[In the following review, Edwards presents an overview of Noam Chomsky's central arguments in 9-11.]

‘Ha ha ha to the pacifists’, wrote Christopher Hitchens in November, as Kabul fell to the combined might of US bombers, the Northern Alliance, and the BBC's, ‘Simpson of Kabul’. Two months later, the victory celebrations continue tirelessly (almost maniacally), as the ‘first virtual war’ draws to a close. It was ‘an instant, foolproof, bloodless recipe, like Delia Smith for bombers’, crowed the Observer's Mary Riddell, demonstrating due respect for the untold numbers of civilian victims incinerated by US bombs and starving to death in the frozen hills of Afghanistan.

But, once again, history will not end here. And, as Noam Chomsky makes clear in [9-11, a] tiny, essential book of interviews, history is sure to swallow the vapid cries of ‘Victory!’ in its vast and bloody maw.

The folly of the course on which we are set is hidden from the public by years of suppression and omission of embarrassing truth. First, there is the sheer scale and depth of the hatred ranged against the US and its allies. In mid-1979, President Carter's National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski began secret support for the Mujahadin—later to become the bin Laden network—fighting against the government of Afghanistan. The objective was to draw the Soviet Union into an ‘Afghan trap’, Brzezinski boasts. The US and its allies assembled a huge mercenary force, 100,000 or more, powerfully armed by the CIA, and drawn from the most militant sectors of radical Islamists.

By 1989, these radical Islamists had succeeded in their Holy War against the Russians, only to turn with equal ferocity on the establishment of US bases in Saudi Arabia (seen by them as comparable to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan). In 1983, they had already attacked the Americans in Lebanon. In 1997, they murdered 60 tourists in Egypt. They are now active in North Africa, the Middle East, the Balkans, Central Asia, western China, Southeast Asia and the US. This, Chomsky points out, is one group. There are many others.

‘It's entirely possible that bin Laden's telling the truth when he says he didn't know about the operation …’ Chomsky suggests. ‘Even if bin Laden is killed—maybe even more so if he is killed—a slaughter of innocents would only intensify the feelings of anger, desperation and frustration that are rampant in the region, and mobilise others to his horrendous cause.’

An easy ‘victory’ in disbanding the Taliban in Afghanistan may yet prove to be a terrible defeat for peace and security in the world.

So what would Chomsky do? Well, he asks, what was the right thing for Britain to do when IRA bombs exploded in London?

‘One choice would have been to send the RAF to bomb the source of their finances, places like Boston, or to infiltrate commandos to capture those suspected of involvement in such financing and kill them or spirit them to London to face trial.’

But that, Chomsky notes, would obviously have been ‘criminal idiocy’. Similarly, bombing Sicily would be an absurd way of dealing with the Mafia. Another possibility, the sane course, would be ‘to consider realistically the background concerns and grievances, and try to remedy them, while at the same time following the rule of law to punish criminals.’

But different standards apply when dealing with the Third World. Chomsky identifies a hidden and deeply disturbing truth about mainstream commentators: ‘It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that at some deep level, however they may deny it to themselves, they regard our crimes against the weak to be as normal as the air we breathe.’ This Chomsky sees as one of the profound effects of ‘several hundred years of imperial violence on the intellectual and moral culture of the West.’

There is a high price to pay for this moral degradation. The New York Times locates anti-US sentiments in ‘hatred for the values cherished in the West as freedom, tolerance, prosperity, religious pluralism and universal suffrage.’ It matters not that bin Laden and others are clear that they are fighting a Holy War against the corrupt, repressive, ‘un-Islamist’ regimes of the region; that they are fighting against the devastation of Iraqi civil society by Western sanctions, and against the ruthless Israeli oppression of the Palestinians. Because we are morally blind to the horrors for which we are responsible, we cannot understand the depth of the hatred our policies have generated, and so we call inflicting yet more violence on that already suppurating wound, ‘victory’.

Thus Chomsky was lambasted far and wide for comparing the atrocities of 11 September with Clinton's August 1998 cruise missile attack on the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Sudan. The attack was considered trivial in the West and has been long forgotten. And yet half the pharmaceutical production capacity of Sudan was destroyed by those missiles. ‘Tens of thousands of people—many of them children—have suffered and died from malaria, tuberculosis, and other treatable diseases,’ writes Jonathan Belke of the Boston Globe. The German Ambassador to Sudan reports: ‘It is difficult to assess how many people in this poor African country died as a consequence of the destruction … but several tens of thousands seems a reasonable guess.’ Tens of thousands of dead and next to nobody knows or cares in a society where such crimes are indeed ‘as normal as the air we breathe.’

The media consensus may now be that the campaign in Afghanistan has been a resounding success. But Chomsky reminds us that in 1914 the soldiers on both sides marched off to the slaughter with enormous exuberance, encouraged by the intellectual classes and a public mobilised in support of the war: ‘We should not underestimate the capacity of well-run propaganda systems to drive people to irrational, murderous, and suicidal behaviour.’

Another defeat in ‘victory’ could prove to be the emboldening and entrenchment of dangerous reactionary forces in society. George Bush's administration is deeply rooted in militarism and big business, particularly the oil industry. Perceived success in ‘the war on terrorism’ could lend even more, and perhaps terminal, strength to centres of power that are successfully opposing action on climate change.

How should social activists react to the horrific events of 11 September and thereafter? If we want to escalate the cycle of violence and increase the likelihood of worse horror to come, then we should curb our criticisms and disengage from involvement in these issues, Chomsky says. On the other hand, if we want to reverse the current, insane strategy we should intensify our efforts. As he puts it:

‘It is important not to be intimidated by hysterical ranting and lies and to keep as closely as one can to the course of truth and honesty and concern for the human consequences of what one does, or fails to do. All truisms, but worth bearing in mind.’