As If We Needed More Proof

Perhaps I shouldn't be wasting my time with Noam Chomsky, since he strikes me as having gone around the bend so long ago that there's really nothing to discuss.  But his latest, a reaction to Osama Bin Laden's death, shows, I would hope, just how sick and twisted the man is.

It's one thing to disagree over whether Bin Laden should have been killed or captured (and it's quite easy to second-guess the team that took him out--Chomsky even pretends they were never really in any danger), but Chomsky goes much further.  He believes Bin Laden should be treated as if he were just another suspect in some local crime investigation, rather than the recognized leader of an international terrorist organization that has declared war on the United States, and has regularly and violently acted on that declaration.

Worse, and here's where we enter the arena of lunacy, Chomsky doesn't accept that Al Qaeda is known to be behind 9/11.

Thus Obama was simply lying when he said, in his White House statement, that 'we quickly learned that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by al Qaeda.'

"Simply lying." Not even mistaken. Chomsky considers their involvement an open question, and, if anything, seems to be leaning against it.

(He also takes seriously the Taliban's offer to hand over Bin Laden if "evidence" were presented of his guilt, even though it was an obvious ploy. This is classic Chomsky. He bends over backwards to give terrorists, fascists and racists the benefit of the doubt, while the actions and statements of free and democratic states, especially the U.S. and Israel, are viewed with such a jaundiced eye that nothing can satisfy him.)

But while he thinks Bin Laden's guilt is questionable, he considers President Bush's crimes uncontestable--and far greater, of course.  As always, all Chomsky has to do is wave his magic wand of "international law" and anyone he disagrees with politically is turned into a war ciminal.

And just when you think he's done, he's got one more.  Chomsky doesn't like the name "Operation Geronimo":

The imperial mentality is so profound, throughout western society, that no one can perceive that they are glorifying bin Laden by identifying him with courageous resistance against genocidal invaders.

A pretty perverse misreading for someone who is at least nominally a professor of linguistics.

PS  Christopher Hitchens and Noam Chomsky used to agree on many things.  They've had their differences lately, and it's good to see Hitchens take him out, along with others on the incoherent far left.