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Title: The Empire and Ourselves Author: Noam Chomsky Date: April 9, 1986 Language: en Topics: US foreign interventions, Latin America, north africa, Imperialism Source: Retrieved on 8th June 2021 from https://chomsky.info/19860409/ Notes: From A Solidarity Pamphlet, April 9, 1986
LET ME BEGIN by asking a question. Why are we having this meeting about
Central America today and not, say, ten years ago? Was it, for example,
that ten years ago democracy was flourishing in Central America and the
population was so happy, free, prosperous and well fed? Well, obviously
not. Ten years ago they were living under brutal military dictatorships.
We were directly responsible for what was happening to them then,
exactly as we are now. But order reigned and profits flowed, and
therefore there was no interest here.
Or letâs ask a second question. Why are we meeting about Central America
and not, say, about the Caribbean? Is it that nothing is happening
there? Yes, things are happening there. Take Haiti, for example. Haiti
is now in the news. It has been in the news for the last couple months,
but about a year ago it wasnât, although interesting and important
things were happening. For example, the Haitian legislature passed a law
unanimously which read as follows, and I am quoting from it: âEvery
political party must recognize in its statutes the President for Life as
the supreme arbiter of the nation.â
The new electoral law excluded the Christian Democrats, and it stated
that the state can suspend any political party without reason. This was
ratified by 99.98 % of the vote. There was indeed a reaction in the
United States. The American ambassador described the new law on
political parties as âan encouraging step forward.â
The Administration then certified to Congress that democratic
development was proceeding, and that allowed them to release $50 million
in military and economic aid. The economic aid primarily aided Baby Doc;
it went straight into his bank accounts. The United States at that point
was pursuing what the House Foreign Affairs Committee called the basic
principle of U.S. policy, namely, to maintain friendly relations with
Duvalierâs noncommunist government.
Haiti is a country of about six million people in which four thousand
families have 80% of the wealth, 87% of the children suffer from
malnutrition, thereâs 82% illiteracy, 60% of the population have an
annual per capita income of $60. There torture, state terror and slave
labor conditions are the common lot. But thatâs perfectly okay. No
concern here.
By December of last year things began to change. There was turbulence,
demonstrations, killings. And at that point the United States began to
show some concern about what was happening. Here is the way it was
described in the Wall Street Journal: âThe White House concluded that
the regime was unraveling. U.S. analysts learned that ruling inner
circles had lost faith in Duvalier. As a result, U.S. officials,
including Secretary of State George Shultz, began openly calling for a
âdemocratic process in Haiti.ââ
Well, thatâs an interesting comment. The cynicism is quite
extraordinary. Of course it wouldnât be noticed in a highly
indoctrinated society like ours. But the point is that before,
everything was quite satisfactory while now we suddenly needed a
democratic process. The same cynicism was illustrated in our behavior in
the Philippines about the same time, also evoking great
self-congratulation and much awe about our general magnificence.
Now there is an official explanation for the lack of attention when
order reigns and profits flow, One version of that was given by Jean
Kirkpatrick, the chief sadist-in- residence of the Reagan
Administration, in the article that propelled her to fame and into the
Administration in 1979. She had the following to say:
Because the miseries of traditional life are familiar, they are bearable
to ordinary people who, growing up in the society, learn to cope and
therefore accept the fact that wealth, power, status and other resources
favor an affluent few while traditional autocrats maintain the masses in
misery. So therefore our lack of concern is quite proper; indeed, quite
decent and moral because the lower orders feel no pain.
That, incidentally, is quite a classic view of imperial power. In
Central America, however, by the late 1970s, problems were brewing. What
was happening was that the pack animals forgot that the miseries of
traditional life are quite bearable in luxury apartments in Washington,
and they tried to overcome them. That was a threat to order and profits
in Nicaragua, in El Salvador, and Guatemala. So therefore there was
great concern here and much sudden rhetoric about the need for
democracy; an increased U.S. involvement; and meetings like this one
which donât take place when U.S. interests are not threatened. All of
that teaches us something about ourselves.
If you want to learn something about the nature of the Soviet Union,
what kind of a government it is and what kind of a society they run, one
of the best things to do is look at Eastern Europe. That tells you what
they do whey they have a chance, when something is under their control.
Central America and the Caribbean have been in the iron grip of the
United States for a century and therefore they tell us a lot about
ourselves. What you find if you look is one of the worldâs worst horror
chambers. Thereâs starvation, slave labor, torture, massacre by U.S.
clients. Virtually every effort to bring about some constructive change
has led to a new dose of U.S. violence.
Itâs an illuminating picture if we want to learn. As an example of how
little we want to learn, you might take a look at last Sundayâs âNew
York Times Magazineâ where thereâs a cover article by James Lemoyne. He
has the following to say:
Virtually every study of the region, including the Kissinger Commission
Report, has concluded that the revolutions of Central America primarily
have been caused by decades of poverty, bloody repression, and
frustrated efforts at bringing about political reform.
Well, thatâs true. Virtually every study has concluded that. But why?
What has caused the decades of poverty and bloody reparation? That
question is unanswered. His article goes on to talk about the Soviet
Union and Cuba and Bulgaria and North Korea and the PLOâall sorts of
countries who are involved in the region and causing all sorts of
turmoil and problems.
But there is one country that is mysteriously missing from the
discussionânamely, the major one, the one that has the responsibility
for the tragedy and for the turmoil, And that is a revealing example of
the cynicism and the quite astonishing moral cowardice of the American
elites. And in this it is very much like every official study of the
region and a great many of the unofficial ones.
A couple of months ago the Council on Hemispheric Affairs published its
annual human rights report for Latin America. It selected, as the worst
governments in Latin America for 1985, El Salvador and Guatemala, the
only two governments in Central America âthat abducted, killed, and
tortured political opponents on a systematic and widespread basis.â
This, incidentally, is the sixth successive year that they obtained that
honor, and in that period they have succeeded in killing, those two
governments, roughly a hundred and fifty thousand people, and causing
several millions of refugees.
There was, in fact, one other contender for first place in the Council
on Hemispheric Affairs report; namely, the Contrasâwhat even their
supporters call an American proxy army, that is attacking Nicaragua from
its Honduran, and in part Costa Rican, bases. There are also thousands
of civilians murdered, tortured, and mutilated by them. They carry out
no other noteworthy military operations. The only reason they donât
achieve first place is that they donât have quite the strength to do it.
Now these atrocities are not the ordinary garden variety kinds of
murders. In El Salvador it means, for example, elite American-trained
battalions going through a town, destroying, and leaving behind them
women hanging by their feet with their breasts cut off and their facial
skin peeled back, bleeding to death.
It means in Nicaragua, for example, the Contras going into a town,
shooting it up, killing people, taking a fourteen-year- old girl, raping
her, slitting her throat, cutting her head off and putting it on a pole
to intimidate the rest of the population. To pick one example. That one
from an American priest who has been working there for many years. One
example from a list a mile long compiled by human rights organizations,
barely noted here and quickly forgotten.
Itâs rather interesting that American reporters in Nicaragua are
remarkably incapable of discovering any of these facts, though every
investigating group that goes down quickly comes up with a gory and
grisly series of them.
In Guatemala it means, for example, troops going into a village,
collecting the population in the central town building, taking out the
men and beheading them, raping and then killing the women, taking out
the children and smashing them to pieces against rocks in a nearby
river. These are the kinds of things that we are talking about. This is
a record that bears comparison to Pol Pot, both in scale and in
character.
Itâs also notable that we are talking about three close U.S. allies, in
fact clients, which have been supported by the United States throughout.
With one exception. In the case of Guatemala, Congress put some
restrictions on the Executive limiting its capacity to participate in
genocide to the extent that it wanted, and therefore it was necessary to
call upon other client states to help. First were Argentine neo-Nazis,
but that was lost with the unfortunate return to democracy in Argentina;
and since, primarily Israel, which has lent itself with great enthusiasm
to the cause.
To that record we may add Nicaragua, where in 1978 and 1979, in the last
days of Somoza, about fifty thousand more people were killed. Contrary
to many lies, the Carter Administration supported that massacre to the
very end. Itâs very much like the Haiti and Philippines case.
When it was clear that Somoza could no longer be maintained, the Carter
Administration tried to retain control of the country by the National
Guard, which the U.S. had installed in the first place and had trained
and maintained ever since. And when even that didnât work, the United
States shortly after began organizing the National Guard again, outside
Nicaragua, to attack the country, now as a proxy army. Well, all of this
also teaches us something about ourselves if we care to learn.
What is the reason for this very systematic behavior? And, indeed, it is
quite systematic. There is an official answer to that, or kind of
answer. The answer was perhaps given in its clearest form by John F.
Kennedy. He said that we would be in favor of decent democratic regimes,
as he put it, but, and then comes a rather big but: if there is a danger
of a Castro we will always support a Trujillo.
Well, what do those terms mean? What did he mean by a Castro? It is
important to understand that he did not mean a Communist or a Russian
ally, but rather the category of Castro is vastly broader. As for
Trujillo, we know what he meant by that. Trujillo was the murderous and
brutal dictator of the Dominican Republic who was installed with U.S.
support and who tortured, murdered, and robbed for thirty-five years
with American support until we finally turned against him because his
robbery began to extend to U.S. corporations and their local clients.
In fact the Dominican Republic serves as a kind of illuminating case
study to answer what I think is the crucial question: what Kennedy and
the other planners mean when they say we have to avoid the danger of a
Castro. The first Marine landing on the Dominican Republic was in the
year 1800, so thereâs a long history.
I wonât run through the nineteenth century but the most serious
interventions began under Woodrow Wilson. Woodrow Wilson, as you all
learn in school, was the great apostle of self-determination and he
celebrated this doctrine, among other things, by invading the Dominican
Republic and Haiti. In the Dominican Republic his warriors fought for
six years to suppress the âdamn Dagoesâ as Theodore Roosevelt had
described them. This was a vicious counterinsurgency campaign that has
essentially disappeared from American history. The first major scholarly
study of it just appeared in 1984, by Bruce Calder, University of Texas
Press. Calder, in keeping with the conventions of American scholarship,
regards this as a kind of an odd exception, an inexplicable departure
from our path of righteousness. But he does describe what happened and
Iâll give you some of his description.
He says that Wilson intervened in the Dominican Republic in 1916 to
block constitutional government and insure complete U.S. economic and
military control. The behavior of the Marines, he says, was brutish by
Dominican standards. They murdered, destroyed villages, they tortured,
they created concentration camps which served as a slave labor supply
for the sugar corporations. The end result was that the sugar companies,
overwhelmingly American, owned about a quarter of the agricultural land
while the population sank into misery and starvation.
Now, of course, all of this was done in self-defense. Everything we
always do is in self-defense. But who were we defending ourselves
against? Well it started in 1916 so we couldnât be defending ourselves
against the Bolsheviks. So it turned out that we were defending
ourselves against the Huns. There didnât happen to be any Huns there but
that didnât matter.
When the Marines left, they placed the country in the hands of a
National Guard trained by the United States. Trujillo quickly emerged
and he became the dictator, one of the most rapacious and brutal of the
many dictators that weâve established under similar conditions
throughout the region of our control.
Well, everything was okay for thirty or thirty-five years. Trujillo was
praised in the United States as a forward-looking leader; for example,
after he massacred fifteen or twenty thousand Haitians in one month in
1937 and carried out other similar actions against his own population.
However, by the late 1950s this love affair was beginning to turn sour.
Trujillo owned at that time about 70 to 80% of the economy, which means
that the proper owners, mainly American-based corporations, were being
pushed out. The CIA was authorized, or instructed, to carry out an
assassination plot. Whether they did it or not, somebody did. He was
assassinated.
At that point there was a democratic election, in 1962. Juan Bosch was
elected. Juan Bosch was a Kennedy liberal. His policies were essentially
those professed by John F. Kennedy. Kennedy immediately committed
himself to undermine and destroy him. U.S. aid was stopped. The United
States blocked the removal of Trujilloist officers. The U.S. military
maintained their close contact with them. It was quite obvious that
there would be a military coup given this U.S, insistence on maintaining
the Trujilloist military system.
Bosch fought corruption, he defended civil liberties, he stopped police
repression. He began programs to educate peasants and workers for true
democratic participation. He actually succeeded under awful conditions
in initiating an economic revival. It was plain that we had to âlet him
go,â as Ambassador Martin said, and so we did. There was a military
coup, quickly recognized by the United States. Well, at that point an
economic decline set in, corruption increased, the repression
increasedâand all of this was fine. No objections.
That incident helps us get some understanding of the meaning of the term
âCastro.â Juan Bosch was one of those Castros who we have to oppose in
favor of a Trujillo. Juan Bosch was not a Communist, he was a liberal
democrat. He tried to institute a capitalist democracy, and that was
intolerable to Big Brother.
Well, thatâs not the end of the story. In 1965 there was a
constitutionalist military coup, attempting to return the Dominican
Republic to constitutionalist rule to reinstate the legally elected
president, Juan Bosch. Twenty-three thousand Marines were sent, who
fought against the Constitutionalist forces. And then they stood by
while the Dominican military, whom they had rescued, carried out a
substantial slaughter of civilians. They stood by because the official
line was that it would violate U.S. neutrality for them to intervene at
that point. So, the threat of democracy was averted and the traditional
order was restored.
The result this time was more serious. It was death squads, torture,
mass starvation, the flight of about 20% of the population to the United
States, and outstanding opportunities for U.S. investors who bought up
pretty much the rest of the countryâGulf and Western being one, among
others.
In El Salvador in 1932 there was a huge massacre they called âthe
Mantanza.â The first Mantanza; the second one being the one thatâs going
on now. Some ten to thirty thousand peasants were murdered in a few
weeks. The United States Navy was standing off-shore at the time but, as
the Chief of Naval Operations testified before Congress, it was not
necessary to intervene because he said the situation was well in hand.
So we just watched.
Turning to Nicaragua, the first major U.S. military intervention in
Nicaragua was in 1854. Thatâs a hundred and thirty years ago, a little
over that. At that time the U.S. Navy burned down a town to avenge an
alleged insult to an American millionaire, Cornelius Vanderbilt. Through
a good part of the first half of this century the country was under
Marine rule. That left the National Guard under Somoza, and we
maintained it until the very end.
In Guatemala there had been one interval in the traditional history of
brutal military dictatorships, 1944â1954, when there was a democratic,
capitalist regime. It was initiated by Arevalo who was modeling himself
on Rooseveltâs New Deal and immediately aroused bitter American enmity.
In 1954 that experiment was overthrown by a CIA coup. That initiated
thirty years of military dictatorship in a state which probably
resembles Nazi Germany more closely than any other in the contemporary
world over this period.
In 1963 it looked as if there might be a danger of a democratic
election. When they thought that Arevalo was going to be allowed back
into the country and that might have meant a democratic election,
Kennedy supported a military coup to forestall that. This act initiated
a really huge massacre, maybe ten thousand people or so were killed in
the late 1960s.
At that point there was direct U.S. support. U.S. Green Berets were
involved. According to the Vice President of Guatemala, U.S. planes,
based in Panama, were carrying out napalm raids. Things were then quiet
for a little while but in the late â70s it got serious again and since
that time, maybe since about 1978, current estimates are that about a
hundred thousand people were killed, with U.S. support throughout.
I should say that among the other lies that you read constantly one is
that under the Carter Administration military aid to these Guatemalan
Himmlers was terminated. Thatâs false. In fact, U.S. military aid
continued just barely below its normal level right through this time.
Under Reagan, support for what at that point even the conservative
Guatemalan bishops were calling genocide, became absolutely euphoric.
The worst of these monsters, Rios Montt, who was in charge, for example,
during the incident that I mentioned before. Reagan described him as a
man totally committed to democracy who is getting a bum rap by human
rights groups.
Now this apparatus of repression and murder and death squads and
torture, that was an essential component of John F. Kennedyâs Alliance
for Progress. And thatâs worth understanding. In 1962 the Kennedy
Administration made a decision which in terms of its consequences is one
of the most important in recent history, barely known here. They
effectively switched the mission of the Latin American military from
hemispheric defense to internal security. Internal security means war
against their own population. And thatâs what happened as in country
after country national security states were established modeled on the
Nazis, often using Nazi war criminals who we had spirited out of Germany
and settled in Latin America. People like Klaus Barbie. It ended up
being what a commission headed by Sol Linowitz called âa plague of
repression without parallel in the history of the continent.â In El
Salvador the Kennedy Administration established the basic structure of
the death squads, the intelligence apparatus which was then put to work.
The Alliance for Progress, which is much lauded here as another
exhibition of our benevolence, was a totally cynical operation. The
Alliance for Progress was initiated in order to stop âthe virus of
Castro from spreading contagion throughout the regionââthatâs very
common, typical terminology. It did favor a certain kind of economic
development, geared to export crops for the benefit of U.S.-based
agribusiness and fertilizer and pesticide companies.
During that period there was statistical growth. So, for example, in all
of the Central American countries under the Alliance for Progress and as
a result of its programs, beef production increased. But, at the same
time, in every single one of these countries, beef consumption
decreased. The reason was that croplands that had been used for
subsistence crops for the population was being eliminated in favor of
grazing lands for wealthy ranchers tied to American agribusiness who
were producing beef for export. In fact, throughout this period while
there was statistical growth, there was also increased misery and
increased starvation.
Now that kind of economic development carries a corollary. That kind of
economic development does inevitably arouse dissidents and that requires
an apparatus of repression to still it. In this precise and clear
respect the death squads, for which the basic structures were
established by the Kennedy Administration, are part and parcel of the
Alliance for Progress and an essential component of it. In fact, the
death squads are the only lasting element of that system apart from the
enrichment of U.S. agribusiness and related corporations.
Let us examine that legacy in the recent history of El Salvador. In the
1970s some things were happening. There were elections in 1972 and 1977.
The 1972 election was won by Duarte and Ungo. It was stolen by the
military. Duarte was captured and tortured. He was finally released and
came to the United States. Nobody even wanted to talk to him. In fact,
in Congress there were exactly two people, apparently, Edward Kennedy
and Tom Harkin, who were willing even to talk to him.
That reveals with utter clarity the absolute loathing of American elites
for democracy as long as order is being maintained, as long as profits
are flowing. It also reveals with absolute clarity the utter cynicism of
the contemporary pretense of concern for democracy. Itâs a very thin
cover for state terrorism.
The same thing happened in 1977, again arousing very little interest or
concern here: repression, torture, starvation, the normal aspects of the
American semi-colonies continued, so everything was essentially fine.
There were, however, two problems. The first problem was what was going
on in Nicaragua. In 1979 Somoza was overthrown and that was serious
because Nicaragua had been the major base for the projection of American
power in the region. It was a base for the successful overthrow of
Guatemalan democracy in 1954, for the Bay of Pigs attack on Cuba in
1961, for the Dominican Republic invasion in 1965, and also even for the
overturning of the election in El Salvador in 1972, when Nicaraguan
troops intervened.
This base was now lost. There was a second, even more immediate, concern
in El Salvador itself. And that was that in the 1970s, what they called
popular organizations were beginning to develop. Many of them were
church-based, beginning with Bible study groups, turning to self-help
groups, peasant associations, teachers unions, and so on.
That really was a danger sign, because it meant that there really was a
threat of meaningful democracy. That is, not what we call democracy,
which is a system that allows a population every once in a while to
choose between selected business and landowner groups who share control
of the state between them, while the military makes sure that nobody is
causing any trouble. Thatâs what we call democracy.
But the Salvadoran popular movement could have been an effective and
meaningful democracy which would have given people the actual
opportunity to participate in a democratic process. Something which we
donât have here, incidentally, and which we certainly are not going to
tolerate in a colony like El Salvador. Something had tube done about
that, and, in fact, it was.
In February 1980 Archbishop Romero sent a letter to Carter. âThe aid,â
he wrote to Carter, âwill surely increase injustice here and sharpen the
repression that has been unleashed against the peopleâs organizations
fighting to defend their most fundamental human rights.â
Romero had seized upon what was, in fact, the essence of U.S. policy,
namely, to destroy the popular organizations, so Carter naturally sent
the aid with a message to Congress, saying that the aid was âto help the
armyâs key role in reforms.â Thatâs one that would have made Orwell
gasp.
At that point the obvious consequences followed. A few weeks later the
Archbishop was assassinated. In May the war against the peasants was
unleashed in full violence. This was done under the guise of land
reform, incidentally. A state of siege was established which remains
until today. We hear a lot of complaints here about the Nicaraguan state
of siege, initiated just last October!
The peasants were the main victims of the Carter-Duarte war in
1980â10,000 or so. In June the University was destroyed; the army moved
in, killed a lot of people, burned the library, destroyed equipment, and
so on. In November the political opposition was simply massacred by the
security forces.
Meanwhile the media were destroyed. We donât believe in censorship in
the United States, as you know, and we have become quite irate when a
country under attack by the United States censors a newspaper that is
openly subsidized by the country that is attacking it and has expressed
support for the attack launched against their country. Of course we
would never do anything of that kind if we were under attack from some
unimaginable superpower, from Mars or somewhere. If a newspaper here was
supporting the attacker and the editor was expressing support for the
attack we certainly wouldnât have any censorship under those
circumstances.
In fact that is true. Because anyone even remotely connected to the
newspaper would either have been killed or put in concentration campsâas
you may recall was done here under much less onerous circumstances, here
in California, when it was found useful to steal land from domestic
Japanese. And that was at a time when the United States itself was not
under attack. American colonies had been attacked, not the United States
itself.
Anyway, we are very irate about censorship. We donât believe in
censorship. What we believe in is what is lauded in El Salvador, where
there has been no censorship. It is perfectly true that there has been
no censorship. The reason is there is no media. The editor of one
journal was found decapitated, after torture, in a ditch. The editor of
another journal fled after assassination attempts. The church radio
stations were blown up. So now you donât have any censorship.
Everythingâs fine.
After a sufficient dose of terror, what we like to call free elections
were carried out in El Salvador. In the words of a British parliamentary
human rights delegation which observed them, the elections were carried
out âin an atmosphere of terror and despair, macabre rumor and grisly
reality.â Well, the American press hailed this triumph of democracy
exactly as Pravda does under comparable circumstances.
That same parliamentary British human rights group observed the recent
Nicaraguan elections, which it found âfair and honest.â This was the
same report given by numerous observers in Nicaragua, one of which was
an Irish parliamentary delegation including representatives from two
conservative parties. Their report was full of praise for the elections.
The American professional Latin American Studies Association described
the elections as âamong the best held in Latin America.â But none of
this was reported in the American press. The elections didnât take
place. There were no elections in Nicaragua.
So you constantly read that one of the crimes of the Sandinistas is that
they didnât allow elections. And therefore unless they allow elections
we have to do this mad, horrible thing to them. Meanwhile, in El
Salvador, where the elections were carried out in an atmosphere of
âterror and despair, macabre rumor and grisly reality,â thatâs fine. In
fact, itâs a great triumph.
The person who translated the plea of Archbishop Romero into English was
a leading Central American Jesuit priest. He was originally Guatemalan,
but he fled from the American-backed death squads in Guatemala to El
Salvador, where he then was forced to flee from the American-backed
death squads in El Salvador to Nicaragua.
I was honored to be his guest a couple of weeks ago. Heâs part of the
quite wonderful exile community that is in Nicaragua. People such as
Christian Democrats who have escaped the death squads in El Salvador.
The Guatemalan Human Rights Group, which of course canât function in
Guatemala. And many others who fled from the various U.S. torture
chambers to the one place in Central America where a decent person can
live with some dignity and hope. Although âweâ are going to take care of
that!
In January 1981 Reagan was sworn in as President. The massacres in El
Salvador escalated, in sadism and scale. Direct U.S. participation
increased. The U.S. Air Force, flying from Honduran bases, coordinates
air strikes against Salvadoran villages. Night attacks, much more
accurate attacks given the U.S. participation, have increased the kill
rate among defenseless villagers and fleeing peasants. These horrors
continue.
The reaction to them here is interesting. They have led to a mounting
applause in the United States as the terror has seemed to be achieving
some results. And in fact it is a success. It has very largely succeeded
in destroying the popular organizations, as it was intended to do. The
threat of democracy has been overcome. Correspondingly there has been
great awe and high regard for our achievement there. It is one of the
most sordid episodes in American history.
American rhetoric throughout this period is very noble and elevated. But
the reality that it obscures is something rather different. The official
enemy is what president Kennedy called the âmonolithic and ruthless
conspiracy that is attempting to thwart our benevolence.â The
âmonolithic and ruthless conspiracyâ was renamed âthe Evil Empireâ by
the Kennedy clone Ronald Reagan. The real enemy has always been the
indigenous population. And the principle under which we have defended
ourselves from indigenous populations throughout the world has been our
freedom to rob and exploit.
If we cannot destroy such elements by force, as we typically try to do,
then the next best thing is to drive them into the hands of the Russians
so we can then provide a retrospective justification for the violence
and terror that we launch against them for quite different reasons.
This very familiar story is being re-lived in Nicaragua today. The
United States is not concerned by the useless tanks in the streets of
Managua, nor is it concerned by the censorship of a journal that is
supported by the aggressor and supports the aggression. What it is
concerned about is the early success, and quite substantial success, of
social reformsâthankfully aborted, thanks to the Contra war.
This is well understood by independent agencies that work in Nicaragua.
Oxfam America reports that among the four countries in which it has
worked in Central America for the last twenty years or so, âonly in
Nicaragua has substantial effort been made to address inequities in land
ownership and to extend health, educational, and agricultural services
to poor peasant families.â
But the Contra war has slowed the pace of social reform and it has
compounded the hunger in the northern countryside exactly as intended,
and it has compelled Oxfam to convert its development aid to a war
relief, which is a great success for American policy.
The title of one Oxfam report on Nicaragua, incidentally, is âThe Threat
of a Good Example.â That explains the reason for the American attack
against Nicaragua. The reasons that are offered by Washington are too
ridiculous to merit rebuttal among sane people.
Julia Preston in the âBoston Globeâ, a month or so ago, says that âfew
U.S. officials now believe the Contras can drive out the Sandinistas
soon. Administration officials say they are content to see the Contras
debilitate the Sandinistas by forcing them to divert scarce resources
towards the war and away from social programs.â
The cruelty and savagery of that policy is impossible to discuss, as I
canât find words to describe the cynicism of the fact that it is
reported without arousing any concern here. The point is, the United
States will not tolerate any constructive development in its own domain,
any developments that will harm the interests of the elites who run this
place, and hence we are going to destroy them if they happen anywhere
else. Throughout, the real concern is the threat of a good example.
Now, there is no reason at all for us to allow this horror story to
continue. In a country as free as this one, there is a great deal that
can be done to reverse this course. It basically requires two things.
The first thing is that it requires a certain amount of honesty. Enough
honesty to learn who we are and what we do in the world and what weâve
been doing for a long, long time. Secondly, it requires a certain degree
of courage and commitment, namely to devote ourselves to changing a
world of terror and suffering that we have helped to create and now
maintain. (Applause)
Q: Professor Chomsky, with due respect to your erudition, your lecture
to me came across as somewhat one-sided. We cannot fail to recall that
the United States was the largest donor to independent Zimbabwe whose
leader is an avowed Marxist. We also should not overlook the fact that
the United States has given substantial aid to Tanzania whose leader has
also been an avowed socialist and practices socialist policies. Also,
the other major point which I think needed some emphasis is that Russia
and its allies, which play a substantial military role in places like
Cuba and Central America, are the antithesis of democracy insofar as the
political process goes. We need not deny the economic improvements that
have taken place in the respective countries. But I do think that these
countries are not lovers of democracy and that there is some basis for
the current Administrationâs policies being predicated on concern for
Russian and Communist intervention as well.
Chomsky: Okay, just to save time let me keep to Central America and put
aside the African case. If we were to look at the African case we would
discover that the aid is being given in the same manner and for the same
purposes. That is, to prevent meaningful social reform and to insure
that the countries will be penetrable by U.S.-based institutions.
There is no question at all that the Soviet Union is the antithesis of
democracy, plainly. But does that mean that the United States has a
right for a concern over Russian military aid to Nicaragua? Thatâs the
crucial thing. That mistakes totally what is going on.
The United States is pleading, is working with almost fanatical
determination, to try to get Nicaragua to rely solely on Russian aid.
Thatâs the purpose of the America attack.
We are sending a military force to attack a country and at the same time
are cutting off every source of aid to them. So, for example, France was
sending military aid to Nicaragua but we put pressure on France to
stopâwe want the Soviet Union to support them. Not only have we cut off
every kind of military aid, but we have also cut off every other kind of
aid.
Letâs take an actual look at the figures. In May 1985 when the U.S.
imposed the embargo on Nicaragua, total Nicaraguan trade with the Soviet
Bloc countries was about 20%. Thatâs roughly the same as U.S. trade with
the Soviet Bloc countries, a little less in fact. And much less than
European and general Third World trade. Now the figure is much higher. A
big surprise. We cut off our trade and weâve put pressure on client
states to cut off trade, including most of Europe. And weâve cut off
support from the international lending institutions.
So big surprise, the country that we are attacking turns to the one
country that is willing to give them aid, the Soviet Union. And then we
have the hypocrisy to accuse them of taking Soviet aid and of claiming
that this is a reason for concern on our part.
Thereâs only one thing more to say about that. And that is, why are we
doing this? Why did we do it in the case of Cuba? Why did we do it in
the case of Vietnam? Why do we always do it? The answer is quite
obvious. Because that allows people to ask questions like the one youâve
asked.
That allows the newcasters on TV to get up and make breathless comments
about the Soviet Bloc arms used by these Communists after weâve sent an
army to attack them and cut off every other supply of arms. In fact, as
I said, it gives retrospective justification for the attack that we are
carrying out against them for entirely different reasons. Namely,
because they are the threat of a good example.
Having said this, let me take a look at your question from another point
of view. Suppose that, contrary to fact, Nicaragua had wanted to have
primarily Soviet aid, which it did not. We want them to be a Soviet
client so we can have a justification to destroy them. But suppose they
had wanted Soviet aid. Then they would be very much like Denmark.
Denmark gets its military support from us. Now suppose that the Soviet
Union took a position like yours: What right does Denmark have to get
aid from the United States? Weâve got to send an army to attack Denmark
and destroy it and torture people and murder them because, look, theyâre
getting aid from the United States, our great enemy. How would we react
to that?
We take it for granted that these countries are our domains. They are
not allowed to do anything that we donât tell them to do. And if they
decide to be pluralistic, no, we kill them. And if they would decide to
be as dependent on the Soviet Union as Denmark is on us, well, then,
obviously we kill them. And thatâs taken for granted. That again is a
sign of the lawlessness and thuggery of mainstream American culture.
You know, if the Soviet Union said, Look, weâve got to contain Denmark
by sending an army to attack itâhow would we react? Well, thatâs the way
we ought to react to ourselves.
Q: Could you please comment on the recent Israeli and U.S. acts of
aggression in North Africa against specifically Tunisia and Libya and
how this will affect the struggle for Palestinian justice?
Chomsky: Well these are important cases. Letâs take Tunisia first.
Israel, with U.S. complicity, obviously, sent bombers to attack Tunis
where they killed fifty-five Palestinians and twenty Tunisians. Nobody
who was attacked had anything to do with the action to which this was
allegedly a retaliation. Tunis was attacked because it was defenseless.
Thatâs typical, incidentally. You attack people who are defenseless. You
want to make sure you donât attack ones who can fight back.
The attack that it was supposedly in retaliation for was in Larnaca,
Cyprus, where three Israelis had been murdered. The murderers had been
caught and were facing trial. Israeli intelligence and American
intelligence conceded that nobody in Tunis had anything to do with it.
They said it was organized in Syria. But, of course, if you attack Syria
youâre in trouble. They have a missile defense system and the Russians
might do something and so on. Tunis is defenseless so it is easy to
attack.
The United States government officially applauded them for carrying out
this attack and said it was a legitimate response to terrorism. Then,
after the world reaction to that, the United States backed off a little.
It abstained on the Security Council resolution denouncing what the
Security Council unanimously, except for the United States, called an
act of aggression. And then the U.S. government was criticized here for
being anti-Semitic for abstaining on that resolution. That again tells
you something about American culture.
I mentioned that the U.S. government was obviously involved in this
raid. Thatâs certain. The Israeli planes came right across the
Mediterranean. They were refueled in flight. The U.S. governmentâs
official position is that they were unable to detect them.
This is the most sophisticated surveillance system in the world and they
were unable to detect planes that were even being refueled on the way.
If thatâs really true, anybody who believes that tale ought to be
calling for a congressional investigation of the total incompetence of
the American military, which plainly leaves the country completely open
to attack by anybody. You may believe that story, but no sane person
will. In fact, part of our complicity in the attack was that we didnât
even inform the Tunisians that the killers were on their way.
This morningâs âL.A. Timesâ, just to take another example, has a story
about international terrorism, the great scourge of the modern age. They
quote as authorities representatives of several of the leading terrorist
states, the United States and Israel in particular. And they talk about
all the horrible terrorist acts that have taken place. They donât
mention this one. The Tunis attack does not count. That is because that
was, in our terms, a legitimate response to terrorism and therefore itâs
okay.
What was it a response to? Letâs admit what is absurd, that the attack
on Tunis was a retaliation for the Larnaca killings, which were
certainly terrorism. But why were the Larnaca killings carried out? Was
it just crazy Arabs? No, they claimed it was retaliation. And in fact in
that case the claim is a little more plausible than the Israeli one.
They claimed it was retaliation for the hijacking of ships. Now Israel
freely hijacks ships in the Mediterranean that are in transit between
Cyprus and Lebanon. And it captures people on them. Itâs been doing this
certainly since 1976. It quite freely and openly takes the ships into
Israeli ports and does anything it wants to the people. Captures them
and puts them in jail. Back in 1976 it was sending them to its Christian
allies in Lebanon, who killed them.
Now the hijacking of ships is considered a crime when itâs done by the
wrong people. You know we get all upset about it. But this hijacking is
considered quite okay because itâs done by an American client state,
which inherits the right of terrorism from us, and therefore the acts
that they carry out are not terrorism.
I donât say we can condone the murders in Larnaca. But they had a reason
that they gave. They claimed that these yachts in Cyprus were being used
for surveillance that was sending information for the ship hijackers.
Well I donât know if that is true or not. But that was an act of
retaliation. However, thatâs not the way we look at it. Itâs our side
that retaliates and their side who are terrorists.
If youâve read âThe City of Godâ by St. Augustine, you may recall that
he describes a case where Alexander of Macedon captured a pirate. And he
asks him, How dare you disturb the seas with your crimes? And the pirate
responds, How dare you disturb the world with your crimes? The pirate
says, I have a small boat so Iâm a thief, you have a navy so you are an
emperor and not a thief. St. Augustine says that was âan elegant and
accurate response.â And it is. If you have a navy and you disturb the
world youâre not a terrorist. But if youâre small and you have a little
boat, youâre a terrorist. Thatâs essentially the criterion.
We could go back, you know, stage after stage after stage, and weâll
find plenty of terrorism. Most of it being carried Out on Our side in
the Middle East with direct American responsibility. Thatâs,
incidentally, by an overwhelming margin in numbers killed, in preemptive
strikes, and so on. Just overwhelmingly.
Letâs talk about Libya. Thatâs again the same story. Why did we attack
Libya? [Chomsky is referring here to the first attack on Libyan ships.
The U.S. bombed Libya a few days laterâed.]
Well, Libya plays a very special role in American policy. We regularly
attack Libya because it is easy. The Reagan Administration has to
maintain war fever. Has to maintain confrontation. And the reasons for
that have to do with its domestic policies. The major domestic policies
of the Reagan Administration were to effect a substantial transfer of
resources from the poor to the rich. To provide a huge state Subsidy to
the system of advanced technology.
The ratio of state spending to GNP has risen faster under the Reagan
Administration than since World War II. The way you force the public to
invest in high-technology industry, the way you arrange the system of
public subsidy for private profit, is through the military system. Every
time itâs felt necessary to force the public to invest in high
technology, what you do is say, the Russians are coming and weâve got to
have a big military system and lots of missiles. And accidentally you
are able to build the next generation of computers with public funds.
The beneficiaries are not military industry primarily, itâs just
high-technology industry. Associated with that is increased intervention
throughout the world. So youâve got to get the public scared and that
means you have to have confrontations and war fevers.
Theoretically the enemy is supposed to be the Soviet Union. But itâs
tricky to get involved with them. They can fight back. So itâs best not
to have confrontations with them. That might blow up the world. Itâs
best to find somebody you can attack who canât fight back. Well, Libya
is made to order. I mean, you know, to talk about a confrontation
between Libya and the United States isâI wonât even talk about it. Itâs
only in a country as brainwashed as this that one could even talk about
the topic.
Furthermore, Khadafi is very easy to hate. He is a terrorist. In fact,
Libya has killed dozens, according to Amnesty International. The last
Amnesty International figure was, I forget the exact number, maybe 20 or
some number of Libyan dissidents throughout the world, and that sure is
terrorism. If you look youâll notice that Amnesty International was able
to list them and give their names.
In the case of our client states, like, say, El Salvador and Guatemala,
they canât list them. There isnât enough paper to list them. Besides
they donât know their names because they run to a hundred and fifty
thousand or something. But undoubtedly Libya is a terrorist state. Even
if itâs a kind of retail terrorism by our standards. (Laughter and
applause.)
Anyhow, it is involved in terrorism and Khadafi is easy to hate. So
therefore it is very easy to set up confrontations with Khadafi, and
also cheap. Weâve done it repeatedly. Weâve done it about four or five
times in the last four years. Every time that it is necessary to strike
manly, heroic poses we invent something like a Libyan invasion of the
Sudan across six hundred miles of desert and weâre going to stop them by
a manly show of resolve. George Shultz can get up and strike heroic
poses on television.
Some of the cases are so ludicrous you can barely believe them. There
was the story in 1981 that Libyan hit men were roaming the streets of
Washington to assassinate our leader. They put tanks around the White
House. It requires an extraordinarily brainwashed country not to have
collapsed in ridicule over that story.
The ultimate end of that story was that the U.S. transmitted throughout
the world a list of the hit men. They didnât want to identify them here,
but there was a secret list circulated. And in England it surfaced. It
leaked to the press and it was published. And it turned out that the
list of Libyan hit men was Lebanese Shiites, including the leader of the
Lebanese religious community, who I think is about eighty. To compound
the idiocy, these people are fanatically anti-Libyan because Libya
probably killed their major religious figure. Anyway, the American press
was loyal enough not to report any of that.
Now take a look at that incident. It tells you something else about the
lawlessness and thuggery of the current Administration; in fact, of all
of elite opinion. If you look at the confrontation with Libya youâll
notice that what everybody discusses is the U.S. right to send ships, as
granted by the law of the sea.
There are two points to notice about that. One thing is that Libya
didnât attack our ships. So therefore any question that may be raised
about the law of the sea is totally irrelevant. Libya attacked our
planes. So whatâs involved is the right of hostile aircraft to intrude.
Now the United States has a position on that. There is no law about
that. States take unilateral positions. And the United States has a
position. We have what we call an 11 air identification zoneâ under
which we claim the right to shoot down hostile aircraft within a
two-hundred mile range of our shores. Now itâs kind of hard for us to
claim that other countries donât have the same right if we claim that
right.
Our planes had intruded with obviously hostile intent well within a
two-hundred mile limit. So by our standards Libya had a right to shoot
them down. We then committed an illegal act by retaliating against
Libyan ships. Now all of this is suppressed in the discussion and people
talk learnedly about the law of the sea and twelve mile limits, which is
totally irrelevant to what happened. This was simply an act of
international lawlessness on the part of the United States. Thatâs point
number one. By our own standards.
Point number two, suppose that some confrontation had taken place on the
sea, which it didnât until we attacked Libyan ships. Well, suppose you
and your neighbor have an argument over whether some plot in your
backyard belongs to him or belongs to you. There are two ways of dealing
with that. One way is to take a gun and shoot him. The other way is to
go to the courts. Now that is the difference between the Mafia and
law-abiding citizens. And exactly the same is true in this situation.
If there is a dispute over the Gulf of Sidra there is a way to deal with
it. Thereâs the World Court, for example. Thatâs the way to deal with
it. Now there is plainly no urgency. You know, nothing turns on whether
ships can sail there tomorrow or two years from now.
But for a lawless, violent state you donât use legal means. What you do
is shoot your way through. Thatâs exactly what we did. We did it because
we needed a confrontation and we want to elicit terrorism so that we can
then scream about terrorism. And it was very well-timed, long planned,
and itâs not the first time. Itâs the fourth or fifth time. Thatâs what
the Libya thing is about, and thereâll be more like Libya.