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

Patterns of Intervention
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
204
programs. That, in turn, would increase domestic opposition and
quicken their downfall.” Despite official denials, “most of the men
running the war,” including CIA director William Casey, “agreed that the
goal was to topple the regime,” according to senior government
officials. 118
As noted earlier, the goal from the start, apart from public relations
exercises, was to overthrow the government of Nicaragua, as is now
virtually conceded, or at least to sow enough terror and destruction to
avert the danger that the “virus” of successful development might
“infect” the region. The director of medical affairs for the New York State
Department of Health, visiting in 1985, reviews the deleterious impact
of US military and economic actions on health care, education, and food
production, devoted to the poor for the first time in history, observing
that we are “slowly strangling a poor people” who are “struggling for a
better life” and “who should find it difficult to comprehend that they are
alleged to be a threat to the Giant of the North.” 119 Until American
citizens come to understand exactly why these poor people are such a
threat, and resolve to do something about state terrorism guided by
respect for the Fifth Freedom, the story will continue, here and
elsewhere.
The methods undoubtedly work. In a report on Central America,
Oxfam America describes the terrible conditions of nutrition and health
for most of the population in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and
Nicaragua, observing that “Among the four countries in the region where
Oxfam America works [namely, these four], only in Nicaragua has a
substantial effort been made to address inequities in land ownership and
to extend health, educational, and agricultural services to poor peasant
families. But the contra war has slowed the pace of social reform and
compounded hunger in the northern countryside.” 120 The report
describes the effective agrarian reform in Nicaragua, contrasting it with