Andrew Hagen

On 7 December 1975, Indonesia invaded East Timor. For the next few decades, Indonesian soldiers massacred the East Timorese, until they killed over 200,000 of the islanders, the worst proportional genocide since World War II. (*) Noam Chomsky, a professor of Linguistics at MIT, made it his personal mission to prevent the world from ever forgetting the East Timorese. Along with others, he spoke and wrote with great passion in defense of East Timor. Finally, in 1999 the UN acted. (†) (‡) Indonesia was forced to withdraw its forces. Australian troops were sent into East Timor temporarily to keep the peace. Today, East Timor is an independent, sovereign nation.

A few years later, in the wake of the 11 September 2001 terrorist assault upon the United States, Noam Chomsky stepped into the rhetorical breach and attempted to deflect blame for the terrorist assault from the terrorists themselves to the foreign policy of the US. For America’s offenses, including the missile strike on the Sudanese pharmaceutical plant suspected of manufacturing chemical weapons, America had 9/11 coming, he might have said. To Chomsky, there was nothing terribly surprising about 9/11, because, as he had long asserted, the US was the “leading terrorist state,” and thus it should have expected terrorism in return. (§) As others have observed, Chomsky’s counter-narrative would be installed as the official truth were Al Qaeda to succeed in its plans for world domination.

Though it was not a particularly noted issue until fairly recently, Indonesia is a land of mostly Muslims and East Timor is a land of mostly Christians. In his 3 November 2001 television broadcast on Al Jazeera, Osama Bin Laden railed against the UN intervention in East Timor, saying that it was a plot—a conspiracy—against Islam, and stated his wrath toward Australia and Kofi Annan, a Christian himself. Bin Laden said:

This criminal, Kofi Annan, was speaking publicly and putting pressure on the Indonesian government, telling it: You have 24 hours to divide and separate East Timor from Indonesia. Otherwise, we will be forced to send in military forces to separate it by force. The crusader Australian forces were on Indonesian shores, and in fact they landed to separate East Timor, which is part of the Islamic world. Therefore, we should view events not as separate links, but as links in a long series of conspiracies, a war of annihilation in the true sense of the word.

(**) Osama Bin Laden viewed the UN action to protect East Timor from genocide as one of the many slights that Islam has recently suffered. These perceived slights are claimed by Al Qaeda as justifying its campaign of worldwide terror.

Almost a year after that broadcast, on 12 October 2002, a series of terrorist bombings hit Indonesia. In Kuta Beach, Bali, over 180 were killed and hundreds were wounded. The Sari Club, which exclusively admitted foreign tourists, bore the brunt of the bombs. Most of the dead were Western, and many were Australian. All of the evidence fingers Al Qaeda and its alleged surrogate group in Indonesia, Jemaah Islamiah, in the blasts.

Which side will Chomsky be on this time? Will Chomsky say that the West, including Australia, has done many bad things against Muslims, and thus they should expect terrorism such as the Bali bombings in return? If so, he risks implying that the liberation of East Timor was one of those bad things done to Muslims that supposedly brought on Bali. That would echo the position of Osama Bin Laden. Additionally, the sincerity of Chomsky’s decades-long mission to defend East Timor from genocide would be cast into doubt.

If Chomsky says that the liberation of East Timor was not an offense done against Muslims, but that the West nevertheless had the Bali bombings coming, then he would have to explain just what the West did to bring on the Bali bombings.

Will Chomsky unequivocally condemn the Bali bombings, saying that the West did not have them coming? Then he must explain why America had 9/11 coming, but the West did not have Bali coming.

I believe Dr. Chomsky has dug himself a hole.

Update: 20 June 2003: Further discussion. (††)

Update: 17 November 2003: Andrew Olmsted links. (‡‡) On the Third Hand links. (§§) C.D. Harris of Ipse Dixit links. (***) Tim Blair links. (†††)

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