Man I remember being pissed off about George Bush when this book came out (2006). Not because I had read it, or even understood most of what it was talking about, but there was this sense of creeping authoritarianism in the air that I think a lot of people have forgotten and/or it has been largely normalized. It started with yellow ribbons and more flags and mentioning 'the troops' every 5 seconds and the restriction of airport terminals to folks who actually had tickets for a flight. Then, by the time this book came out, it metastasized into even more flags and ribbons (I vaguely remember a camo one, which like, doesn't really make sense, so maybe that's reefer brain. Either that or it was for people who really wanted to hide their support), and we had invented another place to support the troops (Iraq), and couldn't wear shoes in the airport. Fortunately I only live in the timeline with boat parades, flags that are more like 'capes' for trucks?, military-fetish LARPers, and every time you want to fly a plane, the state gets to see your fat rolls. Cool beans.
So yeah in a lot of ways, this book reminds me of a simpler time. Anyway when people bitch about 'liberal academics who hate this country' this is basically what they mean because Chomsky serves up a very critical lens to American foreign and domestic policy, and all of the hypocrisy inherent in a democracy that pursues empire, however neoliberal. I tried to find a critical review of this, but for all their bitching, I never really see folks challenge these sorts of arguments based on anything other than 'feels'. Like I'm not a big history-knower, but you would think if he was like getting shit wrong, people would engage with that substance, but they don't. They say he hates America or like doesn't understand foreign policy goals, but the thing is, Chomksy seems very much like a 'The purpose of a system is what it does' guy, so if the product of your 'democracy' isn't actually democratic then you're not really doing a democracy, right?
Speaking of a simpler time, remember when Bush was going to solve the Israeli/Palestine conflict. Fun times.