Noam Chomsky Quotes
Every book that comes out, every article that comes out, talks about how - while it may have been a "mistake" or an "unwise effort" - the United States was defending South Vietnam from North Vietnamese aggression. And they portray those who opposed the war as apologists for North Vietnam. That's standard to say. The purpose is obvious: to obscure the fact that the United States did attack South Vietnam and the major war was fought against South Vietnam.
Chomsky, Noam. Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky. Edited by Peter R. Mitchell and John Schoeffel, The New Press, 2002.
Chomsky was not asserting this statement as the truth. He was making the statement assuming that the absurdity of it would be clear to the listener and they would also realize that was what the then government policy was. North Vietnamese had infiltrated the South and had much support in many of the South Vietnamese villages. When the U. S. bombed the North Vietnamese—and the Vietnamese inhabitants—of those villages, the intention was indeed to help the South Vietnamese. If Chomsky were a politician running for office, his opponent might well have taken this quote and used it to “prove” that Chomsky supported the American effort in the Vietnam War when he was a vehement opponent.
Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science. He is Laureate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Arizona and Institute Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and is the author of more than 150 books on topics such as linguistics, war, politics, and mass media. Ideologically, he aligns with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism.
