Rating: 
Summary: Power & Error
Review: The name Noam Chomsky possesses drawing power, and it is perhaps unsurprising that books that appear under his name are often composites of speeches, interviews and broadcasts that the outspoken MIT linguist has lacked the time to weave together himself into a structured work. Power and Terror is such a book. Chomsky's argument is simple: September 11 was a horrible atrocity notable only for one fact: that the victims were those of an imperial power. Imperial powers are usually immune - no Chinese terrorists struck Japan while the latter committed atrocities in China in the 1930s, Chomsky reminds us. Pearl Harbor would militate against such a hasty judgement but there is no discussion of it, though Chomsky ranges far and wide in search of US criminality, past and present. This book does not address - it was never Chomsky's intention that it should - the range of issues arising from September 11. It was first and foremost an act of mass terror in the service of a universal, totalitarian agenda against an ideological enemy. Chomsky discusses this no-where. "Islamism", "Islamist terrorism", "militant Islam" figure nowhere in this book's detailed index. For comparison, one need only imagine a book on Pearl Harbor that said nothing about Imperial Japan, its ideology or aims, which barely mentioned Japan at all, and which sought to explain the attack solely in terms of America's prior policies and one would have the measure of this work. Rather than tell us anything about September 11, Chomsky opts for the more congenial task of telling us something he has done in a dozen books: expound his conspiracy theory of international relations. His argument is thus: great powers always encroach on the weak, no matter their character. Or rather, great powers are always characterised by brutal acquisitiveness. No exceptions to this mechanistic, undemonstrated rule appear permitted. It follows that international legal norms and bodies are collaborating in the triumph of the strong, except when they don't. Thus, Chomsky has oscillated over the years between describing the UN as a covert American agency when it blesses American efforts and as the font of international morality when it comes up with other ideas. These beliefs, which Chomsky calls facts, are under-girded by some gossamer social theory: for "almost any crime ...there's usually behind it elements of legitimacy" (p. 15). As more than one authority on terrorist movements has noted, this socio-economic explanation tends to burden victims with the responsibility for the crimes of perpetrators. Readers interested in pursuing the issues Chomsky raises should consult the works of scholarly authorities on terrorism like Paul Wilkinson and Walter Laqueur. This book does not discuss an in-built deficiency in Chomsky's argument: if the US is the greatest criminal, and if for "almost any crime ...there's usually behind it elements of legitimacy" why is Chomsky uniquely unable to discover elements of legitimacy underlying US actions? His theory demands no less. Readers who loathe the United States will find congenial Chomsky's emphatic repetition of allusions to the US being Nazi-like. Others will be disconcerted when he goes so far as to compare the US unfavourably to the Nazis in reference to the US bombing of North Korean dams in the Korean War (the Germans "were doing much less than that", p. 22). Chomsky addresses a question on this subject at one point. Queried that the Nazis were exceptional for pursuing genocide in Europe while America was pursuing no such thing in Vietnam, Chomsky backs off. "I'd never call what happened in Vietnam genocide. That's not the right term for it. I agree, it was totally different. I can't recall anyone suggesting otherwise" (p. 77). Readers will have to decide if this disclaimer in a book repeatedly asserting identity of acts between the US and the Nazis, whose most distinctive crimes were the Holocaust and other acts of genocide, is persuasive.
Chomsky contends that the only matter of interest in the Israeli-Palestinian equation is that Palestinians are occupied by an Israel intent on removing them and capable of doing so only with US acquiescence. Readers who consult his earlier works will know, however, that Chomsky himself once opposed (1974), then supported (1983) then denounced (1999) steps taken in favour of a two-state solution - which proceeded, incidentally, with enthusiastic US support. Although his views are wildly popular in some quarters, Chomsky attributes an alleged absence of commentary similar to his own to an "incredible discipline" which he believes a totalitarian state would be unable to achieve (p. 19). But even if his international lecture trips did not win him saturation media attention, it takes little courage to make a career as a "dissident" in a democracy, especially when it propels fame and agreeable notoriety. The courage to speak truth belongs to an Aung San Suu Kyi, not a Noam Chomsky. Far from asking questions people dare not ask, it is these days radical chic to repeat the questions - and answers - Chomsky offers. Readers would do better to consult works by actual scholars of the Middle East (Bernard Lewis, Fouad Ajami, Daniel Pipes) if they wish to know what produced September 11 and what we might do, as far as possible, to prevent a repetition.
Rating: 
Summary: Chomsky is beyond labels-he simply identifies what is
Review: This is only my second Chomsky book and as with 9/11 he articulates the hidden moves being played out on the international stage. Reading his analysis of what is really happening rather than what the media wants us to believe is happening makes his books like Clift's Notes for those who want to understand how and why the world is as it is. As to those who refuse to see the world's operations as they are and dismiss Chomsky as an unpatriotic liberal I can only say, as he does, that the US is just the most recent of a long line of empires that manipulate the world as their plaything. The US is not the worst nor will it be the last but it is incumbent on us all to realize what is going on and why these actions are taking place, To read the numbing ignorance of letter writers to my local newspaper is enough to establish that the world must have a Chomsky-not to dismantle the American Empire but simply to recognize what it is and what it is doing and why it's doing it.
To blindly and mindlessly accept the evil in the world is to invite that evil into your house-to feed it and offer a soft bed and a soft blanket. If evil is kept at arms length then you are not participating in the catalogue of evil incidents that were created in other people's backyards. A blind acceptance is to become a participant in the monstrous events being carried out in your name but to know the nature of the beast at least insulates you to a feeble extent. Simply put: knowledge is the protector while ignorance is the corrupter.
Rating:
Summary: Every American should read this book.
Review: We need more books like this to open our eyes to what our government is really doing in the name of the United States.
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