with history points out innumerable popular dictators. What is your understanding of the source of the word “dictator,” exactly?
Here, I’ll make it easy. There’s no conflict whatever between being a dictator, and being popular with the masses, or with being elected.
Charles: “You’re right, Jay. The oil import phraseology felt clunky when I wrote it. Fixed.”
I don’t see any mention of an update or change in your post.
Perhaps I’m missing it.
You’re not saying that you simply feel free to rewrite your posts and make no acknowledgement of having done so in the post, surely? I mean, I’m pretty sure you don’t approve of Stalinistic approaches like that.
I’m confused. (Fixing typos or errors in the first ten, maybe twenty, minutes or so, maybe even half an hour or so, after posting would be one thing; the next day, another thing, although obviously you might feel differently, and it’s up to you as to how you want to be publically honest about changing your text the next day or not, of course; it’s your blog, after all.)
Francis: “still worried about Castro? then lift the embargo. he has defined himself by his successful opposition to the US. you flood his country with Wal-Marts….”
I’m for lifting, or at least drastically modifying, the embargo on Cuba, but I think it’s doubtful in the extreme that this would lead to being able to “flood his country with Wal-Marts” while Fidel is still alive or Raul still has power. It’s not as if they don’t have some import controls and laws of their own, in Cuba, you know. Some of them aren’t even very nice laws.
Bill: “yeah because it would be SO hard to find someone else to buy oil. they definitely need us more than we need them…. right. keep dreaming.”
It’s helpful to know something about the technical details of the cost of shipping to different places, and what refineries are located where, and which types of crude they can handle, before commenting on “dreams” and other people’s understanding of the technical aspects of the oil business, it turns out.
d-p-u: “But US debt is at $8 trillion. About $44 of that is foreign-owned.”
Cheap picking-on-typos warning! Humor-only intended!
Pshew! We’re okay, then!
/end cheap-shot picking-on-typos-humor.
“I think any decent person who examines US behavior in Latin America over the past several decades ought to be ‘anti-American’ in the limited sense of the term.”
Last several decades? U.S. behavior towards Latin America has gotten vastly better in the last three decades (and, yes, I’m including everything from invading Panama to, hell, through in Grenada in the Carribean, just to be generous about our geography and inclusiveness, plus Cuba, Veneuzela, etc.).
It’s the last 150 years that you want to look at, and everything from how Panama came to be, to the career of General Smedley Butler, to all the multitude of invasions and occupations, and so on. Anyone want to give a count of how many times we’ve invaded Mexico, and when we started, and how much square mileage we took? Look at how far Wilsonian idealism, as put into effect by Woodrow Wilson hisself, extended southwards? Look at the first half of the 20th century? Etc.
We’ve been pussycats in the last few decades, in context of the past couple of hundred years.
“It’s not like we’ve been mucking about south of the Rio Grande since Teddy Roosevelt’s day, or anything.”
Does no one know anything about 1846-1848?
Okay, now I’m caught up on the thread.
“You’re not saying that you simply feel free to rewrite your posts and make no acknowledgement of having done so in the post, surely? I mean, I’m pretty sure you don’t approve of Stalinistic approaches like that.”
In my world “Stalinistic approaches” to rewriting involves substantive changes instead of grammatical rewordings to make things clearer. My preference for non-spelling corrections might be to note an update if someone in the comments had relied on the old wording for something, but calling a non-substantive phrase-change “Stalinisitc” seems a bit much.
Heh, and of course I had to mispell something there….
Chávez is the king of bombast and by constantly taking the bait, the Bush administration keeps him on the throne.
Of course that’s the problem when the Secretary of Defense is responsible for foreign policy and not the Secretary of State.
Here’s one the best comments I’ve read regarding Chávez and it largely matches my own feelings:
I don’t much care for Chavez and I’m fairly indifferent to Chomsky, but really, Charlie, could you write a wingnuttier sentence?
The direct quote from the wikipedia link, Paul:
I made the dangerous assumption that Wikipedia was accurate in this instance. If there is dissonance between anarcho-whatever-he-is Chomsky and self-proclaimed-socialist Chavez, I’d rather leave Chavez or one of his Bolivarissimos to explain it.
Well, Chavez can’t be both an anarchist and an authoritarian, the political philosophies are opposites.
Maybe you’re wrong about Chavez, and possibly lack knowledge about the various leftist political philosphies involved?
And this is odd. I checked Chomsky’s page on Wikipedia, and I can’t find anything about his anti-American writings.
What was your source for that bit of data?
just a quick note to thank Charles for adding a note about the site that shall not be named. A much longer post of musing about this and other things will appear at HoCB anon.
While Chavez refers to himself as a Bolivarian, his movement is morphing from democratic socialism to a South American flavor of communism, inspired in part by the anti-American writings of Noam Chomsky. Call it Bolivarmunism.
Speaking on behalf of those who love the English language, could you please please please never try to neologize again?
Charles: the following is intended as a tease, nothing worse, okay? And incidentally, regardless of the single point I’ve harassed you about, and setting aside other points of agreement and disagreement (and while I have various points of disagreement with some of what you said, or at least your phrasing, none of it, you’ll note, otherwise rose to the level I felt it important to comment on; there was much you wrote in this post that I also do agree with, though not necessarily the phrasing), you clearly put a lot of work and effort into this post, and for that you have my respect.
Teasing remark, following up on Anarch’s:
What, you object to the neolgesunammi? 🙂
Or that we helped sponsor one coup against Chavez already. Sometimes even the paranoid have enemies, you know.
Or sometimes the paranoid use things like failed coups as political hobby horses. It’s a long post, but the guy was there when it happened. Both Chavez and the opposition made serious mistakes which led to the conflagration. There is no evidence that the U.S. sponsored or was in any other way involved in the coup. There was also no formal investigation as to the events of April 11-13.
“There is no evidence that the U.S. sponsored or was in any other way involved in the coup.”
Stipulating that arguendo — it’s unclear to me we have adequate information, but I’m not making any charges, either — would you agree that the U.S. government and State Department were not exactly quick to speak up to demand the restoration of the democratically elected government? If so, would you agree that this was not a shining example of our support for “democracy” even when we don’t like the results?
If there is dissonance between anarcho-whatever-he-is Chomsky and self-proclaimed-socialist Chavez, I’d rather leave Chavez or one of his Bolivarissimos to explain it.
Er…if you don’t understand “the dissonance” – if such indeed exists – then you really can’t present yourself as a knowledgeable, no?
To do so would be a bit reckless, wouldn’t you say?
As signatories to the Inter-American Democratic Charter, Charles, we were obliged to speak out against any “an unconstitutional interruption of the democratic order or an unconstitutional alteration of the constitutional regime.” Ari Fleischer instead said (incorrectly) that Chávez had resigned and the “events in Venezuela resulted in a change in the government and the assumption of a transitional authority until new elections can be held.”
Whether one likes Chávez or not (and I’m not a fan by any means), what Fleischer said lends credence (although it’s certainly not evidence) that the US lent tacit support to the coup.
Moreover, Charles, their response put the Bush administration at odds with every other government in Latin America, all but one of which were democracies at the time of the attempted coup.
Gary,
“Should” is my personal opinion.
As for Godwin’s Law, my flimsy excuse is that, on a macro scale, Godwin’s Law was invoked (or happened) in a “thread” (consisting of ongoing public statements made by officials of the U.S. and Venezuelan governments) and public officials on both sides used Hitler comparisons. I accept that my use of the phrase is pretty far (to put it charitably) from the cited definition. It’s 8:02pm PST, so I’ll sleep on it.
I don’t see any mention of an update or change in your post.
Generally, I don’t turn on the bijou lights for typographical errors or clunky phrases, Gary, since those errors don’t pertain to substance. Those types of edits are efforts at cleaning up my English and trying to make the post a better read, and I don’t think a statute of limitations is necessary. I don’t see how public honesty or dishonesty or Stalinism should even be an issue in that regard.
If there are factual or contentious matters at issue, I don’t delete. Period. In those cases, I make updates, add explanatories, cross out the bad facts, use asterisks, etc., but I never delete or change the original verbiage I know it’s a judgment call, but that seems the reasonable way to to do these things.
still worried about Castro? then lift the embargo.
I’m not terribly worried about Castro, Francis. If it were up to me, I’d lift the travel ban and allow cash transfers, but otherwise restrict trade with Cuba.
Speaking on behalf of those who love the English language, could you please please please never try to neologize again?
No offense, Anarch, but that was funny. FTR, I prefer the term portmanteau. Can’t help it, really. My mind just sort of works that way.
It sure is hard to know what to think of these not-so-little screeds.
What is your central point here Charles? Is this a cautionary tale about US dependence on O-I-L? An object lesson in the structural and economic inefficiencies which inevitably accompany authoritarian governance? A reminder of the importance of due process and separation of powers in democracy? A gussied-up reprise of the domino theory? A subtle invocation of the Great Man theory of history? Why this extended rumination (with hyperlinks!™) on the awe-inspiring badness of Hugo Chavez? (other than as an excuse to throw around neologisms of course)
Which is really to say, why Venezuela? Why not Saudi Arabia? Why not Russia? Heck, why not Haiti just for a change? You’ve heard of Haiti, right? It’s hardly any farther than Cuba.
It seems that this is really just a strange attractor having to do with Hugo Chavez. What we have is a lot of hating on Hugo Chavez for a wide range of very loosely related and sometimes self-contradictory reasons, which have in common that they converge on political or economic justification for getting rid of him. Nice to see some mention of humanitarian concerns, but when I see somebody linking to a report like that one I can’t help but wonder whether they realize that by HRW’s rather exactinig standards it’s really pretty tame.
It’s sort of interesting in a cui bono kind of way, but I already know cui bono so it’s hard to stay focused. Maybe the problem is that I haven’t mastered the art of doublethink.
As I understand it, the recent Parliamentary elections in Venezuela had about 25% turnout because nearly half of the population, and all of the “right-wing” voters (more than 25%, but let’s say less than 50%) refused to participate. Interestingly, the Carter Center has no commentary or opinion about why this happened. Perhaps Randy could clue us in on this. I think that there is a failure of democracy there in this case because the elections are controlled nationally rather than locally. If you lose your job depending on whether or not you voted for Chavez, perhaps it is better on a personal level to say “the weather was too bad for me to go out and vote”.
Also note that the Carter Center insisted on no exit-polling in the 2004 Presidential referendum.
(A source of my animus for President Carter revealed – I think that those referendum results merited far more scrutiny than they ultimately received, not that the outcome would have been different, but perhaps much more closely contested.)
Gary Farber rightly needles:
“It’s not like we’ve been mucking about south of the Rio Grande since Teddy Roosevelt’s day, or anything.”
Does no one know anything about 1846-1848?
I was aware that there was a slight set-to back then, but hey, the Mexicans started it.
Oh, wait. They didn’t. Okay, I sort of stand corrected. Though the issues at hand at first did involve the territory north of the Rio Grande. Even if the Halls of Montezuma are somewhere south of there.
In any case, we were talking about Venezuela and so far as I know the United States didn’t involve itself much in South America until Teddy Roosevelt whipped out his Big Stick and proclaimed the Roosevelt Corollary. And then, Woodrow Wilson said something about “teaching them to elect good men…”
There’s an interesting story on Venezuela here, on TPMCafe.
Also, an exxtremely good two-part series in the New York Review, here and here.
Interestingly, the Carter Center has no commentary or opinion about why this happened.
Were they invited to participate as official observers to this election (as they were for the referendum)? If yes perhaps, given the elections were December, they are forthcoming? I note on pg. 8:
Also note that the Carter Center insisted on no exit-polling in the 2004 Presidential referendum.
Er…I think you might have misspoken, exit polls were conducted by both sides. For the Carter Center’s account, see here. Of note:
Were they invited to participate as official observers to this election (as they were for the referendum)?
Well if they were not invited, why were they not invited? The Carter Center now has news blurbs on the recent Palestinian elections, for instance.
“‘Should’ is my personal opinion.”
Ah. Well, just possibly you “should” make that kind of thing clear.
I’d never actually write the above sentence without the quote marks, myself, mind. I don’t think I should write imperatives based upon my personal authority, under most circumstances, but rather I should ground them in some actual authority.
You should write according to your own standards, and as you wish, I will opine, though. That’s an example of what I’d consider to be a legitimate exercise of personal opinion. YMM, and does, V.
“Those types of edits are efforts at cleaning up my English and trying to make the post a better read, and I don’t think a statute of limitations is necessary.”
Reasonable people can disagree on this, I’ll allow. I’m moderately strict, although I do allow myself approximately twenty minutes or so to make minor corrections, and will fix a literal typo of a single letter or two for sometime thereafter. More than that, I try to keep to a rule of fixing as an addendum, but I acknowledge that this is purely a personal standard, and not one of any larger authority, and certainly not some sort of objective “rule.”
I was over-strong in my previous comment on this to you, and probably a bit over-the-top in using the phrase “Stalinistic,” given the possible connotations, although I was, of course, strictly referring only to said practices as regards rewriting and cropping/air-brushing/fixing photographs, and not, of course, to any other practices of the regime. But since that might not have been as obvious as I intended, I withdraw the adjective and apologize for using it.
DaveC: “Perhaps Randy could clue us in on this.”
I suspect he can. I suspect that, in general, Randy Paul knows more than either me or thee about Caribbean/Latin American issues, as a rule (which is why he’s been on my quite limited blogroll for many months), and that it might not be wise to push him to prove it.
I do look forward to the possibility, which I hope will come to be, that he will respond and answer your suggestion.
stickler: “Though the issues at hand at first did involve the territory north of the Rio Grande. Even if the Halls of Montezuma are somewhere south of there.”
Yep. Mexico City: not so north of the Rio Grande.
“In any case, we were talking about Venezuela and so far as I know the United States didn’t involve itself much in South America until Teddy Roosevelt whipped out his Big Stick and proclaimed the Roosevelt Corollary.”
Well, there was that whole “Monroe Doctrine” thing.
Serious intervention from the U.S. in South America was essentially a follow-on from the general enthusiasm for American imperialism (not a term that originated in leftist rhetoric, I mention for the benefit of anyone not familiar, unless you consider, say, William Jennings Bryan, or Mark Twain, “leftists,” which while certainly arguable, would be a somewhat unusual and anachronistic usage — “imperialism” was a big topic of debate in America in the late 19th century) from the time of the Mexican-American War (hey, “Manifest Destiny,” anyone?) and most particularly as a product of the Spanish-American War, and its conquest of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and most of all, the Phillipines (although subduing them was a long and horrible story, and one with a considerable amount of relevance remaining today), thus leading to the need for a canal on the isthmus of Panama, and the continued expansion across the Pacific.
In any case, I’m of the impression that relatively few South Americans are going to be fussy in distinguishing between U.S. imperialism in the Caribbean, the Pacific, or South America, although I could, of course, be wrong.
“And then, Woodrow Wilson said something about ‘teaching them to elect good men…'”
Indeed. Wilson was an important President, and did a few good things — though even most of those were arguably more negative in total effect, in the end, than positive, although that’s a debate I can wax on about and listen to for literally hours (I once literally put a sweetie to sleep — unintentionally — nattering on about Wilsonian foreign policy; oops), so I’ll shut up now.
(Fourteen points: overall, more good than bad?; discuss; would things be better if Wilson hadn’t stroked, and we’d joined the League of Nations, or would it have made no significant difference in the long run, anyway?; discuss.)
Okay, this: Wilson was a horrible racist of a man, one of the more racist Presidents ever, and one of the worst for civil liberties ever, with the Palmer Raids and ever so much more. As I quote on the sidebar of my blog:
Wilson did some good, but he’s most certainly not a hero of mine.
“Also note that the Carter Center insisted on no exit-polling in the 2004 Presidential referendum.”
They audited the vote.
“Well if they were not invited, why were they not invited?”
How would any answer reflect in any way on the Carter Center?
Dave, do you ever check facts and documents before commenting on issues? That’s a rude question, I absolutely acknowledge, but if you don’t mind answering, I’m quite curious as to the answer. Your previous citation of Rush Limbaugh as a credible source kind of directly leads me to it.
Also, hoping you’ll find time in the next day or two or three, when you can make time, to address that whole “Democrats in general [don’t] feel any responsibility for protecting Americans from terrorist attacks” and “many Democrats […] will work to harm the US’s security in order to score political points” thing.
They seem charges worth supporting. Or withdrawing. Just my opinion, of course.
No offense, Anarch, but that was funny.
It was intended to be (:
If there is dissonance between anarcho-whatever-he-is Chomsky and self-proclaimed-socialist Chavez, I’d rather leave Chavez or one of his Bolivarissimos to explain it.
Shorter Charlie: “I don’t know the difference between Chavez and Chomsky! Ask them!”
Nice work up there demonstrating just how “anti-American” Chomsky is, too. Not even for 20 bucks. No use offering more, I guess. Ah, Charles. You wind up like a toy.
Gary I’ll answer your questions about Venezuela first:
Concerning the 2004 referendum, the audit was done, but limited. As noted here
Now, I was asking why the Carter Center did not take much interest in the December 2005 parliamentary elections.
Why didn’t it show up on their radar, I don’t know. But it didn’t, and the 2005 election, or lack of partictpation in it by vast majority (75%)of Venezuelans should be a cause of concern.
I did suggest that Randy should clue us in about Dec 2005, and I did so because he is considered an expert a source on a reputable blog ;^) , as is Gary Farber.
(Actually, I think I’ll campaign to make “doesn’t know the difference between Chavez and Chomsky” the new “s**t and shinola” for post-September 11th America.)
I can’t see how the the discussion of whether or not Venezuela is a democracy matters. Of course it matters to the Venezuelans, but there is no reason to think it matters to the Bush administration. The idea that American foreign policy is centered on the promotion of democracy is mostly a myth. The idea that American politicians and foreign policy professionals base their attitudes toward other countries on the form of government htat country has is also mostly a myth. If Venezuela was a completely fascist but pro-Bush goverment it wouldn’t matter a bit to this administration how many citizens died or how they died just as Saddam’s evilness was only important as an excuse for the invasion and the lack of democratic processes in the South Viet Namese government never prevented any war supporters from claiming that we were fighting for democracy.
If it is deemed important by the administration to hate a certain country than that country will be characterized as undemocratic. If it is deemed important by the administration to have a good relationship with a certian country, then its government will not be discussed.
Historically Democratic Presidents have been nearly as cynical in their misuse of democracy promotion as Republicans. The exception, the time our government actally cared about promoting democracy, was the Marshall Plan period in post-WW2 Europe.
Otherwise “democracy” is just a propaganda term.
Why didn’t it show up on their radar, I don’t know. But it didn’t, and the 2005 election, or lack of partictpation in it by vast majority (75%)of Venezuelans should be a cause of concern.
DaveC, I cited you above that the Carter Center no longer has a direct presence in Venezuela. Perhaps, you know, this is why. You asked why the Carter Center was commenting on the Palestinian elections. Perhaps, as per your cite, it’s because they are sending “an international delegation to monitor the 2006 Palestinian Legislative Council elections”. Again, the question is posed: Was the Carter Center monitoring, auditing, or observing the December 2005 Venezuela election.
As for exit polling, the cite I gave you above gives the reason why the Carter Center does not consider it reliable or democratic.
Without clarification, it’s a little bit hard not to conclude that you are insinuating that not only were the Venezuelan referendum and election tainted, but that the Carter Center was party to it.
“Otherwise “democracy” is just a propaganda term.”
You’re rather wildly over-generalizing, when it would be far more useful to approach the topic in a finer-grained way, discussing the differing policies of different administrations, over the decades, and where they had continuity and why, and where they did not, and why, and most particularly looking at the last 20 years, and what specific policies have been in each year, and why, and how they have or have not changed, and where the different people in various offices have made differences, or not, and why, I suggest.
However, I’m not awake, and not going to start that project just now. But I’d point out a couple of basics, such as that US policy under Albright and Clinton was not the same as under Bush and Powell, which is not the same as under Bush and SecState Rice. Just for starters.
Then we might talk about Otto Reich.
Meanwhile, generalities such as above: not so useful, I’m afraid I think.
Er…if you don’t understand “the dissonance” – if such indeed exists – then you really can’t present yourself as a knowledgeable, no?
You should address that question to Chavez and his crew, stickler, since self-proclaimed socialists really can’t present themselves as knowledgeable if they abide by the political tenets of Chomsky. Perhaps what binds Chomsky and the Bolivarmunists is that they share the same anti-American views of the US.
And this is odd. I checked Chomsky’s page on Wikipedia, and I can’t find anything about his anti-American writings.
What was your source for that bit of data?
Perhaps you weren’t reading close enough, d+u. On the Chomsky wiki page there is a link to the Criticisms of Noam Chomsky. Oliver Kamm has taken the time to unravel many of Chomsky’s distortions. Then there are Chomsky’s own words:
If Chomsky believes that we must be denazified, then he must also believe that the US is a nazified state. Like I said, anti-American.
Whether one likes Chávez or not (and I’m not a fan by any means), what Fleischer said lends credence (although it’s certainly not evidence) that the US lent tacit support to the coup.
[…]
Moreover, Charles, their response put the Bush administration at odds with every other government in Latin America, all but one of which were democracies at the time of the attempted coup.
As to the latter, you are factually incorrect, Randy. The US joined the OAS in condemning the coup. As to the former (and latter for that matter), I looked at the press briefings. The press in the room stated as fact the Chavez resignation and installation of the new interim government. Fleisher expressed neutrality on Friday (pre-coup) and on Saturday (hours post-coup). Later on Saturday, the situated was evaluated and the U.S. joined the OAS in opposing the coup. I’m going to burn some thread space, but I think it’s worth it. On April 11th:
On April 12th, approximately fourteen hours after Chavez was coerced from power:
If Fleisher was in error on the facts, then the press at hand were co-conspirators. So far, no endorsement and no evidence of sponsorship for the interim government, but neither was there condemnation of the coup. That came later on the same day. On April 16th, three days after Chavez was returned to power:
The worst that can be said is that the administration did not have its sh*t together at the time of Fleisher’s April 12th press briefing, and we displayed a lack of enthusiasm towards Chavez. The bottom line is that the Chavez government has refused to conduct a formal investigation into the events leading up to April 11th and the days afterward. It’s much more to Chavez’s political advantage to revise and distort history by making unfounded accusations regarding U.S. involvement in his weekend removal from power.
What is your central point here Charles?
Why is it that so many liberals ask me what my point is, radish? I thought you were supposed to be smart and enlightened. Reading comprehension helps with understanding points.
Is this a cautionary tale about US dependence on O-I-L?
Nope, just explaining what is.
An object lesson in the structural and economic inefficiencies which inevitably accompany authoritarian governance?
Nope, that’s a given.
A reminder of the importance of due process and separation of powers in democracy?
In part, yes.
A gussied-up reprise of the domino theory?
Nope.
A subtle invocation of the Great Man theory of history?
That wasn’t my intent.
Why this extended rumination (with hyperlinks!™) on the awe-inspiring badness of Hugo Chavez? (other than as an excuse to throw around neologisms of course)
I don’t need an excuse for neologism.
Which is really to say, why Venezuela? Why not Saudi Arabia? Why not Russia? Heck, why not Haiti just for a change? You’ve heard of Haiti, right?
Which is really to say, “look over there”. I’ve addressed each of those countries in multiple other posts. This time, it was Venezuela’s turn.
Giving you the benefit of the doubt that your questions are not disengenuous, radish, here’s the shorter Bird Dog as to why I wrote this: Like it or not, a secure oil supply is in our national interests and Venezuela plays a major role. Venezuela has a leader who is destabilizing his country, thus potentially imperiling an import that has fundamental effects on our economy. Chavez is doing it by using formulas that have failed historically, every single time. Chavez is destabilizing our relationships with Latin American countries, which also works against our interests. Chavez has allied–and is allying himself–with nations who are hostile to the United States and hostile to the notions of freedom. These are all major concerns for our citizens. Then I outlined a course of action.
I hope that helps your understanding.
Wow. If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bulls**t, eh, Charles?
If Chomsky believes that we must be denazified, then he must also believe that the US is a nazified state. Like I said, anti-American.
Even assuming, argendo, that this is an accurate rendering of Chomsky’s words, there’s nothing “anti-American” there. Chomsky could be wrong, he could be hysterical, he could be mad as a hatter, but if Chomsky’s “anti-American” for believing the US needs to be “de-nazified”–and I’ll note, since you failed to, that he poses that as a question not an assertion–then Christian fundamentalists are also “anti-American” for believing that the US is a sinful nation that desperately needs to be “saved.” Both believe that America is deeply, deeply damaged, and both believe that the damage must be repaired. (In fact, I’d argue that Chomsky’s radicalism partakes of the secular “religious” fervor that has motivated many on the left over the last century or two.) That you equate that fervor with “anti-Americanism” says more about you, than them.
I’m not too terribly invested in Chomsky, myself. I’ve agreed with some of his remarks, disagreed with others. His worst sin may be the sin of being dull. But accusations of “anti-Americanism” just reveal how little you know what you’re talking about.
In Charles’s defense, he had brought up Chavez in some other recent thread, and someone asked him to put together a post explaining his case at greater length. That’s my recollection, at least; I’m too lazy to do a site-search for the right link.
“Why is it that so many liberals ask me what my point is, radish? I thought you were supposed to be smart and enlightened. Reading comprehension helps with understanding points.”
It helps to state your thesis at the beginning, and again at your conclusion. If you did that, feel free to quote it.
If you did not do that, feel free to add a new and fresh paragraph summarizing your thesis, I suggest.
Trying to be helpful, the closest I can find to one in your post is this, from the middle:
Any high school guide to writing an essay will tell you that a central thesis statement belongs at the beginning and the end. Not stuck in the middle.
HTHs. It’s not a problem of “reading comprehension” on the part of your readers; it’s a problem of your having ignored the elementary rule of structuring an essay. Sorry.
There’s an interesting story on Venezuela here, on TPMCafe.
Weisbot made some fair points, Hil, but he lost me here: “There is little evidence that Venezuela today is less democratic than it has ever been, and in fact by most standard political science measures it is more democratic.” A patently absurd statement.
Well, just possibly you “should” make that kind of thing clear.
Fair enough, Gary. Updated.
Shorter Charlie: “I don’t know the difference between Chavez and Chomsky! Ask them!”:
My stock answer. The Shorter Paul:
“What is your central point here Charles?
Why is it that so many liberals ask me what my point is, radish?”
Not being radish, but this liberal’s primary reason is that you get remarkably huffy and hand out silly awards when people reach their own conclusions about what your point is.
and I’ll note, since you failed to, that he poses that as a question not an assertion…
Read again the quote, Paul. Chomsky posited the question, then he answered the question that, yes, we needed a denazification. This is a slimy way to slander our country by equating the U.S. with Nazi Germany. Of course your opinion may differ, but to me his anti-Americanism couldn’t be more obvious.
…Christian fundamentalists are also “anti-American” for believing that the US is a sinful nation that desperately needs to be “saved.”
The difference, of course, is that Christian fundamentalists would say the same for all other countries as well, since their default position is that we all sinners. As I understand the scriptures, the goal of Christ’s followers is to save souls, not nations, so your statement is nonsensical. Render unto Caesar and all that. A pitiful comparison, really.
Not being radish, but this liberal’s primary reason is that you get remarkably huffy and hand out silly awards when people reach their own conclusions about what your point is.
How would you feel, Dan, if your views were mischaracterized, followed by several conservatives deciding to tell you what you were thinking. I would grant you the right to defend yourself. Why would you not me?
If Chomsky believes that we must be denazified, then he must also believe that the US is a nazified state. Like I said, anti-American.
And if someone believed (mistakenly or not) that Venezuela was heading toward totalitarian socialism, and that needed to be stopped, we would be justified in calling them anti-Venezuelan?
You should address that question to Chavez and his crew, stickler, since self-proclaimed socialists really can’t present themselves as knowledgeable if they abide by the political tenets of Chomsky. Perhaps what binds Chomsky and the Bolivarmunists is that they share the same anti-American views of the US.
My initial reaction to you, Charles, when I read your early stuff over at Tacitus was that you were a person that made up your mind first and sought supporting information later. Then I changed that opinion somewhat when I read some of your more thoughtful pieces here on occasion.
But when I read absolute nonsense like that above, the bozo bit flips. You have close to zero understanding of a political philosophy that you condemn, yet you feel free to make lofty and arrogant statements about others ability to analyze the same if they in any way know anything about the ideology. You’ve gone to some lengths here to indicate that Chavez is authoritarian, yet simultaneously a devotee of an anarchist, the polar opposite of an authoritarian. When the contradiction is pointed out to you, you wave your hand dismissively and mumble some nonsense about anti-Americanism.
Smarten up, Charles. Credibility is a currency on a blog like this, and you’re well into deficit spending territory.
Apologies to all for the immoderate tone of this comment, but I feel personally offended by this statement by Charles, and my temper is showing.
CB,
“How would you feel, Dan, if your views were mischaracterized, followed by several conservatives deciding to tell you what you were thinking. I would grant you the right to defend yourself. Why would you not me?”
1. if enough people are mischaracterizing your views, it may be a sign that you aren’t expressing them clearly. It may also be a sign that, whether you intend it or not, you are using language which suggests an interpretation.
2. people going from mischaracterizing your posts to asking for their meaning should be viewed as an improvement. Why do you feel it is best to respond to it by derogatorily asking why people ask for your meaning, followed by questioning the reading comprehension of the person asking?
You should address that question to Chavez and his crew, stickler
That was me.
Hmmm…no…you used as evidence of Hugo’s “communist leanings” his admiration of Noam Chomsky. And the dissonance there is that, as others have pointed out, Chomsky is an anti-communist.
since self-proclaimed socialists really can’t present themselves as knowledgeable if they abide by the political tenets of Chomsky.
Well, abiding by and expressing admiration are two different things, wouldn’t you say? And wouldn’t you say also that, if the former, the obvious conclusion would be Chavez wasn’t a socialist (let alone a communist)?
Perhaps what binds Chomsky and the Bolivarmunists is that they share the same anti-American views of the US.
This would be the cue to excerpt Chavez’s comments about Chomsky to see if that was their common ground.
“Anti-American views of the U.S.” is a very interesting phrase, btw.
From a discussion between Bill Bennett and Chomsky:
Whether or not one agrees with his outlook on US foreign policy, to automatically slap the anti-American label on him gives credence to his views of nazification, at least in some people’s brains if not the entire country.
Charles,
The US was the only nation in the Americas to kmy knowledge to make a statement like what Fleischer made that I quoted. That’s the truth.
As for later condemning the coup, yes it happened, but if Fleischer relied on news media to come to the conclusion that Chávez had “resigned”, well I guess that speaks volumes about the quality of their intelligence gathering. It doesn’t make the media coconspirators, it merely makes the White House look, well lazy at best or gleeful at the outcome at worst. In other words, they were eager to jump on the bandwagon when it suited their needs even before the facts were in. As Iraq and the WMDs demonstrates that appears to be a habit with them.
If you have any doubts about that consider what happened in Haiti. Whether one believes Aristide was pushed or jumped (and I’m not entirely sure myself), the fact is that the White House was working behind the scenes at cross purposes with what the Secretary of State and the previous Ambassador were doing, largely because of their antipathy towards Aristide.
DaveC:
The low turnout was primarily the result of the opposition publicly and vociferously boycotting the election (I don’t believe the Carter Center was observing at this election). I honestly don’t know why they did that. If it was an attempt to deny the Chavistas legitimacy, then at best it’s a Pyrhhic victory. They can scream all they want that about the low turnout, but the fact is that Chavez now controls all branches of government. Sometimes I believe that Chavez could not have had a more inept, feckless opposition if he had created it himself.
Randy Paul: “Sometimes I believe that Chavez could not have had a more inept, feckless opposition if he had created it himself.”
The similarities continue to boggle the mind.
If Chomsky believes that we must be denazified, then he must also believe that the US is a nazified state. Like I said, anti-American.
So, all those Germans who supported denazification in the post-WWII era were actually anti-German? I suspect they’d be surprised to know that. I would have said that they were anti-Nazi. More to the point, it’s not at all anti-American to believe that our body politic has been corrupted by some pretty odious people, and to want to remove them from power. I think you’re being a little too free with the “anti-American” slurs, Charles. I don’t care much for Chomsky, but you’re going to have to support that accusation a little better if you want anyone to take you seriously.
Chávez is a verbal bomb-thrower and he knows that no matter what he says, the Bush administration will take the bait. They should leave diplomacy to the DOS and not the DOD, put a muzzle on Rumsfeld and the hardliners and I’m sure Chávez’s bombastic public profile while certainly not muted, will be blunted somewhat if he doesn’t have someone whose own pronouncements seem almost as hysterical.
As for the opposition, they need to find a way to connect to Chávez’s core of support. As long as they fail to prove themselves to be a viable alternative other than simply saying “I’m not Chávez,” they will continue to be marginalized.
I know I’m risking turning this into a hopeless Chomsky thread, but still:
“Whether or not one agrees with his outlook on US foreign policy, to automatically slap the anti-American label on him gives credence to his views of nazification”
I think you are a little loose with the ‘automatically’ label. Chomsky has an incredibly large body of work–and very much of it could be characterized as anti-American. There may be subtle ways of avoiding that label, but it isn’t as if you have to stretch the idea to ridiculous proportions to include Chomsky. There are also some cases where his views on the US (whatever you want to call them) seem to have interfered with his ability to analyze the rest of the situation–Cambodia being a prime example.
Why is it that so many liberals ask me what my point is, radish? I thought you were supposed to be smart and enlightened. Reading comprehension helps with understanding points.
See also, “Assy, insufferably.”
Everyone is letting their hatred of Charles go to their head. It’s noncontroversial to assert that many left-wing authoritarians, i.e. communists, frequently cite and support Chomsky’s critiques of American foreign policy. Given that’s what he’s best known for outside of linguistics, and not that widely known for advocacy of Anarchism, Charles’ statement of Chavez being a “devotee” is only misleading if you’re assuming most Chomsky supporters are anarchists. Which I don’t think anyone assumed about Chomsky “devotees” until this post came along and people had to come up with byzantinely pedantic reasons to give Charles a hard time.
Chomsky has an incredibly large body of work–and very much of it could be characterized as anti-American.
Please specify some of it. I’m not a devoted Chomsky-follower, but I have seen nothing that could be characterized as such, and you may have read more of his work than I.
And I do hope, Sebastian, that there is more to this accusation that merely a suspicion, which is all I believe you could offer to support your contention that Juan Cole is anti-Semetic. Otherwise it would be less an accusation and more a slur.
Cambodia being a prime example.
Given that Chomsky has called Cambodia “the great act of genocide of the modern period“, this would seem unfair. The article I cite continues:
It is important to keep in mind that Chomsky criticises specific pieces of evidence in these matters..
I think I’m going to be rightfully vilified for that.
Jonas: It’s noncontroversial to assert that many left-wing authoritarians, i.e. communists, frequently cite and support Chomsky’s critiques of American foreign policy. Given that’s what he’s best known for outside of linguistics, and not that widely known for advocacy of Anarchism, Charles’ statement of Chavez being a “devotee” is only misleading if you’re assuming most Chomsky supporters are anarchists.
You might have a point there, Jonas, but for three things. (1) Chomsky’s politics have been overtly anarchist at least since I first heard of him in the late seventies, (2) his critiques of the politics of power stem from an underlying belief in grass roots democracy, and (3) this statement:
Charles’ assertion is that Chomsky’s political beliefs are so fundamental to Chavez’s ideology that they supercede his Bolivarianese.
And the truly irksome part of the whole thing is that rather than concede that he may not be well-versed enough with left-wing ideology to make analytic statements like the above, he shrugs and offers things like “anarcho-whatever-he-is”, which I can only interpret as celebration of his own lack of knowledge of the ideology he is commenting so knowingly on.
And by the way, I don’t let hatred of Charles go to my head. I don’t hate Charles in the least, I like him and think he’s one of the more enjoyable posters here. I just hate it when he reasons like a dope.
Double-plus-ungood,
I suppose I let my hatred of people unnecessarily beating up on Charles go to my head – your parsing of that paragraph does demonstrate a lack of understanding of the specifics of leftist ideologies on his part.
I think you’re being quite too charitable when you describe Chomsky’s “critiques of the politics of power stem from an underlying belief in grass roots democracy.” Well, his critiques are quite rooted in his ideology, but I think calling anarchism “grass roots democracy” is a huge misnomer. Generally, the degree to which authoritarianism has to be created to produce the egalitarian “democracy” of anarchism are fundamentally in opposition to its claims of being a just form of government.
And not to get too nitpicky, the degree to which all of these ideologies stay precisely distinct from each other in practice is not very large. But Charles certainly is being intellectually lazy by throwing up his hands and lumping them all together. I would be rather ignorant to oppose these ideologies if I didn’t have specific notions of what they were all about.
Jonas: …I think calling anarchism “grass roots democracy” is a huge misnomer. Generally, the degree to which authoritarianism has to be created to produce the egalitarian “democracy” of anarchism are fundamentally in opposition to its claims of being a just form of government.
Um, which anarchists are you referring to? I know of no branch of anarchism (and I thought I knew ’em all) that advocates ANY authoritarianism whatsoever, nor government for that matter.
FWIW: Chomsky on Cambodia, Circa 1996.
Chomsky, then: “The Cynical Farce about Cambodia“. Dissent, June 26, 1978
Yes, Chomsky’s view have changed on Cambodia. He’d have to be an idiot not to, considering the evidence available in the past 30 years. That wasn’t my point about Cambodia. It was: “There are also some cases where his views on the US (whatever you want to call them) seem to have interfered with his ability to analyze the rest of the situation–Cambodia being a prime example.” That seems to be true in forming his initial opinion on the matter.
Also I would note that even the modern link shows quite a focus on the US toward the end of it–he pretty much suggests that high estimates of the Cambodian atrocities exist to deflect attention from US crimes.
As for works with broadly anti-American themes I suggest (in the sense of offering them as demonstrative evidence only) “The New Military Humanism: Lessons from Kosovo”, “American Power and the New Mandarins”, “Towards a New Cold War: Essays on the Current Crisis and How We Got There.”,”What Uncle Sam Really Wants”, and “Hegemony or Survival”. In all of these, he tends to maximize his focus on the problems of US power and de-emphasize the effect of other nations’ power. This tends to lead to some rather odd conclusions because he doesn’t seem to take non-US power seriously enough.
D-P-U,
Oh, pick any flavor, and you’ll run into de facto authoritarianism or de facto governments all the time. For instance, any person at any time can create private property by the mere willingness to use force to protect it. Unless the “collective” or whatever is willing to use force to stop it… you see where I’m going.
Oh, pick any flavor, and you’ll run into de facto authoritarianism or de facto governments all the time. For instance, any person at any time can create private property by the mere willingness to use force to protect it. Unless the “collective” or whatever is willing to use force to stop it… you see where I’m going.
No, not really. Most anarchist models use consensus for small-scale decision making, and forms of democratic voting for large-scale ones, so I’m not sure who advocates the forms of group coercion you’re talking about.
In all of these, he tends to maximize his focus on the problems of US power and de-emphasize the effect of other nations’ power. This tends to lead to some rather odd conclusions because he doesn’t seem to take non-US power seriously enough.
I’m not sure why being critical of US power would make one anti-American. especially if one were American to begin with.
Or do you feel that he needs to be more critical of other nations, where he has little influence, than his own in which, being a democracy, he has far more influence?
Either way, would you say that Charles, with this post, is anti-Venezuelan?
PS – Have your read the Chomsky works you listed as having broadly anti-American themes?
“Or do you feel that he needs to be more critical of other nations, where he has little influence, than his own in which, being a democracy, he has far more influence?”
He suggests a comprehensive analysis while focusing on US causes and being dissmissive of non-US causes. Since in many of the cases he talks about their are some very significant non-US causes, this seems like anti-Americanism to me. I wouldn’t make the claim based on one short work–it seems to span multiple works over a long period of time.
I’ve read the works I cited. I haven’t read everything by Chomsky, I find him tedious and the insights he comes to aren’t amazing enough to bother with the tedium. My understanding is that the works I have read are not radically out of step with his other political works.
As such, calling him “Anti-American” seems correct. He may not be as anti-American as bin Laden (at least in terms of actions), but I think the term is not contstrued so narrowly.
Argh, I really do know the difference between “there” and “their”.
Gary Farber,
Thank you belatedly for the kind words. They are much appreciated.
“If you have any doubts about that consider what happened in Haiti. Whether one believes Aristide was pushed or jumped (and I’m not entirely sure myself), the fact is that the White House was working behind the scenes at cross purposes with what the Secretary of State and the previous Ambassador were doing, largely because of their antipathy towards Aristide.”
It’s still in my “to blog” file, because it’s a long piece, but anyone who wants to know more can get a head-start by reading this.
I finished that article you linked to on Venezuela, Charles; interesting; thank you.
d-p-u: “…your contention that Juan Cole is anti-Semetic.”
I’m not much of a fan of Cole’s (he makes frequent errors in areas I know he’s wrong, particularly when he goes beyond his real expertise, he frequently phrases things in heavily unnecessarily biased fashion not fully supported by the facts, and he plays fast and loose with re-writing or disappearing past errors without acknowledgement; when he just reports news about Iraq or Iran, he’s worth at least listening to, with a salt shaker at hand, in my view; he knows squat about Israel/Palestine), but neither am In in the He Must Not Be Allowed To Live! camp. In any case, the word you want is “anti-Semitic.” The other sounds like something you use to keep from throwing up.
As such, calling him “Anti-American” seems correct. He may not be as anti-American as bin Laden (at least in terms of actions), but I think the term is not contstrued so narrowly.
I would urge you, as a respected commentator, to avoid the use of the term. It is too liberally applied to those that one simply does not approve of, and it is a highly objective phrase that is rapidly becoming either meaningless, or highly suspect when it is uses, especially against a dissident.
As Chomsky is an American, and has repeatedly stated that dispite his criticisms of it he thinks it the greatest country in the world (and does not relocate to Canada, the actual greatest country in the world), I’d have to say that what many are calling anti-Americanism is simply him expressing his concerns and dislikes about the governing structure of the country. That is far, in my books, from being anti-American. Otherwise I too would be ant-_American, as well as anti-Canadian. And I ain’t. I’m not even anti-Bird 🙂
Argh, I really do know the difference between “there” and “their”.
You don’t even have to say, we know.
…the word you want is “anti-Semitic.”
You know, I even looked it up and corrected it before hitting Post. Dunno what happened their.
It was: “There are also some cases where his views on the US (whatever you want to call them) seem to have interfered with his ability to analyze the rest of the situation–Cambodia being a prime example.” That seems to be true in forming his initial opinion on the matter.
I await the great dr ngo to set me right on this, but I’m fairly sure that part of the reason for Chomsky’s initial skepticism about Cambodia resulted from his gauging of the credibility of the purported witnesses and — more importantly — the credibility of an intelligence-gathering and -disseminating apparatus that had demonstrably lied about similar matters just a few years before. That’s anti-American only insofar as distrusting American lies and liars is anti-American… and frankly, that’s an anti-Americanism we could use more of.
[That this time they were telling the truth is one of the great ironies of the age. Or something like that.]
And here ends my “defense” of Chomsky. For the year.
“As Chomsky is an American, and has repeatedly stated that dispite his criticisms of it he thinks it the greatest country in the world”
Did he really say that?
“Did he really say that?”
I greatly desire to stay out of discussion of Mr. Chomsky. Other than his linguistic theories, I find him uninteresting.
However, Sebastian.
…and here (from just up there ^^^ a bit)
And yeah, I have some serious disagreements with Chomsky’s views on the media, and don’t want to get into tanglefoot regarding some of his other views. But he’s said this a few times.
And again here, a New York Times interview from November 2, 2003:
A chomsky thread has been placed on HoCB.
Charles, why is it that so many whatever-you-consider-yourself answer my vague rhetorical questions by suggesting that I have a reading comprehension problem, yet nonchalantly ignore my specific non-rhetorical ones? No wonder I don’t comment much nowadays.
But since I’m in for a penny, let me state explicitly the point that may have originally been obscured by the snark.
I concede that being unable to find an explanation of why this was about Chavez rather than about any of the more substantive points which you sprinkled throughout, I wound up in idle speculation. I concede further that I rudely published an implication that this post was inspired not by an antipathy toward badness in general, but by a specific and preconceived antipathy toward Hugo Chavez. Mind reading. Shoulda kept it to myself. Sorry about that.
However I neither misrepresented nor misunderstood your argument as stated. Aside from the rudeness I was simply observing something about the forensic structure (such as it was) of that argument: that you invoked badness in general in order to make a point about Chavez in particular.
Not the other way around.
p.s. I googled obwi for “by Charles Bird” along with Haiti and Russia and didn’t find anything major. Perhaps you could point me in the right direction.
p.p.s. my 2¢: Anarchism and Authoritarianism may be diametrically opposed, but anarchists and authoritarians are only separated by the flimsiest of veils 😉
Radish: …anarchists and authoritarians are only separated by the flimsiest of veils 😉
As a former (and I stress former) anarchist, I’d have to say that you might have a point regarding some personalities, but that the ideology attempts to find mechanisms that might prevent the organizational structures that would allow an authoritarian personality or organization to take over. Y’know, like judiciary review of domestic surviellance is supposed to keep totalitarianism at bay.
Having said that, I suspect that you are making the observation based on limited exposure to actual anarchists, and therefore I choose not to be insulted by the generalization 😉
Point taken d-p-u, I think I’m just cynical and grouchy lately. However, in the funny but true department, the people I’ve known who did call themselves anarchists were not at all in agreement about what that actually meant.
Sigh. I feel like I owe Chomsky a lot–in the days before blogs he was where you turned to get an alternative view of American foreign policy. But he’s not essential now, if he ever was, for the simple reason that most of his criticisms of American foreign policy can be backed up by citing mainstream sources. But I still jump in when I see statements like those of Charles or like this–
“As such, calling him “Anti-American” seems correct. He may not be as anti-American as bin Laden (at least in terms of actions), but I think the term is not contstrued so narrowly. ”
That was Sebastian. It’s kinda big of him to admit that Chomsky may not be as anti-American as bin Laden. This is exactly what’s wrong with terms like anti-American. It lumps together people who devote their lives to chronicling American crimes with people who murder thousands of innocent people. William Lloyd Garrison was anti-American in exactly the same sense as Chomsky–in fact, Garrison publicly burned a copy of the Constitution and called it a pact with hell because it allowed slavery. Sounds about right to me.
As for denazification, Chomsky is referring to various US figures who’ve been responsible for the bombing of civilian populations or who have armed and supported groups and governments overseas that have committed mass murder or even genocide. Nazi analogies are always a problem, I suppose, but saying that some US government officials have been (or are) war criminals and/or supporters of mass killers is , IMO, a simple statement of fact.
It’s kinda big of him to admit that Chomsky may not be as anti-American as bin Laden.
He doesn’t beat his wife as much as Osama either, I hear.
“I feel like I owe Chomsky a lot–in the days before blogs he was where you turned to get an alternative view of American foreign policy.”
What, the Nation, In These Times, Dissent, Covert Action Quarterly, Z Magazine, Howard Zinn, Pacifica Radio, Working For Change, and many other names I could drop weren’t around? Of where and when do you speak? Certainly every major city I ever visited during the Seventies and Eighties had at least one leftist bookstore, and plenty of small college towns did, as well. Not to mention The Socialist Worker and many other newspapers of one fringe radical party or another.
I seem to remember that Donald is from the south, perhaps from Mississippi (though I may be getting confused, and making this up). Nonetheless, as someone from Mississippi, Gary, I would suggest refrain from making such generalizations about the availability of materials, especially in the pre-internet world…
“Nonetheless, as someone from Mississippi, Gary, I would suggest refrain from making such generalizations about the availability of materials, especially in the pre-internet world…”
I asked a question. And I’m pretty sure that the U.S. Postal Service ran in the South. But I only asked a question. And then made one factual observation: “Certainly every major city I ever visited….”
I didn’t indicate that I had traveled to every major city in the U.S.
“I would suggest refrain from making such generalizations….”
I shall certainly continue to not do so.
I recall that you took a breather when Slarti professed that he didn’t know the question ‘Who lost China?’ We have the same sort of situation here. The Postal Service wasn’t bringing by a selection of leftist and progressive magazines to our door and why would you subscribe to them if you didn’t have a group of like minded individuals to discuss things with? You don’t know the path that people take to get to the knowledge they have and given the fact that the path to your knowledge is less than conventional, you might want to take a bit more care and resorting to the ‘I just asked a question’ defense really makes makes you look mean and petty and I don’t think you are like that.
You’ve gone to some lengths here to indicate that Chavez is authoritarian, yet simultaneously a devotee of an anarchist, the polar opposite of an authoritarian. When the contradiction is pointed out to you, you wave your hand dismissively and mumble some nonsense about anti-Americanism.
One last time, d+u. It’s not my job to explain the intellectual incoherence of Bolivarissimos regarding their socialism and their having Chomsky’s works to inspire them. I’m sorry you’re having such a hard time getting that. Requiring me to put forth a disquisition on the similarities and differences between Bolivarism and Chomskyism is utterly beside the point and ridiculous. One would have to be predisposed to actually care about it enough to be compelled to such an exercise and, frankly, I don’t care. The point is that the wikipedia link connected Chomsky’s writings to the Bolivarian movement. If you have evidence to show that the wikipedia link is mistaken, then show it. I know wikipedia has had some controversy of late, but what I’ve seen over the past several months has been pretty solid. In general, Chomsky may insert the terms libertarian and anarcho into his lexicon, but he is still preaching a form of socialism, where anarcho-syndicalism is based on some utopian vision of societies democratically self-managed by workers, and where libertarian socialism has the anti-capitalist and utopian vision of abolishing state and private control over the means of production. That Chomsky’s and Chavez’s views are anti-American are just more gravy.
Whether or not one agrees with his outlook on US foreign policy, to automatically slap the anti-American label on him gives credence to his views of nazification, at least in some people’s brains if not the entire country.
Not automatically at all. In the single paragraph in your cite, Chomsky says he loves his country, then he slanders his country by saying we are “committing horrendous terrorist acts”. US-Nazi analogies are a central and recurring feature in his writings, to quote Oliver Kamm. His repeatedly slapping the Nazi label on the US gives credence to my views that he is anti-American, not to mention, as Sebastian notes, he places all attention on American transgressions, perceived or real, and takes blind eye to the transgressions of other nations, virtually every single time.
FTR, I use the term anti-American very sparingly. It’s just that some Americans have earned it and, in those cases, I refuse to be bowed from calling it how I see it.
Radish,
Fair enough. I apologize for my testy response.
“…resorting to the ‘I just asked a question’ defense really makes makes you look mean and petty….”
[scratches head]
I asked the question because, you know, I was interested in finding out the answer. I don’t see where I used any rude words or phrasings or implications. I don’t see any even remotely-implied put-down in what I asked. (I say this in hopes that you might quote or point out what I said that reads that way to you, so I’ll understand what I’m missing.)
What would you suggest would be a better way to phrase the question, please?
Charles: “…Bolivarissimos….”
Whom are you referring to with this coinage? I have absolutely no idea, myself. This is not sarcastic. I simply have no idea what you mean by this non-existent word.
I think I’m apt to not be alone”
“Your search – Bolivarissimos – did not match any documents.”
“Requiring me to put forth a disquisition on the similarities and differences between Bolivarism and Chomskyism is utterly beside the point and ridiculous. One would have to be predisposed to actually care about it enough to be compelled to such an exercise and, frankly, I don’t care.”
Is it Bolivarism, or “Chomskyism” that you don’t care about, or both?
If you don’t care about the former, presumably you don’t care about South American history and modern South America, given how inextricable Bolivarism is to either.
If it’s Chomskyism you don’t care about, well, you can’t write about it and simultaneously claim you don’t care about it without logically therefore implying that you write about things you don’t care about.
Could you perhaps unpack this, please?
Okay, Gary, a more polite way of asking the question might have simply something like “I’m surprised that Chomsky seemed like the only alternative to etc. pre-blog. Why him, particularly, when there were so many other leftist conversations going on?”
Listing the publications he should have been reading back in the day and then implicitly doubting his energy at seeking out these publications could fairly be construed as less polite.
Maybe we’re back at the difference between intention and reception, but I’d argue that yours was not a question that would ordinarily receive a full and candid response.
re: Chomsky’s anti-Americanism and his calling America the “best country in the world,” David Hume once called Tristram Shandy “The best Book, that has been writ by any Englishman these thirty Years … bad as it is.” And let us not forget (Winston, not Ward) Churchill’s “”Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried.” I think that Chomsky’s criticisms can be taken in the same spirit.
“Listing the publications he should have been reading back in the day….”
I didn’t say a thing about “should.” Nor, for that matter, did I give my views of any of the publications or people I mentioned, either at a given time in the past, or now. As I noted to Charles, above, I’m fairly restrained about my use of “should,” and when I intend to use that word, I use it.
And my actual opinions quite contradict any possible “should.”
“…then implicitly doubting his energy at seeking out these publications….”
I don’t understand where I implied any such thing.
I said and thought nothing about his “energy,” and couldn’t possibly, since I have no idea where and when he was talking about — for all I know, he grew up in Mongolia, and is speaking of any time between the mid-Sixties and the mid-Nineties; I have absolutely no idea. Which is why I asked. Which was my only point/goal. How could I possibly be implying a judgment when I have no knowledge of his circumstances, which is why I was asking what they were?
I simply asked if said publications/people hadn’t been around (implicitly, in his perception) in whatever timeframe he was referring to, and asked “of where and when [he spoke],” so as to understand what his perception had been and where and when it had taken place.
I don’t understand this reading of anything else into that, but since both you and LJ managed it, I’ll thank you for your comments, and attempt considering them as best I can, although mostly I’m afraid I’m just thinking “what?; how did anyone get that from that?”; but I’ll see if I can get anything better out of it. Thanks for your feedback.
jackmormon put my views much more politely than I, alas, am capable. Given that this is precisely the same problem touched on earlier and given full vent over at (insert glowing recommendation for HoCB here), I think that listing, especially with someone of your encyclopedic knowledge and tendencies, is something to be avoided, or at least only used in well lighted and well ventilated spaces. For all you know, we may all have been born in Mongolia…
“I think that listing, especially with someone of your encyclopedic knowledge and tendencies, is something to be avoided….”
Queries about specifics are bad? It’s better to talk in vague generalities, so everyone can misunderstand each other?
(“No,” with an explanation, is a perfectly good answer; my questions are not implications that those are your intended meanings — they are checks as to whether or not you are or are not suggesting anything like that.)
I also previously forgot to mention the existence of libraries, as well as the post office, by the way. Of course, if one was in a small town, one’s local library certainly might not have any of the publications or writers I mentioned.
Whom are you referring to with this coinage?
Bolivarians, Gary. My verbiage was inexact and a bit hastily written [must…stop…neologisms].
Is it Bolivarism, or “Chomskyism” that you don’t care about, or both?
The not caring pertains to putting forth an analysis of the similarities and differences between the two, especially when it’s way off topic from the post. My caring does extend to pursuing a general understanding of both isms.
“[must…stop…neologisms].”
CB, think that should be neologizing. Or neologorrhea. Anyway, not news to you if you read _The Atlantic_, but there’s often a feature at the back called Word Court where they mostly feature neologisms. Best part of the magazine.
“The not caring pertains to putting forth an analysis of the similarities and differences between the two, especially when it’s way off topic from the post. My caring does extend to pursuing a general understanding of both isms.”
Thank you for explaining, and as to the other usage.
I do have a suggestion, however. It is, of course, only a suggestion.
You say “especially when it’s way off topic from the post.”
But not all that far into your post, you wrote this:
Scanning through your post for yet another time, I can’t for the life of me see any particular need to ring Chomsky in to make any other point that I understand you to have been attempting to make.
It seems to me — and this is purely a subjective read, and one which can’t be based on mindreading, and which therefore might simply be based upon insufficient understanding of what you were trying to say — that your bringing Chomsky in was completely gratuitous.
One might speculate that it’s some sort of automatic tic of your side of the aisle, a reflex, in a not dissimlar fashion as to how you might, perhaps, find some of what, say, Jes, or some of like mind, says to reflexively be “anti-American.” But that’s just speculation, and not essential to my point, although it is an attempt to illustrate a conceivable — though perhaps entirely wrong — vague parallel.
My suggestion, however, which is only a suggestion, is this: if you don’t want to “put[ing] forth an analysis of the similarities and differences between the two [Chomsky and Bolivarism],” possibly it’s best to not mention them in the same breath.
If you think such a discussion is “way off topic from the post,” then possibly you might want to not introduce the topic in your post.
It’s not as if someone else introduced Chomsky into the discussion. You did. From the get-go.
So I’m somewhat confused as to why you regard what you say in your post as “way off topic from the post.”
But that might just be me, and I’m likely misunderstanding you in some way. Almostly surely, after all.
Thanks again for the response. I hope I’ve not been unintentionally insulting or, you know, i-a, or anything.
🙂
The not caring pertains to putting forth an analysis of the similarities and differences between the two, especially when it’s way off topic from the post.
Actually, it seems kinda central to your post:
While Chavez refers to himself as a Bolivarian, his movement is morphing from democratic socialism to a South American flavor of communism, inspired in part by the anti-American writings of Noam Chomsky. Call it Bolivarmunism.
FWIW, I found the Chomsky fact amusing and useful as such things go – i.e., knowing a regime is based on kooky or doctrinaire idea X is predictive of bad governance but not necessarily the path the badness will take. Of course it’s a mention likely to produce a few vortices in the comments.
Gary,
We’re all ignorant in various spheres. If you point out my ignorance today, with a list of suggested sites that provide relevant information, you are providing me with remedies – and the more the better. If we’re discussing my past ignorance and I’ve noted finding several sources whereby I currently remedy that ignorance, then a detailed list of sources I could have used in the past is rather less helpful. I may be less likely to receive these gracefully.
Delivering a scrupulous editing of a draft, as opposed to an already published work, might be a servicable analogy. HTH
I should have previewed. I was attempting to respond to the discussion that led up to
this point in the discussion about available publications or sources.
I get that a great deal myself, even when there’s nothing in the way of evidence to support it. My take is this: it’s a thinly disguised calling of you’re-a-great-big-stupidhead. I’ve done it myself more than once, although I’ve been backspacing over these things when they fall out of my keyboard with increasing frequency of late.
Gary, I know now of the existence of the various outlets you reference, but when I first started reading Chomsky I knew of The New Republic and the Nation–the Nation was, of course, to the left and TNR was doing its mid=80’s slide to the right. But at that point I’d never read anyone who so forthrightly said the US was guilty of war crimes or support for war criminals, not just on rare occasions here and there, but constantly. And in the pre-web era most of us had no access to the foreign press and getting Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch reports involved a fair amount of labor, instead of just a google search. (I did order a few through the mail). So I overstated, but Chomsky was the one-stop source for concentrated information on US crimes.
I’m from Memphis, btw.
Slarti,
As someone who appreciates the way you cool things off with a well placed one liner, I really have a hard time picking out the ‘specific non-rhetorical ones’. I had written this as a sarcastic come back, but I was worried it might be a bit too sharp. But if there are questions that you want answered, at least from me, I think you might have to make it very clear. Apologies if I haven’t responded before.
Donald,
While I’m glad I got the from the south bit right, apologies if you felt I was calling you out. My arc was a lot like the one you describe, and I just went to the catalogue of my university library to see if anything that Gary referenced was there. Howard Zinn’s People’s History was a 1990 edition, though it was first published in 1980, and all the magazines but Dissent don’t appear. Dissent appears, but only in a few 1 year blocks, 61-62, 63-64, and 70-71. Of course, my university didn’t celebrate the 4th of July until the mid 70’s because it was a “g-d yankee holiday” according to the university president of the time, so I’m not really all that surprised.
LJ:
I’m a little confused about what that all meant, but I assume you’re hearkening back to your mention of me upthread. I just assume that I’ll be bludgeoned with that from time to time, just as Gary will occasionally dredge up my unfamiliarity with the antics of Super Grover. I figure I may as well grow some scar tissue over that spot.
On the other hand, if that’s not what you’re talking about, I’m confused.
Well, here is the deleted snarky reply, which might better explain it, but please don’t take it as anything but good natured fun.
—-
…yet nonchalantly ignore my specific non-rhetorical ones?
I get that a great deal myself
What, you mean you’ve asked specific non-rhetorical questions?
—-
I wrote that, and then worried that I had just missed the questions and I was taking a snark out on you because of my own misreading. Anyway, not a big thing, just worried that you felt people were ignoring you when you were trying to ask specific questions.
Charles:
I am an American. Born in the USA (and one of my ancestors signed the Declaration of Independence, if that matters, which it doesn’t). Married to an American. Served in the US military. Living here now, and probably until I die.
I also, based on forty-plus years of studying world history, regard the government of the United States as one of the most dangerous in the world. I find plausible the argument that Henry Kissinger could reasonably be tried as a war criminal. I believe that much of our current foreign policy is imperialistic. In this my views are not dissimilar to Noam Chomsky’s, though he is far more visible and articulate.
Sometimes I despair of my country. I weep for it.
I am not anti-American.
You may disagree with me, but you have no standing to call me – or Chomsky – anti-American.
You have no authority, moral or intellectual, to do so.
You have the right, but only because this is America.
But you are wrong – morally and intellectually – in what you are doing. To describe fellow Americans as “anti-American” – not just in passing, but repeatedly – is in itself a violation of some of our most cherished values. You owe Chomsky (and me) an apology, not that I expect to see one.
I realize that my pseudonym can easily be penetrated, but let me make it even simpler for you.
I am, sir:
(Dr) Norman G. Owen
Visiting Professor of History, Duke University
Visiting Professor of History, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
Honorary Professor of History, University of Hong Kong
Which is really to say, “look over there”. I’ve addressed each of those countries in multiple other posts. This time, it was Venezuela’s turn.
Radish,
Didn’t even have to Google. Use the search function here, couldn’t find anything on ObWi by Charles about Haiti.
“I get that a great deal myself, even when there’s nothing in the way of evidence to support it.”
So do I. So does almost anyone who writes much about the writing of others. Sometimes it’s a valid point. Sometimes it’s not. Sometimes it’s a pot-kettle problem. Sometimes it’s not.
Sometimes you feel like a Snickers. Sometimes you just feel like snickering.
Ah, I see. My initial response was focused mostly on the accusations of not having read the material in question, which as I’ve noted I get all the time. Probably justified as many times as not, to be honest.
Donald: “…when I first started reading Chomsky I knew of The New Republic and the Nation–the Nation was, of course, to the left and TNR was doing its mid=80’s slide to the right.”
Ah, the Kinsley/Hertzberg era. Both, mind, people I considerably respect, and I think TNR still published (and continues to publish) much invaluable work, along with some trash (including quite a lot of such from owner Martin Peretz), and plenty to disagree with, but I certainly agree with your uncontroversial characterization, particularly as regards a couple of the choices of “TRB,” although I’d say that the rightward-at-best-centrist trend really accelerated far more in the 90s Sullivan/Kelly era.
And while I still have some respect, and much disagreement, and some agreement, with various of the writings and editorial choices of each of those gentlemen (Kelly now deceased, of course, killed in Iraq), and although Morton Kondracke (a TRB writer) subsequently moved vastly further to the right, and pretty much entirely off my scope of respect, my stomach still churns at the memory of some of the more crapish stuff he turned out, and please, please, please tell me that the memory of the ever-despicable and lunatic Fred Barnes as TRB was all a hideous nightmare. Please. Jeebus, I hate that guy; he’s more rabid than Patrick Buchanan.
So: 80s and Memphis. Thanks for giving me your baseline.
Trivial note: although there were many other sources I could have noted, I feel a particular omission was The Progressive, which did some excellent work, IMO.
“You may disagree with me, but you have no standing to call me – or Chomsky – anti-American.
You have no authority, moral or intellectual, to do so.”
I’ve read Chomsky. I can come to my own conclusions based on what I have read. That provides me as much standing is usually available to anyone to make a judgment, and my judgment is that his approach is anti-American. Not coincidentally it is a judgment shared by a rather large number of people who have read him. (He is a polarizing figure so I freely admit that there are also many who admire him). Note, I don’t just find his conclusions anti-American, his analytic approach of explaining things with many important factors as if the only important factors were US factors and when doing so focusing almost exclusively on negative US factors is anti-American. I don’t know what ‘authority’ you think I need. This isn’t a church.
I haven’t called you anti-American. I know only your conclusions. I haven’t seen your reasoning. I tend to disagree with your conclusions, but I don’t know anything about how you get there–and frankly I’m not interested in investigating it today. My criticism of Chomsky is much more than his conclusions–it is the intellectually dishonest way he gets there that leads me to conclude he is anti-American.
BTW, I always presumed your pseudonym meant “Non-Government Organization”.
LJ: “…I just went to the catalogue of my university library….”
Again, just curious: might you say which university that was?
William Shawcross’s Sideshow
Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia came out in ’79, and was on the best-seller’s lists for a lengthy period; newspaper writers such as Sidney Schanberg, Peter Arnett, and many others, were documenting war crimes in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, throughout the Sixties and Seventies. Many many other popular books establishing war crimes, detailing My Lai (not a small story in the press and on tv news at the time), and so on, were widespread by the Seventies.
I mention none of these things as any sort of chastisement, or disagreement with anything anyone has said, nor, indeed, to make much of any larger point at all, but merely, essentially, because they pop into my head, and to say that I find differences of perception for good reasons interesting, and I’m always interested in both how different circumstances lead to those different perceptions, and what they are. That sort of information helps me better understand the thinking of other people, and thus better understand the world. That’s all.
Since Dr. Owen has outed himself (not that, as I noted long ago, it would take anyone more than 30 seconds googling to get to his unhidden full name and status), I’ll not shy from calling him by said name from time to time, which is throat-clearing to saying of this: “I find plausible the argument that Henry Kissinger could reasonably be tried as a war criminal.”
I suspect Charles is not particularly familiar with the history, arguments, and debate, at least in much detail or as credibly presented by other than those who would reject the notion out of hand as nothing but the product of crazed leftist bias, but not that you need me to lend my voice to your own real authority, I’ll nonetheless speak up to say that, absolutely, the case against Kissinger is, at the very least, an entirely legitimate and utterly supportable topic of argument.
I suspect that Charles, whether he has noticed them or not, is in considerable sympathy with and agreement with, the present-day views of the aforementioned William Shawcross on Iraq, and the similar views of Christopher Hitchens. Should he grant either gentlemen any such credibility, I’d recommend to him that he read their books, and other articles, on Henry Kissinger and the topic of American war crimes.
It’s a topic that should be, at the least, legitimate to consider the arguments on, and not made unthinkable and put on auto-dismiss as merely the product of loony leftists and communists, I would strongly suggest to him.
As a general principle, I’d emphasise to him and all of us, that just because a particular argument or point or usage is adopted by a loony fringe, be it left or right, that doesn’t inherently mean that said argument or point or usage becomes invalid when made by less hysterical, more credible, speakers.
Obviously, this point could be made about any number of right-wing assertions — that just because loony rightwingers also say something doesn’t mean a more restrained version can’t be correct — but I’ll leave choosing examples as an exercise for the reader.
Randy: “Use the search function here….”
No, don’t. It’s been broken forever. I regret having pointed Moe at it. It’s fixable by hand-pasting URLs for each archive in at the administrative site for the search engine, but it’s not worth it and is best replaced by the Google site-search application.
Until a blog-owner bothers to take care of this — which I won’t hold my breath on, since it’s been broken, and I’ve pointed out that it’s been broken, for years — use “site:http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/” plus the relevant term via Google General.
“I’ve read Chomsky. I can come to my own conclusions based on what I have read.”
My impression from your past writings on him is that you tend to lump his writings from the Sixties, Seventies, and recent years, together as if they were one homogenous mass of his unchanging thinking, and then you tend to point to stuff he’s written decades ago and subsequently changed his mind about, as shown in his later writings, as if that was still representative of his thinking.
This may be an unfair and inaccurate impression of mine, but I’m willing to bet that I’m not the only person who holds it.
My own suggestion is that it might be wise to tend to stick to what someone has written in, say, the last ten years, when discussing their views.
And then I’d ask if you still agree with everything you wrote ten years ago, or five years ago, or two years ago, Sebastian.
I trust I need not elaborate on the implications of this point.
Can I say, as an American, that the Unabomber is anti-American? Or Ann Coulter re 9/11 and the NYT or conquering the ME and converting it? Or Aldritch Ames? Can I say person X is anti-Israel, or does that depend on his nationality and mine?
If there are Chomskian arguements of the form, “Let’s consider the good that the US does, and the bad, and what good the US might practically be expected to do given real-world constraints and our lack of perfect knowledge generally, under some plausible theories of history and economics and so forth”, then I’d like to see them. My impression of him was indelibly marked by a description in the New Yorker of him browbeating a German student who said that the US entry into WWII was a good thing. At least from what I’ve picked up reading that sort of medium, he strikes me as both anti-intellectual (not quite the right word, sorry) and anti-American. It’s fine, and admirable, to do research into America’s failures – but to do so as a complete program of describing America’s place in the world is intellectually dishonest.
Sebastian: the “anti-American” charge has enough of a history behind it, in my view, that it should be used very sparingly, and with great caution. Since dr. ngo outed himself, I’ll add the following:
* As I’ve said before, my wonderful and public-spirited Dad find himself on Nixon’s enemies’ list for the horrid crime of having been involved in the opposition to one of Nixon’s awful Supreme Court nominees.
* My grandmother was forbidden to leave the NY area while working for the UN during the McCarthy era (and while she disagreed with some US policies, she was a straightforward, play-by-the-rules diplomat, and for it’s worth loved the US).
* My grandfather was described as ‘anti-American’ on the grounds that, while running a UN agency for post-WW2 European trade reconstruction (if memory serves), he refused to turn over personnel files on his US employees to McCarthy’s committee, and therefore had a reasonably serious tussle with McCarthy.
This same grandfather, when writing a book on a topic (race in the US in the 1940s) that would have provided any real anti-American with a marvelous opportunity to go on and on about America’s faults, chose instead to cast America’s treatment of blacks as a conflict within the national conscience, in which racial issues were the largest standing contradiction to the ideals this country was founded on; and those ideals, which he admired all his life, were front and center in the resulting book.
These things have a history. It is not a history in which everyone has been careful about who they call anti-American. And it’s especially problematic for those of us who genuinely love our country: being called anti-something-unimportant wouldn’t be nearly such an issue. (Would I mind it if someone concluded that I was, say, anti-this-Diet-Coke-can? I’d think it was silly, but I wouldn’t care nearly so much about seeing the charge bandied about.)
I’m still waiting to hear if Charles is now to be considered anti-Venezuelan. And if not, why not, given the criteria?
Gary, “My impression from your past writings on him is that you tend to lump his writings from the Sixties, Seventies, and recent years, together as if they were one homogenous mass of his unchanging thinking, and then you tend to point to stuff he’s written decades ago and subsequently changed his mind about, as shown in his later writings, as if that was still representative of his thinking.”
The works I cited were: “The New Military Humanism: Lessons from Kosovo”, “American Power and the New Mandarins”, “Towards a New Cold War: Essays on the Current Crisis and How We Got There.”,”What Uncle Sam Really Wants”, and “Hegemony or Survival”. Their publications dates are, in the order I cited them, 1999,1969,1982,1992,2003. In my view, however you want to take that, his analytic framework of ignoring important non-US contributions to the state of the world (and often much more important than the US contributions) and focusing almost exclusively on negative US contributions–while also suggesting that he is taking a comprehensive look at the issues–strongly suggests an anti-American focus. I don’t see where you are getting the impression that I focus only on his early works. I also don’t see a big change in focus or framework between his early works and his more current works, so I’m not sure why a focus on his early works would have been a problem in his particular case anyway.
Hilzoy, “These things have a history. It is not a history in which everyone has been careful about who they call anti-American. And it’s especially problematic for those of us who genuinely love our country: being called anti-something-unimportant wouldn’t be nearly such an issue.”
Yes they do. But the fact that a label has improperly in the past doesn’t make it improperly applied in all situations. The situation you describe with your father and grandparents certainly do not fall under the rubric of anti-American. Chomsky does. Chomsky’s writings share an analytic framework suggests it is a complete look at US interactions but he routinely ignores the other actors with which the US is interacting.
If someone wants to point me to one of his extended writings (essay length or longer)which offers a balanced look at pros and cons of US policies which also takes into account the dangers of inaction and/or a balanced look at the dangers other actors on the world stage pose I would be thrilled (ok “thrilled” is way too strong a word) to look at it. But I’ve seen more than enough of Chomsky to find it unlikely.
SH, we’re in complete agreement a lot lately – are you feeling ok? Hmm, I’ve been reading the bridge column in the paper recently…
No problem, LJ. I wasn’t offended. I also wasn’t offended by Gary. I was probably more interested in politics than the average 20-something when I stumbled across Chomsky, but I certainly wouldn’t have known at that point how to find out much of anything about American crimes without the pointers I got from reading him. I wasn’t exactly on Gary’s level then, and in fact I’m not now.
But speaking of non-offense, Gary, I’ve read Shawcross, Sheehan, Branfman and a fair number of other books about Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia and am aware that Chomsky wasn’t the only one to say that bad things were happening in Southeast Asia. Sheehan wrote a famous article in the NYT Book Review about war crimes in Vietnam, for instance, something I found out about and read in a library once. So I know you weren’t aiming that comment at anyone, but I caught a piece of the shrapnel anyway. What I’d say in reply is what I said earlier–if you wanted to find a one-source spot for an overview of American foreign policy crimes, Chomsky was and to some extent might still be one of the best places to start. I don’t say to finish. For instance, Chomsky is where I first found out the US government and some pundits enthusiastically cheered Suharto’s butchery in Indonesia in the mid-60’s, but if I were going to make that case I’d probably cite Kai Bird’s book on the Bundy brothers “The Color of Truth”, which in turn has other sources (that I haven’t read) in the bibliography.
Rilkefan, I don’t think a New Yorker article is a very good way to find out what Chomsky thinks. You’re under no obligation to care–in fact, in this age of blogs I don’t think Chomsky’s opinions are worth any more attention than those of a fair number of leftwing bloggers I could name. But to the extent that it matters, there’s a huge gap between the Chomsky I’ve actually read and the caricature his critics trot out. He’s in the same tradition as other harsh critics of American injustice and he openly says that he focuses mostly on US crimes, because he thinks those are the ones he should concentrate on as an American citizen. I don’t fully agree with that attitude, but he’s upfront about it.
That term “anti-American” doesn’t have much emotional content for me, precisely because it’s so often used to discredit people who point out American crimes. I think it reflects badly on people who use it and when I hear it I generally suspect that the user prefers to engage in name-calling rather than face up to unpleasant facts.
“Rilkefan, I don’t think a New Yorker article is a very good way to find out what Chomsky thinks.”
I was citing that more as how he acts than as how he thinks, which isn’t necessarily relevant. If you disagree on his stance re WWII, or hold that he’s not claiming to present an analysis of America’s place in the world (as opposed to considering certain events using certain tools the value of which he weighs) then that’s a different story.
To put it another way, I’d like to know how to distinguish his critiques from those of someone who simply opposes America or is a crank on the topic of American actions and who wishes to have a certain degree of effectiveness.
Personally I see a difference between applying the term “anti-American” to an argument and applying it to a person. I’d be comfortable with saying that Chomsky’s writings display an anti-American bias, but to say that Chomsky himself is anti-American has “traitor” overtones to me.
“I don’t see where you are getting the impression that I focus only on his early works.”
That’s understandable, since I said no such thing.
Indeed, what I wrote directly contradicts that: “My impression from your past writings on him is that you tend to lump his writings from the Sixties, Seventies, and recent years, together as if they were one homogenous mass of his unchanging thinking….”
I’m fairly sure that saying that you refer to his writings in recent years” specifies other than his “early years.”
I’m also comfortable with describing your referring to a book of his from 1969 as said lumping.
Further than this, I have no interest in discussing Chomsky. Carry on.
Donald: “…but I caught a piece of the shrapnel anyway.”
My apologies.
Apropos of no particular comment, I’ll say that I think that the term “anti-American” has some valid uses, and can reasonably be used to describe some people — Fidel Castro, say, and, yes, Mr. Chavez. But I’d also thoroughly and emphatically agree that wielding of the term should be done only with great caution and fair precision, given its vast misuse and vastly damaging, at least when made against another American, connotations and implications.
Blame Joe McCarthy for that, perhaps.
“Blame Joe McCarthy for that, perhaps.”
Immediate afterthought: better to blame him, and Parnell Thomas, and Richard Nixon, and others, for use of “un-American,” than “anti-American,” perhaps, but nonetheless. Both terms are historically, and contemporaneously, far more misused, in ways that grossly and unfairly damage loyal Americans, than not.
And, more recently, Sean Hannity, who seems to have it fall trippingly from his tongue only a few times per minute.
kenB, fair enough. I can well imagine Chomsky not wanting to take positive action to harm the US or its govt and writing as he does out of contrariety or the desire to occupy a niche or for personal historical reasons or from sincere belief coupled with certain blinkers. (I can also well imagine him writing to harm the US, whether out of animus or a belief that a weakened US would be good for the rest of humanity.)
I can also well imagine him writing to harm the US, whether out of animus or a belief that a weakened US would be good for the rest of humanity.)
And of course those are two very different motivations. One could also think that a short-term setback for the US could work out to be a long-term positive, e.g. an isolationist who wants Iraq to work out poorly so that we’re less likely to act that way in the future. The easy charge of “anti-American” (applied to the person) glosses over all those differences.
Randy,
I haven’t written about Haiti at ObWi, though I’ve made a few false starts. Tacitus has gone through several format changes, and my writings from October 2003 through March 2004 are unavailable, but I’ve written at three posts on Haiti while there. I was able to find the links to two of them, here and here. I hope this alleviate yours and others’ doubting of my word.
Dr. Owens,
From all I’ve read of your comments, I would indeed be on paper-thin ice to opine that your writings are anti-American. You’ve always commented informatively and there is the ever-present sense that what you put forth is done so in good faith, and to add substance to our conversations. For that, I appreciate all of your contributions.
From what I’ve read of Chomsky, good faith and his writings don’t belong on the same continent. The well-documented dishonesty and distortion points in one direction, virtually every single time.
From what I’ve read of Chomsky, good faith and his writings don’t belong on the same continent.
What have you read by him? After all, if I were base my judgements of Charles Bird on what I’ve read of him, I would certainly have a different opinion than the delightful one that I currently hold.
Oh yeah. I also wrote one on Haiti and its juxtaposition with the Dominican Republic in Feb-2004, titled “One Island, Two Nations”. Can’t find it. There may be one more beyond that. I’ve written to Josh multiple times to e-mail me all of my pre-March 2004 posts, but no response.
Charles,
Wasn’t doubting your word and I stand corrected. Forgot about your work on Tacitus.
Thanks for the links, BTW.
However, the situation in Haiti has worsened significantly since Aristide left and what I found especially disturbing were the likes of Roger Noriega and Otto Recih working at cross-purposes to the Secretary fo State and Ambassador at the time.
Haiti would have been better off if someone forced the opposition and Aristide sit down and be put in a position to learn to live together for the good of Haiti. Aristide to his credit agreed, while the opposition refused. The White House, probably spurred on by their hatred of Aristide, undercut Colin Powell and sided with the opposition, helping force Aristide out.
Say what one will about Aristide, but that is not how democracies are built. Haiti has worsened as a result of this.
The well-documented dishonesty and distortion points in one direction, virtually every single time.
It’s becoming crystal clear that you haven’t actually read Chomsky at all….that in fact you are relying on sometimes dishonest in it’s own right Chomsky criticism found on the web to make your arguments for you, without actually understanding key concepts to boot, the most obvious glaring being Communism, Socialism and anarchism (which you have used at times as if interchangeable).
For the life of me I don’t understand why you feel the need to misrepresent either Chavez or Chomsky to critique them. They provide ample ammunition.
Btw, the only “link” demonstrated b/w Chavez and Chomsky, is that Hugo has read some of Noam’s books and liked especially the parts about U.S.
-from an interview on Democracy Now
“…what I found especially disturbing were the likes of Roger Noriega and Otto Recih working at cross-purposes to the Secretary fo State and Ambassador at the time.”
Again, for those who’d like to know more, I point to this recent long article, which I’m still intending to get to a post on. I’d get to it sooner if I didn’t spend so much time messing around here, of course. 🙂
Charles, here‘s one of your Haiti posts. Which, amusingly, cites Randy.
“It’s becoming crystal clear that you haven’t actually read Chomsky at all….that in fact you are relying on sometimes dishonest in it’s own right Chomsky criticism found on the web to make your arguments for you, without actually understanding key concepts to boot, the most obvious glaring being Communism, Socialism and anarchism (which you have used at times as if interchangeable).”
Spartikus, tell me right now which balanced book of Chomsky’s I should be reading. I will buy it TODAY and write on it by Monday.
Spartikus said (to Charles Bird)–
“For the life of me I don’t understand why you feel the need to misrepresent either Chavez or Chomsky to critique them.”
I think the answer to that question, in the case of Noam at least, is that a serious discussion of what Noam actually says would involve trying to determine to what extent he’s right when he says that the US government has been guilty of war crimes, terrorism, and so forth. Because the embarrassing fact of the matter is that, even if one believes Noam exaggerates or is wrong in some of his judgments, most of his claims are based on information supplied by mainstream sources like Human RIghts Watch and Amnesty International and, despite his press criticism, articles in the mainstream press. I think the last thing most virulent Chomsky-haters want is that kind of discussion. Much better to concentrate on the real or alleged flaws of a moonbat leftist than deal with the possibility that he might be right half the time, or maybe even more than half.
And BTW, I understand the terms “Communism”, “Socialism”, and “anarchism” just fine. I haven’t used them in this conversation so I suspect you are confusing me with someone else when you say that I use them interchangeably.
This is a rather shocking oversight for someone who is attacking my honesty and basic reading comprehension skills.
If I chime in to point out that Spartikus was talking to Charles, will Sebastian still do a forced-reading march?
And BTW, I understand the terms “Communism”, “Socialism”, and “anarchism” just fine. I haven’t used them in this conversation so I suspect you are confusing me with someone else when you say that I use them interchangeably.
This is a rather shocking oversight for someone who is attacking my honesty and basic reading comprehension skills.
Considering that his castigation for confusing the terms was directed at Charles — a major clue being that he actually quotes Charles’s words — he probably wasn’t talking to you.
Nice own goal there on the reading comprehension snark, Sebastian. Truly masterful.
Sebastian, please read my comment again. You’ll note it was addressed to Charles, though I tend to think that you too are not as familiar with the actual details of Chomsky’s work than you imply. The list of books you provided range, as others have noted, from the 1960’s. Indeed a couple of the more recently published on that list are simply collections of older essays reprinted as a single volume.
You don’t have to read Noam Chomsky if you are not interested, as you clearly aren’t, but please stop misrepresenting him and/or exaggerating your familiarity with his work.
I didn’t know that the Kosovo conflict occurred in the 60’s. Oh, spartikus is saying that Chomsky wrote about it back in the 60’s, proving his foresightedness.
I haven’t read Noam’s most recent books (9/11, Hegemony or Survival), though I still read his essays online or at Z magazine and probably wouldn’t find too much in those books that’s very surprising. But if Sebastian wants, he could try “Rogue States”, which came out in 2000. It’s got some of Noam’s best points, and also places where I think he’s vulnerable to criticism. But again, whether Chomsky himself is perfect isn’t terribly important–what’s important is whether the US is guilty, sometimes directly and sometimes via proxy, of mass murder. This is what I don’t get about Sebastian’s offer. Nobody reads Chomsky for his writing style or for the way the gentle charm of his personality comes shining through or, more seriously, for his firsthand reporting of war-torn regions. He’s not Robert Fisk. He’s useful (or was, before the Internet) for the way he would gather evidence from human rights groups and various press sources for American complicity in various atrocities, something that was pretty hard for the average person to do before the age of google. So if Sebastian wants to refute Chomsky’s main points, he’ll have to track down the human rights references and refute them, because Chomsky is not a primary source on anything.
Wheee, good thing I have my mint flavored shoes on.
🙂
“Spartikus, tell me right now which balanced book of Chomsky’s I should be reading. I will buy it TODAY and write on it by Monday.”
“You don’t have to read Noam Chomsky if you are not interested, as you clearly aren’t […]”
This sequence, it seems to me, indicates an unwillingness to discuss the issue in good faith on spartikus‘s part.
Donald Johnson: “he might be right half the time, or maybe even more than half.” Reverend Moon, or Jim Jones, or take-your-pick might be right half the time. If you point me to a balanced discussion, I’ll take a look, and reccommend it to people on the right. You can’t reasonably say, “you’re afraid to discuss the issue” if you’re not willing to take up the cudgels. I for instance noted something about Chomsky’s stance on WWII – if you want to engage that issue, please do so – “maybe half-right, or more” is too amorphous. – And now on preview I see that you’ve addressed some of the issue above, so thanks. Is the book really a collection of links to data, without drawing any conclusions or giving any context?
“The list of books you provided range, as others have noted, from the 1960’s.”
Amusingly, this is exactly how Chomsky deals with evidence. He makes statements that are technically true, but highly misleading.
The publication dates of the works I cited are: 1999, 1969, 1982, 1992, 2003.
Now this of course is a list that ranges from the 1960’s. But the implication that it focuses on older works is entirely misleading. The focus is clearly on more recent works. 2/5 of the works are in the past ten years. 3/5 of the works are in the past twenty years. One of the two remaining works is from the early 1980s. Only one of the works is from “the 1960’s” and even that work isn’t as old as the gist implies–it is from 1969. And of course this does absolutely nothing to address my contention that Chomsky’s method and focus has remained very similar throughout that period.
This leads directly to Donald’s point: “He’s useful (or was, before the Internet) for the way he would gather evidence from human rights groups and various press sources for American complicity in various atrocities, something that was pretty hard for the average person to do before the age of google. So if Sebastian wants to refute Chomsky’s main points, he’ll have to track down the human rights references and refute them, because Chomsky is not a primary source on anything.”
His selection of evidence to prove points and his characterization of that evidence is what makes him seem anti-American to me. His avoidance of surrounding circumstances to focus on the US role, while suggesting that the problem is mainly of US origin is what makes him seem anti-American to me. I don’t have to consult AI for that.
His selection of evidence to prove points and his characterization of that evidence is what makes him seem anti-American to me. His avoidance of surrounding circumstances to focus on the US role, while suggesting that the problem is mainly of US origin is what makes him seem anti-American to me. I don’t have to consult AI for that.
So is Chomsky dishonest, or deceitful, in his representation of what happened?
If so, why not just point out his deceit, and call him deceitful or dishonest? It’s far more precise than the nebulous concept of anti-americanism, and would certainly be of more interest to people such as myself who aren’t american and therefore don’t have quite the motivation to be pro-american in all circumstances.
This sequence, it seems to me, indicates an unwillingness to discuss the issue in good faith on spartikus’s part.
Given the fact that he made this demand to a comment not addressed to him: Really? As I said, rilkefan, the list ranges from the 1960’s, so it’s a bit dishonest of you to try to take the most recent book on the list and use it to portray the list in entirety as “current”.
The point I’m trying to make is critique Chomsky all you want…just critique him for what he actually says, and what he say now, rather than in 1968, and if you are not familiar with his work, then maybe, you know, refrain.
SH: Now this of course is a list that ranges from the 1960’s. But the implication that it focuses on older works is entirely misleading.
As I pointed out, some of those are collections of old work. Specifically:
American Power and the New Mandarins: a collection of essays from 1966 through 1968.
Towards a New Cold War: Essays on the Current Crisis and How We Got There: a collection of essays and articles dating from 1973 to 1981
What Uncle Sam Really Wants: compiled from talks and interviews completed between 1986 and 1991, with particular attention to Central America.
That’s 3 out of the 5. Misleading?
Goooooooaaaal! by Spartikus.
Man. While I haven’t read much Chomsky recently, and had disagreed with much of what he said when I used to, I have the urge to pick up a book or two now.
Rilkefan, I don’t think I’ve ever read Chomsky claiming that the US was wrong to have intervened in WWII and as I’ve said, I’ve read most (though not all) of his political writings. Like everyone else, he treats Nazi Germany as the ultimate in human evil. He is also very critical of Imperial Japan, as all sane people are. (He’s a good friend of Herbert Bix, or Blix?, who wrote a widely acclaimed biography of Emperor Hirohito that was very critical of the man. Chomsky has endorsed the biography and said he was pleasantly surprised it is so widely respected, or something to that effect.)
There was an essay in “American Power and the New Mandarins” that reviewed the views of the American pacifist A.J. Muste, but though Chomsky was sympathetic, I don’t think he actually endorsed his views. (I can’t find my copy–books are not arranged in a logical fashion in our coop.) So when you mentioned that German student New Yorker story, I scratched my head, was very doubtful, but don’t know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it’s a misrepresentation of his views. What he says in the beginning of “The Chomsky Reader” was that he was skeptical of the patriotic interpretation of the war. He also says he was a very committed anti-Nazi at the time. What I suspect is that Chomsky was ridiculing the notion that the US entered the war for noble reasons–he has talked about how the Europeans and the Americans were already colonialists in Asia. But it’s a stretch from that to the position that the US shouldn’t have fought Nazi Germany and I’ve never read him say that, but of course can’t be absolutely certain what his position might be now.
Rilkefan, Chomsky’s books tend to be lists of bad things the US has done that the average person doesn’t know much about. Yes, he gives context, but it’s not a flattering one for the US government. For instance, the Suharto slaughter of suspected communists (and others) in the mid-60’s is described by Chomsky in terms of how happy the US government was, and how some pundits seemed equally pleased. Kai Bird in his biography of the Bundy brothers paints the same picture, so if I want to make a point about this I’d cite Kai Bird and avoid the usual Chomsky argument (like the one in this thread). Chomsky wrote a great deal about Reagan’s enthusiastic support for mass murderers in Central America and gives his view of the motivations behind it (none of it flattering), but again, to avoid unnecessary and irrelevant discussions of Chomsky, on that subject I’d refer to the work of Human Rights Watch (America’s Watch back then) or Amnesty International and if I wanted to cite books I’d cite Mark Danner’s book on the El Mozote massacre or Ray Bonner’s book on El Salvador or Aryeh Neier’s recent book on his life as a human rights activist. So in fact I read Chomsky (less now, because human rights info is so readily available online) and feel I owe him a great deal, but if I want to reach a possibly open-minded centrist or even rightwinger I never under any circumstances recommend a Chomsky book. Again, this isn’t because I think he’s worthless or dishonest or a liar, but simply a pragmatic judgment that you don’t smack people over the head with a rhetorical hammer if you want to persuade them.
Which takes me to Sebastian. Yes, you’d find him anti-American in your sense of the word. Chomsky says you should expect the ruling elites in any society to clothe their desire to maintain or increase their power in noble-sounding rhetoric and that the US is no exception. As a Christian I find this fits in neatly with the Christian view of human nature. ‘m not sure myself if Chomsky is always right in his attribution of bad motives to US actors. There will be exceptions to this, cases where people might really mean well, and Chomsky may not make allowances for this possibility. My vague religious argument aside, when you look at the facts it’s often hard to attribute good motives to American foreign policymakers when you see the harm their policies sometimes cause. I’d go further than this, actually, but don’t feel like hitting you over the head with a rhetorical hammer.
“Given the fact that he made this demand to a comment not addressed to him: Really?”
Non-responsive. He says he’ll read the book of your choice, you respond by saying he’s not interested in reading. Do you concur with Donald‘s reccomendation? Will you accept it as representative?
“what he say now, rather than in 1968”
“1991”
“[recent stuff by implication, not directly admitted]”
This sequence, it seems to me, indicates an unwillingness to discuss the issue in good faith on spartikus‘s part.
Donald, thanks for the response. I’m sorry I don’t have the New Yorker at hand – I’ll see if I can find it in the pile at home. If I can, perhaps we’ll be better able to understand each other’s viewpoint.
I see your point about source materials. On the other hand, I doubt CB or SH needs to be informed about bad things which might under some interpretations be blamed on the US. The interpretations are what’s at issue here, I think.
For instance, consider Rwanda. Clinton’s fault? No. Does he bear some blame for not acting? Sure. Is he an accomplice to mass murder? I don’t think so.
Or consider Pakistan. We prop up a military dictator there. Colonialism, realism, necessity?
Hegemony and Survival might be a more topical Chomsky book to read, unless there’s one still more recent. As mentioned, I don’t pay as much attention to his book output these days. Rogue State is still a good choice, from my perspective, but it’s only the most recent one I’ve read and if Sebastian wants to do this, maybe a later more topical choice would interest more people.
Rwanda is actually not the kind of thing Chomsky tends to criticize as much. That was a sin of omission and in mainstream circles, when people criticize the US role they usually single out the sins of omission and in Chomsky’s view (and mine) they are tacitly assuming or pretending that the US is never directly involved in the actual commission of massive human rights violations. Not that we shouldn’t discuss our sins of omission (like Darfur), but it gives a slanted view of things if people only discuss this and ignore the times when the US actually supported the people doing the killing.
Your Pakistan point I think is more relevant. Sometimes I do think Chomsky holds the US to a higher standard than any government has ever met. Though having said that, I don’t know enough about our Pakistan policy to say for sure whether I’d support a really harsh Chomsky-style condemnation of our policy there. Now back in 1971, when Pakistan was murdering hundreds of thousands (or millions) of Bengalis and Nixon sided with them, I’d support a Chomskyan view. Except, oddly enough, Chomsky has written very little about that–Seymour Hersh’s biography of Kissinger is much more damning.
I vaguely recall the New Yorker article and even remember Chomsky browbeating someone in it, but don’t and didn’t remember what the topic was.
This is excellent, because spartikus is now using the exact type of intellectually dishonest that I despise so much from Chomsky.
Now let us note again that implication in his original quote was that I was ignoring the modern thoughts of Chomsky and focusing on the 1960s thoughts. He portrays that through the technically accurate but deeply misleading: “…though I tend to think that you too are not as familiar with the actual details of Chomsky’s work than you imply. The list of books you provided range, as others have noted, from the 1960’s.”
Now of course he also chooses not to address my perception that Chomsky’s approach has not markedly changed in the past 30 years, but we can come back to that later.
First book on my list:
“The New Military Humanism: Lessons from Kosovo” Published 1999. Rather new. Deals with Kosovo, so a rather new topic.
Second book on my list:
“American Power and the New Mandarins” Published 1969, republished 2002. This is in fact Chomsky’s first political book. This is the only book from the 1960s and is the anchor for the deeply misleading suggestion that I focus on the old stuff because the books I cite range “from the 1960’s”.
Third Book:
“Towards a New Cold War: Essays on the Current Crisis and How We Got There.” First published 1982. Republished 2003. Essays from 1973-1981. Including the brilliancy on how Carter wanted a new Cold War. These essays are in many ways very obvious precursors to his newest book.
Fourth Book:
“What Uncle Sam Really Wants” Views from 1986-1991. This book is very similar to “Towards a New Cold War” but with an emphasis on Central and South America.
Fifth Book:
“Hegemony or Survival” This was published in 2003, and Chomsky follows up the themes of the previous two in the post-Communist era.
So we have my exposure to Chomsky’s thoughts 1966-1968, 1973-1981, 1986-1991, 1999 and 2003.
Is this broadly indicative of my lack of exposure to his modern views? I think not. A fairer look might suggest that I have read a broad cross-section of his works spread out over his political writing career. If you look at those years, does it really lend itself to: “The point I’m trying to make is critique Chomsky all you want…just critique him for what he actually says, and what he say now, rather than in 1968, and if you are not familiar with his work, then maybe, you know, refrain.”? The focus on 1968 ends up being deeply misleading in exactly the way that Chomsky is deeply misleading. It is not misleading in that the fact quoted is technically wrong. It is misleading because the fact AS USED creates a mostly wrong impression.
By the way, is there some reason you avoid mentioning which ‘old’ view that I might have picked up in his late 1960s works he has turned his back on in the ‘new’ books? From what I can see his analytic framework with respect to the US has only hardened.
But if I have, by some awful chance, read unrepresentative books you can help me. I have requested that you name the modern book you think provides a look at the US which does not contain the attributes I have seen in the books I have read. I will buy it (now I might have to commit to tomorrow since it is getting late). I will read it. I will post my thoughts on it. What book should I use?
Some quotes from the article. I’m not sure I’ve characterized it correctly, though clearly the “motives” question (which I call “interpretation” above) was at issue.
I haven’t posted here before, but reading the whole discussion of Chomsky and WWII made me vaguely remember a quote from him saying he supported US entry into the war. I was able to find it, and it pretty much settles the issue, I think:
“There are interventions that have had humanitarian consequences. Getting rid of Hitler was a humanitarian consequence, although incidentally it wasn’t an intervention. The U.S. got into the war when it was attacked. Germany declared war on the United States, not the other way around. But the military action was one that I did support as a kid and would support now.”
Emphasis mine. That was from a collection of interviews with Chomsky entitled Propaganda and the Public Mind, on page 164, and the interview in question took place on April 10, 2000. So, it’s fairly recent.
The New Yorker thing- reading the link, it indeed doesn’t sound at all like he was attacking the idea of fighting in WWII itself at all, but the US’s conduct in the war. I can’t say much more than that, as the blogger in question so clearly has an ax to grind, and pretty much anything else I can think of to say about that link would be unproductive snark. I’d have to see the article itself to comment further.
As for my opinions of Chomsky himself- basically, what Donald Johnson said. Though I would consider him still worth reading even with the rise of blogs and the internet. His political perspective isn’t that well represented in the blogosphere, from what I’ve seen. I don’t think I would really consider myself far-left, but they don’t tend to get a fair shake, and it’s worth learning about their perspective even if one doesn’t agree. IMO, anyway…
You know, rilkefan, Gandhi made some of the same arguments that Chomsky was making there. And there is this phenomenon of arguments moving people to positions that they normally wouldn’t hold in order to defend themselves. Not that this ever happens at ObWi.
As for browbeating, Chomsky effectively uses the power differential between teacher and student. I don’t like it either, but arguing whether WWII was a good thing or a bad thing seems like a pretty pointless debate, as I don’t think it can be reduced to a value like that. Unless you want to claim that he was lying about what a louis quoted and he really didn’t mean it.
Sebastian, why don’t you try Robert Barsky’s _Life of Dissent_ rather than a Chomsky work? Also, if you get one of Chomsky’s main books, read it in two days, and post on it, I don’t think (because Chomsky’s prose is dreadful) you can be fair to the arguments. This is one of the outs he gives himself, though it is hard to know if it is conscious or subsconscious.
I also think it is possible to criticize his stance on one issue while supporting his stance on another. Yet you want some sort of ‘what Chomsky is’ in relation to US foreign policy and you want us to point you to something. Can’t be done, especially when you have someone who has published as much as Chomsky has and when you are dealing with something as wide ranging as US foreign policy (he largely confines himself to US foreign policy, with occasional diversions into the ‘West’) I think this is the point of spartikus’ complaint rather than the implication of bad faith that you and rilkefan make. Reading anyone fairly requires a certain sympathy or at least empathy. I don’t think it is bad faith on spartikus part to think that Sebastian is not going to bring any sympathy whatsoever to a reading of Chomsky and Sebastian trying to limit the discussion to one book ‘representative’ of Chomsky’s book is just as much a debating tactic as anything Chomsky does.
It is misleading because the fact AS USED creates a mostly wrong impression.
I see.
Perhaps you could refresh my memory, Sebastian, what the general thesis of The New Military Humanism is and enlighten us why it’s anti-American? And for bonus points, what he also said about the Serbian and Kosovar leaderships.
Just for fun.
lj, seems to me that if there’s no Chomsky book that an intelligent, informed, unsympathetic reader like SH can read to assess the quality of his arguments, then it’s unlikely Chomsky has written anything useful. I can well imagine that philosopher X’s best book S requires one to read R, Q, and P first, plus all of philosopher Y’s work, plus glosess by Z, but here I’m skeptical.
An enthused blogger could probably find a Chomsky article on the web and get a reading group to consider and critique it.
Re the New Yorker article, I need to check the context.
“He’s a good friend of Herbert Bix, or Blix?, who wrote a widely acclaimed biography of Emperor Hirohito that was very critical of the man. Chomsky has endorsed the biography and said he was pleasantly surprised it is so widely respected, or something to that effect.)”
Herbert P. Bix. Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan.
Won various prizes, widely reviewed, highly respected. Like any nonfiction book, some argue with it. It fits entirely with my view of the topic (not in every single particular, of course, but in the general thrust of documenting Hirohito’s degree of responsibility for Japanese aggression, so long covered up by MacArthur and SCAP and the U.S. for the convenience of it), so naturally I think it’s an excellent work. 🙂
“…or Ray Bonner’s book on El Salvador….”
I might also recommend Bitter Fruit, although the edition I read was purely by Stephen Kinzer, in galley, in the mid-Eighties.
Kinzer I’ve generally found to be good on American intervention, although I have no idea how good or bad Overthrow : America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq is, and I’ve not read Blood of Brothers: Life and War in Nicaragua yet, either.
But I’ve generally found him pretty sound in the past.
Sebastian: “This is excellent, because spartikus is now using the exact type of intellectually dishonest that I despise so much from Chomsky.”
I read that as “intellectual dishonesty.” But I’m filling, and could be wrong.
Sebastian, what’s your response to a query asking how you square this with the posting rules?
lj, seems to me that if there’s no Chomsky book that an intelligent, informed, unsympathetic reader like SH can read to assess the quality of his arguments, then it’s unlikely Chomsky has written anything useful.
Noted, but to suggest that one has read several and then barrack people for refusing suggest the one book that will stand for the totality of a thinker’s thoughts is a bit more than ‘unsympathetic’, im jaundiced o.
I can well imagine that philosopher X’s best book S requires one to read R, Q, and P first, plus all of philosopher Y’s work, plus glosess by Z, but here I’m skeptical.
A bit of reductio ad absurdum there. Sebastian is proposing to read, over the weekend, a writer whose prose style is difficult at best, a single work in order to get his viewpoint. Quick, give me one work by Sartre to read this weekend so I can adequately criticize his entire ouvre. See what I mean?
I think, from my reading of Chomsky, his works fall into three periods. The first, the Vietnam period, got him on the same enemies list as Hilzoy’s dad. When that conflict ‘ended’ (the scare quotes are meant to denote not that we are still fighting Vietnam, but that there was no clear cut ‘end’ as such), attention to Chomsky faded. In this middle period, he wrote about South and Central America and Indonesia and Cambodia, which is where a lot of the strife comes in because of the original thought that Pol Pot was being villified in order to draw attention away from Suharto. There was also the Faurisson incident in which the question of free expression emerges. I guess this would include his writings about the Balkans and his complaints about the cruise missile attacks on Sudan, that, iirc, some right wingers seized on to attack Clinton’s foreign policy. (as an interesting sidelight, the Guardian piece that was retracted utilized Chomsky’s support of Diana Johnstone’s book questioning reports of concentration camps in the Balkans housing Muslims that was withdrawn by a Swedish publisher because of the concerns that are now at issue in the Danish cartoons row.) The third phase obviously comes after 9/11, but I think was foreshadowed by a piece (in the Guardian?) that suggested that Chomsky was yesterday’s news. He responded with a long and detailed piece that I hesitate to summarize, but basically saying ‘I’ve been here the whole time, it’s just that you haven’t been paying attention’.
While it is possible to extract a unified message (Chomsky can be doggedly consistent, which in some ways, is a problem), failure to take into account those backdrops makes critiqueing a single Chomsky article pretty foolish, I think.
Sebastian:
Could you perhaps, please, link to the specfic post in which someone did this, and quote the precise words in which they did this?
I believe I missed that comment.
Since what you are quoting is either a suggestion or a request as regards the future, or is in the subjunctive, yes, it does so lend itself to such a suggestion or request or hypothetical.
If someone had made a claim that you only referred to older works, or had made some other claim, that would be different.
I have no dog in a fight over Chomsky, I’ll note again. I am, however, responding to your question while remaining indifferent to the substance of the debate over Chomsky. Since you asked.
“The focus on 1968 ends up being deeply misleading in exactly the way that Chomsky is deeply misleading.”
It’s not a “focus.” It’s a mention. You are focusing on that, to be sure.
Good grief, rilkefan, you’re not exactly being fair here yourself. Chomsky was invaluable to me because he collected a very large amount of evidence on American crimes–as Gary and for that matter, I myself have pointed out, the evidence exists in other places, but it is pretty darn convenient having it all in one author who lays out a damning indictment of US foreign policy. “The New Mandarins” book was good for the late 60’s., “Towards a New Cold War” was extremely good for around 1981 or so and if I had to pick, I’d say that was Chomsky at his best. It’s got pieces on East Timor (where yes, Jimmy Carter was actively helping the Indonesians commit genocide) and a devastating review of Guenter Lewey’s book on Vietnam which summarizes, IMO, all you need to know about American crimes in that country, and some of his early pieces pointing out (when it was still a controversial thing to say in the US, I think) that Israel practiced torture. Sebastian just panned the book, but I rate it very highly. “Manufacturing Consent” was pretty good for the period of the late 80’s and as a summary of his press criticism and also as a summary of his case against the US in Vietnam. I’m a little more ambivalent about some of the later books–I’ve never made up my mind what to think about our Kosovo intervention and here I wonder if his ideology made him a little too kneejerk.. But “The New Military Humanism” pointed out some stuff I didn’t know about our support for Turkey (during the Clinton years) as they crushed their Kurdish revolt and whether the Kosovo War was right or not, I think Chomsky brings out some legitimate points about US hypocrisy there. I’ve mentioned how the Internet has decreased the need for me to read Chomsky, but having said that, there was a damning Human Rights Watch report about US weapons being used by Turkey to kill Kurds which he referenced and I later found online and wouldn’t have known it existed if he hadn’t said so. I probably ought to get Hegemony or Survival sometime, or whatever the latest book is–I read Chomsky online and his books tend to be compilations of things he’s already written, but it might be nice having them all in one cover.
I bashed Chomsky’s prose, but I also think there are times when it hits the mark. I agreed with Hitchens that his chapter on Sabra and Shatila in “The Fateful Triangle” was brilliant. And I thought the previously mentioned review of the Guenter Lewy (or Lewey?) book was just about perfect. He also rips into Kissinger and if there is anyone who deserves ten tons of Chomsky’s irony crashing down on them, it’s Kissinger.
I probably overdid my claim that Chomsky is irrelevant now–he is much less important for the reason I mentioned, which is that anyone can now read articles in at least the English language versions of foreign papers (when they exist) and look up human rights reports and so forth. And there are bloggers with a far left view of things–Raul Mahajan at Empire Notes, for instance and a woman whose name I can’t remember at “Under the Same Sun”. Helena (forgot her last name) at Just World News.. And others that do a superb job on human rights issues–Jeanne at Body and Soul, though I think she writes much better than Chomsky and doesn’t have the, hmm, overly aggressive subtle as a hammer sense of irony that sometimes makes Chomsky’s prose a little hard to get through.
I wouldn’t recommend Chomsky for conservatives or even centrists primarily because he is so uncompromising and so in-your-face with his attitude that I think it probably makes it extremely difficult for a conservative or someone unused to thinking in terms of American war crimes to read him without being so angered they just start looking for things to attack. And also ,there’s all the baggage of all the Chomsky-bashing over the years–if Chomsky says something truthful and upsetting, well, isn’t he the guy who initially was reluctant to fully credit the genocide in Cambodia? Yeah, so why believe him? So that’s why, if I want to convince someone that the US is guilty of some horrific crime, I cite someone else.
A crazy idea: Since this post was originally about Hugo Chavez and his Chomsky inspired (in part, mind you) descent into Bolivarmunism, ne, communism…we could read and critique a December 2005 article by Chomsky on Chavez?
The focus on 1968 ends up being deeply misleading in exactly the way that Chomsky is deeply misleading. It is not misleading in that the fact quoted is technically wrong. It is misleading because the fact AS USED creates a mostly wrong impression.
Considering that:
a)spartikus’ original quote is available with a quick flick of the scroll wheel, and
b)that spartikus then follows the comparison you quote with a clarification
As I said, rilkefan, the list ranges from the 1960’s
thus indicating to the reader that the chomsky writings cover a range of times, I find this criticism of spartikus ridiculous. All the relevant facts are already in the thread. Spartikus has no ability to cherry-pick.
However, I find this statement:
3/5 of the works are in the past twenty years.
when one of those works was a collection of writings more than 20 years old (a fact not presented in the thread at that time), to be quite misleading while technically correct.
I wonder if Chavez attaches any conditions to the sale of low cost heating oil? *ducks*
“I’ve never made up my mind what to think about our Kosovo intervention….”
Just to helpfully digress, I’ve always thought it was clearly more of a good thing than a bad thing. That’s a subjective view on my part, to be sure.
(Hey, at least I restrained myself from taking up LJ on the question of “there was no clear cut ‘end’ as such” to our involvement in Vietnam, since I understood what he meant, and it would just be a phrasing quibble.)
One general observation I’ll toss out is that the question of what one might or might not fairly label “American war crimes” is separable from discussion of specific events and their relative justice/injustice, wisdom/foolishness, whether American ideals were also involved, what the balance of idealism/other motivations was, whether it’s possible to commit wrong acts with good motives, whether America has done many things both good and bad, whether America has sometimes done things that was simultaneously both, and separable from so many other questions and topics that nonetheless might be related.
I strongly tend to avoid the term “war crimes,” although, of course, that also leaves me ripe to leftists who will accuse me of dishonesty, fear of using the best label (in their view), etc., and so on — I can live with that, and still be happy — but without even beginning a discussion (at my end — anyone else can carry on as they like, of course) of whether it’s appropriate to describe anything other than, say, an event where someone, such as Lt. Calley was actually convicted of a war crime, I feel that, in general, the term is so utterly inflammatory as to be generally vastly more destructive of useful discourse than it forwards useful discourse, in most, though not all situations.
That was a pretty horrific sentence, but I’m not going to take the time to revise it, because I hate you all. Okay, that’s not why, at all; it’s just laziness, okay? Sorry.
“War crime” is, for me anyway, a term that I use as shorthand for “atrocity” or “support for atrocities”. Whether all or most of the evil actions committed by the American government in its foreign policy could be prosecuted as crimes is something I don’t know. The Reagan Administration supported the military in El Salvador and pretended the tens of thousands being killed there were murdered by shadowy forces having nothing to do with the government. They didn’t get serious about telling the government to crack down on death squads until December 83, when Bush I was sent down to tell them to cut it out (because of Congressional pressure, I think). Would all this winking and nodding about the crimes committed by our allies violate some law concerning war crimes? Could it be prosecuted as aiding and abetting crimes against humanity? I don’t know. It was deeply immoral–I’d call it evil. A lot of what I condemn I’m condemning as immoral, without really knowing at all whether the American actions are (in theory if not in reality) prosecutable.
Gary, your indulgence with my phrasing is greatly appreciated. 🙂
lj, I think SH wanted one work of Chomsky that could stand up to a skeptical read. The question from my point of view isn’t whether his entire program, if he can be said to have one, is coherent, consistent, and reasonable, but whether he can produce a long essay or a book which presents a logical fair assessment of available data.
Donald, I agree with you that our actions in El Salvador were wrong and the rest – again, the question here is whether those actions were motivated by evil as you say or by what from a reasonable viewpoint (whatever that is) could be considered a well-meaning idiotic mistake (or perhaps a set of arguable policy goals in a realist framework).
And having spent the last half hour pawing through my collection of Harpers and Atlantics and Physics Todays and New Yorkers, or what I could locate of it following Mrs. R’s reorganization of my books and scores and magazines, it seems likely that I don’t have the 31 Mar 2003 issue any more. And since I’m unable to enter libraries due to an unfortunate medical condition, I’ll have to give up on that part of the argument, with apologies.
Consider this a placeholder. I’m reading through the comments and I will respond, but it may take a day or two.
“Noted, but to suggest that one has read several and then barrack people for refusing suggest the one book that will stand for the totality of a thinker’s thoughts is a bit more than ‘unsympathetic’, im jaundiced o.”
Who asked for that? I want one book where I can look at Chomsky weighing evidence without excluding hugely relevant facts that don’t happen to be damning to the US. I am not surprised to find that book does not exist, which is precisely my point about Chomsky being anti-American. I don’t need a one-book summary of his intellectual life. I want one book where his intellectual dishonesty doesn’t shine like a beacon.
Gary, this is the quote by spartikus in full:
He correctly notes my misreading of his earlier comment. (Hence my mint-flavored shoes comment). He then says”I tend to think that you too are not as familiar with the actual details of Chomsky’s work than you imply. The list of books you provided range, as others have noted, from the 1960’s. Indeed a couple of the more recently published on that list are simply collections of older essays reprinted as a single volume.”
His entire criticism of my understanding of Chomsky is based on allegedly reading his older works. There is absolutely no other substantive criticism of my reading of Chomsky.
If I don’t focus on that, there is absolutely nothing to his criticism.
He later says: “The point I’m trying to make is critique Chomsky all you want…just critique him for what he actually says, and what he say now, rather than in 1968, and if you are not familiar with his work, then maybe, you know, refrain.”
Once again the entire substance of the criticism is that I am focusing on his early work and ignoring his current thought. There is not a single shred of substance beyond that.
I focus on the time-sensitive criticism because other than that his argument is: “_____________________________”.
If you would care to point me to his argument beyond the time span, please do so.
lj, I think SH wanted one work of Chomsky that could stand up to a skeptical read. The question from my point of view isn’t whether his entire program, if he can be said to have one, is coherent, consistent, and reasonable, but whether he can produce a long essay or a book which presents a logical fair assessment of available data.
Rilkefan
Again, given that he has been writing about American foreign policy for 40+ years, I don’t know if it’s fair, especially when the goal is a weekend reading followed by a blog post Explaining It All. I can’t think of doing that for any thinker with an even medium sized list of publications, so doing it for Chomsky is going to obscure more than it will enlighten. Donald’s list gives some good starting points, and again, the Barsky bio is also worthwhile, even though it veers to hagiography in places.
And I believe that Chomsky’s consistent position has been that he primarily criticizes America rather than other countries because he is a citizen of the US and his criticisms of other countries would be hypocritical. As I said, he can be doggedly consistent and this, if I understand correctly, is one of those times. That Sebastian argues that this is mistaken is noted, but this has been a consistent argument from Sebastian, so I hope I’m not being rude to suggest that it may be difficult to separate what Sebastian is bringing to what is actually there.
Lastly, sorry to hear about the med condition, and I hope that you get well soon.
Sebastian,
Apologies for suggesting that you were looking for ‘one book’. Here’s the comment that I was referring to
If someone wants to point me to one of his extended writings (essay length or longer)which offers a balanced look at pros and cons of US policies which also takes into account the dangers of inaction and/or a balanced look at the dangers other actors on the world stage pose I would be thrilled (ok “thrilled” is way too strong a word) to look at it.
followed by
Spartikus, tell me right now which balanced book of Chomsky’s I should be reading. I will buy it TODAY and write on it by Monday.
These comments took on a separate life in the discussions between rilkefan and me, so my apologies for the misstatement.
However, I find the request similar to wondering why the prosecutor didn’t include any mitigating evidence about the crime in his closing statement.
“Explaining It All”
Again, that I take it isn’t the goal proposed: it’s to report back on whether the reccommended text is reality-based.
If this is hard-science naivete… Well, even in reading books on poetry I think it’s clear when the author is playing fair, even when (as with say John Hollander) I’m unable to parse the complexer sentences.
“Lastly, sorry to hear about the med condition, and I hope that you get well soon.”
Sorry, that was a joke. I’m able to enter libraries, it’s just the exiting part I have trouble with. Though my knee and actually my whole leg are unhappy of late, so maybe I’m speaking too soon.
“Apologies for suggesting that you were looking for ‘one book’.”
I was looking for one book. I was not looking for one book that represented all of Chomsky’s possible ideas on foreign policy. I was merely looking for one book that had a balanced look at a particular issue.
You quote me saying: “If someone wants to point me to one of his extended writings (essay length or longer)which offers a balanced look at pros and cons of US policies which also takes into account the dangers of inaction and/or a balanced look at the dangers other actors on the world stage pose I would be thrilled (ok “thrilled” is way too strong a word) to look at it.”
I’m sorry if you feel compelled to interpret that statement as “… I don’t know if it’s fair, especially when the goal is a weekend reading followed by a blog post Explaining It All. I can’t think of doing that for any thinker with an even medium sized list of publications, so doing it for Chomsky is going to obscure more than it will enlighten.”
I think it is fairly clear that I wouldn’t be looking at his entire foreign policy history while trying to analyze every single thought that sprouts from his mind, but rather whether or not any single book written by him has characteristics of balance including “pros and cons of US policies which also takes into account the dangers of inaction and/or a balanced look at the dangers other actors on the world stage pose”.
All of the books I have read so far by Chomsky share the characteristic of dramatically overplaying the role of the US while consistently and dramatically underplaying the role of anyone else in the world. They offer a skewed and anti-American look rather than an historical look.
That contention has been attacked as wrong–though not on any particular basis. Obviously talking about Chomsky’s entire work is beyond the scope of anyone here–none of us are going to put in the hundreds of hours necessary to comprehensively analyze the meaning of someone who writes so poorly. But I am willing to look at one book, of the choice of Chomsky’s defenders here. That one book could be analyzed to see if contained the things which I contend are characteristic. It really should be the best possible world for someone who thinks I have mischaracterized Chomsky. I am letting them choose his least skewed work–which is to say quite possibly a work that is not in fact characteristic of Chomsky. The fact that those who suggest my characterization is unfair do not want to engage me in particularities of the alleged unfairness makes me suspect that my characterization is fair.
His entire criticism of my understanding of Chomsky is based on allegedly reading his older works.
Juxtaposed with:
Indeed a couple of the more recently published on that list are simply collections of older essays reprinted as a single volume.
Er, I said a couple of books were collections. I didn’t deny the other two were recent.
Um…your objection is, quite frankly, bogus. As many others have noted. I have, though, asked you to refresh my memory on a couple of points in the 1999 book.
Its a shame, I was really enjoying this thread before the Chomsky mess started up again. Sebastian I really wish you would do something to deal with your unwholesome facination with Chomsky. I tried to figure out when the conversation went bad and as near as I can figure it happened with a comment from you. I am going to reprint it here in its entirety:
know I’m risking turning this into a hopeless Chomsky thread, but still:
“Whether or not one agrees with his outlook on US foreign policy, to automatically slap the anti-American label on him gives credence to his views of nazification”
I think you are a little loose with the ‘automatically’ label. Chomsky has an incredibly large body of work–and very much of it could be characterized as anti-American. There may be subtle ways of avoiding that label, but it isn’t as if you have to stretch the idea to ridiculous proportions to include Chomsky. There are also some cases where his views on the US (whatever you want to call them) seem to have interfered with his ability to analyze the rest of the situation–Cambodia being a prime example.
Posted by: Sebastian Holsclaw | February 08, 2006 at 02:49 PM
Sebastian shows an admirable precience here. But then goes ahead and does it anyway.
As near as I can tell this conversation is primarily about anti-Americanism. Sebastian seems to enjoy using this label while others seem to dislike it, or at least feel that it should be confined to actual enemies of the country who pose a physical threat.
As a former libertarian, current Bush hater, Party of the McManus-leaner, I think the only response to an accusation of anti-Americanism from a Monarchist, Bush supporter is: Coming from you, that is a complement.
“His entire criticism of my understanding of Chomsky is based on allegedly reading his older works.”
This is a clear misreading. It’s actually based on the same thing I said earlier: that you tend to lump older and newer Chomsky works together and treat the whole as if it were homogenous.
You continue to support that claim: “I wouldn’t make the claim based on one short work–it seems to span multiple works over a long period of time.”
And: “I also don’t see a big change in focus or framework between his early works and his more current works, so I’m not sure why a focus on his early works would have been a problem in his particular case anyway.”
This is an entirely different allegation than that you simply have read and discuss older works, or that you only have read and discuss older works.
As such, this:
…is debatable, but entirely fair.
“There is absolutely no other substantive criticism of my reading of Chomsky.”
If so, then don’t respond. But you’ve, it seems to me, misread what spartikus said.
No. In this statement you quote, there is no “criticism,” in point of fact, but a suggestion/request, and a subjunctive. Fairly made, so far as I can see. You are free to ignore or reject his suggestion as to future behavior, and you are free to reject the premise of his subjunctive, but it would be a good thing to understand them for what they are, rather than to misunderstand them as what they are not.
I think that’s somewhat unfair to Sebastian, Frank. Charles is the one who brought up Chomsky, in his post. Then others discussed him. Only then did Sebastian enter the conversation on Chomsky; he didn’t initiate the subject, and I can’t see why he deserves any blame simply for participating in the conversation. If there’s primary “blame” for this turning into a Chomsky thread, it clearly lies with Charles for initiating it, when it was, so far as I can see, unnecessary to make any of the points his post was ostensibly and apparently about, which were about Chavez.
And since we don’t presume Charles to be stupid, we must assume Charles knew what would happen by ringing Chomsky in. Thus, he bears the largest responsibility and blame, in my view. I realize this is an easy answer on ObWi, but maybe there’s a reason for that. (See also my analysis/comment/suggestion on the soon-disappearing last-but-one open thread, which was replied to by no one.)
It is based on the same thing you identified earlier, and it is wrong both from you and from him. Lumping together suggests “undifferentiated mass” an interpretation strengthened by “treat the whole as if it were homogenous”. I analyze the different works (written at different times) against each other and find similarly flawed types of analysis. That is not lumping anything together nor is treating the whole as if it were homogenous. It is identifying a common thread of analytic error in the works which I have read. It is not focusing on older works in favor of more recent works, it is identifying a common thread of analytic error in both recent and older works.
It is possible that I have misidentified this common thread. It is possible that this thread is not characteristic of Chomsky’s political work as a whole. In order to analyze that possibility I have requested that someone more knowledgable about Chomsky’s writings point me to one of his political books that does not have that characteristic.
Apparently that will not be forthcoming.
Also, the characteristic that I allegedly focus on in his older works has not been identified. As such, I cannot point to the fact that it is present in newer works because I have not been put on notice what thing which is present in his newer works I have missed by allegedly treating the newer and older works as homogenous or by lumping them together.
I responded to the only substantive question put before me. Since that question was of very little substance and since those proposing it have offered very little guidance about what spurred the criticism, the discussion has unsurprisingly not been very enlightening.
I have been as forthcoming as I can be on the topic. At this point if no one wants to point directly to the problem and if no one wants to point directly to a Chomsky work which ought to disabuse me of my notions, I don’t see that I can go any further in the discussion.
Let’s focus on suggesting a Chompsky book for SH to read. The only political one I’ve read was Manufacturing Consent and that was some time ago, so I’m obviously no authority. But I did find that book interesting and important, if a bit of a polemic. So, because I want to read Sebastian’s reactions upon closely reading a Chompsky book, I’ll just go ahead and recommend that one.
Anyone else?
Whoa, sorry for that extraneous “p”! (Both times, too; at least I wasn’t claiming any real authority.)
Scuse me, while I chomp the sky. Dauw dauw dauw, du da dauw… Jimi Hendtryrannosourusrix.
Oops, wrong thread, sorry.
If you’all think it is a good example, I’ll read it. But how much of it is his co-author? Chomsky gets second billing in that book.
I quite honestly don’t know, Sebastian. I’m just trying to move the conversation forward–while sending you off on a forced-reading march. 😉
Hey, maybe we can turn this into an ObWi Book Club — let’s *all* read Manufacturing Consent (or another Chomsky book — Syntactic Structures, anyone?), and then we can devote a thread or two to discussing it.
Or not.
If we’re going to have a book club the Phantom Tollbooth has to come first. But OK, if we do that I promise to read a Chomsky book (*sigh* what am I getting myself into?)
I promise to read a Chomsky book
Hey, I was just joking. Read one if you feel you must, but not because of anything I said — I wouldn’t want to have to live with that guilt.
I’d be comfortable with saying that Chomsky’s writings display an anti-American bias, but to say that Chomsky himself is anti-American has “traitor” overtones to me.
Fair enuf, Ken. I’ll take that under advisement. It is not my intent to imply or intone that he is traitorous. Treason is a word I use even more sparingly than anti-American.
Either way, would you say that Charles, with this post, is anti-Venezuelan?
It’s an irrelevant question, d+u, because I’m not Venezuelan. I suggest you ask Ms. Machado if she’s anti-Venezuelan. Chavez apparently thinks so.
PS – Have your read the Chomsky works you listed as having broadly anti-American themes?
I haven’t listed any of Chomsky’s works. I can tell you that virtually everything I’ve read by him favors the other side and disfavors ours. Worse, he does it in bad faith. His distortion of Moynihan’s comments on East Timor is but one small example.
That said, I haven’t read terribly much of him because there’s only so much crap a man can take.
Say what one will about Aristide, but that is not how democracies are built. Haiti has worsened as a result of this.
Thanks for your comments, Randy. I might just move Haiti up to the top of my posting list. I’ve been following the press reports passively, but my experience has been that you have to work at it to get a read on the real situation.
It’s becoming crystal clear that you haven’t actually read Chomsky at all…
Crystal clear as mud, stickler. It is possible that we could have read the same material and came to different conclusions, don’t you think? But thanks for the Democracy Now link. It confirms that Chavez and his Bolivarian movement are indeed inspired by Chomsky, thus affirming the accuracy of my post.
Jack,
sparti challenged Sebastian, and Sebastian responded by asking sparti what Chomsky book he should read next. I think we should wait for sparti to respond. If he does, I’ll join Sebastian and read the book, too.
Apparently that will not be forthcoming.
As won’t, apparently, a refresher on the themes of “The New Military Humanism: Lessons from Kosovo”….somewhat deflating confidence on your actual knowledge of Chomsky’s – recent, old or future.
Your continuing demand for some imaginary book of pure distilled Chomsky-essence remains an objection to a point I never made.
Hang on, Charles: you’re saying that non-Americans can’t be anti-American? That you’ve never called a non-American “anti-American”?
Right in this post, you say “…Anti-American tirades don’t hurt Chavez….”
So, it’s relevant to call Chavez “anti-American” because of what he says about America, but whether what you say about Venezuela is “anti-Venezuelan” is “irrelevant… because I’m not Venezuelan”?
What?
Let me say again: what?
“Worse, he does it in bad faith.”
Got the ‘ol mind-reading cap working again , have you?
“That said, I haven’t read terribly much of him because there’s only so much crap a man can take.”
Ah. You can’t cite a single book you’ve read of someone’s work, but you know what you think of that person and his work, and you feel entitled to repeatedly write in public about that person with extreme calumny. Interesting approach. I’ll try to keep in mind that you feel this is a viable approach, in case I ever notice you ever criticizing someone for engaging in that sort of thing.
“I can tell you that virtually everything I’ve read by him favors the other side and disfavors ours.”
And what of the merits of whatever specific issue you have in mind? How about instead of ad hominem approaches, you discuss an issue, and what the writer gets wrong or neglects, specifically? Have you considered that approach instead of ad hominems about someone whose books you say you’ve not read?
“If he does, I’ll join Sebastian and read the book, too.”
That sounds like a positive step. But if you feel like responding to my above queries, I’d appreciate it, though, of course, you are under no obligation to do so.
It’s an irrelevant question, d+u, because I’m not Venezuelan.
You can only be anti-American if you’re American?
This will certainly be a surprise to those right-wingers who have labelled me as such in the past. I can’t wait to tell them.
I haven’t listed any of Chomsky’s works.
Yes, I know. You’re responding to a comment that was addressing to (and quoting) Sebastian.
stickler: “As won’t, apparently, a refresher on the themes of ‘The New Military Humanism: Lessons from Kosovo’….somewhat deflating confidence on your actual knowledge of Chomsky’s – recent, old or future.”
I don’t understand what this sentence means (or why there are four dots in the middle of it, but that’s a smaller point).
“Your continuing demand for some imaginary book of pure distilled Chomsky-essence remains an objection to a point I never made.”
That doesn’t seem, to me, to be an accurate characterization of what either Sebastian or Charles are now asking for. They seem to be asking simply for a recommendation of a good example of current Chomsky. I doubt that any provided example will result in other than either of them doing other than cherry-picking it for objectionable material, but offering them a choice of reading matter seems to me both harmless, and a reasonable request to fulfill. I’d suggest, and naturally you are free to ignore my suggestion, that you give them the name of a recent book, as might anyone else who wants to play.
They’ve hit the ball back to the other side with that one (I don’t know if the game is tennis, ping-pong, or another, to be sure, nor how it is I seem be acting as part-time umpire, but I’m sure I have no actual authorit-ay [Cartman usage]), and it doesn’t seem to have landed on foul territory. Might be best, perhaps, to return it, and not lose the point there.
I don’t understand what this sentence means
It’s probably just as well it was incoherent. I’m starting to write in anger, which never leads to good things.
There is Hegemony or Survival, 9/11, Rogue States….and there are the articles on his website. I did, in fact, earlier recommend Chomky’s recent article on Venezuela. It’s brief, but on-topic.
Understanding Power is a collection of unpublished seminars from the 90’s on a variety of topics. It exposes strength and weakness, and is as good a place to start as any.
They’ve hit the ball back to the other side with that one (I don’t know if the game is tennis, ping-pong, or another, to be sure, nor how it is I seem be acting as part-time umpire, but I’m sure I have no actual authorit-ay [Cartman usage]), and it doesn’t seem to have landed on foul territory. Might be best, perhaps, to return it, and not lose the point there.
I don’t know, since the whole thing is based on Sebastian thinking a comment to Charles was made to him, which led to Charles quoting something said to Sebastian, the whole enterprise is more like The Red Queen’s croquet game. There is a Chomsky Reader, so why doesn’t Sebastian (or Charles, unless he’s only chimed in to say that Sebastian can read all you can give him and more) buy that and go off and read it. (Of course, we would have to ask Sebastian to not buy the Chomsky Anti-Reader and recycle the arguments from there). Or there is his newest Hegemony and Survival, though I don’t have that and I probably won’t be getting it soon. If it presents an excuse for Sebastian to post, I’m all for it.
And why is everyone calling me Stickler?
There’s occasionally name confusion and misattribution around here (blogbudsman mistook me for dmbeaster in another thread).
And stop calling me Shirley!
And why is everyone calling me Stickler?
Because you’re stickly?
Want to talk another kind of anti-Americanism? Try this and this and this. It’s in regard to our Turkish ally, and our (U.S.) regional reputation.
“And why is everyone calling me Stickler?”
I can’t speak to anyone else, but I’m: a) an idiot; b) there are gremlins in my keyboard, and it’s all their fault.
I’m pretty sure they’re anti-American.
“…so why doesn’t Sebastian (or Charles[)…]buy that and go off and read it….”
I’m sure they wouldn’t want to contribute money to a publisher who would contract with such a dastardly anti-American (although if they buy it used via their choice of online used bookseller — the unionized powells.com, perhaps, or the non-union amazon.com or BarnesandNoble.com, or whomever — no money would go to either Chomsky or the original publisher), so perhaps they’d prefer their local library — the still newish main branch of the Seattle Public Library has quite a large collection, I believe, and if they don’t have any of the mentioned volumes, I’m fairly sure they can order them.
Mind, don’t expect me to volunteer to engage in this exercise. 🙂
Going over the remains of this thread, and I note that Sebastian replied to me and said
I’m sorry if you feel compelled to interpret that statement…
As I said, the statement arose from the back and forth between rilkefan and me, specifically when he said:
I can well imagine that philosopher X’s best book S requires one to read R, Q, and P first, plus all of philosopher Y’s work, plus glosess by Z, but here I’m skeptical.
Again, I apologize that the back and forth took on a life of its own. I realize that there have been a lot of mistakes and misattributions in this thread (there was even one from Gary, or at least the gremlins in his keyboard), and this does not fill me with confidence that we are going to get a fair reading of Chomsky. As I mentioned, I view Chomsky more as a prosecutor rather than a purveyor of balanced rhetoric and that seems to be the basic opinion of everyone else in this thread (Donald Johnson has probably stated that best, I think), so arguing that we haven’t presented you with whatever it is you are looking for is, at best, a strawman.
However, I would like to see you post, but on some topic of interest to you rather than on a perceived desire to claim you’ve given Chomsky a fair shot.
I spent a few minutes googling the background to Charles Bird’s claim that Chomsky misrepresented Moynihan. CB is referring to Oliver Kamm’s obsessive attack–Chomsky’s reply is here
http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?search_term=chomsky&id=7179&issue=514&AuthKey=fef445ed93fdb9436e5633af4758076a
Hmm, I didn’t think I copied that much. Anyway, you can google it yourself.
East Timor is as good an issue as any on which to defend Chomsky. Moynihan worked for the US government when it supported Indonesia in its invasion and genocidal occupation of East Timor and he brags about his success as UN ambassador in preventing the UN from doing anything about it. Moynihan and Ford and Kissinger and Carter had to know the likelihood of massive human rights violations was extremely high, given how Indonesia had dealt with their own leftists in the mid 60’s. So when they all supported Indonesia, they were supporting a government which had murdered hundreds of thousands of people ten years earlier.
Moynihan later mentions the tens of thousands of Timorese who had died (ultimately between 100-200 thousand) and Chomsky quite rightly links this later comment with the earlier comment. This is what Oliver Kamm and apparently Charles consider to be an example of Chomsky’s intellectual dishonesty. Let me repeat–Moynihan carried out a policy which helps a government of known genocidal tendencies conquer a tiny country. The fact that he was later sympathetic to the plight of the Timorese is good, but it doesn’t wash away the blood on his hands. What do Kamm and apparently CB think is the important point here? Chomsky thinks the point is that a widely praised public intellectual like Moynihan, a man who was famous for denouncing the murderous hypocrites in the UN, was involved up to his neck in supporting a murderous regime carry out a genocidal war of conquest against its tiny neighbor. Kamm and CB think the important point is that Moynihan wasn’t explicitly boasting about the fact that he helped murder 100,000 people. Kamm claims Chomsky misrepresents Moynihan by making him a monster who gloats over the death toll. Yeah, really important point, guys. If only you had pointed this out to me 20 years ago, I never would have started buying Chomsky books.
But in case anyone is interested in this unbelievably trivial point, Chomsky is perfectly clear about what Moynihan said in “Towards a New Cold War.” It’s on the bottom of page 339. First Chomsky quotes Moynihan where he bragged in his book about preventing the UN from doing anything effective about Indonesia’s invasion. Chomsky then says
“Ambassador Moynihan was presumably aware of the nature of his success. He cites a February 1976 estimate by the deputy chairman of the provisional government installed by the Indonesian force that ‘some sixty thousand persons had been killed since the outbreak of civil war’–racall that two to three thousand had been killed during the civil war itself–’10 percent of the population, almost the proportion of the casualties experienced by the Soviet Union during the Second World War.’ Thus, in effect, he is claiming credit fo ‘success’ in helping to cause a massacre that he compares to the consequences of Nazi aggression, not to speak of the growing number of victims in the subsequent period.”
Kamm’s point is that Moynihan felt sorry for the Timorese and that Chomsky is misrepresenting Moynihan here by making it appear that Moynihan was gloating over Nazi-like atrocities. But Chomsky doesn’t do this. Note that phrase “in effect”. Chomsky is in fact making the point I made at the top of this post–it was blindingly obvious what the likely consequences of an Indonesian invasion would be, and Moynihan, the heroic denouncer of UN hypocrisy, knew what those consequences were soon afterwards. One wonders why he didn’t resign in a fit of conscience or make a speech acknowledging that he was one of those UN hypocrites.
I criticized Chomsky quite a bit during this thread. But his sins are trivial compared to those of his virulent critics. There’s a level of pettiness and moral obtuseness of almost stunning proportions that seems to appear almost by magic in virtually every harsh criticism of Noam that I’ve ever read. Surely the important issue here is that supposedly decent men like Ford and Moynihan and Carter were involved in mass murder, but to Kamm and Charles, the important point is their reading of Chomsky’s criticism of Moynihan.
BTW, most Americans have no idea what the US did to help Indonesia in its murder of the Timorese. And they have no idea because the details (beyond an occasional mention of Kissinger’s role) never appears in the mainstream press. But somehow the really important issue to Chomsky-critics is whether Noam is “anti-American”. Depends on what you mean–if you mean he hates it when the American government helps murder innocent people and he hates it when the press doesn’t expose what’s going on, then he’s guilty as charged.
He doesn’t seem very articulate about the point:
I suspect that link is broken. It happens a lot when one doesn’t embed them. (If you don’t know how, see here and scroll to “link something.”)
“I doubt that any provided example will result in other than either of them doing other than cherry-picking it for objectionable material, but offering them a choice of reading matter seems to me both harmless, and a reasonable request to fulfill.”
But when analyzing Chomsky, isn’t cherry-picking the most sincere form of flattery?
Only a quick google of Chomsky, Hitchens, and Kamm, but it seems to me that
Chomsky’s being intellectually dishonest here and refusing to acknowledge the motivations and reasoning of Moynihan and the govt. I hate it when when Chomsky distorts, selectively quotes, dishonestly ascribes false motives, is a demagogue.
By his laughable standard, Donald Johnson and I are helping murder people by posting on this blog instead of sending money to the third world or heading to Darfur to make a difference. To say that Moynihan got up one morning and said, “Let’s help start genocide” is similarly laughable.
“I doubt that any provided example will result in other than either of them doing other than cherry-picking it”
Not sure this accords with the posting rules.
The most sincere form of flattery would be to point out the long bipartisan tradition of American support for mass murderers and torturers. For instance, Moynihan, the great intellectual and scourge of UN hypocrisy on human rights, supporting Indonesia’s invasion of East Timor when he had to know and soon did know what the consequences would be.
Or one could sincerely flatter the typical Chomsky-basher and zero in on the almost comically unimportant issue of whether Chomsky’s writings seem to make Moynihan into a comic strip character who openly gloated over the deaths he helped cause.
Gary, I’m the only one here who had a kind word for Noam’s writing style, and even I only said he sometimes rises to the occasion. Most of the time I’d say he needs an editor. Actually, some of my own writing reminds me of Chomsky’s clumsy prose–maybe there’s an unconscious influence. In this case it’s not an influence I welcome.
“Or one could sincerely flatter the typical Chomsky-basher and zero in on the almost comically unimportant issue of whether Chomsky’s writings seem to make Moynihan into a comic strip character who openly gloated over the deaths he helped cause.”
When one has lost the argument on facts, it’s a bit late to claim the issue isn’t important.
“The most sincere form of flattery would be to point out the long bipartisan tradition of American support for mass murderers and torturers.”
So you were for the Iraq invasion, I guess, and you support Bush’s program of encouraging democracy and freedom? And you think Carter’s going to hell? And you’d advocate withdrawing support for the House of Saud, and the military govt of Pakistan? And I guess we should do something active about Tibet, shouldn’t we?
Again, I’m not defending Chomsky here, but taking sides in this fight is not such a good idea. For instance, in Kamm’s follow-up blog post, he pulls up the notion that Chomsky’s political philosophy is based on the notion “that you cannot make sense of Chomsky’s political writings without understanding the centrality of his notion that the US is comparable to Nazi Germany.” As someone who thinks that the questions of ethnicity, nationality and state power are the fundamental questions that face us today, this move is just as dishonest as what Kamm and you are complaining about.
As someone who strongly disagrees with Chomsky’s version of linguistics, I also noted that in this post, Kamm cites Paul Postal as helping him with his Prospect article. This is like assigning Ken Starr to give you a few ideas for your bio of Clinton. This is the end letter in an exchange about linguistics that Postal sent to Chomsky
we are so far apart and so lacking common assumptions and judement that the time has possibly come when discussion is largely fruitless beyond picking up occasional counterexamples to proposals, which opposing-hostile thought generates with great facility. Frankly, I find it increasingly hard to see the kind of work you do and sponsor as part of a common field of interest. (from Goldsmith _Ideology and Linguistic Theory_
As I mentioned at HoCB, Chomsky hates to lose an argument. We all may find more in common with him than we care to admit.
Actually, rilkefan, Indonesia invaded East Timor and the US supported Indonesia in the UN and a couple of years later, when they needed more weapons, we supplied them. Nobody, not Chomsky or anyone else, says Moynihan or the US supports genocide just to watch people die or for Nazi-like racist reasons. The US supported Indonesia because Indonesia is a huge country of strategic importance, and East Timor was a tiny little place with only 700,000 people and no American constituency to raise a huge stink if they were slaughtered.
You seem a little confused about the distinction between sins of omission and sins of commission. I’m not out stopping crimes right now (and maybe there are some, as in Darfur, where I should be doing more. That situation deserves another Obsidian Wings post, btw). But I’m not out handing out weapons to criminals or lobbying the police force not to go after one of my friends if he murders someone–if I were, that would be worse than merely not stopping crimes.
I do think crimes of omission can be quite serious, but crimes of commission are worse. Not helping the people in Darfur is bad–if we defended them in the UN and supplied the Sudanese government with weapons right now that would be worse. Which is what we did in the Indonesia/East Timor situation.
DJ, I’m clear on the difference between omission and commission – I just hate sin in general. And of course when someone sins there’s always someone else to point at and say, at least I’m not as bad as him. And I hate people who browbeat students, refuse to acknowledge others’ arguments, and all the rest.
lj, I have no brief for Kamm, about whom I am ignorant beyond the fact that he says something nice about Susan Sontag on his blog, writes “[while] I do not admire Noam Chomsky as a political thinker, not every attack on him is correct”, and at least links and cites chapter and verse. Postal seems to be at NYU. How do you feel about Bob Borsley?
“…Surely the important issue here is that supposedly decent men like Ford and Moynihan and Carter were involved in mass murder….”
Given the need, or at least advisablity, of careful use of language here, I’d suggest that “involved in” isn’t the ideal choice.
Still trying to stay away from the substance of Chomsky debate, I’d like to suggest that an entertaining, but within the boundaries of historical accuracy, way to get a tiny taste of flavor of the atmosphere of Indonesia at the time in question would be a viewing of Peter Weir’s The Year Of Living Dangerously , which was relatively early in Weir’s career, and Mel Gibson’s career (though after Gallipoli, also a splendid colloboration for them, and after both Mad Max I and II), as well as Linda Hunt’s first prominent role (winning her the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her role as the male Billy Kwan) (and Sigourney Weaver and Michael Murphy and everyone else were fine, too).
It’s also just a great film, with terrific use of a piece by Vangelis.
To be sure, it’s not quite as educational as reading a book about Suharto and the massive killing (and if anyone wishes to dispute that the CIA submitted, via the Embassy, a lengthy list of Indonesians believed by them to be Communists, which Suharto’s people used as part of their list of who to kill, I will smack them with more cites than they would like to read, I give fair warning — oh, let’s just pre-empt), shall we? — or even a good web page, but it probably goes down easier, assuming you don’t hate any of the people involved.
“BTW, most Americans have no idea what the US did to help Indonesia in its murder of the Timorese.”
To be a bit cynical, but factual, most Americans couldn’t tell us what province Toronto is in, let alone where Indonesia is.
“And they have no idea because the details (beyond an occasional mention of Kissinger’s role) never appears in the mainstream press.”
That’s a slight exaggeration. “Relatively rarely” would, I suggest, be more accurate.
I meant to add, rilkefan, that I should be doing more for Third World poverty (including writing more checks) than even Darfur. In terms of numbers of preventable deaths, it’s the most important moral issue there is. And many of those deaths can be prevented in relatively inexpensive ways, compared to humanitarian invasions.
You’re obviously just losing your temper in the past couple of posts, but I’ll answer your questions anyway.
1. I don’t think I’ve “lost the argument”–if you want to know the truth, I think I’m making very good points. In fact, I’m about at that point where I realize what a timewasting narcissistic activity blog arguments often are. You’re right–I should be doing something useful like working on issues like Darfur and global poverty. Winning or losing arguments is just a chest-thumping activity. Maybe someone’s mind is changed, but this kind of thread is the very definition of one where that is unlikely to happen.
2. Was I for the Iraq invasion? Truthfully, I was ambivalent. I’d like to claim I was certain it would be a total disaster, but I wasn’t.
I thought and think that Bush is evil, but the Iraqis were suffering under Saddam and sanctions and it was at least possible that the invasion would lead to less overall suffering. I was against it, but wasn’t sure I was right. I feel more comfortable agreeing with the claim that whatever the hypothetical virtues of humanitarian invasions, under Bush it was almost certain to be a mismanaged disaster.
3. Bush’s push for democracy and freedom–I’m skeptical that he really means it. I suspect that what those phrases meant originally was a compliant American puppet would be put in place. Chalabi, maybe.
More generally, on the invasion thing, I think you’re still confusing crimes of omission vs. crimes of commission. We’re not obligated to invade countries to bring freedom to them, supposing we had a government that really wanted to do that. But we are obligated not to support governments in the act of committing genocide.
And also, if we really want to help people, then pour those billions into Third World health problems and you’ll probably do much more good than you will with supposedly humanitarian wars.
4. Carter’s fate– I’ve often wondered what Carter was thinking. He has done some cynical things in his life. The fact remains that he supported Indonesia when their brutality in East Timor was at its peak. I wish he’d come clean on this–he’s devoted his life as an ex-President to doing a lot of very good things.
“In fact, I’m about at that point where I realize what a timewasting narcissistic activity blog arguments often are.”
It’s useful to keep in mind that while one can’t know how many lurkers read a given discussion, there are, at this site, some number rather larger than countable on one’s fingers and toes.
“…I wish he’d [former President Carter] come clean on this….”
Consider writing him a polite letter and asking. The odds are against his replying, but you never know. People tend to underestimate the odds of getting replies from thoughtful prominent people, in my experience.
Paul Postal is one of the founders of generative syntax, and as such, is far above my pay grade in terms of like or dislike. Bob Borsley works primarily in an approach called HPSG (Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar) of which I an only faintly acquainted with. However, this is the school that Postal went on to develop. I’m pretty far from being a formalist, so I don’t think much of the approach, but I think there are some insights that are important. I think the best ones have been used in an approach called Construction Grammar. Still, it’s all very much works in progress, so you picks your horse and takes your chance, I suppose.
“You’re obviously just losing your temper in the past couple of posts, but I’ll answer your questions anyway.”
Well, no, but perhaps my reductio ad absurdum argument wasn’t clear. Note that I’m an atheist and nihilist. I appreciate your not taking the argument personally.
lj, asking because Kamm has a post from Borsely on Chomsky’s linguistics. I had the impression from somewhere that his position had changed by pi or more over the years without him acknowledging it.
his position had changed by pi or more over the years without him acknowledging it.
Chomsky? Sure, and his argument is that his theories were empirically disconfirmed and this is the proper course of science. Just like Ratliff said about Snopes in Faulkner’s “Spotted Horses”. “Dang, you just can’t beat him”
If you want some real fun, read Pullum’s essay called “Chomsky on the Enterprise”, (in the collection _The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax_) where he channels Spock and inserts him in an interview that Chomsky has with two European generative linguists. (though all the essays in the book are good) As always, humor makes the pill go down quite a bit easier (at least for me, I can’t speak for Chomsky)
I’ve only had one encounter — purely online — with Oliver Kamm, but it sticks in my memory, despite being something on the order of the better part of a year ago or so (I have a crap time sense).
It was on Michael Totten’s site, in a comment thread, and while I’d have to think to remember the substance, what I clearly recall is that I pointed out to Kamm that he had gotten certain facts wrong in what he’d written in the relevant post on his site; he responded by rewriting his post with no acknowledgement that it had been anything different. It was a significant change of what he had gotten wrong, on substance, not a mere question of grammar or a typo.
He saw nothing wrong with this, although he admitted in the Totten thread that he’d changed what he’d written, and not acknowledged it.
Color me unimpressed with his criticisms of someone not being honest in what they write.
Ah, here’s the whole exchange. I liked the part where Kamm denied that he’d “revised” what he’d written, and insited that he’d instead merely “slightly rewritten that sentence.”
Clearly, that’s entirely different.
In describing America’s, um, endeavor in Iraq, he said this: “Except that we weren’t invading a country: we were excising a tyranny that was ruling over a country.”
Apparently we did that without “invading,” just as Don Rumsfeld, and innumerable Republicans kept maintaining for at least a year that we were not “occupying” Iraq, but merely had “liberated” it. (Has Rumsfeld yet granted that we “occupied” Iraq?; does anyone here wish to still maintain that we did not “occupy” Iraq?; that talking point seems to have quietly disappeared at some point without ever, that I’ve noticed, being taken back my anyone who argued it.)
Ah, interestingly, and to his credit, looking at Kamm’s post that started all that off, I see that at some later point — it had to have been some days after the Totten thread died, because I recall checking the Totten thread for up to a couple of weeks afterwards to see if Kamm would ever respond, and I also checked his post at those times — he did add a note clarifying his rewrite. So good for him for eventually doing that. So I now revise my opinion of him mildly upwards. Nonetheless.
LJ: Mind giving me the nickel-and-dime version of why you don’t like Chomskyan linguistics? He was all the rage (well, kinda) when I was doing linguistics ten years ago… but then again, it’s been ten years since I’ve done linguistics.
Anarch,
your wish is my command. Everyond is welcome to throw in their 2 cents, but I extend a special invite to kenb, since he’s a linguist, iirc.
Gary, I’ve been toying with the idea of writing Carter a very polite letter doing exactly what you suggest. It wouldn’t be hard to be polite–he’s one of the few public figures I genuinely admire and religiously speaking, we’re on the same page. I give money to the Carter Center.
Of course, the odds of a reply are low. He must be swamped with letters and I assume he’s got a secretary to read them and pass on the ones considered worth his attention. Also, I wonder if any laws were broken in selling Indonesia weapons when they were likely to be used to violate human rights? That would make it a very touchy subject, if that’s correct.
Rilkefan, I was losing my temper (with CB and to a lesser extent SH), so I thought I recognized the same symptoms in you. Blowups are normal in threads where Chomsky’s name is mentioned.
Oh, my, but this is hilarious, though. Oliver Kamm, attacked by FrontPage for being a Chomsky-loving socialist.
You can’t cite a single book you’ve read of someone’s work, but you know what you think of that person and his work, and you feel entitled to repeatedly write in public about that person with extreme calumny.
I didn’t know I was obligated to or challenged to, Gary. FTR, I haven’t read Chomsky’s books in their entirety, but I have read chapters and smaller excerpts. I’ve read quite a few items at his website over the last couple of years, most recently his 9/12 humdinger, and his co-written piece on Hue which I linked to in my Hue post.
As for my “anti-Venezuelan” response, I suppose I should clarify since d+u jumped on it, too. Ah, crap. Now that I think about, let me just say that I misspoke and made a flippant and regrettable response. Sorry. I would just ask d+u why he (or anyone else for that matter) would think my post anti-Venezuelan. I think I was pretty clear that my “anti” was focused on one person.
Got the ‘ol mind-reading cap working again , have you?
Gary, the way Chomsky mistreated quotes by Huntington and Moynihan was deliberate and dishonest, just to give two small examples of taking quotes out of context to completely reverse the meaning of what they actually said. Tell me how Chomsky was acting in good faith by doing what he did.
Sebastian’s original challenge: “Spartikus, tell me right now which balanced book of Chomsky’s I should be reading. I will buy it TODAY and write on it by Monday.”
spartikus’ answer: “Your continuing demand for some imaginary book of pure distilled Chomsky-essence remains an objection to a point I never made.”
I took that as non-responsive, but looking downthread I see that sparti (not Stickler!) named a few. As such, I just bought The New Military Humanism and Understanding Power on Amazon and I will try to report back by the end of the month.
Donald, the issue about Chomsky-Moynihan wasn’t about East Timor per se, it was about Chomsky’s dishonest attempt to yank a quote and ascribe a completely different meaning to what the person actually said. This isn’t the first time he’s done this. Kamm used this example because he was mostly in agreement with what Chomsky wrote about US policy towards East Timor.
Okay. We bring different standards to that question. You’re entitled to your own.
Okay. Nicely done. Thank you. Points to you for grace.
I would just ask d+u why he (or anyone else for that matter) would think my post anti-Venezuelan. I think I was pretty clear that my “anti” was focused on one person.
Most of the people who are called Anti-American are focused on a very small group of Americans – the current administration, generally.
As for my “anti-Venezuelan” response, I suppose I should clarify since d+u jumped on it, too. Ah, crap. Now that I think about, let me just say that I misspoke and made a flippant and regrettable response. Sorry. I would just ask d+u why he (or anyone else for that matter) would think my post anti-Venezuelan. I think I was pretty clear that my “anti” was focused on one person.
One person and his government and his supporters by implication, actually. But I think Gary explains my meaning above. Focussing on the negative acts of a government and its supporting power structure does not, in my books, make Chomsky any more anti-American than you, Charles, would be anti-Venezuelan, or Reagan anti-Russian, for that matter.
I should also say that I know people who I would consider to be anti-American, in that they automatically assume the worst of Americans. But I’m pretty sure that Chomsky isn’t one of them.
As someone said above, he sees his role as critic. There are plenty of voices who generously praise the US, a few inner ones of dissent don’t take away from that.
Speaking of American war crimes, and incontrovertible ones.
Focussing on the negative acts of a government and its supporting power structure does not, in my books, make Chomsky any more anti-American than you, Charles, would be anti-Venezuelan, or Reagan anti-Russian, for that matter.
Venezuelan executive power is much stronger than the American equivalent, d+u. It is unfathomable how any American president could make a bicameral legislature unicameral, increase the supreme court by 60% and appoint cronies, assert complete control over the country’s largest industry, and issue command-and-control economic proclamations, to name a few. My focus is on the person who did those things. If there is a complaint about the Venezuelan government, it would be for its lack of checks and balances for stemming the advances of wannabe dictators. The Venezuelan governmental structure is responsible to the extent that a Chavez could run roughshod over it. But none of this would’ve happened first and foremost without Chavez making it happen. That’s why I wrote that my focus was on one person.
If there is a complaint about the Venezuelan government, it would be for its lack of checks and balances for stemming the advances of wannabe dictators.
So, all of your complaints about Chavez and Venezuela are really a metaphorical way of complaining about Bush trying to do this to the US?
Otherwise a body might ask “Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but don’t consider the beam that is in your own eye?”
Let me see how did Chavez win the last election. To begin with his present Vice President was the chief of the National Elections Comission, his goverment is the majority shareholder in the company that manufactured the voting machines, he controls the media.
Look at what is going on in Venezuela today (May 28). Most of you knuckleheads probably can’t read Spanish. Mass uprisings against the Chavez government.
The King rules by decree and does whatever he wants. Now the people are pissed off. Get a clue morons.