To The Chagrin of Chomsky

            In a mix of lofty idealism and nonsensical conclusions, Noam Chomsky attempts to project his view of 9/11, and the actions thereafter.  Professor Chomsky posits three examples of American exceptionalism.  First, Chomsky equates the terrorist attacks carried out against the US as akin to American moves to stabilize Chile by aiding the Pinochet regime.  Second, the he argues for the trial of Osama Bin Laden, and that there should have been extra efforts to take him alive.  Last, Chomsky makes claim that the United States in taking military action in Afghanistan had violated international law.  In each case however there are glaring oversights that are to be analyzed.

            The first 9/11 as Chomsky describes was the United States helping Pinochet seize power.  However there are key differences in the “terror attack” the US committed, and the terror attack against it.  The death toll of the 9/11 attacks was upwards of 2,950 civilians, not government officials, counter coup leaders or soldiers, but unarmed civilians.  Instead Pinochet’s coup was the select imprisonment and removal of Marxist leaders, and allowing the military to take power.  The government Pinochet replaced was by no means lawful.  As Niall Ferguson, professor of history at Harvard explains, “prior to the coup d’état, the Chilean Supreme Court denounced the Allende government’s disruption of the legality of the nation in its failure to uphold judicial decisions.”  When the United States sent aid to Pinochet, they were aiding an economically liberal, and legally minded faction in a nation undergoing a rapid shift to a communist regime.  At this point it becomes paramount to explain the core differences in the theories of idealism and realism.  Idealism is the theory that things can become the ideal, and that there can be paths with no downsides in both foreign policy and domestic policy.  In contrast to the impossible to achieve idealism there is realism, which takes into account all parts of a situation and attempts to weigh the harms and benefits to find a net beneficial and achievable course of action.  The view that Pinochet was holistically a harmful character to the Chilean nation is an example of the lofty idealism so prevalent in Chomsky’s essay.  In many ways Pinochet saved Chile, he prompted a period of rapid economic growth, stabilized the country (through admittedly less than peaceful means), and peacefully handed power back to a democracy, all while maintaining massive approval from the population he governed.  In no way was this regime change akin to the US committing the mass murder of civilians for no reason but shear hatred of their ideas and people, which was the motivation of Al-Qaeda in their 9/11.

            Second, Chomsky presents that the United States should have pursued a trial in court rather, and made extra effort to capture Osama Bin Laden.  Chomsky makes the claim that if only the US had tried to extradite Bin Laden from Afghanistan it would have worked.  Two problems emerge with the claim, first the US had already attempted to extradite Bin Laden and failed, second there were issues in geography.  First as the United Nations notes in resolution 1333,

“Noting the indictment of Usama bin Laden and his associates by the United States of America for, inter alia, the 7 August 1998 bombings of the United States embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and for conspiring to kill American nationals outside the United States, and noting also the request of the United States of America to the Taliban to surrender them for trial.” 

So in fact it was quite clear how the Taliban was likely to respond, they were not likely to extradite post 9/11 if they weren’t before.  Next, Chomsky seems to forget the infrastructure, politics, and geography of Afghanistan.  The infrastructure of Afghanistan is to say the least poor, and around 2001 even worse.  The politics of Afghanistan were by no means unified, individual factions of ethnic, religious, and tribal origins controlled large portions of the country.  As a result even if the Taliban decided to try and extradite Bin Laden, he could likely have gone to a place out of their effective control.  Lastly the Afghan nation is crisscrossed by a number of mountain ranges, allowing for Bin Laden to hide effectively against the Taliban if they searched for him.  Moreover though the Nurnberg trials set a legal precedent for armed, uniformed combatants.  In other words the legal precedent of giving a terrorist the right to trial did not exist from the post WWII trial.  In practical matters as well, an explicit order to kill Bin Laden was more effective, as keeping him for trial would only further motivate radicals and fanatics endangering Americans at home and abroad.

            Finally Chomsky makes claim that the United States had violated international law by taking military action in Afghanistan.  It is important to note that international law is derived from the United Nations, and in the UN charter article 51 any state is given the right to self-defense, clarifying that, “Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations.” By even the most relaxed standards the killing of 2977 persons is an attack.  The role of the Taliban in protecting and supporting the leadership of the group that committed the attack made them guilty by association.  Therefore, the US under the most explicit of international treaties, the UN charter, the United States had the right to self-defense.  However the United States actions were even further supported by international law as evidenced by UN resolution 1373 where the security council, “Reaffirming the need to combat by all means, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, threats to international peace and security caused by terrorist acts,” within that statement the US was granted the right to combat threats to peace and security, which were constituted by terrorist groups including the Taliban.  Once again it would appear that Chomsky’s ideals fail to equate to the reality of international law, since within both the UN charter and later resolutions countries were given the blessing of the UN to protect their security.  So instead of breaking international law, the US actions were well within the bounds of UN law.  Another important failing of Chomsky is to recognize the fact that the United States was not invading but backing Hamid Karzai and his forces.  Hamid Karzai was the acting leader of Afghanistan post 2001, and as such his approval of American troops to continue eliminating terrorist threats in Afghanistan served to finally remove any legal question about the American intervention on behalf of the Northern alliance.

            To conclude, Chomsky’s theory that America omitted itself from following the rules was far from true, his historical example of Pinochet, overblown, his theory of international law, misguided, his view on legal precedent, faulty. 


Works Cited
Brown, Lewis. Guilty economics? Friedman, Pinochet and Chile. Event Panel. City of London: Center for Policy Studies, 2012. Document

United Nations, Charter of the United Nations, 24 October 1945. Web. 9 September 2015.

Security Council resolution 1333, S/RES/1333 (19 December 2000)