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U.S. intervention in Nicaragua provides an astounding, but by no means extraordinary, example. First, some background: by 1934, when the authoritarian Somoza regime was established, the U.S. had already occupied the country militarily on at least four different occasions, established training schools for right-wing militia, dismantled two liberal governments, and helped to orchestrate fake elections. In 1981, the CIA began to organize the "Contras" many of whom had already received training from the U.S. military as members of the Somozas' National Guardsmen to overthrow the progressive Sandanista government. In other words: the CIA "harbored," recruited, armed and trained the Contras, in order to "coerce" and overthrow a government, and terrorize a people, through violent means ("in furtherance of political social objectives"). U.S. intervention went well beyond "harboring," however, in this case. In 1984, the CIA mined three Nicaraguan harbors. When Nicaragua took this action to the World Court, an $18 billion judgment was brought against the U.S. The U.S. response was to simply refuse to acknowledge the Court's jurisdiction.
Another striking example of U.S. terrorist activity was the bombing of a suburban Beirut neighborhood in March 1985. This attack which killed 80 people and wounded 200 others, making it the single largest bombing attack against a civilian target in the modern history of the Middle East was ordered by the director of the CIA (William Casey) and authorized by President Reagan. Another U.S. attack on civilians, the 1986 bombing of Libya, is listed by the UN's Committee on the Legal Definition of Terrorism as a "classic case" of terrorism on a short list that includes the bombing of PAN AM 103, the first attempt made on the World Trade Center, and the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building.
Other instances of U.S. support for, or direct engagement in, terrorist acts include:
overthrow of the democratically elected Allende government in Chile in 1973--leading to widespread torture, rape, and murder by the military regime, and the termination of civil liberties
extensive support for a right-wing junta in El Salvador that ended up being responsible for 35,000 civilian deaths between 1978 and 1981
assassination attempts, exploded boats, industrial sabotage, and the burning of sugar fields in Cuba
the training of thousands of Latin American military personnel in torture methods at the School of the Americas
providing huge quantities of arms--far more than any other nation-- to various combatants in the Middle East and West Asia
and massive support, in funds and arms, for Israeli attacks on Palestinian civilians.
The rationale provided for many of these interventions in those case where a rationale was in fact provided was the "war on Communism." This often served as an alibi, however, for the protection of economic interests: unrestricted access to oil and other natural resources for U.S.-based (and other "First World") corporations.
Double standards
U.S. officials successfully pressured the UN to impose sanctions on Libya for its initial refusal to extradite Libyan agents implicated in the PAN AM 103 bombing; but they (U.S. officials) have consistently refused to extradite U.S. citizens all of whom have ties to the CIA charged with acts of terrorism in Costa Rica and Venezuela (including blowing up a Cuban airliner in 1976). We have provided no support for attempts to bring Augusto Pinochet (the Chilean military dictator responsible for the atrocities described above) to justice probably not only because our own government was so heavily involved in his rise to power but also because the prosecution of such an obvious State-terrorist would open the door, legally, for the likes of Henry Kissinger and Oliver North to be tried for having ordered terrorist acts.
The double standards at play, the hypocrisy and bad faith involved, in calling for the world to decide whether it is "with us" or "with the terrorists" should by now be fairly evident. To use President Bush's terms, our nation has -- tragically -- in reality championed "Fear" and suppressed "Freedom" in a great many countries, for millions of people. We have been directly responsible for acts of terrorism, and for the "harboring" of terrorists, on an almost unimaginable scale in terms of human death and the creation of fear. When Green Berets trained the Guatemalan army in the 1960s leading to a campaign of bombings, death squads, and "scorched earth" assaults that killed or "disappeared" 20O,000 -- U.S. Army Colonel John Webber called it "a technique of counter-terror." This comment can serve as a reminder and warning for us now--not that there are not real terrorist threats to our national security, but that we have to be incredibly careful about how we define terrorism, who defines it, and what tactics are used to uproot it. There is something truly chilling, as the Syrian Information Minister pointed out, in the apparent consensus within the United States that we stand for "Freedom" and all that is "Good" in the world, and that we are somehow entitled and equipped to mete out "infinite justice."
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