In Memory Of Chalmers Johnson 1931 - 2010

The excerpt below is taken from an article Professor Emeritus Chalmers Johnson wrote for The Nation in 2001.  The article is entitled "Blowback":

The suicidal assassins of September 11, 2001, did not "attack America," as our political leaders and the news media like to maintain; they attacked American foreign policy. Employing the strategy of the weak, they killed innocent bystanders who then became enemies only because they had already become victims. Terrorism by definition strikes at the innocent in order to draw attention to the sins of the invulnerable. The United States deploys such overwhelming military force globally that for its militarized opponents only an "asymmetric strategy," in the jargon of the Pentagon, has any chance of success. When it does succeed, as it did spectacularly on September 11, it renders our massive military machine worthless: The terrorists offer it no targets. On the day of the disaster, President George W. Bush told the American people that we were attacked because we are "a beacon for freedom" and because the attackers were "evil." In his address to Congress on September 20, he said, "This is civilization's fight." This attempt to define difficult-to-grasp events as only a conflict over abstract values--as a "clash of civilizations," in current post-cold war American jargon--is not only disingenuous but also a way of evading responsibility for the "blowback" that America's imperial projects have generated.

"Blowback" is a CIA term first used in March 1954 in a recently declassified report on the 1953 operation to overthrow the government of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran. It is a metaphor for the unintended consequences of the US government's international activities that have been kept secret from the American people.

Comment: Chalmers died three days ago on November 20 in California.  He was 79 and a no-flies intellectual who supported the Vietnam War and Cold War but then grew into a fierce critic of American imperialism.

His 'tell it like it is' style will be sorely missed.

For more of his incisive deconstruction of US imperialism see his "Can we end the American empire before it ends us" (2007) here.

His fourth, and last book, on American Imperialism is entitled "Dismantling the Empire: America's Last Best Hope" (August 2010). 

May he rest in peace.

Onward!

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