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

Patterns of Intervention
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
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helped to establish and have since maintained, that grew inevitably out
of the intelligence and paramilitary apparatus we constructed in our
interest and the social conditions breeding dissidence and revolt that are
in significant measure our legacy.
The injunction to persist “regardless of how many are murdered” goes
a long step beyond the racist press of the turn of the century. In fact, it
is not easy to find a historical counterpart; perhaps the Nazi archives
might yield examples. As the right-wing moved to overturn the reformist
coup in El Salvador with US backing in late 1979, Colonel Vides
Casanova, then commander of the National Guard and now Minister of
Defense under the Duarte government, reminded civilians in the junta
that “in 1932 the country had survived the killing of 30,000 peasants.
‘Today, the armed forces are prepared to kill 200,000-300,000, if
that’s what it takes to stop a Communist takeover’.” 209 But willingness to
kill two or three hundred thousand still falls short of the advice of the
New Republic editors that we must proceed “regardless of how many
are murdered.” A closer counterpart is a statement attributed to the
Khmer Rouge by François Ponchaud and widely publicized in the late
1970s as proof that its leadership matches or surpasses Hitler and
Stalin: the statement that one or two million people would be enough to
build the new Kampuchea, so that the rest could be eliminated. This
proved to be a fabrication, 210 but at least it does come closer to the
advice to proceed “regardless of how many are murdered,” though it still
falls short.
The sentiments themselves are remarkable enough; still more
instructive, perhaps, is that they pass without comment, as apparently
entirely normal. 211
As the record clearly shows, what we are doing today in Central
America, and the reaction to it, breaks little new ground, apart from
scale. There should be no surprise over the undisguised pleasure so