United States and state terrorism: Difference between revisions
Content deleted Content added
Self revert. |
fixing link |
||
| (4 intermediate revisions by the same user not shown) | |||
| Line 1: | Line 1: | ||
{{POV|date=September 2010}} |
|||
{{Very long|date=August 2010}} |
|||
{{synthesis|date=October 2010}} |
|||
Various groups and individuals have accused the '''[[United States government]]''' of '''[[state terrorism]]'''. Among those who've made this argument are historians, political theorists, government officials, propagandists for nations that have adversarial relationships with the United States, and Marxist ideologues. These accusations also include arguments that the US has funded, trained, and harbored individuals or groups who engaged in [[terrorism]].<ref> |
|||
* {{Cite web|url=http://www.austlii.org/au/journals/QUTLJJ/2004/15.html|archiveurl=http://www.webcitation.org/5n4tuzDcU|archivedate=2010-01-26|title=TERRORISM, HUMAN RIGHTS, SOCIAL JUSTICE, FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY: SOME CONSIDERATIONS FOR THE LEGAL AND JUSTICE PROFESSIONALS OF THE ‘COALITION OF THE WILLING’|last=Ball|first=Matthew|publisher=QUT Law & Justice Journal|year=2004|accessdate=2008-02-14}} |
|||
* {{Cite web|url=http://www.arkibongbayan.org/2006-10Oct24-iapl/iapl.htm|title=The role of lawyers in defending the democratic rights of the people|last= |
|||
|first=Various|publisher=International Association of People's Lawyers|date=November 7, 2006|accessdate=2008-02-14|archiveurl = http://web.archive.org/web/20080408175353/http://www.arkibongbayan.org/2006-10Oct24-iapl/iapl.htm |archivedate = 2008-04-08}} |
|||
* {{Cite web|url=http://www.ahrchk.net/ahrc-in-news/mainfile.php/2007ahrcinnews/1130/|title=Filipina Militants Indict Bush-Arroyo for Crimes Against Humanity |
|||
|last=San Juan, Jr.|first=E.|publisher=Asian Human Rights Commission|date=April 28, 2007|accessdate=2007-07-09}} |
|||
* {{Cite web|url=http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/091605I.shtml|title=Venezuelan Leader Lashes at US in UN Speech|publisher=Agence France-Presse |
|||
|date=September 16, 2005|accessdate=2008-02-14|archiveurl = http://web.archive.org/web/20080213083411/http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/091605I.shtml |archivedate = 2008-02-13}} |
|||
* {{cite news|url=http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1309/is_v23/ai_4656176|title=Security Council considers Nicaraguan complaint against United States, takes no action|publisher=United Nations|date=November, 1986|accessdate=2008-02-07}} |
|||
* {{Cite web|url=http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/sanjuan180906.html|title=Class Struggle and Socialist Revolution in the Philippines: Understanding the Crisis of U.S. Hegemony, Arroyo State Terrorism, and Neoliberal Globalization|last=San Juan, Jr.|first=E.|publisher=Monthly Review Foundation|date=September 18, 2006|accessdate=2007-07-09}} |
|||
* {{Cite web|url=http://www.india-seminar.com/2002/518/518%20roland%20g.%20simbulan.htm|title=The Real Threat|last=Simbulan|first=Roland G.|publisher=Seminar |
|||
|date=May 18, 2005|accessdate=2007-07-09}} |
|||
* {{Cite book|last=Piszkiewicz|first=Dennis|title=Terrorism's War with America: A History|date=November 30, 2003|publisher=Praeger Publishers|pages=224|isbn=978-0275979522}} |
|||
* {{Cite web|url=http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-95571886.html|title=Understanding, responding to, and preventing terrorism|last=Cohn|first=Marjorie |
|||
|date=March 22, 2002|publisher=Arab Studies Quarterly|format=Reprint|accessdate=2007-07-09}} |
|||
* {{Cite web|url=http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=HAL20050703&articleId=627|title=The UN and its conduct during the invasion and occupation of Iraq|last=Halliday|first=Dennis|publisher=Centre for Research on Globalization|date=July 3, 2005|accessdate=2007-07-09}} |
|||
* {{Cite episode|title=Noam Chomsky Interview on CBC|series=Hot Type|network=[[Canadian Broadcasting Corporation]]|airdate=2003-12-09}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=KNQtB_VHoYEC&pg=PA157&dq=walzer+hiroshima+terror&lr=lang_en&as_brr=3&cd=18#v=onepage&q=walzer%20hiroshima%20terror&f=false|publisher=[[Yale University Press]]|page=157|author=Michael Howard, George J. Andreopoulos, Mark R. Shulman|title=The Laws of War: Constraints on Warfare in the Western World|ISBN=9780300070620|year=1997|quote=Michael Walzer has argued that Hiroshima was not a case of supreme emergency, but rather an act of political terror.}}</ref><ref name=coady1>{{Cite web|url=http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/just-causes-dont-excuse-indiscriminate-killing/2007/11/13/1194766672031.html|date=2007-11-14|author=[[Tony Coady]]|title=A just cause doesn't excuse indiscriminate killing|publisher=[[The Age]]|accessdate=2010-05-12|quote=Although there were some genuine military targets in Hiroshima, the atomic bomb was not needed to destroy them. If we think of terrorism as the deliberate killing of the innocent, then the bombing was an act of terrorism far greater than any single act of terrorism perpetrated since by non-state agents.}}</ref><ref name=oliverio/> |
|||
The states in which the U.S. has allegedly conducted or supported terror operations include the [[Philippines]], [[Cuba]], [[Chile]], [[Guatemala]], [[Iran]], [[Iraq]], [[Lebanon]], [[Japan]], [[Nicaragua]], and [[Vietnam]]. |
|||
==Definitions== |
==Definitions== |
||
{{Main|State terrorism|Definition of terrorism}} |
{{Main|State terrorism|Definition of terrorism}} |
||
There is no international consensus on what [[terrorism]], or state terrorism is.<ref>[http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=29633 POLITICS: U.N. Member States Struggle to Define Terrorism<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> According to US law terrorism is defined as "premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents". |
There is no international consensus on what [[terrorism]], or state terrorism is.<ref>[http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=29633 POLITICS: U.N. Member States Struggle to Define Terrorism<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> According to US law terrorism is defined as "premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents".<ref>http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/422/usc_sec_22_00002656---f000-.html</ref> |
||
== General allegations against the US == |
|||
In October 2001, [[Arno Mayer]], an Emeritus Professor of History at Princeton University, charged that "since 1947 America has been the chief and pioneering perpetrator of 'preemptive' state terror, exclusively in the Third World and therefore widely dissembled."<ref>Arno Mayer, [http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2001/10/05/opinion/3509.shtml "Untimely reflections upon the state of the world"], guest column in the ''Daily Princetonian'', October 5, 2001; also see George, Alexander, ed. "Western State Terrorism",1 and Selden, Mark, ed. "War and State Terrorism: The United States, Japan and the Asia-Pacific in the Long Twentieth Century", 13.</ref> [[Noam Chomsky]] also argued that "Washington is the center of global state terrorism and has been for years."<ref>[http://www.democracynow.org/2000/5/22/noam_chomsky_speech_on_state_terror Democracy Now! Noam Chomsky Speech On State Terror and U.S. Foreign Policy<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> |
|||
Chomsky has charged that the tactics used by agents of the U.S. government and their proxies in their execution of [[foreign affairs of the United States|U.S. foreign policy]]—in such countries as [[Nicaragua]]—are a form of terrorism and that the U.S is "a leading terrorist state."<ref name="barsamian" /> |
|||
After President [[George W. Bush]] began using the term "[[War on Terrorism]]", Chomsky stated in an interview:"The U.S. is officially committed to what is called "low-intensity warfare"... If you read the definition of low-intensity conflict in army manuals and compare it with official definitions of "terrorism" in army manuals, or the U.S. Code, you find they're almost the same."<ref name="barsamian">{{Cite web |
|||
|url=http://www.monthlyreview.org/1101chomsky.htm |
|||
|title=The United States is a Leading Terrorist State |
|||
|last=Barsamian |
|||
|first=David |
|||
|publisher=[[Monthly Review]] |
|||
|date=November 6, 2001 |
|||
|accessdate=2007-07-10 |
|||
}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book| title=Military Operations in Low Intensity Conflict | url=http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/100-20/10020ch1.htm#s_9 | publisher=Headquarters Departments of the Army and Air Force}}</ref> |
|||
In 1985 the historian [[Henry Steele Commager]] wrote that "Americans, too, must confess their own terrorism against those they feared or hated or regarded as "lesser breeds.""<ref name=oliverio>{{Cite book|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=5L01qCBf2V0C&pg=PA57&dq=us+state+terrorism+hiroshima&as_brr=3&cd=6#v=onepage&q=hiroshima&f=false|title=The state of terror|author=Annamarie Oliverio|year=1998|page=57|publisher=[[SUNY Press]]|ISBN=9780791437070}}</ref> Commager cited instances spanning several centuries - the 1637 massacre of the [[Pequot]], the 1864 [[Sand Creek massacre]], the [[Philippine–American War]] (1899–1902), and the 1968 [[My Lai massacre]].<ref name=oliverio/> |
|||
The longstanding and widespread use of state terrorism by the U.S. commented upon by Americans, including 3 star |
|||
General [[William Odom]], formerly President Reagan's [[National Security Agency|NSA]] Director, who wrote: |
|||
<blockquote>"As many critics have pointed, out, terrorism is not an enemy. It is a tactic. Because the United States itself has a long record of supporting terrorists and using terrorist tactics, the slogans of today's war on terrorism merely makes the United States look hypocritical to the rest of the world."<ref name="odom_terrorismtactic">[www.middlebury.edu/media/view/214721/original/OdomPaper.pdf American Hegemony: How to Use It, How to Lose It by Gen. William Odom]</ref><ref>[http://www.docstoc.com/docs/32938989/American-Hegemony-How-to-Use-It-How-to-Lose American Hegemony How to Use It, How to Lose at Docstoc]</ref></blockquote> |
|||
===State terrorism and propaganda=== |
|||
[[Richard Falk]], Professor Emeritus of International Law and Practice at Princeton, has argued that the U.S. and other first-world states, as well as mainstream [[mass media]] institutions, have obfuscated the true character and scope of terrorism, promulgating a one-sided view from the standpoint of first-world privilege. He has said that |
|||
:if 'terrorism' as a term of moral and legal opprobrium is to be used at all, then it should apply to violence deliberately targeting civilians, whether committed by state actors or their non-state enemies.<ref name="Falk 1988">{{Cite book|last=Falk |first=Richard |title=Revolutionaries and Functionaries: The Dual Face of Terrorism |city=New York |publisher=Dutton |year=1988}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.transnational.org/SAJT/forum/Nonviolence/2004/Falk_GandhiNonviolence.html |title=Gandhi, Nonviolence and the Struggle Against War |last=Falk |first=Richard |publisher=The Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research |date=January 28, 2004 |accessdate=2007-07-10}}</ref> |
|||
Moreover, Falk argued that the repudiation of authentic non-state terrorism is insufficient as a strategy for mitigating it, writing that |
|||
:we must also illuminate the character of terrorism, and its true scope... The propagandists of the modern state conceal its reliance on terrorism and associate it exclusively with Third World revolutionaries and their leftist sympathizers in the industrial countries.<ref name="falk">{{cite journal|title=Thinking About Terrorism|journal=[[The Nation]]|date=1986-06-28|first=Richard|last=Falk|coauthors=|volume=242|issue=25|pages=873–892|id= |url=|format=|accessdate=2008-01-30}}</ref> |
|||
Falk also argued that people who committed "terrorist" acts against the United States could use the [[Nuremberg Defense]]. |
|||
[[Daniel Schorr]], reviewing Falk's ''Revolutionaries and Functionaries'', argued that Falk's definition of terrorism hinges on some unstated definition of "permissible"; this, says Schorr, makes the judgment of what is terrorism inherently "subjective", and furthermore, he suggests, leads Falk to characterize some acts he considers impermissible as "terrorism", but others he considers permissible as merely "terroristic". |
|||
:Mr. Falk overstates his point when he asserts that "revolutionaries and functionaries both endanger political democracy by their adoption and dissemination of exterminist attitudes, policies, and practices." To say that "all forms of impermissible political violence are terrorism" is to beg the question, requiring the author to make subjective judgments about the "permissible." Thus, the antiapartheid movement in South Africa becomes "a legitimate armed struggle, even if some of its tactics are terroristic in design and execution." However justified the struggle against apartheid may be, Mr. Falk's exception to his own rule seems to be subjectively determined.<ref>["The Politics of Violence" http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DEFD8133BF932A35756C0A96E948260], Daniel Schorr, 1 May 1988.</ref> |
|||
In discussing the irrationality of the modern obsession with non-state terrorism, journalist John Pilger cited research from Edward Herman and Gerry O'Sullivan "covering the period singe 1965, which points to the killing of several thousand people by non-state terrorists such as [[Al Qaeda]], compared with 2.5 million civilians killed by state-sponsored terrorism. These include the violence of the South African apartheid regime, the Suharto regime in Indonesia, the 'Contras' in Nicaragua, and other American-backed terrorist states."<ref>Quoted in {{cite book|author=Cahill, Kevin M.|title=Traditions, values, and humanitarian action|publisher=Fordham University Press|year=2003|isbn=9780823222889|page=234|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=8XBjEtg5uEEC&pg=PA234}}</ref> |
|||
==History== |
|||
=== Indonesia's anti-Communist purges (1965–66)=== |
|||
{{Main|Indonesian killings of 1965–1966}} |
|||
The 1965-66 anti-Communist purge in Indonesia, assisted by the United States government, and carried out by the Indonesian Army, is described in an internal CIA publication as follows: ''"In terms of the numbers killed, the anti-PKI massacres in Indonesia rank as one of the worst mass murders of the twentieth century, along with the Soviet purges of the 1930s, the Nazi mass murders during the Second World War, and the Maoist bloodbath of the early 1950s. In this regard, the Indonesian coup is certainly one of the most significant events of the twentieth century, far more significant than many other events that have received much more publicity."''<ref>Central Intelligence Agency, Intelligence Report: Indonesia 1965, The Coup that Backfired (Washington, D.C., 1968), p. 71</ref> |
|||
Senior US diplomats and CIA officials compiled lists of Communist operatives and provided a list of approximately 5,000 names to the Indonesian Army as it captured and annihilated the Indonesian Communist party and its sympathizers. State Department and CIA officers spent two years compiling the lists and delivered them to an Army intermediary. Joseph Lazarsky, the deputy CIA station chief in [[Jakarta]], said that confirmation of the killings came straight from Suharto's headquarters. 'We were getting a good account in Jakarta of who was being picked up,' said Lazarsky. 'The army had a "shooting list" of 4,000 to 5,000 people. They didn't have enough goon squads to zap them all, and some individuals were valuable for interrogation. The infrastructure (of the PKI) was zapped almost immediately. We knew what they were doing... Suharto and his advisers said, if you keep them alive, you have to feed them.'<ref>''San Francisco Examiner'', May 20, 1990; ''Washington Post'', May 21, 1990.</ref> Robert J. Martens, head of the embassy group that compiled the lists, acknowledged that the names on the lists were killed or captured in overwhelming numbers: "It really was a big help to the army. It's a big part of the reason the PKI has never come back."<ref name="SFOKK">{{cite news|title=Ex-agents say CIA compiled death lists for Indonesians |newspaper=[[San Francisco Examiner]] |date=1990-05-20|author=[http://www.namebase.org/kadane.html Kadane, Kathy] |location=San Francisco }}</ref> |
|||
Approval for the release of names put on the lists came from top US embassy officials; Ambassador Marshall Green, deputy chief of mission Jack Lydman and political section chief Edward Masters. The lists included names of provincial, city and other local PKI committee members, and leaders of the PKI national labor federation, women's and youth groups. According to Green, "[the embassy] had a lot more information [about the PKI] than the Indonesians themselves...The government did not have very good information on the Communist setup, and [Martens] gave me the impression that this information was superior to anything they had."<ref name="SFOKK" /> |
|||
The American Ambassador in Jakarta was Marshall Green, known in the State Department as 'the coupmaster'. Green had arrived in Jakarta only months earlier, bringing with him a reputation for having supported the overthrow of the Korean dictator and strongman [[Syngman Rhee]], who had fallen out with the Americans. When the killings got under way in Indonesia, manuals on student organizing, written in Korean and English, were distributed by the US embassy to the Indonesian Student Action Command (KAMI).<ref name=pilger>{{Cite book|last=Pilger|first=John|year=2002|title=''The New Rulers of the World.''|publisher=Verso|isbn=978-1859843932}}</ref> The US also directly funded those participating in the anti-Communist repression. On December 2, 1965, Green endorsed a plan to provide fifty-million [[rupiahs]] to what he called “the Kap-Gestapu movement,” which he described as an “army-inspired but civilian-staffed action group” which was “carrying [the] burden of current repressive efforts targeted against PKI, particularly in Central Java.”<ref>Telegram, Embassy in Indonesia to Department of State, Jakarta, 2 December 1965, FRUS 64-68, 379.</ref> Green did not mention the fact that “current repressive efforts” against the PKI in Central Java consisted, according to the US Consulate in Medan, of an attempt to “eradicate all PKI.” That he was aware of this fact is beyond doubt, as he himself noted that the Embassy had access to “substantial intelligence reporting” on Kap-Gestapu activities, activities which he assured the State Department were “fully consonant with and coordinated by the army” and which he praised as “highly successful.”<ref>Ibid., 379-80.</ref> |
|||
The US government also provided the Indonesian army with important logistical equipment including small arms, jeeps and dozens of field radios. Investigative reporter Kathy Kadene, reporting on information gathered from taped interviews with former top-level embassy officials stationed in Indonesia, writes: "...the Central Intelligence Agency hastily provided the radios—state-of-the-art Collins KWM-2s, high-frequency single-sideband transceivers, the highest-powered mobile unit available at that time to the civilian and commercial market. The radios, stored at [[Clark Field]] in the Philippines, were secretly flown by the US Air Force into Indonesia. They were then distributed directly to Soeharto's headquarters—called by its acronym KOSTRAD—by Pentagon representatives. The radios plugged a major hole in Army communications: at that critical moment, there were no means for troops on Java and the out-islands to talk directly with Jakarta."<ref>Kathy Kadane… A Letter to the Editor, New York Review of Books, April 10, 1997</ref> The Indonesian generals requested the equipment directly, through a designated liaison in [[Bangkok, Thailand]].<ref name="insideindonesia.org">http://www.insideindonesia.org/edition-99/accomplices-in-atrocity</ref> The tactical communications equipment was used for the purpose of linking [[Jakarta]] with military commands carrying out anti-PKI repressions in [[Sumatra]], [[Java]] and [[Sulawesi]].<ref name="insideindonesia.org"/><ref>Memorandum Prepared for the 303 Committee, November 17, 1965, Foreign Relations of the United States Series:1954-68, Volume XXVI, pp.368-370</ref> The arms provided were of both US and non-US origin, requested specifically to “arm Moslem and nationalist youths in Central Java for use against the PKI.” <ref>http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1997/apr/10/smoldering-indonesia-an-exchange/</ref><ref>Telegram, Embassy in Thailand to Department of State, Bangkok, 5 November 1965, FRUS 64-68, 360.</ref> Brad Simpson, Assistant Professor of History and International Studies at [[Princeton University]] and director of the Indonesia/East Timor Documentation Project at [[George Washington University]] stated that "The United States was directly involved to the extent that they provided the Indonesian Armed Forces with assistance that they introduced to help facilitate the mass killings." <ref>http://thejakartaglobe.com/news/historian-claims-west-backed-post-coup-mass-killings-in-65/312844</ref> |
|||
On October 5, 1965, Green cabled Washington on how the United States could 'shape developments to our advantage'. The plan was to blacken the name of the PKI and its 'protector', Sukarno. The propaganda should be based on '(spreading) the story of the PKI's guilt, treachery and brutality'. At the height of the bloodbath, Green assured General Suharto: 'The US is generally sympathetic with and admiring of what the army is doing.'<ref>US National Archives, RG 59 Records Department of State: cable no. 868, ref: Embtel 852, October 5, 1965.</ref> As for the numbers killed, Howard Federspiel, the Indonesia expert at the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research in 1965, said 'No one cared, as long as they were communists, that they were being butchered. No one was getting very worked up about it.'<ref>''San Francisco Examiner'', May 20, 1990</ref> |
|||
The common estimate of the death toll of the anti-Communist purge is 500,000, although higher, more unreliable estimates put the death toll at or above 1,000,000.<ref>Robert Cribb, ed. The Indonesian Killings of 1965-1966: Studies from Java and Bali (Clayton, Vic: Monash papers on Southeast Asia, no. 21, 1990), p.12</ref> |
|||
===Indonesia's occupation of East Timor (1975–1999)=== |
|||
{{Main|Indonesian occupation of East Timor}} |
|||
In 1975, the Ford administration, including President Ford himself and [[Henry Kissinger]], authorized and supported Indonesia's invasion and occupation of East Timor.<ref>http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB62/doc4.pdf (pg.9-10)</ref><ref name= NSA>[http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB62/ East Timor Revisited. Ford, Kissinger and the Indonesian Invasion, 1975-76] ''The National Security Archive''</ref> Subsequent US administrations continued support of Indonesia while the Indonesian army systematically destroyed East Timor; throughout the 24 year period, the army forcibly sterilized women, carried out massacres, engaged in systematic rape, torture, and food deprivation, destroyed whole villages and forced hundreds of thousands into virtual concentration camps. By 1980 the occupation had left more than 100,000 dead with some estimates running as high as 230,000.<ref>http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB62/#18</ref><ref>http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/35878.htm</ref> |
|||
The US played a crucial role in supplying weapons to Indonesia. Virtually all of the military equipment used in the invasion was U.S. supplied: U.S.-supplied destroyer escorts shelled East Timor as the attack unfolded; Indonesian marines disembarked from U.S.-supplied landing craft; U.S.-supplied [[C-47]] and [[C-130]] aircraft dropped Indonesian paratroops and strafed Dili with .50 caliber machine guns; while the 17th and 18th Airborne brigades which led the assault on the Timorese capital were "totally U.S. [[Mutual Defense Assistance Act|MAP]] supported," and their jump masters U.S. trained.<ref>http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB174/1010.pdf</ref> Following the invasion, U.S. arms sales to Indonesia quadrupled from 1974 to 1975 from $12 million to more than $65 million. U.S. military aid to Jakarta doubled from 1974 to 1976, from $17 million to $40 million. Arms sales dropped to $10–$12 million per year during the last two years of the Ford Administration, but increased $112 million in 1978, and averaged nearly $60 million per year for the duration of the Carter administration.<ref name="worldpolicy.org">http://www.worldpolicy.org/projects/arms/reports/indoarms.html</ref> |
|||
At the United Nations, American ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan undertook the task of blocking Security Council action against East Timor: ""The United States wished things to turn out as they did, and worked to bring this about. The Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. This task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success."{{cn|date=December 2010}} |
|||
International relations professor Ruth Blakely states that "Both the US and Britain were complicit in an ongoing campaign of state terrorism by Indonesia which cost hundreds of thousands of lives. Furthermore, their economies benefited from the sale of arms which were used against East Timorese civilians."<ref name="blakely-2009-91">{{cite book|author=Blakely, Ruth|title=State terrorism and neoliberalism: the North in the South|publisher=Taylor & Francis|year=2009|isbn=9780415462402|page=91|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=FoxuDCMmlqoC&pg=PA91</ref> |
|||
===Wars in Indochina=== |
|||
International relations professor Ruth Blakely stated the following: |
|||
{{blockquote|The methods used by the US to defeat its opponents in Indochina involved the widespread use of state terrorism. The US was directly responsible for state terrorism in some cases, as in the aerial bombardment of the civilian population in Korea and the establishment of counterinsurgency programmes such as the Phoenix Programme in Vietnam, which involved torture and assassination of civilians suspected of supporting the opposition, and was intended to deter public support for the enemy. The US was complicit in state terrorism through its support for repressive regimes, either by giving the green light to acts of state terrorism or by providing military hardware to regimes engaged in campaigns of state terrorism, as was the case in Taiwan and Indonesia. The US also collaborated with those regimes through the sharing of military doctrine which advocated state terrorism, as the case of the Philippines shows<ref name="blakely-2009-91" />}} |
|||
[[Operation Speedy Express]] was a large-scale, rural "pacification" operation carried out in Vietnam's Mekong Delta (in the province of Kien Hoa) by the United States Army's Ninth Infantry Division. Eight thousand infantrymen were involved in the operation and the division relied heavily on artillery, helicopters gunships and support from B-52 bombers. There were 3,381 tactical air strikes by fighter bombers during Speedy Express. As many as 5,000 noncombatant civilians were killed.<ref name="Pacification's Deadly Price 1972 pp.42-43">[http://www.chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/Vietnam/buckley.html "Pacification's Deadly Price"], Newsweek (June 19, 1972), pp.42-43.</ref> Commanding officers encouraged the use of massive, indiscriminate firepower to wrack up high body counts. Louis Janowski, an adviser during Speedy Express,observed the operations and called them a form of 'non selective terrorism': |
|||
"I have flown Phantom III missions and have medivaced enough elderly people and children to firmly believe that the percentage of Viet Cong killed by support assets is roughly equal to the percentage of Viet Cong in the population", he wrote. "That is, if 8% of the population [of] an area is VC about 8% of the people we kill are VC."<ref>[http://www.thenation.com/article/my-lai-month]</ref> |
|||
[[Michael Stohl]] considers the 1972 saturation bombings of North Vietnam, code-named [[Operation Linebacker II]], to be an example of a type of state terrorism that he calls "terrorism by coercive diplomacy" -- i.e. terrorism whose purpose is to force an opponent to agree to your demands by making their living conditions "horrible beyond endurance".<ref>{{cite book|author=Stohl, Michael|title=The Politics of Terrorism|publisher=CRC Press|year=1988|isbn=9780824778149|page=279|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=R60c_2nCcnYC&pg=PA279}}</ref> |
|||
===Atomic bombings of Japan (1945)=== |
|||
The [[atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki]] during World War II remain the only time a state has used [[Nuclear warfare|nuclear weapons]] against people. Because concentrated civilian populated areas were targeted, critics hold that it represents the single greatest act of [[state terrorism]] in the 20th century even though it was done during wartime. Others defend the bombings as shortening the war, arguing that the loss of life could have been greater if the war had continued, even though the dead were civilian.<ref name="Frey 2004">{{Cite book |
|||
| last = Frey |
|||
| first =Robert S. |
|||
| title = The Genocidal Temptation: Auschwitz, Hiroshima, Rwanda and Beyond |
|||
| publisher =University Press of America |
|||
| year =2004 |
|||
| id = ISBN 0761827439 }} Reviewed at: |
|||
{{cite journal |
|||
| last = Rice |
|||
| first =Sarah |
|||
| title =The Genocidal Temptation: Auschwitz, Hiroshima, Rwanda and Beyond (Review) |
|||
| journal =Harvard Human Rights Journal |
|||
| volume = 18 |
|||
| year =2005 |
|||
| url = http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/hrj/iss18/booknotes-Genocidal.shtml |
|||
| accessdate = }}</ref><ref name="Dower 1995">{{cite journal |
|||
| last = Dower |
|||
| first =John |
|||
| title =The Bombed: Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japanese Memory |
|||
| journal =Diplomatic History |
|||
| volume = 19 |
|||
| issue = 2 |
|||
| year =1995 |
|||
| url = |
|||
| accessdate = }}</ref> |
|||
[[Image:Nagasaki 1945 - Before and after (adjusted).jpg|thumb|200px|[[Nagasaki, Nagasaki|Nagasaki]] before and after bombing]] |
|||
For scholars and historians, the primary [[ethic]]s [[debate over the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki]],<ref>See: {{cite journal|title=Recent Literature on Truman's Atomic Bomb Decision: A Search for Middle Ground|journal=Diplomatic History|year=2005|month=April|first=J. Samuel|last=Walker|coauthors=|volume=29|issue=2|pages=334|id= |url=|format=|accessdate=2008-01-30 }}</ref> relate to whether the use of nuclear weapons were justified. A number of scholars consider the atomic bombings to be a form of state terrorism, based on a definition of terrorism as the targeting of civilians to achieve a political goal.<ref>{{citation|title=The Psychology of Terrorism: Clinical aspects and responses Psychological dimensions to war and peace|author=Chris E. Stout|isbn=0275977714|publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group|year=2002|isbn=0275978664|pages=105–7|quote=Surely if targeting civilians is a defining characteristic, then the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki would qualify as state terrorism.}}</ref><ref>{{citation|title=Trying to Define Terrorism|author=Robert V. Keeley|journal=[[Middle East Policy]]|volume=9|issue=1|publisher=[[John Wiley & Sons]]|date=December 2002|pages=33–39 [35]|quote=Terrorism is also used in nation-state wars, for example in the wholesale and indiscriminate bombings of civilians living in cities – a tactic used by both sides in World War II – culminating in the atom bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a deliberate and successful attempt to end the war quickly by threatening the extinction of populations. How acute the problem of definitions is becomes manifest when anyone who tries to explain these atom bombings as acts of state terrorism in wartime is pilloried as anti-American if not worse.}}</ref> |
|||
Some scholars have also argued that the bombings weakened moral taboos against attacks on civilians, and allege that this led to such attacks becoming a standard tactic in subsequent [[US military]] actions.<ref name=Selden/> The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki remain the only time nuclear weapons have been used in war.<ref name="Frey 2004"/><ref name="Dower 1995"/> |
|||
====Views and opinions==== |
|||
According to [[Thomas B. Allen (author)|Thomas Allen]], the bombings were part of the overall military strategy to defeat Japan by forcing as quick an end to the war as possible while minimizing loss of life and also avoid a very costly, in terms of both Japanese and Allied casualties, invasion of the Japanese mainland.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Code-Name Downfall |last=Allen |first=Thomas |coauthors=Norman Polmar|pages=266–270 |year= 1995|publisher=Simon & Schuster |location=New York |isbn=0684804069}}</ref> However, there is considerable [[debate over the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki|debate on the use of nuclear weapons to achieve that military objective]] that centers on whether killing hundreds of thousands of unarmed civilians with such weapons was moral or even necessary, especially the need for a second nuclear bomb to be dropped on Nagasaki.{{cite}} |
|||
;Viewed as state terrorism |
|||
[[Image:Nagasaki temple destroyed.jpg|thumb|right|200px|A Japanese report on the bombing characterized Nagasaki as "like a graveyard with not a tombstone standing".]] |
|||
Historian [[Howard Zinn]] writes: "if '[[terrorism]]' has a useful meaning (and I believe it does, because it marks off an act as intolerable, since it involves the indiscriminate use of violence against human beings for some political purpose), then it applies exactly to the bombings of Hiroshima and [[Nagasaki, Nagasaki|Nagasaki]]."<ref name="ZinnBreakingSilence" /> Zinn cites the sociologist [[Kai Erikson]] who states that: {{quote|The attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not 'combat' in any of the ways that word is normally used. Nor were they primarily attempts to destroy military targets, for the two cities had been chosen not despite but because they had a high density of civilian housing. Whether the intended audience was Russian or Japanese or a combination of both, then the attacks were to be a show, a display, a demonstration. The question is: What kind of mood does a fundamentally decent people have to be in, what kind of moral arrangements must it make, before it is willing to annihilate as many as a quarter of a million human beings for the sake of making a point?<ref name="ZinnBreakingSilence">{{Cite web|url=http://polymer.bu.edu/~amaral/Personal/zinn.html |title=Hiroshima; Breaking the Silence |accessdate=2008-01-30 |first=Howard Zinn |archiveurl = http://web.archive.org/web/20071201172331/http://polymer.bu.edu/~amaral/Personal/zinn.html <!-- Bot retrieved archive --> |archivedate = 2007-12-01}}</ref>}} |
|||
The [[Just War|just war]] theorist [[Michael Walzer]] argues that while taking the lives of civilians can be justified under conditions of 'supreme emergency', the war situation at that time did not constitute such an emergency and was influenced by the U.S. demand for an unconditional Japanese surrender.<ref name=justice>{{Cite book|title=Justice Beyond Borders: A Global Political Theory|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=KhuyAtfeecIC&pg=PA197&dq=walzer+hiroshima+emergency&lr=lang_en&as_brr=3&cd=5#v=onepage&q=walzer%20hiroshima%20emergency&f=false|publisher=[[Oxford University Press]]|page=197|year=2006|author=Simon Caney|ISBN=9780199297962}}</ref> [[Tony Coady]], [[Frances V. Harbour]], and [[Jamal Nassar]] also view the targeting of civilians during the bombings as a form of terrorism.<ref name=coady1/><ref name=jamal>{{Cite book|title=Globalization and Terrorism: The Migration of Dreams and Nightmares|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=KVgUGDJGGl4C&pg=PA30&dq=hiroshima+terrorism&cd=3#v=onepage&q=hiroshima%20terrorism&f=false|author=[[Jamal Nassar]]|year=2009|publisher=[[Rowman & Littlefield]]|page=30|ISBN=9780742557888|quote=As discussed earlier, the Holocaust, followed by the Allied firebombings of Dresden and Tokyo and the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, represented some of the most severe effects of terrorism directed at civilian populations.}}</ref> |
|||
[[Richard A. Falk]], professor Emeritus of [[International Law]] and Practice at [[Princeton University]] has written in detail about Hiroshima and Nagasaki as instances of state terrorism. He writes "The graveyards of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are the number-one exhibits of state terrorism... Consider the hypocrisy of an Administration that portrays [[Muammar al-Gaddafi|Qaddafi]] as barbaric while preparing to inflict terrorism on a far grander scale.... Any [[counter terrorism]] policy worth the name must include a convincing indictment of the First World variety.".<ref name="Falk 1988"/><ref>{{Cite web |
|||
|url=http://www.transnational.org/SAJT/forum/Nonviolence/2004/Falk_GandhiNonviolence.html |
|||
|title=Gandhi, Nonviolence and the Struggle Against War |
|||
|last=Falk |
|||
|first=Richard |
|||
|publisher=The Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research |
|||
|date=28 January 2004 |
|||
|accessdate=2007-07-10 |
|||
}}</ref> He writes elsewhere that:<ref>Falk, Richard. "State Terror versus Humanitarian Law",in Selden,, Mark, editor (November 28, 2003). War and State Terrorism: The United States, Japan, and the Asia-Pacific in the Long Twentieth Century. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.. ISBN 978-0742523913. ,45</ref> |
|||
{{quote|Undoubtedly the most extreme and permanently traumatizing instance of state terrorism, perhaps in the history of warfare, involved the use of atomic bombs against the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in military settings in which the explicit function of the attacks was to terrorize the population through mass slaughter and to confront its leaders with the prospect of national annihilation....the public justification for the attacks given by the U.S. government then and now was mainly to save lives that might otherwise might have been lost in a military campaign to conquer and occupy the Japanese home islands which was alleged as necessary to attain the war time goal of unconditional surrender.... But even accepting the rationale for the atomic attacks at face value, which means discounting both the geopolitical motivations and the pressures to show that the immense investment of the [[Manhattan Project]] had struck pay dirt, and disregarding the Japanese efforts to arrange their surrender prior to the attacks, the idea that massive death can be deliberately inflicted on a helpless civilian population as a tactic of war certainly qualifies as state terror of unprecedented magnitude, particularly as the United States stood on the edge of victory, which might well have been consummated by diplomacy. As Michael Walzer puts it, the United States owed the Japanese people 'an experiment in negotiation,' but even if such an initiative had failed there was no foundation in law or morality for atomic attacks on civilian targets.}} |
|||
[[Steven Poole]], author of ''[[Unspeak]]'' (2006), states in Chapter 6 (entitled 'Terror'), page 130 that: |
|||
'Remember that people killed by terrorism are not the people the perpetrators wish to persuade. They are exemplars, bargaining chips. There is a disconnect between victims and audience; the violence is a warning to people other than those targeted. (The writer Brian Jenkins has sumed up this fact in the catchphrase 'terrorism is theatre': a US Army lieutenant colonel went one better, telling a reporter in Baghdad in 2003: 'terrorism is grand theater')<ref>Danner, Mark "Delusions in Baghdad", New York Review of Books, 19 November 2003</ref> Unfortunately this, too, is true of many government actions. Consider the nuclear bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima in 1945. The US had not identified every citizen in those cities as being an indispensable part of the Japanese war effort. On the contrary, the bombings were designed as an awful demonstration: to instil such fear in the Japanese government that they would surrender. The bomb thus spoke thus: Give up or there'll be more where this came from. It also sent a powerful message to a secondary audience: Joseph Stalin. On this measure, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are, by many orders of magnitude, the greatest acts of terrorism in history.'<ref>2006 Poole, Steven 'Unspeak', Little Brown, London. ISBN 0 316 73100 5</ref> |
|||
;Viewed as primarily wartime acts |
|||
[[Burleigh Taylor Wilkins]] states in ''Terrorism and Collective Responsibility'' that "any definition which allowed the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to count as instances of terrorism would be too broad." He goes on to argue "The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, while obviously intended by the American government to alter the policies of the Japanese government, seem for all the terror they involved, more an act of war than of terrorism."<ref name=Wilkins>{{Cite book |
|||
|title=Terrorism and Collective Responsibility |
|||
|publisher=Routledge |
|||
|last=Wilkins |
|||
|first=Burleigh Taylor |
|||
|isbn=041504152X |
|||
|pages=11}}</ref> |
|||
It has also been argued, under the view that Japan was involved in a [[total war]], that therefore there was no difference between civilians and soldiers.<ref>{{Cite web |
|||
|title=The Avalon Project : The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki |
|||
|url=http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/abomb/mp25.htm |
|||
|accessdate=2005-08-06}}</ref> The targets, while they may not primarily have been chosen for this reason, had, in this view, strategic military value. [[Hiroshima]] was used as headquarters of the Fifth Division and the 2nd General Army, which commanded the defense of southern Japan with 40,000 military personal in the city, and was a communication center, a storage point with military factories.<ref>{{Cite web |
|||
| url= http://www.hiroshima-spirit.jp/en/museum/morgue_e11.html |
|||
| title= Hiroshima Before the Bombing |
|||
|publisher= [[Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum]] |
|||
| accessdate= 2008-03-16 }}</ref><ref name="hanson">{{Cite web |
|||
| url= http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson200508050714.asp |
|||
| title= 60 Years Later: Considering Hiroshima |
|||
| first= Victor Davis | last= Hanson | authorlink= Victor Davis Hanson |
|||
|date= August 5, 2005 |publisher= ''[[National Review]]'' |
|||
| accessdate= 2008-03-24 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |
|||
|url=http://www.worldsecuritynetwork.com/showArticle3.cfm?article_id=15045 |
|||
|title=Hiroshima: Hubertus Hoffmann meets the only U.S. Officer on both A-Missions and one of his Victims |
|||
|first=Hubertus |
|||
|last=Hoffmann}}</ref> [[Nagasaki]] was of wartime importance because of its wide-ranging industrial activity, including the production of ordinance, ships, military equipment, and other war materials.<ref>{{Cite web |
|||
|url=http://www.century-of-flight.net/Aviation%20history/WW2/Atomic%20Bombing%20of%20Hiroshima.htm |
|||
|title=The Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima}}</ref> |
|||
In 1963, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the subject of a [[judicial review]] in ''[[Ryuichi Shimoda et al. v. The State]]''.<ref>[http://www.helpicrc.org/ihl-nat.nsf/46707c419d6bdfa24125673e00508145/aa559087dbcf1af5c1256a1c0029f14d?OpenDocument Shimoda et al. v. The State], Tokyo District Court, 7 December 1963</ref> The [[District Court of Tokyo]] declined to rule on the legality of nuclear weapons in general, but found that "the attacks upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki caused such severe and indiscriminate suffering that they did violate the most basic legal principles governing the conduct of war."<ref>{{cite news|first=Richard A.|last=Falk |title=The Claimants of Hiroshima| date=1965-02-15 |publisher=The Nation}} reprinted in {{Cite book|editor=Richard A. Falk, Saul H. Mendlovitz eds.|title=The Strategy of World Order. Volume: 1| publisher=World Law Fund|year=1966|location=New York|chapter=The Shimoda Case: Challenge and Response|pages=307–13}}</ref> [[Francisco Gómez]] points out in an article published in the ''[[International Review of the Red Cross]]'' that, with respect to the "anti-city" or "blitz" strategy, that "in examining these events in the light of international humanitarian law, it should be borne in mind that during the Second World War there was no agreement, treaty, convention or any other instrument governing the protection of the civilian population or civilian property." <ref name="ICRC">[http://www.icrc.org/web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/iwpList200/42F64C9A4212EA07C1256B66005C0BF1 International Review of the Red Cross no 323, p.347-363 The Law of Air Warfare (1998)]</ref> |
|||
The possibility that attacks such as those on Hiroshima and Nagasaki could be considered war crimes under the [[Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court]] was one of the major reasons often given by [[John R. Bolton|John Bolton]] (while US ambassador to the [[United Nations]]) for the United States not agreeing to be bound by the Rome Statute.<ref>John Bolton ''[http://www.law.duke.edu/shell/cite.pl?64+Law+&+Contemp.+Probs.+167+(Winter+2001)+pdf The Risks and Weaknesses of the International Criminal Court from America's Perspective]'', (page 4) [[Law and Contemporary Problems]] January 2001, while US ambassador to the United Nations</ref> |
|||
;Viewed as diplomacy or state terrorism not considered |
|||
Critical scholarship has focused on the argument that the use of atomic weapons was "primarily for diplomatic purposes rather than for military requirements ... to impress and intimidate the Soviet Union in the emerging Cold War."<ref>{{cite journal|title=Recent Literature on Truman's Atomic Bomb Decision: A Search for Middle Ground|journal=Diplomatic History|date=[[2005-April]]|first=J. Samuel|last=Walker|coauthors=|volume=29|issue=2|pages=312|id= |url=|format=|accessdate=2008-01-30 }}</ref> Certain scholars who oppose the decision to use of the atom bomb, while they state it was unnecessary and immoral, do not claim it was state terrorism per se. Walker's 2005 overview of recent historiography did not discuss the issue of state terrorism.<ref>Walker, "Recent Literature on Truman's Atomic Bomb Decision", ''passim''.</ref> |
|||
====Forward effects==== |
|||
[[Political science]] professor [[Michael Stohl]] and [[peace studies]] researcher [[George A. Lopez]], in their book ''Terrible beyond Endurance? The Foreign Policy of State Terrorism'', discuss the argument that the institutionalized form of terrorism carried out by states have occurred as a result of changes that took place following World War II, and in particular the two bombings. In their analysis state terrorism as a form of foreign policy was shaped by the presence and use of [[weapons of mass destruction]], and that the legitimizing of such violent behavior led to an increasingly accepted form of state behavior. They consider both Germany's bombing of London (q.v. [[The Blitz]]) and the US atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to be examples of this. |
|||
Scholars treating the subject have discussed the bombings within a wider context of the weakening of the moral taboos that were in place prior to World War II, which prohibited mass attacks against civilians during wartime. [[Mark Selden]], professor of sociology and history at [[Binghamton University]] and author of ''War and State Terrorism: The United States, Japan, and the Asia-Pacific in the Long Twentieth Century'', writes, "This deployment of air power against civilians would become the centerpiece of all subsequent U.S. wars, a practice in direct contravention of the Geneva principles, and cumulatively the single most important example of the use of terror in twentieth century warfare."<ref>{{cite news |
|||
|first=Mark |
|||
|last=Selden |
|||
|title=Terrorism Before and After 9-11 |
|||
|date=2002-09-09 |
|||
|publisher=[[Znet]] |
|||
|url =http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=2310 |
|||
|accessdate=2008-01-30}}</ref> Falk, Selden, and Prof. Douglas Lackey, each of whom relate the Japan bombings to what they believe was a similar pattern of state terrorism in following wars, particularly the [[Korean War]] and the [[Vietnam War]]. Professor Selden writes: "Over the next half century, the United States would destroy with impunity cities and rural populations throughout Asia, beginning in Japan and continuing in North Korea, Indochina, Iraq and Afghanistan, to mention only the most heavily bombed nations...if nuclear weapons defined important elements of the global [[balance of terror]] centered on U.S.-Soviet conflict, "conventional" bomb attacks defined the trajectory of the subsequent half century of warfare."<ref name=Selden>Selden, War and State Terrorism.</ref> |
|||
===Cuba (1959–present)=== |
|||
After [[Fidel Castro]]'s forces vanquished [[Fulgencio Batista]]'s forces, a new government was formed in [[Cuba]] on January 2, 1959. The [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] initiated a campaign of regime change in the early parts of 1959,<ref>[http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/%7Ehbf/Cuba_and_the_US_book.pdf cuba and the us.p65<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> and by the spring of 1959 was arming [[counter-revolutionary]] guerrillas inside Cuba. By winter of that year US-based Cubans were being supervised by the CIA in the orchestration of bombings and incendiary raids against Cuba.<ref name=autogenerated1>Chomsky, Noam. Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance, Henry Holt and Company, 80.</ref> [[Piero Gleijeses]], [[Jorge I. Dominguez]], and [[Richard Kearney]] refer to the US actions against Castro during the early 1960s as terrorism. |
|||
<ref>{{Cite book|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=6_E_mW8YXQEC&pg=PA14&dq=operation+mongoose+terrorism&lr=&as_brr=3&cd=11#v=onepage&q=operation%20mongoose%20terrorism&f=false|publisher=[[Stanford University Press]]|title=Averting 'the final failure': John F. Kennedy and the secret Cuban Missile Crisis meetings|year=2003|author=Sheldon M. Stern|ISBN=9780804748469|page=14}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=BOzoAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA58&dq=operation+mongoose+terrorism&lr=&as_brr=3&cd=14#v=onepage&q=operation%20mongoose%20terrorism&f=false|publisher=[[Manchester University Press]]|year=1995|author=[[Richard Kearney]]|title=States of mind: dialogues with contemporary thinkers on the European mind|page=58|ISBN=9780719042621}}</ref> |
|||
[[Politics of Cuba|Cuban government]] officials have accused the United States government of being an accomplice and protector of terrorism against [[Cuba]] on many occasions.<ref>{{Cite web |
|||
|url=http://www.granma.cu/miami5/ingles/415.html |
|||
|title=The United States is an accomplice and protector of terrorism, states Alarcón |
|||
|last=Rodríguez |
|||
|first=Javier |
|||
|publisher=Granma |
|||
|accessdate=2007-07-10 |
|||
|archiveurl = http://web.archive.org/web/20070609104439/http://www.granma.cu/miami5/ingles/415.html <!-- Bot retrieved archive --> |archivedate = 2007-06-09}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |
|||
|url=http://www.granma.cu/cubademanda/ingles/demanda9-i.html |
|||
|title=Terrorism organized and directed by the CIA |
|||
|publisher=Granma |
|||
|accessdate=2007-07-10 |
|||
|archiveurl = http://web.archive.org/web/20070609174822/http://www.granma.cu/cubademanda/ingles/demanda9-i.html <!-- Bot retrieved archive --> |archivedate = 2007-06-09}}</ref> According to [[Ricardo Alarcón]], President of [[National Assembly of Cuba|Cuba's national assembly]] "Terrorism and violence, crimes against Cuba, have been part and parcel of U.S. policy for almost half a century."<ref name="landau">{{Cite web |
|||
|url=http://www.tni.org/archives/landau/alarcon.htm |
|||
|title=Interview with Ricardo Alarcón |
|||
|last=Landau |
|||
|first=Saul |
|||
|publisher=Transnational Institute |
|||
|date=February 13, 2003 |
|||
|accessdate=2007-07-10 |
|||
}} {{Dead link|date=October 2010|bot=H3llBot}}</ref> Testifying before the United States Senate in 1978, [[Richard Helms]], former CIA Director, stated; "We had task forces that were striking at Cuba constantly. We were attempting to blow up power plants. We were attempting to ruin sugar mills. We were attempting to do all kinds of things in this period. This was a matter of American government policy."<ref>House Select Committee on Assassinations Report, Volume IV, page 125. September 22, 1978</ref> |
|||
The claims formed part of Cuba's $181.1 billion lawsuit in 1999 in Havana's Popular Provincial Tribunal against the United States on behalf of the Cuban people which alleged that for over 40 years, "terrorism has been permanently used by the U.S. as an instrument of its foreign policy against Cuba", and it "became more systematic as a result of the covert action program."<ref>{{Cite web |
|||
|url=http://www.workers.org/ww/1999/cuba0916.php |
|||
|title=Cuba's case against Washington |
|||
|last=Wood |
|||
|first=Nick |
|||
|publisher=Workers World |
|||
|date=September 16, 1999 |
|||
|accessdate=2007-07-10 |
|||
}}</ref> The lawsuit detailed a history of terrorism allegedly supported by the United States. The United States has long denied any involvement in the acts named in the lawsuit.<ref>{{cite news |
|||
|url=http://edition.cnn.com/WORLD/americas/9906/02/cuba.billions/ |
|||
|title=Cuba sues U.S. for billions, alleging 'war' damages |
|||
|publisher=[[CNN]] |
|||
|date=June 2, 1999 |
|||
|accessdate=2007-07-10 |
|||
|archiveurl = http://web.archive.org/web/20070310002911/http://edition.cnn.com/WORLD/americas/9906/02/cuba.billions/ <!-- Bot retrieved archive --> |archivedate = 2007-03-10}}</ref> |
|||
[[Image:Porter Goss, Barry Seal, Felix Rodriguez, et al.jpg|thumb|200px|Gathering of [[Operation 40]] operatives including Guillermo Novo Sampol, (left; fourth from camera) wanted in [[Venezuela]] for extradition in connection with terrorist acts,<ref name="sanchez">{{cite news |
|||
|url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57838-2004Sep2.html |
|||
|title=Moral Misstep |
|||
|last=Sanchez |
|||
|first=Marcela |
|||
|publisher=[[The Washington Post]] |
|||
|date=September 3, 2004 |
|||
}}</ref> Mexico City 22 January 1963.]] |
|||
Cuba also claims US involvement in the paramilitary group [[Omega 7]], the CIA undercover operation known as [[Operation 40]], and the umbrella group the [[Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations]]. Cuban [[counterterrorism]] investigator [[Roberto Hernández]] testified in a [[Miami]] court that the bomb attacks were "part of a campaign of terror designed to scare civilians and foreign tourists, harming Cuba's single largest industry."<ref>[http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y01/mar01/30e8.htm Investigator from Cuba takes stand in spy trial] Miami Herald</ref> |
|||
In 2001, Cuban Ambassador to the UN Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla called for [[UN General Assembly]] to address all forms and manifestations of terrorism in every corner of the world, including — without exception — state terrorism. He alleged to the [[UN General Assembly]] that 3,478 Cubans have died as a result of aggressions and terrorist acts. The Ambassador however did not claim that the US had committed terrorist acts.<ref name="United">[http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2003/L3028.doc.htm Cuba Statement to the United Nations 2001] since the [[Cuban revolution]]</ref> He also alleged that the United States had provided safe shelter to "those who funded, planned and carried out terrorist acts with absolute impunity, tolerated by the United States Government."<ref name="United" /> |
|||
====Operation Mongoose==== |
|||
{{Further|[[Church Committee]], [[Operation 40]], [[Cuban Project|Operation Mongoose]], [[Operation Northwoods]]}} |
|||
An objective of the [[John F. Kennedy|Kennedy]] administration was the removal of [[Fidel Castro]] from power. To this end it implemented [[Cuban Project|Operation Mongoose]], a US program of sabotage and other secret operations against the island.<ref>Domínguez, Jorge I. "The @#$%& Missile Crisis (Or, What was 'Cuban' about U.S. Decisions during the Cuban Missile Crisis.Diplomatic History: The Journal of the Society for Historians of Foreign Relations, Vol. 24, No. 2, (Spring 2000): 305-15.)</ref> Mongoose was led by [[Edward Lansdale]] in the Defense Department and [[William King Harvey]] at the [[CIA]]. Samuel Halpern, a CIA co-organizer, conveyed the breadth of involvement: "CIA and the U. S. Army and military forces and Department of Commerce, and Immigration, Treasury, God knows who else — everybody was in Mongoose. It was a government-wide operation run out of Bobby Kennedy's office with Ed Lansdale as the mastermind." .<ref>James G. Blight, and Peter Kornbluh, eds., Politics of Illusion: The Bay of Pigs Invasion Reexamined. Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner, 1999, 125)</ref> The scope of Mongoose included sabotage actions against a railway bridge, petroleum storage facilities, a molasses storage container, a petroleum refinery, a power plant, a sawmill, and a floating crane. Harvard Historian Jorge Domínguez stated that "only once in [the] thousand pages of documentation did a U.S. official raise something that resembled a faint moral objection to U.S. government sponsored terrorism." <ref name=autogenerated4>Domínguez, Jorge I. "The @#$%& Missile Crisis (Or, What was 'Cuban' about U.S. Decisions during the Cuban Missile Crisis)." Diplomatic History: The Journal of the Society for Historians of Foreign Relations, Vol. 24, No. 2, (Spring 2000): 305-15.</ref> The CIA operation was based in [[Miami, Florida]] and among other aspects of the operation, enlisted the help of the [[Mafia]] to plot an assassination attempt against [[Fidel Castro]], the Cuban president; for instance, [[William King Harvey|William Harvey]] was one of the CIA case officers who directly dealt with the mafiosi [[John Roselli]].<ref>{{cite news | author = Jack Anderson | title = 6 Attempts to Kill Castro Laid to CIA | publisher = The Washington Post | date = 1971-01-18}}</ref> |
|||
Dominguez wrote that Kennedy put a hold on Mongoose actions as the Cuban Missile Crisis escalated, and the "Kennedy administration returned to its policy of sponsoring terrorism against Cuba as the confrontation with the Soviet Union lessened." <ref name=autogenerated4 /> However, Chomsky argued that "terrorist operations continued through the tensest moments of the missile crisis," remarking that "they were formally canceled on October 30, several days after the Kennedy and Khrushchev agreement, but went on nonetheless." Accordingly, "the Executive Committee of the National Security Council recommended various courses of action, "including ‘using selected [[Cuban exile]]s to sabotage key Cuban installations in such a manner that the action can plausibly be attributed to Cubans in Cuba’ as well as ‘sabotaging Cuban cargo and shipping, and [Soviet] Bloc cargo and shipping to Cuba." <ref name=autogenerated1 /> Peter Kornbluh, senior analyst at the [[National Security Archive]] at George Washington University, raised the point that according to the documentary record, directly after the first executive committee ([[EXCOMM]]) meeting that was held on the missile crisis, Attorney General Robert Kennedy "convened a meeting of the Operation Mongoose team" expressing disappointment in its results and pledging to take a closer personal attention on the matter. Kornbluh accused RFK of taking "the most irrational position during the most extraordinary crisis in the history of U. S. foreign policy", remarking that "Not to belabor the obvious, but for chrissake, a nuclear crisis is happening and Bobby wants to start blowing things up.".<ref>James G. Blight, and Peter Kornbluh, eds., ''Politics of Illusion: The Bay of Pigs Invasion Reexamined''. Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner, 1999, 125</ref> |
|||
Historian [[Stephen G. Rabe]] wrote that "scholars have understandably focused on...the Bay of Pigs invasion, the U.S. campaign of terrorism and sabotage known as Operation Mongoose, the assassination plots against [[Fidel Castro]], and, of course, the Cuban missile crisis. Less attention has been given to the state of U.S.-Cuban relations in the aftermath of the missile crisis." In contrast Rabe wrote that reports from the Church Committee reveal that from June 1963 onward the Kennedy administration intensified its war against Cuba while the CIA integrated propaganda, "economic denial", and sabotage to attack the Cuban state as well as specific targets within.<ref name=autogenerated3>Stephen G. Rabe -Presidential Studies Quarterly. Volume: 30. Issue: 4. 2000,714</ref> One example cited is an incident where CIA agents, seeking to assassinate Castro, provided a Cuban official, Rolando Cubela Secades, with a ballpoint pen rigged with a poisonous hypodermic needle.<ref name=autogenerated3 /> At this time the CIA received authorization for thirteen major operations within Cuba; these included attacks on an electric power plant, an oil refinery, and a sugar mill.<ref name=autogenerated3 /> Rabe has written that the "Kennedy administration...showed no interest in Castro's repeated request that the United States cease its campaign of sabotage and terrorism against Cuba. Kennedy did not pursue a dual-track policy toward Cuba....The United States would entertain only proposals of surrender." Rabe further documents how "Exile groups, such as [[Alpha 66]] and the Second Front of Escambray, staged hit-and-run raids on the island...on ships transporting goods...purchased arms in the United States and launched...attacks from the Bahamas." <ref name=autogenerated3 /> |
|||
====Allegations of harboring terrorists==== |
|||
The Cuban revolution resulted in a large Cuban [[refugee]] community in the U.S., some of whom have conducted long-term insurgency campaigns against Cuba.<ref name = "poptel-Cuba">[http://www.poptel.org.uk/cuba-solidarity/CubaSi-Autumn/Bombs3.html Alpha 66 says it carried out bomb attacks] Cuba solidarity</ref> and conducted training sessions at a secluded camp near the Florida Everglades. These efforts are charged to have been directly supported initially by the United States government.<ref>Bohning,Don. The Castro Obsession: U.S.Covert Operations Against Cuba 1959-1965, Potomac Books,137-138</ref> The failed military invasion of Cuba during the administration of [[John F. Kennedy]] at the [[Bay of Pigs Invasion|Bay of Pigs]] marked the end of documented U.S. involvement. |
|||
The Cuban Government, its supporters and some outside observers have charged that the group [[Alpha 66]], whose former secretary general Andrés Nazario Sargén acknowledged terrorist attacks on Cuban tourist spots in the 1990s<ref name = "poptel-Cuba"/> and conducted training sessions at a secluded camp near the Florida Everglades,<ref>[http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/belligerence/era.htm An Era of Exiles Slips Away]. The Los Angeles Times.</ref> has, according to Cuba's official newspaper [[Granma]], been supported by the [[National Endowment for Democracy]], the [[United States Agency for International Development]] and, more directly, the CIA. |
|||
Marcela Sanchez says that the U.S. has also failed to indict or prosecute the alleged terrorists Guillermo and Ignacio Novo Sampoll, Pedro Remon, and Gaspar Jimenez.<ref name="sanchez" /><ref>[http://www.miaminewtimes.com/2002-12-05/news/righteous-bombers/full Righteous Bombers?] by Kirk Nielsen, ''[[Miami New Times]]'', December 5, 2002</ref> Claudia Furiati has suggested Sampol was linked to [[John F. Kennedy assassination|President Kennedy's assassination]] and plans to kill President Castro.<ref>{{Cite book |
|||
| edition = 2nd |
|||
| publisher = Ocean Press (AU) |
|||
| isbn = 1875284850 |
|||
| pages = 164 |
|||
| last = Furiati |
|||
| first = Claudia |
|||
| title = ZR Rifle : The Plot to Kill Kennedy and Castro |
|||
| date = 1994-10 |
|||
}}</ref> |
|||
[[Luis Posada Carriles]] a former [[CIA]] operative, Posada has been convicted [[in absentia]] of involvement in various [[terrorism|terrorist]] attacks and plots in the Western hemisphere, including involvement in the 1976 bombing of a [[Cubana Flight 455|Cuban airliner]] that killed seventy-three people<ref>{{cite news|title=Link found to bombing| first= Andrew O.| last= Selsky| publisher= Associated Press| date= May 4, 2007| accessdate=2007-05-09}}</ref><ref>Castro: U.S. to free 'monster' Posada, ''[[Miami Herald]]'', Wed, April 11, 2007.</ref> and has admitted to his involvement in other terrorist plots including a string of bombings in 1997 targeting fashionable Cuban hotels and nightspots.<ref>[http://www.local10.com/news/4402775/detail.html Organizations Demand Cuban Militant's Arrest]</ref><ref>[http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0520/p02s02-usfp.html US tiptoes between terror, Castro's policies]</ref><ref name="LA Times">[http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-posada20apr20,1,2202043.story?coll=la-headlines-world&ctrack=2&cset=true U.S. criticized as Cuban exile is freed]</ref> In addition, he was jailed under accusations related to an assassination attempt on Fidel Castro in [[Panama]] in 2000, although he was later pardoned by Panamanian President [[Mireya Moscoso]] in the final days of her term.<ref>[http://www.guardian.co.uk/cuba/story/0,,1930703,00.html US embarrassed by terror suspect] Guardian online.</ref><ref>[http://www.voltairenet.org/article30425.html The Confessions of Luis Posada Carriles]</ref> |
|||
In 2005, Posada was held by [[Federal government of the United States|U.S. authorities]] in [[Texas]] on the charge of illegal presence on national territory before the charges were dismissed on May 8, 2007. His release on bail on April 19, 2007 had elicited angry reactions from the Cuban and Venezuelan governments.<ref>[http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/world/americas/15578403.htm Push to free convicted Cuban spies reaches D.C.], ''[[Miami Herald]]'', September 22, 2006</ref> The [[United States Department of Justice|U.S. Justice Department]] had urged the court to keep him in jail because he was "an admitted mastermind of terrorist plots and attacks", a flight risk and a danger to the community.<ref name="LA Times"/> |
|||
On September 28, 2005 a U.S. immigration judge ruled that Posada cannot be deported, finding that he faces the threat of torture in Venezuela.<ref name="No deportation for Cuban militant">[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4289136.stm No deportation for Cuban militant] ([[BBC]])</ref> |
|||
===Nicaragua (1979–90)=== |
|||
{{See also|Iran-Contra affair}} |
|||
{{Further|[[Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare]]}} |
|||
Following the rise to power of the left-wing [[Sandinista]] government in [[Nicaragua]], the [[Ronald Reagan]] administration ordered the CIA to organize and train the [[Contras]], a right wing guerrilla group. On December 1, 1981, President Reagan signed an initial, one-paragraph "Finding" authorizing the CIA's paramilitary war against Nicaragua.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB210/index.htm|title=The Iran-Contra Affair 20 Years On: Documents Spotlight Role of Reagan, Top Aides|date=2006-11-24|publisher=The National Security Archive}}</ref> |
|||
''The Republic of [[Nicaragua vs. The United States]] of America''<ref name="name">Official name: ''Military and Paramilitary Activities in and against Nicaragua (Nicar. v. U.S.), Jurisdiction and Admissibility, 1984 ICJ REP. 392'' June 27, 1986.</ref> was a case heard in 1986 by the [[International Court of Justice]] which found that the United States had violated [[international law]] by direct acts of U.S. personnel and by the supporting [[Contra (guerrillas)|Contra]] guerrillas in their war against the [[Nicaragua]]n government and by mining Nicaragua's harbors. The US was not imputable for possible human rights violations done by the Contras. The Court found that this was a conflict involving military and para-military forces and did not make a finding of state terrorism. |
|||
[[Florida State University]] professor, Frederick H. Gareau, has written that the Contras "attacked bridges, electric generators, but also state-owned agricultural cooperatives, rural health clinics, villages and non-combatants." U.S. agents were directly involved in the fighting. "CIA commandos launched a series of sabotage raids on Nicaraguan port facilities. They mined the country's major ports and set fire to its largest oil storage facilities." In 1984 the U.S. Congress ordered this intervention to be stopped, however it was later shown that the CIA illegally continued (See [[Iran-Contra affair]]). Professor Gareau has characterized these acts as "wholesale terrorism" by the United States.<ref name="Gareau"> |
|||
{{Cite book|last=Gareau |first=Frederick H. |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=State Terrorism and the United States |year=2004 |publisher=Zed Books |location=London |id=ISBN 1-84277-535-9 |pages=16 & 166}}</ref> |
|||
In 1984 a CIA manual for training the Nicaraguan [[Contras]] in psychological operations was leaked to the media, entitled "Psychological Operations in Guerrilla War".<ref name="KillingHope"> |
|||
{{Cite book|last=Blum |first=William |authorlink=William Blum |coauthors= |title=Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions since World War II |year=2003 |publisher=Zed Books |location=Noida, India |id=ISBN 1-84277-369-0 |pages=290}}</ref> |
|||
The manual recommended "selective use of violence for propagandistic effects" and to "neutralize" government officials. Nicaraguan Contras were taught to lead: |
|||
{{quote|...selective use of armed force for PSYOP psychological operations effect.... Carefully selected, planned targets — judges, police officials, tax collectors, etc. — may be removed for PSYOP effect in a UWOA unconventional warfare operations area, but extensive precautions must insure that the people "concur" in such an act by thorough explanatory canvassing among the affected populace before and after conduct of the mission.|James Bovard|Freedom Daily<ref name = "FFF">{{Cite web| title =Terrorism Debacles in the Reagan Administration| work =The Future of Freedom Foundation| url =http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0406c.asp| accessdate=2006-07-30}}</ref>}} |
|||
Former State Department official [[William Blum]], has written that "American pilots were flying diverse kinds of combat missions against Nicaraguan troops and carrying supplies to contras inside Nicaraguan territory. Several were shot down and killed. Some flew in civilian clothes, after having been told that they would be disavowed by the Pentagon if captured. Some contras told American congressmen that they were ordered to claim responsibility for a bombing raid organized by the CIA and flown by Agency mercenaries."<ref>Blum 293.</ref> According to Blum the Pentagon considered U.S. policy in Nicaragua to be a "blueprint for successful U.S. intervention in the Third World" and it would go "right into the textbooks".<ref>Blum 305.</ref> |
|||
Colombian writer and former diplomat Clara Nieto, in her book "Masters of War", charged the Reagan administration was "the paradigm of a terrorist state", remarking that this was "ironically, the very thing Reagan claimed to be fighting." Nieto charged direct CIA involvement, claiming that "the CIA launched a series of terrorist actions from the "mothership" off Nicaragua's coast. In September 1983, she charged the agency attacked Puerto Sandino with rockets. The following month, frogmen blew up the underwater oil pipeline in the same port- the only one in the country. In October there was an attack on Pierto Corinto, Nicaragua's largest port, with mortars, rockets and grenades, blowing up five large oil and gasoline storage tanks. More than a hundred people were wounded, and the fierce fire, which could not be brought under control for two days, forced the evacuation of 23,000 people." <ref>Nieto, Clara. ''Masters of War: Latin America and United States Aggression from the Cuban Revolution Through the Clinton Years'', Seven Stories Press, 2003, 343-345</ref> |
|||
Historian Greg Grandin described a disjuncture between official U.S. ideals and support for terrorism. "Nicaragua, where the United States backed not a counter insurgent state but anti-communist mercenaries, likewise represented a disjuncture between the idealism used to justify U.S. policy and its support for political terrorism... The corollary to the idealism embraced by the Republicans in the realm of diplomatic public policy debate was thus political terror. In the dirtiest of Latin America's dirty wars, their faith in America's mission justified atrocities in the name of liberty." <ref>Grandin, Greg. Empire's Workshop: Latin America, The United States and the Rise of the New Imperialism, Henry Holt & Company 2007, 89</ref> In his analysis, Grandin charged that the behaviour of the U.S. backed-contras was particularly inhumane and vicious: "In Nicaragua, the U.S.-backed Contras decapitated, castrated, and otherwise mutilated civilians and foreign aid workers. Some earned a reputation for using spoons to gorge their victims eye's out. In one raid, Contras cut the breasts of a civilian defender to pieces and ripped the flesh off the bones of another." <ref>Grandin, Greg. ''Empire's Workshop: Latin America, The United States and the Rise of the New Imperialism'', Henry Holt & Company 2007, 90</ref> |
|||
====Nicaragua vs. United States==== |
|||
{{Main|Nicaragua vs. United States}} |
|||
''The Republic of Nicaragua vs. The United States of America''<ref name="name" /> was a case heard in 1986 by the [[International Court of Justice]] which ruled in Nicaragua's favor, and found that the United States had violated [[international law]]. The court stated that the United States had been involved in the "unlawful use of force", specifically that it was "in breach of its obligation under customary international law not to use force against another state" by direct acts of U.S. personnel and by the supporting [[Contra (guerrillas)|Contra]] guerrillas in their war against the [[Nicaragua]]n government and by mining Nicaragua's harbors. The ICJ ordered the U.S. to pay reparations. The US was not imputable for possible human rights violations done by the Contras. The case led to considerable debate concerning the issue of the extent to which state support of terrorists implicates the state itself.<ref name=battle>{{Cite book|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=w6c5HoRUMekC&pg=PA156&dq=us+terrorism+nicaragua+support&hl=en&ei=-zLOS4nvGI2KNMb-kSI&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CEAQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=us%20terrorism%20nicaragua%20support&f=false|title=Battling terrorism: legal perspectives on the use of force and the war on terror|author=Jackson Nyamuya Maogoto|year=2005|publisher=[[Ashgate Publishing]]|pages=156, 157|ISBN=9780754644071}}</ref> A consensus among scholars of [[international law]] had not been reached by the mid-2000s.<ref name=battle/> |
|||
U.S. foreign policy critic [[Noam Chomsky]] argued that the U.S. was legally found guilty of international terrorism based on this verdict, which condemned the [[Federal government of the United States|United States federal government]] for "unlawful use of force".<ref>{{Cite web |
|||
|url=http://dir.salon.com/story/people/feature/2002/01/16/chomsky/index_np.html?pn=2 |
|||
|title=Noam Chomsky |
|||
|last=Hansen |
|||
|first=Suzy |
|||
|publisher=[[Salon.com]] |
|||
|date=January 16, 2002 |
|||
|accessdate=2007-07-10 |
|||
}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |
|||
|url=http://www.zmag.org/content/ForeignPolicy/chomskyglobeterr.cfm |
|||
|title=Who Are the Global Terrorists? |
|||
|last=Chomsky |
|||
|first=Noam |
|||
|authorlink=Noam Chomsky |
|||
|publisher=[[Znet]] |
|||
|date=May 19, 2002 |
|||
|accessdate=2007-07-10}}</ref> |
|||
{{quote|The World Court considered their case, accepted it, and presented a long judgment, several hundred pages of careful legal and factual analysis that condemned the United States for what it called "unlawful use of force" — which is the judicial way of saying "international terrorism" — ordered the United States to terminate the crime and to pay substantial reparations, many billions of dollars, to the victim.|Noam Chomsky|interview on Pakistan Television<ref name = "chom">{{Cite web |
|||
| title =On the War in Afghanistan Noam Chomsky interviewed by Pervez Hoodbhoy |
|||
| work =chomsky.info |
|||
| url =http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/20011127.htm |
|||
| accessdate=2006-07-30 |
|||
}}</ref>}} |
|||
The essence of this view of U.S. actions in Nicaruaga was supported by [[Oscar Schachter]]: "[W]hen a government provides weapons, technical advice, transportation, aid and encouragement to terrorists on a substantial scale it is not unreasonable to conclude that the armed attack is imputable to that government."<ref name=battle/> |
|||
===Guatemala (1954–96)=== |
|||
{{Further|[[Guatemalan Civil War]], [[History of Guatemala]], [[Operation PBSUCCESS]], [[CIA sponsored regime change]], [[Church Committee]] }} |
|||
Professor of History, Stephen G. Rabe, wrote "in destroying the popularly elected government of [[Jacobo Arbenz Guzman]] (1950-1954), the United States initiated a nearly four-decade-long cycle of terror and repression" <ref>{{Cite book|title=Managing the Counterrevolution: The United States and Guatemala, 1954-1961 (review) |publisher=The Americas |page=Volume 59, Number 4 |month=April | year=2003 |pages=601–603 |author=Stephen G. Rabe}}</ref> |
|||
After the U.S.-backed coup, which toppled president [[Jacobo Arbenz]], lead coup plotter [[Castillo Armas]] assumed power. Author and university professor, Patrice McSherry argued that with Armas at the head of government, "the United States began to militarize Guatemala almost immediately, financing and reorganizing the police and military."<ref name=" EvolutionofNationalSecurityState ">J. Patrice McSherry. "The Evolution of the National Security State: The Case of Guatemala." ''Socialism and Democracy''. Spring/Summer 1990, 133.</ref> |
|||
In his book "State Terror and Popular Resistance in Guatemala", Michael McClintock<ref>{{Cite web| title = About Michael McClintock | publisher = Human Rights First | url = http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/about_us/staff/mcclintock_m.htm | accessdate = 2007-07-03}}</ref> argued that the national security apparatus Armas presided over was "almost entirely oriented toward countering subversion," and that the key component of that apparatus was "an intelligence system set up by the United States."<ref name="AmericanConnection">Michael McClintock. ''The American Connection Volume 2: State Terror and Popular Resistance in Guatemala''. London: Zed Books Ltd., 1985, pp. 2, 32.</ref> At the core of this intelligence system were records of communist party members, pro-Arbenz organizations, teacher associations, and peasant unions which were used to create a detailed "Black List" with names and information about some 70,000 individuals that were viewed as potential subversives. It was "CIA counter-intelligence officers who sorted the records and determined how they could be put to use."<ref>McClintock 32-33.</ref> McClintock argues that this list persisted as an index of subversives for several decades and probably served as a database of possible targets for the counter-insurgency campaign that began in the early 1960s.<ref>McClintock 33.</ref> McClintock wrote: |
|||
{{quote|United States counter-insurgency doctrine encouraged the Guatemalan military to adopt both new organizational forms and new techniques in order to root out insurgency more effectively. New techniques would revolve around a central precept of the new counter-insurgency: that counter insurgent war must be waged free of restriction by laws, by the rules of war, or moral considerations: guerrilla "terror" could be defeated only by the untrammeled use of "counter-terror", the terrorism of the state.|Michael McClintock<ref>McClintock 54.</ref>}} |
|||
McClintock wrote that this idea was also articulated by Colonel John Webber, the chief of the U.S. Military Mission in Guatemala, who instigated the technique of "counter-terror." Colonel Webber defended his policy by saying, "That's the way this country is. The Communists are using everything they have, including terror. And it must be met."<ref>McClintock 61.</ref> |
|||
Utilizing declassified government documents, researchers Kate Doyle and Carlos Osorio from the research institute the [[National Security Archive]] documented that Guatemalan Colonel Byron Lima Estrada took military police and counterintelligence courses at the [[School of the Americas]]. He later served in several elite counterinsurgency units trained and equipped by the U.S. Military Assistance Program (MAP). He eventually rose to command [[D-2]], the Guatemalan Military Intelligence services who were responsible for many of the terror tactics wielded throughout the 1980s.<ref name="NSAArchive-Guatemala03"> |
|||
{{Cite web|url=http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB25/index.htm|title=Colonel Byron Disrael Lima Estrada |publisher=George Washington University NSA Archive (Republished)}}</ref> |
|||
===School of the Americas=== |
|||
{{Main|Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation}} |
|||
Professor Gareau argued that the School of the Americas (reorganized in 2001 as Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation), a U.S. training institution mainly for Latin America, is a terrorist training ground. He cited a UN report which states the school has "graduated 500 of the worst human rights abusers in the hemisphere." Gareau alleges that by funding, training and supervising Guatemalan 'Death Squads' Washington was complicit in state terrorism.<ref name="Gareaupp22"> |
|||
{{Cite book|last=Gareau |first=Frederick H. |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=State Terrorism and the United States |year=2004 |publisher=Zed Books |location=London |id=ISBN 1-84277-535-9 |pages=22–25 and pp61-63}}</ref> |
|||
Defenders of the school argued that the alleged connection to human rights abusers is often weak. For example, [[Roberto D'Aubuisson]]'s sole link to the SOA is that he had taken a course in Radio Operations long before El Salvador's civil war began.<ref>{{Cite web|author=Paul Mulshine|title=The War in Central America Continues|url=http://216.247.220.66/archives/politics/watchwar.htm |accessdate=6 November 2007 |archiveurl = http://web.archive.org/web/20021219221936/http://216.247.220.66/archives/politics/watchwar.htm |archivedate = 19 December 2002}}</ref> They also argued that no school should be held accountable for the actions of only some of its many graduates. Before coming to the current WHINSEC each student is now "vetted" by his/her nation and the U.S. embassy in that country. All students are now required to receive "human rights training in law, ethics, rule of law and practical applications in military and police operations."<ref>"[http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0IAJ/is_1_27/ai_n13822517 Teaching democracy at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation]"</ref><ref>{{Cite web| author = Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation | title = FAQ | url = https://www.benning.army.mil/WHINSEC/about.asp?id=37 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web| author = Center for International Policy | title = Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation | url = http://www.ciponline.org/facts/soa.htm | accessdate = May 6, 2006 }}</ref> |
|||
===Chile=== |
|||
Michael Stohl and George A. Lopez have accused the United States of supporting and committing State Terrorism in the period 1970-1973, during the overthrow of the socialist elected Chilean government of [[Salvador Allende]]. Stohl wrote, "In addition to nonterroristic strategies...the United States embarked on a program to create economic and political chaos in Chile...After the failure to prevent Allende from taking office, efforts shifted to obtaining his removal." Money authorized for the CIA to destabilize Chilean society, included, "financing and assisting opposition groups and right-wing terrorist paramilitary groups such as [[Patria y Libertad]] ("Fatherland and Liberty")." [[Project FUBELT]] was the codename for the secret [[CIA]] operations to undermine [[Salvador Allende]]'s government and promote a [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|military coup in Chile]]. In September 1973 the Allende government was overthrown in a violent military coup in which the United States is claimed to have been "intimately involved." <ref>"The State as Terrorist: The Dynamics of Governmental Violence and Repression" by Prof. Michael Stohl, and Prof. George A. Lopez; Greenwood Press, 1984. Page 51</ref> |
|||
Professor Gareau, wrote on the subject: "Washington's training of thousands of military personnel from Chile who later committed state terrorism again makes Washington eligible for the charge of accessory before the fact to state terrorism. The CIA's close relationship during the height of the terror to [[Manuel Contreras|Contreras]], Chile's chief terrorist (with the possible exception of [[Pinochet]] himself), lays Washington open to the charge of accessory during the fact." Gareau argued that the fuller extent involved the US taking charge of coordinating counterinsurgency efforts between all Latin American countries. He wrote, "Washington's service as the overall coordinator of state terrorism in Latin America demonstrates the enthusiasm with which Washington played its role as an accomplice to state terrorism in the region. It was not a reluctant player. Rather it not only trained Latin American governments in terrorism and financed the means to commit terrorism; it also encouraged them to apply the lessons learned to put down what it called "the communist threat." Its enthusiasm extended to coordinating efforts to apprehend those wanted by terrorist states who had fled to other countries in the region....The evidence available leads to the conclusion that Washington's influence over the decision to commit these acts was considerable."<ref>State Terrorism and the United States: From Counterinsurgency to the War on Terrorism by Frederick H. Gareau, Page78-79.</ref> "Given that they knew about the terrorism of this regime, what did the elites in Washington during the [[Richard Nixon|Nixon]] and Ford administrations do about it? The elites in Washington reacted by increasing U.S. military assistance and sales to the state terrorists, by covering up their terrorism, by urging U.S. diplomats to do so also, and by assuring the terrorists of their support, thereby becoming accessories to state terrorism before, during, and after the fact." <ref name=autogenerated2>State Terrorism and the United States: From Counterinsurgency to the War on Terrorism by Frederick H. Gareau, Page 87.</ref> |
|||
Thomas Wright charged that Chile was an example of State Terrorism of a very open kind that did not attempt a facade of civilian governance, and that had a "September 11th effect" through the hemisphere. Wright, argued that "unlike their Brazilian counterparts, they did not embrace state terrorism as a last recourse; they launched a wave of terrorism on the day of the coup. In contrast to the Brazilians and Uruguayans, the Chileans were very public about their objectives and their methods; there was nothing subtle about rounding up thousands of prisoners, the extensive use of torture, executions following sham court-marshal, and shootings in cold blood. After the initial wave of open terrorism, the Chilean armed forces constructed a sophisticated apparatus for the secret application of state terrorism that lasted until the dictatorship's end...The impact of the Chilean coup reached far beyond the country's borders. Through their aid in the overthrow of Allende and their support of the Pinochet dictatorship, President Richard Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, sent a clear signal to all of Latin America that anti-revolutionary regimes employing repression, even state terrorism, could count on the support of the United States. The U.S. government in effect, gave a green light to Latin America's right wing and its armed forces to eradicate the left and use repression to erase the advances that workers — and in some countries, campesinos — had made through decades of struggle. This "September 11 effect" was soon felt around the hemisphere." <ref>Wright, Thomas C. State Terrorism and Latin America: Chile, Argentina, and International Human Rights, Rowman & Littlefield, page 29</ref> |
|||
Prof. Gareau concluded, "The message for the populations of Latin American nations and particularly the Left opposition was clear: the United States would not permit the continuation of a Socialist government, even if it came to power in a democratic election and continued to uphold the basic democratic structure of that society."<ref name=autogenerated2 /> |
|||
===Iran (1979–present)=== |
|||
In 2007, an article in the [[Asia Times Online]] asserted that the United States has likely ramped up support for Iran's oppressed minorities in an attempt to push the Iranian regime toward a negotiated settlement over Iraq." <ref name="Asia Times">{{cite journal |
|||
|first=M. K. |
|||
|last=Bhadrakumar |
|||
|date=February 24, 2007 |
|||
|title=Foreign devils in the Iranian mountains |
|||
|publisher=[[Asia Times Online]] |
|||
|url=http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IB24Ak01.html |
|||
}}</ref> An Asian Times article notes that "Iranian officials have repeatedly accused the United States and Britain of provoking ethnic unrest in Iran and of supporting opposition groups."<ref name="ZAHEDAN">[http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/15/world/middleeast/15tehran.html?_r=1&oref=slogin Car bomb in Iran destroys a bus carrying Revolutionary Guards] The New York Times</ref> |
|||
====Jundullah==== |
|||
The [[Sunni]] militant organization [[Jundallah]] has been identified as a terrorist organization by Iran and Pakistan.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/02/16/iran.bombing/|title=2nd blast in 3 days hits Iranian city|publisher=CNN|date=2007-02-16 | accessdate=2010-05-26}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.newsline.com.pk/NewsAug2004/cover1Aug2004.htm|title=Al-Qaeda's New Face|publisher=Newsline|date=2004-08-15}}</ref> According to an April 2007 report by [[Brian Ross (journalist)|Brian Ross]] and [[Christopher Isham]] of [[ABC News]], the [[United States government]] had been secretly encouraging and advising the Jundullah in its attacks against Iranian targets. This support is said to have started in 2005 and arranged so that the United States provided no direct funding to the group, which would require congressional oversight and attract media attention.<ref>[http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/04/abc_news_exclus.html The Secret War Against Iran]</ref> The report was denied by Pakistan official sources.<ref name="Rood">Justin Rood and Gretchen Peters, [http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/04/pakistan_denoun.html Pakistan Denounces ABC News Report on Backing Iran Radicals], [[ABC News]], April 5, 2007</ref><ref>n.b. [[Alexis Debat]], one of the sources quoted by Ross and Isham in their report alleging US support for the Jundullah, resigned from ABC News in June 2007, after ABC officials discovered he faked several interviews while working for the company. See: {{cite news |
|||
|first=Howard |
|||
|last=Kurtz |
|||
|url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/12/AR2007091202333.html?sub=AR |
|||
|title=Consultant Probed in Bogus Interview |
|||
|publisher=[[The Washington Post]] |
|||
|date=2007-09-13}}, and {{cite news |
|||
|url=http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/15/business/media/15abc.html?ex=1347508800&en=ade79fbecbd7f5de&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss |
|||
|title=Former ABC Consultant Says He Faked Nothing |
|||
|first=Bill |
|||
|last=Carter |
|||
|publisher=The New York Times |
|||
|date=2007-09-15}}</ref> |
|||
[[Fars News Agency]], an Iranian state run news agency, alleged that the United States government is involved in the terrorist acts of the Peoples Resistant Movement of Iran (PRMI). The [[Voice of America]], the official broadcasting service of the United States government, interviewed Jundullah leader [[Abdul Malik Rigi]] in April 2007, and the Iranian government claims that the fact that he was interviewed was proof of US terrorism.<ref>[http://www.swissinfo.org/eng/international/ticker/detail/Iranian_speaker_says_U_S_supports_terrorists.html?siteSect=143&sid=7692846&cKey=1175790190000 Iranian speaker says U.S. supports "terrorists" - swissinfo<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> |
|||
====People's Mujahedin of Iran==== |
|||
The [[People's Mujahedin of Iran]], PMOI, known also as the Mujahedeen-e Khalq or MEK, is dedicated to the overthrow of the Iranian regime. Iranian government has accused the MEK of orchestrating a series of bombings inside Iran, including one attack that left the current supreme leader, [[Ayatollah Ali Khamenei]], partially paralyzed. Until January, 2009 the United States military protected the MEK inside its military camp and on supply runs to Baghdad, although the U.S. has listed the group as a terrorist organizatim since 1997.<ref name="mcclatchydc.com">McClatchy Newspapers, December 31, 2008, [http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/58809.html "Cult-like Iranian Militant Group Worries About its Future in Iraq"]</ref> |
|||
"They're terrorists only when we consider them terrorists. They might be terrorists in everybody else's books . . . . It was a strange group of people and the leadership was extremely cruel and extremely vicious." said [[Lawrence Wilkerson]], former Secretary of State [[Colin Powell]]'s chief of staff.<ref name="mcclatchydc.com"/> |
|||
In April 2007, [[CNN]] reported that the US military and the [[International Committee of the Red Cross]] were protecting the [[People's Mujahedin of Iran]], with the US army regularly escorting PMOI supply runs between [[Baghdad]] and its base, [[Camp Ashraf]].<ref name="cnn06apr07">{{cite news|url=http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/04/05/protected.terrorists/|title= U.S. protects Iranian opposition group in Iraq|accessdate=2007-04-06|publisher=CNN|year=2007|author=Ware, Michael|work=CNN website, April 6, 2007. }}</ref> The PMOI have been designated as a [[terrorist organization]] by the United States (since 1997), Canada, and [[Iran]].<ref name="eu-fto">{{cite journal | title=COUNCIL COMMON POSITION 2005/847/CFSP| journal=Official Journal of the European Union| year=2005| volume=L 314| page=44| url=http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/site/en/oj/2005/l_314/l_31420051130en00410045.pdf|format=PDF}}</ref><ref name="crt">{{Cite web|url=http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/crt/2006/82738.htm|title=Chapter 6 -- Terrorist Organizations|accessdate=2007-07-15|publisher=US Department of State|year=2007}}</ref> According to the ''[[Wall Street Journal]]''<ref name="WSJ">{{Cite |title= Iranian Imbroglio Gives New Boost To Odd Exile Group |date=2006-11-29|publisher=Wall Street Journal |author=Andrew Higgins and Jay Solomon }}</ref> "senior diplomats in the [[Bill Clinton|Clinton]] administration say the PMOI figured prominently as a bargaining chip in a bridge-building effort with Tehran." The PMOI is also on the [[European Union]]'s blacklist of terrorist organizations, which lists 28 organizations, since 2002.<ref name="Bonnet">[http://www.les4verites.com/Defense-des-Moudjahidines-du-peuple-312.html?PHPSESSID=469e4a14dbc8d2850715f4a791c00dea Défense des Moudjahidines du peuple], [[Yves Bonnet]], former director of the French [[Direction centrale des renseignements généraux|RG intelligence agency]] {{fr icon}}</ref> The enlistments included: [[U.S. State Department list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations|Foreign Terrorist Organization]] by the United States in 1997 under the [[Immigration and Nationality Act]], and again in 2001 pursuant to section 1(b) of [[Executive Order 13224]]; as well as by the [[European Union]] (EU) in 2002.<ref>[http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/site/en/oj/2005/l_340/l_34020051223en00640066.pdf Council Decision], [[Council of the European Union]], December 21, 2005</ref> Its bank accounts were frozen in 2002 after the [[September 11 attacks]] and a call by the EU to block terrorist organizations' funding. However, the [[European Court of Justice]] has overturned this in December 2006 and has criticized the lack of "transparency" with which the blacklist is composed.<ref>[http://www.rfi.fr/actufr/afp/001/mon/061212185631.3avhw1zi.asp Terrorisme: la justice européenne appelle l'UE à justifier sa liste noire], ''[[Radio France International]]'', December 12, 2006 {{fr icon}}</ref> However, the [[Council of the European Union|Council of the EU]] declared on 30 January 2007 that it would maintain the organization on the blacklist.<ref>[http://www.ncr-iran.org/content/view/2831/69/ EU’s Ministers of Economic and Financial Affairs’ Council violates the verdict by the European Court], [[National Council of Resistance of Iran|NCRI]] website, February 1, 2007.</ref><ref>[http://www.ncr-iran.org/content/view/2832/70/ European Council is not above the law], NCRI website, February 2, 2007</ref> The EU-freezing of funds was lifted on December 12, 2006 by the [[Court of First Instance|European Court of First Instance]].<ref name="lifted">http://curia.europa.eu/en/actu/communiques/cp06/aff/cp060097en.pdf</ref> In 2003 the US State Department included the NCRI on the blacklist, under Executive Order 13224.<ref>[http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2003/23311.htm US State Dept press statement] by [[Tom Casey (diplomat)|Tom Casey]], Acting Spokesman, August 15, 2003</ref> |
|||
According to a 2003 article by the New York Times, the US 1997 proscription of the group on the terrorist blacklist was done as "a goodwill gesture toward Iran's newly elected reform-minded president, [[Mohammad Khatami]]" (succeeded in 2005 by the more conservative [[Mahmoud Ahmadinejad]]).<ref name="Rubin">{{Cite web| url=http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/sloth/2003-07-15.html| title= The Cult of Rajavi| first=New York Times| last=Rubin, Elizabeth| accessdate=2006-04-21}} {{en icon}}</ref> In 2002, 150 members of the [[United States Congress]] signed a letter calling for the lifting of this designation.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-71383195.html|title= |
|||
U.S. Congressman Tom Tancredo: Mujahedin offers hope for a new Iran|publisher=Rocky Mountain News|date=2003-01-07}}</ref> The PMOI have also tried to have the designation removed through several court cases in the U.S. The PMOI has now lost three appeals (1999, 2001 and 2003) to the US government to be removed from the list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations, and its terrorist status was reaffirmed each time. The PMOI has continued to protest worldwide against its listing, with the overt support of some US political figures.<ref name="au_act">{{Cite web|url=http://www.aph.gov.au/library/pubs/rn/2002-03/03rn43.htm|title=Behind the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MeK)|accessdate=2007-07-15|publisher=Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Group, Parliament of Australia|year=2003|author=Nigel Brew}}</ref><ref>United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Argued April 2, 2004 Decided July 9, 2004, [http://pacer.cadc.uscourts.gov/docs/common/opinions/200407/01-1480a.pdf No. 01-1480: National Council of Resistance of Iran v. Department of State]</ref> |
|||
Past supporters of the PMOI have included Rep. [[Tom Tancredo]] (R-CO), Rep. [[Bob Filner]], (D-CA), and Sen. [[Kit Bond]] (R-MO), and former [[Attorney General]] [[John Ashcroft]], "who became involved with the [PMOI] while a Republican senator from Missouri."<ref>Michael Isikoff, "[http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/09.30B.nswk.bagdad.htm Ashcroft's Baghdad Connection]: Why the attorney general and others in Washington have backed a terror group with ties to Iraq", ''Newsweek'' (26 September 2002).</ref><ref name="gso">{{Cite web|url=http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2005/050531-terror-list.htm|title=Group on U.S. terror list lobbies hard|accessdate=2007-07-15|publisher=United Press International|year=2005|author=Angela Woodall}}</ref> In 2000, 200 U.S. Congress members signed a statement endorsing the organization's cause.<ref name="newsweek">{{Cite web|url=http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6242223/site/newsweek/ShadesofGray|title=Shades of Gray|accessdate=2007-07-15|publisher=Newsweek|year=2004|author=Michael Isikoff & Mark Hosenball |archiveurl = http://web.archive.org/web/20071117070000/http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6242223/site/newsweek/ShadesofGray |archivedate = 2007-11-17}}</ref> |
|||
===Iraq (1992–95)=== |
|||
The ''[[New York Times]]'' reported that, according to former U.S. intelligence officials, the CIA once orchestrated a bombing and sabotage campaign between 1992 and 1995 in Iraq via one of the resistance organizations, [[Iyad Allawi]]'s group in an attempt to destabilize the country. According to the Iraqi government at the time, and one former CIA officer, the bombing campaign against [[Baghdad]] included both government and civilian targets. According to this former CIA official, the civilian targets included a movie theater and a bombing of a school bus where children were killed. No public records of the secret bombing campaign are known to exist, and the former U.S. officials said their recollections were in many cases sketchy, and in some cases contradictory. "But whether the bombings actually killed any civilians could not be confirmed because", as a former CIA official said, "the United States had no significant intelligence sources in Iraq then."<ref name="NYT">{{cite journal |
|||
| first =Joel |
|||
| last =Brinkley |
|||
| authorlink = |
|||
| coauthors = |
|||
| date =June 9 |
|||
| year =2004 |
|||
| title =Ex-C.I.A. Aides Say Iraq Leader Helped Agency in 90's Attacks |
|||
| journal =New York Times |
|||
| volume = |
|||
| issue = |
|||
| pages = |
|||
| id = |
|||
| url =http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0609-02.htm |
|||
}}</ref><ref>Counter Currents, 2004 June 19, "Who Is Allawi?" http://www.countercurrents.org/iraq-hassan190604.htm; World War 4 Report, "Iraq Meets the New Boss" http://ww4report.com/static/iraq5.html</ref> |
|||
===Lebanon (1985)=== |
|||
The investigative reporter [[Bob Woodward]] has accused the CIA of arranging for Saudi Arabia to sponsor a [[1985 Beirut car bombing]] which killed 81 people. The bombing was apparently an assassination attempt on an [[Islamic]] cleric, Sheikh [[Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah]].<ref>{{cite news |first= Stephen|last= Engelberg|authorlink= |coauthors= |title=Casey Reported Behind '85 Lebanon Bombing |url=http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE1DE1339F934A1575AC0A961948260 |quote=William J. Casey, the former Director of Central Intelligence, personally arranged for Saudi Arabia to sponsor a car bomb attack against a Lebanese Shiite religious leader believed to be involved in terrorism, according to a new book. |work=[[New York Times]] |date=September 27, 1987 |accessdate=2008-12-04 }}</ref><ref name = "Woodward-CIA-1987">{{Cite book |
|||
|first=Bob |
|||
|last=Woodward |
|||
|title=Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA |
|||
|publisher=Simon and Schuster |
|||
|year=1987 |
|||
}}</ref> The bombing, known as the Bir bombing after Bir el-Abed, the impoverished [[Beirut]] neighborhood in which it had occurred, was reported by the New York Times to have caused a "massive" explosion "even by local standards", killing 81 people, and wounding more than 200.<ref name="worldbobmade">{{Cite web|url=http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IF27Ak01.html|title=The Gates Inheritance, Part 3: The world that Bob made|publisher=Asia Times|date=2007-06-27}}</ref> Investigative journalist [[Bob Woodward]] stated that the CIA was funded by the [[Saudi Arabia]]n [[Politics of Saudi Arabia|government]] to arrange the bombing.<ref name = "Woodward-CIA-1987"/><ref name = "Time.com-8816">[http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,965712,00.html Did A Dead Man Tell No Tales?] [[Richard Zoglin]] ''TIME'' October 12, 1987</ref> Fadlallah himself also claims to have evidence that the CIA was behind the attack and that the Saudis paid $3 million.<ref>[http://www.worldpress.org/Mideast/1891.cfm title=www.worldpress.org/Mideast/1891.cfm Will U.S. Foreign Policy Increase Terrorism?] Paul Cochrane ''Worldpress.org'' July 5, 2004</ref> |
|||
The U.S. [[National Security Advisor (United States)|National Security Advisor]] [[Robert McFarlane]] admitted that those responsible for the bomb may have had American training, but that they were "rogue operative(s)" and the CIA in no way sanctioned or supported the attack.<ref name="target">[http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/target/etc/cron.html title=www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/target/etc/cron.htmlfrontline Target America: terrorist attacks on Americans, 1979-1988]</ref> Roger Morris wrote in the Asia Times that the next day, a notice hung over the devastated area where families were still digging the bodies of relatives out of the rubble. It read: "Made in the USA". The terrorist strike on Bir el-Abed is seen as a product of U.S. covert policy in Lebanon. Agreeing with the proposals of CIA director [[William Casey]], president [[Ronald Reagan]] sanctioned the Bir attack in retaliation for the [[1983 Beirut barracks bombing|truck-bombing of the U.S. Marine Corps barracks]] at Beirut airport in October 1983, which, Roger Morris alleges, in turn had been a reprisal for earlier U.S. acts of intervention and diplomatic dealings in [[Lebanese Civil War|Lebanon's civil war]] that had resulted in hundreds of Lebanese and Palestinian lives. After CIA operatives had repeatedly failed to arrange Casey's car-bombing, the CIA allegedly "farmed out" the operation to agents of its longtime Lebanese client, the Phalange, a [[Maronite Church|Maronite Christian]], anti-Islamic militia.<ref name="worldbobmade"/> Others allege the 1984 Bombing of the U.S. Embassy annex northeast of Beirut as the motivating factor.<ref name="target"/> |
|||
===Philippines=== |
|||
In "The Terrorist Foundations of US Foreign Policy", Professor of International Law [[Richard Falk]] argues that during the [[Spanish American War]], when the U.S. was "confronted by a nationalistic resistance movement in the Philippines," American forces were responsible for state terrorism. Falk relates that "as with the wars against native American peoples, the adversary was demonized (and victimized). In the struggle, US forces, with their wide margin of military superiority, inflicted disproportionate casualties, almost always a sign of terrorist tactics, and usually associated with refusal or inability to limit political violence to a discernible military opponent. The dispossession of a people from their land almost always is a product of terrorist forms of belligerency. In contrast, interventions in Central and South America in the area of so-called "Gunboat Diplomacy" were generally not terrorist in character, as little violence was required to influence political struggle for ascendancy between competing factions of an indigenous elite." <ref>Falk, Richard. Terrorist Foundations of US Foreign Policy, in Western State Terrorism, Alexander George, ed.,Polity Press,110</ref> |
|||
In "Instruments of Statecraft" [http://www.statecraft.org/chapter4.html], human rights researcher [[Michael McClintock]] described the intensification of the U.S. role during the [[Huk]]balahap rebellion in 1950, when concerns about a perceived communist-led Huk insurgency prompted sharp increases in military aid and a reorganization of tactics towards methods of guerrilla warfare. McClintock describes the role of U.S. "advisers" to the Philippine Minister of National Defense, [[Ramon Magsaysay]], remarking that they "adroitly managed Magsaysay's every move." Air Force Lt. Col. [[Edward Geary Lansdale]] was a psywar propaganda specialist who became the close personal adviser and confidant of Magsaysay. The forte of another key adviser, Charles Bohannan, was guerrilla warfare. McClintock cites several examples to demonstrate that "terror played an important part" in the psychological operations under U.S. guidance. Those psywar operations that utilized terror included theatrical displays involving the exemplary display of dead Huk bodies in an effort to incite fear in rural villagers. In another psywar operation described by Lansdale, Philippine troops engaged in nocturnal captures of individual Huks. They punctured the necks of the victims and drained the corpses of blood, leaving the bodies to be discovered when daylight came, so as to play upon fears associated with the local folklore of the Asuang, or vampire. [http://www.statecraft.org/chapter4.html] |
|||
For McClintock, this Philippines episode is particularly important because of its formative influence on U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine. In his essay, American Doctrine and State Terror, McClintock explained that U.S. Army instruction manuals of the 1960s concerning 'counterterrorism' often referred to "the particular experiences of the Philippines and Vietnam." Noting that tactics similar to those used during the Huk Rebellion (from 1946–54) in the Philippines were cited in the manuals, he elaborated that the "Department of the Army's 1976 psywar publication, DA Pamphlet 525-7-1, refers to some of the classic counterterror techniques and account of the practical application of terror. These include the capture and murder of suspected guerillas in a manner suggesting the deed was done by legendary vampires (the 'asuang'); and a prototypical "Eye of God" technique in which a stylized eye would be painted opposite the house of a suspect."<ref>McClintock, Michael. ''American Doctrine and State Terror in Western State Terrorism''. Alexander George, ed., Polity Press, 134</ref> |
|||
==See also== |
|||
{{Wikiquote|State terrorism and the United States}} |
|||
* [[Operation Northwoods]] |
|||
* [[Human Rights Record of the United States]] |
|||
* [[War crimes and the United States]] |
|||
* [[Torture and the United States]] |
|||
* [[CIA sponsored regime change]] |
|||
* [[Overseas expansion of the United States]] |
|||
* [[Overseas interventions of the United States]] |
|||
* [[American Empire]] |
|||
* [[United States military aid]] |
|||
* [[United States Foreign Military Financing]] |
|||
* [[List of United States military history events]] |
|||
* [[List of United States military bases]] |
|||
* [[Human_rights in the United States#International_human_rights|Human rights in the United States]] |
|||
* [[Foreign Military Sales]] |
|||
* [[United States Agency for International Development]] |
|||
* [[War Crime]] |
|||
* [[On the Justice of Roosting Chickens]] |
|||
==References== |
==References== |
||
{{Reflist|colwidth=35em}} |
{{Reflist|colwidth=35em}} |
||
==Further reading== |
|||
* {{Cite book |last=Alexander |first=George |title=Western State Terrorism |publisher=Polity Press |month=December | year=1991 |pages=276 |isbn=9780745609317}} |
|||
* {{Cite book|last=Blum|first=William|title=Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II|publisher=Common Courage Press|year=1995|pages=457|isbn=1-56751-052-3}} |
|||
* Campbell, Bruce B., and Brenner,Arthur D.,eds. 2000. ''Death Squads in Global Perspective: Murder with Deniability''. New York: St. Martin's Press |
|||
* {{Cite book|last=Chomsky|first=Noam|title=The Culture of Terrorism|publisher=South End Press|month=January | year=1988|pages=269|isbn=9780896083349}} |
|||
* {{Cite book|last=Churchill|first=Ward|title=On The Justice of Roosting Chickens|publisher=AK Press|year=2003|pages=309|isbn=1902593790}} |
|||
* Menjívar, Cecilia and Rodríguez,Néstor, editors, ''When States Kill:Latin America, the U.S., and Technologies of Terror'', University of Texas Press 2005,isbn=978-0-292-70647-7 |
|||
* {{Cite book|last=Perdue|first=William D.|title=Terrorism and the State: A Critique of Domination Through Fear|publisher=Praeger Press|city=New York|pages=240|date=August 7, 1989|isbn=9780275931407}} |
|||
* {{Cite web|url=http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Pilger_John/Bush_Terror_Elite.html|title=Bush Terror Elite Wanted 9/11 to Happen|last=Pilger|first=John |
|||
|publisher=Third World Traveler|date=December 12, 2002|accessdate=2007-07-09}} |
|||
* {{Cite book|last=Selden,|first=Mark, editor|title=War and State Terrorism: The United States, Japan, and the Asia-Pacific in the Long Twentieth Century|publisher=Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.|date=November 28, 2003|isbn=978-0742523913}} |
|||
* {{Cite book|last=Sluka,|first=Jeffrey A., editor|title=Death Squad: The Anthropology of State Terror|publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press|year=1999|isbn=978-0-8122-1711-7}} |
|||
* {{Cite web|url=http://www.pbs.org/newshour/forum/august97/terror04.html|title=Understanding Terrorism|publisher=[[Public Broadcasting Service]]|date=August 15, 1997|accessdate=2007-07-09}} |
|||
* {{Cite web|url=http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/nov2001/reic-n24.shtml|title=Bush nominee linked to Latin American terrorism|last=Vann|first=Bill|publisher=World Socialist Web Site|date=November 21, 2001|accessdate=2007-07-09}} |
|||
* {{Cite book|last=Wright,|first=Thomas C.|title=State Terrorism in Latin America: Chile, Argentina, and International Human Rights|publisher=Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.|date=February 28, 2007|isbn=978-0742537217}} |
|||
{{Refend}} |
|||
==External links== |
|||
* [http://www.adbusters.org/files/media/flash/hope_and_memory/timeline.swf “Hope and Memory”.] 1801-2004 timeline of 163 U.S. interventions. [[Adbusters]]. |
|||
* [http://ssis.arts.unsw.edu.au/tsw/D62IfYouWantAffluence.html Paper argues that US State Terrorism is a function of the global capitalist economy, described as Imperialism.] |
|||
* {{Cite web|url=http://www.michaelmoore.com/books-films/bowlingforcolumbine/library/wonderful/index.php |title=Bowling for Columbine : Library : What a Wonderful World|publisher=MichaelMoore.com}} |
|||
*[http://monthlyreview.org/100501kuzmarov.php U.S. Terrorism in Vietnam] a review of ''War Without Fronts: The USA in Vietnam'' by Bernd Greiner |
|||
{{DEFAULTSORT:United States And State Terrorism}} |
{{DEFAULTSORT:United States And State Terrorism}} |
||
Revision as of 23:29, 27 December 2010
Definitions
There is no international consensus on what terrorism, or state terrorism is.[1] According to US law terrorism is defined as "premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents".[2]