[rad-green] Official: The US is a Leading Terrorist State

[Sid Shniad]

*http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/Official-The-US-is-a-Leading-Terrorist-State-20141020-0067.html
<http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/Official-The-US-is-a-Leading-Terrorist-State-20141020-0067.html>Telesur
October 2014Official: The US is a Leading Terrorist State*



*In western political culture, it is taken to be entirely natural and
appropriate that the Leader of the Free World should be a terrorist rogue
state and should openly proclaim its eminence in such crimes. And it is
only natural and appropriate that the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and
liberal constitutional lawyer who holds the reins of power should be
concerned only with how to carry out such actions more efficaciously.By
Noam Chomsky*
An international poll found that the United States is ranked far in the
lead as “the biggest threat to world peace today,” far ahead of
second-place Pakistan, with no one else even close.

Imagine that the lead article in *Pravda* reported a study by the KGB that
reviews major terrorist operations run by the Kremlin around the world, in
an effort to determine the factors that led to their success or failure,
finally concluding that unfortunately successes were rare so that some
rethinking of policy is in order. Suppose that the article went on to
quote Putin as saying that he had asked the KGB to carry out such inquiries
in order to find cases of “financing and supplying arms to an insurgency in
a country that actually worked out well. And they couldn’t come up with
much.” So he has some reluctance about continuing such efforts.

If, almost unimaginably, such an article were to appear, cries of outrage
and indignation would rise to the heavens, and Russia would be bitterly
condemned – or worse -- not only for the vicious terrorist record openly
acknowledged, but for the reaction among the leadership and the political
class: no concern, except how well Russian state terrorism works and
whether the practices can be improved.

It is indeed hard to imagine that such an article might appear, except for
the fact that it just did – almost.

On October 14, the lead story in the *New York Times *reported a study by
the CIA that reviews major terrorist operations run by the White House
around the world, in an effort to determine the factors that led to their
success or failure, finally concluding that unfortunately successes were
rare so that some rethinking of policy is in order. The article went on to
quote Obama as saying that he had asked the CIA to carry out such inquiries
in order to find cases of “financing and supplying arms to an insurgency in
a country that actually worked out well. And they couldn’t come up with
much.” So he has some reluctance about continuing such efforts.

There were no cries of outrage, no indignation, nothing.

The conclusion seems quite clear. In western political culture, it is
taken to be entirely natural and appropriate that the Leader of the Free
World should be a terrorist rogue state and should openly proclaim its
eminence in such crimes. And it is only natural and appropriate that the
Nobel Peace Prize laureate and liberal constitutional lawyer who holds the
reins of power should be concerned only with how to carry out such actions
more efficaciously.

A closer look establishes these conclusions quite firmly.

The article opens by citing US operations “from Angola to Nicaragua to
Cuba.” Let us add a little of what is omitted.

In Angola, the US joined South Africa in providing the crucial support for
Jonas Savimbi’s terrorist UNITA army, and continued to do so after Savimbi
had been roundly defeated in a carefully monitored free election and even
after South Africa had withdrawn support from this “monster whose lust for
power had brought appalling misery to his people,” in the words of British
Ambassador to Angola Marrack Goulding, seconded by the CIA station chief in
neighboring Kinshasa who warned that “it wasn’t a good idea” to support the
monster “because of the extent of Savimbi’s crimes. He was terribly
brutal.”

Despite extensive and murderous US-backed terrorist operations in Angola,
Cuban forces drove South African aggressors out of the country, compelled
them to leave illegally occupied Namibia, and opened the way for the
Angolan election in which, after his defeat, Savimbi “dismissed entirely
the views of nearly 800 foreign elections observers here that the
balloting
was generally free and fair” (*New York Times*), and continued
the terrorist war with US support.

Cuban achievements in the liberation of Africa and ending of Apartheid were
hailed by Nelson Mandela when he was finally released from prison. Among
his first acts was to declare that “During all my years in prison, Cuba was
an inspiration and Fidel Castro a tower of strength
 [Cuban victories]
destroyed the myth of the invincibility of the white oppressor [and]
inspired the fighting masses of South Africa 
 a turning point for the
liberation of our continent — and of my people — from the scourge of
apartheid. 
 What other country can point to a record of greater
selflessness than Cuba has displayed in its relations to Africa?”

The terrorist commander Henry Kissinger, in contrast, was “apoplectic” over
the insubordination of the “pipsqueak” Castro who should be “smash[ed],” as
reported by William Leogrande and Peter Kornbluh in their book *Back
Channel to Cuba*, relying on recently declassified documents.

Turning to Nicaragua, we need not tarry on Reagan’s terrorist war, which
continued well after the International Court of Justice ordered Washington
to cease its “illegal use of force” – that is, international terrorism --
and pay substantial reparations, and after a resolution of the UN Security
Council that called on all states (meaning the US) to observe international
law – vetoed by Washington.

It should be acknowledged, however, that Reagan’s terrorist war against
Nicaragua – extended by Bush I, the “statesman” Bush -- was not as
destructive as the state terrorism he backed enthusiastically in El
Salvador and Guatemala. Nicaragua had the advantage of having an army to
confront the US-run terrorist forces, while in the neighboring states the
terrorists assaulting the population were the security forces armed and
trained by Washington.

In a few weeks we will be commemorating the Grand Finale of Washington’s
terrorist wars in Latin America: the murder of six leading Latin American
intellectuals, Jesuit priests, by an elite terrorist unit of the Salvadoran
army, the Atlacatl Battalion, armed and trained by Washington, acting on
the explicit orders of the High Command, and with a long record of
massacres of the usual victims.

This shocking crime on November 16, 1989, at the Jesuit University in San
Salvador was the coda to the enormous plague of terror that spread over the
continent after John F. Kennedy changed the mission of the Latin American
military from “hemispheric defense” – an outdated relic of World War II –
to “internal security,” which means war against the domestic population.
The aftermath is described succinctly by Charles Maechling, who led US
counterinsurgency and internal defense planning from 1961 to 1966. He
described Kennedy’s 1962 decision as a shift from toleration “of the
rapacity and cruelty of the Latin American military” to “direct complicity”
in their crimes, to US support for “the methods of Heinrich Himmler’s
extermination squads.”

All forgotten, not the “right kind of facts.”

In Cuba, Washington’s terror operations were launched in full fury by
President Kennedy to punish Cubans for defeating the US-run Bay of Pigs
invasion. As described by historian Piero Gleijeses, JFK “asked his
brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, to lead the top-level interagency
group that oversaw Operation Mongoose, a program of paramilitary
operations, economic warfare, and sabotage he launched in late 1961 to
visit the 'terrors of the earth' on Fidel Castro and, more prosaically, to
topple him.”

The phrase “terrors of the earth” is quoted from Kennedy associate and
historian Arthur Schlesinger, in his quasi-official biography of Robert
Kennedy, who was assigned responsibility for conducting the terrorist war.
RFK informed the CIA that the Cuban problem carries “[t]he top priority in
the United States Government -- all else is secondary -- no time, no
effort, or manpower is to be spared” in the effort to overthrow the Castro
regime, and to bring “the terrors of the earth” to Cuba.

The terrorist war launched by the Kennedy brothers was no small affair. It
involved 400 Americans, 2,000 Cubans, a private navy of fast boats, and a
$50 million annual budget, run in part by a Miami CIA station functioning
in violation of the Neutrality Act and, presumably, the law banning CIA
operations in the United States. Operations included bombing of hotels and
industrial installations, sinking of fishing boats, poisoning of crops and
livestock, contamination of sugar exports, etc. Some of these operations
were not specifically authorized by the CIA but carried out by the
terrorist forces it funded and supported, a distinction without a
difference in the case of official enemies.

The Mongoose terrorist operations were run by General Edward Lansdale, who
had ample experience in US-run terrorist operations in the Philippines and
Vietnam. His timetable for Operation Mongoose called for “open revolt and
overthrow of the Communist regime” in October 1962, which, for “final
success will require decisive U.S. military intervention” after terrorism
and subversion had laid the basis.

October 1962 is, of course, a very significant moment in modern history.
It was in that month that Nikita Khrushchev sent missiles to Cuba, setting
off the missile crisis that came ominously close to terminal nuclear war.
Scholarship now recognizes that Khrushchev was in part motivated by the
huge US preponderance in force after Kennedy had responded to his calls for
reduction in offensive weapons by radically increasing the US advantage,
and in part by concern over a possible US invasion of Cuba. Years later,
Kennedy’s Defense Secretary Robert McNamara recognized that Cuba and Russia
were justified in fearing an attack. “If I were in Cuban or Soviet shoes, I
would have thought so, too,” McNamara observed at a major international
conference on the missile crisis on the 40th anniversary.

The highly regarded policy analyst Raymond Garthoff, who had many years of
direct experience in US intelligence, reports that in the weeks before the
October crisis erupted, a Cuban terrorist group operating from Florida with
US government authorization carried out “a daring speedboat strafing attack
on a Cuban seaside hotel near Havana where Soviet military technicians were
known to congregate, killing a score of Russians and Cubans.” And shortly
after, he continues, the terrorist forces attacked British and Cuban cargo
ships and again raided Cuba, among other actions that were stepped up in
early October. At a tense moment of the still-unresolved missile
crisis, on November
8, a terrorist team dispatched from the United States blew up a Cuban
industrial facility after the Mongoose operations had been officially
suspended. Fidel Castro alleged that 400 workers had been killed in this
operation, guided by “photographs taken by spying planes.” Attempts to
assassinate Castro and other terrorist attacks continued immediately after
the crisis terminated, and were escalated again in later years.

There has been some notice of one rather minor part of the terror war, the
many attempts to assassinate Castro, generally dismissed as childish CIA
shenanigans. Apart from that, none of what happened has elicited much
interest or commentary. The first serious English-language inquiry into
the impact on Cubans was published in 2010 by Canadian researcher Keith
Bolender, in his *Voices From The Other Side: An Oral History Of Terrorism
Against Cuba*, a very valuable study largely ignored.

The three examples highlighted in the *New York Times* report of US
terrorism are only the tip of the iceberg. Nevertheless, it is useful to
have this prominent acknowledgment of Washington’s dedication to murderous
and destructive terror operations and of the insignificance of all of this
to the political class, which accepts it as normal and proper that the US
should be a terrorist superpower, immune to law and civilized norms.

Oddly, the world may not agree. An international poll released a year ago
by the Worldwide Independent Network/Gallup International Association
(WIN/GIA) found that the United States is ranked far in the lead as “the
biggest threat to world peace today,” far ahead of second-place Pakistan
(doubtless inflated by the Indian vote), with no one else even close.

Fortunately, Americans were spared this insignificant information.