A reader writes:
Someone should point Chomsky to the tape Bin Laden released in December 2001, when he says: "[W]e calculated in advance the number of casualties from the enemy, who would be killed based on the position of the tower. We calculated that the floors that would be hit would be three or four floors. I was the most optimistic of them all."
Another writes:
I agree that Chomsky's use of the word "uncontroversially" is at best wrong-headed; you always have to watch out for people who use words/phrases like "it's a proven fact." But if he had phrased it as "Bush's actions wreaked more havoc than Bin Laden's," do you think that would be fair?
The motives of the two men couldn't be more different. Bin Laden's goal was to kill as many people as he could and Bush wanted to stop an imminent attack on America/remove a tyrant from power/build a democracy in the Arab world. While the dead and wounded in Iraq were not "goals" of the administration, they did occur. The Iraq War cost more American lives than 9/11 did and untold thousands of Iraqi lives. Bush's intentions may have been good, but as the old adage goes, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions."
Hitch attacked Chomsky's lastest effort by associating Chomsky with 9/11 trutherism and 9/11 apologism:
It's no criticism of Chomsky to say that his analysis is inconsistent with that of other individuals and factions who essentially think that 9/11 was a hoax. However, it is remarkable that he should write as if the mass of evidence against Bin Laden has never been presented or could not have been brought before a court. This form of 9/11 denial doesn't trouble to conceal an unstated but self-evident premise, which is that the United States richly deserved the assault on its citizens and its civil society. After all, as Chomsky phrases it so tellingly, our habit of "naming our murder weapons after victims of our crimes: Apache, Tomahawk … [is] as if the Luftwaffe were to call its fighter planes 'Jew' and 'Gypsy.' " Perhaps this is not so true in the case of Tomahawk, which actually is the name of a weapon, but the point is at least as good as any other he makes.
Freddie deBoer sides with Chomsky:
Here is Chomsky refuting 9/11 conspiracy theories in about the least vague terms imaginable. You might consider the entire book that Chomsky published about 9/11 for repeated and consistent denials of the morality of killing innocent civilians on 9/11. This stuff isn't hard to find. Hitchens writes, "It's no criticism of Chomsky to say that his analysis is inconsistent with that of other individuals and factions who essentially think that 9/11 was a hoax." If this is his admission that Chomsky is not a Truther, it's as weird and awkwardly constructed as I can imagine, which I guess is the point. He then says "However, it is remarkable that he should write as if the mass of evidence against Bin Laden has never been presented or could not have been brought before a court." It's remarkable? I find it demonstrably unremarkable, considering that, well, the mass of evidence against bin Laden has never been formally presented in a legal setting– the way we answer questions of crime and legality, or we did, when we were the society of our ideals.
The Dish 