Humanitarian Imperialism by Jean Bricmont

Author:Jean Bricmont
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Monthly Review Press
Published: 2006-09-02T16:00:00+00:00

The Contras and Human Rights Defenders

After the victory of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua in 1979, which overthrew the U.S.-supported dictatorship of Somoza, the United States decreed an embargo against Nicaragua and organized guerrilla bands called Contras. They had no chance of winning a military victory, but they could weaken the new government especially by disrupting the economy. In 1990, the Sandinistas lost the elections, whereupon the United States lifted their embargo. The United States was condemned for its sabotage actions by the International Court of Justice in 1986. Despite a demand by the U.N. General Assembly for immediate payment of reparations, the United States refused to comply.

The United States can, however; count on its own lobby of European intellectuals. On March 21, 1985, the leading French newspaper, Le Monde, published a paid advertisement on page 6 calling on the U.S. Congress to aid “all sectors of the opposition” in Nicaragua, that is, the Contras in particular, against “a totalitarian party”—the Sandinistas.

This aid, according to the text was necessary for “strategic” reasons; “the Sandinista junta has never hidden its aim to integrate all of Central America into a single Marxist-Leninist entity.”11! If this should happen, the United States “would be obliged to disengage from one of their principal overseas treaties, and that is precisely the objective sought by Soviet strategy to force the United States to withdraw from regions of vital importance to both the USSR and the Free World.”

The alarmed signatories included some big names in French intellectual circles, among them Fernando Arrabal, playwright; Eugene lonesco, playwright; Bernard-Henri Levy, philosopher; Jean-François Revel, writer; Olivier Todd, journalist, writer; Emmanuel Le Roy-Ladurie, historian; Vladimir Bukovsky; Simon Wiesenthal.

Aside from their strategic acumen, these thinkers had a moral argument “The West must be consistent in its support to those who fight to benefit from the rights that your own Declaration of Independence proclaimed inalienable, and which therefore should belong to all.”

It may be noted that the Sandinistas overthrew a dictatorship, organized and won the first democratic elections in their country, lost the second elections, and left office. Hardly a model “totalitarian party”

On the other hand, a 1984 CIA “Psychological Operations” manual destined for “freedom fighters,” as Reagan called the Contras, included the following recommendations:

Kidnap all officials or agents of the Sandinista government…

It is possible to neutralize carefully selected and planned targets, such as court judges, mesta judges [justices of the peace], police and State Security officials, Sandinista Defense Committee chiefs, etc….

The notification of the police denouncing a target who does not want to join the guerrillas, can be carried out easily … through a letter with false statements of citizens who are not implicated in the movement…

If possible; professional criminals will be hired to carry out specific selected “jobs.”

A shorter manual in comic book form recommended “a series of useful sabotage techniques” to hasten “liberation”:

Stop up toilets with sponges… pull down power cables … put dirt into gas tanks … put nails on roads and highways … telephone to make false hotel reservations and

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.