Noam Chomsky - Turning the Tide U.S. intervention in

Patterns of Intervention
1. Defending our Sovereignty
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
136
t is natural and proper to focus attention on current atrocities, but it
can also be misleading, and can hamper a proper understanding of
what lies behind them. It may foster the belief that what is
happening today is to be explained on the basis of the deficiencies,
moral or intellectual, of a transitory political leadership and can be
changed simply by “voting the rascals out.” There is an element of truth
to that assessment: the Reagan Administration and its cohorts are
unusual in their commitment to aggrandizement of state power, state
violence and terror, deception and other means to protect state actions
from scrutiny by citizens, a quality noted by Congress as well as human
rights groups. 1 I
But the element of truth is rather slight, as the historical
record plainly shows, a fact of some import for people who hope to
change the world, not merely to observe it.
It is important to recognize that little that is happening today is new.
The United States has been tormenting Central America and the
Caribbean for well over a century, generally in alleged defense against
“outside threats.” In the late 1920s, the Marines invaded Nicaragua in
defense against the “Bolshevik threat” of Mexico. Secretary of State
Frank Kellogg warned that
The Bolshevik leaders have had very definite ideas with respect to
the role which Mexico and Latin America are to play in their
general program of world revolution. They have set up as one of
their fundamental tasks the destruction of what they term
American imperialism as a necessary prerequisite to the successful
development of the international revolutionary movement in the