SOURCE: “The Lone Arranger,” in New Statesman and Society, July 5, 1991, p. 35.

In the following review, Edwards offers positive assessment of Deterring Democracy, though finds fault in Chomsky's “browbeating style.”

The late Napoleon Duarte, president of El Salvador, was a right-wing Christian Democrat—demonstrably so after 1980, when a quarter of his party left and joined the guerrillas. At the time of the mid-1980s election in which Duarte lost power, the BBC news characterised him as “left of centre”. Given that the only candidate to Duarte's right was a neo-fascist, this is a bit like calling Harvey Proctor a Red. A veil of normality had to be thrown over the facts, though: the elections were being held with US (and British) government approval.

There are many stories here as unpleasantly revealing as this one: this is a good book, but not entirely a good read. Part of the problem...