In 9-11, published in November 2001 and arguably the single most influential post 9-11 book, internationally renowned thinker Noam Chomsky bridged the information gap around the World Trade Center attacks, cutting through the tangle of political opportunism, expedient patriotism, and general conformity that choked off American discourse in the months immediately following. Chomsky placed the attacks in context, marshaling his deep and nuanced knowledge of American foreign policy to trace the history of American political aggression--in the Middle East and throughout Latin America as well as in Indonesia, in Afghanistan, in India and Pakistan--at the same time warning against America’s increasing reliance on military rhetoric and violence in its response to the attacks, and making the critical point that the mainstream media and public intellectuals were failing to make: any escalation of violence as a response to violence will inevitably lead to further, and bloodier, attacks on innocents in America and around the world. This new edition of 9-11, published on the tenth anniversary of the attacks and featuring a new preface by Chomsky, reminds us that today, just as much as ten years ago, information and clarity remain our most valuable tools in the struggle to prevent future violence against the innocent, both at home and abroad.
9-11: Was There an Alternative? (Open Media Book)
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• "9-11 was practically the only counter-narrative out there at a time when questions tended to be drowned out by a chorus, led by the entire United States Congress, of ‘God Bless America.’ . . . it is possible that, if the United States goes the way of nineteenth-century Britain, Chomsky's interpretation will be the standard among historians a hundred years from now." --New Yorker
• "A badly needed corrective to news coverage of the present-day ‘war on terrorism.’"
--Norman Solomon, San Francisco Chronicle Review
• "Every word of 9-11 is more relevant than ever." --Amnesty International Journal (Ireland)
• "Chomsky laments that the U.S. government largely dismissed these human rights problems in its quest to “secure our interests.” The invasion of Afghanistan was far from the first time NATO overran unstable civilian populations in the search for terrorists (Chomsky offers several examples in the book) and, as we now know, it was not the last."
--Foreign Policy in Focus
• "A badly needed corrective to news coverage of the present-day ‘war on terrorism.’"
--Norman Solomon, San Francisco Chronicle Review
• "Every word of 9-11 is more relevant than ever." --Amnesty International Journal (Ireland)
• "Chomsky laments that the U.S. government largely dismissed these human rights problems in its quest to “secure our interests.” The invasion of Afghanistan was far from the first time NATO overran unstable civilian populations in the search for terrorists (Chomsky offers several examples in the book) and, as we now know, it was not the last."
--Foreign Policy in Focus
About the Author
NOAM CHOMSKY is known throughout the world for his political and philosophical writings as well as for his groundbreaking linguistics work. He has taught at Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 1955 and remains one of America's most uncompromising voices of dissent.
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More About the Author
Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston. A member of the American Academy of Science, he has published widely in both linguistics and current affairs. His books include At War with Asia, Towards a New Cold War, Fateful Triangle: The U. S., Israel and the Palestinians, Necessary Illusions, Hegemony or Survival, Deterring Democracy, Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy and Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
40 of 44 people found the following review helpful
By Chris
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This book is basically a reprint of Chomsky's "9-11" with a chapter added at the beginning written after the assassination of Osama Bin Laden. Contrary to the ravings of far right demagogues like David Horowitz or a buffoon like Christopher Hitchens, Chomsky does not argue that the US deserved to get attacked on 9-11 or that Osama Bin Laden was a freedom fighter. He quite appropriately labeled 9-11 a horrendous act and a springboard for the infliction of more misery against the Palestinians and other peoples that OBL claimed to fight for.
Chomsky notes that the United States played a vital role in the creation of the jihadi network. In the 1980's in Afghanistan, the US and other countries joined with the Islamist dictatorships of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to organize, train and arm the most fanatic Islamic extremists--many of them not native to Afghanistan--in order to fight the Soviets. As Chomsky observes, the first visible demonstration of blowback from this policy occurred when jihadis assassinated President Sadat of Egypt in 1981. Since the end of the Soviet occupation, the jihadi veterans of the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan have spread out across the world and committed grizzly atrocities. After the Communist regime fell in Afghanistan in 1992, Chomsky observes, quoting a Human Rights Watch official, Afghanistan descended into the worst period in its history. The fundamentalist warlords backed by the US in the 80's took to pillaging, raping and murdering with such intensity in the period 1992-96 that many Afghans welcomed the Taliban's takeover. These fundamentalist warlords, of course, are now back in power in Afghanistan.
Chomsky notes that Bin Laden and other jihadis have explained their motives clearly. They want to overthrow the corrupt and brutal dictatorships (e.g. Saudi Arabia) that the US and other western countries prop up and install in their places their vision of a pure Islamic state. They want the US military out of the Middle East and they opposed murderous US sanctions on Iraq--which strengthened Saddam--and the provision of weapons to Israel so it can butcher Palestinians. The charges against US imperialism made by the jihadis are also widely believed by ordinary Arabs. The same feelings exist among wealthy and secular Middle Eastern Muslims. Chomsky quotes a Wall Street Journal survey days after 911 which showed widespread resentment against the US among wealthy Muslims. These Muslims are westernized and don't hate the US because of our freedom but resent the US support for regressive dictatorships and other reasons.
Chomsky, of course, believes that the US is the leading terrorist state in the world. In this book, he goes through his familiar litany of US crimes, for example in Latin America in the 1980's, including the terrorist war against Nicaragua. Chomsky observes that Michael Kinsley and Time Magazine both wrote sympathetically of the terrorist methods of the Contras. Chomsky notes that when a US backed coup installed the Suharto dictatorship in Indonesia in 1965 and the Indonesian military proceeded to slaughter hundreds of thousands of peasants, the US media was elated. The Suharto regime, of course, beginning in 1975, engaged in a genocidal occupation of East Timor, with plenty of weapons from the US, Britain and other nations until Clinton ordered the Indonesian generals to cease the occupation in September 1999.
Chomsky also compares 9-11 to Clinton's bombing of the Al Shifa pharmaceutical plant in the Sudan in 1998. The bombing destroyed the source of the majority of pharmaceutical and veterinary supplies in the country. The bombing probably led to the death of tens of thousands of people, including from easily treatable diseases like malaria and TB, which supplies from Al Shifa had been used to combat. He quotes sources like Johanthan Belke of the Near East Foundation (writing in the Boston Globe), the former German ambassador to the Sudan and an article by James Astill in the London Guardian to prove his argument.
Chomsky argues that 9-11 should have been treated as an international law enforcement matter and not used as a basis for war. The US should have tested the Taliban's offer to turn over Bin Laden in return for the presentation of evidence of his guilt. They should have avoided embarking on a path of war-making that would cause great suffering and strengthen Islamic terrorists. Chomsky says that the British solved the problem of IRA terrorism not by carpet bombing Northern Ireland or Boston--the latter city a significant source of funding for the IRA. Instead, the British made an effort to address the grievances that the IRA used to fuel its terror. But the US is not really interested in fighting terrorism, according to Chomsky. It is interested in using events like 911 as a cover for policies to increase its world domination and empower its domestic elite.
The first essay in this book was written shortly after Bin Laden's assassination. Chomsky quotes Anatol Lieven , a Wikileaks cable from the US ambassador to Pakistan and New York Times reporter Jane Perlez about the extremely fragile state of Pakistan. This fragile state has been greatly exacerbated by US policies in the country, including the Bin Laden assassination and Obama's murderous drone war that has killed many Pakistani civilians. The Pakistani military is extremely resentful of US violations of the country's sovereignty, including the Bin Laden assassination, and a military coup is not completely unlikely. Also the country has a relatively large nuclear weapons program and if the country descends into chaos, fissible material will likely fall into the hands of jihadis.
Chomsky also mentions that the United States harbors terrorists (apart from US government officials involved in terrorism). It harbored Orlando Bosch before he died around the time of Bin Laden's assassination, and still harbors the Haitian death squad leader Emmanuel Constant despite Haiti's call for his extradition. It also refuses to extradite the former CEO of Union Carbide, responsible for the Bhopal gas explosion that killed thousands in India in the 1980's.
Chomsky notes that the United States played a vital role in the creation of the jihadi network. In the 1980's in Afghanistan, the US and other countries joined with the Islamist dictatorships of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to organize, train and arm the most fanatic Islamic extremists--many of them not native to Afghanistan--in order to fight the Soviets. As Chomsky observes, the first visible demonstration of blowback from this policy occurred when jihadis assassinated President Sadat of Egypt in 1981. Since the end of the Soviet occupation, the jihadi veterans of the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan have spread out across the world and committed grizzly atrocities. After the Communist regime fell in Afghanistan in 1992, Chomsky observes, quoting a Human Rights Watch official, Afghanistan descended into the worst period in its history. The fundamentalist warlords backed by the US in the 80's took to pillaging, raping and murdering with such intensity in the period 1992-96 that many Afghans welcomed the Taliban's takeover. These fundamentalist warlords, of course, are now back in power in Afghanistan.
Chomsky notes that Bin Laden and other jihadis have explained their motives clearly. They want to overthrow the corrupt and brutal dictatorships (e.g. Saudi Arabia) that the US and other western countries prop up and install in their places their vision of a pure Islamic state. They want the US military out of the Middle East and they opposed murderous US sanctions on Iraq--which strengthened Saddam--and the provision of weapons to Israel so it can butcher Palestinians. The charges against US imperialism made by the jihadis are also widely believed by ordinary Arabs. The same feelings exist among wealthy and secular Middle Eastern Muslims. Chomsky quotes a Wall Street Journal survey days after 911 which showed widespread resentment against the US among wealthy Muslims. These Muslims are westernized and don't hate the US because of our freedom but resent the US support for regressive dictatorships and other reasons.
Chomsky, of course, believes that the US is the leading terrorist state in the world. In this book, he goes through his familiar litany of US crimes, for example in Latin America in the 1980's, including the terrorist war against Nicaragua. Chomsky observes that Michael Kinsley and Time Magazine both wrote sympathetically of the terrorist methods of the Contras. Chomsky notes that when a US backed coup installed the Suharto dictatorship in Indonesia in 1965 and the Indonesian military proceeded to slaughter hundreds of thousands of peasants, the US media was elated. The Suharto regime, of course, beginning in 1975, engaged in a genocidal occupation of East Timor, with plenty of weapons from the US, Britain and other nations until Clinton ordered the Indonesian generals to cease the occupation in September 1999.
Chomsky also compares 9-11 to Clinton's bombing of the Al Shifa pharmaceutical plant in the Sudan in 1998. The bombing destroyed the source of the majority of pharmaceutical and veterinary supplies in the country. The bombing probably led to the death of tens of thousands of people, including from easily treatable diseases like malaria and TB, which supplies from Al Shifa had been used to combat. He quotes sources like Johanthan Belke of the Near East Foundation (writing in the Boston Globe), the former German ambassador to the Sudan and an article by James Astill in the London Guardian to prove his argument.
Chomsky argues that 9-11 should have been treated as an international law enforcement matter and not used as a basis for war. The US should have tested the Taliban's offer to turn over Bin Laden in return for the presentation of evidence of his guilt. They should have avoided embarking on a path of war-making that would cause great suffering and strengthen Islamic terrorists. Chomsky says that the British solved the problem of IRA terrorism not by carpet bombing Northern Ireland or Boston--the latter city a significant source of funding for the IRA. Instead, the British made an effort to address the grievances that the IRA used to fuel its terror. But the US is not really interested in fighting terrorism, according to Chomsky. It is interested in using events like 911 as a cover for policies to increase its world domination and empower its domestic elite.
The first essay in this book was written shortly after Bin Laden's assassination. Chomsky quotes Anatol Lieven , a Wikileaks cable from the US ambassador to Pakistan and New York Times reporter Jane Perlez about the extremely fragile state of Pakistan. This fragile state has been greatly exacerbated by US policies in the country, including the Bin Laden assassination and Obama's murderous drone war that has killed many Pakistani civilians. The Pakistani military is extremely resentful of US violations of the country's sovereignty, including the Bin Laden assassination, and a military coup is not completely unlikely. Also the country has a relatively large nuclear weapons program and if the country descends into chaos, fissible material will likely fall into the hands of jihadis.
Chomsky also mentions that the United States harbors terrorists (apart from US government officials involved in terrorism). It harbored Orlando Bosch before he died around the time of Bin Laden's assassination, and still harbors the Haitian death squad leader Emmanuel Constant despite Haiti's call for his extradition. It also refuses to extradite the former CEO of Union Carbide, responsible for the Bhopal gas explosion that killed thousands in India in the 1980's.
21 of 25 people found the following review helpful
By S.R. Hadden
Format:Paperback
In this trenchant analysis of 9-11's immediate aftermath, Noam Chomsky brings to bear encyclopedic knowledge of recent American history and cutting political insight, in criticizing the US government's immediate response to 9-11, which was, he argues, largely facilitated by news and media outlets which, in their apparent patriotic fervor, failed in their duty to subject the Bush administration's ostensible justifications for its response to 9-11 to even the most cursory analysis. The result, he argues, will be (and as we have seen, was indeed) a moral catastrophe for both the US and its victims abroad.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book is moral relativism at its most extreme --- a political tract on supposed evils imposed by America on the world that meanwhile ignores all U.S. innovation and aid (food, health care, drugs, agricultural assistance, etc.) from which people around the globe benefit daily.
The book avoids discussing victims of 9/11 as well as all facts surrounding the worst terrorist attack in world history and its perpetrators. Chomsky is uninterested in bin Laden or Islamic extremism. According to this book, everything bad is America's fault.
It contains lots of errors, too. According to Chomsky, America's attack on a Sudanese "drug plant" --- in reality a manufacturer of biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction --- was calculated destruction of much-needed drug supplies for Sudan's beleaguered population. Excuse me? (Wikipedia notwithstanding --- whatever Wiki editors dislike, including true facts, they delete. On anything concerning recent or current events, it's generally trash.)
Let's get real: Who would believe claims of the Sudanese government, which for decades perpetuated terror, genocide and enslavement of southern Sudan's black, animist and Muslim populations --- murdering at least 2 million and enslaving several hundred thousand. Not to mention hosting bin Laden for years, and arranging his many meetings with Iranian and Iraqi terrorists, to say nothing of Khartoum's [2011 and 2012] massacres against non-Muslim Nubian mountain peoples after the Republic of South Sudan obtained internationally recognized statehood in July 2011 --- or the tens of thousands of Nubians likely to die at Sudanese hands, going forward.
Genuine humanists who care may read some details of Sudanese history in Silent Terror, Escape from Slavery, Let My People Go, and Dream Freedom. Alas, those do not seem to include Chomsky or his fans. But then, Chomsky also supported the Khmer Rouge.
To Chomsky, U.S. policy must be considered in a vacuum --- where it is always, and can only be --- bad. Literally, nothing else seems to matter to him.
Chomsky also repeats earlier falsehoods concerning U.S. friendship with Israel, advising us to stop all support for a nation whose largely hostile neighbors have sought her destruction for 67 years. It's not mentioned here, but he also supports Hamas and Hezbollah. World Court and recent U.N. statements and resolutions notwithstanding, under international law, Israel was and remains within her rights to disputed territory obtained during a war of self-defense --- until the parties arrive at mutually agreeable terms (which seems increasingly unlikely, given adamant and obstructionist PA refusals to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, a prerequisite for any negotiations ever to succeed).
As for Iraq, while the war had not started when this book was first written and published, Chomsky condemned U.S. sanctions, and ignored Saddam Hussein's ruthless mass murder of Iraq's Kurdish and other populations, or his orders that henchmen perpetrate mass rape. Subsequently, Chomsky did not care about the freedom relished by Iraq's masses after Hussein's defeat. Rather, his perspective lacks all balance.
In 2003, Iraqi masses welcomed U.S. forces gleefully in Baghdad's streets, where they joyfully toppled the grotesque statute of Saddam Hussein that for decades had dominated its central square. Al Qaeda had moved into Iraq in 2002, long before the U.S. invasion. In March 2003, U.S. forces began to reduce al Qaeda in Iraq to a shadow of its former self. The 2007 surge cut its attacks on Iraqi civilians by 90%.
Some Iraqis --- though certainly not all --- [until the end] viewed the U.S. as an "occupier," much as Muslims would any non-Muslim force in predominantly Islamic nations. That's another issue entirely, having zip to do with the U.S. per se --- and too complex to cover here. (For history and background, consult Bat Ye'or's classic, The Dhimmi, Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam or her latest volume, Europe, Globalization, and the Coming of the Universal Caliphate; Andrew Bostom's Legacy of Jihad, or Mark Durie's The Third Choice.)
Presented as questions which the author purports to answer, this book requires that readers have a firm enough grasp of history to see through Chomsky's creative historical reconstructions. Chomsky gets full freedom in the U.S. to dump on his country, and dump he does.
--Alyssa A. Lappen
The book avoids discussing victims of 9/11 as well as all facts surrounding the worst terrorist attack in world history and its perpetrators. Chomsky is uninterested in bin Laden or Islamic extremism. According to this book, everything bad is America's fault.
It contains lots of errors, too. According to Chomsky, America's attack on a Sudanese "drug plant" --- in reality a manufacturer of biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction --- was calculated destruction of much-needed drug supplies for Sudan's beleaguered population. Excuse me? (Wikipedia notwithstanding --- whatever Wiki editors dislike, including true facts, they delete. On anything concerning recent or current events, it's generally trash.)
Let's get real: Who would believe claims of the Sudanese government, which for decades perpetuated terror, genocide and enslavement of southern Sudan's black, animist and Muslim populations --- murdering at least 2 million and enslaving several hundred thousand. Not to mention hosting bin Laden for years, and arranging his many meetings with Iranian and Iraqi terrorists, to say nothing of Khartoum's [2011 and 2012] massacres against non-Muslim Nubian mountain peoples after the Republic of South Sudan obtained internationally recognized statehood in July 2011 --- or the tens of thousands of Nubians likely to die at Sudanese hands, going forward.
Genuine humanists who care may read some details of Sudanese history in Silent Terror, Escape from Slavery, Let My People Go, and Dream Freedom. Alas, those do not seem to include Chomsky or his fans. But then, Chomsky also supported the Khmer Rouge.
To Chomsky, U.S. policy must be considered in a vacuum --- where it is always, and can only be --- bad. Literally, nothing else seems to matter to him.
Chomsky also repeats earlier falsehoods concerning U.S. friendship with Israel, advising us to stop all support for a nation whose largely hostile neighbors have sought her destruction for 67 years. It's not mentioned here, but he also supports Hamas and Hezbollah. World Court and recent U.N. statements and resolutions notwithstanding, under international law, Israel was and remains within her rights to disputed territory obtained during a war of self-defense --- until the parties arrive at mutually agreeable terms (which seems increasingly unlikely, given adamant and obstructionist PA refusals to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, a prerequisite for any negotiations ever to succeed).
As for Iraq, while the war had not started when this book was first written and published, Chomsky condemned U.S. sanctions, and ignored Saddam Hussein's ruthless mass murder of Iraq's Kurdish and other populations, or his orders that henchmen perpetrate mass rape. Subsequently, Chomsky did not care about the freedom relished by Iraq's masses after Hussein's defeat. Rather, his perspective lacks all balance.
In 2003, Iraqi masses welcomed U.S. forces gleefully in Baghdad's streets, where they joyfully toppled the grotesque statute of Saddam Hussein that for decades had dominated its central square. Al Qaeda had moved into Iraq in 2002, long before the U.S. invasion. In March 2003, U.S. forces began to reduce al Qaeda in Iraq to a shadow of its former self. The 2007 surge cut its attacks on Iraqi civilians by 90%.
Some Iraqis --- though certainly not all --- [until the end] viewed the U.S. as an "occupier," much as Muslims would any non-Muslim force in predominantly Islamic nations. That's another issue entirely, having zip to do with the U.S. per se --- and too complex to cover here. (For history and background, consult Bat Ye'or's classic, The Dhimmi, Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam or her latest volume, Europe, Globalization, and the Coming of the Universal Caliphate; Andrew Bostom's Legacy of Jihad, or Mark Durie's The Third Choice.)
Presented as questions which the author purports to answer, this book requires that readers have a firm enough grasp of history to see through Chomsky's creative historical reconstructions. Chomsky gets full freedom in the U.S. to dump on his country, and dump he does.
--Alyssa A. Lappen
Most Recent Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
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Over the years the good linguist has produced a tome of books with each becoming more and more predictably ostensible exercises of commercial counterculture. Read more
Published 15 days ago by Jason L. Cole
4.0 out of 5 stars
Chomsky's confusion over 9/11
This book is a puzzle, and it is hard to understand how Chomsky came to write it. After 9/11, within hours, a global group of critics and commentators began to question the... Read more
Published 4 months ago by John C. Landon
5.0 out of 5 stars
Still relevant after 10+ years
This book is of interview given by Chomsky after 9/11 about various aspects. He had a great opportunity after 9/11 to make an impact on the discourse and he did. Read more
Published 12 months ago by Christopher M. Whitman Jr.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Usefulness is good
Excellent book to read. His videos found on U Tube are easier to watch than this particular book to read. It's still a good addition to library.
Published 15 months ago by R. Marino
3.0 out of 5 stars
Brief Collection
I have only read two books by Noam Chomsky: "What We Say Goes" and this one under review. Both books are actually not really books: "What We Say Goes" is an interview, and "9-11:... Read more
Published 16 months ago by G.X. Larson
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