Objet: [STOPNATO] Fw: [MLL] United States Intervention
(Part III)
Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2000 01:36:01 +0100
De: "Bill Howard" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Répondre-A: "STOP NATO: ¡NO PASARAN!" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
A: <Undisclosed-Recipient:;>
STOP NATO: ¡NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.COM
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Tuesday, July 25, 2000 11:36 AM
Subject: [MLL] United States Intervention
(Part III)
Since 1945 the United States has carried out extremely serious
wars of aggression and interventions in more than 70 nations.
Parts I and II of this series, published in the last two issues
of "The Guardian", brought the series up to the 1960s. This week,
the final in the series, covers actions commenced in the 1970s up
to the present.
by William Blum
East Timor, 1975 to present: In December 1975, Indonesia invaded
East Timor, which lies at the eastern end of the Indonesian
archipelago, and which had proclaimed its independence after
Portugal had relinquished control of it.
The invasion was launched the day after US President Gerald Ford
and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had left Indonesia after
giving President Suharto permission to use American arms which,
under US law, could not be used for aggression. Indonesia was
Washington's most valuable tool in Southeast Asia.
Amnesty International estimated that by 1989, Indonesian troops,
with the aim of forcibly annexing East Timor, had killed 200,000
people out of a population of between 600,000 and 700,000.
The United States consistently supported Indonesia's claim to
East Timor (unlike the UN and the EU), and downplayed the
slaughter to a remarkable degree.
At the same time the US supplied Indonesia with all the military
hardware and training it needed to carry out the job.
Nicaragua 1978-89: When the Sandinistas overthrew the Somoza
dictatorship in 1978, it was clear to Washington that they might
well be that long-dreaded beast -- "another Cuba".
Under President Carter, attempts to sabotage the revolution took
diplomatic and economic forms.
Under Reagan, violence was the method of choice. For eight
terribly long years, the people of Nicaragua were under attack by
Washington's proxy army, the Contras, formed from Somoza's
vicious National Guardsmen and other supporters of the dictator.
It was all-out war, aiming to destroy the progressive social and
economic programs of the government, burning down schools and
medical clinics, raping, torturing, mining harbours, bombing and
strafing. These were Ronald Reagan's "freedom fighters".
There would be no revolution in Nicaragua.
Grenada 1979-84: What would drive the most powerful nation in the
world to invade a country of 110,000?
Maurice Bishop and his followers had taken power in a 1979 coup.
Although their actual policies were not as revolutionary as
Castro's, public appearances by the Grenadian leaders in other
countries of the region met with great enthusiasm.
Washington was again driven by its fear of "another Cuba". US
destabilisation tactics against the Bishop Government began soon
after the coup and continued until 1983, featuring numerous acts
of disinformation and dirty tricks.
The US invasion in October 1983 met minimal resistance, although
the US suffered 135 killed or wounded; there were also some 400
Grenadian casualties, and 84 Cubans, mainly construction workers.
What conceivable human purpose these people died for has not been
revealed. At the end of 1984, a questionable election was held.
It was won by a man supported by the Reagan administration.
One year later, the human rights organisation, Council on
Hemispheric Affairs, reported that Grenada's new US-trained
police force and counter-insurgency forces had acquired a
reputation for brutality, arbitrary arrest, and abuse of
authority, and were eroding civil rights.
In April 1989, the government issued a list of more than 80 books
which were prohibited from being imported. Four months later, the
Prime Minister suspended parliament to forestall a threatened no-
confidence vote resulting from what his critics called "an
increasingly authoritarian style".
Libya 1981-89: Libya refused to be a proper Middle East client
state of Washington. Its leader, Muammar el-Qaddafi, was uppity.
He would have to be punished.
US planes shot down two Libyan planes in what Libya regarded as
its air space. The US also dropped bombs on the country, killing
at least 40 people, including Qaddafi's daughter.
There were other attempts to assassinate the man, operations to
overthrow him, a major disinformation campaign, economic
sanctions, and blaming Libya for being behind the Pan Am 103
bombing without any good evidence.
Panama, 1989: Washington's mad bombers strike again. December
1989, a large tenement barrio in Panama City wiped out, 15,000
people left homeless.
Counting several days of ground fighting against Panamanian
forces, 500-something dead was the official body count (what the
US and the new US-installed Panamanian Government admitted to).
Other sources, with no less evidence, insisted that thousands had
died; 3,000-something wounded. Twenty-three Americans dead, 324
wounded.
Question from reporter: "Was it really worth it to send people to
their death for this? To get Noriega?"
George Bush: "Every human life is precious, and yet I have to
answer, yes, it has been worth it."
Manuel Noriega had been an American ally and informant for years
until he outlived his usefulness. But getting him was not the
only motive for the attack.
Bush wanted to send a clear message to the people of Nicaragua,
who had an election scheduled in two months, that this might be
their fate if they re-elected the Sandinistas.
Bush also wanted to flex some military muscle to illustrate to
Congress the need for a large combat-ready force, even after the
very recent dissolution of the "Soviet threat".
The official explanation for the American ouster was Noriega's
drug trafficking, which Washington had known about for years and
had not been at all bothered by.
Iraq 1990s: Relentless bombing for more than 40 days and nights,
against one of the most advanced nations in the Middle East,
devastating its ancient and modern capital city.
177 million pounds of bombs falling on the people of Iraq, the
most concentrated aerial onslaught in the history of the world;
using depleted uranium weapons and incinerating people, causing
cancer.
Chemical and biological weapon storages and oil facilities
blasted, poisoning the atmosphere to a degree perhaps never
matched anywhere; soldiers buried alive, deliberately.
The infrastructure destroyed, with a terrible effect on health;
sanctions continued to this day multiplying the health problems;
perhaps a million children dead by now from all of these things,
even more adults.
Iraq was the strongest military power amongst the Arab states.
This may have been their crime.
Noam Chomsky has written: "It's been a leading, driving doctrine
of US foreign policy since the 1940s that the vast and
unparalleled energy resources of the Gulf region will be
effectively dominated by the United States and its clients and,
crucially, that no independent, indigenous force will be
permitted to have a substantial influence on the administration
of oil production and price."
Afghanistan 1979-92: Everyone knows of the unbelievable
repression of women in Afghanistan, carried out by Islamic
fundamentalists, even before the Taliban.
But how many people know that during the late 1970s and most of
the 1980s, Afghanistan had a government committed to bringing the
incredibly backward nation into the 20th century, including
giving women equal rights?
What happened, however, is that the United States poured billions
of dollars into waging a terrible war against this government,
simply because it was supported by the Soviet Union.
Prior to this, CIA operations had knowingly increased the
probability of a Soviet intervention, which is what occurred. In
the end, the United States won, and the women, and the rest of
Afghanistan, lost.
More than a million dead, three million disabled, five million
refugees, in total about half the population.
El Salvador, 1980-92: Salvador's dissidents tried to work within
the system. But with US support, the government made that
impossible, using repeated electoral fraud and murdering hundreds
of protesters and strikers. In 1980, the dissidents took to the
gun, and civil war.
Officially, the US military presence in El Salvador was limited
to an advisory capacity. In actuality, military and CIA personnel
played a more active role on a continuous basis.
About 20 Americans were killed or wounded in helicopter and plane
crashes while flying reconnaissance or other missions over combat
areas, and considerable evidence surfaced of a US role in the
ground fighting as well.
The war came to an official end in 1992; 75,000 civilian deaths
and the US Treasury depleted by US$6 billion.
Meaningful social change has been largely thwarted. A handful of
the wealthy still own the country, the poor remain as ever, and
dissidents still have to fear right-wing death squads.
Haiti, 1987-94: The US supported the Duvalier family dictatorship
for 30 years, then opposed the reformist priest, Jean-Bertrand
Aristide. Meanwhile, the CIA was working intimately with death
squads, torturers and drug traffickers.
With this as background, the Clinton White House found itself in
the awkward position of having to pretend -- because of all their
rhetoric about "democracy" -- that they supported Aristide's
return to power in Haiti after he had been ousted in a 1991
military coup.
After delaying his return for more than two years, Washington
finally had its military restore Aristide to office, but only
after obliging the priest to guarantee that he would not help the
poor at the expense of the rich, and that he would stick closely
to free-market economics.
This meant that Haiti would continue to be the assembly plant of
the Western Hemisphere, with its workers receiving literally
starvation wages.
Yugoslavia, 1999: The United States set about bombing the country
back to a pre-industrial era. It would like the world to believe
that its intervention was motivated only by "humanitarian"
impulses.
Perhaps the above history of US interventions, can help one
decide how much weight to place on this claim.
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