The quote directly addresses your point. What should U.S. citizens do about the crimes of other governments? By contrast, what should U.S. citizens do about crimes that are the doing of their own government, regardless of what proportion they are of the total state-level crimes in the world?

This is what he means by ethical value of these judgments.

Well I think the US was more justified than Pol Pot, Stalin et. al. when it engaged in violence.

You're arguing a different point from the one being discussed.

The argument from the beginning was not about where the U.S. ranks in goodness vs. evil compared with other countries.

Many people say Chomsky is full of it when he focuses his criticism on the U.S. for actions he believes to be state-level crimes because, these people say, other countries are the true evil ones.

Chomsky's response is that even if you think the U.S. government is responsible for only 2% of the crimes in the world, it is this 2% that falls on his shoulders (and yours, and mine) as a U.S. citizen. His efforts on that 2% can have meaningful impact that can't be had on the other 98%.

Talk about damning with faint praise.

Should those crimes be excused just because someone else racked up a higher body count?

Of course not.

But I'd feel a lot better about saying that if I didn't expect that this isn't just a rhetorical gateway to turn around and ignore the high-body count crimes in favor of the politically-fashionable ones again, since "of course not" is the only dialectal response possible.

They should be understood in context. The US was engaged in a war against dictatorial USSR style communism for nearly 50 years. History has shown the US to be on the right side of that conflict.

Is people being killed ever a good thing? Almost never. Human life is inherently valuable. But is it at least more understandable when it is done in the name of trying to rid the world of a dangerous and destructive ideology? Yes it is.

>History has shown the US to be on the right side of that conflict.

That depends on who wrote the history book you're reading. By the accounts of the millions of innocents slaughtered by both sides, neither side was in "the right".

> But is it at least more understandable when it is done in the name of trying to rid the world of a dangerous and destructive ideology

This is factually wrong, the cold war was about imperialism and spheres of influence. The US was tearing down democracies and propping up dictators left and right to counter the Soviet Union.

Have you done the actual comparison? E.g. Native American Genocide vs Stalin's Purges as one example. What's the result?

Also Winston Churchill bragging about letting 2 million Indians starve. Stalin was trying to stop farmers from burning their own crops. It's interesting how one sided most of our "common knowledge" of the last century is.

> excused by a higher body count

From 1939-1945, we sent tons and tons of weapons, cars, and rolling stock to Stalin. Were we justified in supporting him?

If you say yes, then how do you decide which murderous dictators to be willing to support? Those who will oppose more powerful murderous dictators.