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

Free World Vignettes
attained, it may well subside. Thus urban assassinations declined in El
Salvador after the successful use of terror to subdue the urban
population, a fact exploited here to justify further support for the
torturers and assassins, who are seen to be mending their ways.
Similarly, we can expect with some confidence that sooner or later the
terror in the countryside will abate, once the resisting population is
decimated or has fled, or has been forcibly removed to areas where they
can be controlled. Under Col. Ochoa’s rule, there will be many fewer
atrocities, as a point of logic: atrocities require victims. And those that
occur will be ever more difficult to document.
If Charles Clements were to return to Guazapa, he would not report
horrors and atrocities of the kind he witnessed a few years ago, because
“the continuing bombardment around Guazapa has driven almost all of
the few hundred civilians remaining to flee to camps or hiding
elsewhere, refugees and relief workers say”—that is, those who have not
been murdered or removed by the army. Relief workers near Guazapa
say “they observed planes bombing the mountainside at least once a
week since January [1985]” though they rarely saw “air fire while troops
are fighting on the ground,” the only circumstance in which it is
permitted according to the highly-touted Duarte rules of engagement.
Since the civilians have been killed or removed, the press can inform us
that things are looking up: “American and Salvadoran human rights
groups in El Salvador have not reported any incidents this year [1985]
in which air force fire caused large numbers of civilian casualties.” 62
This last conclusion is plainly true, again as a point of logic, with
regard to the main human rights monitor in the hemisphere, Americas
Watch, since its most recent report was based on testimony taken in
January 1985. It is highly misleading at best with regard to other
human rights groups. Two weeks before the conclusion just quoted
appeared, the Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA, Washington)
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
47