Distorted Morality: America's War on Terror [DVD] [2002] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]

Chomsky's lecture at Harvard-which he calls a "talk" because it sounds more informal-deals with the Bush administration's efforts to combat international terrorism. Beginning with a premise about terrorism taken from an old American military handbook, he attempts to prove that a war on terrorism is an impossibility, an illogical idea completely inconsistent with our nation's prior actions in Central America and the Middle East. The United States consistently supports and works closely with terroristic regimes, argues the professor, which means that we are in fact and in action a terroristic regime. A war on terrorism, therefore, would mean that we must fight ourselves. Chomsky doesn't go so far as to condone the September 11, 2001 nightmare; he accepts that it is a horrific incident worthy of retaliation, but he wants the United States to do so through the umbrella of the United Nations and the World Court. The lecture only runs for an hour or so. The question and answer session at MIT covers a whole host of foreign policy issues-guerilla warfare, 9/11-with some of the answers from Chomsky varying from a few sentences to five minutes or more.

Noam Chomsky is an acquired taste. While I disagree strenuously with him concerning American involvement in the UN and the World Court, I usually agree with many of the issues he raises about our foreign relations. I'm more at home with him when he attacks the concentrated media systems in the United States and calls for a breakup of the big corporations that control what we see and hear. Critics routinely blast Chomsky by labeling him as either pro-communist or a literal communist. Well, he's not, but tossing a label like this one around obscures many of the pertinent issues he raises. America has acted to support tyrants in the past. American companies have exploited third world countries and citizens of those countries (Nike and the United Fruit Company, anyone?). A nation cannot indulge in exploitative practices for decades and expect there won't be reprisals.

Here's a good question that Chomsky would probably love-and one that ties into the lecture he gives on this disc: why, when we expelled the Taliban from Afghanistan and still have troops on the ground over there, are the poppy fields pumping out raw opium as never before? The heroin derived from those fields ends up in the United States, does it not? Why don't we stop it? Perhaps the government wants a certain segment of the American population to use narcotics because it's easier to control a docile citizenry. Too, it allows the federal government to continue to wage yet another one of their great wars, the ever reliable "War on Drugs." I just can't believe our government didn't shut down those poppy fields. Doing so could save thousands, if not tens of thousands, of our citizens from a life of addiction, despair, and death. While you don't hear the media raising issues such as this one, you will here people like Noam Chomsky asking about it. For that, I do respect his insights and ability to increase awareness.

"Distorted Morality" isn't the best available information on Chomsky floating around. In fact, I found the lecture and Q&A on this disc a little dry. I keep planning on checking out a few of his books so I can get a better take on the man. While I find some of his solutions to our problems unacceptable, the questions he asks and the issues he raises continue to challenge what our government is doing and the reasons behind it.

This DVD is actually my introduction to him, regarding hearing him speak. Without going too far in the direction of being too linguistically intellectual, or too far in the other of being self-righteously rhetorical, Chomsky proves for any person willing to think (and not just feel emotions the corporate media has expressly designed to make us feel) that a war on terror could not possibly exist. He brings to light foreign policy facts that show Terrorism as a modern political tool of ALL nations today, with smaller nations and dictatorships having in actuality less effect on the world stage with terrorism (despite the press they receive in developed countries leading one to believe otherwise) than the far more deadly and effective examples of terrorism practiced by, well, us. Chomsky, in his intellectual but raw, Sagittarian tell-it like-it-is way, does not demand anti-Americanism, or an insurrection, or even civil disobedience with this lecture to Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. His spelling out of not just facts of the structure of language, but facts of current events and recent history reveals the moral vacuum in our present day world; a vacuum that, just like nature's abhorrence of a true vacuum, is abhored by the hearts of good people from whom true knowledge and information has been kept--which is most of America and the world. A vacuum that can only be filled with a sober, rational, moral maturity, when it comes to political perspectives, foreign policy and the secret motivational impulses and agendas of our quasi-democratic nations.

This DVD comes with subtitles, despite the fact that he is speaking in English. This can be distracting at times, because they are not 100% accurate regarding actual words spoken nor the spontaneity with which Chomsky, like with any speaker, uses one word or phrase incorrectly and then corrects himself while in the middle of another sentence. A helpful section is where the question and answer session after the lecture is broken up into sections on the DVD, just like various scenes on a movie--though here again, I would have preferred to be able to simply run the entire thing and here the questions as they were being asked. Just the same, these small issues of DVD construction will not take away from the power of Chomsky's message, or his presence.

It is really odd: Einstein's political views were extraordinarily progressive and gave most believers in a capitalist democracy, as well as communists, a moment of pause whenever he publicly shared them to say the least. But he was not silenced for these views, even back in the 40's and 50's; he was even asked to be the Prime Minister of the State of Israel by the Israelis. He was Einstein! Noam Chomsky has had the well deserved title of being the Einstein of the science of Linguistics practically since the late 50's--a title not even given to Nietzsche, a professor of linguistics (then called philology) while he was writing his philosophy... and yet here, in the 21st century, his so-called political views (as opposed to what they really are: again, moral perspectives) make it impossible for him to ever be seen or read on 60 minutes? Dateline? CNBC? CNN? Good Morning America? The New York Times? If he is so wrong, why won't his name ever be mentioned in the media, even as an adjective, let alone him being confronted in front of the nation to prove it?

A disc worth having.