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

Patterns of Intervention
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
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surely with tacit US approval despite official denials—when direct US
intervention was blocked by congressional human rights legislation.
When all hope of maintaining Somoza was lost, the US attempted to
ensure that the National Guard would remain intact and the FSLN
excluded from the government, a solution that the guerrillas accurately
characterized as “somocismo without Somoza.” Some 40-50,000
people were killed and the society was reduced to ruins, devastated and
bankrupt. 114
With the failure of its attempt to maintain the basic structure of the
terrorist regime, the US government, along with articulate opinion,
became passionately concerned over repression and democracy in
Nicaragua. In a less-indoctrinated society than ours, this sudden
conversion would be dismissed with the contempt it so richly merits.
Carter proposed an “aid” package, largely credits to purchase US
goods, for the country that had been left in ruins after a century of
torture by the US and its clients. Much of the aid was to go to the
private business sector; conditions were added barring the use of aid in
facilities with Cuban personnel, who were involved in literacy and other
social programs. Considerable support for the aid program came from
banks, which feared default on the huge debt now that the country had
been bankrupted. The new government agreed to pay the debt
accumulated by Somoza, who had robbed the country blind and fled
with its remaining assets. 115 This last-ditch effort to pay off US banks, to
preserve the traditional Central American order, and to prevent the new
government from shifting its meager resources to the needs of the
disadvantaged is now described as a proof of US magnanimity and its
desire for friendly relations with the new regime.