Defending the Indefensible: Noam Chomsky's 9/11 Spin

Defending the Indefensible: Noam Chomsky's 9/11 Spin

Crimes of the State

Noam Chomsky's 2006 "analysis" of US government 9/11 complicity is being promoted by Alternet.org as if it was news. That's because Chomsky basically sides with the editors there and their dismissive attitudes toward looking at the evidence.

In this battle of ideas, it warms my heart that Alternet's boards are swamped with controversy the minute they try to push this garbage onto the unsuspecting.

I remain a bit dazed though that hard core "leftists" accept Chomsky's thin dismissal, and ignore the most important admission Chomsky has made:

"I mean even if it [US GOVERNMENT COMPLICITY IN THE 9/11 ATTACKS] were true, which is extremely unlikely, who cares? I mean it doesn't have any significance." -Noam Chomsky

If you aren't familiar with this quote, read it again. Play the linked video. Come to terms with what he is saying. Chomsky gives the same dismissal to the JFK assassination (at the end of the clip). It just doesn't matter. To whom? Noam? To whom?

I suppose one could argue that JFK is dead 44 years now, and so America has moved on.* Not so for 9/11. Not on your life.

Chomsky has admitted that HE doesn't care if elements of the government were criminally complicit and treasonous in the 9/11 attacks, and that his school of followers shouldn't (doesn't) concern themselves either.

That's quite powerful stuff, given that many "lefty" pinhead types have internalized the marching orders and come up with elaborate mental gymnastics to convince themselves that 9/11 is "irrelevant." You see the "irrelevant" dismissal repeated in the threads over at that video post.

Example, "fireballs" says:

"9/11 truthers, you might be right in some form. There might be enough logical inconsistencies in the media's narrative of that day to produce some amount of scepticism. All of that is irrelevant. It does not matter if the towers fell due to controlled demolition. It does not matter what caused the collapse of WTC 7. It does not matter because you cannot prove what did happen, and the government is not going to help you, no matter how loud you shout outside of its doors."

You really have to wonder the mindset that admits the government could have participated in the mass murder of our fellow civilians, and yet works overtime trying to dismiss it as "irrelevant."

Well obviously it's not "irrelevant" to us, nor to the family members affected by it, nor to a hell of a lot of people around the world. That it is apparently "irrelevant" to Noam Chomsky and his dwindling band of followers speaks volumes about their priorities, as well as their morality, or apparent lack thereof. Perhaps it is they who are "irrelevant?"

Treason does not matter to these people.

So many derelictions of duty before 9/11 point to high treason (in the Clinton and Bush regimes), deliberate, calculated, with historical precedents and whistleblowers exposing the reality. None of that can sway the Chomskyites, because their leader seems to have some charismatic cult of personality hold on their ability to reason these things through.

Another one, "abstractedaway" says:

"The 9/11 truth movement assumes that there must have been a massive conspiracy, in my opinion, because it does not understand the ramifications of the huge disparity of wealth and power in our country."

It all comes back to the Marxist critique of everything, not the actual evidence of the case. These types always put cart before horse. The 9/11 movement has waded through thousands and thousands of pages of evidence to find things that don't appear right, were covered up, lied about AND EXPOSED AS LIES, and are downright incriminating. I don't know of anyone who pretends to know exactly what happened. What we are pretty sure about is that it shouldn't have happened. In this context, we seem to be the only ones demanding accountability from an out of control illegitimate regime, while Chomsky et al. are fabricating excuses for said regime.

This one, "samco" has the audacity to proclaim:

"9/11 Truthers are no different that (sic) White Supremacists. For their own sad psychological reasons, Truthers have bought into an ideology that, in order to be true, requires the complete dehumanization of a group of people [Bush et al.]."

The indoctrinated "left" have bought a (questionable) ideology. I'm a hard core skeptic of the government's numerous lies and cover ups with some actual education about the government's numerous crimes throughout history. It's quite a difference, no?

The Bushites/Democrat elite have murdered about 1.2 million Iraqi civilians since 2003. So how come we're only "dehumanizing" them as monsters if we add on another 3,000 Americans? Yet I'm supposed to be the white supremacist in this equation? Go look up "Freudian slip," samco.

Their group reveals a generalized aversion to look at the facts. Chomsky is famous for his "institutional analysis" that just ignores individual actions and actors, in favor of glossing over and generalizing whenever that is more convenient. His posse at Alternet similarly resorts to anti-intellectual dismissal tactics in order to avoid very straightforward evidence.

The infamous Joshua Holland (Alternet editor and writer of hit pieces against the 9/11 Truth Movement) got in a half-hearted sniping at me just as the comments were "closed."

Chomsky said:

"It's almost certain that it woud have leaked."

"So something would have leaked out, very likely."

To which I responded:

"Chomsky has nothing to say about Sibel Edmonds, Richard Wright, or any of the other whistleblowers, up to and including Senator Bob Graham ("foreign governments assisted the hijackers") and Senator Max Cleland ("not going to be part of another warren commission").

It did leak. It was known ..."

Holland cuts off the rest of my quote in his response, of course, which said:

"It was known by many people before the fact. High level pentagon oficials cancelled travel plans on 9/10. The mayor of San Francisco was warned not to fly. Many other leaks are known if you bother to look."

Then, Joshua Holland comes to Chomsky's defense:

"That depends entirely on what "it" is in the sentence. If you are claiming that these people said "it" was an inside job, you are incorrect. Yet an inside job is what Chomsky's talking about in the clip."

Hmm. The question read to Noam Chomsky at the beginning of the video clip:

"(9/11 attacks) ...directly or indirectly Bush clan is behind this?"

Strike one, Holland.

Chomsky himself says:

"Did they plan it in any way or know anything about it?"

Strike two, Holland.

And the term "inside job", with whatever fantastical connotations are in Joshua Holland's mind, is not spoken in this video clip at all.

Strike three, Holland. You're out. Thanks for playing.

But, hey, Joshua Holland has also tried to spin both Sibel Edmonds and FBI Special Agent Robert Wright.

Here's what FBI translator Sibel Edmonds has said:

“If Counterintelligence receives information that contains money laundering, illegal arms sale, and illegal drug activities, directly linked to terrorist activities; and if that information involves certain nations, certain semi-legit organizations, and ties to certain lucrative or political relations in this country, then, that information is not shared with Counterterrorism, regardless of the possible severe consequences." -Sibel Edmonds Letter To Thomas Kean, August 1, 2004

That is an open accusation of conspiracy. Numerous conspiracies! Directly related to "terrorist activities!"

Could someone forward this over to Noam for me? Hey Joshua, what about you? Gonna Fedex these facts right over, or continue spinning?

FBI Special Agent Robert Wright, has said:

“Corruption is knowing when something is not being done, knowing when the American people are being left unprotected and when you make a decision not to do something to protect the American people... And you effectively allow 9/11 to occur. That is the ultimate form of government corruption—dereliction of duty. That’s subject in the military to prosecution, to court martial.... Frankly, if not treason.” --Robert Wright, Press Conference, Federal News Service, 5/30/2002, CooperativeResearch

Holland (and Chomsky) also seems to have no problem with Senator Bob Graham's admission about "foreign governments" ... plural.

If foreign governments are getting away with mass murder on US soil, I think a majority of Americans will not only want to know about it (although they won't hear about it from Alternet or Noam Chomsky), but they will immediately want to throw out the bums -- every traitorous stinking last one of them -- who are protecting these "foreign governments."

The governments in question are clearly not on the "enemies" list, or else such information would quickly have been plastered all over the world's press as justificaiton for the serial wars that were planned long before 9/11/01. Yes they were planned in places like the American Enterprise Institute, the Project for a New American Century, and in Zbigniew Brzezinski's Grand Chessboard.

So the "foreign governments" assisting the alleged hijackers are "allies." Allies who crash planes into NY skyscrapers. Allies who are protected AFTER they crash planes into NY skyscrapers.

We are so through-the-looking-glass here, people, that the only sensible response to this towering wall of propaganda and disinformation is to look for the covert control of the "alternate" media and to question the credibility of the "alternate" icons like Chomsky, Alexander Cockburn, and others in positions of editorial control and influence.

"The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyyone of any significance in the major media." --Former CIA director William Colby (quote apparently purged recently from Wikipedia)

You can tell very easily who is concerned with the truth, and who is not by examining the targets of their ire. Those whose fixation is "conspiracy theorists" or the "9/11 Truth Movement" are not interested in knowing. They are simply turning focus and attention onto a generalized movement, which allows them to cherry pick claims and ideas to "debunk." They make quite a sport of this, and have done so for a while.

There are ideological reasons for doing this -- all the while ignoring the evidence related to 9/11 -- and they are being misled, clearly from "above." The "Left Gatekeepers" have done a tremendous amount of work keeping the focus on amateur investigators and whatever mistakes they have made, as well as the deliberate COINTELPRO originated disinformation "theories."

In the process, these Gatekeepers have given the treasonous faction in charge a free pass. Why would they do this? Why would they not want to hold the regime accountable for the atrocities of 9/11? That's a very fair question.

A number of Chomskyites admit that the Bush regime is negligent, and that there was "malfeasance" and other lighter charges. They omit the part about criminal negligence, with 3,000 homicides in the balance (and two illegal wars as a consequence). I don't know what they're putting in the bottled water over in Chomskyland, but I see a problem here.

* P.S.

Kennedy's death didn't matter? Perhaps it did to 58,000 US troops and 3,000,000 Vietnamese citizens.

We had Kennedy retreating from a belligerent foreign policy after the Cuban Missile Crisis sent the world to the brink of nuclear war. Kennedy was proclaimed "soft on communism" when he made a deal with the Soviets to avoid Armageddon. JFK subsequently refused to invade Cuba, or to support the CIA's rogue Bay of Pigs invasion with US air power.

Kennedy was at war with the CIA when he fired Allan Dulles as CIA head shortly before his assassination.

Dulles for some reason ended up on the Warren Commission "investigation" that brought us the magical bullet of Lee Harvey Oswald. But none of that matters, ...says Chomsky.

What say you followers?

Not a one of them had the gumption to answer my question:

"I mean even if it [US GOVERNMENT COMPLICITY IN THE 9/11 ATTACKS] were true, which is extremely unlikely, who cares? I mean it doesn't have any significance."

"Is there anyone in their right frame of mind who agrees with the above quote?"

No takers. Just wise cracks about "conspiracy whackoness." Real intellectual giants over there in Alter-Chomsky universe.

Bulls-eye. Yes, we

Bulls-eye. Yes, we care.
http://www.webcom.com/~lpease/collections/assassinations/jfk/cia-inst.htm

“On the altar of God, I swear eternal hostility against all forms of tyranny over the mind of man."--Thomas Jefferson

It is rather telling,

if, as you assert:
"The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyyone of any significance in the major media." --Former CIA director William Colby (quote apparently purged recently from Wikipedia)"

...... the proof in the pudding sort of thing. Long have I viewed Chomsky as a mockingbird. He has pursued his assigned tasks with cleverness and persistence.

==================================================================
"There are none so hoplessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free." (Goethe)

i made that qoute my sig for

i made that qoute my sig for a reason :-)

"The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media." ~ William Colby, Former Director, CIA

well stated

At this point, the propagandist smearing of perfectly reasonable skepticism is so pervasive that many on the Left and Right have adopted patently absurd positions on 9/11 Truth, such as Chomsky's.

What happened? At what point did people simply give up on the prospect of government transparency? When did the bar of secrecy get set so high that self-annointed "progressives" are unwilling to demand a comprehensive and legitimate investigation of the worst terrorist attack in the nation's history?

John, I admire you for getting in the ring

with the alter-neters. They are mud wrestling and you are stand up boxing. Necessary work carried out with patience and precision. Good idea to write up the blow by blow, thanks.

The "so what" argument

I have come across the "so what" argument from people on the left a lot. It's not just the marxist left (Chomsky is actually an anarchist), but a broad spectrum of the left that take this view.

The 3 best replies to this I have so far follow...

First it is clear that the 9/11 attacks were also a, successful, attack on the anti-capitalist / anti-globalisation movement, consider what David Graeber has said:

"September 11th was such a weird event, such a catastrophe, that it makes it almost impossible for us to perceive anything else around it. In its immediate aftermath, almost all of the structures created in the [anti-]globalization movement collapsed."

Secondly it's clear that the governments needed 9/11 to justify the wars, on the 6th February 2003, Tony Blair said:

"I keep having this mental picture in my mind of August 2001 and coming along to people and saying there's this terrorist organisation in Afghanistan, they are evil people who will try and mount major terrorist attacks on our country, we've got to go into Afghanistan and deal with them.

I think people would have said to me, you know you must be crackers what on earth are you on about. I mean people wouldn't have even have heard of who al-Qaeda was but a month later it [9/11] happened."

Thirdly, (and I could do with some help getting some stats together on this) how many people joined the US military to go and fight because of 9/11? How many of these people might be somewhat pissed off if they realised that they have been had...? Wouldn't the truth coming out end the wars?

"September 11th was such a

"September 11th was such a weird event, such a catastrophe, that it makes it almost impossible for us to perceive anything else around it. In its immediate aftermath, almost all of the structures created in the [anti-]globalization movement collapsed."

As a member of that movement (anti-globalization) that was my initial reason for being suspicious about the 9/11 attacks. I actually believed that the attack was occuring in order to (more generally) stop the anti-globalization movement (and its vast momentum at the time) in its tracks, and (more specifically) to pull the breaks on the enormous protest/direct action the nation's capital would ever have seen, which was scheduled for the last weekend of september, '01. And boy did it work.

My greatest disappointment was that hardly anyone from that (now-dead) movement, which consisted of the brightest people on the planet, didn't have the vision or courage to see 9/11 for what it was. The cynical side of me began to believe that, since this movement wasn't able to identify the 9/11 attacks for what they were, maybe it (the movement) didn't deserve to exist at all. Such a pity, really...because I thought the anti-corporate globalization movement was going to change everything...forever.

Broad brush fallacy

While I agree with your critique of Chomsky your references to “commies” and the like shows a lack of understanding. This response is not intended as an insult but a simple lesson in isms and ologies.

Chomsky is an anarcho-syndicalist, which means he (theoretically) adheres to a form of anarchism as theorized by Rudolph Rocker and especially Mikhail Bakunin. It was put in practice somewhat by the Spanish anarchists during the 1930’s. You refer to Chomsky as a “Marxist”, yet during his lifetime Bakunin was one of Marx’s fiercest critiques, so much so that Marx resorted to starting scurrilous rumors about the Russian anarchist in a bid to marginalize the anti-authoritarian wing of the socialist movement. Ironically, Bakunin’s predictions of what a Marxist state would look like came to pass almost exactly in his native Russia.

Although it may seem paradoxical to someone brought up in the US with all of its “red menace” hysteria, anarcho-socialism is actually far more anti-statist than libertarianism; in fact, it is the antithesis of the Marxist/Stalinist philosophy we normally associate with the term “socialism” or “communism”.

Anarchism itself as a broad back; different philosophers have different ideas about the degree of public ownership best suited to a well-ordered society, ranging from the anarcho-communism of Kropotkin to the “individualist” anarchism of the American Benjamin Tucker. The point is that we have to be a little more careful with our language.

Finally, you stated that:

“Socialists and communists have never been known for their independence of thought.”

Your opening line renders your essay absurd, and should be stricken if you want it to be taken seriously. Socialism refers to public ownership of public resources; thus, mankind as a whole has been “socialist” for 99.9% of our time on planet earth. Even if we include statist socialists we still have to take into account the likes of Albert Einstein, Hellen Keller, Jack London, George Bernard Shaw, Pier Pasolini, George Orwell, Nelson Mandella etc. etc. etc. (ironically, John Lennon himself). If we extend it to anarcho-socialists you have at least half of the great artists and political philosophers in history, everyone from Kafka and Chaplin to Huxley, Ibsen, William Blake, Percy Shelley, Leo Tolstoy, Oscar Wilde, nearly all of the Surrealists/Dadaists, John Cage, William Burroughs, Henry Miller, Gandhi…

I could literally go on all day here, but the point is made. Above are some of the most independent thinkers in history. We have to be careful not to paint with a broad brush.

Video: Truth Revolution

You're probably right.

I don't know much about Chomsky's politics.

I'll edit the article.
JD.

Hiding from the truth.

The control of the left through Chomsky and others who have influence is essential to
the whole Imperial agenda including 9/11. Whether he is a Mockingbird mole, or whether
he has been threatened or intimidated into towing the official line is irrelevant, he can't come clean
now. Chomsky and his ilk are now becoming marginalized however, by the huge momentum of the truth movement, when you
hear someone with his intellect attempting to dismiss something this important with such weak argument it speaks volumes,
even to his, up to now, dedicated followers.

Even for those with the linguistic skills, intellect and reputation of Chomsky,
the bright light of truth is becoming difficult to hide from.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Who controls the past controls the future, who controls the present controls the past"
George Orwell 1984