I can't bring myself to read much Chomsky, but the little bit that I've read seems to concentrate on American excesses, things that many, perhaps most of us, would condemn.
His fundamental flaw seems to be excessive generalization, taking something true and making it into something false by characterizing it as universal when it is not. But then, he's a hard leftist.
Nevertheless, you don't have to be a hard leftist to be troubled or even revulsed by the history of American foreign policy in places like El Salvador, Chile, Cuba, Guatemala. Not everybody approves of using the CIA to destabilize other governments and formulate coups.
The worst thing is that, when these things happen, the government condemns the critics as mad, and then later, the truth comes out in places like the GWU National Security Archives, and it just reinforces cynicism and lack of trust.
Personally, I put very little trust in any President, past, present, or future. |
