Chomsky, Noam - The Culture of Terrorism

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NNOOAAMM CCHHOOMMSSKKYY

THE

CULTURE OF

TERRORISM

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ESSENTIAL CLASSICS IN POLITICS: NOAM CHOMSKY

EB 0007 ISBN 0 7453 1345 0

London 1999

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The Culture of

Terrorism

Noam Chomsky

Pluto Press

London

Classics in Politics: The Culture of Terrorism Noam Chomsky

Book printed in the United States of America

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Chomsky, Noam.

The culture of terrorism

1. United States — Foreign relations —1981-

I. Title

7.73 E876

ISBN 0-7453-0269-6

ISBN 0-7453-0270-X Pbk

Digital processing by The Electric Book Company

20 Cambridge Drive, London SE12 8AJ, UK

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Classics in Politics: The Culture of Terrorism                                                       Noam Chomsky 
5 
Contents 
Click on number to go to page 
 
Preface........................................................................................ 7 
Notes Preface............................................................................. 11 
INTRODUCTION The Public and State Violence.............................. 12 
Notes Introduction...................................................................... 16 
PART ONE  The Scandals of 1986................................................ 17 
1 The Challenge......................................................................... 18 
Notes Chapter One...................................................................... 34 
2 The Cultural-Historical Context .................................................. 37 
Notes Chapter Two..................................................................... 49 
3 The Problems of Clandestine Terrorism....................................... 52 
Notes Chapter Three................................................................... 77 
4 The Limits of Scandal............................................................... 83 
Notes Chapter Four..................................................................... 93 
5 The Culture of Terrorism........................................................... 96 
Notes Chapter Five ....................................................................136 
6 Damage Control......................................................................146 
Notes Chapter Six......................................................................166 
7 The Perils of Diplomacy...........................................................170 

 
Classics in Politics: The Culture of Terrorism                                                       Noam Chomsky 
6 
Notes Chapter Seven..................................................................214 
8 The Reality That Must Be Effaced: Iran and 
Nicaragua.................................................................................221 
Notes Chapter Eight...................................................................246 
PART TWO  Further Successes of the Reagan 
Administration...........................................................................252 
9 Accelerating the Race  Towards Destruction...............................253 
Notes Chapter Nine....................................................................257 
10 Controlling “Enemy Territory” .................................................258 
Notes Chapter Ten.....................................................................261 
11 Freedom of Expression in the Free World .................................262 
Notes Chapter Eleven.................................................................274 
PART THREE  The Current Agenda ..............................................277 
12 The Threat of a Good Example................................................278 
Notes Chapter Twelve ................................................................285 
13 The Fledgling Democracies.....................................................287 
Notes Chapter Thirteen...............................................................314 
14 Restoring Regional Standards.................................................320 
Notes Chapter Fourteen..............................................................324 
15 Standards for Ourselves.........................................................325 
Notes Chapter Fifteen.................................................................331 
16 Prospects.............................................................................332 
Notes Chapter Sixteen................................................................334 
 

Preface

Classics in Politics: The Culture of Terrorism Noam Chomsky

Preface

his essay on the culture of terrorism is based on a December

1986 “postscript” for several foreign editions of my book Turning

the Tide.1 I had originally intended to update the same material

for a new U.S. edition, carrying it through the Iran-contra hearings, but it

took on a rather different character in the course of rewriting, so I have

prepared it for separate publication. I will, however, generally assume

the discussion in Turning the Tide and the further elaboration in On

Power and Ideology as background, without specific reference.

This earlier material dealt with several topics: the travail of Central

America; the principles that underlie U.S. policy planning as revealed by

the documentary record; the application of these principles in Third

World intervention, primarily with regard to Central America and the

Caribbean; the application of the same principles to national security

affairs and interactions among the industrial powers; and some relevant

features of domestic U.S. society. The central—and not very surprising—

conclusion that emerges from the documentary and historical record is

that U.S. international and security policy, rooted in the structure of

power in the domestic society, has as its primary goal the preservation

of what we might call “the Fifth Freedom,” understood crudely but with

a fair degree of accuracy as the freedom to rob, to exploit and to

dominate, to undertake any course of action to ensure that existing

privilege is protected and advanced. This guiding principle was

overlooked when Franklin Delano Roosevelt announced the Four

Freedoms that the U.S. and its allies would uphold in the conflict with

Preface

Classics in Politics: The Culture of Terrorism Noam Chomsky

fascism: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want,

and freedom from fear.

The internal documentary record of U.S. planning and, more

importantly, the unfolding historical events themselves yield ample

evidence to evaluate the significance attached to the Four Freedoms in

doctrine and in practice, and to demonstrate their subordination to the

Fifth Freedom, the operative principle that accounts for a substantial

part of what the U.S. government does in the world. When the Four

Freedoms are perceived to be incompatible with the Fifth, a regular

occurrence, they are set aside with little notice or concern.

To pursue programs that are conceived and applied in these terms,

the state must spin an elaborate web of illusion and deceit, with the

cooperation of the ideological institutions that generally serve its

interests—not at all surprisingly, given the distribution of domestic

wealth and power and the natural workings of the “free market of ideas”

functioning within these constraints. They must present the facts of

current history in a proper light, conducting exercises of “historical

engineering,” to use the term devised by American historians who

offered their services to President Wilson during World War I:

“explaining the issues of the war that we might the better win it,”

whatever the facts may actually be. It has commonly been understood

that the responsibility of the serious academic historian and political

scientist, as of political leaders, is to deceive the public, for their own

good. Thus the respected historian Thomas Bailey explained in 1948

that “Because the masses are notoriously short-sighted and generally

cannot see danger until it is at their throats, our statesmen are forced to

deceive them into an awareness of their own long-run interests,” a view

recently endorsed by the director of Harvard University’s Center of

International Affairs, Samuel Huntington, who wrote in 1981 that “you

Preface

Classics in Politics: The Culture of Terrorism Noam Chomsky

may have to sell [intervention or other military action] in such a way as

to create the misimpression that it is the Soviet Union that you are

fighting. That is what the United States has done ever since the Truman

Doctrine.” An accurate assessment, which applies very aptly to Central

America today. The academic world too must be rallied to the cause. In

his presidential address to the American Historical Association in 1949,

Conyers Read explained that

we must clearly assume a militant attitude if we are to survive ...

Discipline is the essential prerequisite of every effective army

whether it march under the Stars and Stripes or under the

Hammer and Sickle ... Total war, whether it be hot or cold, enlists

everyone and calls upon everyone to assume his part. The

historian is no freer from this obligation than the physicist ... This

sounds like the advocacy of one form of social control as against

another. In short, it is.2

In general, it is necessary to ensure that the domestic population

remains largely inert, limited in the capacity to develop independent

modes of thought and perception and to formulate and press effectively

for alternative policies—even alternative institutional arrangements—that

might well be seen as preferable if the framework of ideology were to be

challenged.

Subsequent events illustrate very well the theses developed in the

earlier material to which I referred above. I will review a number of

examples, including the “scandals” that erupted in late 1986 and their

consequences, and the new demands that these developments posed for

the ideological system. The scandals elicited a good deal of commentary

and reflection on our political institutions and the way they function.

Much of it, I think, is misguided, for reasons that I will try to explain as

Preface

Classics in Politics: The Culture of Terrorism Noam Chomsky

we proceed. My main concern will be to assess what we can learn about

ourselves, particularly about the dominant intellectual culture and the

values that guide it,3 from an inquiry into recent events and the reaction

to them at a critical moment of American life.

Dedication to the Fifth Freedom is hardly a new form of social

pathology. Nor, of course, was it an invention of the “white hordes” who,

“fortified in aggressive spirit by an arrogant, messianic Christianity” and

“motivated by the lure of enriching plunder, ... sallied forth from their

western European homelands to explore, assault, loot, occupy, rule and

exploit the rest of the world” during the nearly six centuries when

“western Europe and its diaspora have been disturbing the peace of the

world”—as the advance of European civilization is perceived, not

without reason, by a perceptive African commentator.4 But this vocation

of the powerful constantly assumes new forms—and new disguises, as

the supportive culture passes through varying stages of moral cowardice

and intellectual corruption.

As the latest inheritors of a grim tradition, we should at least have the

integrity to look into the mirror without evasion. And when we do not

like what we see, as we most definitely will not if we have the honesty

to face reality, we have a far more serious moral responsibility, which

should be obvious enough.

Cambridge, Massachusetts

October 1987

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