Letters

Reading from Left to Right

Your review of Noam Chomsky's Interventions (Book World, Sept. 2) does nothing but serve to perpetuate the case that Chomsky's work "goes all but unnoticed inside the Capital Beltway." It is predictable that reviewer Jonathan Rauch, a conservative insider affiliated with the Brookings Institution, would not agree with Chomsky on many points, but one might have hoped for more engagement with Chomsky's ideas. Rauch mentions a few claims made in the book, but instead of addressing them in any useful way, he simply dismisses them as boring "tendentious whimsy." Certainly not a characterization that would lead your readers to explore the writing of a man who is known internationally as one of the most important political voices in the United States today. Would it not help matters if people in this town knew what a large part of the rest of the world thinks about our government, if only to better refute the lies?

Chomsky does his research, and his sources are generally beyond reproach. Sure, if one believes that the U.S. government tells the truth about the motivations behind its foreign policies, Chomsky's view is going to seem peculiar. But if one believes that there may be hidden agendas in our corridors of power, Chomsky's arguments are worthy of being addressed, not dismissed. Would it not have been wiser to have given this review to a person who was somewhat on the left, or at least centrist, so that readers might have been afforded a look at Chomsky and his ideas? Even if he is wrong on many points, it does not seem reasonable, in light of all the international respect, to dismiss him as a kook.

--DAVID W. CARPENTER

Washington, D.C.

Jonathan Rauch condemns Noam Chomsky's book to "instant forgettability," while of its author he declares, "Heaven knows, the world needs a pointed, perceptive leftist critique of Bush's foreign policy and America's blind spots, but Chomsky, on the evidence of this tired book, is not the thinker to provide it."

It will come as no surprise that Rauch was an advocate of invading Iraq, ostensibly in the aim of ending Saddam Hussein's chimerical weapons programs. It is increasingly sickening and insulting that the moral and intellectual failures of the people who lobbied for this war have not only not discredited them in The Post's eyes, but now seem to be indispensable qualifications for opining on U.S. foreign policy in the newspaper's pages.

--BRENDAN MARTIN

Washington D.C.

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