Chapter Two
Teach-In: Over Coffee
1. On post-World War II U.S. and Soviet military presence, see for
example, Center for Defense Information, "Soviet Geopolitical Momentum:
Myth or Menace? Trends of Soviet
Influence Around the World From 1945 to 1980," Defense Monitor, January 1980, p. 5 (tracing Soviet influence on a
country-by-country basis since World War II, and concluding that Soviet power
peaked in the late 1950s and by 1979 "the Soviets were influencing only 6 percent
of the world's population and 5 percent of the world's G.N.P., exclusive of the
Soviet Union"); Senate Subcommittee on Security Agreements and Commitments
Abroad, Security Agreements and
Commitments Abroad, Report to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
December 21, 1970, 91st Congress, 2nd Session, Washington: U.S. Government
Printing Office, 1970, C.I.S.# 70-S382-17, p. 3 (pointing out that the
post-World War II U.S. global military presence reached over 3,000 foreign
military bases "virtually surrounding both the Soviet Union and Communist
China"); Ruth Leger Sivard, World
Military and Social Expenditures 1981, Leesburg, VA: World Priorities,
1981, p. 8 (study counting at least 125 military conflicts since the end of
World War II, 95 percent of them occurring in the Third World and in most cases
involving foreign forces, with "western powers accounting for 79 percent
of the interventions, communist for 6 percent").
2.
For Gaddis's justification of his use of the "containment"
concept, see John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies
of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security
Policy, New York: Oxford University Press, 1982. The exact words (p. vii n."*"; emphasis in original):
The
term "containment" poses certain problems, implying as it does a
consistently defensive orientation in American policy. One can argue at length about whether
Washington's approach to the world since 1945 has been primarily defensive -- I
tend to think it has -- but the argument is irrelevant for the purposes of this
book. What is important here is that
American leaders consistently perceived
themselves as responding to rather than initiating challenges to the existing
international order. For this reason,
it seems to me valid to treat the idea of containment as the central theme of
postwar national security policy.
3.
For Gaddis's reference to "economic considerations," see John
Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment:
A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy, New
York: Oxford University Press, 1982.
The exact words (pp. 356-357; emphasis in original):
What
is surprising is the primacy that has
been accorded economic considerations in shaping strategies of containment, to the exclusion of other considerations. One would not expect to find, in initiatives
directed so self-consciously at the world at large, such decisive but parochial
concerns. . . . To a remarkable degree,
containment has been the product, not so much of what the Russians have done,
or of what has happened elsewhere in the world, but of internal forces
operating within the United States.
4.
For National Security Council [N.S.C.] 68, of April 14, 1950, see Foreign Relations of the United States, 1950, Vol. I, Washington: U.S. Government
Printing Office, 1977, pp. 234-292. The
exact words (section VI.B.2, pp. 261, 258):
[T]here
are grounds for predicting that the United States and other free nations will
within a period of a few years at most experience a decline in economic activity
of serious proportions unless more positive governmental programs are developed
than are now available. . . .
Industrial production declined by 10 percent between the first quarter
of 1948 and the last quarter of 1949, and by approximately one-fourth between
1944 and 1949. In March 1950 there were
approximately 4,750,000 unemployed, as compared to 1,070,000 in 1943 and
670,000 in 1944. The gross national
product declined slowly in 1949 from the peak reached in 1948 ($262 billion in
1948 to an annual rate of $256 billion in the last six months of 1949), and in
terms of constant prices declined by about 20 percent between 1944 and 1948.
The
document then proposes a build-up of "economic and military strength"
through rearmament (pp. 258, 286):
With a high level of economic activity, the United
States could soon attain a gross national product of $300 billion per year, as
was pointed out in the President's Economic Report (January 1950). Progress in this direction would permit, and
might itself be aided by, a build-up of the economic and military strength of
the United States and the free world; furthermore, if a dynamic expansion of
the economy were achieved, the necessary build-up could be accomplished without
a decrease in the national standard of living because the required resources
could be obtained by siphoning off a part of the annual increment in the gross
national product. . . .
One of the most significant lessons of our World War
II experience was that the American economy, when it operates at a level
approaching full efficiency, can provide enormous resources for purposes other
than civilian consumption while simultaneously providing a high standard of
living. After allowing for price
changes, personal consumption expenditures rose by about one-fifth between 1939
and 1944, even though the economy had in the meantime increased the amount of
resources going into Government use by $60-$65 billion (in 1939 prices).
For commentary, see for
example, Fred Block, "Economic Instability and Military Strength: The
Paradoxes of the 1950 Rearmament Decision," Politics and Society, Vol. 10, No. 1, 1980, pp. 35-58; Melvyn
Leffler, A Preponderance of Power:
National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War, Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1992, ch. 8.
See also chapter 3 of U.P. and
its footnotes 7 to 10.
5. On
the decision to increase military spending in the wake of the Marshall Plan's
failure, see for example, Richard M. Freeland, The Truman Doctrine and the Origins of McCarthyism: Foreign Policy,
Domestic Politics, and Internal Security, 1946-1948, New York: New York
University Press, 1985, pp. 329-334. An
excerpt (pp. 330, 334):
Despite the rapid success of the aid program in
inducing the recovery of western Europe's productive capacity, unsatisfactory
progress was made with respect to the problem of increasing the dollar earnings
of western European economies. In 1949
European exports to both the United States and Latin America actually
declined. In this context Britain
suffered another economic crisis and in September 1949 was forced to devalue
the pound by 30 per cent; in subsequent months all other Marshall Plan
countries followed suit. By the end of
the year both [the Council of Economic Advisors] and other federal agencies
came to the conclusion that the [Committee for European Economic Cooperation]
had asserted in 1948: the E.R.P. [European Recovery Program, the "Marshall
Plan,"] offered no prospect for the countries of Europe to balance their
payments through exports to the U.S. . . .
The decision to shift the emphasis of American
policy toward Europe from economic aid to military aid occurred within the
context of the recognized failure of the politico-commercial strategy that was
an essential component of the E.R.P.
This failure left the kind of rearmament program proposed by N.S.C.-68
as the sole means for building the Atlantic political community to which U.S.
policy was consistently committed after 1946.
William Borden, The Pacific Alliance: United States Foreign
Economic Policy and Japanese Trade Recovery, 1947-1955, Madison: University
of Wisconsin Press, 1984, especially pp. 12, 27, 50-60, 245-246 n.75 (reaching
the same general conclusion; also pointing out that "few dollars changed
hands internationally under the aid programs, the dollars went to American
producers and the goods were sold to the European public" in local
currencies).
See also, Melvyn Leffler, "The United
States and the Strategic Dimensions of the Marshall Plan," Diplomatic History, Summer 1988, pp.
277-306 at pp. 277-278 (overcoming the dollar gap "which had originally
prompted the Marshall Plan" required a restoration of the triangular trade
patterns whereby Europe earned dollars through U.S. purchase of raw materials
from its colonies; hence European, and Japanese, access to Third World markets
and raw materials was an essential component of the general strategic planning,
and a necessary condition for fulfillment of the general purposes of the
Marshall Plan, which were to "benefit the American economy," to
"redress the European balance of power" in favor of U.S. allies --
state and class -- and to "enhance American national security," where
"national security . . . meant the control of raw materials, industrial
infrastructure, skilled manpower, and military bases"). And see chapter 3 of U.P. and its footnotes 3,
7,
8,
9,
10
and 11.
6.
For Gaddis's characterization of the 1918 invasion of the Soviet Union,
see John Lewis Gaddis, The Long Peace:
Inquiries Into the History of the Cold War, New York: Oxford University
Press, 1987, pp. 10f, 21. His exact
words (pp. 10-11):
This
debate over the motives for intervention misses an important point, though,
which is that Wilson and his allies saw their actions in a defensive rather
than an offensive context. Intervention
in Russia took place in response to a profound and potentially far-reaching
intervention by the new Soviet government in the internal affairs, not just of
the West, but of virtually every other country in the world: I refer here, of
course to the Revolution's challenge -- which could hardly have been more
categorical -- to the very survival of the capitalist order. . . . From this perspective, the interesting
question regarding Western intervention in Russia after the Bolshevik
Revolution is why it was such a half-hearted, poorly planned, and ultimately
ineffectual enterprise, given the seriousness of the threat it sought to
counter.
7.
For Secretary of State Lansing's warning, see "Lansing Papers,
1914-1920," Vol. II, Foreign
Relations of the United States, Washington: U.S. Government Printing
Office, 1940, p. 348. His exact words (referring
to a 1918 communication from the Bolsheviks to "the peoples and
governments of the Allied countries"):
The
document is an appeal to the proletariat of all countries, to the ignorant and
mentally deficient, who by their numbers are urged to become masters. Here seems to me to lie a very real danger
in view of the present social unrest throughout the world.
For a similar warning by Lansing made
elsewhere, see John Lewis Gaddis, Russia,
the Soviet Union, and the United States: An Interpretive History, New York:
Knopf, 1978, p. 105:
[Bolshevism's
appeal is] to the unintelligent and brutish elements of mankind to take from
the intellectual and successful their rights and possessions and to reduce them
to a state of slavery. . . . Bolshevism
is the most hideous and monstrous thing that the human mind has ever conceived.
See also, Lloyd Gardner, Safe for Democracy: The Anglo-American
Response to Revolution, New York: Oxford University Press, 1984, p. 242 (on
President Wilson's fears about Bolshevism's potential effect upon American
blacks).
For a study of Wilson's intervention in Russia, see
David S. Fogelsang, America's Secret War
Against Bolshevism: U.S. Intervention in the Russian Civil War, 1917-1920,
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995.
For sources on the Red Scare of 1919 in the U.S.,
see footnote 6 of chapter 8 of U.P. Chomsky remarks: "The Red Scare was
strongly backed by the press and elites generally until they came to see that
their own interests would be harmed as the right-wing frenzy got out of hand --
in particular, the anti-immigrant hysteria, which threatened the reserve of
cheap labor" (Necessary Illusions:
Thought Control in Democratic Societies, Boston: South End, 1989, p. 189).
8. On
popular reform under the Sandinistas, see for example, Latin American Studies
Association, The Electoral Process in
Nicaragua: The Report of the Latin American Studies Association Delegation to
Observe the Nicaraguan General Election of November 4, 1984, Latin American
Studies Association Official Publication, November 19, 1984, pp. 4-7
(summarizing the Sandinista government's priorities and why it gained popular
support during the first half of the 1980s; noting that the Sandinista agenda
"defined national priorities according to 'the logic of the majority,'
which meant that Nicaragua's poor majority would have access to, and be the
primary beneficiaries of, public programs"); Joseph Collins et al., What Difference Could a Revolution Make?:
Food and Farming in the New Nicaragua, San Francisco: Institute for Food
and Development Policy, 1985; Dianna Melrose, Nicaragua: The Threat of a Good Example?, Oxford (U.K.): Oxfam
[British charitable relief and development organization], 1985 (preface
1989). An excerpt (pp. 1, 13-14):
[Oxfam's] long-term development work is most likely to succeed where
governments are genuinely committed to the needs of the poor majority. Rarely is this the case. Nicaragua stands out because of the positive
climate for development based on people's active participation, which Oxfam has
encountered over the past five years [i.e. since 1979 under the Sandinista
government]. . . . [S]ince 1979 the
scope for development has been enormous, with remarkable progress achieved in
health, literacy and a more equitable distribution of resources. . . .
The new Government of National Reconstruction stressed its desire to
develop a mixed economy and political pluralism in a country that had no
tradition of democracy or free elections.
Great importance was also attached to achieving a high degree of
national self-sufficiency and an independent, non-aligned foreign policy. This radically new focus of social policy in
Nicaragua towards the needs of the poor presented enormous scope for Oxfam's
work. In addition to locally-based
projects, Oxfam was now able to support nationwide initiatives to tackle
problems rooted in poverty. The concept
of actively involving people in development through community organisations is
neither new nor radical, but widely recognised to be a precondition for
successful development. However, as the
World Bank points out: "Governments . . . vary greatly in the commitment
of their political leadership to improving the condition of the people and
encouraging their active participation in the development process." From Oxfam's experience of working in
seventy-six developing countries, Nicaragua was to prove exceptional in the
strength of that Government commitment.
This report documents a wide
range of Sandinista reforms (pp. 14-26).
They included a decline in the national illiteracy rate from 53 percent
to 13 percent; popular education collectives established in 17,000 communities;
127 percent more schools, 61 percent more teachers, and 55 percent more
children at primary school; a national program of mass inoculations against
diseases which resulted in, among other successes, a 98 percent fall in new
malaria cases; agrarian reform, including compensation for expropriated land,
since up to a third of arable land (mainly on large estates) was idle or
under-used; 49,661 families in a total population of three million receiving
titles to land between late 1981 and late 1984; and an 8 percent increase in
overall agricultural production between 1979 and 1983. The Inter-American Development Bank
summarized: "Nicaragua has made noteworthy progress in the social sector,
which is laying a solid foundation for long-term socio-economic development." As the New
England Journal of Medicine put it: "In just three years, more has
been done in most areas of social welfare than in fifty years of dictatorship
under the Somoza family." See also
footnote 52 of chapter 1 of U.P.
For the World Bank's 1980 prediction that it
would take at least a decade for Nicaragua to reach the economic level that it
had in 1977 -- because of the damaging economic consequences of the popular
insurrection against the U.S.-client dictator Somoza's regime -- see Michael E.
Conroy, "Economic Aggression as an Instrument of Low-Intensity
Warfare," in Thomas Walker, ed., Reagan
versus the Sandinistas: The Undeclared War on Nicaragua, Boulder, CO: Westview, 1987, pp. 57-79,
especially p. 67 (citing "Nicaragua: The Challenge of
Reconstruction," Washington: International Bank for Reconstruction and
Development [the "World Bank"], October 9, 1981, p. 11). See also, Michael E. Conroy, "Economic
Legacy and Policies: Performance and Critique," in Thomas Walker, ed., Nicaragua: The First Five Years, New
York: Praeger, 1985, pp. 232-233.
9. On
the "threat of a good example" as a preoccupation of U.S. foreign
policy, see chapter 5 of U.P. and
especially its footnote 32,
and also its footnotes 7,
8
and 108. See also
chapter 1 of U.P. and its footnote 20;
and footnote 8 of this chapter.
10. A
search on the Nexis computer database of newspapers and journals dating from
the early 1980s for every instance in which the root-term "invade!"
(i.e. including "invades," "invaded," etc.) was published
within ten words of "South Vietnam" retrieved a total of two direct
statements in American newspapers and journals that the U.S. invaded South
Vietnam. One was by Chomsky in an
interview -- see Eric Black, "Noam Chomsky: He's got a world on his
mind," Star Tribune
(Minneapolis), April 10, 1997, p. 17A.
The other appeared in a letter to the editor from a reader in Lakeland,
Florida -- see Fred Mercer, "U.S. caused 'Nam war," Letter, The Ledger (Lakeland, FL), December 1,
1995, p. A14. In addition, the Washington Post quoted the phrase one
time in an article on North Vietnamese propaganda and reeducation camps; and
the British news-wire Reuters and the British Broadcasting Corporation
transmitted stories which utilized the terms in this manner. See Robert G. Kaiser, "Surviving
Communist 'Reeducation Camp,'" Washington
Post, May 15, 1994, p. A33; and, for example, John Chalmers,
"Vietnam's party conclaves map turbulent history," Reuters, June 27,
1996.
11.
For Gaddis's characterization of Dienbienphu, see John Lewis Gaddis, The Long Peace: Inquiries Into the History
of the Cold War, New York: Oxford University Press, 1987, pp. 129f.
12.
For Bundy's statement about Dienbienphu, see McGeorge Bundy, Danger and Survival: Choices About the Bomb
in the First Fifty Years, New
York: Random House, 1988, pp. 260-270 at pp. 260-261.
13.
On the indigenous opposition which confronted the French and then the U.S.
in Vietnam, see footnote 71
of chapter 1 of U.P.
14.
On Nicaragua's 1984 election, see for example, Latin American Studies
Association, The Electoral Process in Nicaragua:
The Report of the Latin American Studies Association Delegation to Observe the
Nicaraguan General Election of November 4, 1984, Latin American Studies
Association Official Publication, November 19, 1984; Canadian Church and Human
Rights Delegation, Nicaragua 1984:
Democracy, Elections and War, Toronto: Inter-Church Committee on Human
Rights in Latin America, 1984; Abraham Brumberg, "'Sham' and 'Farce' in
Nicaragua?," Dissent, Spring
1985, pp. 226-237.
On El Salvador's 1982 election, see for example,
Edward S. Herman and Frank Brodhead, Demonstration
Elections: U.S.-Staged Elections in the Dominican Republic, Vietnam, and El
Salvador, Boston: South End, 1984, ch. 4.
15.
On repression in El Salvador and Guatemala versus that in Nicaragua
under the Sandinistas, see for example, Americas Watch, Human Rights in Nicaragua 1986, New York: Americas Watch Committee,
February 1987, chs. 1, 2 and 6. An
excerpt (pp. 140-141, 158-159):
One illustration of the Reagan Administration's
employment of human rights rhetoric in its war against the Sandinistas is a
joint State Department-Defense Department document that was distributed to
those who attended the White House ceremony on December 10, 1986 marking
International Human Rights Day. Printed
on glossy paper with a silver cover and with four color illustrations (a format
that stands out in contrast to U.S. government documents on human rights in
other parts of the world) it is titled "The Challenge to Democracy in
Central America." At page 28, it
cites the following statement approvingly: "In the American continent,
there is no regime more barbaric and bloody, no regime that violates human
rights in a manner more constant and permanent, than the Sandinista
regime." Whatever the sins of the
Sandinistas -- and they are real -- this is nonsense. . . .
Between 40,000 and 50,000 Salvadoran civilians were
murdered by government forces and death squads allied to them during the
1980s. A similar number died during
[the U.S. client] Somoza's last year or so in Nicaragua, mostly in
indiscriminate attacks on the civilian population by the National Guard. The number of civilian noncombatants killed
by the armed forces in Guatemala during the 1980s cannot be known, but it is
probably the highest in the hemisphere. . . . As to Nicaragua, taking into account all of the civilian
noncombatant deaths attributable to government forces in the more than seven
years since the Sandinistas consolidated power, it is difficult to count a
total of more than 300 . . . of which the largest number of victims were
Miskito Indians on the Atlantic Coast in 1981 and 1982. . . . [Furthermore], Americas Watch knows of two
cases of [Nicaraguan] political prisoners in the sense in which that term is
used in the United States . . . [one of these] had been arrested for evading
the military draft. . . . He was
subsequently released without charges and is not presently serving in the
military. . . . Also at this time, Amnesty
International has no currently adopted "prisoner of conscience" in
Nicaragua under the Sandinistas.
See also footnotes 8, 16
and 17
of this chapter; footnote 13
of chapter 1 of U.P.; footnote 48
of chapter 5 of U.P.; and footnote 54
of chapter 8 of U.P.
The true nature of the U.S.-client regimes in
El Salvador and Guatemala should be fully appreciated. See for example, Reverend Daniel Santiago
[Catholic priest working in El Salvador], "The Aesthetics of Terror, The
Hermeneutics of Death," America
[Jesuit journal], Vol. 162, No. 11, March 24, 1990, pp. 292-295. An excerpt:
I have heard Tonita tell her story at least a dozen times. She has recounted the horror for each
delegation of North Americans who visited the refugee camp on the outskirts of
San Salvador. With so many tellings,
Tonita's testimony has acquired a repetitive quality. When translated and transcribed, it is somewhat
unbelievable. What is convincing,
however, is not the story itself, but Tonita's visceral reaction to each
telling. Her tears are not the stage
tears of an actress; the lines of pain that cross her wrinkled face have not
been enhanced with makeup. Tonita's
story is quite believable and that is the problem.
Tonita is a peasant from Santa Lucia, a rural village near the volcano
of San Vicente in El Salvador. One day,
two years ago, at 11:00 A.M., Tonita left her one-room home to carry lunch to
her husband, Chepe, and their two teen-age sons who were cutting firewood on
the volcano. She left her three
smallest children -- an 18-month-old daughter, a 3-year-old son and a 5-year-old
daughter -- in the care of her sister and mother. . . . Entering the house [on her return], Tonita
was greeted by the grisly spectacle of a feast macabre. Seated around a small table in the middle of
her house were her mother, sister and three children. The decapitated heads of all five had been placed in front of
each torso, their hands arranged on top, as if each body was stroking its own
head. This had proven to be difficult
in the case of the youngest daughter.
The difficulty had been overcome by nailing the hands onto the head. The hammer had been left on the table. The floor and table were awash with
blood. In the very center of the table
was a large plastic bowl filled with blood; the air hung heavy with its sweet,
cloying smell. Tonita's neighbors had
fled when the Salvadoran National Guard began their killing. The Guardia
had not tried to stop the people from fleeing and, indeed, they encouraged
it. One neighbor, Doña Laura, returned
for Tonita and found her standing in the doorway, moaning and staring at her
decapitated mother, sister and children. . . .
This is only one tableau of many.
Other scènes macabres have
been created by the armed forces in their 10-year exhibition of horror and
death. People are not just killed by
death squads in El Salvador -- they are decapitated and then their heads are
placed on pikes and used to dot the landscape.
Men are not just disemboweled by the Salvadoran Treasury Police; their
severed genitalia are stuffed into their mouths. Salvadoran women are not just raped by the National Guard; their
wombs are cut from their bodies and used to cover their faces. It is not enough to kill children; they are
dragged over barbed wire until the flesh falls from their bones while parents
are forced to watch. . . . There is a
purpose to all of this. One embraces a
certain style in order to achieve a certain effect. Stories of atrocities committed by Government security troops
spread by word of mouth. It is the
attention to detail that captures people's imagination and leaves them
shaking. But these stories are not
fairy tales. The stories are punctuated
with the hard evidence of corpses, mutilated flesh, splattered brains and
eyewitnesses. Sadomasochistic killing
creates terror in El Salvador. Terror
creates passivity in the face of oppression.
A passive population is easy to control. Why the need to control the peasants? Somebody has to pick the coffee and cotton and cut the sugar
cane.
Craig W. Nelson and Kenneth
I. Taylor, Witness to Genocide: The
Present Situation of Indians in Guatemala, London: Survival International,
1983 (collection of depositions taken in Mexico of refugees from
Guatemala). An excerpt (p. 19):
[A mother of two children, who fled her village as it was burned down
with many killed by the Guatemalan army, reports]: "In July, 1982,
soldiers flew into the area by helicopter.
First they went to [the name is redacted to avoid possible
retributions], a nearby town, and killed five people, burned the town, and
threw people, including women and children, into the flames. . . . Children's throats were cut, and women were
hit with machetes. . . ."
[A man reports that he] watched as the soldiers killed fifteen people,
including women, with machetes. They
set fire to the houses, and sometimes opened the doors of huts and threw hand
grenades inside. In all, fifty people
in his village were killed. Soldiers
also killed forty-nine people in the nearby town of [name redacted], which they
burned as well. Two of those killed
were his uncles. From a kilometer away,
he saw women from the village who were hung by their feet without clothes and
left.
Elizabeth Hanley,
"Tales of Terror from El Salvador," In These Times, April 17, 1985, p. 16 (recounting stories of
Salvadoran women in a refugee camp in Honduras). An excerpt:
When the National Guard came to [the] village in U.S.-supplied
helicopters, they chopped all the children to bits and threw them to the
village pigs. "The soldiers
laughed all the while," Luisa told me.
"What were they trying to kill?" she asked, still able to cry
two years later. . . .
Like [her], all of the women still had tears to cry as they told stories
of sons, brothers and husbands gathered into a circle and set on fire after
their legs had been broken; or of trees heavy with women hanging from their
wrists, all with breasts cut off and facial skin peeled back, all slowly
bleeding to death. A frenzy went with
each telling, as though women had yet to find a place inside themselves to
contain it. Now, to my right one of the
women was rocking another. Everyone was
trembling.
Representative Gerry Studds,
Central America, 1981, Report to the
Committee on Foreign Affairs, U.S. House of Representatives, 97th Congress, 1st
Session, Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, March 1981. An excerpt (pp. 26-29):
January 17-18, 1981 --
Conversations with refugees from El Salvador (conducted in areas along the
Honduras-El Salvador border):
The conversations . . . were tape recorded and are summarized in detail
below. They describe what appears to be
a systematic campaign conducted by the security forces of El Salvador to deny
any rural base for guerrilla operations in the north. By terrorizing and depopulating villages in the region, they have
sought to isolate the guerrillas and create problems of logistics and food
supply. This strategy was recently
summarized by one military commander, who told the Boston Globe: "The subversives like to say that they are the
fish and the people are the ocean. What
we have done in the north is to dry up the ocean so we can catch the fish
easily." The Salvadoran method of
"drying up the ocean" involves, according to those who have fled from
its violence, a combination of murder, torture, rape, the burning of crops in
order to create starvation conditions, and a program of general terrorism and
harassment. . . .
The following is an outline of the statements made by refugees to the
[delegation led by Representative Barbara Mikulski], as summarized on the scene
by the translator accompanying the group:
Interview -- Woman No. 1: "This woman fled in
November 1980, and while she was then forced to flee, she was one of the last
people from her village to flee. She
was 9 months pregnant. She had her
little baby, which she is holding in her arms right now, in the mountains on
her way out to Honduras. The Army was
setting up guns, heavy cannon artillery on the hills around their village,
bombing the villages and forcing the people away. . . . If people were caught in the village, they
would kill them. Women and children alike. She said that with pregnant women, they
would cut open the stomachs and take the babies out. She said she was very afraid because she had seen the result of
what a guard had done to a friend of hers.
She had been pregnant and they took the child out after they cut open
her stomach. And where she lived they
did not leave one house standing. They
burned all of them. . . ."
Interview -- Woman No. 2: Maria: "She say that she would like to tell us the following:
That many of her family were killed, so many were killed that she doesn't even
remember their names. . . . About 7
months ago they killed one of her family and the child was an infant and is now
in a hospital in a nearby town close to death.
The army threw the baby in the river when they found them, and they took
them into the woods and later they were found.
She personally saw children around the age of 8 being raped, and then
they would take their bayonets and make mincemeat of them. With their guns they would shoot at their
faces. . . ."
Question: "These were army
troops or guards?"
Answer: "Troops.
Army."
Question: "Did the left ever do
these things?"
Answer: "No. No, they
haven't done any of those kinds of things . . . but the army would cut people
up and put soap and coffee in their stomachs as a mocking. They would slit the stomach of a pregnant
woman and take the child out, as if they were taking eggs out of an
iguana. That is what I saw. That is what I have to say. . . ."
Interview -- Man No. 2: "[United States helicopters]
are up in the air and they shoot at us.
And we are completely defenseless.
We have our ax and machetes to clean the earth with and to cultivate the
land, and that is all we have against the helicopters."
Ms. Mikulski: "Has the left done
anything against him?"
Answer: "No, they don't kill children. We don't complain about them at all. . . ."
Interview -- Woman No. 5: "[O]nce she saw [the
army] kill six women. First they killed
two women and then they burned their bodies with firewood. She said, one thing she saw was a dog
carrying a new born infant in its mouth.
The child was dead because it had been taken from the mother's womb
after the guard slit open her stomach."
Ms. Mikulski: "How were the other
two women killed?"
Answer: "First, they hung them and then they machinegunned them and
then they threw them down to the ground.
When we arrived the dogs were eating
them and the birds were eating them.
They didn't have any clothes on.
They had decapitated one of the women.
They found the head somewhere else.
Another woman's arm was sliced off.
We saw the killings from a hillside and then when we came back down we
saw what had happened. While we were
with the bodies we heard another series of gunshots and we fled again. . .
. [I]t's the military that is doing
this. Only the military. The popular organization isn't doing any of
this."
See also, Ambrose
Evans-Pritchard, "Bach and War in El Salvador," Spectator (London), May 10, 1986, pp. 16-17 (quoting a Salvadoran
death squad member: "We learnt from you [i.e. Americans], we learnt from
you the methods, like blowtorches in the armpits, shots in the balls");
Allan Nairn, "Behind the Death Squads," Progressive, May 1984, pp. 1f (documenting U.S. training of,
support for, and behind-the-scenes involvement in Salvadoran Death Squad
activities).
16.
On freedom of the press in Sandinista Nicaragua, see for example, Thomas
Walker, ed., Reagan versus the
Sandinistas: the Undeclared War on Nicaragua, Boulder, CO: Westview, 1987, pp. 6-10. An excerpt (pp. 7-10):
As is true in all states in time of war or threat of
war, certain human rights were gradually infringed upon in the name of national
security [in Sandinista Nicaragua]. . . .
[O]n a half-dozen occasions, La
Prensa was closed for two-day periods [in late 1981]. This action was taken under the terms of a
press law decreed by the original Junta (of which, ironically, La Prensa owner Violeta Chamorro had
been part). . . . However, even with
these shutdowns, La Prensa continued
to operate freely and in bitter opposition to the government more than 95
percent of the time. . . .
In spring 1982 following contra attacks on important
Nicaraguan infrastructure and the disclosure in the U.S. media of President
Reagan's earlier authorization of funding for C.I.A.-sponsored paramilitary
operations against its country, the government declared a state of prewar
emergency under which certain civil and political rights were temporarily
suspended. . . . La Prensa, though now heavily censored, continued to function until
June 1986, when it was finally closed in the wake of the House approval of the
$100 million [for the contras]. (In El
Salvador the only real opposition papers had long since been driven completely
out of business through the murder or exile of their owners.)
John Spicer Nichols,
"The Media," in Thomas Walker, ed., Nicaragua: The First Five Years, New York: Praeger, 1985, pp.
183-199 (on the degree of censorship in Nicaragua during the contra war, with
comparisons to censorship in the U.S. during wartime). See also chapter 4 of U.P. and its footnote 9. On civil liberties violations in times of
war in the United States, see chapter 8 of U.P.
and its footnotes 4 to 7.
17.
On the fate of El Salvador's independent press, see for example, Jorge
Pinto [editor of the former Salvadoran newspaper El Independiente, writing after he fled to Mexico], "In
Salvador, Nooseprint," Op-Ed, New
York Times, May 6, 1981, p. A31. An
excerpt:
In
January 1980, El Independiente's offices were bombed. In April, an office boy standing in the front entrance was killed
in a machinegun attack. On June 27,
armed men arrived at the printing shop and gave the 40 workers there one minute
to leave before they placed dynamite under the press and destroyed it. Two days later, my car was sprayed with
machine-gun fire, pocking it with 37 bullet holes. Two other such attacks were made on my life.
Raymond Bonner, Weakness and Deceit: U.S. Policy and El
Salvador, New York: Times Books, 1984.
An excerpt (pp. 206, 212):
The
country's small opposition newspapers, El
Independiente and La Crónica,
were repeatedly bombed. La Crónica's editor in chief, Jaime
Suárez, and a photojournalist, César Najarro, were seized mid-day while sitting
in a downtown coffee shop. Their
bodies, hacked to pieces by machetes, were found a few days later. . . . Two weeks after Reagan's triumph, troops
stormed into the archdiocese's building, where they ransacked the offices of
the church newspaper, Orientacíon,
and destroyed the facilities of the radio station, YSAX.
Aside from Pinto's Op-Ed, there was not one
word in the New York Times's news
columns and not one editorial comment on the destruction of El Independiente. Before it was finally destroyed, there had
been four bombings of La Crónica in six
months; the last of these received forty words in a "News Brief" in
the New York Times. See World News Briefs, "Salvador Groups
Attack Paper and U.S. Plant," New
York Times, April 19, 1980, p. 7.
Chomsky comments (Necessary
Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies, Boston: South End,
1989, p. 42):
Contrasting
sharply with the silence over the two Salvadoran newspapers is the case of the
opposition journal La Prensa in
Nicaragua. Media critic Francisco
Goldman counted 263 references to its tribulations in the New York Times in four years [see Francisco Goldman, "Sad
Tales of La Libertad de Prensa," Harper's,
August 1988, p. 56]. The distinguishing
criterion is not obscure: the Salvadoran newspapers were independent voices
stilled by the murderous violence of U.S. clients; La Prensa is an agency of the U.S. campaign to overthrow the
government of Nicaragua, therefore a "worthy victim," whose
harassment calls forth anguish and outrage. . . . These matters did not arise in the enthusiastic reporting of El
Salvador's "free elections" in 1982 and 1984.
The situation was much the same in
U.S.-client Guatemala. For example, on
June 10, 1988, fifteen heavily armed men broke into the offices of the
newspaper La Epoca, stole valuable equipment,
and firebombed the offices, destroying them.
They also kidnapped the night watchman, releasing him later under threat
of death if he were to speak about the attack.
Eyewitness testimony and other sources left little doubt that it was an
operation of the security forces. The
editor, Byron Barrera Ortiz, held a press conference on June 14th to announce
that the journal would shut down "because there are not conditions in the
country to guarantee the exercise of free and independent journalism." The destruction of La Epoca "signaled not only the end of an independent media
voice in Guatemala, but it served as a warning as well that future press
independence would not be tolerated by the government or security forces,"
as Americas Watch put it. See
"Guatemala: Independent press silenced by bombing," Central America Report (Guatemala City,
Guatemala: Inforpress Centroamericana), Vol. XV, No. 23, June 17, 1988, p. 182;
"Guatemala: Low-intensity political violence," Central America Report (Guatemala City, Guatemala: Inforpress
Centroamericana), Vol. XV, No. 22, June 10, 1988, pp. 175-176.
These facts were not even reported contemporaneously
in the New York Times or Washington Post. One month later, the seventeenth paragraph
of a story on Guatemala by Stephen Kinzer mentioned the bombing of La Epoca, which "some diplomats
attributed to the security forces," and it was referred to again in August
in the Times book review in a report
on a conference of Central American writers.
See Stephen Kinzer, "Top Guatemala Officers Solidly Behind
President," New York Times, July
6, 1988, p. A2; David Unger, "Central American Writers Meet Amid the Death
Squads," New York Times, August
7, 1988, section 7, p. 25.
18.
On the U.S. opposing the Central America peace process, see for example,
Walter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions:
The United States in Central America, New York: Norton, 1993 (revised and
expanded edition). See also, Noam
Chomsky, Necessary Illusions: Thought
Control in Democratic Societies, Boston: South End, 1989, ch. 4 and
Appendix 4.5.
On the U.S. opposing the Middle East peace
process, see chapter 4 of U.P. and
its footnotes 41, 47,
48,
49
and 56;
chapter 5 of U.P. and its footnotes 104
and 111; and the text of chapter 8 of U.P.
19.
For King Hassan as a "moderate," see for example, Eleanor
Blau, "A King of the Unexpected," New
York Times, July 23, 1986, p. A6 (King Hassan "has been described as
charming and extremely self-confident . . . he is usually regarded as
pro-Western, moderate and eager to preserve his throne against Islamic
militants").
For useful lists of common media buzzwords
and deceptive terminology, see Martin A. Lee and Norman Solomon, Unreliable Sources: A Guide to Detecting
Bias in News Media, New York: Lyle Stuart, 1990, pp. 10-13, 39-41 ("A
Lexicon of Media Buzzwords"); Edward S. Herman, Beyond Hypocrisy: Decoding the News in an Age of Propaganda,
Montreal: Black Rose, 1992, pp. 113-187 ("A Doublespeak Dictionary for the
1990s").
20.
For Saudi Arabia as "moderate," see for example, Jonathan C.
Randal, "Iran's Rivalry With Saudis Seen as Factor in Book Row," Washington Post, February 21, 1989, p.
A17 ("Saudi Arabia and other moderate, pro-western regimes in the Arab
world").
21.
On Iraq being described as "moving towards moderation," see
for example, Henry Kamm, "Iraq Is Improving Links to Both U.S. and
Soviet," New York Times, March
29, 1984, p. A12 ("a dramatic but little discussed Iraqi swing from Arab
radicalism toward moderation and a warming relationship with the United
States"); E.A. Wayne, "Iraq Returns to Mideast Political
Lineup," Christian Science Monitor,
July 17, 1989, p. 7 ("Iraq's leadership remains 'tough-minded' says one
official, but it is less ideological and is aligning itself with
moderates").
22.
For the article on Indonesia, see John Murray Brown, "Bringing
Irian Jaya into 20th century," Christian
Science Monitor, February 6,
1987, p. 9 ("With the downfall in 1965 of then President Sukarno, many in
the West were keen to cultivate Jakarta's new moderate leader, Suharto").
23.
On U.S. support for the 1965 coup in Indonesia, see footnote 18
of chapter 1 of U.P.
For casualty estimates for the post-coup
massacres in Indonesia, see for example, Amnesty International, Indonesia: An Amnesty International Report,
London: Amnesty International Publications, 1977. An excerpt (pp. 12-13, 22, 41):
In
the aftermath of the attempted coup [in 1965], the Army carried out a massive
and violent purge of people identified as or suspected of being members of the
Communist Party, or affiliated to left-wing organizations. . . . In a Dutch television interview in October
1976, the head of the Indonesian state security agency, Admiral Sudomo, gave a
definitive estimate: he said that more
than half a million people were killed following the attempted coup. There can be no doubt about the authority of
that estimate, except that the true figure is possibly much higher. . . . [Sudomo added] that after the coup, 750,000
people were arrested. (Televisie Radio Omroep Stichting, 9
October 1976). The official figures of
600,000 [given by Indonesian Foreign Minister Adam Malik] or 750,000 arrested,
do not include the number who were killed.
Ernst Utrecht, "The
Indonesian Army as an Instrument of Repression," Journal of Contemporary Asia, Vol. 2, No. 1, 1972, pp. 56 n.1, 62
(relating "reliable" estimates of 500,000 killed after the 1965 coup,
and 700,000 killed by the Indonesian military by the 1970s).
On the U.S. government's view of the
slaughter in Indonesia, see for example, Audrey R. Kahin and George McT. Kahin,
Subversion as Foreign Policy: The Secret
Eisenhower and Dulles Debacle in Indonesia, New York: New Press, 1995. An excerpt (pp. 226, 229-230):
[T]he 1965-66 massacres constituted one of the
bloodiest purges in modern history: in the words of the C.I.A. study, "In
terms of the numbers killed the anti-P.K.I. [Indonesian Communist Party]
massacres in Indonesia rank as one of the worst mass murders of the 20th
century, along with the Soviet purges of the 1930's, the Nazi mass murders
during the Second World War, and the Maoist blood bath of the early 1950's. . .
."
The U.S. embassy's attitude [towards these killings]
was clearly expressed when, almost a month after the mass killings had begun,
Francis Galbraith, the deputy chief of mission (later to succeed Marshall Green
as ambassador), reporting to Washington on his conversation with a high-ranking
Indonesian army officer, said that he had "made clear" to him
"that the embassy and the U.S.G[overnment] were generally sympathetic with
and admiring of what the army was doing."
Careful study of all declassified U.S. government documents that bear on
the physical liquidation of the P.K.I. disclose no instance of any American
official objecting to or in any way criticizing the 1965-66 killings. . .
. American input went beyond mere
approbation and encouragement. As
Bunnell has established from U.S. government documents and corroborative
interviews with General Sukendro (in 1965 the ranking army intelligence chief),
the United States quickly fulfilled the army's request, relayed by Sukendro on
November 6, 1965, for weapons "to arm Moslem and nationalist youth in
Central Java for use against the P.K.I." in the context of overall army
policy "to eliminate the P.K.I."
For a rare investigative report on U.S.
involvement in the Indonesia coup, see Kathy Kadane, "Ex-agents say C.I.A.
compiled death lists for Indonesians," San
Francisco Examiner, May 20, 1990, p. A1.
An excerpt:
The U.S. government played a significant role in one of the worst
massacres of the century by supplying the names of thousands of Communist Party
leaders to the Indonesian army, which hunted down the leftists and killed them,
former U.S. diplomats say. For the
first time, U.S. officials acknowledge that in 1965 they systematically
compiled comprehensive lists of communist operatives, from top echelons down to
village cadres. As many as 5,000 names
were furnished to the Indonesian army, and the Americans later checked off the
names of those who had been killed or captured, according to U.S. officials. .
. .
Silent for a quarter century, former senior U.S. diplomats and C.I.A.
officers described in lengthy interviews how they aided Indonesian President
Suharto, then army leader, in his attack on the P.K.I. [Indonesian Communist
Party]. "It really was a big help
to the army," said Robert J. Martens, a former member of the U.S.
Embassy's political section who is now a consultant to the State
Department. "They probably killed
a lot of people, and I probably have a lot of blood on my hands, but that's not
all bad. There's a time when you have
to strike hard at a decisive moment. . . ." Approval for release of the names came from top U.S. Embassy
officials, including former Ambassador Marshall Green, deputy chief of mission
Jack Lydman and political section chief Edward Masters, the three acknowledged
in interviews.
For a reply by Martens, see
Robert Martens, "Indonesia's Fight Against Communism, 1965," Letter, Washington Post, June 2, 1990, p. A18
("If I said anything like [that], it could only have been a wry
remark"; although "[i]t is true I passed names of the P.K.I. leaders
and senior cadre system to the non-Communist forces," Suharto's men
probably could have obtained the information in any event).
See also, Kathy Kadane, "U.S. had role
in '65 Indonesia massacre, ex-officials say," Orange County Register (CA), May 20, 1990, p. A8 (reporting that
the U.S. also provided "logistical support" including
"state-of-the-art radio field equipment" on which Indonesia's orders
to attack villages and individuals were monitored).
On Suharto's genocidal occupation of East
Timor with U.S. support, see the text of chapter 8 of U.P. and its footnotes 41
and 57.