Chomsky 10 Years After 9/11

This Thursday, Seven Stories Press will release a 10th anniversary reissue of Noam Chomsky’s book on the World Trade Center attacks titled “9-11: Was There an Alternative?” and TomDispatch has an exclusive excerpt from the new preface.

The new essay addresses the meaning of America’s “war on terror” after the assassination of Osama bin Laden. Here’s a taste: “‘We are left with two choices: either Bush and associates are guilty of the “supreme international crime” including all the evils that follow, or else we declare that the Nuremberg proceedings were a farce and the allies were guilty of judicial murder.'”

See the publisher’s note on the book here. –ARK

Noam Chomsky at TomDispatch:

A number of analysts have observed that although bin Laden was finally killed, he won some major successes in his war against the U.S. “He repeatedly asserted that the only way to drive the U.S. from the Muslim world and defeat its satraps was by drawing Americans into a series of small but expensive wars that would ultimately bankrupt them,” Eric Margolis writes. “‘Bleeding the U.S.,’ in his words.” The United States, first under George W. Bush and then Barack Obama, rushed right into bin Laden’s trap… Grotesquely overblown military outlays and debt addiction… may be the most pernicious legacy of the man who thought he could defeat the United States” — particularly when the debt is being cynically exploited by the far right, with the collusion of the Democrat establishment, to undermine what remains of social programs, public education, unions, and, in general, remaining barriers to corporate tyranny.

That Washington was bent on fulfilling bin Laden’s fervent wishes was evident at once.

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