16 february 2012, the other noam

A thoughtful piece from noam chomsky, who we sort of named our second son after. He bemoans the wilful lack of any remembrance of the beginning of the vietnam war, and quickly arrives at chomsky's favourite theme of american power and its abuse, which is never apparent because in chomsky's phrase, only the weak and defeated are called to account for their crimes. That is a better formulation that the victor writing history, because that is not of course how america finished up, either in vietnam or, as chomsky moves easily to, iraq. The scale of that defeat, which chomsky sees as deeper than generally perceived, presages the flood of headlines about whether america is over. This not new: several years ago I wrote that america's unipolar moment was brief and long gone and this was the era of the move from america being sufficiently hegemonistic to veto action by others to a dramatic waning of its power to when as now it no longer only needs others' passive acquiescence but in fact their active support in order to do anything on the global stage. Chomsky sees this as feeding paranoia, this "apocalyptic vision reflects the familiar ruling-class perception that anything short of total control amounts to total disaster." He moves effortlessly on to palestine, of course, and to global warming and china. You don't have to agree with him, but it's always a thought provoking pleasure to read.