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

The Race to Destruction
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
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station in August 1980 in which 84 people were killed—advised Major
Roberto d’Aubuisson on anti-subversive tactics for the Salvadoran army
in 1980. He and his terrorist associates, holding Argentine passports,
transmitted information to the Argentine neo-Nazi generals on left-wing
exiles and passed on “arms, equipment, and finally men for the
Salvadoran death squads.” 64
Surely all of this was well-known to the US government. As noted
earlier, Rand Corporation terrorism expert Brian Jenkins notes blandly
that “Argentina acted as a proxy for the United States in Central
America,” referring to Argentina under the murderous neo-Nazi generals,
now on trial for massive crimes; he adds that the US “provides military
assistance and training to the Honduran armed forces, while Argentinian
advisers until recently provided training and management support to the
Nicaraguan guerrillas,” 65 a well-coordinated joint operation, terminated
when the military dictatorship in Argentina was overthrown. The
operations in El Salvador and Guatemala are another facet of these joint
enterprises, which trace directly back to US solicitude and care for
useful Nazi gangsters as Europe was liberated from Hitler.
These are a few glimpses into what Edward Herman properly calls
“The Real Terror Network.” We may recall Juan José Arévalo’s sorrowful
comment in 1951 that “The arms of the Third Reich were broken and
conquered . . . but in the ideological dialogue . . . Roosevelt lost the
war. The real winner was Hitler.” 66
This chapter of postwar history adds another facet to the story. In
accordance with the guiding geopolitical conceptions already discussed
and illustrated, it was essential to destroy the popular anti-fascist
resistance in much of the world, and the US quite reasonably turned to
specialists in the task, drawn from the ranks of leading Nazis. These
useful folk were then sent on to safer climes when their task was done
and they could no longer be protected, and there they continued their