Reply to Stephen Zunes

Edward S. Herman and David Peterson

Stephen Zunes does make a credible case that he has directed the bulk of his work to the critical analysis of U.S. and U.S. client-state abuses and that it is unfair to accuse him of focusing only on governments that are U.S. targets.[1]  We had done this in passing when we quoted an independent blogger who named Zunes as a member of a "clique" (our word) that takes an interest in the "democratic" potential of countries only when the "U.S. wants to bring down a government by military force, attempting to refocus any First World opposition away from opposing imperialism and toward 'bringing down dictators by nonviolent means'."[2]  As the inclusion of Zunes' name in the original version of our text was wholly tangential to the larger case that we made there as well as in

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