Turning the Tide: U.S. Intervention in Central America and the Struggle for Peace

Chomsky published this book in early 1986 on U.S. imperialism in Latin American and its institutional roots and history. It was published before such events as the June 1986 ruling of the World Court of Justice ordering the United States to cease its terrorist war against Nicaragua and pay substantial reparations to it, the 1987 Esquipulas accords and the 1990 elections in Nicaragua all or much of which Chomsky covers in books published in the years after this book ("The Culture of Terrorism," "Necessary Illusions," "Deterring Democracy," etc.). But nonetheless he makes some excellent points in this book and I'm glad I read it. There is alot of stuff in this book about the background to the U.S. intervention in Central America in the 1980's including the Kennedy administration's policies like the "Alliance For Progress" and the decision to switch the mission of the Latin American military from "hemispheric defense" to "internal security" in 1962, as well the secret documents from the 1940's from George Kennan and the other evidence where U.S. planners lay out their plan for the "Grand Area," define just what they mean by "communist" and "communist aggression," and so on. He has written on this in alot of other places. But the immediate roots for the intervention and support for the death squads, Chomsky shows, started during the Carter "human rights" administration. During that time, he shows, the Reaganite programs of massive military spending and cutback of social programs began. Carter continued to support the Guatemalan Nazi-like military, despite a few token gestures that were apparently not enforced. Contrary to much illusion, he tried to keep Somoza in power to the very end of his barbaric rule, and probably sparked the final uprising against him by sending a letter in the summer of 1978 praising him for his devotion to human rights (he was making similar comments to the Shah of Iran at the same time). He vastly increased U.S. aid to El Salvador after an October 1979 military coup by reformist officers who were quickly pushed aside by fanatic rightist officers who began their mass murder in early 1980, as the archbishop of San Salvador Oscar Romero was writing to Carter to beg him to stop military aid to the murderous junta and the oligarchy saying that it would "sharpen injustice against the people's organizations who are fighting for their most fundamental human rights." Archbishop Romero was assasinated shorly after by the forces of Ricardo Lau, a Nicaraguan Contra, in the employ of the notorious death squad leader Roberto D'aubuisson, according to the former chief of Salvadoran intelligence Roberto Santivanez. As Archbishop Romero's successor was condemning "a war of extermination and genocide against a defenseless civillian populatoion" Jose Napolean Duarte, a former dissident liberal, decided to completely sell out and become the figurehead civillian president of the junta to salve the conscience of the New York Times liberals. He jo

A book that will gnaw at your guts like a rabid sewer rat. The irrefutable facts are all here: How the U.S. government, and especially the heinous criminals in the Reagan administrations, brought a nightmare of rape, torture, and mass murder to impoverished students, peasants, and community activists in some of the most destitute countries in the world. Every American should read this book...and vow "NEVER AGAIN".