Noam Chomsky needs an Intervention

[James DiEugenio]

Chomsky's latest piece of pap on JFK and American history. Its really pretty bad even for him. 

You could not get a demonstration going against the war until 1966?

Kennedy issued a White Paper on Vietnam to the public?

The demonstrations against the Iraq War were effective?

I mean really, this one is almost Orwellian in its twists of history. Anyway, here I go again:

https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/noam-chomsky-needs-an-intervention

[Michael Clark]

Chomsky is getting old. You will too. Be kind.

[James DiEugenio]

Michael, are you saying he is senile?

He was always this bad on the JFK case.

[Michael Clark]

2 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

Michael, are you saying he is senile?

He was always this bad on the JFK case.

Yes, Jim, I am, now, aware of that. It took some time. But, yes, I think he has done some good for us... some. 

[Cliff Varnell]

How does Chomsky square his "Kennedy-as-super-hawk" smear with the Harriman-negotiated partition of Laos in 1962, when the rest of the US foreign policy establishment wanted to drop 60 thousand US troops on the Ho Chi Minh Trail?

Edited April 7, 2018 by Cliff Varnell

[James DiEugenio]

Well actually, I should not say that he was always this bad on JFK.

Because that is not really accurate.  Chomsky has been intent on hiding the fact that he did a switcheroo on the issue.

See, back in the mid sixties, Ray Marcus visited him at his office at MIT and Chomsky gave him an hour to make a case for JFK being killed in a plot.

Guess what?  After one hour, Ray was still there.  After two hours, he was still there.  After three hours he was still there.  That is how interested he became.  He seriously thought of becoming one of the leaders of the JFK movement.  But as Ray noted,  he then later talked to one of the other professors that Chomsky had discussed it with.  And as he was driving him to the airport, the guy said words to the effect, "If they can get away with something like that, what can one person do?"

So Chomsky copped out of being an activist on the JFK Case even though he understood what it was about.  In fact, that is why he dropped out because he knew too well what it was about.

But still, about 8 years later he signed a petition to reopen the case for the HSCA.

But now that the fruity left has made him their useless spokesman, he does not want to admit that.  In fact, he denies it all as if it never existed.

[Michael Clark]

I think Christopher Hitchens took a very similar tack. If he, like Chomsky, were ardent proponents for discovery of the conspiracy, we would have never heard of him/them.

[Paz Marverde]

Chomsky has never ever been sincere about JFK

[James DiEugenio]

Well, Paz, I would argue that for those three hours in his office with Ray Marcus, Chomsky sure as heck seemed to be interested in the issue.

But then, he thought it over with one of his colleagues. Apparently they decided that discretion would be the better part of valor.

Instead Chomsky made his reputation with Vietnam.  And now, he even has to deny that JFK was getting out of Vietnam, so he can remain as he thinks he is the King of the Hill.

And if you read my above review of his latest crackpot blathering, he now also tries to deny that there was any anti war demonstration in Boston prior to 1966!!  I mean can you believe this guy?  Is he getting senile or what?  As I showed, there were scores of demonstrations all over the country, including Boston, prior to 1966.  But that is something that  historians do--search for data-- and he is not a historian in any acceptable meaning of the word.

And note I am also now going to mention the people  who cooperate with this guy, because they an able him to mislead the general public.  I mention Parramore here, but the guy most responsible for Chomsky is David Barsamian who promoted him through the Pacifica network.  I will be mentioning him in the future.

 

Edited April 7, 2018 by James DiEugenio

[Paz Marverde]

27 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

And note I am also now going to mention the people  who cooperate with this guy, because they an able him to mislead the general public

Well done

[James DiEugenio]

Thanks.

Just to show you how bad the fruity left is on this, consider the following.

I went after Paul Street a few weeks ago for his smear of JFK at Truthdig.

https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/paul-street-meets-jane-hamsher-at-arlington

Well, he recycled that pice of malarkey for the King anniversary at Counterpunch. 

So on Friday, I emailed Counterpunch and asked if I could reply on the site.  Well, as of today, no answer.  I am not expecting them to allow me to do so.

If not, I will reply at K and K.  The information we have on Kennedy today is just so abundant that its simply ridiculous for these nuts to do what they are doing, which is to simply misrepresent the historical record.

 It used to be that the strength of the Left was truth based upon fact.  The way I look at this is that there will never be a chance for real political reconstitution of America until the assassinations of the sixties are faced up to.  To say they do not matter is to deny the political reality we are faced with today. 

Edited April 8, 2018 by James DiEugenio

[Paz Marverde]

4 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

So on Friday, I emailed Counterpunch and asked if I could reply on the site.  Well, as of today, no answer.  I am not expecting them to allow me to do so.

No surprise at all

[Clive Largey]

Jim,

The white paper Chomsky is referring too is not a literal document, it's the example he thinks JFK set, just as you quoted, went into Vietnam and attacked the country "without anyone lifting an eyebrow" . According to Noam, Reagan tried to duplicate it and found out very quickly that times had changed and public protest made him retreat and take his own attack on Central America completely underground. That's all it is and no more than a idea.

A couple things you two seem to agree on are that the confilct in Vietnam is all about independance not commies, that the Diems and their forces are just US clients repressing a popular movement of the people and that JFK knew this, you say he learnt it early on, Noam says he was told exactly who or rather what the real enemy to the US was shortly after becoming President. You say that's part of the reason he wanted to withdraw because he knew we had no right even supporting Diem let alone being over there. The same events have Chomsky putting him in the dock(he knew but he still went in and with full support. War crime).

Where I think you might dissagree strongly is exactly what went on over there during the JFK years. I know what Chomsky thinks the "Military Advisors" were there for and what they might have been doing besides the training of Diems forces(30% of all sortes flown had US pilots for example, or that indiscriminate bombing in the free fire zone after the hamlet programme was underway was okay as long as remained deniable (if it came out)) so do you feel there is evidence enough to believe this 15,000+ group was far more hands on than simply training and advising? Officially the aircraft are escorting and transporting, the advisors are training and consulting and we are over there only to protect these innocent people from terroists controlled by the red menace and support their democratic freedom. So did "counterincergency" mean assassination squads, S&D missions and the like all completely deniable or simply just recon support to help find the enemy?

I've heard Chomsky talk about this more than a few times and read a lot of what he has written only because of my interest in JFK, I've never heard him deny the withdrawal plans, if he has done so recently then I would put it down to age. Have you ever heard of McNamara telling his forces in Vietnam in 1964 (before Tonkin)that they should still be preparing to withdraw and that the 1000 men out by December 1963 plan actually went through?

[James DiEugenio]

Clive:

This is cut and pasted from the interview:

So they had a white paper more or less modeled on Kennedy's white paper that said the Communists are taking over.

I know of no such White Paper that Kennedy issued.  The closest thing I can think of in 1961 was the Taylor Rostow report which JFK rejected. That was in late 1961.  Five months later he had Galbraith handing in a report for withdrawal to McNamara.

I do not agree that one can fight a war in another country without combat troops.  If one wants to argue that you can, then what do you call what LBJ did then?  He really did commit hundreds of thousand of combat troops.  He really did lay waste to the country. He really did kill hundreds of thousands of civilians and tens of thousand of Americans.  

The Truman Doctrine was a part of American diplomacy from the forties.  The exceptional thing about Kennedy was that he obeyed it in its purest form.  That is America can supply aid, money and advisors to fight the Cold War. But he was not going beyond that in the Third World.  The same thing happened in Cuba with the Bay of Pigs.  He was not going to commit American forces into a Third World country.  He was willing to accept the loss and the humiliation and he then got rid of the people who suckered him into it.

Same thing in Vietnam.  It was begun by the Dulles brothers, and Eisenhower/Nixon. Nixon actually wanted to commit combat troops in 1954.  Dulles wanted to use atomic weapons to bail out Dien  Bien Phu.

Kennedy thought this was nuts. He simply did not think South Vietnam was part of the vital interests of the USA.  Therefore he was never going to commit direct military intervention there. And that goes all the way back to what he saw in 1951 in Saigon and his education from Edmund Gullion. (Destiny Betrayed, second edition, p. 21)

Edited April 20, 2018 by James DiEugenio

[Clive Largey]

NSAM 111 fits the bill but Chomsky never refers to it or any other literal document each time he talks or writes about Reagan attempting to emulate Kennedy, that's why I believe it's just an example and similar to saying "JFK wrote the book on how to get away with it".

What was he getting away with? An attack on freedom, ability to self rule and independance free of the US. This is what Chomsky preaches, that this is what it's all about, Vietnam, Cuba, Columbia, etc, even the complete cold war(to put Russia back where it belongs in the third world he says), leaving these people to go their own way would be a complete disaster for US power, wealth and dominance. They'd set bad examples to others and Vietnam surrounded as it is by so many other countries could not be allowed to succeed, it had to be crushed and repeatedly punished to set a good example to those looking on.

Perhaps I am confused a little but you have said that JFK knew that Vietnam was about independance, he said as much and got critized for it, I assumed you were talking about the same independance that Chomsky is and I still do, the independance of the real people of Vietnam not the US puppets in the south. So could you provide the evidence for me? I did try reading the 1957 speech but I didn't get very far, it's so long and about a conflict I know nothing about but from what I gathered from scanning it, I think you're correct, so I'd like to see the Vietnam examples.

Chomsky would probably have JFK completely withdrawing all support for the Diems, from the very start and making sure that the real Vietnamese got every xxxistance it needed to become a successful union and great friend of the US. Treason.