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

Notes
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
415
revolution had expressed a hope that their democratic revolution would
extend “without frontiers.” In fact, there is a similar phrase in a speech
by Sandinista leader Tomás Borge, who said in July 1981 that “this
revolution transcends national boundaries,” making it quite clear that he
meant ideological transcendence. He proceeds to say: “this does not
mean we export our revolution. It is enough—and we couldn’t do
otherwise—for us to export our example . . . we know that it is the
people themselves of these countries who must make their revolutions.”
No one familiar with the US government disinformation system could
doubt what would follow; and sure enough, in September 1985 the State
Department published a document attempting to prove Nicaraguan
aggressiveness, entitled “Revolution beyond our Borders,” referring to this
very speech, with a mistranslation of Borge’s statement excised from the
immediate context to make it appear that the Sandinistas themselves
boast of their aggressiveness. The fraud is exposed by the Council on
Hemispheric Affairs, Washington Report on the Hemisphere, Oct. 16,
1985. The tradition of fabrication is a hoary one. See TNCW, 71, and
references of note 56, below, for earlier examples.
4. NYT, March 20, 1984, June 5. 1985; LAT, Nov. 14, 13, 1984.
5. Langley, Banana Wars, 153f., 137, 123f.; Stuart Chreigton Miller,
“Benevolent Assimilation” (Yale, 1982), 230-2.
6. Bain, Sitting in Darkness, 78, 66, 86f.; Miller, Benevolent Assimilation,
164, 65f., 95, 116, 235, 269.
7. Daniel B. Schirmer, Republic or Empire (Schenkman, 1972), 231, 236-
9.
8. T. D. Allman, Unmanifest Destiny (Dial, 1984), 277, 259, 265;
Scientific American quoted by Ronald Takaki, Iron Cages (Knopf,
1979), 162.
9. For specific references, see For Reasons of State, 114f., 127f.; TNCW,
198f.
10. John Goshko and Charles Babcock, WP, April 14, 1984. In apparent
contradiction to Rubin’s accurate statement, Moore (“Tripping through
Wonderland”) claims that “the U.S. has repeatedly raised the Cuban-