Chomsky's solution

Say, I personally think that you…hell, never mind, it was perfectly said by about 15 people before me.

Talk about a unified front!

Hello Nathan,
It is nice to know something more about you. Math, you Say :). I was kind of hoping for a Pol Sci major or at least a journalism major.
Where is your math degree going to take you? Not into the heartless world of High Finance? Nuclear weapon or energy production?
Yes, corporations are heartless. Their primary purpose is to make money for there share holders.
Best of Luck.

Oh my God, Ike!

I just read Nathan’s most recent post and he was within a few miles of us!

We could’ve gotten together at McDonald’s and then maybe done a little shopping at Walmart, then topped it off with a latte at Starbuck’s!

Hey, I made the list!

Cool.

“A liberal is a conservative who’s been arrested. A conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged”

~ Wendy Kaminer

I have several problems with this post but I will only touch on three of them. My first problem is the line by Say, “see how silly Bush and his crew are…” I don’t find anything silly with a war plan that eliminated one of the most brutal dictators in modern history while only losing nearly 100 American soldiers. If there remains any doubt to the brutality of the Iraqi regime, please read the Op-Ed piece I posted or some of the links I posted in the post entitled “Hell Ya War.” What I do find silly, however, is the notion that Chomsky’s idea can be proposed as a serious alternative. Let me explain why.

The war plan waged by the coalition used laser and satellite guided bombs to pinpoint Iraqi military troops and equipment. Almost a thousand Tomahawk cruise missiles costing $1.4 million dollars apiece were fired to destroy military targets as accurately as modern technology allows. No other nation in the world has the capability to launch such a sophisticated attack, let alone the will to pay for that type of precision to minimize the amount of civilian casualties. There are many ways to fight a war, but the United States waged its war in Iraq in a way that placed a premium on human life, both Iraqi and American, and achieved its objective in a little more than two weeks.

My second problem is that Chomsky proposes assisting a state that spent eight years fighting Saddam in a war that was fought with the very weapons we seek to get rid of. The end result of which was Saddam remained in power with nearly 1 million Iranian people killed or maimed and 375,000 Iraq deaths. Why does Chomsky believe that Iran has the capability to remove Saddam when it couldn’t be done in a war that lasts nearly a decade? Unfortunately I doubt Chomsky consulted any of the families of the Iranian and Iraqi casualties from the Iran-Iraq war before writing his solution in which he edits in crowd laughter and sarcasm.

My last problem is the description of the armament of Turkey and the track record the United States has with the Kurds. In fact, this type of argument has gone on in several other posts that I have read on the forum, and I grow tired of reading arguments about issues that are taken out of context. Chomsky implies that the United States has been arming Turkey after the cold war but fails to mention that Turkey is the only NATO ally that has a majority Muslim population and was instrumental in our repulsion of the Iraqi army from Kuwait in the 90?s. Turkey has been armed for protection against Iraqi retaliation, as was evident when we left Turkey with patriot missile batteries for free as gratitude for their assistance in the first Iraq war. To imply that we are arming Turkey because we care nothing of the Kurds is off base and out of context.

Finally, and this wasn’t one of my original three points, but I think it is worth mentioning, the United States has had to face some tough questions about the cold war policy of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Although this policy may have helped us avoid nuclear war with the Soviet Union, it did empower many regimes that committed atrocities that we are answering for now (the armament of Iraq for one). To imply that we cannot learn lessons from the success and failures of our previous foreign policy is short cited.

This post should be titled: Chomsky’s Problem, Not Solution.

I thought people were arguing that America made a mistake helping Iraq against Iran. Now they are arguing that we should fund Iran. Is this a joke?

Chompsky is one of the most important intellectuals of this century. I find that most people who bash him have never read one of his books. Mostly they just parrot what someone else has said about him.
I’ve watched him debate college presidents, heads of states, CIA directors, and he deftly handled them all. I’ve seen excerpts of his debate on Firing Line. Now for some of you who don’t know, that used to be William F. Buckley Jr.'s show. He is seen by most as the leader of the neoconservative movement. He -at one time- was a huge inspiration in my life. I would get up every Sunday morning and watch his show instead of football. If anyone has seen him debate before, you know that he is one of the best. I’ve seen him make people look absolutely stupid without even trying. However, he could not shake Chompsky and seemed to stumble over Chompsky’s replies. Chompsky is TRULY impressive and those who want to broaden their thier intellectual scope and challenge their own conventional beliefs shold give him a read. If interested, start with Manufacturing Consent.

Chomsky ought to stick to linguistics, which he has some knowledge and insight in, and stay out of politics, for which he does not.

Just another example of how a person can be utterly brilliant in one area, and blind as a bat in another.

Why the fuck would you outsource a war? And what would letting Iran win the war accomplish?

Wow. Chomsky really fucked up on this one.

My my, I go away for a little while and Say has managed to make himself look even less intelligent – I guess I didn’t need a Kreskin’s Crystal to see that one coming…

Say, given the point of this whole thing you posted was why we should have let Iran fight the war, why would I try to explain to you about the oil thing again – you weren’t smart enough to get it the first several times, and I don’t feel like banging my head against the wall of your mental density.

Now, as to this, given you are obviously not bright enough to evaluate things for yourself, and given I want to go to bed so I can work out in the morning, I’ll just point to something obvious and let you think about it for a second (because that seems to be your attention span).

Given that we wanted to stop Saddam from obtaining nuclear weapons, to take away the weapons of mass destruction he does have, and to enforce the provisions of his surrender in the Gulf War, and that one of the main reasons we did this was to stop Hussein from distributing his WMD to terrorist groups, why would we want to outsource the enforcement to Iran (acknowledging here Stella’s keen insight that any such “outsourcing of war” is ridiculous), which is one of the biggest sponsors of state terrorism in the world? Why would we want whatever technology Saddam has developed in his quest to attain nuclear weapons to fall to another terrorist-sponsoring regime that is engaging in its own efforts to go nuclear? And, just from the viewpoint of actually accomplishing the objective of taking Hussein out, why would we want Iran to try, when the Iranians couldn’t bean Saddam last time around?

Now, I suggest sleeping on that, and seeing if it doesn’t make sense. Also, while you’re sleeping, try to maintain an unobstructed airflow – you can’t lose many more brain cells without becoming a chimpanzee.

to nephorm: Stumping Buckley in a debate is not, as you say, “being blind as a bat”. I’ve also watched him frustrate David Frum, but I guess that isn’t too hard if you know what your talking about.

As a linguistics major in college, I can confidently say that Chomsky is probably the pre-eminent intellect of the latter half of the 20th century. Not only is he the founder of and by far the titanic figure in modern linguistic thought (think of Darwin in the field of evolution for a good comparison), but he has made significant contributions to computational theory as well.

However, I agree that he is much better off in the realm of the abstract than when it comes to real-world stuff. Occasionally the two meet (if you haven’t read Chomsky’s complete trashing of B.F. Skinner’s book on Behaviorism, you should - his review put the nails in the coffin for all time, and is funny to boot), but not very often.

Chomsky is a giant intellect, and should be listened to on most subjects if for no other reason than that he’ll see something that others miss. But he’s not the guy to ask to come fix your plumbing for you.

Let me tell you a little something about Chomsky and his “Resume”. hes from around me and here we all know him and he can pull any of that stuff like people pull in the USA. We dont have a constitution but we have freedom of speech and he has tried to spam his way in the press and media here forever but then he realized he will have a much easier time at the states so he left, thank goodness. He had some of the most destructive, out-dated, illusionary ,fake, leftwinged out of the window ideas and was considered a wirdow and the loughing stock at first but then ignored completly like the noise of the busses in my street - makes me want to shoot some1 but I move on. anyway, stop giving him attention because it wil never end.

Just my opinion (and most Israelies)

Note to Chomsky–Unleashing Iraq in the 1908s as a cure for Iran got us where we are today.

Unfortunately, Chomsky suffers from “ivory tower” syndrome, like most intellectuals and academians. There are many ideas that just don’t pan out in the real world regardless of how logical and efficient they may appear, human nature has a way of interfering. Even communism looks like a good idea theoretically.

BostonBarrister the answers to all your questions are in the text. Iran isn’t hated as much in the Middle East as the USA, no USA or Israeli casualties, if Iraq has any wmd (which is unlikely)Iran will take those too, they’ll remove Hussein and any successive regime which the USA won’t do, etc etc. There’s just 1 problem though. It would leave Iran in control of Iraqi oil, not the USA. + where, exactly, are Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction that the USA was going in to get?

Say: Pay attention. We wouldn’t want Iran to take any WMD. That’s going from the frying pan into the fire.

As far as comments about Chomsky’s great intellect, I think he’s very clever, and obviously incredibly skilled in his area. But politically, he’s a couple football fields left of Marx. Here’s a major problem with how many people seem to view intelligence: The most ‘intelligent’ person is the one who is most clever, quick with a quip, and who disarms his opponents with rhetoric and sophistries alike.

There is far too much emphasis these days on being clever, and far too little on actually thinking things out, giving careful consideration to all the facts. Hence, many otherwise intelligent people have learned to use their brains for speed, rather than accuracy. Come up with the best sounding idea in the quickest amount of time, and be able to out-argue any naysayers, and you are worshipped.

That is a super idea but i’d like to make one modification. I think we should include North Korea in the mix. We can arm them with longer range missles so they can hit Iran and Iraq. I think a couple nukes will take care of our problems.

Oh, if they don’t have operation nukes yet we can send in some scientists to help. I like to call this solution the Bi-bim-bop scenario.

or we can just get one of Saddam’s bodyguards to spike his food with ephedra. I have heard this is quite dangerous.