Why did most of the American mainstream liberal intelligensia remain silent while atrocities were being committed in Vietnam? Chomsky’s answer is that they not only participated, but provided the ideas that fuelled the war: that the Vietnamese peasantry needed to be pacified, that Vietnam was under the influence of Moscow and/or China, that America had an unfettered right to intervene, in Asia or anywhere. Chomsky argues that scholarly elites in newfound positions of influence used the mask of objectivity to promote self-serving ideas that proved disastrous to millions of Southeast Asians.