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Doubting Thomas has written an essay attacking U.S. support (and Pejman Yousefzadeh's support for that support) for dictators such as Somoza, Mohammed Pahlavi, Pinochet, etc. To identify Thomas with the loony Left would be a grave error. He would vehemently deny it himself, I believe, and, whilst I might less vehement in defending him (partly through my nature), I wholeheartedly agree that he does not deserve to be tarrred by that brush. Note that he has denounced Chomsky in a way that I, for one, find quite convincing. Nonetheless, I believe that Thomas has been led astray in his article by Leftist propaganda and myth (and Pejman has gone overboard in his defense of U.S. actions abroad, probably in an attempt to counter that same propaganda). First, let me deal briefly with the area in which I am essentially in complete agreement with Thomas: our support of Somoza was unconsciable. The most that can be said for the man is that he wasn't a Communist. The same, however, could have been said for many other men and women who would have been far better for Nicaragua and the Nicaraguan people. A certain amount of blindness through incomplete information, and of error through the same, is acceptable, even inevitable in this imperfect world, but our support for Somoza went far beyond this point. We owe Nicaragua a deep apology for this; and whilst the U.S. has been skirting around the edges of the issue for decades, trying to admit error without actually acknowledging it, we must stop doing so, and admit our mistakes openly and directly. On the matter of Pinochet, though, I think that it is Thomas who is in error. For nearly thirty years, the Left has been building the myth of Allende as a progressive democrat with deep and wide popular support, who was overthrown by the evil Pinochet in a coup backed solely by the U.S. Such propaganda overlooks such matters as Allende's close victory (which -- despite the criticism of Left in the matter of Bush's victory -- makes neither him nor that election any less democratic, but which does show the limits of his popular support), the March of the Empty Pots, the Tancazo, and the anti-democratic and unconstitutional actions of his supporters and his apparatus. The one matter for which the U.S. can be criticized is the assassination of General Schneider, although here it can be pled (some pleading is required) that the CIA did not know of or intend such an outcome of his kidnapping. It is also Leftist propaganda that the U.S. could have, anywhere and anytime, not only overthrown who it liked but also replaced him with who it liked. Such an outcome could have been approximated in Nicaragua, which was certainly ruled by an American puppet regime (the Somozas) essentially wholly dependent on American support. The coup in Chile, however, was a home-grown affair; Pinochet, Leigh, Prats, and other military officers were highly popular there (remember that Prats put down the Tancazo essentially single-handedly), and trying to opppose them by setting up a figurehead through another coup would have been futile, and opposed by the Chilean people themselves. As for the coup against Mossadegh, I cannot comment with any certainty. It is certain true that the Pahlavis were Westernizers is much the same mold as Atatürk (who, it should be noted, was no democrat himself), but Mossadegh was also a Westernizer, albeit in a different mold. My assumption is that Pejman has better sources than Thomas does, but it is an easily refuted assumption. My only real objection here is again to the (implicit) assumption that we have could have deposed both Mossadegh and Mohammed Pahlavi, and replaced them with with who we liked. John "Akatsukami" Braue Saturday, May 11, 2002 |
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