Moral intransigeance: In defense of Noam Chomsky

Peter Beaumont reviews Noam Chomsky's 'Failed states' . In the review he accuses Chomsky of allowing 'bile and rhetoric to replace intellectual rigour'

His arguments ?

1. Chomsky is seeing the forest and not the trees.

''Chomsky chooses to deal with America's growing democratic deficit not by putting it under a microscope, but by reaching for hyperbole.''

2. Chomsky is not seeing America's good actions (which are things from the past).

''I could find no mention of the Marshall Plan, although there is enough about American crimes in Guatemala, to which he returns repeatedly. He can find enough to say about America's misdemeanours during the Cold War; but nothing about the genuine fear of the Soviet Union, one of the most brutally efficient human-rights-abusing states in history.''

3. Chomsky's position on Serbia's NATO bombardment.

''In setting about this task quite so selectively, he allies himself with some obnoxious characters. While Chomsky was righteously indignant over suggestions in a recent Guardian interview that he defended Srebrenica, he does portray a certain sympathy for Slobodan Milosevic. Kosovo, in his reading, began in 1999 with Nato bombers, not in 1998 with Serbian police actions that cleared villages, towns and valleys of their populations. (I know this, Mr Chomsky, because I saw them do it.)''

4. Chomsky is not seeing America's good intentions !

''Where I differ from him, however, is that I reject Chomsky's view that American misdeeds are printed through history like the lettering in a stick of rock. Instead, the conclusions I have drawn from more than a decade of reporting wars on the ground is that motivations are complex, messy and contradictory, that the best intentions can spawn the worst outcomes and, occasionally, vice versa.''

5. Chomsky is very influent among bloggers and therefore Beaumont wants to save bloggers from lies (or serve them his own lies).

''It is important to recognise this fact because the Chomskian analysis has become the defining dissident voice of the blogosphere and a certain kind of far-left academia. So a sense of its integrity is crucial. It is obsessively well-read, but rather famished in original research, except when it is counting how often the liberal media say this or that in their search for hidden, and sometimes not-so-hidden, bias. Crucially, it is not interested in debate, because balance is a ruse of the liberal media elites used to con the dumb masses. Chomsky is essential to save you, dear reader, from the lies we peddle.''

My arguments in defense of Chomsky:

1. Sometimes you need to see the big picture. If you stay at the lower level analysis you might not realise the consequences of American actions in the world. It is the same for climate change. Complexe phenomena need higher level analysis.

2. Concerning Serbia, it seems to me that mainstream western media and intellectuals have adopted a narrative and they are not accepting a challenge to this narrative. They are charging every intellectual who is not adopting their narrative of treason, complicity with Milosevic and awkwardness... Not long ago, Peter Handke have seen his play cancelled in France by the director of the Odeon theater because of his presence at Milosevic's funerals. Chomsky was attacked before by Emmma Brokes in the pages of the Guardian on his position on Serbia. Western media and intellectuals cannot support challenges to their official narrative on Serbia and the NATO bombardment because this narrative established 'humanitarian interventions' as a doctrine for wars against nonfriendly regimes and their civilian populations. Invalidating the NATO bombardment of Serbia will invalidate all other subsequent imperialistic wars done in the name of 'humanitarian intervention', 'freedom' and 'democracy', like the Iraq war. These narratives are becoming powerful motives and means for the West's imperialistic hubris.

The 'I was there and I have seen it all' is a weak argument. Descriptive analysis of political events miss the cultural and historical contexts most of the time and this is a problem with current western journalism: Insensitivity to other cultures and the will to apply a monolithic cultural standard to all civilisations and judge them by this standard.

3. Chomsky is misunderstood because he speaks from a moral point of view and there are no concessions, middle of the road position to be made when you speak from this position. It is erroneous to think that adopting a middle of the road position is somehow rational and conciliatory. This is moral relativism, a moral illness eating out present western thought. Moderation is not the middle of a line drawn between two extremes, it is a point outside this line (Aristotle).

4. Missing the point on America's good actions is not a fault on Chomsky's part. Because if you are judging an accuser of a horrible crime you are going to judge it for this crime no matter what he did otherwise. Missing the point on America's good intentions is another point: you don't judge people on their intentions, you judge them on their actions ! 'L'enfer est pavé de bonnes intentions' goes a french saying: 'The hell is full with good intentions'.

5. Chomsky speaks from the position of moral intransigeance and it seems that moral intransigeance is not a virtue anymore because our western society is becoming the champion of double standards and hypocrisy, applying on other cultures moral relativism and cultural absolutism, when it is suitable and profitable.

6. The US's imperialistic project is having its way easily because of the absence of vigourous dissent on the national and international levels due to the lack of rigourous moral standards and cultural empathy. Peter Beaumont, as every other mainstream western agent of the media or intellectual, lacks both cultural empathy and rigourous moral standards.