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

The Fifth Freedom
government policy to be clear about these matters. There is no point
wasting time in patiently explaining to our leaders that the policies they
pursue are inconsistent with the goals they profess; they know this well
enough without our help. Nor is there any reason to suppose that a
different group of leaders would react in any essentially different way to
the same institutional imperatives. It is not failure to understand a
simple point so clear to us that regularly leads the political leadership to
commit the same “error” over and over again.
Returning to Kennan’s prescriptions, what means must we use
against our enemies who fall prey to the heresy that threatens our
resources? Kennan explains, in the same briefing to the Ambassadors:
The final answer might be an unpleasant one, but . . . we should
not hesitate before police repression by the local government. This
is not shameful since the Communists are essentially traitors . . .
It is better to have a strong regime in power than a liberal
government if it is indulgent and relaxed and penetrated by
Communists.
Again, as policy becomes practice, the term “Communists” takes on
its technical sense in American political discourse, referring to people
who do not appreciate the sanctity of the Fifth Freedom.
It is small wonder, then, that John F. Kennedy should have held that
“governments of the civil-military type of El Salvador are the most
effective in containing Communist penetration in Latin America.” This
was after a military coup overthrew a liberal civilian government, with
US approval, while the Kennedy Administration was organizing the basic
structure of the military and paramilitary “death squads” that have
massacred tens of thousands of civilians since, within the framework of
the Alliance for Progress—in fact, the most lasting effect of that program
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
94