It is rare that one leaves a movie with the feeling that one understands the world better than when one entered, but after seeing John Junkerman's "Power and Terror: Noam Chomsky in Our Times" at the Spangenburg Theater in Palo Alto, I can only say wow!
For a cynical leftist, still reeling from yesterday's election results, seeing this film was akin to rebirth. What Noam Chomsky does is to throw the world upside down, to question all the assumptions, and to not just suggest, but demand, that we look at ourselves in the mirror. Chomsky exposes the hypocrisy of a society bent upon justifying the unjustifiable.
Of course the context for the documentary is the post September 11 period. Chomsky makes too many good points to list here, but a few stick in my mind. When the U.S. kidnapped Noriega and invaded Panama in 1989, 3,000 people were killed when U.S. planes bombed a slum in Panama City. And we're not talking about the dark ages here, we're talking about twelve years ago. So why then are we so shocked when 3,500 Americans are killed in a terrorist attack on the WTC?
Chomsky's point is that it is no more morally defensible to bomb people in Panama City than to fly two planes into the Twin Towers. George W. Bush is very good about discussing morals. But how dare he talk of morals when thousands of people in Iraq have died due to U.S. sanctions and when Israel with his approval has killed 1,500 Palestinians. How dare he talk of a war on terror, when the United States has engaged in more massive and deadly terrorism than any other nation on the planet? Chomsky asks, and I have yet to hear a valid refutation of this argument.
"Why do they hate us so?" was a common sentiment asked after September 11. It's odd that the supposedly liberal media allied itself with the president in claiming that it had to with their hatred of our values, our freedoms, or our success. The Wall Street Journal had a slightly better explanation, as Chomsky explained. They asked middle-class Arabs involved in international businesses. They responded that what they hated about America was it's support of the corrupt, brutal and dictatorial regimes which stifled hope and progress in their nations.
I think Chomsky's central thesis is that terrorism is not a phenomenon merely of fringe radicals, it is a common phenomenon. How was the U.S. bombing of Vietnam not a terrorist action? How about the dozens of other U.S. actions? How is our "strategic" bombing of Hanoi over Christmas of 1972 so much morally superior to the terrorists attack on the WTC. Moreover, if one examines the rest of the world, one sees examples of state sponsored terrorism all the way 'round. No, what we object to so much after 9/11 is not terrorism, merely terrorism directed at us.
What is remarkable about both the film and the man is that they are optimistic. While Chomsky knows that the vast majority of the world is blind to its faults, he is still optimistic about the future. I only wish I had that faith. Now I have to hurry up and do some reading about Chomsky...
