It amazes me that not only does Noam Chomsky believe he can lecture the United States and its citizens on how to best spread and sustain democracy, but that otherwise intelligent people and organizations like Artvoice continue to feed this delusion (“American Bombs,” Artvoice v10n18.)

This, after all, is a man who insisted that Maoist China in fact had “many things that are really quite admirable” about it (Dissent, Power and Confrontation, pp. 117-8), that the actions of Pol Pot “may actually have saved many lives” (After the Cataclysm, p. 160), that Imperial Japan’s genocidal rule “was in some respects highly beneficial to the people of Asia” (International Socialist Review, September-October 2002), and who described the brutal, despotic terrorist group Hamas as “more forthcoming and more conducive to a peaceful settlement than those of the United States or Israel” (Interview, LBC TV, Lebanon, May 23, 2006.).

Even more amazing is that he continues to pass himself off as an expert on the conflict in Afghanistan. Most people would stop claiming expertise in a field after being extremely wrong on the major fact of that field, such as Mr. Chomsky did when he claimed the United States and its allies were attempting a “silent genocide” of Afghan civilians (“The New War Against Terror,” Lecture, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, October 18, 2001.), while in fact they prevented a famine.

I am honestly confused as to why this paper and others like it continue to waste perfectly good ink on him.

Ian Grogan, Buffalo

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