Remedies for Terrorism

excerpted from the book

The Real Terror Network

by Edward S. Herman

If "terrorism" means "intimidation by violence or the threat of violence," and if we allow the definition to include violence by states and agents of states, then it is these, not isolated individuals or small groups, that are the important terrorists in the world. If terrorist violence is measured by the extent of politically motivated torture and murder, ... it is in the U.S.-sponsored and protected "authoritarian" states-the real terror network-that these forms of violence have reached a high crescendo in recent decades.

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With the coming into power of the Reagan-Haig-Kirkpatrick team, the veneer of do-goodism has been stripped away from the underlying primary force of economic interest-the basis for the long-standing U.S. acceptance of terror-and the common elements of ideology between the U.S. right-wing and the leaders of the NSSs have become explicit. The new team makes no pretense at support for an enfeebled center (as well as right) or for a pallid reformism, or even for the forms of democracy. It has shown not the slightest interest in bolstering up a floundering Costa Rican democracy, Kirkpatrick even suggesting that what Costa Rica needs is a good dose of militarization, and under Reagan influence the U.S.-dominated InterAmerican Development Bank has sharply reduced its aid to Costa Rica. Nicaragua, where for the first time in almost a half century terror has abated and pluralism, participation by the masses, and a concern by the political leadership for the welfare of the "oxen" are on display, the Reagan team is aghast and is not merely destabilizing economically as best it can, but is openly encouraging and threatening military intervention. On the other hand, Garcia, Pinochet, Stroessner, Turbay Ayala, the El Salvador junta, Botha, are all being treated with warm understanding and as prized friends and allies.

In short, with Reagan-Haig-Kirkpatrick U.S. policy has reached this stage: (1) there is indifference at best to democratic forms and civil liberties in the Third World; (2) there is active hostility and repugnance toward any manifestations of non-elite and human needs objectives oriented to the majority; (3) there is a pro-fascist bias in a literal sense, in which warmth and understanding appear to be roughly but directly proportional to the ruthlessness of the controlling elite and the magnitude of its terroristic behavior as measured by body count.

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Solutions

I have distinguished in this book between state (wholesale) terror, and the terror of isolated individuals and small groups (retail terror). It has been argued here, further, that the latter is overrated in relative importance, although many individual acts carried out by these terrorists have caused great pain and suffering and have involved serious injustices to the victims. Retail terror is overblown for political reasons, to distract attention from more substantial terror, and to allow a manipulation of public fears and a more efficient "engineering of consent." Insofar as this is the case, "terrorism" will only recede when the government and mass media decide (or are forced) to terminate their use of the Red Menace. This occurred in 1955, when the political elite decided that Senator Joe McCarthy had satisfactorily completed his job of disrupting the New Deal consensus and was now actually threatening the unity of the Republican Party! All of a sudden, McCarthy and his demagogic red herrings ceased being newsworthy. In the early 1980s, however, retail terror in the form of phantom "Libyan hit squads" and mythical Cuban troops in El Salvador was still serving an elite purpose; but when (and if) the bubble is finally pricked, the inflated balloon of retail terrorism will collapse to very small size.

It is, of course, impossible to eliminate entirely individual acts of terror-they are inescapable in a complex, dynamic world in which means of destruction are readily available to the alienated and oppressed. But a substantial fraction of real acts of retail terror arise out of world failures to alleviate widespread misery and injustice and to deal intelligently and humanely with local and regional grievances (Northern Ireland, Israel-Palestine). These more important causes of retail terrorism could be alleviated by responsible policies addressed to sources of endemic conflict and mass distress. A large part of the responsibility for resolving these problems falls to the west, which contains the wealthiest and most dynamic states, who are most closely linked to the poor and troubled enclaves of the world, and whose power of initiative has been maintained up to the present day.

The west has done poorly in addressing world conflict and misery, and the conservative drift of western politics bodes ill for the future. With the advent of the Reagan team, all adverse conflict-misery trends are likely to be accelerated. To a world imperiled by a nuclear arms race, by the impoverished state of the majority and by serious environmental and ecological threats posed by technological advance and uncontrolled growth, the Reagan administration now offers deliberately stoked international tension, remilitarization, the "free market," and an aggressive application of national power to serve parochial U.S. ends. Instead of providing even the beginning of solutions, the United States itself is very much part of the problem. It has become the big bull in the China shop, threatening the shop as well as the china. Under Reagan, in consequence, "terrorism" (retail) is sure to increase. This natural result of greed, shortsightedness and stupidity will then be used to justify greater state violence, which will be wrapped up in an "anti-terrorist" flag. Right-wing ideologues create retail terrorists and are then quite prepared to kill them.

State terrorism, the quantitatively important terrorism, has escalated in scope and violence in recent decades. This is evidenced in the rise of torture as a serious problem, death squad murders, and the use of direct state violence to intimidate millions. While this is a global development, a very sizable proportion, of this growth has taken place in the western sphere of influence ... there is a system of terrorisstic 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. The mechanisms that protect this network are extremely potent, combining military force, economic power and coercion, and a vast apparatus serving to engineer consent. The United States has needed Polish martial law, Gulag and other Soviet sphere crimes and abuses to distract attention from the escalating reign of terror under its own sponsorship. But the contrast between the actuality of Polish terror and the volume of propaganda outpourings-versus the far more extensive and deadly reality and relative silence and non-indignation as regards terror in Turkey, El Salvador, Guatemala, Colombia and the host of other protected fascist states-should raise questions in the mind of any observer with eyes not closed tightly by nationalistic blinders.

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... anticommunism, the "terrorist" threat, and militarism are being used to cover over savagely inhumane policies at home and even more scandalous policies abroad. Bank of America, Citibank, General Electric, Westinghouse, ITT and United Technologies may like tight money at home and in Brazil and Chile, and the supportive arms budgets and NSS repression, but what is good for these companies is bad for the majorities of people in Brazil, Chile, the United States, Western Europe and the rest of the world. Insisting on a single standard to be applied to terrorism in Poland, El Salvador, Guatemala, Turkey and Uruguay will quickly demonstrate that the real terror network is white, not red. There is a huge world commonalty of interest in containing repression and an arms race designed to keep the home population quiet and to allow Marcos, Pinochet and the rest of the Third World mafia to provide a favorable investment climate for multinational corporate interests.

More immediately, the situation in Central America is strikingly reminiscent of the crisis period 1952-1954, which culminated in the overthrow of the last democratic government of Guatemala by means of armed aggression organized by the Republican administration of that day. That armed attack was preceded and accompanied by a flood of deliberate propaganda fabrications alleging Guatemala's threats to its neighbors! During 1981-1982 we have witnessed an almost complete rerun of the earlier scenario in the stream of claims by Alexander Haig on the "Nicaraguan menace," designed to obscure the real ongoing efforts by the Reagan administration to subvert Nicaragua. As described earlier, the U. S. termination of Guatemalan democracy in 1954 was followed by 27 years of escalating state violence that reached new heights in the early 1980s. Now, the Nicaraguans having finally thrown off their yoke of Somozan terror-a yoke provided earlier by U.S. intervention in the 1930s-the Reagan team is attempting to do for Nicaragua what we did for Guatemala in 1954. In contrast with the earlier situation, however, the Central American crisis is now wider and deeper, with large numbers struggling against the massive injustices and exceptionally cruel and violent state terrorism in both Guatemala and El Salvador. The Reagan administration is increasing its support for the state terrorists of El Salvador and Guatemala, at the same time reducing aid to the struggling democracy of Costa Rica and escalating its threats of violence against the first non-terrorist government of Nicaragua in 45 years. The Reagan bias toward death and immiseration is highlighted by the fact the Inter-American Development Bank, itself, noted in 1978 that between 1965 and 1975 the extent of child malnutrition rose markedly in all countries in Central America except Costa Rica-the average increase in the Reagan favorites was 80%.

The Reagan-Haig team will continue to escalate the violence in Central America to whatever level is required to preserve military mafia/ oligarchic control if they can get away with it. They have shown themselves to be not only quite comfortable with rule by the most ruthless killers in the hemisphere but entirely unconcerned with the indiscriminate and wholesale murder of civilians. This administration will only be slowed down and reversed in its intervention by a serious and determined opposition. The 1960s demonstrated that ordinary people, organizing and acting at the grassroots, can affect policy. The moral demands and economic and political basis for action were never more clear or of greater urgency.

Real Terror Network