...denied the Hue massacres in Vietnam:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_at_Hu%E1%BA%BF
...denied the Khmer Rogue Holocaust in Cambodia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge#Genocide
...advocated actions that were eventually followed, which lead to the death and enslavement of millions of people...
....and he's never apologized for that, or taken culpability for those actions. The fact that he's a hero of some intellectual movements show the bankruptcy of those movements. There's real champions in the world, but he's not one of them. Noah Chomsky is an apologist for tyranny, and someone who has advocated extraordinarily bad policy. Even if you slant left - and I've been gradually moving more leftwards - this man should be treated as a pariah and an embarrassment for the horror his actions have helped perpetuate.
Edit: Whoever is downvoting this, and especially the facts and citations following it... I don't know what to tell you. Chomsky got the policies he was advocating for, and Communist Southeast Asia was horror, bloodbath, and concentration camps afterwards. It was very bad. You might not have heard this side of the story, but it's what actually happened. The Khmer Rouge atrocities don't happen if the South Vietnam/USA coalition wins against the North Vietnam/USSR coalition, or at least winds up demilitarized like North Korea/South Korea.
But like I said, I'm not expert. And from the bits of Chomsky's writings and interviews that I have read I certainly don't agree with all of his opinions although I do find him an interesting man. But you certainly need to provide evidence when you make claims like that against anyone, it's just not acceptable to make the statements on their own.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1775881
"Space limitations preclude a comprehensive review, but such journals as the Far Eastern Economic Review, the London Economist, the Melbourne Journal of Politics, and others elsewhere, have provided analyses by highly qualified specialists who have studied the full range of evidence available, and who concluded that executions have numbered at most in the thousands; that these were localized in areas of limited Khmer Rouge influence and unusual peasant discontent, where brutal revenge killings were aggravated by the threat of starvation resulting from the American destruction and killing." - Noah Chomsky
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Noam_Chomsky#Posit...
And:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1775946
> I think you're exaggerating the point to some degree by saying "there's no concentration camps in Cambodia", but I think you're generally right.
"...that these were localized in areas of limited Khmer Rouge influence and unusual peasant discontent, where brutal revenge killings were aggravated by the threat of starvation resulting from the American destruction and killing"
He says they were:
1. In areas not under the control of the Khmer Rouge (false)
2. Manages to somehow blame the United States for the few killings he does admit happened.
A lot of people don't realize that if the United States and South Vietnamese had won the war, the massacres in Cambodia don't happen. Cambodia would've been next.
American Withdrawl: 15 May 1975
Fall of Saigon: 30 April 1975
Khmer Rouge Genocide: 1975 to 1979
Wikipedia: "The Killing Fields were a number of sites in Cambodia where large numbers of people were killed and buried by the Khmer Rouge regime, during its rule of the country from 1975 to 1979, immediately after the end of the Vietnam War." -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Killing_Fields (emphasis mine)
That wouldn't have happened with a stable joint American/South Vietnamese presence next door. Couldn't have happened, the USA wouldn't have allowed massacre on that scale the way the communist powers did. At the risk of getting into political territory, I think people like Noah Chomsky and Jane Fonda have a lot more blood on their hands than any of the military commanders they like to criticize.
However, it's easy to argue that there's no evidence, when you simply sidestep a damning piece of evidence that doesn't mold itself to your views. This is highly selective, and it throws the whole piece into question for me. Specifically, I'm talking about the confession, which to Chomsky, we should simply ignore because Chomsky knows he was just boasting.
Chomsky presents a lot of things as facts, which are opinions, while condemning others of doing the same thing.
It doesn't make him less wrong that others are doing it. But it certainly doesn't make him right.
Furthermore, Chomsky might be representing opinions as facts, but he does not go invade countries and assassinate people based on his ideas. I think your comparison is unfair in this regard.
If someone confesses to something they didn't do to profit from it, well then they're an idiot and deserve the punishment.
For the record my money is on his involvement and the boasting was a legit confession.
I call this total crap... You'd prefer if someone confessed and be punished, instead of have the __right__ perpetrator be punished?
I do think that justice requires us to punish the guilty only, not the innocent, regardless if they themselves want to be punished or not.
I'm sorry, but we're in Iraq by invitation of the Iraqi government. They can expel us at anytime. They want us there. Implying that we're "invading" a country is factually incorrect, absurd, and just shows complete ignorance about our foreign policy.
And we have to examine in this context that the Middle East political orgs such as governments have used terrorist groups to put forth their political aims and ambitions. As of yet there are no independent facts pointing to another terrorist-middle-east-government pairing for the 911 attacks although Iraq was slightly implied by several fundamental US groups.
The "confession video" would never be accepted in any serious court as a proof, simply because it can be fabricated and you wouldn't be able to prove if it was. See also:
http://www.infowars.net/articles/february2007/190207Osama_ta...
Finally, it's quite certain that had been Bin Laden caught alive, there wouldn't be enough evidence to trial him. That's the major reason why the order was obviously to "kill him."
I agree that in a fair and impartial trial, what we've been given may not have been enough to secure a prosecution. And there may or may not be enough evidence to actually implicate Osama in 9/11. But why does Chomsky act like there was nothing but the October 2001 video where he praises the attack? If he wants to argue that there isn't enough evidence to link Osama to 9/11 he should at least present all the evidence. As it is he comes off as disingenuous by not mentioning all the other videos and evidence (which I'm sure he is aware of).
There is a lot more I disagree with in his reaction but that stands out the most.
The three word answer is "might makes right" and many books and many articles don't really expand much upon that. The USA is a modern empire and we can put contracts out on people and hit them, end of story. Don't like it, then go eff yourself. End of story. He knows this.
It's no different than a small town mayor bitching about a county authority bitching about a governor bitching about a federal bureaucrat bitching about an executive. One power trumps another, and that doesn't end at the lines of nation states. The million-tentacled montster exceeds the explanatory powers of the 1000 word op-ed.
I know that this shouldn't be the usual case and there should probably be ample time for the accused to show up (three, four, five years) and then there is the question how someone who doesn't even show up should be defended but I don't see any huge problems with that, especially if it's only used in very rare cases.
In short, you say you don't see any huge problems, but that sounds a little like Fermat saying he can't fit a proof in the margin. I suspect that if you look further you'll start seeing problems :p
The Confrontation Clause, as embodied in the sixth amendment to the US constitution, is generally regarded as a good thing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixth_Amendment_to_the_United_S...
So I make this call first:
- in 20 years when the U.S. military
can deploy networked/armed decentralized
P2P microweapons with explosive, chemical,
and nano agents, such a network will be
named the "Al Qaeda Swarm"
- to introduce new programming/objectives to
this decentralized network will be termed
"upgrading its bin Laden"
Whether there is a Republican or Democrat in office, America ignores international law when it suits its own interests to do so.
If he hadn't already lost me, he would have here.
Chomsky reminds me of the college student with a Che shirt. Inexcusably ignorant.