George W. Bush

George W. Bush is portrayed as the head of an administration that turned the September 11 crisis into an opportunity to enlarge both domestic government power and U.S. military reach. In Noam Chomsky’s account, the administration’s counterterrorism campaign was not simply a response to an attack: it also accelerated existing policies and helped consolidate American global dominance.

Crisis, public opinion, and political framing

Chomsky distinguishes public opposition to the attacks from support for an indiscriminate military response. He describes a broad desire to identify and punish those responsible, alongside strong aversion to an attack that would kill large numbers of innocent people. He also argues that, during crises, major media and intellectual circles commonly rally to state power and encourage the public to do the same, a pattern he associates with both the Gulf War and the NATO bombing of Serbia.

The distinction between condemning the attacks and endorsing the administration’s response is central to Chomsky’s criticism. He rejects the use of “war on terrorism” as a neutral description when the campaign does not consistently target conduct that official definitions classify as terrorism. He argues that Western powers could not apply their own definitions to their actions without exposing the United States and its clients to the same charge. In his analysis, the campaign’s language therefore functions as propaganda as well as policy justification.

Domestic consequences

Chomsky argues that governments used the post-September 11 atmosphere of fear and appeals to patriotism to impose stricter controls and unpopular laws. In the United States, he says, the Bush administration seized the opportunity to press policies against the majority of the population, including future generations, while serving the narrow interests of large corporations that exerted unusual influence over the administration.

He places this domestic expansion within a broader pattern rather than treating it as an isolated emergency measure. The crisis, in his account, allowed the administration to pursue a program that would otherwise face greater resistance. The rhetoric of fighting terrorism helped present political discipline and an intensified governing agenda as necessary responses to danger.

Military reach and global dominance

Chomsky describes the Bush administration’s new phase of the “war on terrorism” as a renewed version of the Reagan administration’s earlier war on terrorism, and as an opportunity to strengthen an already overwhelming U.S. military advantage. One major consequence, he writes, was the establishment of substantial American military bases in Central Asia for the first time.

He links those bases to strategic access and economic power. In his interpretation, they would facilitate the position of U.S.-dominated multinationals in the region’s contemporary “Great Game,” help secure control over its considerable resources, and reinforce the encirclement of major energy resources in the Persian Gulf. Before the war in Afghanistan, Chomsky identifies Diego Garcia as the safest base in the network directed toward the Gulf; he argues that the new Central Asian presence improved the capacity for intervention. He presents this as his analysis of the strategic consequences, not as a conclusion established by confidential documents.

Allies, deterrence, and the administration’s legacy

Chomsky connects the administration’s expanding military agenda to a broader willingness among governments to use the attacks as cover for harsher policies. He cites Russia’s effort to gain latitude for its actions in Chechnya, China’s participation for similar reasons, and Israel’s expectation that stronger American support would permit more forceful action against Palestinians. He also describes Turkey’s offer of troops as tied, according to its prime minister, to American support for Turkey’s repression of its Kurdish population.

The administration’s posture is illustrated by an exchange with Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah. When Abdullah urged greater attention to Arab responses to U.S. support for Israeli repression, Chomsky reports that American officials answered that they did not care what he or other Arabs thought. A senior official reportedly invoked the Afghanistan campaign to demonstrate that the United States was acting with far greater force than during Operation Desert Storm; a former military official predicted that others would respect its firmness. Chomsky reads this language as an assertion of deterrence and dominance, not merely a response to terrorism.

He further suggests that the Afghanistan bombing may have been intended to warn the world of the consequences of defying U.S. rules, while acknowledging that this interpretation is an inference rather than one supported by secret documents. He compares the logic to the NATO bombing of Serbia, which Tony Blair and Bill Clinton had explained in terms of maintaining NATO’s credibility. Chomsky’s concluding assessment is that the attacks accelerated trends already underway: the international problems largely remained, but the crisis brought consequential and, in his view, troubling changes.