I'm a pretty avid reader of Noam Chomsky, but this book was a disappointment. What I found absurd was his comparison of 9-11 with Clinton's bombing of Sudan. They are not morally equivalent-actually Chomsky actually goes farther than claiming moral equivalence and says Clinton's actions were worse. It should be obvious that the bombing of Sudan was an attempt to kill Al-Qaeda members, not civilians, while the 9-11 terrorists deliberately targeted civilians, in the hope of killing as many as possible. Sam Harris does a great analysis of this book in his work The End of Faith. Todd Gitlin, as far from a right-winger as one can be, also harshly criticized 9-11 in the Nation.

I cannot recommend this book. If you want a good Chomsky book, try Failed States or the Indispensable Chomsky.

This is a collection of talks and interviews so it lacks the political models and theories that Chomsky applies to U.S. politics and media that are found in his larger and more in depth works.

This book is probably best suited for the moderate dissident or progressive who has read only minimally on the subject. This text has nothing to do with 9/11 conspiracy theories or the 9/11 truth movement.

What it does contain is context to help people put the 9/11 attacks in perspective. During the Russian occupation of Afghanistan the U.S. and others armed, trained, and funded several radical Islamism groups to engage in low intensity conflict with the Russians. Many of these groups ascribe to a purist form of Islam that deems any foreign influence in Arab lands as an abomination. These groups were not particularly popular among Arabs, but through foreign support they became quite powerful militarized organizations.

Since then they have been doing more of the same, which is basically fighting a holy war against imperialism in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia and Egypt are constantly being targeted by them. These groups have dissolved and reconstituted themselves and have had a variety of names over the years, they fight each other and are mostly funded by drug profits. Al Qaeda is one of these organizations. They had very little power before they received foreign support to fight the Russians.

Basically the people we gave the guns to do our dirty work turned them on us after they had served their purpose.

In the book, Chomsky advocates a peaceful approach to resolving the conflict, predicting the negative affects on the civilian populations that result from military conflict will lead more people to sympathize with Bin Laden's cause. The bombing Afghanistan halted U.N. food aide shipments to the millions who are starving there, resulting in unknown death tolls. While the Arab world was overwhelmingly appalled by the events of 9/11, taking it out on civilian populations (unintentionally, incidentally or otherwise) will only increase support for Bin Laden's efforts.

This prediction has been proven true by a NSA report two years ago that said as a result of the war in Iraq Al Qaeda has increased in number and organization and we are now more at risk of an attack as the result of our actions.

After reading all the one star reviews, would estimate that at most 4 of the people who left them have actually read the book, and every single one of them misrepresents Chomsky's views completely.

If you're interested in this book, read it and form your own opinions.

A true American is a Caucasian or African-American Christian that loves his country. That's all there is to it.

America was discovered by Caucasian Christians and settled as a land where they could practice Protestantism freely. The Catholic church had grown corrupt and was persecuting other Christians for not following their newly-proclaimed dogma.

Americans soon found they had neighbors whom they mistakenly yclept Indians, whom they shared the truth of Christ with. The two got along well, but began to make deals with each other and change their minds afterward which led them to get into squabbles. America generously agreed to give certain portions of America to the Indians and they happily accepted.

Over in Africa, the Arabs were capturing African-Americans and enslaving them. America took up a collection and bought all the slaves from the Arab invaders, with the agreement that the African-Americans work for them to pay off the debt. The African-Americans kindly accepted. The Americans then shared the truth of Christ with their new African-American friends.

The World saw how free and happy America was and sought to destroy it. Britain, an evil empire that encompassed half the world decided to invade. Even though America was greatly out-numbered, God gave her the power to fight off the evil invaders and keep America the bastion of freedom it was.

When England was in rubble, the Americans got together and wrote down how their government worked so their descendants would never forget how it was done. They called it the Constitution. It said that Americans would be free to say anything they wanted, and practice any form of Christianity they wanted. They were kind enough to forgive the Catholic church for what it did and allowed people to be Catholic if they wanted as well. As well as a myriad of other wonderful things, it also stated that Americans' should be allowed to carry firearms.

Even though they would have been kicked out of the original America, there has arisen a new "false-American" that wants to destroy the country that has given him everything. They call themselves liberals, or sometimes progressives. They want to expand the Indians' territory to cover most if not all of America's territory, and they tell the African-Americans lies about how they were slaves. They burn American flags and claim the first Americans were devil worshippers. They also want to destroy the constitution because it gives people the freedom of religion and the right to bear firearms.

Yes, there is such as thing as true Americans, and unfortunately false Americans as well. The difference is obvious: one loves his country and wants to keep it like the original Americans had it, the other hates it and wants to destroy it.

Noam Chomsky could well be the character upon whom famed intellectual/cannibalistic mass murderer Hannibal Lecter is based. Brilliant in his chosen field (that's linguistics, not political science), he nonetheless is possessed of an insatiable need to feed on the flesh of the nation that welcomed his people while the Europeans were burning Jews' homes, and preparing to do much worse.

9-11 is a miserable, malicious, and awesomely unsophisticated villification of the greatest and most successful country in the history of mankind, the United States of America.

If you want to know why your toddler knows the f-word even though you never said it in front of him, read Chomsky. If you want a cogent and insightful analysis of American foreign policy and the politics of Muslim fanaticism, you'd do just as well to ask that same toddler as to read this glob of moronic silt.

Look up the "5 Dancing Israelis" and Building 7. It's called controlled opposition, disregard and find out the real truth about 9/11.

Very disappointed with the book that I didn't even finish reading it. The book is more or less an interview with Chomsky. It really didn't offer any insight to 911 and it didn't offer anything new. I expected more out of this book and from Chomsky.

Chomsky's analysis of the political situation is, as always, extraordinarily astute. He has a knack for cutting to the quick, summing up extremely complex international political situations succinctly and comprehensibly. And he certainly doesn't beat around the bush!

But five years down the line, though most of his predictions have sadly proved true, this book is clearly outdated. Owing to its structure, moreover - a series of interviews with journalists asking more or less the same questions - it's rather repetitive.

Now I'd like to know his thoughts on the situation in Iraq - and Somalia....

I am a big fan of Noam Chomsky, and if you like to read a short book about 9/11 and the lies and deceptions attached to this tragic event, I highly recommend this book.

I thought this book was a good read. I don't totally agree with all of Chomsky's views, but getting an semi-alternative view was good. I think he does press a little too much by accusing the US and Israel of being terrorist. We (the US) didn't specifically target civilians by hitting the towers, but I think the book sheds light on that we were involved in activities that killed many innocent people, not that we wanted people dead but to maintain control. I can't agree that with Chomsky that we shouldn't have played a role in Afghanistan during the 80's. It was a good way to indirectly hurt the Soviet Union. But our previous administrations foreign policies failed to protect us with what happened on 9-11. If something remotely similiar happens again, then the Bush administration has failed. The book is good to read if you are open-minded and not-biased against or for the US, Israel, or who ever. Chomsky makes the US look bad so if you the American thats refuses to accept our wrongdoing don't read it. If you are anti-Bush and whatever, reading it might fuel your bias. If you are more moderate then its a great book to give you some things to think about but don't take everything to seriously but seriously don't outright deny any possiblities.

The religion of peace is at it again! In response to the popes words, muslims all over the world respond with violence, destruction, rage, hatred, burning down buildings, burning papal effigies, issuing fatwas against the pope, and even shooting a 70 year old nun in the back. Wow, such peace from a religion of "peace". If Islam is a religion of peace, then all the guns in the world are pink flowers, and every nuclear bomb, a soft feathery pillow. Violence for words. Destruction for speech. PLEASE! This is a religion of war, and bereft mindless 70 year old bags like Noam have begun to lose a lot of mental function with age. This old bag of a man gives Muslims free passes and blames America.


Question: When will the world start holding to account the actions of Muslims, and stop blaming others, such as Bush, America, the Pope, or God knows who else? How many more innocent people will die at the hand of Muslims before the western world finally, and for the first time, holds the Muslims accountable for their own actions, rather than someone else?

Well Im sick of the left defending this vile cesspool of Islamofacism. Im tired of the leftist media beating up on Israel and coming to the side of middle-eastern tyrants who shoot 70 year old nuns in the back in response to spoken words. And then these radical leftists have the audacity blame the pope! Can you believe it?!! Yes, idiots all over the western world actually blame the pope for the mindless violence and destruction that followed from a spoken word. Its unreal! A grown man got a gun, deliberately aimed it at a 70 year old woman's backside, and deliberately pulled the trigger, purposefully killing her in cold blood....and yet according to socialist America-hating leftists, he couldn't help it. Its not his fault...its the Pope's fault guys! Respond to words with violence, and then blame the speaker, absolving the person who actually commits the violence of responsibility. As absurd as that sounds, I'm sad to say there are actually people all over the world who think that. And they are idiots (like Noam)

I picture Chomsky in a sunless, cluttered apartment full of scattered yellowing newspapers, surrounded only by walls of his own clippings. Yes, his recent writing is the result of too little exposure to the real world. Not everything is a conspiracy theory, and not all facts or events paint an overall trend or picture. The world is too random for all similar events to be related. But when you surround yourself with your own highlighted facts of history and dwell on them day after day trying to sell your thoughts, the result is going to be nonsense. I respect Chomsky's right to say what he thinks, and as a liberal I often find myself agreeing with him (but for vastly different reasons). What I do not respect are those readers who take his words as gospel, when they are simply the rantings and ravings of someone who has lost touch with how the real world works. Throwing together a bunch of events across history does not make for a lucid view of how we got to the present and what to do about the current problems. To me, he is no different from those who have assembled enough disjointed evidence as to convince themselves that 9-11 was perpetrated by the U.S. government.

I am not excusing the actions of any U.S. administration, past or present. All that I am saying is that the actions of the U.S. 10, 20, even 50 years ago bear little relation to each other or to the present. And where they do, it is not worth arguing that it is the result of some long-term phenomenon of evil U.S. power. The world is comprised of random actors interacting constantly, and to say that the U.S. should be able to control or foresee the future is nonsense. All the U.S. can do is preserve and fight for its own interests, which is all that any state does.

Chomsky's anti-capitalist, anti-globalization, anti-aggression stance is based on an ill-conceived vision of a utopia, one far distanced from the real world in which we live. In Chomsky's world, it is possible for everyone to get along in a state of equality, and no interests ever conflict. In the real world, interests do conflict, and equality is impossible without sacrificing absolute welfare. While I often disagree with the chosen approach to resolving those conflicts, I at least accept that the conflict needed resolution and that doing so presented difficulties beyond the ability of a human mind to conceive. Sometimes we get it right, sometimes we don't. But it is only a fool who would take all of the failures and weave together a story of evil intentions.

That Chavez would brandish Chomsky's book while ranting and raving about good and evil on the floor of the U.N. shows just what company Chomsky's theories find for him. Chomsky's theories could use less lofty language and more grounding on planet earth. It is no wonder that half of the evidence provided cannot be backed up with verifiable sources.

This is a spiteful, hateful man who is out of his element outside of linguistics. And he got that wrong, as well.

This is a spiteful, hateful man who is out of his element outside of linguistics. And he got that wrong, as well.

Noam Chomsky has thrived greatly in this great country of his, yours, and mine - the United States of America. He has made millions of dollars teaching, lecturing, selling his books, and investing. His world-wide fame in psycholinguistics is well-deserved. His infamy is merited for his lack of loyalty to his own Jewish ethnicity and the U.S., in spite of the fruits he has received by being a citizen of the United States. He has repaid this country in bile with his incredibly biased analysis of American foreign policy. He goes way beyond a balanced multiculturism, when he always ranks the U.S. and Israel as foremost among the terrorist forces in the world now, and even in history. His distrust of any authority, benign or otherwise, is reflected in his dogmatic and unexamined support of the "underdog," even if that underdog is a suicide bomber or a major terrorist organization such as Al Queda or Hezbollah.

Yet since 1955, hypocrite Chomsky has worked for the "overdog" Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which has actively and enthusiastically participated in the development of weapons of War and mass destruction, and continues to this very day.

Chomsky trumps his own potential for gifted analytic objectivity with his simple hatred of the United States and the Jewish State.

If he were not so attached to the freedom of making money, earning the adulation of the American Left, and freedom to express himself, he might be able to give more direct and personal support for our enemies and his friends by taking up residence in North Korea, Iran, or Syria. Let us hope he retires outside of our homeland that he hates so much, the United States of America.

God Bless America, which will continue to give Chomsky the right to speak, teach, and make lots of money.

Rayboy

Adequate notes for the early panic stricken and taken by surprise effort to process the events. The author does note history of warfare on the North American continent aimed at the US, The War of 1812. The 9-11 Report had not been published yet, so what did anybody really know? We had to wait for the raft of tangential media reconstructions to start piecing together the story, and it all looked like an effort to hide the apparent pyrotechnics complications outside the forum of law, government and the 9-11 Commission--another tell tale sign of history revision, when NOVA and The History Channel are essentially overriding the investigation of a crime scene. This book does not address measurement of the evidence universe or lack thereof, neither does it register the manipulation of the public. Those complications remain in place, and only further jeopardize the future by their not being processed--they will make gains on it for further power grabs from more national smoke and ashes. In fact, they will create a television series foreshadowing the obvious escalation: "Jericho", this Fall, Wednesdays on CBS.

His other book, "Hegemony or Survival" does not speak to readers who might want to contemplate such terms either, but in a different way from scarcity of information, it grouses in the customary panache of Chomsky's meandering style, and is a case of yet another bait and switch disappointment--detours to conclude the American people have no recourse through their common justice system, what all has to bow before a fabrication of world government's ways and means. Debating whether terrorism is crime and the `time wasted' in 1993 to treat that bombing as a crime scene, got called into question by Rep. Heather Wilson of N.M in H.R. 861. Such practical recourses to our survival as our code of laws and justice system cannot be allowed to steal the thunder of staged sensations, nor the mystique riddled, abracadabra nomenclature so brilliantly pronounced as if in a ceremonious incantation rite, on Democracy Now Radio, over a crystal ball--very, very hypnotizing those Arab names. And of course to the American ear, there is no sorting out what's going on based on that obstructionism. The ciphers are merely recycled and held up in contempt of the public's review, the systematic deconstruction of the scope of evidence, evidentiary proceedings, admissible scope, or any form of examination--just voodoo. There's a book about this called "The Anthropology of War", chapter on `witchcraft', would you believe it? There's also a section on fragmentation review barrages.

Valid address of the cause and effect line of questioning would have tied the 1993 bombing attempt to a massive reorganization to regroup and study the problem of skyscraper demolition more carefully, multimarketing with compromised U.S sections of `security' encompassing war planning for the whole problem of the new millennium, and notoriously signal jammed by the buzz word Y2K in the 1990s. Cause and effect could have cited references to the Twin Towers, depicting an anomalous realty market initiative to carve up and sell off the buildings' assets under that blueprint's logistics time frame (Teleport versus NYNEX's million channel landline hub in the Twin Towers) Cause and effect could have noted hostility openly expressed by factions of city government to the WTC project ever being built, and probably always living to see the day it came down. The cause is thermite (what also asphyxiated the jumpers), pyrotech by RC, and the subversion of the United States government--literally espionage on the FBI and interference cued thereby with a federal passenger list screening investigation under Title 22, The Transportation Safety Acts of 1993-4. FISA in non-applicable, a passenger list is not any form of `communication', the FBI had eminent domain and more than enough warrant to arrest an obvious build up of `men at arms' amassing coordinated hijacking by overwhelming force--ipso facto violation of `Armed Vessel' statues by virtue of commandeered vehicle weaponization, thus no certificates in any ports to ward off full inspection on grounds of civil liberties, automatic impound and full arrests, certainly with tracked suspects (the tell-tale insider yearbook). All else is accessory hazardous communication in collusion abetting capitol mass murder, welcome to civil defense. Read the United States Code Annotated at your local public law library.

And to finish with a word on Chomsky's speech to the Naval Cadets on C-SPAN recently, "just war", is just how it sounds, it's just, `war', and there are no more rules regulating it today than were ever abided in the past. This presents a serious problem for democracy having to deduce it is controlled by an overriding militaristic syndicalism wanting to make war against its own namesake, hold the people in contempt, and then impose oppression further by converting the stonewall of denial and non-recognition into the most potent form of mind control--a simple grudge match of the hegemony's deceit against the duped and destroyed electorate whose vain trust always provides more coy opportunities. The President has to be photographed on the cover of TIME, next to the seal on his jacket `air force one', and with significance of literacy, reading glasses, for the ever vigilant manufacture of his legitimacy (week of July 29, '06). And Noam Chomsky, if he's to really make a speech, ought to speak to people who matter, and about the right attitude with regard to war, the irrelevance of the Geneva Convention, cozying up to a trivial affectation of uniformed officiousness that pads a diseased abdication of leadership.

Chomsky book applies media filter (reporters asking questions), and avoids argument sui generis (step by step reductions of analysis filtering out the spurious Arabs) chases after the same phantoms (first reported to the American public after 9/11 as if drawn from a hat or school yearbook) applied to confound the public and further disguise America's simmering civil war.

Asked directly, which is often the style of his book generation, the guru will be flattered to only offer considered responses to submitted questions. Basically this tells his readership that he would otherwise have nothing formally to say nor consider it a worthy subject for his own research were he unable to disguise commingling with the lesser intellectuals by charitably donating warranted deliberation--so long as its interrogatory brings with it the spectacle of fetching the media, by having them court his attentions like he were an American Idol or something-no doubt his lifelong dream and realized fantasy.

Some of Chomsky's habits of speech ring with a Cold War era bias inflected from perhaps too much attention to exnominating conventions. He uses his press conference to hold class about world woes and unrest in recent history, addressing Vietnam, he might've curbed stodgy rhetoric by saying:

The `landless peasants' had no quarrel with their colonizing `European masters', therefore the progression of their national sovereignty from the North mistook the fact they had already been excised as a banana republic in the global slave economics, not a would be communist country. Corporate communism being at least deodorized by the sweet smell of windfall profits, exploitations of working people, their land and environment, catering to America's inevitable fall to consumption.

Asked point blank whether the attack was `internal' or `external' (p. 17), our professor from MIT tells his biggest whopper: "There is no serious doubt that the attack was `external'."

`Wallowing in self indulgent fantasies', Chomsky misses an opportunity to answer a question about `cause and effect' in relationship to the `miseducation' of the American people (p. 32), by instead returning to commentate for his unctuous swine, forever clouding American news media with its conflation of their necessary unanimous vitriol, paranoias and hatreds-what Chomsky only assists, as if Middle Easterners were just more `landless peasants' who had to have their minds made up for them by Western intellectual media demagogues. Valid address of the cause and effect line of questioning would have tied the 1993 bombing attempt to a massive reorganization to regroup and study the problem of skyscraper demolition more carefully, multimarketing with compromised U.S sections of `security' encompassing war planning for the whole problem of the new millennium, and notoriously signal jammed by the buzz word Y2K in the 1990s. Cause and effect could have cited references to the Twin Towers, depicting an anomalous realty market initiative to carve up and sell off the buildings' assets under that blueprint's logistics time frame (Teleport versus NYNEX) Cause and effect could have noted hostility openly expressed by factions of city government to the WTC project ever being built, and probably always living to see the day it came down.

Another interesting item is how a movie about the project's construction which aired at the end of a news broadcast on the evening of December 24th 2001 MSNBC, appeared to have been of so many spliced together fragments in no particular order, that the synthetic and digitally reconstructed narration sounded like computer speech synthesis. It gave me chills. It could also be evidence of cutting room floor rescue after Santa's Little Helpers tried to destroy that record of how massively overbuilt the Twin towers really were, built to withstand hurricane force winds of up to 150 mph with only a foot of roof to foundation displacement [Gillespie, Angus Kress, `The life of NYC's Twin Towers', reprinted in memoriam but not available on Amazon.com]. How about that Amazon, are you effectively burning books for the Patriot Act now?

The airliner impacts on the WTC on 9/11 produced enormous exterior fireballs, exhausting their instantly volatilized jet fuel by in large. There were no forensic budget estimates based on those cloud radii in relationship to the projected fuel payloads. The airframe's lightweight structures were effectively shredded by the building's high strength steel outer cage wall, built from 44-ton sections half the size of a tennis court [Gil], admitting only primary penetrations relatively small by comparison to the aircraft's impact silhouettes, (veritably Ford Fiesta versus a Union Pacific freight train.) Enormous plumes of smoke were produced, filling the skies over the city nonetheless, and people were motivated to jump from the buildings in large numbers due to its suffocating, noxious acrid elimination of breathable air. There has been no forensic budget analysis of time and rate of atmospheric smoke production based on the video evidence. There has been no conflagration analysis accounting fire control sprinkling systems, fire-doors, and fire repellant materials; surviving witnesses who escaped the towers reported seeing the floods of sprinkler waters pouring down stairwells, they also reported drywall blow apart in perhaps levels of the building that would not correlate with where the impacts had occurred. The Official 9/11 Report, blacked out in places originally, revised draft edited even, still contains the eyewitness expert emergency rescue technicians reporting what they described as `[many surmising that] a bomb had gone off', that knocked them off their feet in the upper floors of the North Tower as the South Tower dropped. That reflected shockwave also had the same effect on standing eyewitnesses in the Marriot Hotel lobby and more emergency response crew on the mall concourse, eastern side of the North Tower; as it reflected off the foundation. What's called a `clamped boundary condition', and is taught at MIT. So much for our government and its media's regard for `cause and effect'-pathetic.


Perhaps he's getting too old to rail against the system from his own synthesis, it would be fun to keep bouncing emails off him, but it would be disrespectful of the elderly.

This is excellent material from Chomsky. Inspired me to reread some of his earlier works and to purchase 2 I hadn't read. This is clear, concise, if somewhat repetitive(but it tells you it will be, so that's all right too). Gives a different view of the cause and effects of 9/11, a must read for anyone wanting a well rounded view of that time.

Chomsky main failing in this work and it appears to be a recurring theme in his 40 year career as a propagandist, is he begins with a typical theory: America is bad and all that it does is bad, finds information to corroborate this through a creative process of distorting sources or failing to mention them all together, and ignoring anything that might deconstruct his theme. Despite Chomsky's belief that Bin Laden's attacks were driven by US foreign policy, all one has to do is go to the source, whom Chomsky believes can be taken at his word, to realize the goals of Bin Laden.

All actions taken by Bin Laden and his organization have this specific and narrow goal: to re-create the Islamic Caliphate that existed centuries ago and basing it on Shari'a. It is driven by a chauvinistic belief that "Dar es Harb" does not deserve its prosperity and "Dar es Salam" deserves to take its rightful place of power on the world stage. Realistically, the only thing standing in the way of the recreation of the Caliphate is the United States and the force it can project to prevent this, and that's why Bin Laden believes it needs to be destroyed. One does not even have to stoop to Chomsky's level of vile intellectual dishonesty to make this point, Bin Laden's own words are very clear on this.

"the pious Caliphate will start from Afghanistan"

This is Bin Laden's reason for 9/11, everything else from the Palestinian issue to Iraq, to Saudi Arabia is a pile on to garner him mainstream support, but his core ideology a, Shari'a governed Islamic Caliphate, is what motivates his backers, allies. and foot soldiers.

Chomsky confidence that he understands everything that motivated Bin Laden, is more a projection of his own beliefs, ideology and motivations for wanting to see America destroyed than Bin Laden's motivations. Chomsky on September 11th is like someone who, upon hearing that Reagan was shot, immediately launches into a ten-minute tirade about the Contras, Cuba, Palestine, Vietnam (etcetera), only to be told that was all about Jodie Foster.

His analysis, if that's what one could call this tripe, about Bin Laden also repeats the often told lie that Bin Laden was involved with the US during the 80's in Afghanistan. The Mujahideen were split into 6 different factions , three of which were hardliner Islamists : Islamic Party , Islamic society , Islamic Unity and three moderate factions : Islamic Revolutionary Movement , National Islamic Front , and National Liberation Front . None of these factions were led by Bin Laden and not all them were supplied by America, the hardliners were supplied by Pakistan , Egypt and Saudi Arabia . Don't believe it, look up Rober Fisk's interview with Bin Laden in 1988 where Bin Laden categorically denies that he took any assistance from the US during the Afghan Jihad.

If you want to know who Bin Laden is read Michael Scheuer, if you want to know what drives him, read Daniel Pipes, and if you want a poor alternative for toilet paper read Chomsky.

This is book is collection of Interviews by Noam Chomsky given before and after the attacks on the WTC.

I found this book a little too brief and would recommend to first time readers of this author to read some of his other work and then come to this particular book.

This book is nonetheless an Interesting view to take on the events that are discussed in it.

The book gives good insight to some of the events that may generally not be discussed when it comes to events leading to 9-11. The entire book is a discussion between Mr.Chomsky and other journalist and radios. The good part about the book is the questions that are asked are very relevant and address the issue that needs to be addressed. They would certainly help an American who still does not understand why the Middle-East dislikes America and why terrorist are out to get them. This would help ofcourse if one thinks beyond the neocon ideology of the American superiority in culture and race. The book is not good if you are looking for details of any particular US military intervention; i would recommend this book for those who are reasonably well aware of the US war crimes outside its borders. May be for starters you could read some of the other books by this author and then read this.
Finally, I must say overall a great book, Mr.Chomsky's replies are very informative and elucidating. The book addresses some important questions so it might help all those curious jacks out there.

Chomsky has long been considered the Left's most prominent intellect so it stands to reason that a man who has written a great wealth of books on American militirazation and globilization would write his view about the events of 9-11.

Although, this book is not entirely written by Chomsky, as the editor makes it clear that it is rather a composite of interviews and one article that Chomsky embarked upon after 9-11, the information that Chomsky reveals is great brain food for those interested not only in Politics but social and philosophical ideas about why 9-11 happened and how America may have prevented and may prevent another tragedy like 9-11 from occuring.

Though the chapters often repeat the same information, the facts that Chomsky draws upon are cited accurately and often, and he does not, as many conservatives claim, support or condone the events of 9-11. Rather, Chomsky offers insightful evidence to why it occured in the first place and lets the reader draw there own conclusion about the future of American global politics.

For the most part Chomsky is closer to the truth than his detractors.

Years ago I was a student at MIT and had a laboratory close to Chomsky's office in the old research MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics. At that time, and for many years later I thought Chomsky was a rabid liberal- socialist that was out somewhere in left field on many issues.

Of course I had formed that opinion without reading his books! But I knew that he had written dozens of books, was made an Institute Professor (which is a big deal at MIT) had written hundreds of papers and had at least 20 honorary doctorates from universities all around the world. When I sat down and read his books page by page I was converted. He simply presents the facts in a cool and detached manner. The facts speak quite eloquently for themselves and they are damming of US foreign policy.

On 9-11 and after like many others if I had been the President I would have ordered a military strike. It was and is a natural response as if your wife was raped or a child killed by a criminal. We wanted revenge for the 3,000 killed. Even Rudolph Giuliani told Bush he wanted to personally pull the trigger when Bin Laden was captured. It was a time of high emotion. Bush followed human instincts and his advisors, and indeed at lot of pressure from the American public and the congress to do something.

Chomsky of course has taken a more rational approach and has tried to formulate a quick analysis of what happened and where we have gone wrong. This is a short book but otherwise excellent. It is a question and answer format. I cannot agree with everything in the book but it gives a fair portrayal of many aspects of the problem. In many respects the US has become a rogue nation, pumped up with layer of propaganda and patriot rhetoric that has permitted the government for over 45 years and often with congressional and public support to invade Afghanistan, Cambodia, Cuba, Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, Grenada, Panama, Somalia, Haiti, Kosovo, Iraq, to send troops to Lebanon, to bomb Yemen, Libya, and the Sudan. No wonder the US has enemies. If we are upset about the 3,000 killed on 9-11 what do the Vietnamese think of the 3 million killed in the Vietnam conflict?

It is time for a complete re-think of the US foreign policy and the role of the UN and other institutions such that groups and countries will act within a set of internationally accepted laws. Then variations from those laws will be addressed by all nations acting together, not just the US following its own self interests for better or for worse. That is the value of this thin book on 9-11.

My humble opinion.

Here is Noam CIA-homsky back with more Left Gatekeeper disinformation. Chomsky accepts the official story of 19 Arab hijackers, even though 7 of them have been found alive. He never questions why the Air Force stood down, why WTC-7 collapsed, why Atta and others trained at US Air Force bases, why Cheney ran hijacking drills the morning, and the host of other smoking guns like Operation Northwoods.

Chomsky is a CIA superspook, who legitimates the fairy tale version of 9-11 and ignores all evidence of government complicity. He then tells his leftist readers that the solution is "international law" and blames the usual suspects: corporations and America. Meanwhile he ignores all the real cartels behind the 9-11 attacks with extreme prejudice. How about the CFR and Bilderberg role in engineering crises? Or PNAC documents which called for a "new pearl harbor." All ignored by Disinfo Noam.

Chomsky's analysis is useless and dated at best. He won't even suggest the government knew the attacks were coming. At best he is a washed up Fabian socialist whose writings are pathetic and dated. But more likely the Firm cut him a big check after this one.

Wake up folks, Al-Qaeda is nothing more than an intelligence front run by the CIA, NSA, MI6, Mossad and other black ops. They are Arab patsies being used to engineer WW III and turn the earth into a biometric prison with every action traced and tracked.

For real analysis, look to Webster Tarpley's brilliant 911: Synthetic Terror.

Here is Noam CIA-homsky back with more Left Gatekeeper disinformation. Chomsky accepts the official story of 19 Arab hijackers, even though 7 of them have been found alive. He never questions why the Air Force stood down, why WTC-7 collapsed, why Atta and others trained at US Air Force bases, why Cheney ran hijacking drills the morning, and the host of other smoking guns like Operation Northwoods.

Chomsky is a CIA superspook, who legitimates the fairy tale version of 9-11 and ignores all evidence of government complicity. He then tells his leftist readers that the solution is "international law" and blames the usual suspects: corporations and America. Meanwhile he ignores all the real cartels behind the 9-11 attacks with extreme prejudice. How about the CFR and Bilderberg role in engineering crises? Or PNAC documents which called for a "new pearl harbor." All ignored by Disinfo Noam.

Chomsky's analysis is useless. He won't even suggest the government knew the attacks were coming. At best he is a washed up Fabian socialist whose writings are pathetic and dated. But more likely the Firm cut him a big check after this one.

Wake up folks, Al-Qaeda is nothing more than an intelligence front run by the CIA, NSA, MI6, Mossad and other black ops. They are Arab patsies being used to engineer WW III and turn the earth into a biometric prison with every action traced and tracked.

For real analysis, look to Webster Tarpley's brilliant 911: Synthetic Terror.

Chomsky concedes that the events on 9/11 were horrendous but drives home the point that the United States has committed even worse attrocities throughout the world. To demonstrate his thesis that the U.S. is the most vile terrorist state in the world (superceding even the Taliban), Chomsky focuses on the bombing of the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in the Sudan that destroyed half of the country's medicine production and silently killed thousands while halting the trend of moderation in the country and plunging back into fanatical warring which has now culminated in genocide. In addition, Chomsky hones in on our decimation of Nicaragua in the 80's near the peak of communist hysteria when the leftist Sandinista's were rapidly accruing public support. As Chomsky repeatively emphasizes, the United States is the only country to ever be condemned for international terrorist by the world court (1986).

Not only does Chomsky expose the hypocracy that lies beneith the interminable "war on terror," he also mentions that it was the U.S. (among other capitalist nations) who organized, trained, financed, and armed the most extreme Islamic fundamentalists to slaughter the Russians who were lured into the "Afghan Trap." The "blowback" from our actions have been felt all over the world--after expelling the Soviets this new fundamentalist organization directed its attention towards oppresive regimes more influenced by capitalism than Islam. This same group relates the U.S. occupation of Saudi Arabia (country of Mecca) to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and their primary goal has been to drive the oil coveting interest protectors from the holy land. Hence the reason Bin Laden's networks brought jihad to the country that created them.

The only problem I have with this book is that is was released way too soon after the attacks. Instead of predicting America's reaction, Chomsky should have waited to criticize it.. (for example, he suggested that a dazed and confused america would be open to questioning and freedoms would actually increase--this of course, before the announcement of the "patriot act")

I highly recommend this book...

A booklet filled with typical Chomsky. Nothing is factual but there seem to be lots of citations that refer the reader back to some other Chomsky title which contains even more self-citing.

How deep is the rabbit hole? Only Chomsky knows. I guess this is the trick of a learned linguist.

"The Anti-Chomsky Reader" is a must have accompaniment.

PenetratingArmenian
A Self Certified Blogspot Blogger

PS-1 Star because it's dead cheap and brief.

I find it humorous that one "patriotic, America loving" reviewer wanted to charge Chomsky with treason under the Patriot Act, even though the Constitution clearly spells out the criteria for treason, the only crime it explicitly defines. You would figure that someone who loves America so much would find it abhorrent to circumvent the Constitution like that.
It is completely illogical to equate questioning America with hating America. If you had a family member you thought was making a grave mistake, you most certainly would speak up. I see no difference in this case. In fact, I think it would be treacherous if someone who thought a loved one was making a grave mistake stayed silent, instead of trying to help. America is great because everyone is free to express their opinions, and remains viable because Americans can sort out valid opinions from trash. There is no need to censor them, bad opinions will simply marginalize themselves. If Chomsky's words are those of a loony radical, then people will disregard them. However, if there is validity to them, which many seem to feel, then they are a constructive part of American political discourse.
Chomsky doesn't defend terrorists, he just points out that it isnt the hatred of freedom that spawns them. Our foriegn policy (especially post WWII) has alienated and aggravated a large number of people around the world. That doesnt justify the actions of terrorists, it just helps explain why these people are so determined to destroy us.
Overall, I think this is a solid book, although I am not a huge fan of Chomsky's writing style.

In the aftermath of the attacks of 9/11, many were quick to point fingers, lump arab-americans in with the terrorists who were responsible, and a veil of paranoia fell over the country. Not to say that the paranoia was not justified, but still, it was there. Even though all this was going on, nobody bothered to ask why. Why did Osama and Al Qaeda attack NYC? This book attempts to explore some of the causes of this aggression towards the United States.
It's not Anti-American garbage. When you read it, and put the pieces together, it starts to make a lot of sense. Really read it before you decide to alert Ashcroft of this great misdeed.

This slim volume shows how the US(especially now with Bush) is, ---and has been for the last half century--, a vicious imperial power whose internal freedom has no correlation with its external behavior; a country where people are brainwashed to believe official pieties, support state atrocities and be ignorant/apathetic or jingoistically enthusiastic about the brutal and heinous crimes carried out by the US, which is dominated by corporate interests in their insatiable quest for power and wealth. The brainwashing is done through the manufacture of consent, a technique of social control by which people get to regard themselves as thinking perfectly independently, while they are in fact just servile to power, weak members of the herd who have internalized the values of the prevailing and highly indoctrinated intellectual culture.
Here are some of the ways they do it:

1- The US is not a totalitarian state, so you don't get the propaganda line. In the intellectual realm what you get is something much more subtle, yet similar. Namely, vigorous debate within a framework of fixed and unquestionable presuppositions, and those presuppositions ARE the propaganda line. So take the war in Vietnam; the "left" said:
"We began with blundering efforts to do good, but by 1969 it became too costly, we found it was a disaster, too costly for ourselves, so therefore we should get out."
The right said "You're selling us out, we can win if we fight harder, etc." All of it assumes that the US attack against south Vietnam was in defense of South Vietnam, and an effort to do good (which of course, is totally false). That's the genius of the propaganda system.

2- Selection of people (students, workers intellectuals) who are obedient& subservient to power (they get rewarded& get ahead in life), and discrimination of others. Also, a biased, nationalistic version of US history & American values is taught in schools & family households. People end up internalizing the values of power and regard themselves as thinking perfectly freely/independently.

3- Lots of distractions(Sports, stupid TV shows etc)and Major (Corporate) media control: filtering of information, distribution of concerns, emphasis, framing of issues, bounding of debate within certain limits (so that you can't present evidence if you say anything against power or anything other than what's common knowledge). They determine, select, shape, control, restrict, in order to serve the interests of dominant elite groups.

4- Trying to impose a philosophy of passive consumerism (the US has 6% of the world's population and consumes 50% of the world's resources) in a country that is not a democracy, but rather a system of elite decision and periodic public ratification.
The rulers don't represent the people, and the election process is a show that stays away from any important issues (healthcare, minimum wage etc)

Some reviewers, in a desperate attempt to attack Chomsky's accurate analysis of US atrocities and imperialism, say that he says that the 9-11 attacks were justified. That is a straw man. Chomsky NEVER SAID THAT. He says that nothing can justify such atrocities. What he says is that there's a reason why Bin Laden attacked the US and not Sweden, and if we wish to avoid further terrorist attacks, we should stop opressing/massacring people all over the world and being so hypocritical; we should apply to ourselves the same standards we apply to others: basic morality (which we lack). The US is a leading terrorist state, which has been slaughtering and oppressing people for decades. Unfortunately, the 9-11 attacks are unusual not because of their scale or nature but because of who the victims were. The US, like other imperialist powers in the past, has been for years carrying out crimes that make 9-11 look like a minor event. We kill and oppress people all over the world and think nothing of it, but the day we finally taste some of our own medicine, we start asking ourselves stupid questions like "Why do they hate us when we are so good?" Read this book and you'll learn why.
Why didn't we bomb Idaho after the Oklahoma city bombing? After all Idaho was harboring the extreme right wing groups that worked with Timothy Mc Veigh. We'd be outraged if they bombed Idaho and killed civilians rather than just going after the criminals,yet we thought nothing of it when they bombed Afghanistan. Pure hypocresy.
Did England bomb Ireland or Boston (which were harboring the IRA)after the IRA set up a bomb in London? Of course not.
Chomsky's 9-11 is a wake up call for all Americans, especially the elite-serving majority, whose societal function is to follow orders and be gullible consumers/passive members of the herd.
They are the ones who are allowing the elite to carry out their abuses and crimes. The "intellectuals" are probably beyond help, because they've been so indoctrinated, but the vast majority still has a chance to wake up. America--There is a good way to reduce terrorism and oppression: Stop participating in it!
As a final note, I should add that Chomsky is not "anti-American". Chomsky loves America and people in general, that's why he criticizes injustice. The concept "anti-American" is an interesting one. The counterpart is used only in totalitarian states or military dictatorships. Thus, in the old Soviet Union, dissidents were condemned as "anti-Soviet." That's a natural usage among people with deeply rooted totalitarian instincts, which identify state policy with the society, the people, the culture. In contrast, people with even the slightest concept of democracy treat such notions with ridicule and contempt. Suppose someone in Italy who criticizes Italian state policy were condemned as "anti-Italian." It would be regarded as too ridiculous even to merit laughter. Maybe under Mussolini, but surely not otherwise.

Actually the concept has earlier origins. It was used in the Bible by King Ahab, the epitome of evil, who called Elijah a "hater of Israel" for criticizing his Gov policies.
The idea of leaving America because one opposes state policy is another reflection of deep totalitarian commitments. Solzhenitsyn, for example, was forced to leave Russia against his will, by people with beliefs very much like those of the American commissars in the euphemistically called "conservative" party(that is, the statist reactionary party; people such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter etc)

Everyone should read a little Noam Chomsky, one of the most formative influences and Grand Masters in the pantheon of modern American liberal thought. Chomsky's tired old flesh serves as a roadmap of where we've been and why we're here: a radicalizer. A revolutionary. A ghoul. A man whose tirades, screeds, and bromides against America are critical to understand in order to better grasp the vast divide that made our last two presidential elections such potboilers, have cast a once vital and moderate political opposition into something akin to a secular outer darkness, and today leads so many of our commentators to wring their hands at what they consider a divided nation.

Read Noam Chomsky in the same way you might read "Mein Kampf" by Adolf Hitler. Read it to drink in the sickness of a diseased mind gone wild with the fever heat. Read it as a diary of madness. Try not to be infected. Read it as a literary warning beacon. Read it to better sense the ravings of a gifted lunatic. With that in mind, a little Chomsky is called for, not a lot.

"9/11" fits the bill perfectly for the uninitiated: it is a pure distillation of the red rage and intellectual fossilization that has characterized Chomsky since the sixties, when he turned his passion for linguistics into a fixation on the injustice and evil of a nation, the United States of America, that had provided him with leisure and a sounding board. It is a sounding board for the modern Democrat party, for a party that stands days away from electing the frothing-mad Howard dean as its titular head, from anointing Michael Moore as its patron saint, heart, and soul.

Chomsky's "theories" make up a fearsome if fossilized triumvirate of ideas:

1) America's consumerist culture of death has resulted in a kind of uber-political "shop til you drop" institutional structure that hates starving children and seeks to export its greedy, amoral capitalism abroad.

2)Israel is the primary beneficiary of this consumerist, Mickey Mouse "Culture of Death".

3)9/11 occurred precisely because of our neo-imperialist retro-colonialist desire to export our consumerist Armaggedon through Israel into the Arab world. In Chomsky's distorted, sick, twisted, paranoid world view, America is guilty because the indigenous cultures---The arabs, the pygmies, the Zoroastrians, the Hindus---want to buy what we're selling. Never mind their free will, we should have been advanced enough never to sell, let alone manufacture, the goods we offer up in the Arab soukh.

4) As a result, according to Chomsky, we deserved 9/11. Stop. Breathe. Focus. Because of our policy---that is to say, our preference for democracy, property rights, privacy rights, freedom of speech---in a time of peace, 3000 plus people who did nothing more than put on their trousers and go to work deserved to be vaporized.

This is the very anatomy of a diseased mind, of a degenerate nature, of a diseased soul. Pick up 9/11 and read it: to bear witness to its madness is to serve as bailiff to the mind of Evil and insanity. If you agree that a jogger in Central Park at 7 in the evening deserved to be raped, then you'll love Chomsky. If you have even a shred of humanity, you'll want to vomit.

I love reading Noam's books. His blatant anti-America and anti-Israel sentiments are so obvious, that it is almost comical.

What I would suggest is that he goes to Gaza for a while. They will not care about how he defends terrorists. They will not care that he is anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian.

Once they hear that he is an American Jew, they will rip him apart. And that is the crux of the matter. The inherent anti-American/Jewish feelings of the Arab world.

While he may try to defend terrorists, and condemn the US and Israel, when push comes to shove, it is a hatred of the Arab world for the west, plain and simple.

Noam can't defend that. Nor does he try. But he does skirt the issue.

Noam Chomsky has been a fixture of the American far, far, far left for over 50 years now. His great work on language was finished in the 1950s.

He has been a professor at MIT since 1955. Next year in 2005, it will be 50 years at one job.

What has he done since then, living off the wealth of the free market enterprise system by having a tenured, lifelong job at MIT. Academics have rigged the system by voting themselves lifelong jobs. What a fraud and sham. Do you have lifelong job?

Tenured jobs are for life until they drop dead. Basically, welfare for burnt-out intellectuals. All his ranting are given respectability because he is a professor at MIT.

Chomsky somehow makes the sick argument that Reagan-Bush policy are directly responsible for 9-11. What he forgets is that over 3,000 died innocently from terrorists. Pearl Harbor was a direct attack on America. 9-11 was another direct attack on the sovereignty, independence of America.

Any government, USA included, must defend the lives of its citizen, men, women, children and territorial sovereignty of the nations. Over 20 millions Russians died defending Motherland Russia from Nazi Germany. George Bush was right to declare war on terrorism.

Noam Chomsky has been a professor at MIT since 1955, almost 50 years, 1955-2005, a job for life. No wonder he is able to make such outlandish statement, continuous attack on America, ignorance, and nonsense about America.

USA presidents, senators, governors, movie stars, NFL, NBA, MLB stars do not have jobs for life. Academic tenure is absolute fraud, welfare for intellectuals, a blank check for the far, far, far left to rant nonsense.

Noam Chomsky would be at Taco Bell, Burger King, and McDonald if not for a lifelong job at MIT. Truth in old adage:

THOSE CAN DO WILL DO. THOSE CANNOT DO WILL GET A JOB TEACHING

Any prior knowledge of Chomsky's previous work will obviously be a huge help prior to reading 9/11, but this was the first Chomsky book I read and I was blown away.

This book is relatively short so I believe it makes a wonderful introduction to Chomsky's thinking. It also provides perspective and context to help readers understand the conditions that led up to Sept. 11.

One of the main themes that runs throughout Chomsky's other work, as well as this one, is that while other countries and international actors may committ terrible crimes, it doesn't make it ok for the US to do the same. The idea is that we should set moral standards for ourselves and then live up to them, rather than playing blame games with terrorists and "rouge" regimes.

Anyone struggling to grasp what happened on Sept. 11 or worried about future attacks should read Chomsky's 9/11. He isn't and never was in the so-called "Blame America first crowd" as he is sometimes accused. Pointing out Amercia's horrific record when dealing with developing countries isn't "blaming America." You can't understand what's happening in the world now unless you understand America's role in it. Reading Chomsky is an excellent way to gain that knowledge.

Chomsky has made a career out of knee-jerk anti-Americanism by any and all means, and "9/-11" is no exception. In leu of a well-thought out exegesis, we find a jumbled collection of email interviews and remarks. For an issue as serious as this, one would think Chomsky could make an effort at scholarship. But Chomsky, so used to preaching to a loyal choir, has no had to make any scholastic effort for a long time. Moreover, this book is shallow in its understandings of the complex dynamics of the Middle East. Chomsky, having little experience or knowledge in this area, is notably useless as a Middle East commentator or in explaining what motivates jihadi terror. His area of expertise--uncritical blame and Leftist demonization of the US--is likewise not very enlightening. This book is proof that Chomsky can publish almost anything, even some emails, and his loyal fanbase will always buy it. (Although profiting from 9/11 while not contributing much to the discussion strikes me as unethical in and of itself). Overall, I found this book very disappointing.

This book collects interview and discussions with Chomsky shortly after the September 11th attacks. For those who want something a bit more enlightening, Chomsky puts forth bold assertions that many people wouldn't be willing to even consider in the wake of the attacks. One of his main assertions throughout is that if the US wants to really fight terrorism, we should stop participating in it. He cites specific, uncontroversial examples such as Nicaragua and the Contras, or Turkey, where massive US aid (by Bubba) helped the government do to the Kurds what we bombed Milosevic for when he tried it with Albanians.

I don't agree that Chomsky is insensitive to the victims of 9/11 in this book. I believe that his attitude is similar to many others': that such an event, while shocking, is not entirely surprising, especially to anyone who's been paying attention to the world in the last decade. Of course, he condemns the actions. He does not rant that American lives are paramount in the face of other atrocities, which may not make his critics happy, but he also regularly acknowledges that, in our society, we simply do not ask certain questions.

Therefore, it's disconcerting to some that Chomsky is able to discuss the matters of 9/11, terrorism, and the USA's global presence with what sounds like an almost arrogant detachment. Unlike the countless pundits on TV though, Chomsky rarely generalizes and cites sources for his facts. He may skew them how he likes, but he rarely makes up whoppers to prove a point, a favorite element of television debate.

Chomsky has been vocal about America's foreign policy for decades, and it's entirely reasonable to suggest that his tone is now relentlessly radical left with an evil eye for capitalism. However, I still believe reading Chomsky is a heck of a lot more valuable for the average reader and more enlightening than hours of CNN, Fox, or the wrapped-in-the-flag latest book from a TV `pundit'.

It's funny, whenever a corporate media pundit mentions Chomsky, it's usually to rip him as 'anti-American', yet the points he actually makes are rarely refuted. Just calling him an 'intellectual' (he does not consider himself such) or an 'academic' is enough to discredit him in the eyes of those who see intellectuals and anyone critical of America as evil incarnate and in league with terrorists. Since he often cites specific facts though at times selectively, and he jettisons bombast in favor of serious consideration, he is the complete antithesis of loudmouth talking heads. Chomsky's arguments are certainly not airtight, but his presentation of facts, his acknowledgement of the de facto state of opinion, debate, and education in America, and his straightforward tone (he is very lucid in his speech and writing) make this a very compelling and important read.

I really wonder if the Library Journal reviewer bothered to read the whole book, or just stopped when he found that Chomsky was departing from the post-9/11 unquestioning acceptance of the 'US vs. the evildoers' party line.
"Chomsky condemns the attacks specifically and then suggests that the deaths are entirely the responsibility of capitalist globalization" - That is a complete misrepresentation; Chomsky repeats several times that Bin Laden and his ilk don't care about globalization. What has created anti-American sentiment around the world, in Chomsky's view, is a US foreign policy dictated by the interests of energy companies, and which supports brutal, anti-human rights dictatorships in Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries because it guarantees access to cheap oil. This book was written before the recent US takeover of Iraq, but Chomsky's arguments are quite prescient...

Chomsky's world-view is skewed by his dogmatic commitment to the radical left and the unshakable belief that capitalism and the U.S., in particular, are the root causes of evil.

The Chomskyites have been playing this intellectual game since the Vietnam war which, in their view, was a peasant revolt against Western imperialists that went sour when the U.S. invaded South Vietnam. After the Vietnamese expelled the foreign invader, they went about the task of installing their agrarian utopia with the help of Marx and Lenin. He characterizes America's effort to defeat communism in Indochina as an invasion because, according to him, the Cold War was invented by the power elite in Washington as a ploy to justify the expansion of capitalism and militarism. Stalin, you see, never entertained ambitions of totalitarian hegemony in Eurasia and Communism was never a threat to democracy. Unfortunately for Chomsky and his acolytes, the fate of post-war Saigon and Pol Pot's "killing fields" in Cambodia refuted the leftist interpretation of the Vietnam War. But the amazing thing about Chomskyites is their ability to ignore history when it conflicts with the a priori truth that only socialism can save the planet. Although I do not recommend Anne Coulter's book, Treason, her basic thesis is sound, viz., that in the 20th century the Left consistently defended murderous and repressive regimes, while denigrating the U.S., because the murderous regimes ostensibly embodied socialism.

Employing the same logic of denial to the rise of fundamentalist Islam and 9/11, Chomsky et. al, now assert that the war on terror was fabricated by the power elite in Washington in order to capture Middle Eastern oil reserves. I agree that the Iraqi war is in large part about oil and the perceived need to control the Middle East. What the Chomskyites will not admit, however, is that the continued geopolitical dominance of the U.S. is critical to the future of Western democracy. The Left refuses to accept the implications of the fact that countries such as the former Iraq, Iran, and Saudi Arabia are dangerous and unreliable, yet control a significant portion of the energy reserves on which the global economy depends. In light of the inevitable rise of China as a contender in the East, the uncertainty of Russia's future, and the continued threat of terrorism, the U.S. policy of intervention in the hopes of creating more stable structures in the Middle East is a necessary evil and not the product of corporate bandits.

Furthermore, anti-American terrorism is real and autonomous. It is not the effect of U.S. foreign policy (i.e. support for Israel). Fundamentalist Islam is predicated on a totalitarian system of cultural and religious absolutism. Its hatred for the West is central to its ideology and its followers espouse an apocalyptic fantasy of tearing down "secular" America. The fact that Bush Sr. helped to create the Taliban after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, or that the U.S. supported Saddam during the Iran/Iraq war are nice rhetorical points to score in a debate, but do not change the fact that we are facing significant challenges to our security and our future which must be dealt with in terms of realpolitik, not discredited ideologies.

Here is a book that never would have been published if Noam Chomsky's name didn't appear on the cover. It is basically a collection of interviews and essay concerning the events of 9/11. But the subject matter goes way beyond this, as the author catalogues the US government's so called "terrorist" actions around the world.

Inconsistencies abound: Chomsky maintains that it is the poor and oppressed Muslim minority that wish to destroy us, since America and Israel are responsible for their plight. Bin Laden, however, and a good number of his cronies are not Palestianian ghetto dwellers. Bin Laden is a wealthy Arab who had many political connections. The reasons behind the terrorism may very well be more religious than political.

Chomsky has moved beyond criticism and analysis of American foreign policy to outright condemnation of the US, its government, its people, and Democracy itself. This book is a vicious attack launched from the ivory tower, paranoid and unreasonable.

There may have been celebration in the Chomsky household when the twin towers fell, but for most of us, sympathy and understanding for terrorist groups is out of the question. This book is especially insensitive to those who have lost loved ones in the catastrophe.

This slim Chomsky book has a lot of important information in it --- unless you've read Chomsky before. If you know anything about US foreign policy, this is a recap. If you've never read Chomsky before, this is an okay place to start. (A better place to start is Chronicles of Dissent.)

What does it have to do with the 9/11 terrorist attacks? Well, Chomsky gives you a lot of context. He shows you that these events didn't take place in a historical vacuum. But once you've read that, it's up to you to learn more, by reading dozens of other books.

I wasn't that impressed by this book but some of these negative reviews are mind boggling, for example, several reviewers refute Chomsky's claim that Bin Laden has CIA ties by stating that both Bin Laden and the CIA deny this claim.....ever consider that both parties are lying due to the embarrassment such a connection would cause? Of course Bin Laden was a CIA asset. We don't need chomsky to tell us that but, it gets annoying when some people insisting on refuting the claim and use lame official statments from less than credible parties as their source. Either way, there are far better books on 9/11 out there. Nevertheless, Chomsky does have an interesting POV and had I come across this book sooner, I might be inclined to give it a higher rating

If the revelation of the extent of the killing fields in Cambodia (more on this later), or the mass graves concealed in Serbia didn't dissuade Noam Chomsky from continuing his bizarre career of spinning conspiracy theories and whitewashing murderous ideologies, it is definitely too much to hope for that the deaths of 3,000 people in a well-orchestrated murderous attack might provoke some thought in his mind, while sitting in his decidedly non-plebeian mansion. No such luck.

If anything, this book illustrates just how deeply old Noam has withdrawn from the world. There is little in it that one could not find in his prior works, and I got tired of reading his discussions with fawning interviewers who throw him softballs. Of course, he writes of Afghanistan as someone who has never seen it (I'd lay money on that) and certainly as someone indifferent to the damage wrought by the Taliban on that country. The Chomskyite Left doesn't really care about human suffering in the vast majority of instances when it does not flow from Western action - he may occasionally cite the failure to intervene in Rwanda as proof of Western or American malevolence, but (diehard followers pay attention) does anyone think that he would have supported an intervention there?

Once again Chomsky trots out his tired characterization of America as a terrorist state. But he doesn't really look at events in question besides viewing them casually as items on a list. Context is important. Why? See what one author has to say about this, when examining the crimes of Communist rebels in South Vietnam:

"I don't accept the view that we can just condemn the NLF terror, period, because it was so horrible. I think we really have to ask questions of comparative costs, ugly as that may sound. And if we are going to take a moral position on this-and I think we should-we have to ask both what the consequences were of using terror and not using terror."

The author? A younger, less guarded Noam Chomsky. Apparently terror is OK if inflicted in the name of "the people". But going in and rooting out a terrorist-sponsored regime in Afghanistan is inexcusable.

He's done this sort of thing before. One chapter of his career that is deeply embarrassing to his acolytes occurred when he savagely attacked emerging reports of genocide in Cambodia. When refugees published accounts of Khmer Rouge atrocities, he attacked those accounts, while praising pro-Khmer Rouge works by Western Marxists (a Google search on Khmer Rouge and Chomsky will reveal more information). Some Westerners admitted later that they were wrong about the Khmer Rouge; Chomsky never has, though his praise of them was written guardedly, as if in anticipation of future denials.

Readers looking to learn about the world will find this book tiresome and disappointing. But if you care more about the Cult of Noam than the actual world his writings distort, don't let me stop you from buying this book and helping him pay the mortgage on his mansion. Go ahead, once you have it, you can read it forwards and backwards and sideways and even upside-down. It will be very enlightening . . . because you want it to be!

Chomsky shows his true colors with this book by needlessly trying to justify the atrocities of 9/11 , and by distorting truths, even tries to blame the event on previous US policies.

Mindlessly condemning any US military action before the fact, Chomsky shows his hatred and mistrust of the US government. History has already proven him wrong just by looking at the lives that have been saved in Iraq and Afghanistan by removing oppressive regimes.

Chomsky failed to realize that the US is capable of careful, controlled military actions that minimize civilian casualties, and greatly benefit hundreds of millions of people. His cynicism also prevented him from foreseeing the selfless nation building exercises now underway in Iraq and Afghanistan that stabilize the mideast; despite the obvious historical precedence of US charity in response to war in nations like Japan, France and Germany to name a few.
It's important to realize that despite good intentions, the US isn't perfect and no better than other civilized societies. However, most of Chomsky's criticisms are way off base, and include his typical distortions of the truth to paint a black picture of what is really quite a great country.

Ultimately, Chomsky gives himself away as someone motivated by bitter hatred by publishing this horrible book less than a month after the atrocities while the smell of still burning flesh was hovering over the southern half of Manhattan.

There's no denying Chomsky tastelessly tried to make money on the tragedy by churning out this drivel immediately afterwards. He rightfully takes his place alongside the worst scum of the earth, including the hateful dastards who flew the planes into the buildings.