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<span class="slug"><big><big><big>IN THESE TIMES<br>
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<p class="photo-caption">Photos of the six Jesuit priests
and their housekeeper murdered by U.S.-supported soldier
in El Salvador's civil war—one of many examples of
American-sponsored terrorism—at a 2009 commemoration.
(Steve Rhodes / Flickr) </p>
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<h5 class="article-dateline"> Web Only / Features » November
3, 2014 </h5>
<h1 class="article-headline">Noam Chomsky: The Long, Shameful
History of American Terrorism</h1>
<p class="article-deck">President Obama should call our
country’s history of supporting insurgents abroad for what
it is: U.S.-backed terrorism.</p>
<span class="author">BY <a
href="http://inthesetimes.com/community/profile/10246">Noam
Chomsky</a></span>
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<p class="pullquote">A recent <em>New York Times</em>
articles lists three major examples of "covert aid," in
Angola, Nicaragua and Cuba. In fact, each case was a
major terrorist operation conducted by the U.S.</p>
</div>
<p>“It's official: The U.S. is the world's leading terrorist
state, and proud of it.”</p>
<p>That should have been the headline for the lead story in
the <em>New York Times</em> on October 15, which was more
politely titled “<a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/15/us/politics/cia-study-says-arming-rebels-seldom-works.html?_r=0">CIA
Study of Covert Aid Fueled Skepticism About Helping
Syrian Rebels</a>.”</p>
<p>The article reports on a CIA review of recent U.S. covert
operations to determine their effectiveness. The White
House concluded that unfortunately successes were so rare
that some rethinking of the policy was in order.</p>
<p>The article quoted President Barack Obama as saying that
he had asked the CIA to conduct the review 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 Obama has some reluctance about
continuing such efforts.</p>
<p>The first paragraph of the <em>Times</em> article cites
three major examples of “covert aid”: Angola, Nicaragua
and Cuba. In fact, each case was a major terrorist
operation conducted by the U.S.</p>
<p><a
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a copy of Noam Chomsky's newest book</em> Masters of
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Times <em>today</em></a>!</p>
<p>Angola was invaded by South Africa, which, according to
Washington, was defending itself from one of the world's
“more notorious terrorist groups”—Nelson Mandela's African
National Congress. That was 1988.</p>
<p>By then the Reagan administration was virtually alone in
its support for the apartheid regime, even violating
congressional sanctions to increase trade with its South
African ally.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Washington joined South Africa in providing
crucial support for Jonas Savimbi's terrorist Unita army
in Angola. Washington continued to do so even after
Savimbi had been roundly defeated in a carefully monitored
free election, and South Africa had withdrawn its support.
Savimbi was a “monster whose lust for power had brought
appalling misery to his people,” in the words of Marrack
Goulding, British ambassador to Angola.</p>
<p>The consequences were horrendous. A 1989 U.N. inquiry
estimated that South African depredations led to 1.5
million deaths in neighboring countries, let alone what
was happening within South Africa itself. Cuban forces
finally beat back the South African aggressors and
compelled them to withdraw from illegally occupied
Namibia. The U.S. alone continued to support the monster
Savimbi.</p>
<p>In Cuba, after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961,
President John F. Kennedy launched a murderous and
destructive campaign to bring “the terrors of the earth”
to Cuba—the words of Kennedy's close associate, the
historian Arthur Schlesinger, in his semiofficial
biography of Robert Kennedy, who was assigned
responsibility for the terrorist war.</p>
<p>The atrocities against Cuba were severe. The plans were
for the terrorism to culminate in an uprising in October
1962, which would lead to a U.S. invasion. By now,
scholarship recognizes that this was one reason why
Russian Premier Nikita Khrushchev placed missiles in Cuba,
initiating a crisis that came perilously close to nuclear
war. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara later conceded
that if he had been a Cuban leader, he “might have
expected a U.S. invasion.”</p>
<p>American terrorist attacks against Cuba continued for
more than 30 years. The cost to Cubans was of course
harsh. The accounts of the victims, hardly ever heard in
the U.S., were reported in detail for the first time in a
study by Canadian scholar Keith Bolender, <em><a
href="http://www.powells.com/partner/36495/biblio/9780745330419?p_tx"
rel="powells-9780745330419" title="More info about
this book at powells.com">Voices From the Other Side:
An Oral History of Terrorism Against Cuba</a></em>, in
2010.</p>
<p>The toll of the long terrorist war was amplified by a
crushing embargo, which continues even today in defiance
of the world. On Oct. 28, the U.N., for the 23rd time,
endorsed “the necessity of ending the economic,
commercial, financial blockade imposed by the United
States against Cuba.” The vote was 188 to 2 (U.S.,
Israel), with three U.S. Pacific Island dependencies
abstaining.</p>
<p>There is by now some opposition to the embargo in high
places in the U.S., reports ABC News, because “it is no
longer useful” (citing Hillary Clinton's new book <em><a
href="http://www.powells.com/partner/36495/biblio/9781476751443?p_tx"
rel="powells-9781476751443" title="More info about
this book at powells.com">Hard Choices</a></em>).
French scholar Salim Lamrani reviews the bitter costs to
Cubans in his 2013 book <em><a
href="http://www.powells.com/partner/36495/biblio/9781583673409?p_tx"
rel="powells-9781583673409" title="More info about
this book at powells.com">The Economic War Against
Cuba</a></em>.</p>
<p>Nicaragua need hardly be mentioned. President Ronald
Reagan's terrorist war was condemned by the World Court,
which ordered the U.S. to terminate its “unlawful use of
force” and to pay substantial reparations.</p>
<p>Washington responded by escalating the war and vetoing a
1986 U.N. Security Council resolution calling on all
states—meaning the U.S.—to observe international law.</p>
<p>Another example of terrorism will be commemorated
on November 16, the 25th anniversary of the assassination
of six Jesuit priests in San Salvador by a terrorist unit
of the Salvadoran army, armed and trained by the U.S. On
the orders of the military high command, the soldiers
broke into the Jesuit university to murder the priests and
any witnesses—including their housekeeper and her
daughter.</p>
<p>This event culminated the U.S. terrorist wars in Central
America in the 1980s, though the effects are still on the
front pages today in the reports of “illegal immigrants,”
fleeing in no small measure from the consequences of that
carnage, and being deported from the U.S. to survive, if
they can, in the ruins of their home countries.</p>
<p>Washington has also emerged as the world champion in
generating terror. Former CIA analyst Paul Pillar warns of
the “resentment-generating impact of the U.S. strikes” in
Syria, which may further induce the jihadi organizations
Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State toward “repairing
their breach from last year and campaigning in tandem
against the U.S. intervention by portraying it as a war
against Islam.”</p>
<p>That is by now a familiar consequence of U.S. operations
that have helped to spread jihadism from a corner of
Afghanistan to a large part of the world.</p>
<p>Jihadism's most fearsome current manifestation is the
Islamic State, or ISIS, which has established its
murderous caliphate in large areas of Iraq and Syria.</p>
<p>“I think the United States is one of the key creators of
this organization,” reports former CIA analyst Graham
Fuller, a prominent commentator on the region. “The United
States did not plan the formation of ISIS,” he adds, “but
its destructive interventions in the Middle East and the
War in Iraq were the basic causes of the birth of ISIS.”</p>
<p>To this we may add the world's greatest terrorist
campaign: Obama's global project of assassination of
“terrorists.” The “resentment-generating impact” of those
drone and special-forces strikes should be too well known
to require further comment.</p>
<p>This is a record to be contemplated with some awe.</p>
</div>
<div class="moreby"> <a
href="http://inthesetimes.com/community/profile/10246/"><img
src="cid:part11.06000909.07050208@comcast.net" alt=""
height="75" width="75">
<h2 class="sechead-article-author">Noam Chomsky</h2>
</a>
<p><b>Noam Chomsky</b> is Institute Professor &
Professor of Linguistics (Emeritus) at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, and the author of dozens of books
on U.S. foreign policy. He writes a monthly column for <i>The
New York Times</i> News Service/Syndicate.</p>
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