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

Patterns of Intervention
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
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The Administration has also made it plain that the use of US military
force will be considered if other measures fail. Secretary of State Shultz
stated that if Congress did not provide assistance to the contras, then
the US would eventually have to make “an agonizing choice about the
use of American combat troops,” and Langhorne Motley, then Assistant
Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, informed a House
committee in closed session that failure to provide aid for the contras
would place the US “in an accommodationist or military response
dilemma at some later date when the threat to US interests becomes
more obvious and when the only effective response would be on a larger
scale or in less favorable circumstances.” He referred specifically to
direct US military involvement. 21 Since we evidently cannot adopt the
“accommodationist” horn of the dilemma, as even the Democratic
opposition generally agrees, we must prepare to use military force unless
our mercenary armies can overthrow the government—or at least make
the country bleed sufficiently so that it no longer poses a threat to the
Fifth Freedom, always the tacit principle.
These warnings about an eventual invasion are simply another stage
in what a classified Pentagon document in 1983 called a “‘perception
management’ program . . . designed to keep the Nicaraguans concerned
that the United States might attack.” The regular large-scale US military
maneuvers on the border are part of the same program, according to this
document, though they also serve to establish US bases by subterfuge to
ensure the militarization of Honduras under a facade of “democracy.”
Sonic booms over Managua have the same goal, the Administration
noted. The purpose is explained by a State Department official: “Every
time there’s an invasion scare, they make some concessions.” 22
From the start, the Somozist leaders of the US proxy army have made
it clear that “the goal of their organization has been to topple the
government of Nicaragua. They scoff at past statements by the Reagan