perhaps the most widely read voice on foreign policy on the planet.” -The New York Times Book Review “The conscience of the American people.” -New Statesman “Reading Chomsky is like standing in a wind tunnel. Praise for Noam Chomsky “Chomsky is a global phenomenon . . . Rethinking Camelot is “an interesting work not only for the history it explores, but also as a study of how various individuals and groups write and interpret history” (Choice). Chomsky argues that US institutions and political culture, not individual presidents, are the key to understanding US behavior during Vietnam. In it, Chomsky dismisses efforts to resurrect Camelot-an attractive American myth portraying JFK as a shining knight promising peace, foiled only by assassins bent on stopping this lone hero who would have unilaterally withdrawn from Vietnam had he lived. Rethinking Camelot is a thorough analysis of John F. Kennedy’s role in the US invasion of Vietnam and a probing reflection on the elite political culture that allowed and encouraged the Cold War. strong arguments against Kennedy mythologists” (Publishers Weekly).

It is a shame that this welcome antidote to JFK will not be as widely read as that film was seen.The famed political critic “analyzes the issue most prominently posed in Oliver Stone’s film JFK . . . Chomsky’s reading of the scholarship on the American involvement in Southeast Asia ably demonstrates that Kennedy, like his predecessors, was committed to an increasing level of violence in Vietnam in particular and the developing world in general. In this book, Chomsky debunks the idea, propagated most recently and successfully by Oliver Stone in the film JFK, that there was a plot to kill Kennedy, who, had he lived, would have pulled the United States out of Vietnam. Furthermore, Chomsky argues, the United States has enjoyed popular support for its actions overseas largely because it has indoctrinated its elites and masses. In his view, the United States’ biggest fear has never been the Soviet Union or international communism, but rather “ultranationalism” and the threats it poses to U.S. Chomsky cites evidence of pre- and post-Cold War activity to bolster his argument. foreign policy, within and beyond the boundaries of the Cold War, as a North–South rather than an East–West conflict. foreign policy in the Cold War, sees U.S. Noam Chomsky, at one time an astute critic of U.S.

Chomsky camelot