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

Patterns of Intervention
6.2 The Proxy War
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
203
Under Reagan, the US turned to a direct attack against Nicaragua. The
Sandinista government, departing from historical precedents (for
example, France in 1944, under US civil-military control, where tens of
thousands were killed in a few months), had not carried out large-scale
execution of collaborators or National Guard torturers and murderers.
These elements began to reorganize on the Honduran border under the
direction of Somozist officers, with assistance from Argentine neo-Nazis
by 1980, and US supervision from 1981. Nicaraguan exiles and
Salvadoran army officers trace Salvadoran aid to the exiled Somozists to
1979, shortly after the fall of Somoza. Salvadoran pilots bomb
Nicaragua under CIA control from their sanctuaries in Honduras and El
Salvador, and according to US officials in Central America, fly as many
as a dozen sorties a week from El Salvador deep into Nicaragua to
supply contra forces. 116 With CIA assistance, arms were smuggled from
the US center for international terrorism in Miami, where the FDN
leadership operates. CIA helicopters with American pilots provided air
cover for commando raids, Ecuadoran frogmen were sent from CIA
speedboats to blow up bridges, CIA transport planes dropped supplies to
guerrillas deep inside Nicaragua, and a CIA “mother ship” launched
seaborne commando raids to mine harbors. The Miami Herald reports
that a secret US Army helicopter unit, a task force of the 101st Airborne
Division operating out of Kentucky, is carrying out missions inside
Nicaragua, with 17 fatalities in 1983 (35 casualties were reported by
the entire US Army that year). 117 The early goal was “not to topple the
Sandinistas by force but to push them into increased domestic
repression and to spend scarce currency on military rather than social