Memo to Chomsky: Retire

I was sort of waiting for this. Noam Chomsky coming out in public to declare that Osama Bin Laden was an "unarmed victim" and, better, to strongly suggest he just might also be innocent i.e. that he's just bullshitting when he claims credit for the Al Qaeda attacks.

Chomsky argues:

In April 2002, the head of the FBI, Robert Mueller, informed the press that after the most intensive investigation in history, the FBI could say no more than that it "believed" that the plot was hatched in Afghanistan, though implemented in the UAE and Germany. What they only believed in April 2002, they obviously didn't know 8 months earlier, when Washington dismissed tentative offers by the Taliban (how serious, we do not know, because they were instantly dismissed) to extradite bin Laden if they were presented with evidence – which, as we soon learned, Washington didn't have. Thus Obama was simply lying when he said, in his White House statement, that "we quickly learned that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by al Qaeda."

Nothing serious has been provided since. There is much talk of bin Laden's "confession," but that is rather like my confession that I won the Boston Marathon. He boasted of what he regarded as a great achievement.

Sorry, Noam. But I'm gonna put my down on the greater possibility that Bin Laden has been intimately involved in the killing of thousands than you puffed along a 26 mile run. It was also back in the 90′s that Bin Laden openly declared war on the United States and quickly began to prove it. I daresay he was a good deal more effective in achieving his goals than Chomsky has been in overthrowing world capitalism. Bin Laden's military attacks led to the deaths of thousands — mostly Shia Arabs– and he proudly positioned himself as an active commander of a global armed force.  This was no empty boast. It was a deadly reality.

When Bin Laden was surprised by U.S. commandos, whether he was in his pajamas at the moment, or whether he was oiling a rifle or dying his beard, he was –nevertheless– the commander of a force actively continuing a war against civilians across the globe, including Americans.  He was a target — not an unarmed victim as Chomsky bleats.

Natch, we're treated to the usual political symmetries and asymmetries by Chomsky.  Code-naming OBL Geronimo was an imperialist choice of words. Bush has killed more people than OBL. The U.S. harbored the anti-Cuban terrorist Orlando Bosch.  True or not true, they don't change the underlying fact that OBL — as the leader of an international murder organization– was armed and dangerous even if he was in his P.J.'s playing with his dongle. And even if the U.S. is rife with hypocrisy. That changes nothing.

Chomsky asks how we would have reacted if an Al Qaeda squad had flown into Washington D.C., assassinated the president and dumped his body into the Atlantic.  I don't think we have to search very hard for the answer as that is more or less what Al Qaeda did do!  They flew two planes into office buildings that house up to 25,000 civilians at a time. killed as many as of them as they could,  and buried them under a sea of steel and rubble. They flew a third plane into the Pentagon and tried to kill as many U.S.military officers as possible. And they used a fourth plane, unsuccessfully, to try and kill their commander-in-chief.

We know how we reacted to all this. Bin Laden went on to camera to gloat over his butchery and to mock the dead. We went after him, cornered him, and blew his head off. It took ten years to get to but seems like a fair enough deal to me.

I don't think sending commandos into other countries to assassinate leaders we don't like is a defensible U.S. policy.  But sending in soldiers to execute an active commander of a ruthless and lethal enemy force who is being protected by the government whose sovereignty we violated is a once in a decade exception I am more than happy to tolerate AND celebrate.

Just what did Chomsky propose in this case? That U.S. forces ask Pakistan to extradite the criminal they were harboring and and then have Ramsey Clark defend him in court? Or was Chomsky wishing to parlay with OBL and ask him, come on Osama, aren't you just making up all this crap about what you're doing?

Chomsky was a courageous voice during Vietnam and has often been a valuable counter-point to official propaganda.

But not for a long time.

Noam, it's time to retire.