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Julian: Chomsky is more hostile towards Western governments that anyone else I've read, blaming them for the world's problems.

Chomsky does not blame Western governments for the world's problems: he simply highlights the many ways that highly centralized and unaccountable power is abused. Since Western governments have the lion's share of economic and military power, it is logical to expect their abuses to be paramount. He doesn't simply rest upon this expectation: he provides mountains of empirical evidence to support it. If Chomsky was Mandarin and China was the Superpower, his critique would follow the same line of reasoning; and produce similar evidence no doubt.

More importantly, Chomsky is American and it is his moral and civic duty to hold America accountable for its abuses. There is very little he, or you and I, can do to limit the abuses generated out of Beijing or Moscow. There is a great deal we can do to keep our tax dollars and government in check: and Chomsky argues that is our first duty. If are serious about fighting Terrorism around the globe, then we should stop committing it ourselves. If we are serious about Democracy, we should embody it in our own lives first.

In basic moral terms: don't be a goddamned hypocrite. If you don't want it done to you, don't do it to others. If it is wrong for others, it is wrong for you. If it is right for you, it is right for others. Get the plank out of your own eye before condemning your brother for the speck of dust in his own...clean your own side of the street before telling your neighbor what's wrong with theirs.

Furthermore, Chomsky's work crushes the delusional notion that Western powers engage the world for moral or humanitarian purposes. He shows how all Imperial forces have justified their invasions and occupations with the lies: we are doing this to protect the homeland, civilization, humanity, whatever. We are helping those ignorant barbarians by bombing them into submission, allowing our advanced ways to lift them out of their stupidity and primitive shackles.

He is not a moral relativist. He is a defender of universal human rights and a child of the Enlightenment, arguing that all humans carry a capacity for reason and moral judgement (barring severe disabilities, etc.).

Chomsky has also been a firm defender of the crucial importance of Religion in supporting human rights and movements for social justice and radical change. He has consistently used Latin American Liberation Theology as an example of the kind of courageous movement building that 1st World Citizens should emulate. He has also been a trenchant critic of US fundamentalism and its dominant role in American society.

Julian: Chomsky does equate the 9/11 attacks with the deaths caused by US policies, an attitude that massively pisses off people like Harris with a more charitble view of the US government.

Chomsky argues that the historical importance of 911 lies in the fact that for the first time in 500 years, the guns were pointed in the other direction. The last half millenia of European and American colonization and imperialism (with all of its war, slavery, occupation, domination, corruption, brutalities) received its first returned fire from the darker races. And the return fire was not at colonial occupied forces on captured land...but in the heart of enemy territory.

This kind of thinking would piss off people who operate under the delusion that they and their governments are simply in the business of foreign policy to make the world a better place for justice, demoracy and morality. The delusion of innocence is not easy to shed: nor is the truth of guilt easy to take.

Furthermore, Chomsky shows how American foreign policy in the Middle East has directly and indirectly created the radical extremist forces that attacked us on 911. The CIA was integral in creating the Talibani, Mujahadeen, Al Quaeda forces in Afghanistan as a force to help defeat the Soviet Union. As have the decades of supporting brutal dictatorships across the region helped to ferment popular hatred and distrust of the US and Europe.

This is not helpful for Harris' thesis regarding the uncontrollable fanaticism of Islam. It does not serve his thesis when the premier ingredient in such Muslim irrationalism is US foreign policy in search of a rational goal: control of Oil.