Chomsky's first public takes after 9/11 were clunkish at best -- his worst effort yet, and I say this as one who's held Chomsky in high regard and who publicly defended him against slanderous attacks from the likes of Jonathan Alter. But his robotic approach to the deaths of thousands in Manhattan was dreadful, as was his immediate attempt to shift the focus to Clinton's bombing in Sudan. There was a lack of humane feeling to his initial responses that left me, and others I know, cold.
As for Hitch's "slander," it did one thing: it moved Chomsky away from his Al Shafia analogy and nudged him to at least to acknowledge that people were slaughtered in the Towers. When the US bombed Tripoli in 1986, Chomsky and others were outraged by the human cost of the attack -- as well they should have been. When the Towers were hit, and where the death toll was far greater than in Tripoli, Chomsky said yeah, it's bad, but not as bad as . . .
Of course now when asked about this period, Chomsky angrily responds that to question his reaction is a form of state apologia or some other Stalinist move. The decline of the once great is an awful thing to witness.
DP