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

Patterns of Intervention
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
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Nairn’s conclusion considerably understates the case, since it isolates
El Salvador from the general context of US foreign policy, which has had
the same institutional commitments, with much the same effects,
throughout a large part of the world, and for good reason, as we have
seen. Death squads were, in fact, a natural if not inevitable outgrowth of
the counterinsurgency ideology of the New Frontier, itself a concomitant
of the Alliance for Progress programs of strengthening production for
export at the expense of domestic consumption. It was necessary to
prevent such “subversive” activities as distribution of propaganda and
organizing. General William Yarborough of Kennedy’s Special Forces
urged that secret paramilitary groups capable of carrying out violent
covert actions against the domestic opposition would be an effective
mechanism to counter “subversion”: “This Structure should be used to .
. . as necessary execute paramilitary, sabotage and/or terrorist activities
against known Communist proponents,” he explained. A US Army
handbook suggested that security forces impersonate guerrillas while
carrying out terrorist actions against the population “to indicate to the
people the need for protection of the village” and provide the
government with a “pretext” for “population control.” A Salvadoran
military journal, reflecting the counterinsurgency doctrine of their US
trainers, observes that
wherever a guerrilla is found operating with success, there are still
some among the people cooperating with them and providing
information. What, then, must be done? You must annihilate this
source of support and their sources of information.
The US applied a concept outlined for Vietnam, where the Joint
Chiefs of Staff observed in a document on pacification that class conflict