The Unbearable Whiteness Of Chomsky's Arguments:

In his reply to Christopher Hitchens on the subject of theSeptember 11 mass murders, Noam Chomsky rushes to accuse his adversary of"racist contempt" for African victims of terrorism, of a callousrefusal to acknowledge their very existence. This accusation is based onHitchens refusal to accept Chomsky's claim, in the immediate aftermath ofSeptember 11, that the 1998 U.S. bombing of a pharmaceutical factory in theSudan, which was undertaken at a time and in a way designed to minimize the lossof human life and resulted in the death of one night watchman, was a greatercrime than the murder of thousands of innocents in New York and Washington DC, agreater crime than actions designed to maximize the loss of human life and toeliminate a great deal more than the current calculations of over 6000 dead menand women from every race, religion and corner of the globe. 

What are we to make of Chomsky's claims? Let us begin withthe bombing of the Sudanese factory. In the months and years since the 1998bombing, the U.S. government has been unwilling or unable to make public acompelling case, with supporting evidence, to support the contention it made forthe bombing -- that the Sudanese factory was producing chemical weapons for thebin Laden Al Qaeda network. Given that lack of evidence, and given the fact thatthe overall objective of the 1998 bombing [striking a blow at Al Qaeda terrornetwork] was clearly not met, there is no reason to defend that particularaction. Indeed, it seems entirely reasonable to adopt the proposals of HumanRights Watch and former U.S. President Jimmy Carter that the U.S. governmentmust produce, in a public forum, compelling proof of its contentions that thefactory was producing chemical weapons, or pay compensation to the owner of thefactory and the family of the dead night watchman.

But Chomsky's assertions go far beyond credible criticismsthat the action was based on inaccurate and faulty intelligence, that it waspoorly wrought and that it was entirely ineffective. He asserts that it led,directly, to the deaths of tens [at one point in his response to Hitchens] andhundreds [at another point in his response] of thousands of Sudanese; and ifthis were not enough, he goes on later, it led indirectly, to the deaths of moreuntold thousands. 

There are two ways in which Chomsky attempts to supportthese assertions. The first is what one might call an argument by logicaldeduction, although his conclusion does not exactly flow from his premises.Since this factory was producing anywhere from 50% to 90% of the Sudan's drugs[I shall return to the strange anomalies in the figures given by the authoritiesChomsky cites], and since those drugs were important for the health of Sudanesepeople, it follows, according to Chomsky, that tens or hundreds of thousands ofSudanese have died as a result of loss of live-saving drugs caused by the 1998bombing. The pharmaceuticals produced in the factory were, by the Sudanesegovernment's own accounts, basic and widely used anti-malarial, antibiotic andveterinarial drugs.

In his reply to Hitchens, Chomsky cites an article in theBritish Observer which makes much of the fact that the factory wasproducing the anti-malarial drug most widely used throughout the world for thelast half century, chloroquine, so let's examine the case that might be madehere. Chloroquine is an inexpensive drug, available widely throughout tropicalregions where malaria is endemic; it is comparable, both in availability andcost, to aspirin in the U.S. and Europe. As a matter of fact, North Americansand Europeans visiting tropical areas usually take chloroquine or a close butmore expensive relative as a prophylactic.

There are scores of countries that produce chloroquine andits relatives, so even if the United Kingdom where to refuse the Sudanesegovernment's request to import it from there following the bombing of thefactory, there would be little difficulty in finding another source. Moreover,since the discovery of large deposits of oil in its southern region, Sudan hasbecome a major oil exporting nation with a substantial oil-based income; itregularly spends large amounts of that income in the pursuit of its genocidalwar against the Sudanese Africans in the south of its country, as well asopposition groups in the north. It would be a relatively simple matter for it toreplace the chloroquine produced in that factory, should it have the will to doso.

What is interesting in Chomsky's reliance upon thisdeductive argument is the lack of any specific proof or statistical evidence ofthese tens or hundreds of thousands of deaths upon which he speculates.Organizations such as the World Health Organization regularly compilestatistical information on the public health of regions and nations. Is thereany evidence of an increase of tens or hundreds of thousands of Sudanese dyingfrom malaria in the years since the 1998 bombing? None that I have been able tofind.

It is also noteworthy that while international human rightsorganizations such as Amnesty International and the Human Rights Watch havetaken note of the bombing of the factory, and called for independent inquiriesinto the U.S. claims that it was being used for the production of chemicalweapons, their reports on the situation in the Sudan, available on the Internet,contain no statements that even treat as credible and worthy of furtherinvestigation the claims that thousands of Sudanese might have died as a resultof the bombing. What we have here is simply ungrounded assertion, without theslightest evidentiary proof.

Chomsky's second line of support for his assertion lieswith a classic form of argument by authority. Look, he says, the"mainstream press" says that thousands of Sudanese have died, citingthree examples. In fact, only one of the three quoted examples [PatrickWintour's piece in the British _Observer_] is actually an article by apracticing journalist; Jonathan Belke's piece in the Boston Globe is an opinioncommentary by an employee of the Near East Foundation living and working inCairo, Egypt, and the third is simply a quote from a technician who played arole in building the factory which makes only the most general comments aboutthe demise of the factory being a tragedy, and says nothing about it resultingin Sudanese deaths.

What becomes apparent is that these "authorities"have nothing substantive to add to our knowledge of the issue; they simplyreiterate the assertions made by Chomsky, and are supplied for that reasonalone. What is even more interesting is that in these three rather briefquotations supplied by Chomsky, two of his authorities disagree ratherdramatically about as basic a fact as the amount of Sudan's drugs produced bythis factory, one claiming 50% and the other 90%. A web search indicates thatboth individuals have other statements published under their names which use thesame discordant figures, so the discrepancy can not be written off as atypographical error. At least one of them is playing rather fast and loose withwhat little in the way of hard numbers they do provide. Thomas Aquinas oncewrote that the weakest argument was the argument from authority, and Chomsky hasdemonstrated quite well why that is the case here.

An ordinary academic pontificating on matters about whichhe was so poorly informed might have left the issue there. But not Chomsky. Hegoes on to blame the US attack on this factory for every conceivable problem[and some inconceivable ones as well] in the Sudan and its surrounding region.Using a quote full of the most remarkable euphemisms, Chomsky informs us thatthe bombing of the factory brought to a halt "compromises" that mighthave ended the decades old "civil war" between Sudan's "warringsides." How the destruction of a single factory could have produced suchremarkable results is never made clear in the particular passage Chomskyprovides, but a fuller account is provided in the complete article from which itis excerpted.

The full account, however, would strip the veneer right offthe euphemisms, so Chomsky limits himself to the short selection. What theselection calls a "civil war" between "warring sides" hasbeen a genocidal campaign conducted by the northern Arabic government, run bythe extreme fundamentalist National Islamic Front since a 1990 coup, against itssouthern African and non-Moslem peoples. The dead in this war count in themillions, all agree, with some estimates running as high as 3 million. Reportafter report on the Sudan by the United Nations and international human rightsorganizations cite not only the abrogation of the rights of women, the denial ofreligious freedom and the suppression of freedom of expression and associationwhich are standard fare with the imposition of extreme fundamentalist versionsof shari'a law, but also the existence of a large and thriving slave trade inwhich government Arabic militias kidnap, enslave and trade Africans from thelargest of Sudan's ethnic group, the Dinka, the deliberate use of food as aweapon of war that has brought 2.6 million Africans in the southern Sudan intostarvation, the torture of children and the use of stoning and crucifixions asmethods of capital punishment.

To top that off, the Sudanese government has been providingmaterial aid and support to an insurgent group in northern Uganda, the LRA[Lords' Resistance Army], which engages in similar practices there. The argumentof the article cited by Chomsky was that the bombing of the factory gave theAfricans in the south of Sudan some hope -- vain it now appears -- that the U.S.and the rest of the world might actually pay some attention to the crimesagainst humanity that were being perpetrated upon them, and thus, led them tohold out against "compromise."

If that were not enough, Chomsky goes on to approvinglyquote the same article to the effect that, were it not for the 1998 bombing ofthis factory, the theocratic totalitarian state of the National Islamic Frontwould have shifted toward moderation and against terrorism. Having warmlyembraced and received bin Laden when he was expelled from his native SaudiArabia in 1991, having provided him with a base for his activities [includingthe establishment of three separate training camps, the execution of the 1993bombing of the World Trade Center, the 1995 and 1998 bombings aimed at Americantroops stationed in Saudi Arabia and the planning for the bombing of theAmerican embassies in Kenya and Tanzania which took place in 1998], having madeefforts to purchase, in collaboration with him, uranium for nuclear weapons in1994, having only expelled him in 1996 under severe diplomatic and politicalpressure, and having engaged in all the activities against its own southernpeople described above, the Sudanese government was prepared, Chomsky wants usto believe, to move decisively for moderation and against terrorism -- but forthe bombing of one factory. 

Chomsky's suggestion that the Sudanese government had thisprofound desire to move toward moderation and against terrorism is all the moreappalling in its uncannily poor timing. As I write these lines, I have read newsmedia accounts of how the Bush administration was broaching a rapprochement withthe Sudanese government as part of its global "war" against terrorism,much to the horror of those in Washington DC -- principally, human rightsorganizations, the Congressional Black Caucus and the AFL-CIO -- which have beenattempting to organize American and world opposition to Sudan's genocidal war onits own African peoples.

 Let us not lose sight of the Chomskyian forest in ourexamination of the particular trees of argumentation. Chomsky wants us to payclose attention to "African victims," which he accuses Hitchens ofignoring with a "racist contempt." So, after we work our way throughChomsky's arguments, what is his record with regard to African victims? 

• Millions of African Sudanese killed, enslaved, starved and tortured at the hands of the genocidal National Islamic Front government: erased under euphemisms of a "civil war" about to be ended with compromise between the "warring sides," but for the bombing of the Sudanese pharmaceutical factory. 
  
  

• Hundreds of Kenyan and Tanzanian Africans, along with Americans of African descent, killed in the Al Qaeda bombing of U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar Es Salaam: the "invisible men and women" of Chomsky's narrative, they never even appear, despite the fact that the bombing of the Sudanese factory was in response to their murders. 
  
  

• Thousands of people from North America, Latin America, Asia and Africa killed in the September 11 mass murders in New York and Washington DC: of less weight than the bombing of a Sudanese factory in which one night watchman died, but out of which Chomsky finds, by assertion, tens and hundreds of thousands of dead. 
  

In Chomskyian moral and political calculus, African victimscount only when their corpses can be laid at the foot of the American state. Therest disappear, erased from memory. No wonder, with this unbearable whiteness oferasure, he must project "racist contempt" for African victims uponothers.

(Leo Casey, United Federation of Teachers 260 ParkAvenue South New York, New York 10010-7272 212-98-6869)