Western State Terrorism

270 Pages·1991·5.034 MB·English

by  Alexander George

WESTERN
STATE
TERRORISM
Edited by Alexander George
Routledge
New York
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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.
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First published 1991 by Polity Press
in association with Basil Blackwell
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ISBN 0-415-90472-2 (cloth)
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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