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Western State Terrorism PDF

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WESTERN STATE TERRORISM Edited by Alexander George Routledge New York ibC ” 3lr, I 99 / Copyright © this collection Polity Press 1991 Each chapter copyright © the author First published in the U.S.A. and Canada by Routledge, Chapman & Hall, Inc. 29 West 35 Street New York, New York 10001 First published 1991 by Polity Press in association with Basil Blackwell All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. ISBN 0-415-90472-2 (cloth) ISBN 0-415-90473-0 (paperback) Cataloging in Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress. Printed on acid-free paper Typeset in 10 on 12 pt Times by Colset Private Limited, Singapore Printed in Great Britain by T.J. Press Ltd., Padstow, Cornwall Contents Contributors 1 Introduction 2 Internationa! Terrorism: Image and Reality Noam Chomsky 3 “Terrorism” as Ideology and Cultural Industry Edward S. Herman and Gerry O’Sullivan 4 The Discipline of Terrorology Alexander George 5 The Terrorist Foundations of Recent US Foreign Policy Richard Falk 6 American Doctrine and Counterinsurgent State Terror Michael McClintock 7 Containment and its Failure: The British State and the Control of Conflict in Northern Ireland Bill Rolston 8 Indonesia: Mass Extermination and the Consolidation of Authoritarian Power Carmel Budiardjo 9 The Reagan Doctrine and the Destabilization of Southern Africa Sean Gervasi and Sybil Wong Index Contributors Carmel Budiardjo Organizing Secretary of TAPOL, the Indonesia Human Rights Campaign; author of articles and books on Southeast Asia, including The War Against East Timor (with Liem Soei Liong) Noam Chomsky Institute Professor of Linguistics at MIT; author of numerous essays and books on US foreign policy, most recently Neces­ sary Illusions Richard Falk Professor of International Relations at Princeton University; author of many articles and books on foreign affairs, including Revolutionaries and Functionaries Alexander George Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Amherst College Sean Gervasi A US economist who teaches in Paris, he worked for many years at the United Nations on Southern African questions and, from 1982 to 1984, was an adviser to the Ministry of Information in Maputo; he has written extensively on Southern African affairs Edward S. Herman Professor of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania; author of many books and articles on US foreign policy, the media and terrorism, including Manufacturing Consent (with Noam Chomsky) Gerry O’Sullivan Freelance writer and doctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania Michael McClintock Researcher at Amnesty International (London); author of The American Connection, Volume One: State Terror and Popular Resistance in El Salvador and Volume Two: State Terror and Popular Resistance in Guatemala Contributors Bill Rolston Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Ulster; he has written extensively on Northern Ireland, including Belfast in the Thirties: an Oral History (with Ronnie Munck) and Unemployment in West Belfast: the Obair Report (with Mike Tomlinson) Sybil Wong Executive Director of the Berkshire Forum Acknowledgements I have had more than a little help from my friends. I extend my deep gratitude to all of them. Thanks also to Wolfson College (Oxford) and to Amherst College for their support. Alexander George 1 Introduction Terrorism is one of the major long-lived foreign policy issues covered and debated in the wide-circulation media. For at least the past decade, ter­ rorism has been a dominant topic, eliciting substantial reporting, analysis, and commentary. The Reagan administration entered office declaring that terrorism was one of the most important challenges the United States faced in foreign affairs. This declaration set the framework within which most discussions of terrorism have proceeded ever since. Terrorism, on this conception, targets primarily the West and is perpetrated by fanatical groups supplied, if not controlled, by a handful of lawless states and perhaps ultimately the Soviet Union. The articles in this collection argue in different ways and with different emphases that this conception is a misconception. There is no doubt that terrorists have mounted operations against citizens, property, and installations of the United States and the West. There is also little doubt that some of these operations have been supported in varying degrees by foreign governments. The misconception consists in thinking that such operations constitute the bulk of terrorist atrocities in the world today. One reason it is very difficult not to think this is because the term “terrorism” has been virtually appropriated by mainstream political discussion to signify atrocities targeting the West. This makes it difficult to consider whether there might be (very substantial) acts of terrorism other than those typically focused on by the media, academics, and government spokespersons. The plain and painful truth is that on any reasonable definition of terrorism, taken literally, the United States and its friends are the major supporters, sponsors, and perpetrators of terrorist incidents in the world today. Again, this is not to deny that the West is sometimes the victim of terrorism or that the Soviet Union and its satellites are to some degree 1 Introduction responsible for some terrorist actions. It is to affirm - what should surely be of greatest concern to citizens of the West - that many, probably most, significant instances of terrorism are supported, if not organized, by the US, its partners, and their client states. Some of the essays in this volume seek mainly to establish what might be called the fundamental thesis about terrorism: that its primary manifestations are supported, or directly carried out, by Western govern­ ments. Others examine questions that immediately follow: (1) Why is the thesis true, that is, in whose interest is it that the West, and the US in particular, substantially sponsor mass terrorism? (2) How has this situa­ tion arisen and what are the forces that keep it in place? (3) What is the ideological framework of assumptions within which most discussions of terrorism (in the mainstream media and academic scholarship) take place, and which functions are served by it? (4) Which mechanisms render this framework the dominant one (indeed, for all practical purposes, the only one)? Recent events in El Salvador provide supporting (and in equal measure shameful) evidence for this central thesis. On November 11, 1989, the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) launched its most substantial offensive yet against the government of El Salvador. In the week that followed, some 1,000 non-combatants were killed or wounded, most of them victims of indiscriminate aerial bombardment by the Salvadoran military. The New York Times reported that “According to relief officials, the great majority of wounded people that had been treated thus far received their injuries from the Government’s aerial bom­ bardments. And the officials assert that at least four-fifths of the casualties processed so far have been civilians.”1 “In addition,” reports the human rights group Americas Watch, “the Army created an untenable and unfair situation for residents by placing many areas under a 24-hour curfew and then bombing the curfewed areas, sometimes without warn­ ing.”2 That the Salvadoran military has the competence to avoid indiscriminate bombardment when it wants to was illustrated by the markedly different fashion in which it attempted to retake the Sheraton- E1 Salvador in the wealthy district of Escalón. According to Americas Watch, In contrast to its behavior in poor neighborhoods, the Salvadoran army surrounded the hotel and tried to attack the guerrillas from the air, but showed considerable restraint to protect the residences and civilians in the wealthy neighborhoods. Also in stark contrast with its attitudes of the preceding days, the Salvadoran Army agreed to a short truce to allow the guests, including the armed US soldiers, to leave the place unharmed.3 2 Introduction This deliberate exercise of indiscriminate mass terror was accompanied by highly selective acts of violence, most notoriously the murder on November 16 of six Jesuit priests, their cook and her 15-year-old daughter (the latter two presumed to be witnesses to the killings of the priests). Some of the priests were among the country’s most prominent liberal intellectuals and human rights advocates: Father Ignacio Ellacuria, rector of the Central American University (UCA); Father Ignacio Martin Baro, vice-rector of the UCA; Father Segundo Montes, head of the UCA’s human rights institute. Their murder has had the presumably intended effect of paralyzing the country with fear: if even the most renowed pro­ ponents of a negotiated settlement can be gunned down, then no one is safe. The Bush administration throughout has provided the terroristic Salvadoran regime with support of every kind. At the same time human rights groups and the archbishop of San Salvador, Arturo Rivera y Damas, were charging that the eight were victims of the Salvadoran armed forces, US Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney was assuring the press and Congress that no evidence existed to implicate the army.4 Bush himself attempted to deflect responsibility for the killings away from the Salvadoran regime: Asked if he believed Mr Cristiani’s [President of El Salvador] assurances that the Salvadoran government was not involved, Mr Bush said, “Absolutely, I believe it.” “If renegade forces were involved on the left or on the right, they should be brought to justice,” Mr Bush said, although he offered no evidence for the insinuation that leftists were behind the killings.5 In a by now familiar fashion, atrocities perpetrated by those we support are chalked up either to the “terrorist” left or to “right-wing death squads” beyond the control of the Salvadoran military. Thus when, on January 7, Cristiani admitted that members of the military were responsible for the killings,6 he was lauded as a man of “great courage” (Marlin Fitzwater, the president’s spokesman) and pre­ sented as struggling heroically against “his foes on the extreme left and the extreme right” (New York Times).1 This is the usual fiction that serves to obscure the plain fact that Cristiani heads a regime whose military is conducting a campaign of terror against its own citizens of a level of savagery that is perhaps unmatched in the world today.8 Cristiani’s January 13 announcement of the arrests of a colonel and several lower-ranking officers and enlisted men had its evidently intended effect: mollification of an easily placated and complicitous US Congress. The Salvadoran military also understood the point of the arrests and their 3 Introduction irrelevance to the situation within El Salvador. It should come as no sur­ prise then that, according to one assessment, “The arrests have had no appreciable impact on the overall level of military violence; death squad killing and disappearances have not abated, and ongoing repression has forced the popular movement to continue functioning semi- clandestinely.”*' The campaign of aerial bombardment also continues. To take one example among many: on February 11, the air force bombed a refugee resettlement camp killing at least six people (five of them children) and wounding many others. The New York Times reports that Witnesses and religious workers said they were killed when the air force bombed and rocketed the village, about 50 miles northeast of the capital. An American nun who lives there said that on Sunday morning she saw three army helicopters, flying at tree-top level, fire at least 15 rockets at the area. An hour later two A-37 Dragonfly jets dropped at least eight bombs in the immediate vicinity, she said.10 It goes without saying that for every eminent figure killed there are dozens of unpublicized instances of torture and murder of teachers, peasants, trade unionists, and charity, relief, and church workers." Foreigners are not immune to the violence and terror of the Salvadoran military. Americas Watch reports the detainment and torture of French, Japanese, and US citizens. Representatives of the US government provide little protection for its citizens incarcerated and brutalized by the military it supplies. According to Americas Watch, “From scores of interviews with Americans living in El Salvador, we can affirm that US Embassy staff have frequently been rude to American detainees under these cir­ cumstances, and taken the part not of the US citizens in custody but of their notorious captors.” Instead of seeking to support abused US citizens, “consular officials rush to cast doubts on the credibility of the testimony of American citizens who claim mistreatment in the hands of the Salvadoran police.”12 It is instructive to contrast US silence over, or even complicity in, the violence directed against some of its own citizens with its condemnation of the rebels’ capture of the Sheraton Hotel with no reported maltreatment of civilians. Administration officials quickly denounced the takeover as an “outrageous act of terrorism.” And Marlin Fitzwater, the president’s spokesman, declared that “these Marxist guerrillas have shown their true colors,” adding that they had “embarked on a despicable road of violence by threatening civilians, Americans, and innocent citizens of all nations who may be in their path” - none of whom were harmed, as just noted, unlike the “civilians, Americans, and inno­ cent citizens of all nations” who are tortured and killed by the military we train and supply.13 4

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