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

Patterns of Intervention
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
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conflict in the early 1960s; the reasons are similar.
Recall that three months earlier, President Reagan had informed
Congress that aid to the contras was essential or a regional settlement
based on the Contadora process will continue to elude us” (chapter 3,
section 5). The incident can leave no doubt that once again, the US
fears a political settlement and prefers that disputes remain in the arena
of military conflict, in which its supremacy is unchallenged.
We might ask what term other than “hysterical fanaticism” can be
used with reference to the President’s declaration of May 1, 1985,
announcing an embargo “in response to the emergency situation created
by the Nicaraguan Government’s aggressive activities in Central
America”:
I, Ronald Reagan, President of the United States of America, find
that the policies and actions of the Government of Nicaragua
constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national
security and foreign policy of the United States and hereby declare
a national emergency to deal with that threat.
And what term applies to the “key Congressional leaders” who, in
this grim emergency situation when our very existence is under threat,
“generally praised President Reagan’s imposition of a trade embargo as
a useful first step in pressing the Sandinista Government to change its
policies”? Or to the critics who go along with the pretense that any of
this is can be a topic for discussion among sane people? 157
The reaction in the colonies is often not greatly different. The London
Times praises the “unanimity” in Washington “about the nature of the
Sandinista regime and the array of measures needed to change it.” The
editors write that “America’s enlightenment faith in the educability,
reasonableness, even the inherent liberality of most of the world is great.