Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2000 11:54:12 +1000 (EST)
Subject: Re: PKF: terrorist sweethearts


Good to see finally what is behind Alexander's claims that Chomsky
supports terrorists.  (Only now they're "figmentive but potential".)

I'm not speaking (I think?) from a particularly left-wing position, more
perhaps from a hardened realist one.

First: Surely it's absolutely clear that at least in the quoted
passages Chomsky is doing anything but supporting terrorism,
but is attacking what he takes, rightly or wrongly, to be a hypocritical
double standard, pointing out that the rationale for the Clinton doctrine
is the general rationale for terrorism, and if applied across the board and
not merely by the USA government and its allies, would "justify"
bombing Washington.  He is so far from supporting terrorists that he takes
it as a devastating attack on Clinton to argue that he is putting himself
on a par with them.  He makes himself very clear:

"In response to terrorism, further terrorism is not authorized.
If Cuba or Nicaragua or Lebanon or whatever were to drop
bombs in Washington - although it would be justified under the
Clinton doctrine - it wouldn't be justified in any other sense."

(I couldn't tell what were Thompson's comments from what were
Alexander's; in what follows I'll attribute them to Thompson.)

Second, even Thompson's attack on Chomsky does not interpret him
as defending terrorists.  Thompson is doing two things.  One is
violently disagreeing with Chomsky's analysis : "tripe" etc.; but he
does not argue for this.  Rather, he focusses on the second thing:
arguing that (even if Chomsky is/were right in what he said) it is
irresponsible to say such things in public, because evil men
read selectively and are likely to take things out of context as
genuinely justifying their own crimes.

I suspect Chomsky _is_ right.  And here I am saying so in a discussion
group where at least some people may well read selectively,
influenced by political hatreds!  Which makes me not only
irresponsible according to Thompson, but by your criteria, Alexander,
a supporter of terrorists.  (I've been called that before - and a "nurturer
of potential stormtroopers", in the press - for arguing against
student protesters against the Vietnam war being expelled from a
University without a hearing.  My explicit positions were not taken as
particularly relevant; I was also a notorious pacifist, but so what?

There is a point to the Thompson type criticism.  My arguing that the
Vietnam war was barbaric and indefensible did influence some to
oppose it, who went on to do so violently.  So I contributed to that
outcome.  Should I then have shut up and not opposed the vast carnage?
I think not.  And I hope Chomsky doesn't shut up either.

Best wishes
John Fox

John F Fox
School of Philosophy
La Trobe University
Bundoora, Vic 3083
Australia


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