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

Free World Vignettes
reported that according to its sources in El Salvador, the most accurate
figure is that “close to 3,000 civilians have died in rural areas in the first
half of 1985 as a result of the air war.” As for the major human rights
group in El Salvador, the Church-based Tutela Legal, COHA reports that
“unremitting public and private pressure on Tutela Legal by the
Salvadoran government and the US embassy [which has been
documented by Americas Watch] has caused it to adopt a lower profile
and much stricter evidential standards which are difficult to meet under
such restricted and dangerous circumstances, and the figures that it
reports are but a fraction of the total death count, as Tutela personnel
will freely admit.” 63 Since the press regularly avoids the topic and
virtually never reports the findings of Church or other human rights
groups in El Salvador, further check is difficult. But sooner or later, such
conclusions about declining body counts are bound to be correct, just as
Soviet atrocities abated in Hungary after 1956, sure proof of the benign
intent of the forces that had intervened to “defend Hungary” from
“fascists instigated by the US.”
It is notable that in El Salvador as in Nicaragua, the level of
atrocities, which rival the most gruesome of recent years, increased
dramatically as US involvement grew. Few seem capable of drawing the
obvious conclusions, though they would be plain enough in the case of
an official enemy.
Events in Nicaragua and El Salvador since 1980, as reviewed in
sections 2 and 3, illustrate the second of the major consequences that
characteristically ensue in US domains when efforts are made to
mitigate the “miseries of traditional life.” We return in chapter three to
the remarkable reaction on the part of the media and educated classes
fairly generally to what has been taking place in these countries.
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
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