9-11: Was There an Alternative? (Open Media Book)

arrived quickly...WHAT AN AMAZING LIL BOOK!...Fact upon fact & very informative...of course! you can expect nothing less from the wonderful & intelligent Mr. Chomsky

Could not be better. The author express an objective reflection on the September 11 events. I goes deeper explaining the foolishness and obsession of the american administration for war without thinking of back effects of its policy.

This book is a puzzle, and it is hard to understand how Chomsky came to write it. After 9/11, within hours, a global group of critics and commentators began to question the official account. I recall reviewing a book here at Amazon on Sept 12, scratching my head: the Bin Laden gambit is phony. But the views of people like Chomsky on the left confused me for years, although my first instincts turned out to be right. It was clear from the start that something didn't add up. Chomsky's perspective, present in this book, is almost tailor-made to have opened the challenge to the crafted propaganda in effect from the start in the government and media. He is on the verge of seeing the real issue, but then turns around and demurs. Possibly it was too soon after the event to see what had happened. His book is all ready to go as an expose of the 9/11 conspiracy, and then a blank fire. Thus, he presents the correct background to the issue, such as the complicity of the US government in the creation of 'terrorists' and Bin Laden himself, but drifts off into a completely puzzling acceptance of the cover up. This pattern, we should note, has been present all along in Chomsky's refusal to consider the JFK assassination question, a tricky issue to be sure. To be fair, it took time for the skeptics to get their act together, and it was to be several years until figures like David Ray Griffin began to coordinate the evidence of covert conspiracy. Thierry Meyssan's The Big Lie came a year after 9/11, but didn't properly register with Americans. In fact, it was very hard to put the facts together, and it wasn't, perhaps, until the conclusive evidence that the Twin Towers couldn't have collapsed under the collision with jet planes that many were forced to go 'cold turkey' off the official story. The issue is important still if activists on the left defer to what seems now a false view. It sends a message that the perpetrators can get away with a real whopper. This book has frozen a whole generation of leftists into silence, or second string propaganda supporting a Budh, on 9/11. Whatever the case, after so many years, it is time for leftists to check out the real research here. The covert distortions of American democracy require seeing the reality of what happened on that eleventh day of September.

This book is of interview given by Chomsky after 9/11 about various aspects. He had a great opportunity after 9/11 to make an impact on the discourse and he did. Since Chomsky is a very fast researcher and writer, he was really able to get an alternative narrative out as soon as possible. He discusses the discourse of 9/11 and its impact on the world and the US. It is a short worthwhile book to pick up. If you like Chomsky, pick it up, rather straight forward.

I have only read two books by Noam Chomsky: "What We Say Goes" and this one under review. Both books are actually not really books: "What We Say Goes" is an interview, and "9-11: Was There an Alternative?" is a collection of interviews and two brief essays. I read "What We Say Goes" almost exactly one year ago, and was not particularly impressed. After reading "9-11" I cannot help but conclude that Chomsky is a one-trick pony (although I do wish to familiarize myself with his writings on media and linguistics). What I mean by this is that Chomsky seems to have a comfort zone with only one rhetorical element. This element consists of bashing American foreign policy by reminding the reader of past injustices committed by prior policies. For example, a foreign policy to help facilitate democracy in Africa might be dismissed by Chomsky as ironic, since America did so much in the Cold War years to facilitate the spread of authoritarianism on this sad continent.Repeat this ad infinitum, mutadis mutandis (i.e., Latin America, the Middle East, etc.) and you are left with Chomsky's interviews in "9-11". To put it more clearly: this collection contains 6 interviews (spanning roughly 90 pages in a 155 page book is horribly repetitive. The first essay, written shortly after Osama bin Laden was killed, is more of the same. Here Chomsky questions the necessity of killing bin Laden on the spot (I have only heard Chris Hedges share Chomsky's position on this matter, although I am sure there are/were others). After this brief and controversial remark Chomsky reminds us that the US facilitated the growth of Al-Qaeda. Only die-hard conservatives or hardcore Chomsky fanatics will find this provoking or stimulating. Nevertheless, the essay titled "Reflections on 9-11" is, in my opinion, the best part of the book, and helps to make up for its other lackluster pages.Addendum: occasionally Chomsky shows that he is a good writer (it is hard to get a good sample with so many interviews, which are presumably oral...), but a passage on page 146 provoked me to write it down: "Of course, there will be those who demand silent obedience. We will expect that from the ultra-right, and anyone with a little familiarity with history will expect it from some left intellectuals as well, perhaps in an even more virulent form. But 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. Beyond the truisms, we turn to specific questions, for inquiry and for action."

If you like Chomsky, this one doesn't disappoint. Always wanted to know the scenario of 911 going on behind the Whits House doors. Great information, great insight.

I am a Chomskian. I love him and all his work - whether on theoretical linguistics or on politics. I now have twenty different books of his and I still can't have enough of them. Long live Noam Chomsky. I wish him a very long and healthy life. May God bless you.

this man is a national treasure whether you agree with him or not, you will be blown away with the facts.