In Oliver Kamm's blog post titled "Chomsky and source material" he asserts that Emeritus Professor Noam Chomsky has misquoted retired UN Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan alleging that Chomsky "doesn’t appear to have read the book he claims to be quoting from." I note this as a very serious insinuation of research fraud against a distinguished Emeritus Professor of world renown which on those grounds alone warranted closer inspection of Kamm's claims.
I repeat Moynihan's quote below from his book "A Dangerous Place" for reference which for ease of illustration I have identified as two consecutive parts #1 and #2.
UN Ambassador Moynihan (retired) wrote:
Part #1 "In both instances the United States wished things to turn out as they did, and worked to bring this about. The Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook." Part #2 "This task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success."
Chomsky's own writing paraphrases Part #1 of Moynihan's text:
"Referring to the Indonesian invasion of East Timor, [Moynihan] says that the United States wanted things to turn out as they did and that he had the assignment of making sure that the United Nations could not act in any constructive way to terminate or reverse the Indonesian aggression."
Chomsky immediately continues with his own observation of Moynihan that: "He carried out that task with remarkable success." Note: This sentence is Chomsky's observation not Moynihan's and is clear from Chomsky's use of the word "He".
Chomsky, continues paraphrasing Moynihan saying that: "He then in the next sentence goes on to say that he’s aware of the nature of that success." When Chomsky writes "next sentence" he is obviously referring to the sentence identified as Part #2 above i.e. Part #2 is the "next sentence" following on from Part #1 of Moynihan's quote.
Oliver Kamm, in a masterful stroke of conceit ignores this simple truth instead fabricating that Chomsky's "next sentence" points to ...you guessed it, a completely unrelated sentence on Luanda. Rather than suspect his own close reading ability Kamm has instead attempted a clumsy coup de grâce, stumbling upon his own sword in the process and in doing so rendered himself as the one that "doesn’t appear to have read the book he claims to be quoting from."
2 comments:
hello,
I think this critique is a good start but it still might be strengthened. Kamm says that Chomsky misread the context and that Moynihan's comments refer to to "the failure of Soviet and Chinese clients in, respectively, Spanish Sahara and Timor."
Now I don't have the original source but I have noticed that several folks besides Chomsky has understood the quote to mean the same thing. For example Christopher Hitchens, in The Trials of Henry Kissinger wrote,
"So gruesome were the subsequent reports of mass slaughter, rape, and deliberate starvation that bluntness fell somewhat out of fashion. The killing of several Australian journalists who had witnessed Indonesia's atrocities, the devastation in the capital city of Dili, and the stubbornness of FRETILIN's hugely outgunned rural resistance made East Timor an embarrassment to, rather than an advertisement for, Jakarta's new order. Kissinger generally attempted to avoid any discussion of his involvement in the extirpation of the Timorese-an ongoing involvement, since he authorized backdoor shipments of weapons to those doing the extirpating-and was ably seconded in this by his ambassador to the United Nations, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who later confided in his memoir, A Dangerous Place, that in the matter of East Timor the initial invasion toll was "almost the proportion of casualties experienced by the Soviet Union during the Second World War." Moynihan continued:
"[T]he United States wished things to turn out as they did, and worked to bring this about. The Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. This task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success."
The terms "United States" and "Department of State" are here foully prostituted, by this supposed prose master, since they are used as synonyms for Henry Kissinger."http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Kissinger/CaseAgainst2_Hitchens.html
How probable is it that Hitchens and Chomsky would both have reading dysfunctions?
I believe Oliver Kamm is attempting to argue that the humanitarian crisis engendered as part of the East Timor annexation was never intended, in Moynihan's, eyes to be a measure of his success. However, it is disingenuous of Moynihan to gloat over his actions whilst selectively ignoring any responsibility for their consequences. By explanation, part of the UN's mandate would have been to oversee evolving humanitarian issues. By his actions then, Moynihan made sure that these efforts would be frustrated. The resulting consequences of interfering with humanitarian oversight are patently obvious to all in advance. In this context then, I interpret that Chomsky is revealing a part of Moynihan's success he conveniently refuses to acknowledge.
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