Letters
Chomsky on Cambodia
Sir: On seeing Richard West's reference in the Spectator (Books, 29 September), to 'the odious Noam Chomsky', I read on to learn what sins merited this accolade. The charge turns out to be that I had 'con- demned' those who had written about Com- munist atrocities, but after the Vietnamese invasion 'the Chomskys were able to turn to [Shawcross's] Sideshow' to explain that `the Khmer Rouge were the creation of Nixon and Kissinger,' while proceeding to 'justify' the Vietnamese invasion.
Turining to the facts, I have two publica- tions on this topic, 'both co-authored with E.S. Herman: a review-article in the Nation (25 June, 1977) and a chapter in a book (Political Economy of Human Rights [PEHR]), which went to press shortly after the fall of the Pol Pot regime and states that 'the Vietnamese invasion can be ex- plained, but it cannot be justified.' In the review where we allegedly 'condemned' those who reported Communist atrocities, we praised Francois Ponchaud's Cambodge annee zero as 'serious and worth reading', with its 'grisly account of what refugees have reported to him about the barbarity of their treatment at the hands of the Khmer Rouge.' We did raise a few ques- tions about Ponchaud's account, for exam- ple, his apparent exaggeration of casualties due to American bombing. In the Amer- ican edition of his book, Ponchaud ack- nowledges and reciprocates our praise, noting the 'responsible attitude and preci- sion of thought' shown in what I had written on Cambodia. Note that I am referring to the American edition; on the simultaneous British edition, which re- places these statements with some asto- nishing remarks, see PEHR.
The only statement of West's that is even close to true is that I have referred to the role of US bombing in creating the Khmer Rouge, not citing Shawcross as West claims, but rather US war correspondent Richard Dudman, who witnessed and de- scribed the process as a captive of the Khmer Rouge; I first cited his account in 1972, seven years before the publication of Sideshow.
Many myths have been constructed con- cerning what I have written on this topic, particularly in England, though to my knowledge nothing I wrote has been chal- lenged or even addressed. I take responsi- bility only for what I write, not for the inventions of people who are scandalised by our curious proposal that one try to keep to the truth even when condemning official enemies.
Noam Chomsky
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, Cambridge, Massachusetts
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