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

Patterns of Intervention
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
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The result was the usual one: death squads, torture, repression, an
increase in poverty and malnutrition for the mass of the population,
slave labor conditions, vast emigration, and outstanding opportunities for
US investors, whose control over the economy reached new heights.
With the country demoralized and under the control of US corporations
and the security forces, the US became willing to tolerate “free
elections,” even the election of social democrats, all possibility of social
change having been terminated. 174 This permits New York Times
correspondent Leslie Gelb to refer to “President Johnson’s swift, decisive
and successful takeover and redemocratization of the Dominican
Republic in 1965.” To Boston University President John Silber, the
meaning of these events is that President Johnson ‘‘took resolute action,
in concert with the Organization of American States, by sending Marines
to the Dominican Republic in 1965 to protect democracy.” The news
columns of the press remind us that when civil war broke out in 1965,
“President Johnson sent 23,000 troops to seek peace.” 175 What dictator
could demand more loyal service?
In 1976, the Bishop of Santiago reported that “seventy percent of the
country’s peasant population live on the border of starvation and
misery.” In 1985, a Church-based group reported further that the
country had “undergone almost a decade of economic decline” with
20% of the population living in “absolute poverty” while 90% suffer
malnutrition, according to Central Bank officials. The illiteracy rate is
54% and one million school age children in this country of six million do
not attend school because there are no facilities. The Dominican
Bishops’ conference in March 1985 warned “that the foundations of
Dominican society are disintegrating as a result of a crisis that has
plagued the country for years,” referring to the “inhuman and unjust
poverty” for much of the population, the “tragic” situation of the 63% of
Dominicans who are underemployed (30% unemployed) and earn less