I'd be interested in hearing what you disagree with Chomsky .. in my opinion he is one of the most enlightened American academics we have right now, and I personally wish more Americans were exposed to his point of view - it would certainly calm a lot of fires if the average American realized the true, human, cost of their empire.
As far as calling Americans terrorists- how else would you describe the 80+ military actions that America has taken, in the name of its people, since the end of WW2? I mean, policing the world is one thing; bombing certain cultures to absolute oblivion is another thing entirely. What could it be rather than the mass export of terror to the non-militarized world, when American drones act with impunity, American agents operate undeterred in foreign governments, and so on? I think that anyone 'disagreeing' that America engages in terrorism clearly needs to take another renewed look at the situation .. America is most definitely one of the most terrible nations on the planet, in terms of its value of human life. I say this with sincerity, and I do truly believe that America has a lot of positives; however, they are far, far outweighed by the negative impact on humanity that the American people have, and continue to have daily, on the world at large. Every single drone strike is a crime.
Where do I disagree? He is too extreme. Things are never that black and white. He, nor you or I have all of the information surrounding the events of the last fifty or one-hundred years of international politics and conflict be able to hold such extreme positions.
Have people behaved badly? Absolutely. You can go back a thousand years and still make that claim. You can go back three thousand years and still make that claim. The problem isn't a specific people, the problem is the human proclivity for devolving into behaving badly. I don't quite understand how we are going to fix that.
Chomsky himself says very clearly that none of this is abnormal. Any power has historically behaved this way. If the arab world was as powerful as the US they'd most-certainly behave worst. Look at how they treat half their population, in the form of women. Not justifying any of it. Simply stating that this is about the human condition. Ultimately that is what needs to be addressed.
The US might be irrelevant in another hundred years, maybe even less. The next super power (China?) will, with time, probably behave in an equivalent fashion. Chomsky says that this always happens, and he is right. If China where in our position and they had been attacked 9/11-style there's no doubt in my mind that they would have nuked half the arab world out of existence. At least Bush had enough self-restraint not to do that. Not that I'm a fan.
> The next super power (China?) will, with time, probably behave in an equivalent fashion.
And no doubt when they do, you'll be at the forefront defending them? Re-read your 2nd and 3rd paragraphs as a defence of China as a world power. Do you still stand by them?
> And no doubt when they do, you'll be at the forefront defending them? Re-read your 2nd and 3rd paragraphs as a defence of China as a world power. Do you still stand by them?
I don't quite understand how you read what s/he said as a defense of the US' behavior or the putative future behavior of China. An acknowledgment that people in power behave like assholes, sure, but it's in the overall context of criticizing Chomsky's political writings as being somewhat simplistic in how they handle the ethics of power politics. Or perhaps you believe that the black and white view of things is the right and proper one, and failing to adopt it is equivalent to apologizing for misdeeds by those in power.
Oh perhaps. Perhaps I'm not sophisticated enough to appreciate the diplomatic nuances of "China would be just as bad, and the arabs would be worse"(paraphrase)
Anyone else able to build this? I ran into a brick wall:
$ ./build
# github.com/coreos/etcd/store
src/github.com/coreos/etcd/store/store.go:633: method s.checkNode is not an expression, must be called
# github.com/ccding/go-config-reader/config
src/github.com/ccding/go-config-reader/config/config.go:35: undefined: bufio.NewScanner
# github.com/coreos/go-raft
src/github.com/coreos/go-raft/log.go:241: function ends without a return statement
As far as calling Americans terrorists- how else would you describe the 80+ military actions that America has taken, in the name of its people, since the end of WW2? I mean, policing the world is one thing; bombing certain cultures to absolute oblivion is another thing entirely. What could it be rather than the mass export of terror to the non-militarized world, when American drones act with impunity, American agents operate undeterred in foreign governments, and so on? I think that anyone 'disagreeing' that America engages in terrorism clearly needs to take another renewed look at the situation .. America is most definitely one of the most terrible nations on the planet, in terms of its value of human life. I say this with sincerity, and I do truly believe that America has a lot of positives; however, they are far, far outweighed by the negative impact on humanity that the American people have, and continue to have daily, on the world at large. Every single drone strike is a crime.