Noam Chomsky Quotes
There was a striking example of this in Pakistan when the US sent in Special Forces, to be honest, to kill Osama Bin Laden. He could easily have been apprehended and caught but their orders were to kill him.
Chomsky, Noam. Who Rules the World? Metropolitan Books, 2016.
The “Principals Committee” is the senior interagency forum for consideration of policy issues affecting national security. It includes the National Security Director (Chair), the CIA Director, the Secretary of Defense and his Deputy, the Secretary of State and his Deputy, the Chairman of the Jount Chief’s of Staff, The Special Representative to the United Nations and other staff as invited. Clarke was almost always invited to these meeting when terrorism was discussed but he did not have a vote. This is a very important quotation for several reasons. First, it shows the influence that the Defense Department and CIA leaders had with President Bush before the 9-11 attack. It also illustrates dramatically how reluctant our military and CIA were to use drones. It was President Obama who overruled them and changed America policy to use Drones to protect American interests. It also indicates how there was a split regarding the perception of the danger of Al Qaeda and bin Laden with Clark and some of the other Principals placing more value on a military strike than the military and covert action leaders. This is not uncommon despite the fact that public perception is that it is always the military leaders who are the hawks. Also, it illustrates the problem of allowing the military point of view to always prevail in national policy making involving use of force. See {639322}.
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.
