Gość: diabeł Western State Terrorism IP: webcacheP* / *.visp.energis.pl 17.12.02, 19:30 “Neither Jewish morality nor Jewish tradition can be used to disallow terror as a means of war... We are very far from any moral hesitations when concerned with the national struggle. First and foremost, terror is for us a part of the political war appropriate for the circumstances of today...” — Yitzhak Shamir Israeli Prime Minister, Zionist terrorist in an August 1943 article titled “Terror”, written for Hazit the journal of Lehi, the terrorist organization he belonged to Western State Terrorism www.americanstateterrorism.com/books/WesternStateTerrorism.html Edited by Alexander George; with essays by Noam Chomsky, Edward S. Herman, Gerry O’Sullivan and others Routledge, 1991, New York; in Britain: Polity Press, Basil Blackwell, 1991, Cambridge, Oxford; ISBN 0-745-609-317 Other ISBNs for Western State Terrorism: 0415904722; 0415904730; LC 91002715; 0745606725 This very important book is out of print, and there is no mention of it at all on the websites of its own publishers. As of this writing there is relatively little reference to it even on the Web in general. Excerpts from Western State Terrorism: Chapter 2 International Terrorism:Image and Reality by Noam Chomsky There are two ways to approach the study of terrorism. One may adopt a literal approach, taking the topic seriously, or a propagandistic approach, construing the concept of terrorism as a weapon to be exploited in the service of some system of power. In each case it is clear how to proceed. Pursuing the literal approach, we begin by determining what constitutes terrorism. We then seek instances of the phenomenon — concentrating on the major examples, if we are serious — and try to determine causes and remedies. The propagandistic approach dictates a different course. We begin with the thesis that terrorism is the responsibility of some officially designated enemy. We then designate terrorist acts as “terrorist” just in the cases where they can be attributed (whether plausibly or not) to the required source; otherwise they are to be ignored, suppressed, or termed “retaliation” or “self-defence.” It comes as no surprise that the propagandistic approach is adopted by governments generally, and by their instruments in totalitarian states. More interesting is the fact that the same is largely true of the media and scholarship in the Western industrial democracies, as has been documented in extensive detail.1 “We must recognize,” Michael Stohl observes, “that by convention — and it must be emphasized only by convention — great power use and the threat of the use of force is normally described as coercive diplomacy and not as a form of terrorism,” though it commonly involves “the threat and often the use of violence for what would be described as terroristic purposes were it not great powers who were pursuing the very same tactic.”2 Only one qualification must be added: the term “great powers” must be restricted to favored states; in the Western conventions under discussion, the Soviet Union is granted no such rhetorical license, and indeed can be charged and convicted on the flimsiest of evidence. Terrorism became a major public issue in the 1980s. The Reagan administration took office announcing its dedication to stamping out what the [jellybean- munching] president called “the evil scourge of terrorism,” a plague spread by “depraved opponents of civilization itself” in “a return to barbarism in the modern age” (Secretary of State George Shultz). The campaign focused on a particularly virulent form of the plague: state-directed international terrorism. The central thesis attributed responsibility to a Soviet- based “worldwide terror network aimed at the destabilization of Western democratic society,” in the words of Claire Sterling, whose highly-praised book The Terror Network became the Bible of the administration and the founding document of the new discipline of terrorology. It was taken to have provided “ample evidence” that terrorism occurs “almost exclusively in democratic or relatively democratic societies” (Walter Laqueur), leaving little doubt about the origins of the plague. The book was soon exposed as a worthless propaganda tract, but the thesis remained intact, dominating mainstream reporting, commentary, and scholarship. By the mid-1980s, concern over international terrorism reached the level of virtual frenzy. Middle-East/Mediterranean terrorism was selected by editors as the lead story of 1985 in an AP poll, and a year later the tourism industry in Europe was badly hit as Americans stayed away in fear of Arab terrorists infesting European cities. The plague then subsided, the monster having been tamed by the cool courage of the cowboy, according to the approved version. Shifting to the literal approach, we first define the concept of terrorism, and then investigate its application, letting the chips fall where they may. Let us see where this course takes. Odpowiedz Link Zgłoś
Gość: diabeł Western State Terrorism IP: webcacheP* / *.visp.energis.pl 17.12.02, 19:35 1 The Concept of Terrorism Concepts of political discourse are hardly models of clarity, but there is general agreement as to what constitutes terrorism. As a point of departure we may take the official United States Code: “act of terrorism” means an activity that — (A) involves a violent act or an act dangerous to human life that is a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or any State, or that would be a criminal violation if committed within the jurisdiction of the United States or of any State; and (B) appears to be intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by assassination or kidnapping.3 The concept is not precisely delimited. First, the boundary between international terrorism and aggression is not always clear. On this matter, let us give the benefit of the doubt to the United States and its clients: if they reject the charge of aggression in the case of some act of international violence, we will take it to fall under the lesser crime of terrorism. There is also disagreement over the distinction between terrorism and retaliation or legitimate resistance, to which we return. US sources also provide more succinct definitions of “terrorism.” A US Army manual on countering terrorism defines it as “the calculated use of violence or threat of violence to attain goals that are political, religious or ideological in nature. This is done through intimidation, coercion, or instilling fear.” Still simpler is the characterization in a Pentagon-commissioned study by noted terrorologist Robert Kupperman, which speaks of the threat or use of force “to achieve political objectives without the full-scale commitment of resources.” 4 Kupperman, however, is not discussing terrorism, rather, low intensity conflict (LIC), a central doctrine of the Reagan administration. Note that as the description indicates and actual practice confirms, LIC — much like its predecessor “counterinsurgency” — is hardly more than a euphemism for state- directed international terrorism, that is, reliance on force that does not reach the level of the war crime of aggression. The point is recognized within the scholarly discipline, though with the usual doctrinal twist. One leading Israeli specialist observes that “state-sponsored terrorism is a form of low-intensity conflict that states undertake when they find it convenient to engage in ‘war’ without being held accountable for their actions” (Professor Yonah Alexander).5 Alexander restricts his attention to the Kremlin conspiracy to destabilize the West with “surrogate groups,” offering such examples as “an extensive PLO training programme... provided for Nicaragua.” In this conception, “the PLO, which maintains a special relationship with Moscow,” serves its Soviet master by passing on the “specialized training” in terrorism it acquires in the Soviet Union to Nicaragua, which is therefore able to conduct LIC against the United States and its interests. He also suggests ways in which “the Eastern Bloc’s sincerity must be tested;” for example, “Showing willingness to stop propaganda campaigns linking the US and its allies to terrorism.” As the examples illustrate, it would take a fertile imagination to conjure up a thought so outlandish as to ruffle the composure of the fraternity, as long as doctrinal purity is preserved. Odpowiedz Link Zgłoś
Gość: diabeł Western State Terrorism IP: webcacheP* / *.visp.energis.pl 17.12.02, 19:38 2 Terrorism and the Political Culture There are many terrorist states in the world, but the United States is unusual in that it is officially committed to international terrorism, and on a scale that puts its rivals to shame. Thus Iran is surely a terrorist state, as Western governments and media rightly proclaim. Its major known contribution to international terrorism was revealed during the Iran-Contra inquiries: namely, Iran’s perhaps inadvertent involvement in the US proxy war against Nicaragua. This fact is unacceptable, therefore unnoticed, though the Iranian connection in US-directed international terrorism was exposed at a time of impassioned denunciation of Iranian terrorism. The same inquiries revealed that under the Reagan Doctrine, the US had forged new paths in international terrorism. Some states employ individual terrorists and criminals to carry out violent acts abroad. But in the Reagan years, the US went further, not only constructing a semi-private international terrorist network but also an array of client and mercenary states — Taiwan, South Korea, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and others — to finance and implement its terrorist operations. This advance in international terrorism was revealed during the period of maximal anguish over the plague, but did not enter into the discussion and debate. The US commitment to international terrorism reaches to fine detail. Thus the proxy forces attacking Nicaragua were directed by their CIA and Pentagon commanders to attack “soft targets,” that is, barely defended civilian targets. The State Department specifically authorized attacks on agricultural cooperatives — exactly what we denounce with horror when the agent is Abu Nidal. Media doves expressed thoughtful approval of this stand. New Republic editor Michael Kinsley, at the liberal extreme of mainstream commentary, argued that we should not be too quick to dismiss State Department justifications for terrorist attacks on farming cooperatives: a “sensible policy” must “meet the test of cost-benefit analysis,” an analysis of “the amount of blood and misery that will be poured in, and the likelihood that democracy will emerge at the other end.” It is understood that US elites have the right to conduct the analysis and pursue the project if it passes their tests.6 When a Contra supply plane was shot down in October 1986 with an American mercenary on board, it became impossible to suppress the evidence of illegal CIA supply flights to the proxy forces. The Iran-Contra hearings ensued, focusing much attention on these topics. A few days after they ended, the Central American presidents signed the Esquipulas II peace agreement. The US undertook at once to subvert it. The agreement identified one factor as “an indispensable element to achieving a stable and lasting peace in the region,” namely termination of any form of aid “to irregular forces or insurgent movements” on the part of “regional or extraregional” governments. In response, the US moved at once to escalate the attacks on soft targets in Nicaragua. Right at the moment when indignation over Washington’s clandestine operations peaked, Congress and the media kept their eyes scrupulously averted from the rapid increase in CIA supply flights to several a day, while cooperating with the White House program of dismantling the unwanted accords, a goal finally achieved in January 1988; though further steps were required to subvert a follow-up agreement of the Central American presidents in February 1989.7 As supply and surveillance flights for the proxy forces increased, so did violence and terror, as intended. This too passed largely unnoticed, though an occasional reference could be found. The Los Angeles Times reported in October 1987 that “Western military analysts say the contras have been stashing tons of newly dropped weapons lately while trying to avoid heavy combat... Meanwhile, they have stepped up attacks on easy government targets like the La Patriota farm cooperative..., where several militiamen, an elderly woman and her year- old grandson died in a pre-dawn shelling.” To select virtually at random from the many cases deemed unworthy of notice, on November 2, 1987, 150 Contras attacked two villages in the southern province of Rio San Juan with 88-mm mortars and rocket-propelled grenades, killing six children and six adults and injuring 30 others. Even cooperatives of religious pacifists who refused to bear arms were destroyed by the US terrorist forces. In El Salvador too, the army attacks cooperatives, killing, raping and abducting members.8 The decision of the International Court of Justice in June 1986 condemning the United States for the “unlawful use of force” and illegal economic warfare was dismissed as an irrelevant pronouncement by a “hostile forum” (New York Times). Little notice was taken when the US vetoed a Security Council resolution calling on all states to observe international law and voted against General Assembly resolutions to the same effect (with Israel and El Salvador in 1986; with Israel alone in 1987). The guiding principle, it appears, is that the US is a lawless terrorist state and this is right and just, whatever the world may think, whatever international institutions may declare. A corollary is the doctrine that no state has the right to defend itself from US attack. The broad acquiescence in this remarkable doctrine was revealed as Reagan administration agitprop floated periodic stories about Nicaraguan plans to obtain jet interceptors. There was some criticism of the media for uncritically swallowing the disinformation, but a more significant fact was ignored: the general agreement that such behavior on the part of Nicaragua would be entirely unacceptable. When the tale was concocted to divert attention from the Nicaraguan elections of 1984, Senator Paul Tsongas of Massachusetts, with the support of other leading doves, warned that the US would have to bomb Nicaragua if it obtained vintage 1950s MiGs, because “they’re also capable against the United States,” hence a threat to its security — as distinct, say, from US nuclear missiles on alert status in Turkey, no threat to the USSR since they are purely for defensive purposes.9 It is understood that jet interceptors might enable Nicaragua to protect its territory from the CIA supply flights needed to keep the US proxy forces in the field and the regular surveillance flights that provide them with up-to-the-minute information on the disposition of Nicaraguan troops, so that they can safely attack soft targets. Understood, but scarcely mentioned.10 And it seems that no one in the mainstream released the open secret that Nicaragua would happily accept French planes instead of MiGs if the US had not pressured its allies to bar military aid so that we might cower in fear of “the Soviet-supplied Sandinistas.” The same issue arose in August 1988, when congressional doves effusively supported the Byrd Amendment on “Assistance for the Nicaraguan Resistance.” Three days before, the Contras had attacked the passenger vessel Mission of Peace, killing two people and wounding 27, all civilians, including a Baptist minister from New Jersey who headed a US religious delegation. The incident was unmentioned in the Senate debate on the Byrd Amendment. Rather, congressional doves warned that if the Nicaraguan army carried out “an unprovoked military attack” or “any other hostile action” against the perpetrators of such terrorist atrocities, then Congress would respond with vigor and righteo Odpowiedz Link Zgłoś
Gość: diabeł Western State Terrorism IP: webcacheP* / *.visp.energis.pl 17.12.02, 19:40 Rather, congressional doves warned that if the Nicaraguan army carried out “an unprovoked military attack” or “any other hostile action” against the perpetrators of such terrorist atrocities, then Congress would respond with vigor and righteousness by renewing official military aid to them. Media coverage and other commentary found nothing odd or noteworthy in this stance. The message is clear: no one has the right of self-defense against US terrorist attack. The US is a terrorist state by right. That is unchallengeable doctrine. Accordingly, organization of a terrorist proxy army to subdue some recalcitrant population is a legitimate chore. On the right, Jeane Kirkpatrick explained that “forceful intervention in the affairs of another nation” is neither “impractical” nor “immoral”11 — merely illegal, a crime for which people were hanged at Nuremberg and Tokyo with ringing declarations that this was not “victor’s justice” because, as Justice Robert Jackson proclaimed, “If certain acts and violations of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them. We are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us.12 Countering any such thoughts, Irving Kristol explains that “The argument from international law lacks all credibility.” True, “a great power should not ordinarily intervene in the domestic affairs of a smaller nation,” but this principle is overcome if “another great power has previously breached this rule.” Since it is “beyond dispute” that “the Soviet Union has intervened in Nicaragua” by providing arms and technicians “in both the military and civilian spheres,” then the US has the right to send it proxy army to attack Nicaragua. By the same argument, the Soviet Union has a perfect right to attack Turkey or Denmark — far more of a security threat to it than Nicaragua is to the United States — since it is “beyond dispute” that the US provides them with assistance, and would do far more if the USSR were to exercise the right of aggression accorded it by Kristol’s logic. Kristol might, however, counter this argument too by invoking a crucial distinction that he has drawn elsewhere in connection with the right of forceful intervention by the United States: “insignificant nations, like insignificant people, can quickly experience delusions of significance,” he explained. And when they do, these delusions must be driven from their minds by force: “In truth, the days of ‘gunboat diplomacy’ are never over... Gunboats are as necessary for international order as police cars are for domestic order.” Hence the US is entitled to use violence against Nicaragua, an insignificant nation, though the USSR lacks this right in the case of Turkey or Denmark.13 The overwhelming endorsement for US-directed international terrorism should not be obscured by the wide elite opposition to the Contra war. By 1986, polls showed that 80 percent of “leaders” opposed aid to the Contras, and there was vigorous debate in Congress and the media about the program. But it is important to attend to the terms of the debate. At the dissident extreme, Tom Wicker of the New York Times observed that “Mr. Reagan’s policy of supporting [the Contras] is a clear failure,” so we should “acquiesce in some negotiated regional arrangement that would be enforced by Nicaragua’s neighbors” — if they can take time away from slaughtering their own populations, a feature of these terror states that does not exclude them from the role of enforcing regional arrangements on the errant Sandinistas, against whom no remotely comparable charge could credibly be made. Expressing the same thought, the editors of the Washington Post saw the Contras as “an imperfect instrument,” so that other means must be sought to “fit Nicaragua back into a Central American mode” and impose “reasonable conduct by a regional standard,” the standard of Washington’s terror states. Senate Majority Whip Alan Cranston, a leading dove, recognized that “the Contra effort is woefully inadequate to achieve...democracy in Nicaragua” (the US aim by doctrinal fiat, whatever the facts may be), so the US must find other means to “isolate” the “reprehensible” government in Managua and “leave it to fester in its own juices.” No such strictures hold for Washington’s murderous clients.14 In short, there is little deviation from the basic terms of Michael Kinsley’s “sensible policy.” The questions have to do with efficacy, not principle. The state has the right to use violence as deemed appropriate. The motivation for the resort to international terrorism has been candidly explained. High administration officials observed that the goal of the attack against Nicaragua was “forcing [the Sandinistas] to divert scarce resources to the war and away from social programs.” This was the basic thrust of the 1981 CIA program endorsed by the administration. As outlined by former CIA analyst David MacMichael in his testimony before the World Court, this program has as its purpose: to use the proxy army to “provoke cross-border attacks by Nicaraguan forces and thus serve to demonstrate Nicaragua’s aggressive nature,” to pressure the Nicaraguan Government to “clamp down on civil liberties within Nicaragua itself, arresting its opposition, demonstrating its allegedly inherent totalitarian nature and thus increase domestic dissent within the country,” and to undermine the shattered economy. Discussing the strategy of maintaining a terrorist force within Nicaragua after the huge CIA supply operation was theoretically cancelled by Congress in February 1988 (and the proxy forces largely fled, revealing — though not to articulate opinion — how little resemblance they bore to indigenous guerillas), a Defense Department official explained: “Those 2000 hard-core guys could keep some pressure on the Nicaraguan government, force them to use their economic resources for the military, and prevent them from solving their economic problems — and that’s a plus... Anything that puts pressure on the Sandinista regime, calls attention to the lack of democracy, and prevents the Sandinistas from solving their economic problems is a plus.” Viron Vaky, Assistant Secretary of State for Interamerican Affairs in the Carter administration, observed that the principal argument for the terrorist attack is that “a longer war of attrition will so weaken the regime, provoke such a radical hardening of repression, and win sufficient support from Nicaragua’s discontented population that sooner or later the regime will be overthrown by popular revolt, self-destruct by means of internal coups or leadership splits, or simply capitulate to salvage what it can.” As a dove, Vaky regards the conception as “flawed” but in no way wrong.15 The terrorist forces fully understand their directives, as we learn from one of the most important defectors of the 1980s, the head of intelligence of the main Contra force (FDN), Horacio Arce, whose nom de guerre was “Mercenario”, — talk of “democrats” and “freedom fighters” is for home consumption. Sandinista defectors are eagerly exploited by the White House and the media, and the Contra Odpowiedz Link Zgłoś
Gość: diabeł Western State Terrorism cd. IP: *.visp.energis.pl 31.12.02, 16:33 The terrorist forces fully understand their directives, as we learn from one of the most important defectors of the 1980s, the head of intelligence of the main Contra force (FDN), Horacio Arce, whose nom de guerre was “Mercenario”, — talk of “democrats” and “freedom fighters” is for home consumption. Sandinista defectors are eagerly exploited by the White House and the media, and the Contras generally received extensive coverage. Contra defectors are another matter, particularly when they have unwelcome tales to relate. Arce was ignored in the US when he defected in late 1988. In interviews in Mexico before returning to Managua to accept amnesty, Arce described his illegal training in an air force base in the southern United States, identified by name the CIA agents who provided support for the Contras under the AID cover in the US Embassy in Tegucigalpa, outlined how the Honduran army provides intelligence and support for Contra military activities, and discussed the immense corruption of the proxy forces and their sale of arms to the Honduran arms bazaar where they then reach Salvadoran guerillas. He then explained: “We attack a lot of schools, health centers, and those sort of things. We have tried to make it so that the Nicaraguan government cannot provide social services for the peasants, cannot develop its project... that’s the idea.” The success of the US training is amply confirmed by the record.16 The contra war easily qualifies as “state-sponsored terrorism,” as former CIA director Stansfield Turner testified before Congress in April 1985. But one might argue that it should be termed outright aggression. That might be taken to be the import of the 1986 World Court decision. Let us, however, continue to give the US the benefit of the doubt, thus assigning its actions against Nicaragua to the category of international terrorism. 3 International Terrorism in the 1980s During the 1980s, the primary locus of international terrorism has been Central America. In Nicaragua the US proxy forces left a trail of murder, torture, rape, mutilation, kidnapping, and destruction, but were impeded because civilians had an army to defend them. No comparable problems arose in the US client states, where the main terrorist force attacking the civilian population is the army and other state security forces. In El Salvador, tens of thousands were slaughtered in what Archbishop Rivera y Damas in October 1980, shortly after the operations moved into high gear, described as “a war of extermination and genocide against a defenseless civilian population.” This exercise in state terror sought “to destroy the people’s organizations fighting to defend their fundamental human rights,” as Archbishop Oscar Romero warned shortly before his assassination, while vainly pleading with President Carter not to send aid to the armed forces who, he continued, “know only how to repress the people and defend the interests of the Salvadorean oligarchy.”17 The goals were largely achieved during the Reagan administration, which escalated the savagery of the assault against the population to new heights. When it seemed that the US might be drawn into an invasion that would be harmful to its own interests, there was some concern and protest in elite circles, but that abated as state terror appeared successful, with the popular organizations decimated and “decapitated.” After elections under conditions of violence and repression guaranteeing victory to privileged elements acceptable to the US, the issue largely passed below the threshold. Little notice was taken of the significant increase in state terror after the Esquipulas II accords; or of an Amnesty International report entitled El Salvador: “Death Squads” — A Government Strategy (October 1988), reporting the “alarming rise” in killings by official death squads as part of the government strategy of intimidating any potential opposition by “killing and mutilating victims in the most macabre way,” leaving victims “mutilated, decapitated, dismembered, strangled or showing marks of torture... or rape.” Since the goal of the government strategy is “to intimidate or coerce a civilian population” (that is, terrorism, as officially defined in the US Code), it is not enough simply to kill. Rather, bodies must be left dismembered by the roadside, and women must be found hanging from trees by their hair with their faces painted red and their breasts cut off, while domestic elites pretend not to see as they continue to fund, train, and support the murderers and torturers. In the same years, a massacre of even greater scale took place in Guatemala, also supported throughout by the United States and its mercenary states. Here too, terror increased after the Esquipulas II peace agreement in order to guard against steps towards democracy, social reform, and protection of human rights called for in the accords. As in El Salvador, these developments were virtually ignored; the assigned task at the time was to focus attention on Nicaragua and to express vast outrage when Nicaragua occasionally approached the lesser abuses that are regular practices in the US client states. Since the goal is to restore Nicaragua to “the Central American mode” and ensure that it observes the “regional standards” satisfied by El Salvador and Guatemala, terror in client states is of no real concern, unless it becomes so visible as to endanger the flow of aid to the killers.18 Notice crucially that all of this is international terrorism, supported or directly organized in Washington with the assistance of its international network of mercenary states. Well after the 1984 elections that were hailed for having brought democracy to El Salvador, the church-based human rights organization Socorro Juridico, operating under the protection of the archdiocese of San Salvador, described the results of the continuing terror, still conducted by “the same members of the armed forces who enjoy official approval and are adequately trained to carry out these acts of collective suffering,” in the following terms: Salvadoran society, affected by terror and panic, a result of the persistent violation of basic human rights, shows the following traits: collective intimidation and generalized fear, on the one hand, and on the other the internalized acceptance of the terror because of the daily and frequent use of violent means. In general, society accepts the frequent appearance of tortured bodies, because basic rights, the right to life, has absolutely no overriding value for society.19 The same comment applies to the societies that oversee these operations, or simply look the other way. 4 Before the Official Plague International terrorism is, of course, not an invention of the 1980s. In the previous two decades, its major victims were Cuba and Lebanon. Anti-Cuban terrorism was directed by a secret Special Group established in November 1961 under the code name “Mongoose,” involving 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.20 These operations included bombing of hotels and industrial installations, sinking of fishing boats, poisoning of crops and livestock, contamination of sugar exports, etc. Not all of these actions were specifically authorized by the CIA, but no such considerations absolve official enemies. Several of Odpowiedz Link Zgłoś
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