America's Intellectual No-Fly Zone

From left to right, from Chomsky to Carlson, war-skeptical voices are being denounced at levels not seen since Iraq

In a 1979 essay called, “My Speech to the Graduates,” Woody Allen wrote:

More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.

Allen was satirizing the notion that there are always good choices in life. Often, there aren’t. Sometimes the fork in the road ahead asks you to choose between different routes to hell. The late, great Gilbert Gottfried once made the same point in a standup routine about stranded missionaries just slightly less subtle than Allen’s bit.

Indomitable public intellectual Noam Chomsky gave an interview to Current Affairs last week called, “How to Prevent World War III.” Regarding Ukraine, Chomsky revisited “My Speech to the Graduates”:

There are two options with regard to Ukraine. As we know, one option is a negotiated settlement, which will offer Putin an escape, an ugly settlement. Is it within reach? We don’t know; you can only find out by trying and we’re refusing to try. But that’s one option. The other option is to make it explicit and clear to Putin and the small circle of men around him that you have no escape, you’re going to go to a war crimes trial no matter what you do. Boris Johnson just reiterated this: sanctions will go on no matter what you do. What does that mean? It means go ahead and obliterate Ukraine and go on to lay the basis for a terminal war.

Those are the two options: and we’re picking the second and praising ourselves for heroism and doing it: fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian.

Immediate shrieking outrage of course ensued (why doesn’t Twitter have a special “torch” emoji for denunciatory mobs?). Chomsky was judged a genocide-enabling, America-hating Kremlin stooge. A tiny sample:

Reinhard Bütikofer @bueti

Noam Chomsky's position on war and peace depends on who is attacking whom. Against military actions by the U.S. he is a moralist soaked in anti-imperialism. In other cases he is an untra-realist telling the victims that this is how the world functions.

Jasmin Mujanović @JasminMuj

I see we are on day two of pretending Chomsky is but a misinformed grandpa spouting off pro-Kremlin disinformation re: Ukraine rather than a man who has knowingly spent decades peddling bad faith, revisionist hokum, in defense of every murderous tyrant from Pol Pot to Milosevic.

Kyle Orton @KyleWOrton

It's been said a million times, but bears repeating: none of these people - Chomsky, Pilger, Sy Hersh - "went wrong"; they have always been exactly the same, driven by anti-Americanism and a sympathy for literally any force, no matter how gruesome, that could fight American power

Zack Beauchamp @zackbeauchamp

Reading that Current Affairs interview with Chomsky, and I see why everyone's mad about the Ukraine passages. But this from Chomsky is a hell of a factual error. https://t.co/yvfylLMJMg

I reached out to Chomsky about the brouhaha. The good professor was charmingly unaware he’d set off a social media meltdown, but commented in a general way.