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

“resulted from the other side”: 214
Patterns of Intervention
I have always believed that it is counterproductive for one country
to splash itself all over the headlines, demanding that another
government do something because that other government then is
put in an almost impossible political position. It can’t appear to be
rolling over at the demands of outsiders.
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
265
Reagan loves to prate about the Bible, which “contains an answer to
just about everything and every problem that confronts us,” so he
informed the country. 215 Perhaps he might begin his reading of the
Scriptures with the definition of “hypocrite” in the Gospel according to
St. Matthew, 7.5.
Why all of this elaborate pretense about our benevolence and concern
for human rights, democracy, and welfare, as we go on slaughtering the
natives? Why did Reagan not accept the New Republic
recommendation, and simply tell the American people honestly that we
must proceed on our course “regardless of how many are murdered”
because we have higher priorities than the survival of the people of El
Salvador? Why do even the New Republic editors, at the outer limits,
continue to intone pieties about our “moral” goals as we suffer
“America’s agony” in El Salvador? Why do Senator Moynihan and others
proclaim absurdities about our historic commitment to the Rule of Law?
There are two basic reasons. The first is that reality is unpleasant to
face, and it is therefore more convenient, both for planners and for the
educated classes who are responsible for ideological control, to construct
a world of fable and fantasy while they proceed with their necessary
chores. The second is that elite groups are afraid of the population. They
are afraid that people are not gangsters. They know that the people they
address would not steal food from a starving child if they knew that no