AAARGH
Note: Christopher Hitchens wrote an essay in The Nation,
and a subsequent comment on the Nation web siteand among
those he attacked in his fulminations, was Noam Chomsky. Here,
Chomsky replies...
I have been asked to respond to recent articles by Christopher
Hitchens (webpage, Sept. 24; Nation, Oct. 8), and after
refusing several times, will do so, though only partially, and
reluctantly. The reason for the reluctance is that Hitchens cannot
mean what he is saying. For that reason alone -- there are others
that should be obvious -- this is no proper context for addressing
serious issues relating to the Sept. 11 atrocities.
That Hitchens cannot mean what he writes is clear, in the first
place, from his reference to the bombing of the Sudan. He must
be unaware that he is expressing such racist contempt for African
victims of a terrorist crime, and cannot intend what his words
imply. This single atrocity destroyed half the pharmaceutical
supplies of a poor African country and the facilities for replenishing
them, with an enormous human toll. Hitchens is outraged that I
compared this atrocity to what I called "the wickedness and
awesome cruelty" of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 (quoting
Robert Fisk), adding that the actual toll in the Sudan case can
only be surmised, because the US blocked any UN inquiry and few
were interested enough to pursue the matter. That the toll is
dreadful is hardly in doubt.
Hitchens is apparently referring to a response I wrote to several
journalists on Sept. 15, composite because inquiries were coming
too fast for individual response. This was apparently posted several
times on the web, as were other much more detailed subsequent
responses. Assuming so, in the brief message Hitchens may have
seen, I did not elaborate, assuming -- correctly, judging by subsequent
interchange -- that it was unnecessary: the recipients would understand
why the comparison is quite appropriate. I also took for granted
that they would understand a virtual truism: When we estimate
the human toll of a crime, we count not only those who were literally
murdered on the spot but those who died as a result, the course
we adopt reflexively, and properly, when we consider the crimes
of official enemies -- Stalin, Hitler, and Mao, to mention the
most extreme cases. If we are even pretending to be serious, we
apply the same standards to ourselves: in the case of the Sudan,
we count the number who died as a direct consequence of the crime,
not just those killed by cruise missiles. Again, a truism.
Since there is one person who does not appear to understand, I
will add a few quotes from the mainstream press, to clarify.
A year after the attack, "without the lifesaving medicine
[the destroyed facilities] produced, Sudan's death toll from the
bombing has continued, quietly, to rise... Thus, tens of thousands
of people -- many of them children -- have suffered and died from
malaria, tuberculosis, and other treatable diseases... [The factory]
provided affordable medicine for humans and all the locally available
veterinary medicine in Sudan. It produced 90 percent of Sudan's
major pharmaceutical products... Sanctions against Sudan make
it impossible to import adequate amounts of medicines required
to cover the serious gap left by the plant's destruction.... [T]he
action taken by Washington on Aug. 20, 1998, continues to deprive
the people of Sudan of needed medicine. Millions must wonder how
the International Court of Justice in The Hague will celebrate
this anniversary" (Jonathan Belke, Boston Globe, Aug.
22, 1999).
"[T]he loss of this factory is a tragedy for the rural communities
who need these medicines" (Tom Carnaffin, technical manager
with "intimate knowledge" of the destroyed plant, Ed
Vulliamy et al., The Observer, 23 Aug. 1998).
The plant "provided 50 percent of Sudan's medicines, and
its destruction has left the country with no supplies of choloroquine,
the standard treatment for malaria," but months later, the
British Labour government refused requests "to resupply chloroquine
in emergency relief until such time as the Sudanese can rebuild
their pharmaceutical production" (Patrick Wintour, Observer,
20 Dec. 1998).
And much more.
Proportional to population, this is as if the bin Laden network,
in a single attack on the US, caused "hundreds of thousands
of people -- many of them children -- to suffer and die from easily
treatable diseases," though the analogy is unfair because
a rich country, not under sanctions and denied aid, can easily
replenish its stocks and respond appropriately to such an atrocity
-- which, I presume, would not have passed so lightly. To regard
the comparison to Sept. 11 as outrageous is to express extraordinary
racist contempt for African victims of a shocking crime, which,
to make it worse, is one for which we are responsible: as taxpayers,
for failing to provide massive reparations, for granting refuge
and immunity to the perpetrators, and for allowing the terrible
facts to be sunk so deep in the memory hole that some, at least,
seem unaware of them.
This only scratches the surface. The US bombing "appears
to have shattered the slowly evolving move towards compromise
between Sudan's warring sides" and terminated promising steps
towards a peace agreement to end the civil war that had left 1.5
million dead since 1981, which might have also led to "peace
in Uganda and the entire Nile Basin." The attack apparently
"shattered...the expected benefits of a political shift at
the heart of Sudan's Islamist government" towards a "pragmatic
engagement with the outside world," along with efforts to
address Sudan's domestic crises," to end support for terrorism,
and to reduce the influence of radical Islamists (Mark Huband,
Financial Times, Sept. 8, 1998).
In this respect, we may compare the crime in the Sudan to the
assassination of Lumumba, which helped plunge the Congo into decades
of slaughter, still continuing; or the overthrow of the democratic
government of Guatemala in 1954, which led to 40 years of hideous
atrocities; and all too many others like it.
One can scarcely try to estimate the colossal toll of the Sudan
bombing, even apart from the probable tens of thousands of immediate
Sudanese victims. The complete toll is attributable to the single
act of terror -- at least, if we have the honesty to adopt the
standards we properly apply to official enemies.
Evidently, Hitchens cannot mean what he said about this topic.
We can therefore disregard it.
To take another example, Hitchens writes that "I referred
to the "the whole business [of the 1999 war] as a bullying
persecution of -- the Serbs!" As he knows, this is sheer
fabrication. The reasons for the war that I suggested were quoted
from the highest level US official justifications for it, including
National Security Adviser Sandy Berger and the final summary presented
to Congress by Secretary of Defense William Cohen. We can therefore
also disregard what Hitchens has to say about this topic.
As a final illustration, consider Hitchens's fury over the "masochistic
e-mail...circulating from the Chomsky-Zinn-Finkelstein quarter,"
who joined such radical rags as the Wall Street Journal
in what he calls "rationalizing" terror -- that is,
considering the grievances expressed by people of the Middle East
region, rich to poor, secular to Islamist, the course that would
be followed by anyone who hopes to reduce the likelihood of further
atrocities rather than simply to escalate the cycle of violence,
in the familiar dynamics, leading to even greater catastrophes
here and elsewhere. This is an outrage, Hitchens explains, because
"I know already" about these concerns -- a comment that
makes sense on precisely one assumption: that the communications
were addressed solely to Hitchens. Without further comment, we
can disregard his fulminations on these topics. In one charge,
Hitchens is correct. He writes that "The crime [in the Sudan]
was directly and sordidly linked to the effort by a crooked President
to avoid impeachment (a conclusion sedulously avoided by the Chomskys
and Husseinis of the time)." It's true that I have sedulously
avoided this speculation, and will continue to do so until some
meaningful evidence is provided; and have also sedulously avoided
the entire obsession with Clinton's sex life.
From the rest, it may be possible to disentangle some intended
line of argument, but I'm not going to make the effort, and fail
to see why others should. Since Hitchens evidently does not take
what he is writing seriously, there is no reason for anyone else
to do so. The fair and sensible reaction is to treat all of this
as some aberration, and to await the return of the author to the
important work that he has often done in the past.
In the background are issues worth addressing. But in some serious
context, not this one.
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