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

Patterns of Intervention
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
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America in which United States policies clearly have been successful” as
the US backed “the forces of moderation,” upgrading the Salvadoran
Army and turning it into “a well-honed and aggressive fighting force,”
fully capable of the actions documented (occasionally) in the news
columns and far more fully elsewhere; “So long as El Salvador continues
to move forward, as it has done under Duarte, US support should
remain steadfast.” 107
There is “good news from El Salvador,” where “the ideal of a third
force has been instilled with new life” as the army has much improved
its conduct with American aid and the country is marching towards
democracy and social reform under Duarte, who “is the product of an
urban middle class committed to civil liberties and the economic
blandishments of an open society” and is helped by “an enlightened
echelon of the Salvadoran Army.” 108 “He is independent-minded” and
does not accept Reagan’s policies, and “has begun to deliver to his
battered, divided people a taste of better government, a ray of hope,”
though with “aficionados of violence” lurking “on both the left and the
right,” he may not be able to manage the “reform programs” to which he
is committed. 109
The lesson is that if terror and violence appear to be successful, and
the threat to the Fifth Freedom abates, then all is well and we can return
to our historical project of improving the lives of the people of Central
America, those who count.
As for Nicaragua, as long as the US attack is not successful, there are
“holes in the Administration’s case,” we learn from the New York Times,
but these are only “practical,” while the “moral argument is more
compelling”: “The Administration needs a strategy that is not only moral
and legal but also persuasively wise,” that is, successful in its aims,
which are necessarily good. If the US “loses the contra option,” the
editors of the Washington Post explain, it may not be able to “ensure