> The responses of some well-known public
> intellectuals to Terror Tuesday and its
> aftermath leave much to be desired

> By Tapas Ray

---- Said ----

> Marxists. One of them is Edward Said,
.....

Edward Said's text:

 http://www.lbbs.org/saidcalam.htm

: 'Islam' and 'the West' are simply inadequate
: as banners to follow blindly.

> it should be clear that no Western leader has
> framed the conflict in ?Islam vs West? terms. If
> anyone did, it was Osama bin Laden and the
> Taliban.

Tapas Ray's statement diverts from the point of
Edward Said's statement. Surely Ray agrees that
blindly following either "Islam" or "the West"
is not a good thing.

But it is also true that Bush *did* initially
frame the conflict in "Islam vs West" terms:

 http://seattlep-i.nwsource.com/attack/39266_crusade18.shtml

; Bush said, "This is a new kind of, a new kind of
; evil. ... And the American people are beginning
; to understand. This crusade, this war on
; terrorism is going to take awhile."

What else is a "crusade" if not Islam vs the West?

In Bush's 20 Sep speech, it's clear he's been
forced to retract (probably for strategic reasons,
to gain support from Islamic countries), but he
still presents the whole thing as a
Hollywood/Bollywood good vs bad ("manichean" for
readers who like fancy words) film.

 http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/WTC_Bush_transcript010920.html

; we are a country awakened to danger and called to
; defend freedom.

The two million prisoners in the USA are not free.

; This is civilization's fight. This is the fight
; of all who believe in progress and pluralism,
; tolerance and freedom.

USA, a pluralist democracy? Two factions of a
single corporate party (Republicrats) hardly make
for a pluralist democracy.

; Every nation in every region now has a decision to
; make: Either you are with us or you are with the
; terrorists.

This is "good vs bad". Isn't this a call to blindly
follow "the West"?

; nations from Latin America to Asia to Africa to
; Europe to the Islamic world.

And Bush still hasn't learnt much about geography.
He seems to think that Asia, Africa and Europe are
not part of the Islamic World!

---- Chomsky ----
Chomsky's text (cited by Tapas Ray):

 http://www.lbbs.org/chomnote.htm

> Noam Chomsky, another intellectual of
> very high stature, and toast of the Bengal
> Marxists, has also shown signs of stress. .....

> But he, too, seems to find justification for the
> attacks in past US behaviour. What strikes one

Chomsky:
; The terrorist attacks were major atrocities.
...
; But that this was a horrendous crime is not in
; doubt.

The connotations of the words "atrocity"
and "horrendous" are clearly negative.

Tapas Ray does not quote any statement
by Chomsky claiming that atrocities are justified.

True, Chomsky does seek to *understand* the
attacks:

; We can express justified horror; we can seek to
; understand what may have led to the crimes, which
; means making an effort to enter the minds of the
; likely perpetrators.

But understanding is not the same as justifying.

Women are often raped, beaten and abused in other
ways by their husbands - and sometimes escape from
this by murdering the husband. We can understand
this while refusing to justify it.

> the most, however, is his remark that ?the
> primary victims, as usual, were working people:
> janitors, secretaries, firemen, etc.? One is
> left to wonder if he already has the full
> demographics of the more than 6,000 people
> declared or feared dead, and whether he would

This is simply that janitors and secretaries and
other working people generally outnumber the
coordinator class, and there was a lot of
publicity about the fact that many firemen
died. It seems a reasonable guess that the
majority of victims were working class. Does Tapas
Ray have any more precise figures on the
demographics?

> have been a little less sad if the ?primary
> victims? were wealthy stockbrokers. One also
> wonders where, on his sadness scale, he would
> place the middle-class Indian software
> professionals and the restaurant manager from
> Manipur - brother of a former Statesman
> correspondent - who were in the World Trade
> Centre when it collapsed. These are testing

Being "left to wonder" about Chomsky's emotional
reactions is not a very good way to guess
what they might be. The fact that Chomsky's views
are generally left-wing does not mean that
he believes that killing members of the
coordinator class is a good thing.

I can understand that Indian members of
the coordinator class who have lost friends
and family are horrified. I am sure that
Chomsky would be upset at each of these
deaths. I myself am upset at them.

> Since this is a war of signs to a large extent,

These are Tapas Ray's words, and I think they
show a divergence with Chomsky's views (from
many, many of his works).

This is not just a war of signs: it is a war
with real human victims, whether workers,
members of the coordinator class, or capitalists.

----

> times. It is sad that brilliant minds are
> tottering precisely when they are needed the
> most.

Well, criticisms about what "seems" to be
Chomsky's thought and what "one wonders" about
Chomsky's emotional reactions are hardly at the
heights of intellectual criticism.

You've lost friends in the WTC attacks. OK, you
have the right to mourn.

But please be supportive of someone like Chomsky
and criticise him for what he says, not for what
you think he might want to say or what you wonder
he might feel.

Diverging into claims about who is a "Marxist" and
who is "not a Marxist" is not going to help
things. Unless you are more worried about signs
than people.

Okay, so Tapas Ray is not David Horowitz.
He is not capable of good arguments, or it
just may be that he realises that he doesn't
really have any argument. But he didn't go
on the bashing spree without a reason. Why
Chomsky and Said, of all people? Perhaps
The Statesman realises that many of its
readers are connected to the net and has
alternative means of obtaining facts, views
and news? That they can be influenced by
the anti-terrorism arguments of Said, Chomsky
and others, and may in turn try influencing the
forthcoming public debate on WW3?

By the way, their email address is
 thestatesman@vsnl.com
in case someone wants to write to them.