>His presumption here is that if the United States changes its behavior, that terrorist attacks will then cease. Islamic terrorists, in fact, want a pan-world government under Talibanesque repressive sharia law, a vision that mandates the overthrow of all free nations beginning with ours.
Yeah, they hate our freedom. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlAh-WnAoSE
>The linguist also described the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan as a conscious "silent genocide," predicting wrongly that millions would be severed from food supplies.
As I recall he didn't do this investigation himself but cited some organization's analysis, but sure, he basically endorsed the analysis and said state planners must have been aware of it (wrongly discounting that they might have thought it was a bad analysis, which it was).
>Chomsky certainly did not put himself into the shoes of the Afghan women.
Looking at the US's stance on the recent Bahrain protests, I somehow doubt this had anything significant to do with why we went into Afghanistan. One of our biggest allies in the middle-east is Saudi Arabia, champion of women's rights?
>These facts are easily learned by reading about the historical development of Islamic radicalism, which is rooted in reinterpretations of the Qur'an's dictates for action, NOT in wishes to live peacefully in a U.S.-free Middle East.
What spurred the reinterpretations? Simple scholarly random happenstance, or post WW-II reality on the ground? Am I really to believe the US's support for Isreal had nothing to do with these developments? Even hardcore Zionists acknowledge that (though with a framework of thought that paints such impetus as completely morally bankrupt).
>His Cold War depictions are even more stunning, as Understanding Power's abundant examples attest.
I've never heard someone set him straight on Indonesia/East Timor, but I would love to.
>Furthermore, why does Professor Chomsky not include himself in the "elites" so prominent in his analyses? Does he not pay taxes, and drive a BMW, and teach at a cushy, prestigious university?
I've heard him include himself, but perhaps not in Understanding Power. He says his position of privilege is exactly what puts a burden on him to take our crimes seriously. I hadn't heard about the BMW, but he certainly does like to sport a nice sweater. Re: elite university both Chomsky and Norbert Weiner (whose father was a linguist) have/had some interesting things to say on why people of Jewish descent ended up at MIT and not Harvard back in the 40s.. it wasn't pretty. I'm not sure Chomsky was affected by Harvard's policies, he was associated with them for a while.
>Chomsky is an avowed atheist, and believes that life is meaningless.
I have seen talks where he claims free-will is something we can probably never prove but that he thinks it is correct and he asserts that if it isn't correct, then life would be meaningless. I don't agree with that implication, but it blows this part of the review out of the water (to be fair, the review was probably written prior to the talk I am remembering).
The main thing I've seen Chomsky get wrong is some of his speculations on the existence of the master control gene being a major challenge to standard Darwinism ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAX6 ); he has talked about it in several talks, but in one Q/A he really really got it wrong (see http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/04/4/text_pop/l_04... for an account of its alignment with Darwinism).