Left’s Response to Beijing Massacre

I do not wish to engage in an ad hominem exchange with William Kunstler and Noam Chomsky (letters, June 24), but I do wish to correct the record.

Chomsky claims that he “condemned” the massacre in an article he wrote for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune (June 7). This is the totality of what Chomsky wrote about China in the Star-Tribune:

“Power struggles for democracy and human rights also regularly confront deadly force, as we have recently seen in Tiananmen Square, Tblisi, Kwangju, and San Salvador, among many other cases.”

This antiseptic description is far from a condemnation, and by comparing it to “many other cases,” Chomsky trivializes the enormity of the Chinese massacre.

My associate called Kunstler’s office and the woman who identified herself as his secretary said that Kunstler had made no statement. This is consistent with his long-expressed view that he will not condemn human rights violations by socialist countries. Kunstler now claims that one week later (on June 17) he did make a statement on “CBS Evening News” during which he condemned the events in China as a “massacre.” This is what he said:

“If you feel that the Chinese government, or any other government, including the American government, are going to use pictures to prosecute people and perhaps eventually murder them, then you have an ethical dilemma. . . . Do you do it or do you not?”

That is far cry from criticism.

Let me only add that every one of their ad hominem attacks on me for my record as a civil libertarian is demonstrably false, as a reading of the public record will demonstrate.

Finally, the executive director of the National Lawyers Guild told my associate that his own personal view was that China should not have used force against unarmed civilians, but he reiterated that the Guild, as an organization, could come to no organizational position “without more information and discussion.”

ALAN M. DERSHOWITZ

Cambridge, Mass.