> Note, for example, the reaction many people have to Chomsky.
>
> Even among certain segments of what I've now come to call the
> waving-the-flag-just-not-quite-as-hard section of the left (aka the 'soft left')
> he's reviled for having the balls to clearly state that every American action
> abroad -- even from the nation's founding -- wasn't/isn't motivated by a desire
> to save orphans from laughing villains, bring democracy to oppressed people and
> other cinematic, hero scenarios but for reasons an ancient Roman bastard like
> Augustus would have fully understood.
Naomi Klein seems to inspire the same sort of reaction. For example, Marc Cooper writes today that
"Norm [Geras] scolds Klein as a "single-issue" western leftist. That single issue is the reductionist notion of standing in opposition to whatever George Bush is for and vice versa. I'm praying Dubya doesn't soon come out in support of milk and sunshine."
And similar things from Geras, Hitchens, and so on. What I find interesting about the attacks on her (for the stupidly named "Bring Najaf to New York") and so on is that these critics don't address, as far as I've seen, the main focus of her writings on Iraq, the economic aspects of the U.S. occupation and what that means for democracy and sovereignty. Maybe it makes too complicated the story of the U.S. bringing democracy to the Middle East. Has anybody seen anything from the pro-war crowd responding to the sort of stuff in her Harpers "Year Zero" article? Johann Hari is one exception, who has written some pretty good stuff lately.