Chomsky: Our Double Standard On Terrorism
The scene in Paris was described vividly in the New York Times by veteran Europe correspondent Steven Erlanger: “a day of sirens, helicopters in the air, frantic news bulletins; of police cordons and anxious crowds; of young children led away from schools to safety. It was a day, like the previous two, of blood and horror in and around Paris.”
Erlanger also quoted a surviving journalist who said that “Everything crashed. There was no way out. There was smoke everywhere. It was terrible. People were screaming. It was like a nightmare.” Another reported a “huge detonation, and everything went completely dark.” The scene, Erlanger reported, “was an increasingly familiar one of smashed glass, broken walls, twisted timbers, scorched paint and emotional devastation.”These last quotes, however — as independent journalist David Peterson reminds us — are not from January 2015. Rather, they are from a report by Erlanger on April 24 1999, which received far less attention. Erlanger was reporting on the NATO “missile attack on Serbian state television headquarters” that “knocked Radio Television Serbia off the air,” killing 16 journalists.
“NATO and American officials defended the attack,” Erlanger reported, “as an effort to undermine the regime of President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia.” Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon told a briefing in Washington that “Serb TV is as much a part of Milosevic’s murder machine as his military is,” hence a legitimate target of attack.
There were no demonstrations or cries of outrage, no chants of “We are RTV,” no inquiries into the roots of the attack in Christian culture and history. On the contrary, the attack on the press was lauded. The highly regarded U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke, then envoy to Yugoslavia, described the successful attack on RTV as “an enormously important and, I think, positive development,” a sentiment echoed by others.
There are many other events that call for no inquiry into western culture and history — for example, the worst single terrorist atrocity in Europe in recent years, in July 2011, when Anders Breivik, a Christian ultra-Zionist extremist and Islamophobe, slaughtered 77 people, mostly teenagers.
Anders Breivic was a white Christian, not a dark-skinned Muslim. There was no outrage against Christians, however, nor against whites.
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22 responses to Chomsky: Our Double Standard On Terrorism
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allison1050 January 20th, 2015 at 16:25
Hey Chomsky, you left out Rowanda but there again we don’t have to go that many years back. You forgot Nigeria or did you just “forget” it?
anothertoothpick January 20th, 2015 at 19:56
Erlanger?
burqa January 21st, 2015 at 01:38
He hasn’t yet figured out a way to exonerate the perpetrators and pin the blame on America and the West.
allison1050 January 20th, 2015 at 17:25
Hey Chomsky, you left out Rowanda but there again we don’t have to go that many years back. You forgot Nigeria or did you just “forget” it?
anothertoothpick January 20th, 2015 at 20:56
Erlanger?
burqa January 21st, 2015 at 02:38
He hasn’t yet figured out a way to exonerate the perpetrators and pin the blame on America and the West.
StoneyCurtisll January 20th, 2015 at 16:40
“What defines terrorism is determined by who is initiating the terror”…
Those words could never be more true~!
StoneyCurtisll January 20th, 2015 at 17:40
“What defines terrorism is determined by who is initiating the terror”…
Those words could never be more true~!
Apocalypse January 20th, 2015 at 18:03
The motivation in France was to avenge Muhammad .
The NATO motivation during the Kosovo War:
” NATO Headquarters justified the bombing with two arguments; firstly, that it was necessary “to disrupt and degrade the command, control and communications network” of the Yugoslav Armed Forces, and secondly, that the RTS headquarters was a dual-use object which “was making an important contribution to the propaganda war which orchestrated the campaign against the population of Kosovo”.
In Kosovo we were also trying to stop the genocide of Bosnian Muslims and Croats by Serbs.
Violence and war is terror. “One man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist”. Yet we are historically compelled to chose sides. The inability to have peace may be a flaw of humanity.
fahvel January 21st, 2015 at 01:23
not “may” be but is – humanity has neverpassed a day without the horror of war. We get what we reap.
Apocalypse January 21st, 2015 at 01:31
So far…history proves you right.
greenfloyd January 21st, 2015 at 02:16
And it did not happen in a vacuum. I believe there are both internal and outside forces at work there and elsewhere; their mission is to radicalize young people, train, equip and finance them. There are probably many layers of separation between operatives in this particular network in France and those who pay the bills, collect the debt, i.e. France’s military cooperation in trying to sever the head of this ugly monster that pretends to be Muslim.
Apocalypse January 20th, 2015 at 19:03
The motivation in France was to avenge Muhammad .
The NATO motivation during the Kosovo War:
” NATO Headquarters justified the bombing with two arguments; firstly, that it was necessary “to disrupt and degrade the command, control and communications network” of the Yugoslav Armed Forces, and secondly, that the RTS headquarters was a dual-use object which “was making an important contribution to the propaganda war which orchestrated the campaign against the population of Kosovo”.
In Kosovo we were also trying to stop the genocide of Bosnian Muslims and Croats by Serbs.
Violence and war is terror. “One man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist”. Yet we are historically compelled to chose sides. The inability to have peace may be a flaw of humanity.
fahvel January 21st, 2015 at 02:23
not “may” be but is – humanity has neverpassed a day without the horror of war. We get what we reap.
Apocalypse January 21st, 2015 at 02:31
So far…history proves you right.
floyd[@]greenfloyd.org January 21st, 2015 at 03:16
And it did not happen in a vacuum. I believe there are both internal and outside forces at work there and elsewhere; their mission is to radicalize young people, train, equip and finance them. There are probably many layers of separation between operatives in this particular network in France and those who pay the bills, collect the debt, i.e. France’s military cooperation in trying to sever the head of this ugly monster that pretends to be Muslim.
greenfloyd January 20th, 2015 at 22:26
It’s always good to know your history. When Chomsky puts pen to paper you are going to get a history lesson, or two, or three… yet it’s always the same with him, floating around in his dusty old Ivory tower, launching literary missiles at what he is sure is the inherit evil of an America responsible for all the world’s troubles.
floyd[@]greenfloyd.org January 20th, 2015 at 23:26
It’s always good to know your history. When Chomsky puts pen to paper you are going to get a history lesson, or two, or three… yet it’s always the same with him, floating around in his dusty old Ivory tower, launching literary missiles at what he is sure is the inherit evil of an America responsible for all the world’s troubles.
burqa January 21st, 2015 at 01:26
Chomsky is full of bull.
He started out just fine when he said that terrorism is determined by the attackers. T put a finer point on what he said, terrorists intend to terrorize society by threatening or carrying out horrific actions that inspire terror.
Chomsky then contradicts himself, by defining terror NOT by the attackers, but by the victims of a bombing in the course of a war. The bombing was not an intentional act intended by the perpetrators to terrorize society. While questioning the target is legitimate, Chomsky fails to give the context of what that war was about or to give the consequences of failing to respond to what Milosevic was doing.
It would be interesting to go back and look at Chomsky’s writings beginning in thee early 90s to see whether he encouraged the West to step in or whether he urged the West to let the slaughter continue. Thousands had been killed, 500,000 Albanians had been driven from Kosovo and there were hundreds of thousands of other refugees driven from their homes by the Serbs. This is the kind of thing that air campaign we carried out stopped. Chomsky leaves that part out.
Chomsky is a lousy historian when he tries to make a point by stretching definitions further than warranted.
He is also wrong morally to try to divert attention from the perpetrators of mass murder in Paris and elsewhere.
Chomsky will go to any extreme and commit the most twisted leaps of logic to blame the victims of terrorism rather than the terrorists themselves.
It’s pretty sick, really.
17 people get murdered in Paris and you can just see Chomsky putting up police tape around the perpetrators while he casts about to talk and talk and talk some more until he’s figured out a way to blame America for it.
Chomsky blames everyone but the actual perpetrators.
burqa January 21st, 2015 at 02:26
Chomsky is full of bull.
He started out just fine when he said that terrorism is determined by the attackers. T put a finer point on what he said, terrorists intend to terrorize society by threatening or carrying out horrific actions that inspire terror.
Chomsky then contradicts himself, by defining terror NOT by the attackers, but by the victims of a bombing in the course of a war. The bombing was not an intentional act intended by the perpetrators to terrorize society. While questioning the target is legitimate, Chomsky fails to give the context of what that war was about or to give the consequences of failing to respond to what Milosevic was doing.
It would be interesting to go back and look at Chomsky’s writings beginning in thee early 90s to see whether he encouraged the West to step in or whether he urged the West to let the slaughter continue. Thousands had been killed, 500,000 Albanians had been driven from Kosovo and there were hundreds of thousands of other refugees driven from their homes by the Serbs. This is the kind of thing that air campaign we carried out stopped. Chomsky leaves that part out just as Chomsky the historian omits the fact that al Qaeda bases were destroyed, they were kicked out and in some cases captured and sent to prison.
Chomsky is a lousy historian when he tries to make a point by stretching definitions further than warranted.
He is also wrong morally to try to divert attention from the perpetrators of mass murder in Paris and elsewhere.
Chomsky will go to any extreme and commit the most twisted leaps of logic to blame the victims of terrorism rather than the terrorists themselves.
It’s pretty sick, really.
17 people get murdered in Paris and you can just see Chomsky deciding instantly to exonerate the perpetrators while he casts about to talk and talk and talk some more until he’s figured out a way to blame America for it.
Chomsky blames everyone but the actual perpetrators.
jstsmlbrlcnsrvtvguy February 3rd, 2015 at 01:38
Wonder if ol’ Noam has ever talked to anyone in MIT’s Engineering or Architecture departments about 9/11? — “terrorism is determined by the attackers” Are we sure we know who they were in any case? Do John McCain and Lindsey Graham know?.
jstsmlbrlcnsrvtvguy February 3rd, 2015 at 02:38
Wonder if ol’ Noam has ever talked to anyone in MIT’s Engineering or Architecture departments about 9/11? — “terrorism is determined by the attackers” Are we sure we know who they were in any case? Do John McCain and Lindsey Graham know?.