9-11: Was There an Alternative?
Noam Chomsky
176 pp. Seven Stories Press. $13.95.
Following 9/11, few people questioned whether the American government was right to invade Afghanistan, and certainly did not blame the American government for the attacks on the World Trade Center. Noam Chomsky was one of the few dissenters. His book, 9-11: Was There an Alternative?, is a new edition of the collection of interviews and essays he composed in the months following September 11th (originally published in 2001 as 9-11), as well as a recent, retrospective essay he wrote following Osama bin Laden’s death. Throughout both the historical and recent parts of Chomsky’s work, he is unrelenting in his desire to point out what he considers incidences of American terrorism in sovereign states like Nicaragua and Sudan, and the U.S.’s double standard of promoting terrorism while condemning it. All the while, he strives to answer the question of whether there was an alternative to that disastrous September day.
In his original interviews and essays, Chomsky analyzes the reasons why the Muslim world harbored such deadly resentment against the United States prior to 9/11, and it grew as a result of America’s militarized retaliation. According to Chomsky, Bush called for a “crusade” against the Muslim world. That, combined with the subsequent invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, played into the hands of radical figures like Osama bin Laden. Bush’s choices ruined a moment of potential political redemption for the US. Chomsky argues that the sympathy of the world lay with America after 9/11; even prominent radical Muslims like Hezbollah cleric Sheikh Fadlallah criticized the tragic event. Yet the US response to 9/11 further radicalized the Near East. While Osama bin Laden did not enjoy wide support prior to 9/11, his base grew exponentially when bombs began to fall on Afghanistan and Iraq. As Chomsky predicted, Muslims suffered widespread resentment against a Western nation invading their own.
Chomsky also examines the multiple double standards that he claims the U.S. government follows in condemning terrorism. He presents several examples of what he considers U.S.-sponsored terrorism in multiple countries, such as South Vietnam, Sudan, and Nicaragua. Chomsky cites the U.S. bombing of Sudan’s Al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in 1998 as one such incidence. The plant produced 50 percent of Sudan’s medicinal products, but Americans argued that the plant was producing chemical weapons. Even when bombing uncovered no weapons, America still refused to resupply Sudan or send aid to the thousands dying from preventable diseases in the country’s rural areas. Estimates of deaths traced back to the plant’s destruction are sometimes placed in the hundreds of thousands. By Chomsky’s account, the crime had enormous historical significance, yet it remains largely ignored by the Western world.
Many of the warnings Chomsky presented in the original 9-11 have been almost hauntingly vindicated. For example, he warned a massive American military response to 9-11 would provoke anger and condemnation in the Muslim world, allowing al-Qaeda to radically increase the number of soldiers it enlisted. He claims that, in this way, the US did more harm than good in invading Iraq and Afghanistan. The invasions fulfilled al-Qaeda ideology by proving real the physical Western threat. Chomsky likewise feared that a violent reaction to 9/11 would only lead to more violence. Now, ten years since the event, American troops still occupy Afghanistan and are only slowly withdrawing from Iraq. Drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen currently kill civilians as well as militants.
Chomsky’s criticisms came at a time when his dissent was labeled as anti-American; therefore, they fell on deaf ears. In some ways, however, the trenchancy of Chomsky’s criticisms may have made him the most pro-American all along.