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

Free World Vignettes
7. The Planning of State Terror
he striking correlation between US assistance and barbarism in
Central America has its roots in deliberate planning, both in global
terms and in specific application to this region. We will take up
these matters later on, merely noting here that the essentials are
understood in Washington, however easy it may be to disguise the
reality with familiar pieties. A USAID report of 1967, reviewing the US
program to train the National Guard and National Police, commented
that by virtue of this assistance, 90
T
. . . authorities have been successful in handling any politically
motivated demonstrations in recent years . . . With the potential
danger that exists in a densely populated country where the rich
are very rich and poor extremely poor El Salvador is fortunate that
the Guard and Police are well trained and disciplined...
Here it is necessary to decode, once again, from Newspeak to
English: it is not El Salvador that is fortunate, plainly, but rather those
who own and rule the country, those whom we dare not disturb by
trying to inhibit their pleasure in torture and mass murder (see chapter
1, section 3.1).
After its successful destruction of Guatemalan democracy in 1954,
the US undertook to ensure that no such problems would ever arise
again. The US began to train army officers and security forces, including
elements of the police specializing in political repression and the Mobile
Military Police, later implicated in many massacres. The goal was to
increase efficiency in the operations that are bound to be necessary as
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
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