Declassified: US Imperialism, Terror, and Support for Tyranny

[Pn2501]

Apparently there were early versions of democracy in Mesopotamia, India, and the Iroquis nation.
But modern democracy started with the magna carta  and it's is as western as it gets.

[DoomRulz]

no!  srsly?

Well the way you worded it, it sounded as though you implied having a democratic system Westernizes a nation.

[SM]

I worded it "in terms of a desire for democratic governments".

As opposed to monarchies or/ and dictatatorships.

[Space Sweeper]

Note: Add "Best Cospiracy Thread" to AvP Galaxy Award categories.

[maledoro]

Note: Add "Best Cospiracy Thread" to AvP Galaxy Award categories.

...and put this one up for "Most Paranoid Notion to Not Be Considered a Conspiracy Because It Doesn't Connect the Dots".

[Space Sweeper]

[Sharp Sticks]

Do not cry, Okayman. There's always the Czech thread!

[DoomRulz]

Note: Add "Best Cospiracy Thread" to AvP Galaxy Award categories.

...and put this one up for "Most Paranoid Notion to Not Be Considered a Conspiracy Because It Doesn't Connect the Dots".

That's it. You're cut off. I no longer care what you have to say.

Note: Add "Best Cospiracy Thread" to AvP Galaxy Award categories.

And you too.

Dude, if you're going to create a thread such as this, be prepared for heavy criticism. Just the way the ball bounces.

[Vulhala]

^QFT.

[AliceApocalypse]

Maybe I should run for a political office someday....but only something so unimportant that it stays out of media 

[maledoro]

That's it. You're cut off.

You've been cut off for a very long time...

I no longer care what you have to say.

Your reply is evident of that...

[Sharp Sticks]

The Clinton administration's National Security Strategy declares:

The United States reserves the right to the unilateral use of military power to defend it's vital interests which include:

*Ensuring uninhibited access to key markets, energy supplies and strategic resources.

-Without even the pretexts that Bush and Blair devised.

All lizards.

[Horhey]

US-Death Squad War in El Salvador Review Complete: Check pages 7-13.

Just in case any one misses this part because you can get lost in the review easily..

"Democracy Promotion"

The motive for Washington's death squad war in El Salvador: "a deliberate campaign to preserve the privileged position of the ruling minority."

Reaganite scholar and the Vice President for Studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Thomas Carothers wrote the standard scholarly work on U.S. democracy promotion in Latin America in the 1980's.

He writes in part, from an insider's perspective, having served in Reagan's State Department during the 'democracy enhancement' programmes in Central America. He regards these programs as having been a systematic failure:

The Reagan administration was trying to support the military governments that were on the way out if anything, the U.S. policy in that period worked against the democratic trend.

The underlying U.S. goal is maintaining the basic societal orders of particular Latin American countries approximately as they are-ensuring that the economics are not drastically rearranged and that the power relations of the various social sectors are not turned upside down. The underlying objective is to maintain the basic order of what, historically at least, are quite undemocratic societies.

The deep fear in the United States government of populist-based change in Latin America-with all its implications for upsetting established economic and political orders and heading off in a leftist direction- leads to an emphasis on incremental change from the top down.

The Reagan administration came to adopt prodemocracy policies as a means of relieving pressure for more radical change, but inevitably sought only limited, top-down forms of democratic change that did not risk upsetting the traditional structures of power with which the United States has long been allied.

The proudest achievement was El Salvador. Here, the Reagan administration sought two goals:

ensuring that technically credible elections were held and that the Christian democratic candidate, Jose Napoleon Duarte, won.

The administration could not conceive of an El Salvador in which the military was not the dominant actor, the economic elite no longer held the national economy in its hands, the left was incorporated into the political system, and all Salvadorans actually had both the formal and substantial possibility of political participation. In short, the US government had no real conception of democracy in El Salvador.

While "democracy enhancement" was proceeding in this manner, Washington's death squads were slaughtering the opposition by the tens of thousands, carrying out hideous torture and other atrocities, and destroying the  independent press.

A January 1994 conference on state terror organized by Jesuit Priests (those who survived that is) in San Salvador observed that:

it is important to explore . . . what weight the culture of terror has had in domesticating the expectations of the majority vis-a-vis alternatives different to those of the powerful.

That is the crucial point, wherever such methods are used to subdue the "internal enemy."

[Space Sweeper]

When is this going to get to the reptilian stuff?

[Horhey]

US Death Squad War against Nicaragua 1979-1990

Fomer CIA Station Chief, John Stockwell on the CIA-Contra War Against Nicaragua

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLwhAgsyh1c#

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fiy9oDKIGxA#

An in depth investigation that exposes US government-media lies about Nicaragua. Features former CIA Analyst David MacMichael and former CIA Station Chief John Stockwell

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6ClM0BsYAI#

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YP-FYeNmdGI#

It is instructive to look at another international terrorist campaign to overcome "successful defiance": The US terrorist war against Nicaragua.

For President Jimmy Carter, human rights were "the soul of our foreign policy".

Robert Pastor, President Carter's National Security Advisor for Latin America, explained some important distinctions between human rights and policy: Regretfully, the administration had to support Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza's regime, and when that proved impossible because the tyrant was being overthrown by the Sandinistas, to maintain the U.S.-trained National Guard even after it had been massacring the population "with a brutality a nation usually reserves for its enemy," killing some 40,000 people.

To Pastor, the reason is elementary:

The United States did not want to control Nicaragua or the other nations in the region, but it also did not want to allow developments to get out of control. It wanted Nicaraguans to act independently, except when doing so would affect U.S. interests adversely.

^
..You can look at that and come to your own conclusions..

As the US-backed National Guard was carrying out murderous attacks against civilians, leaving tens of thousands killed. On July 6, Carter's Ambassedor Pezzullo recommended that the bloodbath be continued:

I believe it ill-advised to go to Somoza and ask for a bombing halt.

As in U.S. political democracy generally, the Carter Administration had its left-right spectrum. On the right, National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski proclaimed that:

we have to demonstrate that we are still the decisive force in determining the political outcomes in Central America .

-Warning of apocalyptic outcomes if the U.S. did not intervene to prevent the Sandinistas from coming to power.

On the left, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Viron Vaky pursued a more nuanced approach. Pezzullo's task was to implement the policy of the left, that is, to bar the FSLN from power through the:

preservation of existing instititutions, especially the National Guard.

Robert Pastor explained that:

Carter had both a different view of the crisis and a different strategy than Brzezinski. He wanted to preserve the National Gaurd.

The National Security Archive's Peter Kornbluh observes:

the Carter administration began setting the stage for a counterrevolution.

Applying these principles to Nicaragua, Viron Vaky outlined "the principal arguments" for supporting the right wing Contras against the newly formed Sandinista government:

a longer war of attrition will so weaken the regime, provoke such a radical hardening of repression, and win sufficient support from Nicaragua's discontented population that sooner or later the regime will be overthrown by popular revolt, self destruct by means of internal coups or leadership splits, or simply capitulate to salvage what it can.

Terrorizing the population into submission became the primary strategy adopted by the incoming Reaganites..

TO BE CONTINUED