|
May 30, 2002
Tom Turnipseed
Sex Among the Sacred
George Monbiot
Corporate
Phantoms
Web of Deciet over GM Foods
Robert Jensen
Are You a Journalist
or a Patriot?
Gary Leupp
Georgia
and the War on Terror
May 29, 2002
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Age of Inequality
Philip Farruggio
The
Cleaning Lady
Bill Christison
Disastrous US Foreign Policy:
Part 2, Globalization
May 28, 2002
Michael Leon
Lincoln
Brigades Memorial
Scott Lucas
Christopher Hitchens:
No Longer an Authentic
Voice of Dissent
Nelson P. Valdes
Castro,
Bioterrorism and
the State Department
Harvey Wasserman
What Does the White House Know
About Atomic Terror?
Norman Madarasz
France,
Brazil, the Politics
of the World Cup
May 27, 2002
Dave Marsh
Why I Voted for Nader:
Ticketmaster's Stranglehold
on Music and Politics
Robert Fisk
The Coming
Firestorm:
Bush's Crazed Remarks
May 26, 2002
Alexander Cockburn
Diary of a Northwest Trip:
Why Reds Live Longer
May 25, 2002
Chris Floyd
General
Principles:
Unmasking Colin Powell
Gavin Keeney
All Politics is Local? The Unbearable
Lightness of NGO's
Jeffrey St. Clair
A Hero
of Our Time:
Stephen Jay Gould
May 24, 2002
Edward Hammond
Documents Prove Pentagon Violated
Bioweapons Act
Mark Weisbrot
Bush
Administration Scandals:
Beginning of the End?
Feingold / Corzine
Halt Executions Nationwide
Bill Christison
Former
CIA Analyst:
Big Changes Needed in
US Intelligence Agencies
May 23, 2002
Dean Baker
Attack of the Clowns:
The Real Bush is Back
Susan Abulhawa
Israel
and South Africa:
Apartheid's Accidental Prophecy
Uri Avnery
Sharon the Great Reformer?
Behzad Yaghmaian
Travails
of a Middle Eastern Migrant: Accosted at the Border
May 22, 2002
Brian J. Foley
Dick Cheney's Obscenity
Gavin Keeney
Bete Noire
Enron & the Great Game
Fran Shor
Follow the Money
Bush, bin Laden & Carlyle
May 21, 2002
George Monbiot
Riddle
of the Spores:
The FBI and Anthrax
Yulie Khromchenko
Displaced Reality:
Impressions from Jenin
Bernard Weiner
Kenny
Boy to Bush:
"Welcome to the Club"
Ron Jacobs
Confusing the Face
of the Enemy
Gary Leupp
"War
on Terrorism" in Yemen
May 20, 2002
Rep. Ron Paul
Say No to Military Draft
Dave Marsh
Music Monopolies
Jordy Cummings
Israel, Jews and the Left
Francis Boyle
In Defense
of a Divestment
Campaign Against Israel
Christian Salmon
The Bulldozer War
Edward Said
Crisis for
American Jews
May 19, 2002
Philip Farruggio
Where's Twain's Protector Government
Now?
Norman Madarasz
Canada,
NAFTA and Kyoto
May 18, 2002
M.G. Piety
Economic Fiction:
From Here to Annuity?
Michael Colby
Bush Fiddled
While
New York Burned
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
(Click Here to Order from CounterPunch
Online at 20% Off Amazon.com's price!)
INSIDE
EXCLUSIVE
TO
COUNTERPUNCH
SUBSCRIBERS
Published March 15, 2002
Read Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
Buy
This Explosive
New Book at an
Amazing Discount!
Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual
|
May 30, 2002
CNN Debate on
"Terrorism"
Chomsky
v. Bennett
[CNN
Transcript, May 30, 2002]
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: They are two best selling authors
with two very different takes on terrorism. In his book,
"9-11," Noam Chomsky accuses the United States of being
a
terrorist state. He says the war in Afghanistan is wrong,
states that in recent history, America has committed acts of
terrorism, and maintains that America's foreign policy is
hypocritical.
In Bill Bennett's "Why
We Fight," he says the war on terror
is morally just. He maintains that democracy and human
rights are America's noblest exports, and that we must be
prepared to respond to anti-American critics. Talk about a
war of words. Well, Bill Bennett joins us now from New York,
and Noam Chomsky joins us from Boston. Welcome, gentlemen.
Great to have both of you with us.
BILL BENNETT, AUTHOR,
"WHY
WE FIGHT" (Amazon Rank 507): Thank you.
NOAM CHOMSKY, AUTHOR, "9-11"
(Amazon Rank: 220): Hello.
ZAHN: I would like to start off, professor,
by reading a
very small excerpt from your book where you write that
nothing can justify crimes such as those of September 11,
but we can think of the United States as an innocent victim
only if we adopt the convenient path of ignoring the record
of its actions and those of its allies, which are, after
all, hardly a secret. What are you referring to here?
CHOMSKY: Well, for example, the United
States happens to be
the only state in the world that has been condemned by the
World Court for international terrorism, would have been
condemned by the Security Council, except that it vetoed the
resolution. This referred to the U.S. terrorist war against
Nicaragua, the court ordered the United States to desist and
pay reparations. The U.S. responded by immediately
escalating the crimes, including first official orders to
attack what are called soft targets -- undefended civilian
targets. This is massive terrorism. It is by no means the
worst, and it continues right to the present, so for
example...
ZAHN: Bill Bennett, your response
to what the professor
said, and then we will let him pick up from there.
BENNETT: It's quite extraordinary to
hear a supposedly
learned person call the United States a leading terrorist
nation, one of the leading terrorist nations in the world.
It's false and very treacherous teaching. In the situation
Mr. Chomsky is talking about, of course, the United States
supported the Contras in Nicaragua. The condemnation or
judgment by the World Court was not that it was terrorism,
but that we supported some unlawful activity. However, when
there were free elections in Nicaragua, and Mrs. Chamorro
took office, all the lawsuits, all the complaints against
the United States were dropped, when you had a
democratically elected country.
We have done more good
for more people than any country in
the history of the world. What I want to know of Mr. Chomsky
is if he believes we are a leading terrorist state, he is
obviously welcome in the United States, why do you choose to
live, sir, in a terrorist nation?
CHOMSKY: First of all, the World Court
condemned the United
States for what it called "the unlawful use of force and
violation of treaties."
BENNETT: Which is not terrorism.
CHOMSKY: That's international terrorism.
BENNETT: No, it is not.
CHOMSKY: Yes, it is exactly international
terrorism.
BENNETT: No, it is not, sir.
CHOMSKY: Furthermore, the escalation
to attack undefended
civilian targets is just a classic illustration of
terrorism. And furthermore, it continues right to the
present, as I was saying, so for example...
BENNETT: It's quite...
CHOMSKY: May I continue?
BENNETT: Sure.
CHOMSKY: In the late
1990s, some of the worst terrorist
atrocities in the world were what the Turkish government
itself called state terror, namely massive atrocities, 80
percent of the arms coming from the United States, millions
of refugees, tens of thousands of people killed, hideous
repression, that's international terror, and we can go on
and on.
(CROSSTALK)
ZAHN: Before you go further, let's
give Bill a chance to
respond to respond to the Turkish string (ph) of this -- go
ahead, Bill.
BENNETT: America responsible for hideous
repression and
refugees? Why is it, Mr. Chomsky, whenever there are
refugees in the world, they flee to the United States rather
than from the United States? Why is it on balance, Mr.
Chomsky, that this nation, when it opens its gates, has
people rushing in? Why is it that it is this nation the
world looks to for support and encouragement and help? We
rebuilt Europe twice in this century, after two world wars.
We liberated Europe from Nazi tyranny. We have liberated
Eastern Europe in the last few years from communist tyranny,
and now we are engaged in a battle against something else.
When we went in to Kabul,
even the "New York Times" in mid-
November showed pictures of people smiling at the presence
of American troops, because this country was once again a
force for freedom, and a force for liberation. Have we done
some terrible things in our history? Of course we have. But
as Senator Moynihan has pointed out, our people find out
about them from reading the newspapers and watching
television. When you look at this nation on balance, in
terms of what good it has done and what bad it has done, it
is grossly irresponsible to talk about this country as a
terrorist nation, and to suggest, as do you in your book,
that there is justification, moral justification, for what
happened on 9/11. For that, sir, you really should be
ashamed.
CHOMSKY: You should be ashamed for lying
about what is in
the book, because nothing is said -- in fact, the quote was
just given, nothing can justify the terrorist attacks of
September 11. You just heard the quote, if you want to
falsify it, that's your business.
BENNETT: No -- well, I...
CHOMSKY: Just a minute -- did I interrupt
you? Did I
interrupt you?
ZAHN: Professor, let me jump in here,
but implicit in that
-- aren't you saying that you understand why America was
targeted?
CHOMSKY: Do I understand? Yes, so does
the U.S. intelligence
services, so does all of scholarship. I mean, we can ignore
it if we like, and therefore lead to further terrorist
attacks, or we can try to understand. What Mr. Bennett said
is about half true. The United States has done some very
good things in the world, and that does not change the fact
that the World Court was quite correct in condemning the
United States as an international terrorist state, nor do
the atrocities in Turkey in the last few years -- they are
not obviated by the fact that there are other good things
that happen. Sure. That's -- you are correct when you say
good things have happened, but if we are not total
hypocrites, in the sense of the gospels, we will pay
attention to our own crimes. For one reason, because that's
elementary morality -- elementary morality. For another
thing, because we mitigate them.
ZAHN: All right, professor, I'm going
to have to leave it
there with you, Bill Bennett, and we have got to leave it to
about 20 seconds.
BENNETT: It there any nation that acknowledges
its errors
and its sins and its crimes and the things it has done that
are not consistent with its principles more than the United
States? No, there is not.
This is also the man,
just let it be said for the record,
who said that the reports of atrocities by the Khmer Rouge
were grossly exaggerated. This is the man who said when we
engaged the Soviet Union that we...
CHOMSKY: No, it's not. But that is...
BENNETT: I didn't interrupt you -- that
we were continuing
the Nazi effort against Russia. Go through the Chomsky work,
line by line, argument by argument, and you will see this is
a man who has made a career out of hating America and out of
trashing the record of this country. Of course, there is a
mixed record in this country, why do you choose to live in
this terrorist nation, Mr. Chomsky?
CHOMSKY: I don't. I choose to live in
what I think is the
greatest country in the world, which is committing
horrendous terrorist acts and should stop.
BENNETT: I think you should say greatest
-- I think you
should say greatest a little more often.
CHOMSKY: If you want to be a hypocrite...
(CROSSTALK)
BENNETT: I think you should acknowledge
its virtues a little
more often, Mr. Chomsky.
CHOMSKY: And you should acknowledge its
crimes.
BENNETT: I do. Read my book. You will
see it.
CHOMSKY: No, you never do. No, sorry.
And if you want to...
BENNETT: I am reading other people's
books.
CHOMSKY: If you want to know what I say,
do not listen to
Mr. Bennett's falsifications of which I just gave an
example.
BENNETT: Read both books.
ZAHN: Gentlemen, we are going to have
to cut off both of you
there. Noam Chomsky, Bill Bennett, thank you for both of
your thoughts, and I think probably the best course of
action anybody can take out there, is buy both of your books
so they can make their own judgment.
BENNETT: That's fine.
ZAHN: Gentlemen, thank you very much
for your time.
CHOMSKY: Yes.
|