Sam Harris, the prominent “New Atheist” author and vocal proponent of the US “war on terror,” has repeatedly attempted to justify the projection of American military power abroad, especially in the Middle East, by invoking noble Western intentions. In a fairly recent exchange with Omer Aziz on his Waking Up podcast, the famed neuroscientist stated, in the context of a discussion on the ethics of warfare, that “Intention is the only guide to what someone is going to do next.” Previously, in an interview with the radio program Secular Talk, Harris made a similar point by constructing an ideal thought experiment (one of his favorite tactics) in which a sniper, while attempting to shoot a terrorist hostage taker, ends up accidentally killing a civilian. Harris then deduced the key lesson from his hypothetical: “Intentions are everything.”
This focus by Harris on the benign intentions of US policymakers was thrust into the spotlight after the author publicized his email correspondence with Noam Chomsky. In that exchange, Harris essentially accused Chomsky of ignoring the moral implications of intentions, and forwarded the famed linguist a passage from his first book, The End of Faith, in which he summarized what he perceived to be the main weakness in the professor’s worldview: “For him, intentions do not seem to matter. Body count is all.”
Although much has been written on this cyber debate since their exchange was publicized, most of the commentary has focused only on whether the emphasis on intentions detracts from the moral implications of civilian deaths, while ignoring a more fundamental question: Is Harris’ characterization of Chomsky’s approach correct? In other words, is it in fact true that this vociferous critic of American foreign policy has ignored the ethical significance of the intentions behind US interventionism? A brief foray into the written record reveals that the answer is no, and that Harris has either willfully misrepresented another author’s work or is wholly ignorant on matters that he considers himself an expert. Moreover, the moral significance of Chomsky’s actual argument reveals the ethical bankruptcy of the New Atheist movement, at least on matters concerning Western intervention.
The dispute over what the distinguished scholar had written on the relevance of intentions was framed early in the exchange when Harris informed Chomsky, after the latter author referred him to some of his earlier work, that he had not read that particular book and had simply treated his tract on 9/11 “as a self-contained statement on the topic.” This alone is a remarkable admission from an individual who routinely accuses others of misrepresenting his views or quoting passages from his work out of context. Chomsky has written prolifically on US foreign policy and Western interventionism since the 1960s, amassing dozens of books and articles on the topic, and yet Harris apparently thought that it was appropriate to characterize his views after having read what was not even one of his books but only a slim collection of interviews.
If Harris had bothered to explore even just a fraction of Chomsky’s political work, he would have discovered multiple instances where the renowned scholar delved into precisely how the deeply rooted economic institutional structure in America has shaped the ‘intentions’ of US foreign policymakers, and that their intent is to secure a favourable investment climate throughout the developing world, by whatever means necessary. Chomsky’s analysis of US intervention in Vietnam and Central America illustrate this principle well. In a 1975 article entitled ‘The Meaning of Vietnam,’ published in The New York Review of Books, he stated: ‘The US goal was to eradicate the revolutionary nationalist forces which, US officials estimated, enjoyed the support of half the population. The method, inevitably, was to destroy the rural society.” Prior to this essay, Chomsky had written in a 1971 article entitled ‘After Pinkville’—a reference to the My Lai massacre—that “It is important to understand that the massacre of the rural population of Vietnam and their forced evacuation is not an accidental by-product of the war. Rather it is of the very essence of American strategy.”
Perhaps Chomsky’s most comprehensive examination of the motivations driving US foreign policy, in essay format, can be found in his 1985 paper, published in Monthly Review, entitled ‘Intervention in Vietnam and Central America: Parallels and Differences.’ Citing declassified National Security and State Department documents, as well as a study conducted by his co-author Edward Herman on the correlation between mass killings, US foreign aid and an improved investment climate, Chomsky drew the only logical conclusion regarding intentions: “US foreign policy is in fact based on the principle that human rights are irrelevant, but that improving the climate for foreign business operations is highly relevant.” It follows from this principle, as Chomsky went on to argue, that since the investment climate can often be improved through torture, subversion, and the mass murder of dissidents, there is a clear connection between such atrocities and US ‘intent’.
These examples don’t just illustrate that Harris wandered into an exchange for which he was wholly unprepared, although the latter point is certainly telling. After all, Chomsky’s analysis is predicated on the examination of official top level government reports and academic studies. Following a careful evaluation of such documents, he then draws the appropriate inference regarding the intentions of policymakers. Harris, on the other hand, seems to have based his conclusion regarding the nobility of Western intentions on the public statements of government officials and his own impression of US altruism, as expressed through his idealized thought experiments. This is quite an interesting research methodology for an atheist who prides himself for his tendency to favour rational thought and scientific reason over religious dogma.
More importantly, however, this small sampling from Chomsky’s work also highlights a central flaw in the thought process of the New Atheists and humanitarian imperialists in general; namely, the implicit assumption that the civilian death resulting from US interventionism are ‘collateral damage,’ the unfortunate by-product of a noble effort to spread democracy, human rights and secular values. If, during a particular period the latter are compatible with investment and business operations, as in post-World War II Europe, then they will be tolerated, but if profits require subversion, massacres, and atrocities, then such acts will be pursued as well.
In other words, Chomsky does not simply stop at ‘body count,’ as Harris alleges, but rather explores how the body count compiled through decades of US interventionism has benefitted the interests of a small percentage of American elites.
When “your side” does most of the killing, of course you don’t want to focus on body count. You want to come up with some fairytale of noble vs. evil intentions so you can eventually arrive at the pre-ordained conclusion. Whatever “we” do is justifiable at worst and whatever the “other” does is not.
At core, Sam Harris is a tribal loyalist who uses his atheism as cover for what he really is.
Chomsky is right that our foreign policy is unethical, but he is wrong to focus solely on economic motives for our ridiculously close relationship with and subsidization of Israel. The Iraq War was primarily for Israel, though certain military industrial interests surely benefited as well from that stupid war. Our hostility to Iran is primarily because of Israel. And in regards to Syria, Wikileaks released discussions between Hillary and the administration in which it was revealed that she was arguing for regime change in Syria to help Israel. Would be nice to see Chomsky talk about this other motive for US foreign policy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3C6SIviQeUg
This.
A small point first. Harris is not a famed neuroscientist. He has made no contributions of any note to that area of science.
My main point is that one of the reasons Harris places such a great emphasis upon the importance of intention is to hold Israel blameless for the thousands of Palestinians killed by the IDF and Israeli policy in general. His claim is that the “terrorism” of Hamas is evil whereas the “collateral damage” of 500 Gazan children is an unintended consequence of proper behavior and so it is morally acceptable. This hinges on the claim that the suffering by collateral damage is unintended whereas the suffering by terrorism is intentional. But this is untrue. In most cases, and certainly in Gaza 2014, the suffering by collateral damage was predictable and was at best necessary in order to kill Hamas soldiers. It was, therefore, a decision to kill civilians in order to achieve the political goal of punishing Hamas. Except for the fact that the Israeli killers were soldiers (excluded by governments’ definitions of terrorism) collateral damage fits the definition of terrorism. The morality of the two is the same.
Harris’ example of the accidental killing of the hostage is therefore unlike collateral damage in that the hostage’s death was surprising and unpredicted. This is not true of the deaths of the 500 children in 2014. Or suppose in Harris’ example, the shooter used a rocket propelled grenade and killed both and 20 others near them and did it without remorse. The deaths were intentional and morally blameworthy.
SAM HARRIS- “Intention is the only guide to what someone is going to do next.”
This is a strange post. Sam Harris is a credentialed propagandistic jerk who earns his living as an apologist for imperial interventions. Shaukat Ansari should easily be able to shred Harris’s pilpul without dragging in Noam Chomsky, which only serves to provide the illusion of gravitas to Harris’ agitprop. And yet, the quoted statement has merit. The rather obvious problem is how do we determine a person’s or organization’s intention? The only way I know is to ignore their rationalizations (people lie, particularly those in power) and observe their actions and from their actions infer their intentions. Actions speak louder than words. And unless you are brain dead, it should be obvious that empires don’t exist to do good deeds. The purpose of all empires has been and will always be to secure and increase the power of the empire’s dominant elites. Period. Full stop. Only an imbecile would believe that an empire is destroying a country for humanitarian reasons. Yet, many do. This is the modern version of the white man’s burden. Namely, the grotesque misrepresentation of vile deeds as somehow noble and laudable. And people believe because they want to believe. Liberals are particularly susceptible to these types of conscience salving rationalizations.
I bring this up because of the contention among the “liberal” cadre that Hillary is the lesser of two evils. A defensible position only if you believe what she and The Donald say while ignoring her long history of saying one thing and doing another, and of up front warmongering. The current outrageously dishonest demonization of Putin is similar to the demonization of the Serbs in the Bill Clinton administration prior the imperial intervention there. It would seem that the American people are being prepared for yet another intervention against Russia, this one infinitely more dangerous than the Yugoslavia intervention. We are at the end of an era and the empire is attempting to achieve total hegemony prior to a restructuring of the global financial system and the entire global political economy. Hillary has surrounded herself with hyper-militaristic neocons who are pathological risk-takers, Victoria Nuland (Mrs. Robert Kagan) a telling example. For all of these reason’s and more, I have concluded that Hillary Clinton may well be the most dangerous person on the planet, hardly the lesser evil. Even though I predicted much of what is happening, to actually experience it is frightening.