On the NATO Bombing of Yugoslavia...

Having made the mistake of having joked about Noam Chomsky and so provoked a Chomskyite troll eruption that was painful to clean out, I believe that I have to make my position clear:

Noam Chomsky is a liar.

For example, Noam Chomsky says:

On the NATO Bombing of Yugoslavia, Noam Chomsky interviewed by Danilo Mandic: Director of Communications [for Clinton Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott], John Norris.... [T]ake a look on John Norris's book and what he says is that the real purpose of the war had nothing to do with concern for Kosovar Albanians. It was because Serbia was not carrying out the required social and economic reforms, meaning it was the last corner of Europe which had not subordinated itself to the US-run neoliberal programs, so therefore it had to be eliminated. That's from the highest level...

Here's the passage from John Norris (2005), Collision Course: NATO, Russia, and Kosovo (New York: Praeger), that Chomsky is misciting, p. xxii ff.:

For Western powers, the Kosovo crrisis was fueled by frustration with Milsoevic and the legitimate fear that instability and conflict might spread further in the region, The evolving political aims of the Alliance and the changing nature of the transatlantic community also played a role. In that vein, it is useful to more broadly consider how NATO and Yugoslavia came to be locked in conflict....

NATO's large membership and consensus style may cause endless headaches for military planners, but it is also why joining NATO is appealing to nations across central and eastern Europe. Nations from Albania to Ukraine want in the western club. The gravitational pull of the community of western democracies highlights why Milosevic's Yugoslavia had become such an anachronism. As nations throughout the region sought to reform their economies, mitigate ethnic tensions, and broaden civil society, Belgrade seemed to delight in continually moving in the opposite direction. It is small wonder NATO and Yugoslavia ended up on a collision course. It was Yugoslavia's resistance ot the broader trends of political and economic reform--not the plight of the Kosovar Albanians--that best explains NATO's war. Milosevic had been a burr in the side of the transatlantic community for so long that the United States felt that he would only respond to military pressure Slobodan Milosevice's repeated transgressions ran directly counter to the vision of a Europe "whole and free," and challenged the very value of NATO's continued existence.

Many outsiders accuse western countries of selective intervention in Kosovo--fighting on a hair-trigger in the Balkans while avoiding the Sudans and Rwandas of the world. This was hardly the case. Only a decade of death, destruction, and Milosevic brinkmanship pushed NATO to act when the Rambouillet talks collapsed. Most of the leaders of NATO's major powers were proponents of "third way" politics and headed socially progressive, economically centrist governments. None of these men were particularly hawkish, and Milosevic did not allow them the political breathing room to look past his abuses.

Through predatory opportunism, Milosevic had repeatedly exploited the weakest instincts of European and North American powers alike. Time and again, he had preserved his political power because nations mightier than his own lacked the political resolve to bring him to heel. His record was ultimately one of ruin, particularly for the Serbs, as Yugoslavia dwindled into a smaller and smaller state verging on coallpse. It was precisely because Milosevic had become so adroit at outmaneuvering th ewest that NATO came to view the ever-escalating use of force as its only option. Nobody should be surprised that Milosevic eventually goaded the sleeping giant out of repose. NATO went to war in Kosovo because its political and diplomatic leaders had enough of Milosevic and saw his actions disrupting plans to bring a wider stable of nations into the transatlantic community. Kosovo would only offer western leaders more humiliation and frustration if they did not forcefully respond U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's view of Milosevic was probably best revealed when she said that, at a certain stage at Rambouillet, it was evident that Milosevic was "jerking us around." In early June of 1999, German Minister Joschka Fischer rather angrily responded to those who questioned NATO's motives. Fischer observed that he had originally resisted military action, but that his views had changed, "step by step, from mass murder to mass murder"...

John Norris simply does not say what Chomsky says Norris says. It's that simple.

Comments

[tbelcher]

"It was Yugoslavia's resistance ot the broader trends of political and economic reform--not the plight of the Kosovar Albanians--that best explains NATO's war"

so what *does* that mean?

[What it says. It means what Joschka Fischer said: that NATOs governments were initially opposed to intervening against Milosevic, but their minds were changed "step by step" as they watched Milosevic's forces commit "mass murder [by] mass murder." No "social and economic." No "neoliberalism." No subordination to the U.S. No "nothing to do with the Kosovar Albanians.]

Read the whole passage. It's not hard. Not hard at all.]

[Craig Nelson]

Brad,

I believe that you and Noam may be nearly equal in understanding and misunderstanding

[Nonsense: Chomsky claims that Norris says this:

"[T]he real purpose of the war had nothing to do with concern for Kosovar Albanians. It was because Serbia was not carrying out the required social and economic reforms, meaning it was the last corner of Europe which had not subordinated itself to the US-run neoliberal programs, so therefore it had to be eliminated. That's from the highest level..."

Norris doesn't say that the war had nothing to do with concern for Kosovar Albanians. Norris doesn't say the war was because Serbia was not carrying out the required social and economic reforms. When Norris says "political and economic reforms" he does not mean that NATO's beef was that Serbia had not subordinated itself to the U.S.-run neoliberal programs: he means that Milosevic's forces were killing people.

Chomsky's claims about what Norris "from the highest level" says are simply false.]

[AA]

Since everything from "meaning" onward is Chomsky's interpretation, there's not very much point in your citation. At least not if you want to argue he is lying. I think the strongest point you might want to argue here is that no sane man could honestly make that interpretation.

[OK. I'll take "Chomsky is either a liar or insane." That's fine.]

[Tomas]

Brad, I have to agree with you that Mr. Chomsky is reading the passage wrong. But as I read it Norris does argue that the background for the war was that serbia had turned into a nation in europe who was constituting a security risk, due to the fact that serbia did not, like other parts of central and easter europe, move towards a more democratic system and economic integration. Serbia was a "rogue state" on the european edge and it was continually destabilizing for the system.
So no, political and economic doesnt just mean that "Milosevic´s forces was killing people", it wasnt because his henchmen killed people (they had been doing that for years) it was because it was clear that the Milosevic serbia would continue to destabilize the Balkans.

[By killing people.]

[elliottg]

Brad, why are you a lion when criticizing Chomsky and a mouse when it's Mankiw?

[rilkefan]

Chomsky: "it was the last corner of Europe which had not subordinated itself to the US-run neoliberal programs"

Norris: "Only a decade of death, destruction, and Milosevic brinkmanship pushed NATO to act when the Rambouillet talks collapsed."

Look, Chomsky's lying. Moreover, it's transparently clear why - the US led a humanitarian effort that makes his criticisms of the country look like what they are: willfully blind to the good America does.

[A. Zarkov]

Why did you have to “clean out” the “Chomskyite troll eruption?” Having done that why provoke the nut cases yet again, only more so? Chomsky is best ignored.

[You are probably right.]

[joshb]

i usually hate it when brad decides to bait the lefties, but, i think he's right-on here.

the chomsky quote makes it sound like the US State department admitting bombing Belgrade because they refused to liberalize agricultural trade or adhere to the Maastricht criteria or something. you just cannot read the chomsky quote and think "there's a sane guy trying his best to further people's understanding of what Norris really said".

joshb

[Exactly. The whole point of Chomsky's discourse is that "the highest levels" of the State Department are backing him up. They aren't.]

[Joe S.]

Brad,
Give up on the Great White Whale. I despise Chomsky, but he ain't lying here. At least not in the sense that a lawyer would use the term. He is spinning Norris--a less pernicious and qualitatively very different act than lying. What AA says.

[thank you prof brad!]

Thank you Professor DeLong for finally exposing this liar! I think back to the first time I realized he was a liar. A fan of his, worshipping him like he was Bob Marley, wrote and asked how it was Chomsky never got discouraged in the face of the daily war he fought with reality. Chomsky wrote back, proof he doesn't get that much fan mail, and after mentioning what was happening to similar acasdemics in Turkey, Indonesia, Guatemala and other free democracies (where nothing was hapening to the one who weren't dirty Communists), "I don't have the right to get discouraged." Now, this is a lie. Actually, it says nothing in the Constitution or any legal code about discouragement. Everyone does have that right. Chomsky LIED!!

[Michael Carroll]

"Why Kid Gloves for Mankiw and Brass Knuckles for Chomsky"

This feels kind of like a Sista Souljah moment for the academic left. Ah the mid 90's... heady days...

[David Kendrick]

Not simple at all. It's at least an arguable extension to go from Norris' point to Chomsky's. I expected, after reading Brad's aggressive opening, that Chomsky would indeed be revealed to be a "liar." But nope, Brad is revealed to be selective in who he attacks in these righteous terms. Not his economics buddies, no matter that they have had actual power to affect government policy. They escape with occasional wrist slaps. They (or at least some of them) have been helping to run and justify our government as it lies us into war and channels wealth to the rich. But who among them has been called out as a liar? Brad doesn't go there.

[Chris Thomsd]

As an avid but not uncritical reader of both Chomsky and DeLong, let me say two things: a) first, the original joke was not especially offensive, and Chomsky fans who took offense ought to lighten up; b) second, other commentators have rightly pointed out that Chomsky's characterization of a poorly worded paragraph cannot fairly be characterized as "lying."

[What do you call it? As I said, Norris simply does not say what Chomsky says he says.]

[T.R.Elliott]

It doesn't make sense to me that the US would care that much whether Serbia was following the neoliberal program. Bombing them because of that makes no sense to me. We had to wait for W and Iraq for that nonsense to start. I think the neocons did want to impose the neoliberal program on the middle east.

Regarding the distinction between Serbia and say Africa (pick your favorite attrocity and mess in that continent), I would say that the US would be greatly concerned from a strategic perspective if instabilities in Europe were allowed to continue. Those instabilities (read killing people) could very well spread, e.g. into Russia and other former Republics of the USSR.

Where would the instabilities (read killing people) spread in Africa? And what is the cost?

It's a little cold hearted to think that way. But in the minds of those in power, it could be that people killing people in Africa equals people killing people in Africa. While, on the other hand, people killing people in Europe equals broader instability.

Maybe Chomsky should have pursued that avenue instead of going down the neoliberal conspiracy path.

[AA]

NB. What's up there now over my username is not my original comment. That's irritating. There must be a Russian proverb for this, in the vein of: whose mouse enters a flame will lose its tail.

['As You Know' Bob]

You know, there are a lot more liars - with a lot more influence on the world, AND who are a lot more deserving of a smackdown - than Noam Chomsky.

Ok, maybe in an off-the-cuff, extemporaneous LIVE interview, Chomsky made a claim that reaches too far, and is in fact unsupported by his source. OK. You called him on it.

But for goodness sake, keep in mind that nobody died as a result of his 'lie'.

If you left the Chomsky-bashing entirely to the Right, plenty of Chomsky-bashing would get done.

[Turquoise]

If you think Chomsky is a liar - here's your chance to earn $50:

http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/chomskychallenge

[andres]

Brad, I think the following is the key part of Norris's passage:

"As nations throughout the region sought to reform their economies, mitigate ethnic tensions, and broaden civil society, Belgrade seemed to delight in continually moving in the opposite direction."

There may be a plausible way to explain the contradiction: Chomsky simply didn't bother to read further into the excerpt and so he interpreted the above sentence wildly out of context. One could argue that that makes it "manslaughter" dishonesty as opposed to "murder one" lying.

I've always been slightly skeptical of lying as an accusation unless one can come up with a particular reason why the accused liar is trying to save his own skin, which accounts for 99% of all outright cases of lying, including Ken Lay, Scooter Libby, etc., but probably not the Wolfowitz/Bolton faith in democracy being spread in the Middle East by way of Iraq. Bush and Cheney's statements on Iraq prior to the invasion may well fall under the remaining 1%.

In the case of Chomsky one can see a case of inverted neoconservatism: he really does believe his own take on the world situation simply because he can't conceive of a more nuanced version of reality. To be fair, prior to 1993 I would probably have agreed with Chomsky that US foreign policy was an edifice of support for dictatorship and state terrorism hiding behind a Potemkin facade of support for democracy. Even the Carter administration had supported both the Shah and Somoza until the last minute.

But the Clinton foreign policy provided a substantially different take on the US approach to the rest of the world, and one which simply didn't fit in with Chomsky's neo-Imperial outlook. So not surprisingly, he started grasping at straws, and in this occasion at least, Brad caught him in a wild inconsistency.

Take three: Chomsky is either (a) lying, or (b)insane, or (c) he has too much emotionally at stake in his own view of international politics to accept that he's mistaken in spite of clear evidence to the contrary, and that doesn't quite qualify as insane, imho, or else every goon working for AEI, Heritage, and National Review is also insane. In other words, Chomsky wouldn't be the first victim of such a mindset.

[tom f]

andres:

"But the Clinton foreign policy provided a substantially different take on the US approach to the rest of the world, and one which simply didn't fit in with Chomsky's neo-Imperial outlook. So not surprisingly, he started grasping at straws, and in this occasion at least, Brad caught him in a wild inconsistency."

But Clinton did arm Turkey while Turkey went "step by step, from mass murder to mass murder" as it fought Kurdish nationalism.

Regarding Kosovo, Chomsky argues that the bombing occurred before the crisis and in deed precipitated it.

Unless you can counter these points, Chomsky's world view, and yours pre-'93, remains validated.

[Dick fitzgerald]

This is typcal De Long: stupid, vicious attacks on anyone on the left. Meanwhile, nothing critical toward his fellow cowardly Democrats who've supported Bush on the war and the police state.

[George Fiala]

Chomsky:
"It was because Serbia was not carrying out the required social and economic reforms"

Norris:
"As nations throughout the region sought to reform their economies, mitigate ethnic tensions, and broaden civil society, Belgrade seemed to delight in continually moving in the opposite direction."

That top seems an accurate characterization of the bottom... the rest is interpretation - I think to call it a lie is a little harsh. It would actually be nice for the West to make a true humanitarian intervention once in a while. Like we should have been doing in Zimbabwe for the past 10 years. Oh, I forgot, it's not a strategically important place.

[tom f]

Two motives for the bombing of Serbia:

1)Geopolitical. As Norris writes: "It was Yugoslavia's resistance ot the broader trends of political and economic reform--not the plight of the Kosovar Albanians--that best explains NATO's war."

2) Humanitarian. Again, Norris: "[Joschka] Fischer observed that he had originally resisted military action, but that his views had changed, 'step by step, from mass murder to mass murder'..."

How do we evaluate the two motives? The second one is contradicted in several instances, at least by US policy. The US, under Clinton, not only didn't bomb but continued to arm Turkey while it proceded, "from mass murder to mass murder", to put down Kurdish nationalism.

If humanitarianism is operative in one case, why not the other? If it is selective humanitarianism, then we must explain the selecting.

Perhaps more importantly, if NATO sought to stop an ethnic cleansing, why undermine Rambouillet? Why bomb, necessitating the pull out of humanitarian agencies while leaving viscious nationalist Serb forces to carry out attacks against the Albanian majority? A curious policy given the aim of stopping a humanitarian disaster that had yet to come to fruition, no?

Whereas the second motive is starkly contradicted, the former one, to my knowledge, is not in either the broad form of "national interest" or the strict sense of "neoliberal reforms".

I agree with Norris. The first motive is the "best" to understand NATO's policy.

[felix]

This is just a really bizarre post. One hopes Brad will clear up what he *really* has against Chomsky.

To sum up:

Norris: It wasn't concern for the Kosovar Albanians, but rather Yugoslav resistance to political and economic reforms, that led to NATO action.

Chomsky: Norris said that it wasn't concern for the Kosovar Albanians, but rather Yugoslav resistance to political and economic reforms, that led to NATO action.

DeLong: CHomsky is teh LIAR! Impeach Chomsky NOW!!1

[fgvwfwe]

You are a real idiot.

"For Western powers, the Kosovo crisis was fueled by frustration with Milsoevic and the legitimate fear that instability and conflict might spread further in the region, The evolving political aims of the Alliance and the changing nature of the transatlantic community also played a role."

How can it be said more clear? The Kosovo crisis was fueled not by concern for Albanians but by hatred of ("frustration with") Milsoevic and the fear that conflict might spread - _in the region_. Not the waves of refugees submerging good old England. Serbia as a state becoming a power in the region. How did you manage to get your PhD being this stupid?

[Craig Nelson]

After reading Brad on Noam, I'm inspired to write "The Unworldly Philosophers".

[wag]

Brad: are you planning on responding to the substantive point that several readers have made here? It makes you look really bad to cite this as definitive proof Chomsky is a liar when its pretty clear that your example is at best arguable.

[ArC]

I eagerly await the day you can find a real lie, Brad. The worst I would say about this situation is that Chomsky both oversimplifies and spins Norris. But as far as definitive proofs of lying goes, your example case here doesn't nearly match your opening rhetoric.

[Tomas]

Brad, why do you insist on reducing Norris argument to "Milosevic was killing people". If he meant that why write about "political and economic reforms"?

If someone wrote "the reason Britain went to war with Germany in WWI was because of the British wish to maintain its position the hegemonic power in the imperialist capitalist world order"

and refered to someone who argued that
"Britain´s entry into the war is best explained by its polical and economic concerns for the balance of power in continental europe and the growing rivalry with Imperial Germany rather than the plight of the belgians"

Is the first reading the second 100% correctly, no.

[Exactly. The first is a bad faith reading of the second.]

[paradoctor]

You: Milosevic was a murderous thug.
Chomsky: The nail that sticks out gets hammered down.

Both these things are true; and both, I submit, were essential in the case for war. Had Milosevic killed people but opened markets, then he might have gotten away with it; plenty of other tyrants have. Ditto had he kept the domestic peace, but on an independent course; though this is risky.

Since WWII, Europeans have in general refrained from bombing other Europeans; evidently they can be roused to do so by a combinations of reasons _both_ good _and_ bad. You see the good reasons, Chomsky sees the bad; both were in play.

[Chomsky claims that Norris agrees with him. Chomsky's claim is not correct.]

[Paul G Brown]

I have a rack of Chomsky on my book shelf. I have his writings on Vietnam, East Timor, Africa, Central and South America, and language theory. They convinced me.

Then I watched his words and actions during the Balkans, and Afghanistan. Yes. He lied, folks. He bore false witness. You can weasel it anyway you want to, but bullshit is bullshit.

The truth is (Oscar Wilde) never pure and seldom simple. But in the minds of the people who made the decisions, the lives of the Serbians and Albanians would be improved by the violent removal of Milosevic, and his removal was possible (likely). Their motivation was not to eliminate the last hold out against "neo-liberalism", and I doubt his departure meant a damn thing to the ongoing penetration of Exxon and IBM and Starbucks into these markets.

If the UN and NATO were to send men with guns into the Sudan today, the two people I whose opinions I would toss out with the trash are Hitchens and Chomsky. If those who advocate ending the tyranny of big box / big brand companies would spend just a little time actually working for one they would appreciate just how much these firms prefer the opposite of "neo-liberalism" as Chomsky defines it.

[Scott Martens]

You know that there aren't a lot of Chomsky-haters on the left who hate him more than I do. But, Chomsky's sin here is, as usual, one of making mountains out of molehills, not lying. Norris does say that Milosevic and Serbia's recent history of being a thorn in everyone's side, and the fear that doing nothing in Kosovo would just become an embarrassment to NATO states, was the real cause of the Kosovo war. Not, as is often portrayed, some simple altruism where western leaders suddenly became concerned about an obscure ethnic minority that they had hitherto never heard of.

Stripped of its "a-ha" rhetoric, Chomsky is right. Norris is saying that the benefits of undermining Milosevic extended beyond the nominal cause for war; and those benefits were a motivating factor, maybe the principal motivating factor, in going to war. But it's not exactly a major indictment of a politician to say that he did the right thing because it was beneficial to a variety of political interests to do it. To make a case against the Kosovo war on that basis is very questionable. To make a case against the way the war was sold - Chomsky's more traditional territory - it's a bit better an argument. Altruism and war don't mix, pretending that they do is insidious, and Kosovo is perhaps not an exception.

The well-being of Kosovars has certainly not been terribly well preserved recently, and it's debatable whether an independent Kosovo will better serve them than the best arrangement the US could have gotten at Rambouillet. Furthermore, the mess that Kosovo has become was predictable at the time of the war. That would be a sensible argument against the Kosovo war - it's one I even partially agree with - but it's not the argument Chomsky's making.

[Scott, the argument Chomsky is making is that Norris *agrees* with Chomsky on the causes of the intervention. But Norris doesn't agree with Chomsky on the causes of the intervention.]

[Jack]

If you are starting from the point of view that killing people is not by itself enough to get you bombed by NATO then there must be some other factor and according to Norris the extra reason is exactly as Chomsky says it is and you would have a tough job arguing that the plight of the Kosovars was enough on its own.

[Chomsky doesn't say "that plight of the Kosovars wasn't enough on its own." Chomsky says the plight of the Kosovars had "nothing to do" with the intervention.

If you want to say that Chomsky would not have been a liar if he'd said something different from what he said, that's fine with me.]

[a]

C'mon. The whole point of Chomsky is that he makes sweeping historical assertions with have only shards of truth in them. This gives just enough straw for the Chomsky fanatics to hold onto.

[rea]

"Chomsky's sin here is, as usual, one of making mountains out of molehills, not lying."

The line between spin and lying is not always clear, but in this case(as with the case of the Bush administration's characterization of Iraq's alleged nuclear threat in 2003), the spin so overeaches the facts that calling it "a lie" is quite justifiable.

[noChomskyite]

you know, Brad, I'm fine with your deleting my two earlier comments. It's your house, and we're just guests.

But I hope you won't retroactively characterize that deletion as "cleaning out Chomskyite trolls". Because I don't like Chomsky or his political views, and never have. And neither of my posts supported or praised Chomsky, and one of them was explicitly critical of him.

In fact, I have not read *any* posts on this thread--either the ones still visible, or the ones you deleted last night--that struck me as defenses of Chomsky or his views, much less doctrinaire, partisan defenses of Chomsky or his views (i.e. your Chomskyite trolls).

Mostly what I have seen are people questioning whether you are reading this passage a bit too tendentiously.

And the closest thing to defenses of Chomsky have been of the form "his paraphrase of Norris isn't so loose as to constitute lying, is it?" which is a pretty weak form of defense. (Has anyone, for instance, has been saying that Chomsky's *substantive* views are correct, much less that the are correct because ex cathedra Chomskii?)

My second post that you deleted didn't even talk about Chomsky--it was just a gentle ribbing of you, one of my favorite academic bloggers, an indispensable ally in the fight against Bushist mendacity and corruption, who occasionally goes hair-trigger on people. We all need reminders now and then that we have our foibles and hobby-horses. I didn't think you would find such a reminder worthy of deletion, but I suppose I was wrong.

So, delete this one too, if you like. Only, can I remind you, once again, that I have said nothing in support of Chomsky, don't support him, and don't own any of Chomsky's books? So don't characterize the deletion as "cleaning out Chomskyite trolls".

I just am a fan of reading comprehension and charitable interpretation.

So maybe you can say you had to clean out an eruption of charitable reading fans, or something.

[Richard Cownie]

Norris' passage seems highly ambiguous: he says
it wasn't about the Kosovars, and he does mention
"economic reform" and "the transatlantic community"
(which to my ears sounds a little like the Greater
Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere). Then there's Madeleine
Allbright complaining abut being "jerked around",
and tslk of "humiliation".

Against that, the one unambiguous statement that
it's about "mass murder" comes from ... Joschka
Fischer. Since when do you go to a member of the
German Green Party to determine the motives of the
US government ?

Now I know Chomsky rubs you the wrong way with his
distrust of "neo-liberalism" and economics in
general. But for someone like Chomsky who's
predisposed to see US actions in terms of
power relations and hegemony, it's not at all
unreasonable to read Norris as he does.

[monboddo]

Thanks for the post, Brad. Chomsky is such a bizarre figure, and so bafflingly popular, that a smackdown is always deserved. The thing about Chomsky that you don't get into, however, is how clever he is with his distortions. In the above passage, for instance, he is clearly misrepresenting what Norris said--but doing so in such a way that a sympathizer, or one unfamiliar with Chomsky's other works, could easily assume he just got carried away and went a *little* over the line, or got a *bit* confused (see other comments for this line of defense). It's only through review of a lot of Chomsky's political writings that one realizes this isn't a bug, it's a feature--Chomsky systematically misrepresents and distorts his sources, but does so in a way that, in any individual instance, he can maintain plausible deniability. It's a slimy and dishonest practice, and one is left wondering why anyone who has thought about it still takes what he says seriously.

[Wombat]

When it comes to International Relations, Chomsky's "analysis" is about as useful as a run-of-the mill grad student's. He comes at an issue with a preconceived end, and then cherry picks sources (many from the mass media that according to him is brainwashing us) to confirm his preconceived outcome.

Why this thoroughly intellectually dishonest dilettant is taken seriously by the left is an enduring mystery to me.

[theCoach]

I have not read Chomsky in at least ten years, but if I remember correctly he was always arguing from a different framework than is depicted here.

I think Chomsky would say that the real reasons, almost subconscious, were the economic concerns of Western neoliberal elites. That there concerns were always driving policy. They would then come up with other conscious, universally moral, public reasons. But that you could always find those hints in their arguments that did not fit with the public reasons -- and this would seem to me a great example of that.

I disagree with Chomsky's worldview -- I think he greatly under estimates the potential for selfish altruism (nonzero sum gains), but this, from an interview does not strike me as close to what I would call lying.

Although I have not read Chomsky in a long while, I think it is crucial to have someone like him in debates about foreign policy.

[And so he has carte blanche to lie about what Norris said? It's Chomsky's attribution of his own world-view--to say that his analysis is shared by the "highest levels" of the State Department--that is the big lie here.]

[noChomskyite]

monboddo's analysis seems most helpful here.

You see, I don't read Chomsky. I don't take him seriously as a political commentator, and I don't think of him as in any way representative of the left.

So I'm not familiar with his corpus. When I come to the exchange Brad quotes above, I judge it by normal standards, and it strikes me as loose-but-not-lying.

And then I read Paul G. Brown saying that Chomsky lied about Afghanistan and about the Balkans, and I think "maybe so. Probably so, for all I know. But what Brad quoted doesn't show it very well, and if the other clear cases of lying are out there, I'd rather have this fight about the clear cases".

However, if people familiar with his corpus say that this is *always* how he operates, then I guess there may not *be* any better examples.

He may simply be the Cheney of the left, whose every word is a suggestio falsi without quite rising to the level of explicit lie.

And that's a very bad thing, and one that would escape the casual reader of the occasional quote (like me)) but be visible to people who were highly familiar with his corpus.

But that only gets me back to the larger issue: who *does* take Chomsky seriously? Does he have *any* extensive influence on the left? (Certainly not on my part of the left). Is he just another Ward Churchill?

Yeah, he's got a better job than Ward Churchill does, but that's because his work in linguistics is much more significant than Churchill's was in...whatever the hell that guy did before he became the right's favorite animated straw man.

But even if he has a job at MIT, is Chomsky anyone that anyone cares about? Is he even worth spending the time to smack down?

[oed]

no no no

let's get to the real matter of substance here.

Brad is clearly wrong: the word is "irruption", not "eruption".

[Wombat]

Those who question attacks on Chomsky's veracity should revisit his writings on Cambodia and what the Khmer Rouge did; followed by his defense of what he said.

[Northern Observer]

Is he even worth spending the time to smack down?
Posted by: noChomskyite | June 01, 2006 at 06:51 AM

This is the heart of the matter. By making Chomsky important enough to be commented on you elevate him to an unecessary attention that unfortunatly has a side effect of energising the ennemies of reason (Republicans) and discouraging the lights of reason (Democrats)

Chomsky does not belong to our body.
Don't link yourself to him.
Stop hunting the white whale.

Look at it this way Brad. Any possible criticism or smack down of Chomsky that could be important to us (the lights of reason) has already been made, multiple times. You don't need to do this. Maybe you should sit back and question why you want to.

[Neil Craig]

What Choamsky says Norris says (that the reason for war was not the niceness of the KLA but that Yugoslavia wasn't pro-western enough) is exactly what Norris says.

However Norris is a liar when he says that "NATO went to war in Kosovo because its political and diplomatic leaders had enough of Milosevic and saw his actions disrupting plans to bring a wider stable of nations into the transatlantic community". They knew that Yugoslavia was perfectly willing to enter a transatlantic community as an equal sovereign nation. During the Ramboulliet discussion, as a counter to NATO's demand that Yugoslavia submit to a total occupation by NATO, Milosevc offered to join NATO which would make his country a part of the occupying organisation.

Clinton & Albright prefered war. They prefered a war directly & deliberately in support of a KLA they knew was publicly in favour of & engaged in genocide. They knew at the time that the overwehelming majority (perhaps the totality) of non-combat killings were by the NATO & organised armed genocidal KLA. They knew that Milosevic was not only not a thug (as our Nazi friends in Bosnia & Croatia certainly were) but that he wes "the only leader who consistently supported peace" & "a man to whom any form of racism is anathema" to quote former UK Foreign Secretary Lord David Owen in his evidence at the "trial".

These statements are all the truth. Thus it is Clinton & his Democratic genocidal Nazi murdering compatriots who were the "thugs". Each & every one of them is a racist war criminal guilty of genocide in Kosovo, Bosnia & Croatia.

And anybody who specificly denies that is a liar & anybody who tries to suppress it is an accessory to genocide.

Milosevic proved all of this in detail during his trial, which is presumably why he was poisoned.

[noChomskyite]

"Maybe you should sit back and question why you want to."

actually, NorthObs, monboddo's comments even help me understand this. If Chomsky is routinely deceitful but in a frustratingly slippery way, then I can see why you'd get pretty ticked off at him.

But it still seems like a waste of communal effort.

And *especially* if the guy is a liar, but his lying is only properly discernable after you have immersed yourself in the corpus.

Who's got time for that? He's a nobody to begin with--why make myself an expert on him, just so that I can prove he's a mendacious nobody?

[dubblblind]

"My second post that you deleted didn't even talk about Chomsky--it was just a gentle ribbing of you, one of my favorite academic bloggers, an indispensable ally in the fight against Bushist mendacity and corruption..."
---noChomskyite---

Brad, you *are* a good man fighting the good fight but one shortcoming that you have, if you will permit me, is that you are not willing to take snark as well as you give.

IMHO, developing thicker skin will only enhance your character, reputation and the quality of your blog. I'm just sayin'.

[Anonymous]

Could you elaborate on your statements? I have to admit confusion because I don't see the matter as simply as you do (like many of the other commenters).
Chomsky seems to be taking debatable interpretation of what Norris writes. If Chomsky had written
"reading between the lines, Norris says" would you still argue that he's lying?

[That's an interesting question. But not one that is relevant to Chomsky, who says that Norris says things that Norris does not say.]

I certainly wouldn't. I would argue that it's an unreasonable interpretation but I don't think calling him a liar for the passage above is merited.

[Wombat]

What some commentators (and Norris from the extract provided) here omit is that Western Europe and the US dropped the ball in dealing with Milosevic in Bosnia, allowing him to orchestrate ethnic cleansing and persecution on a grand scale. It was not until force was applied that he stopped.

Western Europe and the US were not going to make the same mistake twice.

[Very true. But Norris does not omit that context--although he does not put it in the foreground in this excerpt.]

[Wombat]

Re Chomsky:

Based on his readings, it is pretty safe to say that if the US government is for it, Chomsky is agin' it, and vice-versa. The joy of being a contrarian--as opposed to a robot--is not to be reflexive, but to be open-minded.

[tom f]

Chomsky is misleeding here; he ascribes his views to a text, but fails to mention he is being selective. Norris does say what Chomsky says he says, but he says much else that contradicts his claim.

But context is important. Chomsky's statement comes in an interview. Thus he is speaking informally, colloquially, as in "Read the Social Security Trustees Report. It says there's no solvency crisis." Without demonstrating that the speaker is selectively siting and interpreting his text, the speaker is misleeding. Such are the failings of speaking informally.

I'd be far more critical of misrepresentation that occurs in written material, not based on interviews or lectures.

[SteveH]

Chomsky is a liar. Some people pay him the tribute of thinking he actually believes the falsehoods he traffics in, but that doesn't change the fact that he lies.

[Charles]

I think Brad is overreaching here.

While I agree that Chomsky should not be using Norris as a fact witness to support Chomsky's view of US policy toward Yugoslavia, Norris's description of that policy is puzzling to the point where one can see how a man of Chomsky's specialty might read it as he does.

[Come back when you've read _Collision Course_, and can actually say something about Norris's description of U.S. policy.]

[Maynard]

Chomsky's not lying,

[Yes, he is. Chomsky says that John Norris, in his book _Collision Course_, argues that "the real purpose of the war had nothing to do with concern for Kosovar Albanians." That's not what Norris argues. Chomsky lies.]

he's identifying the deeper, underlying reason for NATO's intervention. The question to ask: would the US have intervened to protect the Kosovars if Serbia had not resisted incorporation into the new European economic system? (Norris doesn't use the term neoliberal, but that's an accurate descriptor.) We can't know the answer to that question, but we have some counterexamples: Turkey v. Kurds, Hutus v. Tutsis, Saddam v. Kurds (pre-1991), Guatemala v. Indians,...

In 1997 a certain author who shall remain nameless wrote of America's Peacetime Inflation of the 1970s: "...at the deepest level, the truest cause of the inflation of the 1970s was the shadow cast by the Great Depression." Now you can go through all the narrative evidence from that period and hear barely a peep about the Great Depression. The problem clearly was that the money supply was growing too dang fast. Do we conclude therefore that the author is lying? Of course not. The money supply was growing too fast because the Fed let it grow too fast, and the Fed let it grow too fast because it didn't have a political mandate to slow it down, and it didn't have a political mandate because of memories of the Great Depression. The author is peeling layers from an onion, getting to the root of the matter. Just like Chomsky is doing.

[Scott Martens]

In response to the comments added to my earlier comment: No, Chomsky says that Serbia was bombed because it refused to "[subordinate] itself to the US-run neoliberal programs, so therefore it had to be eliminated." Norris says "Yugoslavia's resistance to the broader trends of political and economic reform--not the plight of the Kosovar Albanians--that best explains NATO's war". One regards "US-run neoliberal programs" to be a synonym for "human sacrifice and the arrival of the Anti-Christ" while for the other "broader trends of political and economic reform" mean "truth, justice and a Big Mac with a supersize fries and a coke for under $5" - but they are both referring to the same set of ideas.

Chomsky doesn't say that the war had nothing to do with Kosovars; he says the "*real purpose* of the war had nothing to do with concern for Kosovar Albanians." Didn't we have this discussion about Chomsky and hedge words a few years ago? Trying to pin Chomsky down will always involve assigning a meaning to hedge words that leave more than enough wiggle room to make the statement at least reasonable, given that you assign his words a charitable interpretation, and given the text he's discussing.

Is the "real purpose" of a war the last grievance in a long list, or the rest of the list? Chomsky does not deny - at least in this excerpt - that the Kosovars were on that list of grievances, just that they alone would not have been grievance enough.

[And, in the real world, the intervention would not have happened if the Kosovars did not have a grievance. To assign "real purpose" to any one of a list of causes is to distort reality. To go further--as Chomsky does--and say that John Norris says that the "real purpose of the war had nothing to do with concern for Kosovar Albanians" is to tell a lie.

In my view, the question is simple: does John Norris's book _Collision Course_ argue that the real purpose of the war had nothing to do with concern for Kosovar Albanians? No, it does not.]

That the Kosovars convinced men like Fischer to agree to war does not mean that Fischer would have been swayed by an equally brutal ethnic cleansing without those other causes. This seems supported by Norris' text. Chomsky gives the impression that the Kosovars were little more than a pretext for the war, but he does not come out and say so.

[Ummm... Chomsky says that Norris says that the Kosovars were little more than a pretext... There's a difference there.]

Whether his restatement of Norris is merely weaselly rather than false depends on the meaning assigned to "real purpose" - a terribly ambiguous and hedged claim. That's Chomsky's gift: His hedges deny any prospect of identifying a clear falsifiable statement in what appears to be a strong claim.

[Walt]

Maynard: That's exactly what Chomsky's _not_ doing. He's taking his words, and sticking them into the mouths of others, so that he can keep up his whole "it's all right there in the newspaper" schtick. Chomsky's vice is not his interpretations, it's the way he deliberately misleads you as to what his sources say.

[Lindsey]

I think you're early acceptance of the possibility (likelihood?) that Chomsky is insane instead of lying is a key part of this discussion.

Chomsky is insane in that he sets the different things(neo-liberal policies/killing) Norris writes on equal footing. Actually I guess he puts neo-liberal policies ahead of the killing.

Even in an "informal interview" I don't think someone with the language skills of Chomsky (and there aren't many of those) is going to misspeak often. He meant what he said and I think he actually believes what he said. It's nuts, not mendacity, but it's not the kind of nuts you get institutionalized for.

[Mandos]

Speaking as someone very sympathetic to Chomsky's world-view but whose point of *least* agreement, if there is one, would probably Chomsky's take on Yugoslavia, I'm really failing to see the contradiction between Brad's quote of Chomsky and Brad's quote of Norris.

I suspect this is simply a case of mutually irreconcilable frameworks of interpretation. To me Chomsky's take is one possible and obvious take on Norris's writing. I'm not entirely surprised that Brad doesn't see it that way, though.

[Joe S.]

Lindsey introduced a new word into this thread: "mendacity."

Many commenters (myself included) have argued that Chomsky did not lie about what Norris said. But lying is only a subset of mendacity. Mendacity also includes the gentle arts of spin: half-truths, wrenches from context, artful non sequiturs, refusals to address arguments, and the like.

Is Chomsky mendacious in his approach to Norris? You could make a good case for that. Is Chomsky insane? I dunno . . . Does insanity preclude mendacity? Definitely not: Bush foreign policy as Exhibit A.

[sm]

"Is he even worth spending the time to smack down?"

A lot of that here.

[tom f]

Neil Craig:

"In fact everybody quoting somebody else quotes selectively - life is to short to quote everybody's entire article/book etc verbatim."

But then you should give the distinct impression that you're quoting selectively, or your summarizing, or your deconstructing. Chomsky could have said, "Norris himself gives evidence of this motive. He also makes other claims for the motive of NATO bombing, but those can be discounted by acknowledging the clear contradictions."

[noChomskyite]

okay, one thing I have to say I have learned from this thread:

more people take Chomsky seriously than I would have thought.

Some of them, far too seriously.

That's a shame.

Still not sure I think it justifies the attention, but I guess the problem is more wide-spread than I had thought.

[tom f]

Scott Martens:

"Whether his restatement of Norris is merely weaselly rather than false depends on the meaning assigned to 'real purpose' - a terribly ambiguous and hedged claim."

But this isn't a fault of Chomsky; it's a fault of language and human nature. Motives aren't physical facts, human nature can not be reduced to a set of provable hypotheses. Krugman can argue that the real aim of Bush's Social Security "reform" is ending the program, but he's speculating, would have to weasel out of acknowledging he has no proof, that Bush never said such a thing nor did any adminiistration spokesperson. Your argument isn't with Chomsky, it's with the nature of rhetoric and reality.

"That's Chomsky's gift: His hedges deny any prospect of identifying a clear falsifiable statement in what appears to be a strong claim."

Now you're being misleading. "The US armed Turkey at the height of comparable crimes against the Kurds at the same time as it was denouncing Milosevic for human rights violations" is a factual claim that lacks a hedge. "The ethnic cleansing of Kosovar Albanians took place after the NATO bombing" is a factual claim and lacks a hedge. "Before the bombing, both the KLA and Serb forces were guilty of crimes" is a factual statement that lacks a hedge.

All of these, by my reckoning are "strong" claims. Yet you haven't defined "strong" and so could weasel yourself out of this one.

See? Your beef should be with the nature of language and truth.

[diodotos]

All praise to Brad's analysis of economics, but on Chomsky, and on quick-draw accusations of Chomsky's mendacity, he should think again.

I doubt that Chomsky intended to assert that Norris agrees with him.

[Why? He did assert that Norris agrees with him. He asserted (correctly) that Strobe Talbott agrees with Norris. He concludes the paragraph you quote below with the declaration that "the highest levels" of the State Department think the same as Chomsky. Where is there ambiguity?]

The actual situation is fairly complicated. Chomsky says, in the interview Brad linked to, that Strobe Talbott endorses Norris' book as a guide for those who "really want to understand what the thinking was of the top of Clinton administration." It's Talbott's endorsement of the picture drawn by the book that's the basis for Chomsky's claim that only now can we claim to have the backing of an authority from "the highest level of Clinton adminstration" for Chomsky's claims about the motives behind this episode of US policy. As many of the so-far undeleted comments above show, there is plentiful evidence in Norris' account that "the real purpose of the war had nothing to do with concern for Kosovar Albanians."

Indeed Chomsky is being sloppy, as one is in an interview, when he says that Norris _says_ the preceding.

[It's not "sloppy" to say "the author says" rather than "the book reveals." It's something worse.]

He would have been entirely within the bounds of propriety if he had said something such as "Norris' account shows" that Chomsky's picture is correct. And Talbott's endorsement of Norris then authorizes the "highest level" claim. I wouldn't bust Chomsky on a charge of lying over his use of _he says_ here rather than _it shows_ or some such. Neither should Brad, imho.

Below I'll quote the full passage from the interview.

PS, isn't there value in Chomsky's drawing attention to Norris' book, even if one disagrees with Chomsky's interpretation of it?

the uncut passage from the interview:
"Actually, we have for the first time a very authoratative comment on that from the highest level of Clinton administration, which is something that one could have surmised before, but now it is asserted. This is from Strobe Talbott who was in charge of the…he ran the Pentagon/State Department intelligence Joint Committee on the diplomacy during the whole affair including the bombing, so that's very top of Clinton administration; he just wrote the forward to a book by his Director of Communications, John Norris, and in the forward he says if you really want to understand what the thinking was of the top of Clinton administration this is the book you should read and take a look on John Norris's book and what he says is that the real purpose of the war had nothing to do with concern for Kosovar Albanians. It was because Serbia was not carrying out the required social and economic reforms, meaning it was the last corner of Europe which had not subordinated itself to the US-run neoliberal programs, so therefore it had to be eliminated. That's from the highest level."

[tom f]

J Thomas:

"OK, of all the people who've quoted Chomsky here, how many of them have given that distinct impression [of being selective or deconstructing]?"

From what I've read, when quoting him they're not being selective. In the interview, he doesn't suggest that he is analyzing Norris' text.

On the other hand, if your familiar w/ Chomsky (or any intricate and sophisticated thinker for that matter), such things as analysis and selectivity should be implied.

[Really? Whenever anybody writes "X says" we should not expect what follows to be a summary of what X says, but instead an analysis of selectively-chosen passages? That's very interesting.]

There's a degree of bad faith to the Chomsky critics' argument: playing dumb and reverting to literalism as well as applying academic/written standards of discourse to an ad hoc interview.

[Once again: John Norris does not say what Chomsky says he says. Grasp that.]

[Christian Herold]

I don't get you, Brad. Norris gives multiple reasons in the graphs you cited, each one exactly repeated below, which clearly included what Chomsky attributed to Norris prior to using the scare word "meaning." Not a liar at all.

[Let's try it again: Chomsky says "[Norris] says... the real purpose of the war had nothing to do with concern for Kosovar Albanians. It was because Serbia was not carrying out the required social and economic reforms, meaning it was the last corner of Europe which had not subordinated itself to the US-run neoliberal programs..."

Is that what Norris says? That the "real purpose" had "nothing to do with concern for Kosovar Albanians" but was because Serbia "had not subordinated itself the U.S.-run neoliberal programs"? Is that what Norris says?

No. It is not.]

[Padraig]

I'll admit to having a soft spot in my heart for ol' Noam. I don't read him, as I don't see him as an academic on the subject of international relations, but he does one great service - he points out that states simply do not act morally, any more than corporations do. States react to their interests, not for humanitarian purposes. To claim that the US intervention in Serbia was a humanitarian act alone is simply hopelessly naive - the US intervened in Serbia-not-Rwanda because Serbia was a greater strategic problem. Norris points this out, and in so far as Chomsky brings attention to this point, fair play.

[But that's not what Chomsky says, is it? And Norris doesn't say what Chomsky says he says, does he?]

He does mischaracterize Norris' point, by claiming that the reason was failure to liberalize economically

[Yep.]

[Padraig]

One final point - as diodotos' full quote shows, there is actually some ambiguity about who the 'he' in 'he says' is referring to - Norris or Talbot. This particular ambiguity is inherent in impersonal pronouns, and almost certainly would not fall under the 'hedge words' bit of this discussion - no speaker is that calculating off the cuff. In so far as Brad is claiming that Noam 'said' that Chomsky 'said' that Norris 'said' that the US bombed Serbia solely for Neoliberal purposes, Brad is not acknowledging the full account of Chomsky's statement.

["He" refers to Norris: Talbot never says anything that Chomsky could distort into the form he wants.

But neither Norris nor Talbot says what Chomsky claims. So what's your point?

[bongo]

http://tinyurl.com/qn3h9

I see Chomsky as the "one theory to describe everything" professor.

[Michael McIntyre]

If you're going to hang Chomsky for "lying", then go after what he says in print

[I have, before.]

[Martin Bento]

OK, let's look at these closely. Norris says:

"As nations throughout the region sought to reform their economies, mitigate ethnic tensions, and broaden civil society, Belgrade seemed to delight in continually moving in the opposite direction....It was Yugoslavia's resistance ot the broader trends of political and economic reform--not the plight of the Kosovar Albanians--that best explains NATO's war."

This claims that other nations in the region were pursuing policies that Yugoslavia was not, that these policies were economic, political and social (I would file civil society under "social"),

[Everybody else files "civil society" under "political", don't they?]

and that Yugoslavia's resistance to these policies, and explicitly *not* the plight of Kosovar Albanians, best explains the war.

[Killing Bosnian Muslims, and Kosovars, was one the policies that Yugoslavia was pursuing that other nations in the region were not.]

Chomsky says:

"what he says is that the real purpose of the war had nothing to do with concern for Kosovar Albanians. It was because Serbia was not carrying out the required social and economic reforms, meaning it was the last corner of Europe which had not subordinated itself to the US-run neoliberal programs,"

When Norris says the plight of the Kosovar Albanians was not the best explanation of the war, does that mean it was not a factor, which is what Chomsky claims? Under a strict reading of Norris, it could still be a factor

[Under any reading of Norris, it is a factor. Enough.]

[Michael McIntyre]

Brad, you're calling Chomsky a liar because, in an uncorrected transcript of an extemporaneous interview, he inaccurately paraphrased Norris. Now you've twice deleted my attempt to put Chomsky's written comments on Norris on the record. The fact of the matter is that when Chomsky wrote about Norris in print, he quoted him accurately.

[I note that you do not claim that Chomsky quoted Norris fairly, or paraphrased him accurately.

That's wise of you.]

http://blogs.zmag.org/node/2562

"We know have a more authoritative source, however. From the highest level of the Clinton administration: Strobe Talbott, now director of the Brookings Institution, who was the lead American negotiator and director of a joint National Security Council-Pentagon-State Department task force on diplomacy during the bombing. Talbott wrote the foreword to a recent book on the war by his director of communications, John Norris. In it, Talbott writes that thanks to Norris’s book, anyone interested in the war in Kosovo “will know...how events looked and felt at the time to those of us who were involved” in the war. That sounds fairly authoritative. Presenting the position of the Clinton administration, Norris writes that “it was Yugoslavia’s resistance to the broader trends of political and economic reform – not the plight of Kosovar Albanians – that best explains NATO’s war.” That had been surmised, but is now confirmed from a very high level."

[andres]

Martin, you're committing the same egregious error I think Chomsky made: focusing on that one quoted passage and not reading anything else that Norris writes after it. Getting Yugoslavia to follow western economic policies was only one side benefit of NATO intervention. But Norris's entire second paragraph makes it pretty clear that NATO intervention would not have happened without the repeated anti-Bosnian, anti-Kosovar atrocities. Chomsky simply fails to mention this aspect of the passage either because he's lying or (more likely in my view) because he's forgotten its existence.

[wml]

I stil don't understand Brad's point.

Norris says:

"It was Yugoslavia's resistance ot the broader trends of political and economic reform--not the plight of the Kosovar Albanians--that best explains NATO's war."

I guess one could interpret the passage this way:

Norris says that the primary reason for the intervention was failure to enact political and economic reform - plight of the Kosovar Albanians was at best secondary.

[Which is not what Norris says either]

Chomsky seems to interpret it as:

Morris says the ONLY reason for the intervention was failure to enact political and economic reform.

Chomsky is essentially ommitting the hedge word "best" from Norris. Does that make Chomsky a "liar?"

[Yes. "Best" is not a hedge word. It's an important part of Norris's story.]

One reason I lean to give Chomsky a break here is as a Realist, I take it as practically for granted that nations don't intervene for humantarian reasons. I might write hedges that maybe humanitarian concerns played a part in a secondary sense, or played a part among some actors, like Fischer, but deep down inside my instinct is they didn't really matter at all.

[Well that's pretty stupid. Nations are made up of people. People do all kinds of things for all kinds of reasons.]

So I just read Norris' use of the word "best" as just a hedge to satisfy the non-Realists out there.

As far as the mass murder quote, it's Norris quoting someone else, not Norris.

[It's Norris approvingly quoting Fischer for why, by 1998, NATO was unwilling to give Milosevic the benefit of any doubt whatsoever.]

[Anderson]

What a weird bunch of lousy readers.

If DeLong's post didn't explain it sufficiently, Rilkefan's comment did: "Only a decade of death, destruction, and Milosevic brinkmanship pushed NATO to act when the Rambouillet talks collapsed" is incompatible with Chomsky's statement.

If I were Norris, I'd be pissed as hell that Chomsky was summarizing my argument like that.

In short, Chomsky didn't tell the truth about what Norris wrote. Maybe he didn't actually read the book but was e-mailed the quote he seized upon; maybe he has a terrible memory; maybe he's a liar. Whatever.

But DO NOT look at the excerpt DeLong provides and then go "oh, Chomsky summarized that pretty well." Because then you are just making yourself look stupid, or dishonest.

[Charles]

Brad, editing people's comments without indicating that you have done so is a bad thing.

You deleted a long and nuanced explanation that I gave for why, based on the evidence that you present, your conclusion is overreaching.

In the process, you falsified my statement.

I will not post to boards where my statements may be falsified by the host. I do not regard as part of the community of scholars people who engage in such behavior.

I am willing to treat this as a lapse...

Once.

[wml]

"But DO NOT look at the excerpt DeLong provides and then go "oh, Chomsky summarized that pretty well." "

Then what's the point of DeLong providing this passage?

[Walt]

I don't know why this is so hard to understand. It has nothing to do with Chomsky's interpretations. It has everything to do with how Chomsky always carefully phases things to deceive the reader, but leaving himself enough wiggle room to deny it later. The man is wasted on the left: George Bush could use a deceiver of his caliber.

[Mandos]

So, um, going back and rereading the quotes, my eye immediately highlights a handful of sentences from Norris:

"As nations throughout the region sought to reform their economies, mitigate ethnic tensions, and broaden civil society, Belgrade seemed to delight in continually moving in the opposite direction. It is small wonder NATO and Yugoslavia ended up on a collision course. It was Yugoslavia's resistance ot the broader trends of political and economic reform--not the plight of the Kosovar Albanians--that best explains NATO's war."

And later:

"Most of the leaders of NATO's major powers were proponents of "third way" politics and headed socially progressive, economically centrist governments."

These seem to me---and almost certainly to Chomsky---the core of Norris' statements, the implication of the inclusion of these ideas clear, and the remainder standard obfuscatory boilerplate one should expect from state propagandists. Whence the laudatory references to the neoliberalism of the "third way"? What does it have to do with anything? These are crucial admissions that tell us to discount the remainder of what Norris has to say.

[But then Chomsky is lying when he says that Norris says "the real purpose of the war had nothing to do with concern for Kosovar Albanians," isn't he? Chomsky might be able to claim that Norris's book *shows* that "the real purpose of the war had nothing to do with concern for Kosovar Albanians." Chomsky cannot--not without lying--claim that Norris says that "the real purpose of the war had nothing to do with concern for Kosovar Albanians."

Chomsky wants to claim much more than that Norris's book shows that Chomsky is right. Chomsky wants to claim that Norris says what Chomsky says.

And that's just plain false. Norris doesn't say what Chomsky says he says. Norris says something very different.]

[shah8]

Professor Delong, dude,

quit with the editing of people's comment.

make your own replies in the thread, and do the line by line.

I have a hard time understanding the intent of what is posted by your readers, when you constantly interrupt them (in my mind). It's also rude.

It's hard to think of you as better than Noam Chomsky when I see a thread like this. Maybe I have to think a little harder, and their's only economic stuff on Setser's page, but he has better commenters and he treats them with more respect.

In any event, Noam Chomsky, if he was mendacious at all, is mostly taking a stance that such a mentality that Norris expresses is really just your general mishmash of general neoliberalism,

[No. Chomsky is saying that Norris says what Chomsky says. Chomsky is not saying that a Chomskyite reading of Norris's book supports Chomsky.

Those are two very different claims.]

and writing that Norris agrees with him *in the implications*. This may be slippery or whatnot. Noam Chomsky might be using his powers for evil, but this kind of extension of implications and accrediting to others happen *all the time* by accident.

[You think Chomsy's misuse of Norris is an accident?]

Not only that, I have a hard time seeing Chomsky's actual statement as untrue in the generalities. There was alot of a geopolitics that surrounded the events through '94. I read the book on Clinton's foreign policy by Halberstam, which had alot on the Bosnia war. What I got from that book and reading the other books that tangents on Bosnia, such as Somalia and Rwanda conflicts, is that one of the conclusions I came to, and I think is irrefutable, is that during the immediate period past the end of the Cold War, various bodies, the EU, the UN tried to expand their mandates to act, and the US was agressive in trying to maintain leadership over European affairs.

[I was there: Clinton and company would have loved for the EU to take responsibility for Yugoslavia in 1993-95. The EU wouldn't.]

One of those key mandate expansion issues was in the use of force. Ultimatly, the war in Bosnia was prosecuted as a test of the UN and EU and the US's ability to wage [limited, peacekeeping] war to maintain a common political and economic continuum in Europe. Crying about the people dieing has been a common tactic to gain acceptance to do many things that aren't very ethical, especially in recent years as the end of the Cold War precluded any kind of major scare tactice such as what the War on Terror does.

Anyways, Noam Chomsky is essentially skipping the whole mouth the platitudes parts and putting inferences in Norris's mouth about the reasons for prosecuting the war. The thing is, it reads to me that the inference that Chomsky takes are factually true anyways. Nobody really gave a damn about the Bosnians (who, along with the Slovenians were the only nicer guys) or the Kosavars, and the Croats were just as bad, only weaker. And reading the books on the time period pretty much tells me the war was fought as a test case for spreading third way neoliberalism. The US and GB against France, Germany, and Russia in a four way struggle in determining how NATO and the EU would operate. Germany started the thing off by unilaterally recognizing Slovenia's vote for independence (thereby starting Yugoslavia's breakup), and wishing to reconstitute the old relationship it had prior to WWII. France has ties and friendships with Serbia, and wanted a kind of leniency and a bit of anti US positioning. Russia has ethnic ties to Serbia, and they wished to establish that they have a say in European affairs. Turkey and Saudi Arabia has religeos ties with the muslims, and it was a cause celebre in Dar Al Islam. Italians went with the Croats. The US wound up giving up on the UN and EU and using NATO to establish which authority has the muscle behind it.

[wml]

Alright what does Norris mean when he says:

"It was Yugoslavia's resistance ot the broader trends of political and economic reform--not the plight of the Kosovar Albanians--that best explains NATO's war."

if he does not mean:

"Norris says that the primary reason for the intervention was failure to enact political and economic reform - plight of the Kosovar Albanians was at best secondary."

-----

"One reason I lean to give Chomsky a break here is as a Realist, I take it as practically for granted that nations don't intervene for humantarian reasons. I might write hedges that maybe humanitarian concerns played a part in a secondary sense, or played a part among some actors, like Fischer, but deep down inside my instinct is they didn't really matter at all.

[Well that's pretty stupid. Nations are made up of people. People do all kinds of things for all kinds of reasons.]"

The idea that nations act as if they disregard humanitarian concerns is one of the major axioms of one of the central theories of IR, Realism. Now you could say Realism is "pretty stupid" as well, for the same reason. But ALL MODELS are pretty stupid. Neoclassical economics is pretty stupid. Keynesianism is pretty stupid. But that's what models are for, simplifying realty.

In the social sciences, whenever someone says "THE explaination for the following social phenemon is..." they are, in a sense, almost surely stating something which is untrue/lying, because ALL social phenonema have multiple causes and complications. The debate generally centers on the PRIMARY or relevent cause is. One could argue that one should always make that point over and over, especially when discussing someone else's work, but that would make interviews very long :)

[Mandos]

Brad's latest set of mass deletions also took out my attempt to put my words back in context---after he deleted parts of those. I don't know how discussion can continue if Brad simply deletes attempts to repair what are effectively out of context quotes of myself. I have been taken effectively out of context on this blog and people should disregard what I wrote above.

[Gar Lipow]

Brad. If someone takes an out of context cite in a written work to attribute a view the work cited it is one thing. But to do it in a spoken interview is another; unlike writing, memory can play all sorts of tricks;

[Do you really think that Noam Chomsky believes that John Norris thinks: "the real purpose of the war had nothing to do with concern for Kosovar Albanians. It was because Serbia was not carrying out the required social and economic reforms, meaning it was the last corner of Europe which had not subordinated itself to the US-run neoliberal programs, so therefore it had to be eliminated. That's from the highest level [of the Clinton State Department]"?

I don't believe that you do.]

if the quote itself cited is accurate it is easy to see how it can be misremembered. In short, assuming the interview is accurate, (which I note you made no attempt to verify before calling "lie") what an honorable person would do is contact Noam Chomsky, and say "Is this transcript essentially correct. Because if it is I believe you made a serious error." And see if the result is correction. Since you have repeated the term 'liar' over and over, I'm going to repeat that an honorable person would contact Chomsky to give him a chance to correct a *verbal* statement that could easily be a mistake due to selective memory.

[Neil']

Chomsky is one of the few true "leftists", in an age when any liberal/ish is called a member of "the left."

[normansdog]

Is Chomsky really crazy? William Blum doesn't think so...

[Does Chomsky's claims about what John Norris says in _Collision Course_ accurate? William Blum doesn't have an opinion. The answer is that they are not accurate.]

[Gar Lipow]

>[Do you really think that Noam Chomsky believes that John Norris thinks: "the real purpose of the war had nothing to do with concern for Kosovar Albanians. It was because Serbia was not carrying out the required social and economic reforms, meaning it was the last corner of Europe which had not subordinated itself to the US-run neoliberal programs, so therefore it had to be eliminated. That's from the highest level [of the Clinton State Department]"?

>I don't believe that you do.]

I think Noam thought he had found someone who was being unusually forthright about the motives behnd the attack - that he had caught someone in a moment of candor. He believe that humanitarianism played no role in the decision (which I think there is evidence for). He thought he had caught an opponent in a major concession. That is exactly how memory works: memory is not a storage system; memory is recontructed. One reason never to rely on memory is that it has huge component for wishful thinking.

I can recall at least one case of citing with absolute confidence somethign from memory on a public e-mail list, and turned out to have one tenth the evidence I thought I did.

In a e-mail list I was totally to blame; nothing stopped me from double checking. In an interview you are unlikely to stop and double check your sources - especially if you are feeling confident you remembered them right.

[Jesus]

Chomsky does not say that there was no concern for the Kosovar Albanians, he says the "real purpose" of the war had nothing to do with said concern for Kosovar Albanians.

John Norris: "It was Yugoslavia's resistance ot the broader trends of political and economic reform--not the plight of the Kosovar Albanians--that best explains NATO's war."

So if there is a "real purpose" for that war it wasnt out of concern for the Kosovar Albanians, as clearly stated by John Norris himself.

John Norris does talk about the concern for Kosovar Albanians, saying that it made it difficult to avoid war, difficult to resist the push to war, what with all the news stories about the plight of Kosovar Albanians. He goes on to quote German Minister Joschka Fischer who uses the new "excuse" for war as being the plight of the Kosovar Albanians. But that was not the "real purpose" and it does not " best explains NATO's war."

Chomsky: "It was because Serbia was not carrying out the required social and economic reforms, meaning it was the last corner of Europe which had not subordinated itself to the US-run neoliberal programs, so therefore it had to be eliminated. That's from the highest level. "

John Norris: "It was Yugoslavia's resistance ot the broader trends of political and economic reform ... that best explains NATO's war."

[Jesus]

Chomsky does not say that humanitarianism played no role in the decision at all, so why somone says that he believes that, god only knows. Maybe they said someone lies a lot.

He says the "real purpose" of the war had nothing to do with said concern for Kosovar Albanians.

[Jesus]

John Norris: "best explains"

Chomsky: "real purpose"

***

John Norris: "It was Yugoslavia's resistance ot the broader trends of political and economic reform ... that best explains NATO's war."

Chomsky: " It was because Serbia was not carrying out the required social and economic reforms, meaning it was the last corner of Europe which had not subordinated itself to the US-run neoliberal programs"

[Jesus]

The disision to go to war in Iraq was said to have something to do with WMD, links to 9/11, and other things. All false anyway, but the "real purpose" was to control the oil.

Jesus.

[Jesus]

Just to hammer the point home for the hard of hearing.

The dicision to invade Iraq had to with WMD etc (a lie, a falsehood even), it was dicided upon at a meating as the best option, the best choice that everyone could agree on, but that was not the "real purpose".

Get it?

Jesus.

[hnrtkioph54tk0pr]

Yeah, that pinko Chmomsky missed a comma when doing whatnot. So he is an idiot and a liar. So US, sorry, World Comminuity did not bomb, sorry, force Serbia into stone age, sorry, compliance with the policies of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini about using Albanians to fight Orthodox Slavs on the Balkans and coopt Catholic Slavs. Sorry, I wanted to say humanitarian something. You got my meaning, right?

[Jesus]

I mean, some might have thought that the war was to save Kosovar Albanians on humanitarian grounds (they did that one in Britain, actually called it a "humanitarian intervention' i believe), but if you asked John Norris to explain -

John Norris says: "It was Yugoslavia's resistance to the broader trends of political and economic reform--not the plight of the Kosovar Albanians--that best explains NATO's war."

Oh, i bet you didnt expect that from someone like John Norris. Not to mention that a guy called Strobe Talbott "who was in charge of the…he ran the Pentagon/State Department intelligence Joint Committee on the diplomacy during the whole affair including the bombing, so that's very top of Clinton administration" says that John Norris is right.

Well at least Chomsky has brought to light what the "real purpose" of the war was. There'll be no more of that pathetic attempt to refer to the war as a 'humanitarian intervention' from prime minister of Britain, who obviously lied.

[Sunrise]

The fact that Chomsky says "real purpose" where John Norris says "best explains", or John Norris says "trends of political and economic reform" and Chomsky says "required social and economic reforms" does not make Chomsky a liar. Only a semi-literate could come to that conclusion.

After having read what John Norris has had to say we do at aleast now know that to call Kosovar a humanitarian intervention is to lie.

Which means that unless the Prime Minister of Britain was kept in the dark, he was lying all the way.