"It is remarkable indeed that what we call our government is still going around dropping huge amounts of exceedingly powerful explosives upon the heads of defenseless people. It wasn't supposed to be this way. Beginning in the late 1980s, Michael Gorbachev put an end to the Soviet police state, then the Berlin Wall came down and people all over Eastern Europe were joyfully celebrating a NEW DAY, and South Africa freed Nelson Mandela and apartheid began to crumble, and Haiti held its first free election ever and chose a genuine progressive as president ... it seemed like anything was possible, optimism was as widespread as pessimism is today. And the United States joined this celebration by invading and bombing Panama, only weeks after the Berlin Wall fell. At the same time, the US was shamelessly intervening in the election in Nicaragua to defeat the Sandinistas. Then, when Albania and Bulgaria, "newly freed from the grip of communism", as our media would put it, dared to elect governments not acceptable to Washington, Washington just stepped in and overthrew those governments. Soon came the bombing of the people of Iraq for 40 horrible days without mercy, for no good or honest reason, and that was that for our hopes of a different and better world. But our leaders were not through. They were soon off attacking Somalia, more bombing and killing. Meanwhile they continued bombing Iraq for years. They intervened to put down dissident movements in Peru, Mexico, Ecuador and Colombia, just as if it was the cold war in the 1950s in Latin America, and the 1960s, the 1970s, the 1980s, and still doing it in the 1990s. Then they bombed the people of Yugoslavia for 78 days and nights. And once again, last year, grossly and openly intervened in an election in Nicaragua to prevent the left from winning. Meanwhile, of course, they were bombing Afghanistan and in all likelihood have now killed more innocent civilians in that sad country than were killed here on Sept. 11, with more to come as people will continue to die from bombing wounds, cluster-bomb landmines, and depleted-uranium toxicity. And all these years, still keeping their choke hold on Cuba. And that's just a partial list. There was none of the peace dividend we had been promised, not for Americans nor for the rest of the world. What the heck is going on here?
We had been taught since childhood that the cold war, including the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the huge military budgets, all the foreign invasions and overthrows of governments -- the ones we knew about -- we were taught that this was all to fight the same menace: The International Communist Conspiracy, headquarters in Moscow. So what happened? The Soviet Union was dissolved. The Warsaw Pact was dissolved. The East European satellites became independent. The former communists even became capitalists. ... And nothing changed in American foreign policy. Even NATO remained, NATO which had been created -- so we were told -- to protect Western Europe against a Soviet invasion, even NATO remains, bigger than ever, getting bigger and more powerful all the time, a NATO with a global mission. The NATO charter was even invoked to give a justification for its members to join the US in the Afghanistan invasion.
The whole thing had been a con game. The Soviet Union and something called communism per se had not been the object of our global attacks. There had never been an International Communist Conspiracy. The enemy was, and remains, any government or movement, or even individual, that stands in the way of the expansion of the American Empire; by whatever name we give to the enemy -- communist, rogue state, drug trafficker, terrorist ... You think the American Empire is against terrorists? What do you call a man who blows up an airplane killing 73 people? Who attempts assassinations against several diplomats? Who fires cannons at ships docked in American ports? Who places bombs in numerous commercial and diplomatic buildings in the US and abroad? Dozens of such acts. His name is Orlando Bosch, he's Cuban and he lives in Miami, unmolested by the authorities. The city of Miami once declared a day in his honor -- Orlando Bosch Day. He was freed from prison in Venezuela, where he had been held for the airplane bombing, partly because of pressure from the American ambassador, Otto Reich, who earlier this year was appointed to the State Dept. by George W. After Bosch returned to the US in 1988, the Justice Dept condemned him as a totally violent terrorist and was all set to deport him, but that was blocked by President Bush, the first, with the help of son Jeb Bush in Florida.
So is George W. and his family against terrorism? Well, yes, they're against those terrorists who are not allies of the empire. The plane that Bosch bombed, by the way, was a Cuban plane. He's wanted in Cuba for that and a host of other serious crimes, and the Cubans have asked Washington to turn him over to them; to Cuba he's like Osama Bin Laden is to the United States. But the US has refused. Can you imagine the reaction in Washington if bin Laden showed up in Havana and the Cubans refused to turn him over? Can you imagine the reaction in the United States if Havana proclaimed Osama Bin Laden Day?
Washington's support of genuine terrorist organizations has been very extensive. To give just a couple of examples of the past few years -- The ethnic Albanians in Kosovo have carried out numerous terrorist attacks for years in various parts of the Balkans, but they've been our allies because they've attacked people out of favor with Washington. The paramilitaries in Colombia, as vicious as they come, could not begin to carry out their dirty work without the support of the Colombian military, who are the recipients of virtually unlimited American support. This, all by itself, disqualifies Washington from leading a war against terrorism. Bush also speaks out often and angrily against harboring terrorists.
Does he really mean that? Well, what country harbors more terrorists than the United States? Orlando Bosch is only one of the numerous anti-Castro Cubans in Miami who have carried out hundreds, if not thousands of terrorist acts, in the US, in Cuba, and elsewhere; all kinds of arson attacks, assassinations and bombings. They have been harbored here in safety for decades. As have numerous other friendly terrorists, torturers and human rights violators from Guatemala, El Salvador, Haiti, Indonesia and elsewhere, all allies of the Empire. The CIA is looking for terrorists in caves in the mountains of Afghanistan at the same time as the Agency sits in bars in Miami having beers with terrorists. What are we to make of all this? How are we to understand our government's foreign policy?
Well, if I were to write a book called The American Empire for Dummies, page one would say: Don't ever look for the moral factor. US foreign policy has no moral factor built into its DNA."
bits of a talk given in Boulder Colorado by William Blum
author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II and Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower
If the personal freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution inhibit the
government's ability to govern the people, we should look to limit those guarantees.
--President Bill Clinton
