In this particular article, Johnstone does explicitly absolve the people of all responsibility. That's what PCR points out, and I agree with him (though I disagree with his assessment as to why).
I also quite deeply disagree with Chomsky's social analysis and political theories etc. I only put value on Chomsky's investigative work in the area of Imperial crimes, though even there I'm beginning to see how so much of it is tainted by his Rousseauian commentaries.
NO, Americans are not uniquely evil. YES, every single warring power has had to resort to deception and manipulation.
Our falling for manipulation and deception is NOT all their fault.
YES, we are each individually responsible to use our own goddamned noggin!
NO, we should not get angry or violent towards the ignorant.
NO, we should not get angry or violent towards evil.
Anything else? Well, you can go figure the rest out for yourself.