From: harelb@math.cornell.edu (misc.activism.progressive co-moderator)
Subject: Nicaragua Series: A pause for some comments (I)
Organization: misc.activism.progressive on UseNet ; ACTIV-L@UMCVMB
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1992 17:00:04 GMT

Nicaragua Series: A pause for some comments (I)

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I would like to take this opportunity to stress what I think are some
of the key themes throughout the series.

Perhaps first of all, the series is a cold-shower like awakening to
some unpleasant facts -- foremost about our government, but crucially
as well, about what we may have previously regarded as the "Free
Press."

Regarding the later institution, this is a persistent theme, and in
the third (and probably last) section of this series, one can only
shake one's head in disbelieve at how a key event in history --the free
elections in Nicaragua in 1984 -- could be so completely erased,
Stalinist-style from Official History by the government and the Free
Press so as to have "never existed."

We can "only" wonder in disbelieve, that, unless we are willing to
examine more deeply the inherent nature of our politics institutions
including the large corporations in the business of selling
mass-audiences to client advertiser companies -- i.e., the `Free
Press' -- what their nature is, which nature -- not merely "bad
people" to be replaced by more decent folks -- which nature itself is
responsible for this recurring pattern.

Regarding the former institution, the system of government we have had
all these decades: it is similarly tempting to look at individuals and
not institutions. Certainly moral indignation at the crimes unearthed
-- only in part, in this series; and regularly in the alternative press
including the Nation, Z, In These Times, the Progressive, The
Guardian, somewhat Mother Jones, etc -- is warranted. But aside from
the danger of being trapped by anger (or even hate) rather than being
motivated to pursue *action* leading to a saner, more just future, the
focus on individual players missed the fact that the patters we have
seen in Nicaragua, more generally in Central America, are the same
patterns seen elsewhere besides Central America in U.S. foreign
policy, and in previous times, under different administrations,
including more benign ones than Reagan/Bush, e.g. Carter, who also
supported death-squads and Somoza's brutal National Guard if an
independent government outside the sphere of U.S. hegemony, rather
than what should properly be called a "satellite" country, was the
only other alternative -- this alternative being what they like to
call "instability" and "radical nationalism" and when possible, the
"communist threat."

I have stressed that by no means should the series, including the
Chomsky excerpts, be interpreted as claiming that those in power
*think of themselves* as evil-doers. No doubt it is a very rare person
indeed who does. Tyrants generally tell themselves and to a degree (if
not completely) honestly believe they are doing a great thing, or at
least the right thing -- e.g. helping Germany become great and saving
the world from the Jews, or saving the Afghanistan from "anti-Soviet
aggression," or saving Vietnam "from itself" where the misguided
creatures needed our (forceful) help to understand that they did not,
infact, support those who Washington conceded they do, but rather a
U.S.-puppet regime.

Yet historians do not go out of their way to explain that Stalin
didn't *think* of himself as committing crimes against humanity on an
extraordinary scale; rather, we speak of Stalin's "support for"
state-sponsored murder, repression, etc. The same applies to other
governments, including the state-sponsored "proxy" terrorist forces
employed by Washington which the Reagan/Bush administration and the
mainstream Democrats *supported* the use of state-terrorism, if that
was what was necessary to make Nicaragua "cry uncle" in Reagan's fine
words, and return Nicaragua under the evil Sandinista government to
the fine "regional standards" as exemplified by the mass-murder
"Death-Squad democracies" enjoying U.S. support. Undoubtedly, the
administration and Democrats did not *see* themselves by and large as
supporting state-terrorism ("when they do it, it's terrorism; when we
do it, it's fighting for freedom" explained one administration
official, when pressed about the double-talk), but indisputably that
is what their role was in Nicaragua -- and elsewhere in Central
America, in the 1980s and prior.

It is therefore important to understand the underlying driving forces
behind U.S. policy. Regardless of the self-images of those in power,
the historical record reveals with startling consistency that those
countries in our "back-yard" which are subservient to business and
investor interests generally enjoy Washington's support, regardless of
the human rights situation, democracy, and other fine terms employed
by the politicians.

Correspondingly, those governments which have policies which displease
the corporate/economic-elite interests, will suffer the wrath of the
"North American colossus" -- to be sure, under the cloud of rhetoric
about human rights, democracy, or terms like "communism"
"stability", or the "war on drugs" and other constructions -- but in
fact the record reveals these proclamations cannot be taken seriously.

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