BOOK REVIEW Down the wrong path 9-11: Was There an Alternative? by Noam Chomsky
Reviewed by Christopher Bartlo
"The book you are holding was conceived, produced, and published as an act of
protest." This is the first line of the editor's introduction to Noam Chomsky's
revised book about the causes and effects of the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Originally titled simply 9/11, the book was published in November 2001.
The 2011 edition features a new introduction - "Was There an Alternative?" - in
which Chomsky comments on the assassination of Osama bin Laden and other
developments since the book was first published.
Chomsky's initial comments 10 years ago provide a sobering perspective today,
warning about events that have since unfolded. Chomsky argues that the US
government has done exactly what Osama bin Laden wanted it to do: Dig into a
series of expensive and bloody wars in Muslim countries, draining the American
economy and causing many civilian casualties. As a result, "the security
situation in Afghanistan has worsened to its lowest point since the toppling of
the Taliban a decade ago and attacks on aid workers are at unprecedented
levels." The people of Afghanistan, teetering on the edge of starvation in
September 2001, were deprived of much of the food and medical assistance from
international aid that was keeping them alive because Coalition airstrikes
destroyed infrastructure and made travel unsafe for aid trucks.
Chomsky laments that the US government largely dismissed these human-rights
problems in its quest to "secure our interests." The invasion of Afghanistan
was far from the first time North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) overran
unstable civilian populations in the search for terrorists (Chomsky offers
several examples in the book) and, as we now know, it was not the last.
9-11 is a crash course in America's terrorism against inconvenient
regimes, and a primer in the ways that those in power have misled the American
public by suggesting that September 11 happened in a vacuum. Readers interested
in foreign policy and terrorism would find it very interesting, although they
might be slightly frustrated by the way the book is organized into dialogues.
Many of the questions that interviewers asked Chomsky in this book were very
common at that time, but the type of answers that Chomsky gave were very rare
in the mainstream Western media. For that reason, some of the topics (such as
bombing "soft targets" in Nicaragua) are explained several times. This could be
seen as a weakness in organization, but it helps to explain how the various
topics are connected. This format also made it possible to publish the book
only two months after the attacks, when the public needed a voice of reason.
Chomsky was one of the few people in the United States at that time to publicly
talk about how deeply the Central Intelligence Agency was involved in arming
and training the mujahideen in Afghanistan during the 1980s. He explains the
hypocrisy of the US government's definition of terrorism - the use of violence
for political or psychological goals rather than monetary gain - in light of
the fact that US government agencies have been using exactly those methods for
decades, directly and indirectly. When the US government uses these tactics,
they are not called terrorism but, rather, "low-intensity warfare."
For example, the United States recently risked a major international conflict
with a nuclear-armed nation, Pakistan, by assassinating an influential figure
in one of its major cities. That man, of course, was Osama bin Laden. The
United States even had the poor judgment to name this adventure "Operation
Geronimo." As Chomsky says, "The imperial mentality is so profound, throughout
Western society, that no one can perceive that they are glorifying bin Laden by
identifying him with courageous resistance against genocidal invaders."
Christopher Bartlo is a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus.
9-11: Was There an Alternative? by Noam
Chomsky, Open Media/Seven Stories Press; 1 edition (December 4, 2001), ISBN-10:
1609803434, price US$13.95, 176 pages
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Chomsky laments that the US government largely dismissed these human-rights
problems in its quest to "secure our interests." The invasion of Afghanistan
was far from the first time North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) overran
unstable civilian populations in the search for terrorists (Chomsky offers
several examples in the book) and, as we now know, it was not the last.
