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Philosopher Noam Chomsky is professor of the MIT Institute
of Linguistics (Emeritus). (Photo: teleSUR/file)
Article from Telesurtv.net
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An
international poll found that the United States is ranked far in the lead as
“the biggest threat to world peace today,” far ahead of second-place Pakistan,
with no one else even close.
Imagine
that the lead article in Pravda reported a study by the KGB that reviews major
terrorist operations run by the Kremlin around the world, in an effort to
determine the factors that led to their success or failure, finally concluding
that unfortunately successes were rare so that some rethinking of policy is in
order. Suppose that the article went on
to quote Putin as saying that he had asked the KGB to carry out such inquiries
in order to find cases of “financing and supplying arms to an insurgency in a
country that actually worked out well.
And they couldn’t come up with much.” So he has some reluctance about
continuing such efforts.
If,
almost unimaginably, such an article were to appear, cries of outrage and
indignation would rise to the heavens, and Russia would be bitterly condemned –
or worse -- not only for the vicious terrorist record openly acknowledged, but
for the reaction among the leadership and the political class: no concern,
except how well Russian state terrorism works and whether the practices can be
improved.
It is
indeed hard to imagine that such an article might appear, except for the fact
that it just did – almost.
On
October 14, the lead story in the New York Times reported a study by the CIA
that reviews major terrorist operations run by the White House around the
world, in an effort to determine the factors that led to their success or
failure, finally concluding that unfortunately successes were rare so that some
rethinking of policy is in order. The
article went on to quote Obama as saying that he had asked the CIA to carry out
such inquiries in order to find cases of “financing and supplying arms to an
insurgency in a country that actually worked out well. And they couldn’t come
up with much.” So he has some reluctance about continuing such efforts.
There
were no cries of outrage, no indignation, nothing.
The
conclusion seems quite clear. In western
political culture, it is taken to be entirely natural and appropriate that the
Leader of the Free World should be a terrorist rogue state and should openly
proclaim its eminence in such crimes.
And it is only natural and appropriate that the Nobel Peace Prize
laureate and liberal constitutional lawyer who holds the reins of power should
be concerned only with how to carry out such actions more efficaciously.
A closer
look establishes these conclusions quite firmly.
The
article opens by citing US operations “from Angola to Nicaragua to Cuba.” Let
us add a little of what is omitted.
In
Angola, the US joined South Africa in providing the crucial support for Jonas
Savimbi’s terrorist UNITA army, and continued to do so after Savimbi had been
roundly defeated in a carefully monitored free election and even after South
Africa had withdrawn support from this “monster whose lust for power had
brought appalling misery to his people,” in the words of British Ambassador to
Angola Marrack Goulding, seconded by the CIA station chief in neighboring
Kinshasa who warned that “it wasn’t a good idea” to support the monster
“because of the extent of Savimbi’s crimes.
He was terribly brutal.”
Despite
extensive and murderous US-backed terrorist operations in Angola, Cuban forces
drove South African aggressors out of the country, compelled them to leave
illegally occupied Namibia, and opened the way for the Angolan election in
which, after his defeat, Savimbi “dismissed entirely the views of nearly 800
foreign elections observers here that the balloting…was generally free and
fair” (New York Times), and continued the terrorist war with US support.
Cuban
achievements in the liberation of Africa and ending of Apartheid were hailed by
Nelson Mandela when he was finally released from prison. Among his first acts was to declare that
“During all my years in prison, Cuba was an inspiration and Fidel Castro a
tower of strength… [Cuban victories] destroyed the myth of the invincibility of
the white oppressor [and] inspired the fighting masses of South Africa … a
turning point for the liberation of our continent — and of my people — from the
scourge of apartheid. … What other country can point to a record of greater
selflessness than Cuba has displayed in its relations to Africa?”
The
terrorist commander Henry Kissinger, in contrast, was “apoplectic” over the
insubordination of the “pipsqueak” Castro who should be “smash[ed],” as
reported by William Leogrande and Peter Kornbluh in their book Back Channel to
Cuba, relying on recently declassified documents.
Turning
to Nicaragua, we need not tarry on Reagan’s terrorist war, which continued well
after the International Court of Justice ordered Washington to cease its
“illegal use of force” – that is, international terrorism -- and pay
substantial reparations, and after a resolution of the UN Security Council that
called on all states (meaning the US) to observe international law – vetoed by
Washington.
It should
be acknowledged, however, that Reagan’s terrorist war against Nicaragua –
extended by Bush I, the “statesman” Bush -- was not as destructive as the state
terrorism he backed enthusiastically in El Salvador and Guatemala. Nicaragua had the advantage of having an army
to confront the US-run terrorist forces, while in the neighboring states the
terrorists assaulting the population were the security forces armed and trained
by Washington.
In a few
weeks we will be commemorating the Grand Finale of Washington’s terrorist wars
in Latin America: the murder of six leading Latin American intellectuals,
Jesuit priests, by an elite terrorist unit of the Salvadoran army, the Atlacatl
Battalion, armed and trained by Washington, acting on the explicit orders of
the High Command, and with a long record of massacres of the usual victims.
This
shocking crime on November 16, 1989, at the Jesuit University in San Salvador
was the coda to the enormous plague of terror that spread over the continent
after John F. Kennedy changed the mission of the Latin American military from
“hemispheric defense” – an outdated relic of World War II – to “internal
security,” which means war against the domestic population. The aftermath is described succinctly by
Charles Maechling, who led US counterinsurgency and internal defense planning
from 1961 to 1966. He described
Kennedy’s 1962 decision as a shift from toleration “of the rapacity and cruelty
of the Latin American military” to “direct complicity” in their crimes, to US
support for “the methods of Heinrich Himmler’s extermination squads.”
All
forgotten, not the “right kind of facts.”
In Cuba,
Washington’s terror operations were launched in full fury by President Kennedy
to punish Cubans for defeating the US-run Bay of Pigs invasion. As described by historian Piero Gleijeses,
JFK “asked his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, to lead the top-level
interagency group that oversaw Operation Mongoose, a program of paramilitary
operations, economic warfare, and sabotage he launched in late 1961 to visit
the 'terrors of the earth' on Fidel Castro and, more prosaically, to topple
him.”
The
phrase “terrors of the earth” is quoted from Kennedy associate and historian
Arthur Schlesinger, in his quasi-official biography of Robert Kennedy, who was
assigned responsibility for conducting the terrorist war. RFK informed the CIA that the Cuban problem
carries “[t]he top priority in the United States Government -- all else is
secondary -- no time, no effort, or manpower is to be spared” in the effort to
overthrow the Castro regime, and to bring “the terrors of the earth” to Cuba.
The
terrorist war launched by the Kennedy brothers was no small affair. It involved 400 Americans, 2,000 Cubans, a
private navy of fast boats, and a $50 million annual budget, run in part by a
Miami CIA station functioning in violation of the Neutrality Act and,
presumably, the law banning CIA operations in the United States. Operations included bombing of hotels and
industrial installations, sinking of fishing boats, poisoning of crops and
livestock, contamination of sugar exports, etc.
Some of these operations were not specifically authorized by the CIA but
carried out by the terrorist forces it funded and supported, a distinction
without a difference in the case of official enemies.
The
Mongoose terrorist operations were run by General Edward Lansdale, who had
ample experience in US-run terrorist operations in the Philippines and
Vietnam. His timetable for Operation
Mongoose called for “open revolt and overthrow of the Communist regime” in
October 1962, which, for “final success will require decisive U.S. military
intervention” after terrorism and subversion had laid the basis.
October
1962 is, of course, a very significant moment in modern history. It was in that month that Nikita Khrushchev
sent missiles to Cuba, setting off the missile crisis that came ominously close
to terminal nuclear war. Scholarship now
recognizes that Khrushchev was in part motivated by the huge US preponderance
in force after Kennedy had responded to his calls for reduction in offensive
weapons by radically increasing the US advantage, and in part by concern over a
possible US invasion of Cuba. Years
later, Kennedy’s Defense Secretary Robert McNamara recognized that Cuba and Russia
were justified in fearing an attack. “If I were in Cuban or Soviet shoes, I
would have thought so, too,” McNamara observed at a major international
conference on the missile crisis on the 40th anniversary.
The
highly regarded policy analyst Raymond Garthoff, who had many years of direct
experience in US intelligence, reports that in the weeks before the October
crisis erupted, a Cuban terrorist group operating from Florida with US
government authorization carried out “a daring speedboat strafing attack on a
Cuban seaside hotel near Havana where Soviet military technicians were known to
congregate, killing a score of Russians and Cubans.” And shortly after, he
continues, the terrorist forces attacked British and Cuban cargo ships and
again raided Cuba, among other actions that were stepped up in early October.
At a tense moment of the still-unresolved missile crisis, on November 8, a
terrorist team dispatched from the United States blew up a Cuban industrial
facility after the Mongoose operations had been officially suspended. Fidel
Castro alleged that 400 workers had been killed in this operation, guided by
“photographs taken by spying planes.” Attempts to assassinate Castro and other
terrorist attacks continued immediately after the crisis terminated, and were
escalated again in later years.
There has
been some notice of one rather minor part of the terror war, the many attempts
to assassinate Castro, generally dismissed as childish CIA shenanigans. Apart from that, none of what happened has
elicited much interest or commentary.
The first serious English-language inquiry into the impact on Cubans was
published in 2010 by Canadian researcher Keith Bolender, in his Voices From The
Other Side: An Oral History Of Terrorism Against Cuba, a very valuable study
largely ignored.
The three
examples highlighted in the New York Times report of US terrorism are only the
tip of the iceberg. Nevertheless, it is
useful to have this prominent acknowledgment of Washington’s dedication to
murderous and destructive terror operations and of the insignificance of all of
this to the political class, which accepts it as normal and proper that the US
should be a terrorist superpower, immune to law and civilized norms.
Oddly,
the world may not agree. An
international poll released a year ago by the Worldwide Independent
Network/Gallup International Association (WIN/GIA) found that the United States
is ranked far in the lead as “the biggest threat to world peace today,” far
ahead of second-place Pakistan (doubtless inflated by the Indian vote), with no
one else even close.
Fortunately,
Americans were spared this insignificant information.
