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

The Fifth Freedom
soon to be disabused of their illusions.
It was not the first time, nor the last. Truman Doctrine rhetoric in
1947 about supporting “free peoples who are resisting attempted
subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures” concealed
plans for counterinsurgency in Greece, soon implemented, which led to
unspeakable carnage and terror. Meanwhile perennial presidential
adviser Clark Clifford happily observed that the Doctrine served as “the
opening gun in a campaign to bring people up to [the] realization that
the war isn’t over by any means,” setting off a new era of domestic
militarism and intervention abroad in the context of Cold War
confrontation. 4 The true meaning of Jimmy Carter’s soulful devotion to
human rights would be learned by hundreds of thousands of victims of
torture, starvation, or outright slaughter in El Salvador, Timor, Laos, and
elsewhere. John F. Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress, launched with great
fanfare out of fear that the Cuban model might inspire others to pursue
the same course, was again a rhetorical triumph. Its real world impact
for 1960-1965 was summarized by the editor of Inter-American
Economic Affairs: 5
During that period the distribution of income became even more
unsatisfactory as the gap between the rich and poor widened
appreciably. During most of the period a very heavy proportion of
the disbursements went to military regimes which had overthrown
constitutional governments, and at the end of the period, with
almost half of the population under military rule, a significant
portion of the aid was going not to assist “free men and free
governments” [in Alliance rhetoric] but rather to hold in power
regimes to which the people had lost their freedom.
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
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