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

Patterns of Intervention
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
170
Rivera y Damas, condemned the armed forces’ “war of extermination
and genocide against a defenseless civilian population”; a few weeks
later, Duarte hailed the armed forces for “valiant service alongside the
people against subversion” as he was sworn in as civilian president of
the junta. 55
Carter’s war was successful. The popular organizations, dissident
political forces, and the independent media were eliminated, along with
some 10,000 people, many killed after hideous torture. The threat of
democracy in El Salvador had been stilled.
A further effect of state terror was to drive many people to join the
guerrillas, estimated at 2000 in 1979, 5000 in mid-1981, and 10,000
by 1984. 56 But this too is a victory for the US, since it shifts the struggle
away from the political arena, where the US and its clients are weak, to
the arena of force and violence, where they reign supreme. Furthermore,
as state terror undermines the opportunities for peaceful organization
and meaningful political action, its victims either submit or turn to
violence themselves; and as state terror mounts they are likely to lose
their popular support because they cannot defend the population and
because they may be driven to adopt more brutal methods, either in
self-defense or as the advocates of force gain positions of dominance in
an escalating struggle that is restricted by the outside power to the
military dimension. These consequences can then be exploited by the
propaganda system to provide retrospective justification for the initial
resort to violence that is responsible for them, in the familiar manner
already discussed.
The dynamics are obvious, and undoubtedly are well-understood by
US planners and propagandists, who have ample experience in these
matters. The US war against South Vietnam taught clear lessons in this
regard. After the 1954 Geneva Accords, the Viet Minh (later called “Viet
Cong” in US propaganda) attempted to pursue the political settlement it