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The Unbearable Whiteness of Chomsky's Arguments: Psychological Projection and The Erasure of African Victims in Chomsky's "Reply" to Hitchens By Leo Casey In his reply to Christopher Hitchens on the subject of the September 11 mass murders, Noam Chomsky rushes to accuse his adversary of "racist contempt" for African victims of terrorism, of a callous refusal to acknowledge their very existence. This accusation is based on Hitchens refusal to accept Chomsky's claim, in the immediate aftermath of September 11, that the 1998 U.S. bombing of a pharmaceutical factory in the Sudan, which was undertaken at a time and in a way designed to minimize the loss of human life and resulted in the death of one night watchman, was a greater crime than the murder of thousands of innocents in New York and Washington DC, a greater crime than actions designed to maximize the loss of human life and to eliminate a great deal more than the current calculations of over 6000 dead men and women from every race, religion and corner of the globe. What are we to make of Chomsky's claims? Let us begin with the bombing of the Sudanese factory. In the months and years since the 1998 bombing, the U.S. government has been unwilling or unable to make public a compelling case, with supporting evidence, to support the contention it made for the bombing -- that the Sudanese factory was producing chemical weapons for the bin Laden Al Qaeda network. Given that lack of evidence, and given the fact that the overall objective of the 1998 bombing [striking a blow at Al Qaeda terror network] was clearly not met, there is no reason to defend that particular action. Indeed, it seems entirely reasonable to adopt the proposals of Human Rights Watch and former U.S. President Jimmy Carter that the U.S. government must produce, in a public forum, compelling proof of its contentions that the factory was producing chemical weapons, or pay compensation to the owner of the factory and the family of the dead night watchman. But Chomsky's assertions go far beyond credible criticisms that the action was based on inaccurate and faulty intelligence, that it was poorly wrought and that it was entirely ineffective. He asserts that it led, directly, to the deaths of tens [at one point in his response to Hitchens] and hundreds [at another point in his response] of thousands of Sudanese; and if this were not enough, he goes on later, it led indirectly, to the deaths of more untold thousands. There are two ways in which Chomsky attempts to support these assertions. The first is what one might call an argument by logical deduction, although his conclusion does not exactly flow from his premises. Since this factory was producing anywhere from 50% to 90% of the Sudan's drugs [I shall return to the strange anomalies in the figures given by the authorities Chomsky cites], and since those drugs were important for the health of Sudanese people, it follows, according to Chomsky, that tens or hundreds of thousands of Sudanese have died as a result of loss of live-saving drugs caused by the 1998 bombing. The pharmaceuticals produced in the factory were, by the Sudanese government's own accounts, basic and widely used anti-malarial, antibiotic and veterinarial drugs. In his reply to Hitchens, Chomsky cites an article in the British _Observer_ which makes much of the fact that the factory was producing the anti-malarial drug most widely used throughout the world for the last half century, chloroquine, so let's examine the case that might be made here. Chloroquine is an inexpensive drug, available widely throughout tropical regions where malaria is endemic; it is comparable, both in availability and cost, to aspirin in the U.S. and Europe. As a matter of fact, North Americans and Europeans visiting tropical areas usually take chloroquine or a close but more expensive relative as a prophylactic. There are scores of countries that produce chloroquine and its relatives, so even if the United Kingdom where to refuse the Sudanese government's request to import it from there following the bombing of the factory, there would be little difficulty in finding another source. Moreover, since the discovery of large deposits of oil in its southern region, Sudan has become a major oil exporting nation with a substantial oil-based income; it regularly spends large amounts of that income in the pursuit of its genocidal war against the Sudanese Africans in the south of its country, as well as opposition groups in the north. It would be a relatively simple matter for it to replace the chloroquine produced in that factory, should it have the will to do so. What is interesting in Chomsky's reliance upon this deductive argument is the lack of any specific proof or statistical evidence of these tens or hundreds of thousands of deaths upon which he speculates. Organizations such as the World Health Organization regularly compile statistical information on the public health of regions and nations. Is there any evidence of an increase of tens or hundreds of thousands of Sudanese dying from malaria in the years since the 1998 bombing? None that I have been able to find. It is also noteworthy that while international human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and the Human Rights Watch have taken note of the bombing of the factory, and called for independent inquiries into the U.S. claims that it was being used for the production of chemical weapons, their reports on the situation in the Sudan, available on the Internet, contain no statements that even treat as credible and worthy of further investigation the claims that thousands of Sudanese might have died as a result of the bombing. What we have here is simply ungrounded assertion, without the slightest evidentiary proof. Chomsky's second line of support for his assertion lies with a classic form of argument by authority. Look, he says, the "mainstream press" says that thousands of Sudanese have died, citing three examples. In fact, only one of the three quoted examples [Patrick Wintour's piece in the British _Observer_] is actually an article by a practicing journalist; Jonathan Belke's piece in the Boston Globe is an opinion commentary by an employee of the Near East Foundation living and working in Cairo, Egypt, and the third is simply a quote from a technician who played a role in building the factory which makes only the most general comments about the demise of the factory being a tragedy, and says nothing about it resulting in Sudanese deaths. What becomes apparent is that these "authorities" have nothing substantive to add to our knowledge of the issue; they simply reiterate the assertions made by Chomsky, and are supplied for that reason alone. What is even more interesting is that in these three rather brief quotations supplied by Chomsky, two of his authorities disagree rather dramatically about as basic a fact as the amount of Sudan's drugs produced by this factory, one claiming 50% and the other 90%. A web search indicates that both individuals have other statements published under their names which use the same discordant figures, so the discrepancy can not be written off as a typographical error. At least one of them is playing rather fast and loose with what little in the way of hard numbers they do provide. Thomas Aquinas once wrote that the weakest argument was the argument from authority, and Chomsky has demonstrated quite well why that is the case here. An ordinary academic pontificating on matters about which he was so poorly informed might have left the issue there. But not Chomsky. He goes on to blame the US attack on this factory for every conceivable problem [and some inconceivable ones as well] in the Sudan and its surrounding region. Using a quote full of the most remarkable euphemisms, Chomsky informs us that the bombing of the factory brought to a halt "compromises" that might have ended the decades old "civil war" between Sudan's "warring sides." How the destruction of a single factory could have produced such remarkable results is never made clear in the particular passage Chomsky provides, but a fuller account is provided in the complete article from which it is excerpted. The full account, however, would strip the veneer right off the euphemisms, so Chomsky limits himself to the short selection. What the selection calls a "civil war" between "warring sides" has been a genocidal campaign conducted by the northern Arabic government, run by the extreme fundamentalist National Islamic Front since a 1990 coup, against its southern African and non-Moslem peoples. The dead in this war count in the millions, all agree, with some estimates running as high as 3 million. Report after report on the Sudan by the United Nations and international human rights organizations cite not only the abrogation of the rights of women, the denial of religious freedom and the suppression of freedom of expression and association which are standard fare with the imposition of extreme fundamentalist versions of shari'a law, but also the existence of a large and thriving slave trade in which government Arabic militias kidnap, enslave and trade Africans from the largest of Sudan's ethnic group, the Dinka, the deliberate use of food as a weapon of war that has brought 2.6 million Africans in the southern Sudan into starvation, the torture of children and the use of stoning and crucifixions as methods of capital punishment. To top that off, the Sudanese government has been providing material aid and support to an insurgent group in northern Uganda, the LRA [Lords' Resistance Army], which engages in similar practices there. The argument of the article cited by Chomsky was that the bombing of the factory gave the Africans in the south of Sudan some hope -- vain it now appears -- that the U.S. and the rest of the world might actually pay some attention to the crimes against humanity that were being perpetrated upon them, and thus, led them to hold out against "compromise." If that were not enough, Chomsky goes on to approvingly quote the same article to the effect that, were it not for the 1998 bombing of this factory, the theocratic totalitarian state of the National Islamic Front would have shifted toward moderation and against terrorism. Having warmly embraced and received bin Laden when he was expelled from his native Saudi Arabia in 1991, having provided him with a base for his activities [including the establishment of three separate training camps, the execution of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, the 1995 and 1998 bombings aimed at American troops stationed in Saudi Arabia and the planning for the bombing of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania which took place in 1998], having made efforts to purchase, in collaboration with him, uranium for nuclear weapons in 1994, having only expelled him in 1996 under severe diplomatic and political pressure, and having engaged in all the activities against its own southern people described above, the Sudanese government was prepared, Chomsky wants us to believe, to move decisively for moderation and against terrorism -- but for the bombing of one factory. Chomsky's suggestion that the Sudanese government had this profound desire to move toward moderation and against terrorism is all the more appalling in its uncannily poor timing. As I write these lines, I have read news media accounts of how the Bush administration was broaching a rapprochement with the Sudanese government as part of its global "war" against terrorism, much to the horror of those in Washington DC -- principally, human rights organizations, the Congressional Black Caucus and the AFL-CIO -- which have been attempting to organize American and world opposition to Sudan's genocidal war on its own African peoples. Let us not lose sight of the Chomskyian forest in our examination of the particular trees of argumentation. Chomsky wants us to pay close attention to "African victims," which he accuses Hitchens of ignoring with a "racist contempt." So, after we work our way through Chomsky's arguments, what is his record with regard to African victims? * Millions of African Sudanese killed, enslaved, starved and tortured at the hands of the genocidal National Islamic Front government: erased under euphemisms of a "civil war" about to be ended with compromise between the "warring sides," but for the bombing of the Sudanese pharmaceutical factory. * Hundreds of Kenyan and Tanzanian Africans, along with Americans of African descent, killed in the Al Qaeda bombing of U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar Es Salaam: the "invisible men and women" of Chomsky's narrative, they never even appear, despite the fact that the bombing of the Sudanese factory was in response to their murders. * Thousands of people from North America, Latin America, Asia and Africa killed in the September 11 mass murders in New York and Washington DC: of less weight than the bombing of a Sudanese factory in which one night watchman died, but out of which Chomsky finds, by assertion, tens and hundreds of thousands of dead. In Chomskyian moral and political calculus, African victims count only when their corpses can be laid at the foot of the American state. The rest disappear, erased from memory. No wonder, with this unbearable whiteness of erasure, he must project "racist contempt" for African victims upon others.
By Noam Chomsky 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., London _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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