Al-Qaeda

Al-Qaeda is identified in the book as a designated foreign terrorist organization, including under the name Al-Qaida. Its documented role here is narrow but significant: it appears in the official record of U.S. designations and within Noam Chomsky’s broader critique of how terrorism is defined, named, and politically applied. The text does not provide a history of the organization or describe its structure and operations.

Designation and Official Record

In 1999, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright designated Al-Qaida as a new foreign terrorist organization. The appendix’s list, established on October 5, 2001, includes Al-Qaida, identified parenthetically as Osama bin Laden’s network. This places the organization within a formal designation system that the book presents as an exercise of executive authority rather than as a neutral taxonomy.

The text outlines how that system works. The Secretary of State decides whether to designate or renew an organization after reviewing a comprehensive report prepared from intelligence-agency assessments and public and confidential sources. The State Department, working with the Justice and Treasury departments and intelligence services, prepares an administrative record describing the organization’s alleged terrorist activities. Congress receives confidential notice seven days before a designation is entered in the Federal Register.

A designation can be challenged in federal court, where the government relies on that administrative record to defend the Secretary of State’s decision. Because the record contains intelligence information, it remains confidential. Designations generally expire after two years unless renewed; new organizations may be added at any time, and the Secretary may revoke a designation after notifying Congress. The account thus sets out both the procedure and the limits on public scrutiny of the evidence supporting a listing.

The Book’s Account of Terrorism

Al-Qaeda’s appearance in the list sits alongside Chomsky’s insistence that terrorism should be assessed by a consistent definition, not applied only to adversaries. He accepts the official U.S. definition of terrorism as calculated violence or the threat of violence used to pursue political, religious, or ideological ends, including through intimidation, coercion, or fear. Under that definition, he calls the attacks against the United States terrorist crimes. His argument is that the same standard must also be applied to states and their clients, rather than changing according to who commits the act.

Chomsky contrasts this literal definition with a conventional propagandistic usage in which terrorism denotes violence by enemies against the United States or its allies. He argues that official language can classify comparable conduct differently as political circumstances shift. His example is the changing characterization of the Kosovo Liberation Army: condemned by the United States as terrorists in 1998, it was recast as freedom fighters after U.S. and British policy turned toward attacking Serbia, and later again described as terrorists, criminals, or thugs. Al-Qaeda’s inclusion in an official list therefore belongs to a discussion concerned not only with the listed group, but with how governments draw and revise the category itself.

Political Language and Strategic Context

The book also questions the language used to frame military force. Chomsky observes that U.S. actions have at times been called smart bombings or humanitarian intervention rather than war, and argues that a vague term such as war can obscure questions of responsibility. He warns that calling a campaign a war against terrorism becomes propaganda if it does not target terrorism consistently with the government’s own definitions. In his view, applying those definitions to Western powers and their clients would raise questions that official rhetoric leaves aside.

In discussing the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, Chomsky describes the new phase of the war on terrorism as an opportunity for the Bush administration to strengthen U.S. military dominance and expand its global reach. He links the establishment of major U.S. bases in Central Asia to strategic access to the region’s resources and to the wider network of bases oriented toward the Persian Gulf. He further interprets the bombings of Afghanistan as a demonstration of U.S. capacity and a warning about the consequences of defying its rules. These are the author’s strategic interpretations; the cited material does not establish Al-Qaeda’s role in those decisions or describe the organization’s activities in Central Asia.