Brain drainIn defense of Susan Sontag, Noam Chomsky, and Gore Vidal
BY MICHAEL BRONSKI
IT IS AMAZING that one year after the attacks of September 11, we are still hearing many usually progressive commentators complain that there is no public debate about the war on terrorism and George W. Bush’s desire to effect a "regime change" in Iraq. Actually, there is lots of debate — from leading Democrats like Tom Daschle and Al Gore, prominent Republicans like Vice-President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Colin Powell, former generals like Brent Scowcroft, celebrated statespeople like Henry Kissinger and Madeleine Albright, former presidents like Bill Clinton, and commentators including Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter, William Safire, George Will, Thomas Friedman, Paul Krugman, and Nicholas Kristof.
Still, the progressive complaint may yet have merit. For what we’re seeing is that politicians, former presidents, generals, columnists, and even right-wing rabble-rousers are taken, to various degrees, seriously. Writers who’ve made a name for themselves as public intellectuals, on the other hand, are not. People who’ve commented on public and political affairs for more than five decades — often prompting useful intellectual debate — are now being written off as extreme left-wing, anti-American cranks. The attacks on Susan Sontag, Noam Chomsky, and Gore Vidal — the most prominent characters in this category — represent a blossoming of an ugly strain of anti-intellectualism in American culture that has always been present, but which is now, after September 11, in full force.
On the New York Times’ September 10 op-ed page, in a piece titled "Real Battles and Empty Metaphors," Susan Sontag lays out a persuasive argument for why the metaphor of "war" is precisely the wrong way to describe current US policies against Al Qaeda and its associates. Likening it to the "war on cancer" or the "war on drugs," she claims that such an overarching figure of speech as "the war on terrorism" is without precise meaning and thus grants the government power to do whatever it wants at home and abroad. Indeed, such a vague notion of war "is a powerful disincentive to having a mainstream debate about what is actually happening," she writes. Although Iraq is never mentioned, it is clearly the specter lurking behind Sontag’s plea for clarity in thought and language.
An op-ed piece by Noam Chomsky in the September 9 Guardian raises similar points: "The prescription for endless war poses a far greater danger to Americans than perceived enemies do, for reasons the terrorist organisations understand very well." Indeed, terrorists welcome the "Bush doctrine" as great for recruiting. "If we insist on creating more swamps, there will be more mosquitoes, with awesome capacity for destruction," Chomsky adds. These ideas are not new for Chomsky, and are echoed in 9/11 (Seven Stories, 2002), his recently published, best-selling book comprising interviews he has given mostly to the foreign press.
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Someone call the Whambulance on them! They think their free speech is being trashed. What a bunch of morons! Anyways, they all deserved to be on the most hated list.
