Hot Quotes
on US foreign policy
in Third World
Michael Parenti
"The enormous gap between what US leaders do in the world
and what Americans think their leaders are doing is one of the
great propaganda accomplishments of the dominate political mythology."
*****
C.P. Snow, British novelist and scientist
"When you think of the long and gloomy history of man,
you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name
of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion."
*****
Albert Camus
"It is the job of thinking people, not to be on the side
of the executioners."
*****
General Smedley Butler, former US Marine Corps Commandant,1935:
"I spent thirty-three years in the Marines, most of my
time being a hlgh class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall
Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism.
I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house
of Brown Brothers in 1910-1912. I helped make Mexico and especially
Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I brought light
to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916.
I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City
[Bank] boys to collect revenue in. I helped in the rape of half
a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street.
In China in 1927 l helped to see to it that Standard Oil went
its way unmolested.
I had a swell racket. l was rewarded with honors, medals,
promotions. l might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best
he could do was to operate a racket in three city districts. The
Marines operated on three continents."
*****
General David Sharp, former US Marine Commandant,1966:
"I believe that if we had and would keep our dirty, bloody,
dollar-soaked fingers out of the business of these nations so
full of depressed, exploited people, they will arrive at a solution
of their own.... And if unfortunately their revolution must be
of the violent type because the "haves" refuse to share
with the "have-nots" by any peaceful method, at least
what they get will be their own, and not the American style, which
they don't want and above all don't want crammed down their throats
by Americans."
*****
William Shirer, writer:
"For the last fifty years we've been supporting right-wing
governments, and that is a puzzlement to me...I don't understand
what there is in the American character...that almost automatically,
even when we have a liberal President, we support fascist dictatorships
or are tolerant towards them."
*****
Richard Cohen, columnist
" I dream that someday the United States will be on the
side of the peasants in some civil war. I dream that we will be
the ones who will help the poor overthrow the rich, who will talk
about land reform and education and health facilities for everyone,
and that when the Red Cross or Amnesty International comes to
count the bodies and take the testimony of women raped, that our
side won't be the heavies."
*****
George Keenan, head of U.S. State Department Policy Planning
Staff, 1948
"We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today
the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction.... We should cease
to talk about vague and unreal objectives such as human rights,
the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The
day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight
power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans,
the better."
*****
Aldous Huxley, writer
"One of the great attractions of patriotism -- it fulfills
our worst wishes. In the person of our nation we are able, vicariously,
to bully and cheat. Bully and cheat, what's more, with a feeling
that we are profoundly virtuous."
*****
Edward Herman, author
"As human rights conditions deteriorate, factors affecting
the "climate of investment," like the tax laws and labor
repression, improve from the viewpoint of the multinational corporation.
This suggests an important line of causation -- military dictatorships
tend to improve the investment climate.... The multinational corporate
community and the U.S. government are very sensitive to this factor.
Military dictators enter into a tacit joint venture arrangement
with Free World leaders: They will keep the masses quiet, maintain
an open door to multinational investment, and provide bases and
otherwise serve as loyal clients. In exchange, they will be aided
and protected against their own people, and allowed to loot public
property.
*****
Philadelphia Ledger newspaper, 1901 carried a dispatch from
its Manila [Philippines] correspondent during the US war with
Spain:
"Our men . . . have killed to exterminate men, women,
children, prisoners and captives, active insurgents and suspected
people from lads of 10 up.... Our soldiers have pumped salt water
into men to "make them talk," and have taken prisoners
people who held up their hands and peacefully surrendered, and
an hour later. . . stood them on a bridge and shot them down one
by one, to drop into the water below and float down, as examples
to those who found their bullet-loaded corpses."
*****
A Republican member of Congress gave an eyewitness report
on the US invasion of the Philippines, 1899:
"You never hear of any disturbances in Northern Luzon
[Philippines]... because there isn't anybody there to rebel. That
country was marched over and cleared out.... The good lord in
Heaven only knows the number of Filipinos that were put under
the ground; our soldiers took no prisoners; they kept no records;
they simply swept the country and wherever or however they could
get hold of a Filipino they killed him."
*****
Representative Barbara Mikulski (now a US Senator) interviewed
a peasant woman, a victim of the Mazote massacre in El Salvador
in 1981, where a US trained elite battalion killed more than 1,000
people.
"Many members of her family were killed. She personally
saw children around the age of eight being raped, and then [the
soldiers] would take their bayonets and make mincemeat out of
them. With their guns they would shoot at their faces...."
The Army would cut people up and put soap and coffee in their
stomachs as a mocking, [the woman said]. They would slit the stomach
of a pregnant woman and take the child out, as if they were taking
eggs out of an iguana. That is what I saw."
*****
President Franklin Roosevelt -- justifying support for Nicaragua's
dictator Anastasio Somoza:
"He may be a son-of-a-bitch, but at least he's our son-of-a-bitch."
*****
John Stuart Mill, 19th century philosopher
"Was there ever any domination that did not appear natural
to those who possessed it?"
*****
Edward Said, literary critic
"History is written by those who win and those who dominate."
*****
Jose Napoleon Duarte, President of El Salvador 1980, on why
guerrillas were fighting the government
"Fifty years of lies, fifty years of injustice, fifty
years of frustration. This is a history of people starving to
death, living in misery. For fifty years the same people had all
the power, all the money, all the jobs all the education, all
the opportunities."
*****
Amnesty International, describing the torture suffered by
Brazilians at the hands of the military and the US-run Office
of Public Safety (OPS) in the 1960s
"Tortures range from simple but brutal blows from a truncheon
to electric shocks. Often the torture is more refined: the end
of a reed is placed in the anus of a naked man hanging suspended
downwards on the pau de arara [parrot's perch] and a piece of
cotton soaked in petrol is lit at the other end of the reed. Pregnant
women have been forced to watch their husbands being tortured.
Other wives have been hung naked beside their husbands and given
electric shocks on the sexual parts of their body, while subjected
to the worst kind of obscenities. Children have been tortured
before their parents and vice versa. The length of sessions depends
upon the resistance capacity of the victims and have sometimes
continued for days at a time."
*****
California Congressman Pete McClosky following a visit to
Cambodia in the 1970s
"What the United States has done to the country [Cambodia]
is greater evil than we have done to any country in the world,
and wholly without reason, except for our own benefit to fight
against the Vietnamese."
*****
CIA Director Richard Helms, discussing plan to destabilize
government of Chile under democractically-elected President Salvador
Allende
" One in 10 chance perhaps, but save Chile! ... not concerned
with risks involved ... $10,000,000 available, more if necessary
... make the economy scream."
*****
New York Times, 1977, describing pesticide use in Guatemala
under US-supported military dictatoship
"The level of pesticide spraying is the highest in the
world, and little concern is shown for the people who live near
the cotton fields ... 30 or 40 people a day are treated for pesticide
poisoning, death can come within hours, or a longer lasting liver
malfunction ... the amounts of DDT in mothers' milk in Guatemala
are the highest in the Western world. "It's very simple,"
explained a cotton planter, "more insecticide means more
cotton, fewer insects mean higher profits." In an attack,
guerrillas destroyed 22 crop-duster planes; the planes were quickly
replaced thanks to the genius of American industry ... and all
the pesticide you could ever want, from Monsanto Chemical Company
of St. Louis.
*****
President Lyndon Johnson to Greek Ambassador, 1970s
"Fuck your Parliament and your Constitution. We pay a
lot of good American dollars to the Greeks, Mr. Ambassador. If
your Prime Minister gives me talk about Democracy, Parliament
and Constitutions, he, his Parliament, and his Constitution may
not last very long."
*****
James Becket, American attorney, in Greece for Amnesty International,
describing the torture suffered by Greeks under US-supported dictator
Papdopoulos in the 1960s
"People had been mercilessly tortured simply for being
in possession of a leaflet criticizing the regime. Brutality and
cruelty on one side, frustration and helplessness on the other.
They were being tortured and there was nothing to be done. It
was like listening to a friend who has cancer. What comfort, what
wise reflection can someone who is comfortable give. Torture might
last a short time, but the person will never be the same."
Athens [Greece] inspector Basil Lambrou, 1960s, speaking to
prisoners before torturing them, during the US-supported Papadopoulos
dictatorship
"You make yourself ridiculous by thinking you can do
anything. The world is divided in two. There are the communists
on that side and on this side the free world. The Russians and
the Americans, no one else. What are we. Americans. Behind me
there is the government, behind the government is NATO, behind
NATO is the U.S. You can't fight us, we are Americans."
*****
V.P. George Bush to Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos
"We love your adherence to democratic principle."
*****
Henry Cabot Lodge
"If justice requires the consent of the governed, then
our [U.S.] whole past record of expansion is a crime."
*****
Testimony of Fred Sherwood (CIA pilot during the overthrow
of the Arbenz government in 1954 who settled in Guatemala and
became president of the American Chamber of Commerce), speaking
in Guatemala, September 1980:
"Why should we be worried about the death squads? They're
bumping off the commies, our enemies. I'd give them more power.
Hell, l'd get some cartridges if I could, and everyone else would
too ... Why should we criticize them? The death squad-I'm for
it ... Shit! There's no question we can't wait until Reagan gets
in. We hope Carter falls in the ocean real quick ... We all feel
that he [Reagan] is our savior. "
*****
Henry Kissinger
"I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country
go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people."
*****
Statement by the Guatemalan Army of the Poor, 1981
"The Guatemalan revolution is entering its third decade.
Ever since the government of Jacobo Arbenz was overthrown in 1954,
the majority of the Guatemalan people have been seeking a way
to move the country towards solving the same problems which were
present then and have only worsened over time.
The counterrevolution, put in motion by the U.S. Government and
those domestic sectors committed to retaining every single one
of their privileges, dispersed and disorganized the popular and
democratic forces. However, it did not resolve any of the problems
which had first given rise to demands for economic, social and
political change. These demands have been raised again and again
in the last quarter century, by any means that seemed appropriate
at the time, and have received each time the same repressive response
as in 1954."
*****
Statement by Father Thomas Melville, in Guateamala, 1968
"The actual state of violence composed of the malnutrition,
ignorance, sickness and hunger of the vast majority of the Guatemalan
population, is the direct result of a capitalist system that makes
the defenseless Indian compete against the powerful and well-armed
landowner."
*****
Benjamin Cohen
"A world in which others controlled the course of their
own development ... would be a world in which the American system
would be seriously endangered."
*****
Henry Pachter
"The national interest is not to protect individual American
firms but to preserve a system of business ... The American empire
expresses its presence and exercises its influence through the
capitalist mode of operation for which it keeps as much of the
world "open" a possible."
*****
Secretary of State Madelaine Albright talking about Iraqi
children starving and dying as a result of the US embargo of food
and medicine
"It's a hard decision, but we think the price ... is
worth it."
*****
William Greider
"Americans cannot teach democracy to the world until
they restore their own."
*****
Newsweek magazine about the Dominican Republic prior to overthrow
of elected President Juan Bosch in1963
"Democracy was being saved from Communism by getting
rid of democracy."
*****
Secretary of State Madelaine Albright talking about Iraqi
children starving and dying as a result of the US embargo of food
and medicine
"It's a hard decision, but we think the price ... is
worth it."
*****
Ken Saro-Wiwa, after reading a secret Nigerian military memo
- May 1994.
He was executed in 1995.
"They are going to arrest us all and execute us for Shell."
****
Major Paul Okuntimo, Rivers State Internal Security Task Force,
Nigeria*
"Shell's operations are impossible unless ruthless military
operations are
undertaken for smooth economic activities to commence."
*****
Howard Federspiel, the Indonesia expert at the State Department's
Bureau of Intelligence and Research, describing the US supported
overthrow of Sukarno in 1965 and the associated genocide of 500,000
- 1,000,000 Indonesians
"No one cared, as long as they were Communists, that
they were being butchered. No one was getting very worked up about
it."
*****
Robert Martens, former member of the US Embassy's political
section in Jakarta, in 1990, discussing the 1965 US-backed coup
in Indonesia
"It really was a big help to the army. They probably
killed a lot of people, and I probably have a lot of blood on
my hands, but that's not all bad."
*****
Senator Hubert Humphrey
"Do you know what the head of the Iranian Army told one
of our people? He said the Army was in good shape, thanks to U.S.
aid -- it was now capable of coping with the civilian population.
That Army isn't going to fight the Russians. It's planning to
fight the Iranian people."
*****
Gertrude Scholtz-Klink, chief of the Women's Bureau under
Hitler explaining the Jewish policy of the Nazis
"We always obeyed the law. Isn't that what you do in America?
Even if you don't agree with a law personally, you still obey
it. Otherwise life would be chaos."
*****
Thomas Jefferson
"Whenever any form of government becomes destructive
of ... [Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness], it is the
right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute
new government."
*****
Socialist and feminist Emma Goldman lecturing on patriotism
"Conceit, arrogance and egotism are the essentials of
patriotism.... Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into
little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who had
the fortune of being born on some particular spot, consider themselves
better, nobler, grander, more intelligent than the living beings
inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone
living on that chosen spot to fight, kill, and die in the attempt
to impose his superiority upon all others."
*****
Catholic priest-poet Daniel Berrigan
"The time is past when good men can remain silent, when
obedience can segregate men from public risk, when the poor can
die without defense."
*****
Henry David Thoreau, in his famous essay "Civil Disobedience
"A common and natural result of an undue respect for
law is, that you may see a file of soldiers, colonels, captains,
corporals, privates, powder-monkeys, and all, marching in admirable
order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay,
against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very
steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart."
*****
Thomas Jefferson
"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable
on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive. It
will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to
be exercised at all."
*****
"Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear-kept
us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor-with the cry of
grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible
evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to
gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it ..."
General Douglas MacArthur, 1957
*****
"I am strongly in favor of using poisoned gas against
uncivilized tribes. The moral effect should be good...and it would
spread a lively terror.... "
Winston Churchill commenting on the British use of poison
gas against the Iraqis after World War I
*****
"... somehow we find it hard to sell our values, namely
that the rich should plunder the poor."
former Secretary of State John Foster Dulles
*****
"The crimes of the U.S. throughout the world have been
systematic, constant, clinical, remorseless, and fully documented
but nobody talks about them. "
Harold Pinter
*****
"If there has to be a blood-bath [of our own youth],
let's get it over with."
Ronald Reagan, Governor of California during the Vietnam War
*****
"History is the history of war -- of leaders of countries
finding reasons and rationals to send the young people off to
fight."
John Stockwell, former CIA official and author
*****
"We [the U.S.] has over 200 incidents in which we have
put our troops into other countries to force them to our will."
John Stockwell, former CIA official and author
*****
"Why of course the people don't want war. Why should
some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the
best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece?
Naturally, the common people don't want war: neither in Russia,
nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood.
But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the
policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along,
whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament,
or a communist dictatorship ... Voice or no voice, the people
can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy.
All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and
denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the
country to danger."
Leading Nazi leader, Hermann Goering, at the Nuremberg Trials
before he was sentenced to death
*****
"Just who are these goddamn reds, anyway? A goddamn red
is anyone who wants 30 cents when I am paying 25."
John Steinbeck, "The Grapes of Wrath"
*****
"The American oligarchy increasingly has less in common
with the American people than it does with the equivalent oligarchies
in Germany or Mexico or Japan."
Lewis Lapham, editor of Harpers
*****
"If the world operates as one big market, every employee
will compete with every person anywhere in the world who is capable
of doing the same job. There are lots of them and many of them
are hungry."
Andrew Grove, president of Intel Corp., in his book "High
Output Management"
*****
"[Nationalism is] a set of beliefs taught to each generation
in which the Motherland or the Fatherland is an object of veneration
and becomes a burning cause for which one becomes willing to kill
the children of other Motherlands or Fatherlands."
Howard Zinn, historian
*****
"The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities
committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for
not even hearing about them."
George Orwell, writer
*****
"The agony and moral anguish that ought to accompany
an act of mass killing -- yes, even in a war [the Gulf War against
Iraq in 1991]-- seemed wholly absent from American culture."
Ruth Rosen, history professor
*****
"Indonesia plays a key role in maintaining regional stablity.
It is a leader in ASEAN and is a fundimental force for peace and
properity ... We did not have a discussion about East Timor."
Secretary of Defense William Cohen at a press conference,
January 1998, after meeting with Indonesian President Suharto
who is responsible for the deaths of 500,00 - 1,000,000 following
his US-sanctioned coup against Indonesian President Sukarno in
1965, and the deaths of 200,000 during Indonesia's US-sanctioned
invasion and occupation of East Timor in 1975
*****
" Scare the hell out of the American people."
Senator Arthur Vandenburg, telling President Truman what the
he needed to do in order to to tax the American people to pay
for the weapons and covert activities of the US National Security
State that was being planned, to destroy the Russian Communist
State
*****
" The men who possess real power in this country have
no intention of ending the cold war."
Albert Einstein
*****
" No triumph of peace can equal the armed triumph of
war."
"In strict confidence ...I should welcome almost any
war,
for I think this country needs one."
Theodore Roosevelt
*****
" There is no regime to reactionary for us provided it
stands in Russia's expansionist path. There is no country too
remote to serve as the scene of a contest which may widen until
it becomes a world war."
Henry Wallace, Vice-President under Franklin Roosevelt 1941-1945
*****
" The only way to abolish war is to make peace heroic."
John Dewey
*****
" War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to
fight their own battle; therefore they take boys from one village
and another village, stick them into uniforms, equip them with
guns, and let them loose like wild beasts against each other."
Thomas Carlyle
*****
" Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience
of the (U.S.) media."
Noam Chomsky
*****
" The U.S. will not permit constructive programs in its
own domains,
so it must ensure that they are destroyed elsewhere to terminate
" the threat of a good example".
Noam Chomsky
*****
" Patriotism is the last resort of scoundrels."
Samuel Johnson
*****
"Patriotism is the principle that will justify the training
of wholesale murderers."
Leo Tolstoy
*****
" We Americans claim to be a peace-loving people. We
hate bloodshed; we are opposed to violence. Yet we go into spasms
of joy over the possibility of projecting dynamite bombs from
flying machines upon helpless citizens."
" Conceit, arrogance, and egotism are the essentials
of patriotism."
" When a child has reached manhood, he is thoroughly
saturated with the belief that he is chosen by the Lord himself
to defend his country against the attack or invasion of any foreigner.
It is for that purpose that we are clamoring for a greater army
and navy, more battleships and ammunition."
" The people are urged to be patriotic ... by sacrificing
their own children. Patriotism requires allegience to the flag,
which means obedience and readiness to kill father, mother, brother,
sister."
" The experience of every-day life fully proves that
the armed individual is invariably anxious to try his strength.
The same is historically true of governments. Really peaceful
countries do not waste life and energy in war preparations, with
the result that peace is maintained."
" The powers know that the people at large are like children
whose despair, sorrow, and tears can be turned into joy with a
little toy. ... An army and navy represents the people's toys."
Emma Goldman
*****
" ... the operative priciples dictating U.S. support
and hostility in the Third World have been business criteria first,
military convenience second, and any humanistic considerations
third and thus effectively irrelevant. In fact, they are less
than irrelevant -- they are in conflict with the first two criteria,
and therefore ... humanizing forces [become] "threats".
"
"The immiseration of the majority is an integral part
of the Free World package for the Third World, the unsavory aspects
of the package -- the terror, the direct spoilation of people
and resources, and western complicity -- must be rationalized
and, as far as possible, kept under the rug."
" ... there is a system of terroristic states -- the
real terror network -- that has spread throughout Latin America
and elsewhere over the past several decades, and which is deeply
rooted in the corporate interest and sustaining political-military-financial
propaganda mechanisms of the United States and its allies in the
Free World."
Edward Herman
*****
" What history truly records is the inherent irresponsibility
of all despotisms and the almost inevitable corruption of all
forms of government that are not subject to the control of the
people ..."
Brazilian church statement
*****
" The economy is doing fine, but the people aren't."
General Emelio Medici, head-of-state of Brazil, 1971
*****
" We enjoy the economic stability that the Armed Forces
guarantee us. This [economic] plan can be fulfilled dispite its
lack of popular support. It has sufficient political support ..
that provided buy the Armed Forces."
Martinez de Hoz, financial minister of the Argentine military
government, 1976
*****
*****
Latin America -- quotes from survivors
Manuel de Conceicao, peasant leader in Brazil
He was arrested in 1972 and brought before Brazilian security
police who had been schooled at US army bases in the latest methods
of counterinsurgency and interrogation. He was tortured by Brazilian
army units -- trained and equipped by US military-aid programs.
"For four months I was heavily tortured by the Army in
Rio de Janeiro, and then in the Naval Information Center.... Near
death, I was taken to the hospital for the sixth time. The beatings
had been so severe that my body was one big bruise. The blood
clotted under my skin and all the hair on my body fell out. They
pulled out all my fingernails. They poked needles through my sexual
organs and used a rope to drag me across the floor by my testicles.
Right afterwards they hung me upside down.
They hung me handcuffed from a grating, removed my artificial
leg, and tied my penis so l could not urinate. They forced me
to stand on my one leg for three days without food or drink. They
gave me so many drugs that my eardrums burst and I am impotent.
They nailed my penis to a table for 24 hours. They tied me up
like a pig and threw me into a pool so that I nearly drowned.
They put me in a completely dark cell where I remained for 30
days urinating and defecating in the same place where I had to
sleep. They fed me only bread soaked in water. They put me in
a rubber box and turned on a siren. For three days I neither ate
nor slept and I nearly went mad...."
*****
Two women who opposed the same Brazilian military -- trained
and equipped by United States
Instead of being tortured, which was the usual procedure,
they were brought to a hospital where they were subjected to plastic
surgery:
"One of the women had her mouth taken away from her.
The other lost half her nose. And they were released after several
days with the gentle suggestion that they be sure to visit their
comrades to show off their "cures." They had been turned
into walking advertisements of terror, agents of demoralization
and intimidation.... In the case of the woman whose mouth had
been shut, the most sophisticated techniques of plastic surgery
had been employed. Great care had been taken by her medical torturers
to obliterate her lips forever, using cuts and stitches and folds
that would frustrate even the best reconstructive techniques.
[Luis, a Cuban plastic surgeon] even thought he could detect a
"U.S. hand" in this macabre handiwork, or that of a
Brazilian schooled in the United States. A small hole had been
left in the face to allow the woman to take liquids through a
straw and survive....
When Luis and the medical team reopened the hole where her
mouth had been, the sight was far more sickening than they had
expected: All of the teeth had been removed and two dog fangs-
incisors-had been inserted in their place. A little surprise from
the fascist madmen....
The other woman had had half her nose removed, skin, cartilage
and all. A draining, raw, and frightening wound was her "treatment,"
the sign she was to carry around with her to warn people that
rebellion was a "disease" and torture the "cure."
*****
A young Salvadoran deserted the Salvadoran army and fled to
Mexico. His story was published in The Other Side magazine, 1982
Part of his training by eight American Green Berets consisted
of "teaching how to torture." He witnessed a boy of
about fifteen, suspected of supporting the guerrillas, being subjected
to a demonstration torture by the Green Berets They tore out the
youth's fingernails, broke his elbows, gouged out his eyes, and
then burned him alive. The author reports that the torture sessions
continued into the next day and included a thirteen year-old girl.
Another victim had various parts of his body burned and was then
taken up in a helicopter while still alive and thrown out at 14,000
feet. The defector noted that "often the army goes and throws
people out over the sea."
(The editors of The Other Side withheld the Salvadoran informant's
name "for obvious reasons" but claimed that "the
basic outline of his story has been corroborated by independent
sources which we believe to be reliable.")
*****
Victims and survivors of the fascist coup in Chile in 1973
They tell how the Chilean military -- trained and financed
by the United States -- tortured people with electric shock, particularly
on the genitals; forced victims to witness the torture of friends
and relatives (including children); raped women in the presence
of other family members; burned sex organs with acid or scalding
water; placed rats in women's vaginas and into the mouths of other
prisoners; mutilated, punctured, and cut off various parts of
the body, including genitalia, eyes, and tongue; injected air
into women's breasts and into veins (causing slow, painful death);
shoved bayonets and clubs into the vagina or anus, causing rupture
and death.
*****
Elba Vergara, secretary to President Allende (himself murdered
by the Chilean generals), was made to witness repeated torture
and rapes. At one point her tormentors told her they would show
her their "theater."
"Four men came in, bearing a cot with a sheet-covered
figure. "Sit down," one ordered. "You're going
to see a performance by a bad actor, an actor who has forgotten
his part. Help him remember it." They uncovered a body entirely
purple, missing a foot. "Come closer," another ordered.
"Look at him. You'll know him." And she did. It was
27-year-old "El Gordo" Toledo, with whom she had been
20 days before. He could hardly speak, or scream, any more. When
Elba maintained that she did not know him, they said, "Let's
see"-they pulled out his nails, cut off his remaining ear,
cut out his tongue, gouged out his eyes, and killed him slowly
as she watched, thinking, "He could be my son." Then
they brought another "actor," 26-year-old Eduard Munoz.
It took them five hours to kill him, under her eyes. It was worse
than any pain they could have inflicted on her, she said. Later
she was forced to watch while her cellmates-aged 16, 17, and 40,
nude and drugged, were directed to perform an erotic dance before
they were raped. Another girl, back from a dreaded torture center,
and pregnant, was so crazy that each time she awoke she screamed
that her only desire was for her child to be born so she could
kill it."
*****
Rigoberta Menchu Tum, awarded the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize
'My name is Rigoberta Menchu Tum. l am a representative of
the "Vincente Menchu" [her father] Revolutionary Christians
... On 9 December 1979, my 16-year-old brother Patrocino was captured
and tortured for several days and then taken with twenty other
young men to the square in Chajul ... An officer of [President]
Lucas Garcia's army of murderers ordered the prisoners to be paraded
in a line. Then he started to insult and threaten the inhabitants
of the village who were forced to come out of their houses to
witness the event. I was with my mother, and we saw Patrocino;
he had had his tongue cut out and his toes cut off. The officer
jackal made a speech. Every time he paused the soldiers beat the
Indian prisoners.
When he finished his ranting, the bodies of my brother and
the other prisoners were swollen bloody, unrecognizable. lt. was
monstrous, but they were still alive.
They were thrown on the ground and drenched with gasoline. The
soldiers set fire to the wretched bodies with torches and the
captain laughed like a hyena and forced the inhabitants of Chajul
to watch. This was his objective-that they should be terrified
and witness the punishment given to the "guerrillas".
*****
A survivor of a raid by US-backed Contras in Nicaragua in
the 1980s
"Rosa had her breasts cut off. Then they cut into her
chest and took out her heart. The men had their arms broken, their
testicles cut off, and their eyes poked out They were killed by
slitting their throats and pulling the tongue out through the
slit."
*****
*****
The actor Richard Burton once wrote an article for the New
York Times about his experience playing the role of Winston Churchill
in a television drama:
"In the course of preparing myself...I realized afresh
that I hate Churchill and all of his kind. I hate them virulently.
They have stalked down the corridors of endless power all through
history.... What man of sanity would say on hearing of the atrocities
committed by the Japanese against British and Anzac prisoners
of war, 'We shall wipe them out, everyone of them, men, women,
and children. There shall not be a Japanese left on the face of
the earth? Such simple-minded cravings for revenge leave me with
a horrified but reluctant awe for such single-minded and merciless
ferocity."
*****
A United Nations official
" ... in pursuit of political objectives in the Nigerian
Civil War, a number of great and small nations, including Britain
and the United States, worked to prevent supplies of food and
medicine from reaching the starving children of rebel Biafra.
"
*****
Black writer Zora Neale Hurston at the start of World War
II.
All around me, bitter tears are being shed over the fate of
Holland, Belgium, France and England. I must confess to being
a little dry around the eyes. I hear people shaking with shudders
at the thought of Germany collecting taxes in Holland. I have
not heard a word against Holland collecting one twelfth of poor
people's wages in Asia. Hitler's crime is that he is actually
doing a thing like that to his own kind...
As I see it, the doctrines of democracy deal with the aspirations
of men's souls, but the application deals with things. One hand
in somebody else's pocket and one on your gun, and you are highly
civilized.... Desire enough for your own use only, and you are
a heathen. Civilized people have things to show to their neighbors.""
*****
Black writer Zora Neale Hurston, 1946
"I am amazed at the complacency of Negro press and public.
Truman is a monster. l can think of him as nothing else but the
Butcher of Asia. Of his grin of triumph on giving the order to
drop the Atom bombs on Japan. Of his maintaining troops in China
who are shooting the starving Chinese for stealing a handful of
food."
*****
The French worker philosopher Simone Weil,1945
"Whether the mask is labeled Fascism, Democracy, or Dictatorship
or the Proletariat, our great adversary remains the Apparatus-the
bureaucracy, the police, the military.... No matter what the circumstances,
the worst betrayal will always be to subordinate ourselves to
this Apparatus, and to trample underfoot, in its service, all
human values in ourselves and in others."
*****
Former GI Tommy Bridges
"It was a useless war, as every war is.... How gaddamn
foolish it is, the war. They's no war in the world that's worth
fighting for, I don't care where it is. They can't tell me any
different. Money, money is the thing that causes it all. I wouldn't
be a bit surprised that the people that start wars and promote
'em are the men that make the money, make the ammunition, make
the clothing and so forth. Just think of the poor kids that are
starvin' to death in Asia and so forth that could be fed with
how much you make one big shell out of."
*****
Admiral Gene LaRocque
"I had been in thirteen battle engagements, had sunk
a submarine, and was the first man ashore in the landing at Roi.
In that four years, I thought, What a hell of a waste of a man's
life. I lost a lot of friends. I had the task of telling my roommate's
parents about our last days together. You lose limbs, sight, part
of your life-for what? Old men send young men to war. Flag, banners,
and patriotic sayings...
We've institutionalized militarism. This came out of World
War Two... It gave us the National Security Council. It gave us
the CIA, that is able to spy on you and me this very moment. For
the first time in the history of man, a country has divided up
the world into military districts.... You could argue World War
Two had to be fought. Hitler had to be stopped. Unfortunately,
we translate it unchanged to the situation today...
I hate it when they say, "He gave his life for his country."
Nobody gives their life for anything. We steal the lives of these
kids. We take it away from them. They don't die for the honor
and glory of their country. We kill them."
*****
Two Americans who visited El Salvador in 1983 for the New
York City Bar Association described for the New York Times a massacre
of eighteen peasants by local troops in Sonsonate province:
"Ten military advisers are attached to the Sonsonate
armed forces... The episode contains all the unchanging elements
of the Salvadoran tragedy- uncontrolled military violence against
civilians, the apparent ability of the wealthy to procure official
violence...and the presence of United States military advisers,
working with the Salvadoran military responsible for these monstrous
practices... after 30,000 unpunished murders by security and military
forces and over 10,000 "disappearances" of civilians
in custody, the root causes of the killings remain in place, and
the killing goes on."
*****
Helen Keller, 1940
"Strike against war, for without you no battles can be
fought! Strike against manufacturing shrapnel and gas bombs and
all other tools of murder! Strike against preparedness that means
death and misery to millions of human beings! Be not dumb, obedient
slaves in an army of destruction! Be heroes in an army of construction."
*****
Mark Twain -- observing the United States at the turn of the
century, its wars in Cuba and the Philippines, described in The
Mysterious Stranger the process by which wars that are at first
seen as unnecessary by the mass of the people become converted
into "just" wars:
"The loud little handful will shout for war. The pulpit
will warily and cautiously protest at first.... The great mass
of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes, and will try to make out
why there should be a war, and they will say earnestly and indignantly:
"It is unjust and dishonorable and there is no need for war."
Then the few will shout even louder.... Before long you will
see a curious thing: anti-war speakers will be stoned from the
platform, and free speech will be strangled by hordes of furious
men who still agree with the speakers but dare not admit it...
Next, the statesmen will invent cheap lies...and each man
will be glad of these lies and will study them because they soothe
his conscience; and thus he will bye and bye convince himself
that the war is just and he will thank God for a better sleep
he enjoys by his self-deception."
*****
The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, which interviewed 700 Japanese
military and political officials after the war came to this conclusion:
"Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts and
supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved,
it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December
1945, and in all probability prior to I November 1945, Japan would
have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped,
even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion
had been planned or contemplated."
*****
Robert W. Tucker, political scientist, 1980
"We have regularly played.a determining role in making
and in unmaking governments, and we have defined what we have
considered to be the acceptable behavior of governments."
... Right-wing governments will have to be given steady outside
support, even, if necessary, by sending in American forces."
*****
Robert W. Tucker, political scientist, 1980
" The great object of American foreign policy ought to
be the restoration of a more normal political world, a world in
which those states possessing the elements of great power once
again play the role their power entitles them to play."
*****
Erasmus
"There is nothing more wicked, more disastrous, more
widely destructive, more deeply tenacious, more loathsome."
He said this was repugnant to nature: "Whoever heard of a
hundred thousand animals rushing together to butcher each other,
as men do everywhere?"
Erasmus saw war as useful to governments, for it enabled them
to enhance their power over their subjects; " . . . once
war has been declared, then all the affairs of the State are at
the mercy of the appetites of a few."
*****
Samuel P. Huntington
" Many more people in the world are concerned
about sports than human rights."
*****
Henry Kissinger
" Why should we flagellate ourselves for what the Cambodians
did to each other?"
*****
U.S. State Department, 1945
" [Middle East oil is] a stupendous source of strategic
power,
and one of the greatest material prizes in world history."
*****
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