9-11 by Noam Chomsky Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of 9-11
Book Review: A Voice of Reason on an Emotional Subject
Summary: 5 Stars
For the most part Chomsky is closer to the truth than his detractors.
Years ago I was a student at MIT and had a laboratory close to Chomsky's office in the old research MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics. At that time, and for many years later I thought Chomsky was a rabid liberal- socialist that was out somewhere in left field on many issues.
Of course I had formed that opinion without reading his books! But I knew that he had written dozens of books, was made an Institute Professor (which is a big deal at MIT) had written hundreds of papers and had at least 20 honorary doctorates from universities all around the world. When I sat down and read his books page by page I was converted. He simply presents the facts in a cool and detached manner. The facts speak quite eloquently for themselves and they are damming of US foreign policy.
On 9-11 and after like many others if I had been the President I would have ordered a military strike. It was and is a natural response as if your wife was raped or a child killed by a criminal. We wanted revenge for the 3,000 killed. Even Rudolph Giuliani told Bush he wanted to personally pull the trigger when Bin Laden was captured. It was a time of high emotion. Bush followed human instincts and his advisors, and indeed at lot of pressure from the American public and the congress to do something.
Chomsky of course has taken a more rational approach and has tried to formulate a quick analysis of what happened and where we have gone wrong. This is a short book but otherwise excellent. It is a question and answer format. I cannot agree with everything in the book but it gives a fair portrayal of many aspects of the problem. In many respects the US has become a rogue nation, pumped up with layer of propaganda and patriot rhetoric that has permitted the government for over 45 years and often with congressional and public support to invade Afghanistan, Cambodia, Cuba, Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, Grenada, Panama, Somalia, Haiti, Kosovo, Iraq, to send troops to Lebanon, to bomb Yemen, Libya, and the Sudan. No wonder the US has enemies. If we are upset about the 3,000 killed on 9-11 what do the Vietnamese think of the 3 million killed in the Vietnam conflict?
It is time for a complete re-think of the US foreign policy and the role of the UN and other institutions such that groups and countries will act within a set of internationally accepted laws. Then variations from those laws will be addressed by all nations acting together, not just the US following its own self interests for better or for worse. That is the value of this thin book on 9-11.
My humble opinion.
Book Review: A critical look at 9-11: U.S.A, the sole Super-Power.
Summary: 3 Stars
Chomsky, as usual, makes comments that the majority of American society hates to hear. If you like to think critically and hear many different arguements on a subject, have an open mind, and instead of blindly supporting a cause or in this case, A WAR, I strongly recommend you read this book. Some comments that Chomsky makes are supported by logical and historical facts; however, others are of course questionable and lack the context in which America acted upon. I only wish Chomsky had of waited until the "War on Terrorism" had played out instead of only waiting a number of months to react to the events of 911. The only reason why I don't recommend buying this book is because as you know, the war is an ongoing development and Chomsky's best work on the subject will not come out until deep into the war or after. I say this mainly because it would be interesting to hear what he has to say about the possibility of a war in Iraq. Chomsky is finally getting somewhere in his rants against America and anyone blind enough to not see Chomsky's warnings playing out in the world today, should really ask themselves a question. How would you feel if your country, already war-torn and impoverished, came under attack by a far superior power, killed innocent civilians and destroyed what little remained of the infrastructure because of one man(all concede supported by a political group) and some oil?(convenient how recently an oil line has now been discovered in Afghanistan). Notice how this can apply to both Iraq and Afghanistan. Read Chomsky with that question in mind and some of his "RADICAL" arguments don't seem to crazy anymore.Book Review: A good book with important issues
Summary: 4 Stars
I believe to read this book requires an open mind from people, but I also believe this book should be taken with a grain of salt, as should everything. Really what I feel the book does best is tells us how the US is truly arrogant in many of its actions. Chomsky states plenty of examples that I believe would be difficult to argue with, and thats where this books real importance is. Chomsky tells of the many atrocities committed by the United States and how the rest of the world reacts to this. Several times he talks on how we act and asks what the reaction would be if other nations did the same. The example of Nicaragua is given, and how we deliberately broke international law, with almost contempt for anyone that should even think we could be wrong in our actions and total confusion for anyone thinking Nicaragua should be able to have the audacity to *defend* themselves from our attack.Also, this book helped me to see a connection with Orwell's "1984" where (for those of you who dont know) a state tells its people it is at war with one state and friends with another and it has always been this way...then they turn around and say they have never been friends with that state and have always been on the side of the other state. None of the people in the book ever stop and think otherwise. I find this similar to our support of what became the Taliban, which is now our enemy, but none seems to notice or remember we actually started this "government" and they were an ally at one point. Chomsky takes up this issue several times, along with our support for Saddam Hussein (never mentioning anything Orwellian, that was just me).
The only reason I did not give it 5 stars is that I feel that it was thrown together too quickly, certain parts are repeated unnecessarily, the book is fairly short, and really I would also have liked Chomsky to wait awhile to observe events taking place well after 9-11 to elaborate on, particularly after Bush declared war on the world and signed the "Patriot Act." But I guess we will have to wait.
Book Review: A more complete vision of 9-11 than what the media gave
Summary: 5 Stars
"9-11" is a collection of interviews with Noam Chomsky, the internationally respected political commentator, given shortly after the attacks of September 11th, 2001. In these interviews Noam puts the attacks in the perspective of decades of US abuses of power, and points out that much of the world considers the United States a leading terrorist organization. (One interviewer asks Chomsky to comment on the fact that some in other lands celebrated the attacks. Chomsky reminds that the US has at times celebrated attacks on other lands that have killed thousands of innocent people as well.) Please don't mistake Chomsky's comments for sympathy for the attacks on New York or Washington. Chomsky readily agrees that the attacks are terrible - "horrendous" is the word he uses. But he warns that a swift and violent retaliation by the US is exactly what bin Laden would like so as to recruit others to - what Chomksy again describes as - his "horrendous" cause. All Chomsky is asking is that we look to cause and effect and accountability: the US has been violent to other countries, and the violence has now come to the US (Chomsky notes that, sadly, it is not the scale of the attacks, i.e., the amount of people killed, that makes September 11th stand out, but the fact that for the first time in a long time the guns were pointed at a superpower nation). Violence is wrong, Chomsky says. So all sides need to take a look at themselves and realize that violence only breeds violence.
Book Review: A must-read
Summary: 5 Stars
A year and a half after 9/11/01, this book is nearly in the top 500 of best-selling books on Amazon. Defying all logic in the ultra-conservative wake of 9/11, this book became an international bestseller.Why? Because people needed an independent analysis that they could trust. People needed to hear Noam Chomsky's point of view. I believe that is why this book was "rushed into print" after 9/11 (not to "cash in" as critics would have you believe... The Patriot Act is an example of cashing in on 9/11, this book is not). Someone decided it would be a good idea to edit his post-9/11 interviews into a book to get his point of view out to the public, and he agreed to it.
Yes, this is a collection of interviews, similar to the format of the best-selling "Chomsky Trilogy." His interviews are often much easier to read than his writing; it is easier to follow his informal speech than his academic prose. As such, this is a readable introduction to the ideas of Noam Chomsky. Love him or hate him, he should not be ignored.
It's been over a year since I read this, and what sticks out in my mind is his analysis of Clinton's bombing of the Sudanese pharmaceutical factory in 1998, under the apparently mistaken impression that it was a terrorist training facility or something of that nature. Chomsky points out roughly half a dozen various effects of that bombing, leading to the deaths of innocent civilians, instability in the region, decreased likelihood of democratic government, resentment towards the US and refusal to cooperate with the US in hunting for Al Qaeda. Chomsky's analysis makes it clear that this bombing was a greater tragedy than 9/11, in terms of over-all lives lost. Republican Clinton-haters should love this section of the book.
Chomsky has been criticized for being "wooden" in these interviews and not sympathetic enough to the victims of 9/11. In his defense, he has studied mass atrocities for the past 35 years -- many of which the US was responsible for -- many of which involved the death and torture of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. Take East Timor as an example. The East Timor atrocities did not have the support of 24/7 media coverage like 9/11 did.
Chomsky is an internationalist. In his eyes, a Timorese life is equal to the life of a New Yorker. Chomsky was no doubt saddened by 9/11 -- and he clearly states that it was an unjustifiable atrocity -- but he was 70 times more saddened by the US-supported Indonesian invasion of East Timor, because 70 times as many people died. (My statistics might be off, but you get the picture.) If he is not adequately expressing his grief, then all of the Americans who were blissfully ignorant of the East Timor atrocity are far more guilty of not expressing proper grief for those lives lost. You do not have to feel more pain merely because it was American lives lost, merely because the television tells you "Now is the time to be sad."
If Chomsky truly wanted to "cash in," he would gush about how horrible 9/11 was, just like everyone else in the media. Instead he had the courage to present a cogent and politically incorrect point of view -- for which he is still being rewarded with best-seller status.
Check out Chomsky's sequel to 9-11 as well as Rahul Mahajan's "The New Crusade: America's War on Terrorism."