Liberté immuable

Liberté immuable, rendered in English as “Enduring Freedom,” is the name adopted for the Bush administration’s Afghanistan campaign after it dropped “Infinite Justice.” Noam Chomsky presents the change not as a substantive alteration of policy but as a correction to a damaging piece of political language: the replacement avoided the earlier phrase’s apparent presumption of divine authority, while leaving the campaign’s human and strategic consequences in view.

From “Infinite Justice” to a New Name

The Bush administration initially called its operation “Infinite Justice.” Chomsky cites Arundhati Roy’s criticism of the phrase against the backdrop of Afghan civilians facing hunger while awaiting military attack. He then notes that U.S. communications officials recognized a propaganda problem: the name seemed to place the United States in the position of the divine. As with the earlier use of “crusade,” which officials had abandoned because of its implications for potential allies in the Muslim world, the administration changed its terminology. “Enduring Freedom” replaced “Infinite Justice.”

The alteration mattered as an exercise in public framing, but Chomsky treats neither name as an adequate account of what the campaign did. His discussion sets official language beside the conditions in Afghanistan and the larger political effects he attributes to the military action. In that contrast, a change of label may answer a communications problem without settling questions of justification, responsibility, or consequence.

The Campaign and Its Strategic Consequences

Chomsky identifies one major consequence of the Afghanistan campaign as the establishment, for the first time, of substantial U.S. military bases in Central Asia. He argues that these bases could help support U.S.-dominated multinational corporations and the contemporary “Great Game” over the region’s considerable resources. He also situates them within a wider military geography: before the war, Diego Garcia had been the most secure U.S. base for targeting the Persian Gulf; the new Central Asian position, in his account, further improved the ability to intervene.

He interprets the campaign within the Bush administration’s effort to consolidate an already overwhelming military advantage and advance global dominance. The new phase of the “war on terror,” he argues, recalled the Reagan administration’s earlier war on terror while creating an opportunity to extend U.S. power. The name Liberté immuable therefore appears in an argument about more than the stated purpose of the operation: it accompanies a campaign whose military and geopolitical effects, as Chomsky describes them, reach well beyond its public label.

Force, Credibility, and the Limits of the Stated Rationale

Chomsky links the Afghanistan campaign to the use of military force as a demonstration of U.S. capacity. He reports that, during a visit by Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, the prince urged the United States to consider Arab responses to its strong support for Israeli repression. Chomsky recounts that U.S. officials answered that they did not concern themselves with what Abdullah or other Arabs thought. A senior official compared the administration’s present energy with the U.S. performance in Operation Desert Storm, describing the former as ten times greater; a former military official said that the display of firmness would make others respect the United States and stop challenging it.

Chomsky acknowledges that he has no access to confidential documents, but argues that it is reasonable to infer that such effects were calculated and may have been a primary objective of the bombing: to warn the world about the consequences of failing to follow U.S. rules. He compares this reasoning with the NATO bombing of Serbia, which Tony Blair and Bill Clinton had explained in terms of preserving NATO’s credibility. In Chomsky’s account, credibility here means the standing of the United States and its principal arms client, rather than that of NATO member states generally. This is his strategic interpretation of the campaign, not a claim that the public name itself establishes the operation’s legal basis.

The Legal and Political Questions

Elsewhere in the same argument, Chomsky insists that allegations of terrorism and the use of force should be assessed under consistent standards. He cites the International Court of Justice’s 1986 condemnation of U.S. conduct as an unlawful use of force and the subsequent U.S. veto of a Security Council resolution calling on states to respect international law. He also argues that the September 11 attacks meet the official U.S. definition of terrorism, while criticizing the political habit of reserving the term for violence committed by enemies. This distinction underlies his objection to treating “war on terror” as self-justifying language.

Chomsky argues that the attacks on the United States did not constitute an armed attack in the sense required by Article 51 of the United Nations Charter to invoke self-defense. He invokes the postwar prohibition on force, apart from self-defense or action by the Security Council, and rejects retaliation as a lawful alternative. Separately, he says that international legal institutions could support efforts to arrest and try Osama bin Laden and his associates if their responsibility were demonstrated. He reports that proposals for diplomatic means were rejected in favor of force. These arguments frame the name Liberté immuable against unresolved questions of evidence, legal authority, and the difference between pursuing suspects and waging a military campaign.

An Enduring Name, an Unsettled Outcome

For Chomsky, the renaming did not close the argument over the operation. His account connects the public language of freedom to the campaign’s human stakes, its expanded U.S. military presence, and the projection of power for which he sees historical precedents. He concludes that the September 11 attacks changed some conditions in international affairs but left most basic problems in place, with changes that could carry significant and unwelcome consequences. Liberté immuable thus remains, in his treatment, both the administration’s chosen expression and a point of entry into a wider critique of how military action is named, justified, and used.