It is
a scandal in contemporary international law, don’t forget, that while ‘wanton
destruction of towns, cities and villages’ is a war crime of long standing, the
bombing of cities goes not only unpunished but virtually unaccused. Air
bombardment is state terrorism, the terrorism of the rich. It has burned up and
blasted apart more innocents in the past six decades than have all the antistate
terrorists who ever lived. Something has benumbed our consciousness against
this reality. In the United States we would not consider for the presidency a
man who had thrown a bomb into a crowded restaurant, but we are happy to elect
a man who once dropped bombs from airplanes that destroyed not only restaurants
but the buildings that contained them and the neighbourhoods that surround
them. I went to Iraq after the Gulf War and saw for myself what the bombs did;
‘wanton destruction’ is just the term for it.
C. Douglas
Lummis. The Nation. 1994
Douglas Lummis is niet
de eerste de beste bron, maar een Amerikaanse voormalige marinier en emertitus
hoogleraar, over wie Susan Sontag schreef dat hij ‘one of the most thoughtful,
honorable, and relevant intellectuals writing about democratic practice
anywhere in the world,’ is, terwijl Karel van Wolferen hem prees als een ‘eminent
observer of the American-Japanese vassalage relationship.' Lummis' visie staat diametraal tegenover die van de jurist en journalist
Geert Mak wanneer die tegen het eind van zijn Reizen zonder John concludeert dat de VS
wereldwijd
decennialang als ordebewaker en
politieagent [fungeerde]
In de vorige aflevering heb ik proberen aan te
tonen dat deze bewering wat betreft de jaren ’45 tot ’50 niet gebaseerd is op
de feiten. Nu de jaren 50 en 60. Heeft Washington toen de ‘orde’
bewaard, in de betekenis die Mak eraan geeft, namelijk, democratie en
mensenrechten. Dus niet de wanorde van het imperialisme. Laat de feiten voor
zich spreken:
Iran, 1953:
Prime Minister Mossadegh was overthrown in a joint U.S./British
operation. Mossadegh had been elected to his position by a large majority of
parliament, but he had made the fateful mistake of spearheading the movement to
nationalize a British-owned oil company, the sole oil company operating in
Iran. The coup restored the Shah to absolute power and began a period of 25
years of repression and torture, with the oil industry being restored to
foreign ownership, as follows: Britain and the U.S., each 40 percent, other
nations 20 percent.
Guatemala, 1953-1990s:
A CIA-organized coup overthrew the democratically-elected and
progressive government of Jacobo Arbenz, initiating 40 years of death-squads,
torture, disappearances, mass executions, and unimaginable cruelty, totaling
well over 100,000 victims -indisputably one of the most inhuman chapters of the
20th century. Arbenz had nationalized the U.S. firm, United Fruit Company,
which had extremely close ties to the American power elite. As justification
for the coup, Washington declared that Guatemala had been on the verge of a
Soviet takeover, when in fact the Russians had so little interest in the
country that it didn't even maintain diplomatic relations. The real problem in
the eyes of Washington, in addition to United Fruit, was the danger of
Guatemala's social democracy spreading to other countries in Latin America.
Middle East, 1956-58:
The Eisenhower Doctrine stated that the United States ‘is prepared to
use armed forces to assist’ any Middle East country ‘requesting assistance
against armed aggression from any country controlled by international
communism.’ The English translation of this was that no one would be allowed to
dominate, or have excessive influence over, the middle east and its oil fields
except the United States, and that anyone who tried would be, by definition, ‘Communist.’
In keeping with this policy, the United States twice attempted to overthrow the
Syrian government, staged several shows-of-force in the Mediterranean to
intimidate movements opposed to U.S.-supported governments in Jordan and
Lebanon, landed 14,000 troops in Lebanon, and conspired to overthrow or
assassinate Nasser of Egypt and his troublesome middle-east nationalism.
Indonesia, 1957-58:
Sukarno, like Nasser, was the kind of Third World leader the United
States could not abide. He took neutralism in the cold war seriously, making
trips to the Soviet Union and China (though to the White House as well). He
nationalized many private holdings of the Dutch, the former colonial power. He
refused to crack down on the Indonesian Communist Party, which was walking the
legal, peaceful road and making impressive gains electorally. Such policies
could easily give other Third World leaders ‘wrong ideas.’ The CIA began
throwing money into the elections, plotted Sukarno's assassination, tried to
blackmail him with a phony sex film, and joined forces with dissident military
officers to wage a full-scale war against the government. Sukarno survived it
all.
Kort samengevat: ook wat de
jaren vijftig betreft is Mak’s bewering dat de VS ‘als ordebewaker en politieagent
[fungeerde]’ niet gebaseerd op
de werkelijkheid. Nu de jaren zestig:
Vietnam, 1950-73:
The slippery slope began with siding with ~ French, the former colonizers and collaborators with the Japanese, against Ho Chi Minh and his followers who had worked closely with the Allied war effort and admired all things American. Ho Chi Minh was, after all, some kind of Communist. He had written numerous letters to President Truman and the State Department asking for America's help in winning Vietnamese independence from the French and finding a peaceful solution for his country. All his entreaties were ignored. Ho Chi Minh modeled the new Vietnamese declaration of independence on the American, beginning it with ‘All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with ...’ But this would count for nothing in Washington. Ho Chi Minh was some kind of Communist.
Twenty-three years and more than a million dead, later, the United States withdrew its military forces from Vietnam. Most people say that the U.S. lost the war. But by destroying Vietnam to its core, and poisoning the earth and the gene pool for generations, Washington had achieved its main purpose: preventing what might have been the rise of a good development option for Asia. Ho Chi Minh was, after all, some kind of communist.
Cambodia, 1955-73:
Prince Sihanouk was yet another leader who did not fancy being an
American client. After many years of hostility towards his regime, including
assassination plots and the infamous Nixon/Kissinger secret ‘carpet bombings’
of 1969-70, Washington finally overthrew Sihanouk in a coup in 1970. This was
all that was needed to impel Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge forces to enter the
fray. Five years later, they took power. But five years of American bombing had
caused Cambodia's traditional economy to vanish. The old Cambodia had been
destroyed forever.
Incredibly, the Khmer Rouge were to inflict even greater misery on this
unhappy land. To add to the irony, the United States supported Pol Pot,
militarily and diplomatically, after their subsequent defeat by the Vietnamese.
The Congo/Zaire, 1960-65:
In June 1960, Patrice Lumumba became the Congo's first prime minister
after independence from Belgium. But Belgium retained its vast mineral wealth
in Katanga province, prominent Eisenhower administration officials had
financial ties to the same wealth, and Lumumba, at Independence Day ceremonies
before a host of foreign dignitaries, called for the nation's economic as well
as its political liberation, and recounted a list of injustices against the
natives by the white owners of the country. The man was obviously a ‘Communist.’
The poor man was obviously doomed.
Eleven days later, Katanga province seceded, in September, Lumumba was
dismissed by the president at the instigation of the United States, and in
January 1961 he was assassinated at the express request of Dwight Eisenhower.
There followed several years of civil conflict and chaos and the rise to power
of Mobutu Sese Seko, a man not a stranger to the CIA. Mobutu went on to rule
the country for more than 30 years, with a level of corruption and cruelty that
shocked even his CIA handlers. The Zairian people lived in abject poverty
despite the plentiful natural wealth, while Mobutu became a multibillionaire.
Brazil, 1961-64:
President Joao Goulart was guilty of the usual crimes: He took an
independent stand in foreign policy, resuming relations with socialist
countries and opposing sanctions against Cuba; his administration passed a law
limiting the amount of profits multinationals could transmit outside the
country; a subsidiary of ITT was nationalized; he promoted economic and social
reforms. And Attorney-General Robert Kennedy was uneasy about Goulart allowing
‘communists’ to hold positions in government agencies. Yet the man was no
radical. He was a millionaire land-owner and a Catholic who wore a medal of the
Virgin around his neck. That, however, was not enough to save him. In 1964, he
was overthrown in a military coup which had deep, covert American involvement.
The official Washington line was...yes, it's unfortunate that democracy has
been overthrown in Brazil...but, still, the country has been saved from
communism.
For the next 15 years, all the features of military dictatorship that
Latin America has come to know were instituted: Congress was shut down,
political opposition was reduced to virtual extinction, habeas corpus for ‘political
crimes’ was suspended, criticism of the president was forbidden by law, labor
unions were taken over by government interveners, mounting protests were met by
police and military firing into crowds, peasants' homes were burned down,
priests were brutalized...disappearances, death squads, a remarkable degree and
depravity of torture...the government had a name for its program: the ‘moral
rehabilitation’ of Brazil.
Washington was very pleased. Brazil broke relations with Cuba and became
one of the United States' most reliable allies in Latin America.
Dominican Republic, 1963-66:
In February 1963, Juan Bosch took office as the first democratically
elected president of the Dominican Republic since 1924. Here at last was John
F. Kennedy's liberal anti-Communist, to counter the charge that the U.S.
supported only military dictatorships. Bosch's government was to be the long
sought ‘showcase of democracy’ that would put the lie to Fidel Castro. He was
given the grand treatment in Washington shortly before he took office.
Bosch was true to his beliefs. He called for land reform, low-rent
housing, modest nationalization of business, and foreign investment provided it
was not excessively exploitative of the country and other policies making up
the program of any liberal Third World leader serious about social change. He
was likewise serious about civil liberties: Communists, or those labeled as
such, were not to be persecuted unless they actually violated the law.
A number of American officials and congresspeople expressed their
discomfort with Bosch's plans, as well as his stance of independence from the
United States. Land reform and nationalization are always touchy issues in
Washington, the stuff that ‘creeping socialism’ is made of. In several quarters
of the U.S. press Bosch was red-baited.
In September, the military boots marched. Bosch was out. The United
States, which could discourage a military coup in Latin America with a frown,
did nothing.
Nineteen months later, a revolt broke out which promised to put the
exiled Bosch back into power. The United States sent 23,000 troops to help
crush it.
Cuba, 1959 to present:
Fidel Castro came to power at the beginning of 1959. A U.S. National
Security Council meeting of March 10, 1959 included on its agenda the
feasibility of bringing ‘another government to power in Cuba.’ There followed
40 years of terrorist attacks, bombings, full-scale military invasion,
sanctions, embargoes, isolation, assassinations...Cuba had carried out The
Unforgivable Revolution, a very serious threat of setting a ‘good example’ in
Latin America.
The saddest part of this is that the world will never know what kind of
society Cuba could have produced if left alone, if not constantly under the gun
and the threat of invasion, if allowed to relax its control at home. The
idealism, the vision, the talent were all there. But we'll never know. And that
of course was the idea.
Indonesia, 1965:
A complex series of events, involving a supposed coup attempt, a
counter-coup, and perhaps a counter-counter-coup, with American fingerprints
apparent at various points, resulted in the ouster from power of Sukarno and
his replacement by a military coup led by General Suharto. The massacre that
began immediately-of Communists, Communist sympathizers, suspected Communists,
suspected Communist sympathizers, and none of the above-was called by the New York
Times ‘one of the most savage mass slayings of modern political history.’ The
estimates of the number killed in the course of a few years begin at half a
million and go above a million.
It was later learned that the U.S. embassy had compiled lists of ‘Communist’
operatives, from top echelons down to village cadres, as many as 5,000 names,
and turned them over to the army, which then hunted those persons down and
killed them. The Americans would then check off the names of those who had been
killed or captured. ‘It really was a big help to the army. They probably killed
a lot of people, and I probably have a lot of blood on my hands,’ said one U.S.
diplomat. ‘But that's not all bad. There's a time when you have to strike hard
at a decisive moment.’
Het totale aantal
burgerdoden bij deze greep uit het aantal Amerikaanse interventies in
soevereine staten zal nooit precies kunnen worden vastgesteld, maar is in elk
geval loopt dat aantal op tot vele miljoenen. De omvangrijke armoede die de VS op die manier in stand hield veroorzaakte nog eens tientallen miljoenen slachtoffers op. In 1995 wees de Amerikaanse
voormalige minister van Defensie, Robert McNamara, erop dat als gevolg van het
Vietnam-beleid van de regeringen Kennedy, Johnson en Nixon… ‘verschrikkelijk
leed’ hadden toegebracht aan miljoenen mensen, omdat ‘wij de
macht onderschatten van het nationalisme teneinde een volk te motiveren… om te
vechten en te sterven voor hun overtuigingen en waarden- en we blijven dat
vandaag de dag nog steeds doen in vele delen van de wereld,’ terwijl ‘wij
niet het door God gegeven recht
hebben om elke natie naar ons eigen beeld te scheppen.’ Volgens McNamara
zijn alleen al tijdens de Vietnam-oorlog 3,4 miljoen Zuidoost Aziaten om het leven
gekomen, onder wie talloze burgers van Laos, het zwaarst gebombardeerde land in
de geschiedenis als we uitgaan van
het aantal inwoners. Eenkwart van de bevolking vluchtte naar grotten in de
bergen om aan het bruut geweld te ontkomen. De Amerikaanse luchtmacht gooide
twee keer zoveel bommen op Laos dan op Nazi-Duitsland, tien jaar lang elke 9
minuten een clusterbom. Omdat – volgens USA TODAY -- tien tot
dertig procent van deze tegen mensen gerichte, in kleine fragmenten
uiteenspattende bommen, niet explodeerde, komen tot op de dag van vandaag nog
steeds Laotianen om het leven, de meerderheid van hen spelende kinderen. Ook
Cambodja leed onder het Amerikaans terrorisme, een ander woord is er niet voor,
tenminste als we de definitie hanteren zoals afgedrukt in het Amerikaanse
Leger Handboek, waarbij terrorisme omschreven wordt als ‘het bewust
geplande gebruik van geweld of dreiging van geweld om doelen te bereiken die
politiek, religieus, of ideologisch van aard zijn.’ Meer dan 600.000
Cambodjanen kwamen om bij Amerikaanse bombardementen en door de totale
verwoesting van landbouwgronden werden de overlevenden geconfronteerd met een
massale hongersnood.
Met andere woorden: ook voor de
jaren zestig geldt dat Mak’s bewering dat de VS ‘decennialang als ordebewaker en politieagent
[fungeerde]’ is niets anders is dan propaganda.
Morgen de feiten over de jaren zeventig en tachtig.
A terrorist is someone who has
a bomb but doesn’t have an air force.
William Blum. Rogue State. A Guide tot the
World;s Only Superpower. 2001
Throughout the world, on
any given day, a man, woman or child is likely to be displaced, tortured,
killed, or ‘disappeared’, at the hands of governments or armed political groups.
More often than not, the United States shares the blame.
Amnesty International. Human Rights & US Security Assistance. 1996
Het
Land fungeerde, zeker in Europa, decennialang als ordebewaker en politieagent –
om maar te zwijgen van alle hulp die het uitdeelde. En nog steeds zijn de
Verenigde Staten het anker van het hele Atlantische deel van de wereld in de
ruimste zin van het woord. Het is nog altijd de ‘standaardmacht’
Geert Mak.
Reizen zonder John. 2012
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