JFK, Noam Chomsky, and the Straw-man debate about Vietnam Withdrawl

Noam Chomsky has often been criticized for some of his positions regarding the JFK assassination and 9/11. I came across this interesting critique by Michael Morrissey in an open letter addressed to Chomsky and others.

"It might interest you to know that I tried, in the course of a long and intensive correspondence with Chomsky (before Rethinking Camelot came out), to get him to state his position [about US policy towards Vietnam after the JFK assassination] as follows: JFK's withdrawal plan was reversed, after the assassination, because the assessment of the military situation was reversed (also after the assassination). This is in fact his position, but you will see that in his book, as in his letters to me, he refuses to put it this way because he is so determined to make the truly specious argument that "there was no withdrawal policy." The reason is obvious to me, and I told him so: Once you admit that there was a radical policy change immediately after the assassination (exactly when doesn't matter), you must deal with the question of the possible relation between the two events... That means you are automatically involved in "conspiracy theory," which is anathema to Chomsky (and others like Alexander Cockburn and the late I.F. Stone) for I suppose ideological or psychological reasons. The other alternative is to admit the withdrawal policy reversal but deny any relation to the assassination, as Arthur Schlesinger does. This is naive and irrational, as Schlesinger's hysterical condemnation of the Stone film amply demonstrates. Chomsky does not want to appear naive and irrational, so he has manufactured a tortuous and false argument that there was never a withdrawal policy ("without victory") in the first place.

Chomsky's argument is false because Newman's thesis (that JFK was secretly
planning to withdraw regardless of the military situation) is 1) speculative, as
Chomsky correctly says, and 2) unnecessary to establish the fact that
the policy was reversed after the assassination, as Chomsky fails to
realize. This is why I say it is a false debate–because it is about 1), not 2). The irony is that Chomsky's clear presentation of the facts regarding 2), as opposed to Newman's, supports a conspiracy view of the assassination. It is enough to say that two days after the assassination the CIA and other intelligence agencies began to reverse their assessment of the military situation–retrospectively, dating the deterioration from July–and hence to reverse the withdrawal policy. Chomsky says this (without using the term "withdrawal policy," which he refuses to use the way everyone else uses it)–not Newman. We do not need any secret intentions of JFK to pose the question of the relation between the assassination and Vietnam policy. All we need to do is establish what actually happened, according to the documentary record. What happened is that JFK was killed, and two days later the CIA et al. suddenly realized they had been losing the war for the past five months, and the appropriate policy change was made. This may have been pure coincidence (as Chomsky and Schlesinger both assume, Chomsky tacitly and Schlesinger explicitly), but once the facts are stated clearly, they reek of conspiracy."

In a letter to Chomsky, Morrissey makes the point that:

The false debate is about what was going on in Kennedy's head before it exploded on that fateful day in Dallas. It is about what he might or might not have secretly intended to do in Vietnam, and what he might or might not have done if he had lived. There is no answer to these questions, and there never will be, no matter how many additional documents are declassified or memoirs are written... Once you admit that there was a radical policy change in the months following the assassination, whether that change was a reaction to a (presumed) change in conditions or not, you must ask if the change was related to the assassination, unless you are a fool. Then, like it or not, you are into conspiracy theory… ["Chomsky on JFK and Vietnam"]

This is the real debate, the one I was trying in vain to engage Chomsky in. Forget policy. There was a change. A radical change. A reversal of something, whether you want to call it policy, tactics, or assessment. What was the connection, if any, between that change, that immediate and radical change, and the assassination?

This is the question which, I submit, Chomsky and everyone else have been avoiding for the past 15 years.

In Noam Chomsky's words, "The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum."

Michael Parenti: Conspiracy Phobia on the Left

From an article by Michael Parenti: THE JFK ASSASSINATION II: CONSPIRACY PHOBIA ON THE LEFT

It is an either-or world for those on the Left who harbor an aversion for
any kind of conspiracy investigation: either you are a structuralist in
your approach to politics or a "conspiracist" who reduces historical
developments to the machinations of secret cabals, thereby causing us
to lose sight of the larger systemic forces. As Chomsky notes: "However
unpleasant and difficult it may be, there is no escape from the need to confront
the reality of institutions and the policies and actions they largely shape." (Z
Magazine, 10/92).

I trust that one of the institutions he has in mind is
the CIA. In most of its operations, the CIA is by definition a
conspiracy, using covert actions and secret plans, many of which are of
the most unsavory kind. What are covert operations if not conspiracies? At the
same time, the CIA is an institution, a structural part of the national security
state. In sum, the agency is an institutionalized conspiracy.

... Left publications have given much attention to conspiracies
such as Watergate, the FBI Cointelpro, Iran-Contra, Iraq-gate, CIA
drugs-for-guns trade, BCCI, and savings-and-loans scandals. It is never
explained why these conspiracies are important while the FJK assassination is
not. Chip Berlet repeatedly denounces conspiracy investigations while himself
spending a good deal of time investigating Lyndon LaRouche's fraudulent
financial dealings, conspiracies for which LaRouche went to
prison. Berlet never explains why the LaRouche conspiracy is a subject
worthy of investigation but not the JFK conspiracy.

G. William Domhoff points out: "If 'conspiracy' means that these [ruling class] men are aware of their interests, know each other personally, meet together privately and off the record, and try to hammer out a consensus on how to anticipate and react to events and issues, then there is some conspiring that goes on in CFR [the Council for Foreign Relations], not to mention the Committee for Economic Development, the Business Council, the National Security Council, and the Central Intelligence Agency." After providing this useful description of institutional conspiracy, Domhoff then conjures up a caricature that often clouds the issue: "We all have a tremendous tendency to want to get caught up in believing that there's some secret evil cause for all of the obvious ills of the world." Conspiracy theories "encourage a belief that if we get rid of a few bad people, everything will be well in the world."

To this simplistic notion Peter Dale Scott responds: "I believe that a true understanding of the Kennedy assassination will lead not to a few bad people but to the institutional and parapolitical arrangements which constitute the way we are systematically governed." In sum, national security state conspiracies are components of our political structure, not deviations from it.