by
Scott Creighton
The motivation behind writing this article should be understood as it is intended on two key points: (1) to serve as a correction of multiple fallacious arguments on the part of both Sam Harris and Noam Chomsky with regard to their recent email correspondence “debate” recently published by Harris on his website and (2) and open invitation from myself to debate either or BOTH of them simultaneously in order to counter said fallacious arguments.
What is the value of a thesis if it is fundamentally flawed from the start and what is the value of a debate on that thesis given that rudimentary foundation is existentially crippled from the very beginning? The answer to both of those questions, in terms of what educated men like Sam Harris and Noam Chomsky must understand, both holding advanced degrees from prestigious institutions of higher learning, is ZERO.
Yet, that is what the left leaning world has been treated to in the historic email “debate” between these two credible, accredited cutting edge thinkers of these dark, disturbing modern days we find ourselves muddling through.
Chomsky claimed at the end of the “debate” that publishing it would be tantamount to “exhibitionism” on the part of Sam Harris (though he could easily have withheld his permission to publish, so in fact, who’s “exhibitionism” is on display here Noam?) while Sam countered with what I believe is the more accurate assessment of the overall point of this tedious exhibition of public mental masturbation between the two:
“However, if publishing this exchange helps anyone to better communicate about these topics in the future, our time won’t have been entirely wasted.” Sam Harris
I will let that statement and Noam’s allowing Sam to publish it speak for themselves. Frankly, when you look closely at the facts surrounding the main arguments they debated, this discussion between these two “giants” of intellectual discourse wont help anyone understand these topics any better, much less communicate their snake oil versions events with even the slightest bit of clarity to their friends and colleagues around the water cooler.
Fatal Flaw #1: al Qaeda and 9/11 – A Question of Intention
At the core of this “debate” between Sam Harris and Noam Chomsky lies the question of intent i.e. what exactly was the intention of the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 as compared morally to the intention of various US administrations with regard to (a) Bush bombing Iraq and Afghanistan killing an estimated 1 million people (b) Clinton imposing vicious sanctions on Iraq killing as estimated 500,000 children and (c) Clinton’s bombing of the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Sudan killing tens of thousands as a result.
This topic is the heart of their so-called “debate” and at first glance it seems poignant and timely as the Global War OF Terrorism, now renamed for retooling sake, marches on from country to country to country, always fighting the “extremists”, always calling those opposed to our neoliberal order “extremists”
Mr. Harris takes at face value the humanitarian claims of the various administrations in that their actions were intended, though mistaken at times (in the case of the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant), for right and just purposes. Chomsky points out, rightly, that all fascist tyrannies support their actions, brutal as they may be, with right and just rhetoric that apologists are always more than ready to accept at face value, as Harris proves many times over that he is more than willing to do.
So at face value, it’s easy to see why websites like AlterNet and many various writers and bloggers will look at this exchange and chalk it up as a victory for Mr. Chomsky. While Noam methodically hacks away at Sam’s appeasement ideology which lies at the heart of his argument, Sam is reduced to debating the debate itself, taking on the typical last-ditch tactic of the troll: calling out Noam for his “tone” and never really addressing the sickness of his own flawed position.
Being the habitual contrarian that I am, I posit the notion that neither of these two men “won” anything in this debate of controlled opposition of gate-keepers basically for the simple fact that their primary assumption is completely wrong.
They wonder aloud which terrorism is of the more diabolical nature: that of the radical Islamists who attacked us on 9/11 or that of the radical globalists who attacked everyone before and since in the name of 9/11 or whatever other “terrorist” act they had to justify it at the time and my contention is this is a false dichotomy because, as the evidence points out clearly to anyone paying attention, these events were in fact committed by the same entities and for the same purposes.
I can understand Sam Harris not getting it. He’s an ideological zealot who couldn’t see the forest for the trees even if he wanted to.
But Chomsky is something different. He himself has written that the US is the greatest purveyor of terrorism in the world today and has also written that there is no evidence to support the conclusion that al Qaeda or Bin Laden for that matter had anything to do with 9/11. He has also written, and rightly, that Bin Laden made it very clear right after 9/11, in the last confirmed video of his, that he did not have anything to do with the attack and people of this country should instead look to powerful influential people here in the states if we wanted to find the culprits.
Of course, Noam makes no mention of this tiny little detail during his “debate” with Sam.
How short would this “debate” have been if Sam’s position was undermined in such a way that he couldn’t even blame 9/11 on those “God-intoxicated sociopaths”? If the massive amount of evidence, both physical and circumstantial, suggesting 9/11 was indeed a false flag designed and carried out by well placed neocons in the Bush administration, was entered into evidence at the beginning of this “debate” thus silencing Mr. Harris’ primary talking point: 9/11! 9/11! 9/11!?
Where does Mr. Harris’ foundation of “the moral significance of intention” end up once that bomb is dropped?
- Noam understands and knows quite well that the only evidence for al Qaeda being involved in 9/11 comes from torture sessions which the videos of which were later burned by the CIA, illegally, once the 9/11 Commission demanded they be turned over for inspection.
- Noam understands and knows quite well that the neocon Project for a New American Century had written and published a white paper blueprint for their new American hegemony they planned to begin in 2001. A paper which, published exactly a year before 9/11, stated all of their plans depended on a swift transition which could only be achieved via a “new Pearl Harbor type event”
- Noam understands and knows quite well that those same neocons who wrote calling for a “new Pearl Harbor type event” were placed in key positions in the new Bush administration in early 2001 after George W Bush was given the office in the White House via several illegal manipulations of the electoral process of 2000.
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- Noam understands and wrote I believe, that the Taliban had been in negotiations with the Bush administration and various others for at least a year prior to 9/11 and were made an offer of “a carpet of gold” if they allowed US oil interests to run a pipeline through the heart of their country with corresponding US troops to protect it. They refused and were then promised “a carpet of bombs” for doing so. This was a few months prior to 9/11 and this is not a matter of speculation, it’s a matter of fact. The plans for the bombing and invasion of Afghanistan were placed on Bush’s desk a week prior to 9/11.
- Noam understands and knows quite well that Donald Rumsfeld, neocon, announced a “missing” 2.3 trillion dollars from the Pentagon defense department funds on Sept. 10, 2001 and had put in charge of finding that missing money one Dov Zacheim, neocon, whose office it was that was hit on Sept. 11, 2001, killing the majority of those accountants who were looking into where the money went and destroying many of the records they needed to track it. Dov and Donald escaped without a scratch.
- Noam understands and knows quite well that Cheney sat down with CEOs of various oil and liquid natural gas companies in early Jan. 2001 with the intention of dividing up Iraq’s vast oil reserves, figuring out who gets what when they would eventually lie about Iraq and WMDs for the purpose of taking that oil for their own.
- Noam should understand that no steel framed buildings have ever completely collapsed due to office fires until it happened three times, not just twice, but three times on Sept. 11, 2001.
- Noam should understand that it’s a physical impossibility for Building 7 to collapse at free fall acceleration without the use of controlled demolition.
- Noam should understand that the RJ Lee report concluded the metallic micro-spheres they found in the dust of the 9/11 rubble could only have been created as the result of a “combustion event”
Without going into the years and years of research on 9/11, suffice to say, it is hard to believe that 19 jackasses who couldn’t barely fly a single engine Cesna, were able to evade the whole of the US air defense systems for as long as they did that day, armed with nothing more than break-away blade box-cutters.
And as for them being “God-intoxicated sociopaths”, it’s not hard to find the legitimate MSM records of many of them drinking, screwing hookers, gambling and generally acting more like mercenary contractors here in the States than religious zealots.
But then again, those Wahhabists we hire to destabilize places like Syria and Libya these days act the very same way. Now don’t they?
And let’s not even start with the “God-intoxicated sociopaths” who attacked us a couple weeks after 9/11 with anthrax while our neocon masters were attempting to push the Patriot Act through congress. After all, turns out, the “God-intoxicated sociopaths” had nothing to do with that one either.
And I notice neither Harris nor Chomsky felt the need to bring that one up during their “debate”
I will ask again, what is the relative value of a thesis if it is indeed based on a fundamentally flawed assumption from the start?
Again, the answer is Zero.
Now let’s frame the debate in a new light with regard to the evidence presented above.
How does “the moral significance of intention” factor in now?
Mr. Harris works from the assumption that “al-Qaeda is filled… with God-intoxicated sociopaths intent upon creating a global caliphate” setting aside the simple FACT that WE created al-Qaeda long ago for the purpose of undermining Soviet influence in Afghanistan. Setting aside the fact that WE currently USE the same al-Qaeda in Syria to this day to undermine the legitimate government of Assad. Setting aside the fact that WE used al-Qaeda in Libya to force a brutal regime change on that country as well.
So, who exactly are the intoxicated sociopaths intent on creating a global caliphate? Years ago references to the “New World Order” were relegated exclusively to those of us “conspiracy theorists” who dared mention this global hegemonic plan by name but now it’s very well understood and even discussed in polite circles as a very real and very well established operational objective.
So I will ask again, who exactly are the intoxicated sociopaths intent on creating a global caliphate? The evidence is unequivocally on the side of … us.
Fatal Flaw #2: Whitewashing Clinton’s Intentions
So far I believe I have been rather even handed in my critique of both sides of this debate. That ends here.
Mr. Chomsky, the “winner” of this exchange, has a lot to answer for in my opinion not the least of which being his tacit approval of Mr. Harris’ basic, flawed 9/11 assumptions.
However, Noam didn’t leave it at that.
“I do not, again, claim that Clinton intentionally wanted to kill the thousands of victims. Rather, that was probably of no concern, raising the very serious ethical question that I have discussed, again repeatedly in this correspondence.” Noam Chomsky
The mental gymnastics that Mr. Chomsky had to perform in order to make this claim are quite remarkable.
He continually insists that it is perhaps worse that Clinton “just didn’t care” that tens of thousands of people would suffer and die horrible deaths as the result of this attack on the plant and that it was “retaliation” for the embassy bombings which were in completely different countries by the way.
His grasp of the historical facts surrounding this bombing is uncharacteristically weak however:
Officials later acknowledged, however, that “the evidence that prompted President Clinton to order the missile strike on the Shifa plant was not as solid as first portrayed.” Indeed, officials later said that there was no proof that the plant had been manufacturing or storing nerve gas, as initially suspected by the Americans, or had been linked to Osama bin Laden, who was a resident of Khartoum in the 1990s.”[5]
“Now, the analysts renewed their doubts and told Assistant Secretary of State Phyllis Oakley that the C.I.A.‘s evidence on which the attack was based was inadequate. Ms. Oakley asked them to double-check; perhaps there was some intelligence they had not yet seen. The answer came back quickly: There was no additional evidence. Ms. Oakley called a meeting of key aides and a consensus emerged: Contrary to what the Administration was saying, the case tying Al Shifa to Mr. bin Laden or to chemical weapons was weak.”[7] James Risen
The attack on the plant was not in “retaliation” for the embassy bombings as Mr. Chomsky would have you believe in his limited hangout controlled opposition dissertation on the subject. It was a deliberate attempt to weaken a government making it ready for the regime change operations they had planned just like Clinton’s efforts during his administration to weaken the government of Iraq for the same expressed purpose.
There was no connection between bin Laden and Sudan’s Al Shifa plant just as there was not one single shred of evidence that chemical weapons were being produced there. To prove that point, the Clinton administration refused all invitations to travel to the site to check for evidence of those weapons in the debris.
They ALREADY knew what the result of that investigation would produce much like they knew when the Taliban offered up bin Laden if Bush could produce EVIDENCE that he had something to do with 9/11 that they didn’t have said evidence and that no evidence would ever exist until they tortured a couple guys to manufacture it.
How could it possibly be if the Clinton administration KNEW that the plant had no connection to bin Laden and was not manufacturing chemical weapons… how could it possibly be Mr. Chomsky that the cruise missile strike on the plant was in “retaliation for the embassy bombings”?
It couldn’t.
That said, how is it that Clinton, as you yourself admitted, knowing full well the results of the bombing would mean the death of tens of thousands of people in the country, didn’t have as his PRIMARY MOTIVATION those deaths of civilians in the country he had targeted for regime change?
It was the same intention as he had when he maintained and even worsened the sanctions on Iraq: making the public suffer in order to eventually facilitate a forced regime change.
Mr. Harris’ position on this aspect of their “debate”, though less deceptive, is equally troubling considering how so many people follow his blog and read his insipid books (by the way, if it wasn’t for 9/11, Mr. Harris wouldn’t be known to anyone as that was the focus of his first published work)
Here is my assumption about the al-Shifa case. I assume that Clinton believed that it was, in fact, a chemical weapons factory—because I see no rational reason for him to have intentionally destroyed a pharmaceutical plant in retaliation for the embassy bombings. I take it that you consider this assumption terribly naive. Sam Harris
It is said that it’s nearly impossible to make someone see that which their paychecks demand they don’t, or something to that effect and in this case, I would certainly agree with that assessment.
There is way too much evidence proving there was no chemical weapons facility in that plant and there is way too much evidence proving Mr. Clinton wasn’t interested in discovering that fact either before dropping the bombs nor afterward.
Kinda like Mr. Bush jokingly looking for weapons of mass destruction in his office.
To answer Mr. Harris’ inquiry, the “rational reason” is very simple: regime change via destabilization of the population of the country.
It’s a very old tactic, Mr. Harris, perfected over the decades by multiple administrations when our “national interests” are at stake.
If you are interested in doing a little research into those “rational reasons” then I might suggest picking up the early work of Mr. Chomsky. The stuff he did back when he had a soul.
I fully understand the reluctance both of these well established honored thinkers and leaders of the left would have when it comes to publicly calling out Bill Clinton for his crimes against humanity as it were. Clinton is the head of a massive globalist foundation and more importantly, still a very popular figure among those less educated left-leaning fake progressives who, as Sam repeatedly points out, serve as both his and Chomsky’s target market. In this case calling a monster a monster wouldn’t exactly increase invitations to those all important closed door functions both Harris and Chomsky are accustomed to.
But Clinton did know what he was doing when he bombed that plant and he did know what would happen to the people of Sudan and more troubling than him simply regarding them as ants on the sidewalk, Bill Clinton regarded them as mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers and he killed them just the same.
Conclusion
In this debate of cleverly limited discourse, who is the victor and who was slain?
To answer that question, one has to now reexamine the primary topic of the conflict: between combatants, who really ignores the moral significance of intention and perhaps more importantly… why?
And my simple answer to that question is they both did in different ways to varying degrees of success. And they both had the same motive: maintaining their professional relevance which I would suggest is probably the same motive harbored by the likes of George W Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
As the life and times of Mr. Kennedy make clear, previous service to the masters of the universe amount to jack squat. You can only divert outside the prescribed norms for so long before eventually you will be forced back in or left outside in the cold to rot.
I don’t believe, at least in the case of Mr. Chomsky, that these men are so well uniformed as to justify this display of seriously flawed critical thinking.
Mr. Chomsky once said it takes a pretty good education to get certain things so drastically wrong (or something like that) and I today came to understand exactly what he was talking about.
Perhaps one or both of these shapers of left-leaning thought would care to debate poor little uneducated me on this subject some time in the near future. But somehow I doubt it. For all their education and accolades, the question of the moral significance of their intentions might prove too monumental an obstacle for them to overcome. And too easy for me to exploit when coupled with the simple, well established facts both these men seem determined to ignore.
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