For Reasons of State

Those wishing to understand the hijinks that led to the US invasion of Iraq can do no better in reviewing this seminal "nostalgia" piece on American war planning. Overcoming the "Vietnam syndrome" led right back to the quagmire, proof that those in power do not learn from history because they choose to ignore it. The inaccurate ramblings of one reviewer - holding Chomsky somehow accountable for the Khmer Rouge coming to power after this collection of essays was published - demonstrate how atrocity reportage from postwar Indochina was consciously exploited to retroactively justify the war. Reading this review of the Pentagon Papers - over half the book - demonstrate that whatever befell the region later was established in Washington by men who cared not one bit for the nations and people they condemned to disaster.

In 1973, Noam Chomsky released this collection of expanded articles and new material. This was his second political book, published at the height of Vietnam war protests. The book begins with an in-depth examination of the Pentagon Papers. This confidential history of US policy toward Vietnam was made public in the late 1960s, leading to a lawsuit by the US government against the New York Times and other newspapers. The newspapers won (when midwestern papers started printing the confidential history, making the lawsuit irrelevant) and everyone was finally able to see what the Pentagon had been up to since the 1950s.It's not a pretty picture. Chomsky quotes the Papers relentlessly, citing multiple versions of it. He lets the generals and politicians speak for themselves, revealing their real commitments, showing how they prevented democracy from breaking out in Vietnam in 1954. From there, he shows how the war expanded to Laos and Cambodia. The footnotes for these chapters are massive, citing hundreds of reliable sources. This section of the book is one of the best examinations of the Vietnam war you'll ever read, right up there with Gabriel Kolko's "Anatomy of a War" and Marilyn Young's "The Vietnam Wars."Then Chomsky shifts gears. He writes a brief but powerful essay on war resistance and the role of universities as subversive institutions. These chapters show Chomsky's commitment to peaceful, intelligent, democratic protest --- and his honesty about its limitations.The final chapters are about behaviorism, anarchism, and human nature. Although these topics are quite a change from the Vietnam war material at the beginning, they are no less impressive. Chomsky's review of BF Skinner's behaviorism completely demolishes the concept. This essay single-handedly brought the field to a halt in 1972. (Skinner responded once, failing to counter Chomsky's arguments, and behaviorism never recovered.) He even takes time to explain, in a single footnote, why Richard Herrnstein's study of IQ is useless (which made "The Bell Curve" irrelevant twenty years before it was written). Chomsky's notes on anarchism and his reflections on the mystery of human nature describe his underlying attitude about people and their relation to the state.I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants an education on Vietnam or Noam Chomsky's political work. The lies of Vietnam --- and the illegitimate authority of the state --- continue today in new forms. This book will inspire you to activism, and to learn more.

"For reasons of state" and "American power"; both written at the height of the vietnam war are chomsky at his most passionate. The works are obvoiusly written when the hopes of real change in the power structures of society seemed like a real possiblity. The condemnations of US policy are fast and furiuos as Chomsky turns scrutizing State dept papers into calls to action. There is no punches pulled here, hopeful thoughts of future stuctures of human freedom are disscussed in chapters with titles such as "notes on anarchism." Agree with him or not this is one of the few political books that can actually raise your heart rate.