Ideal Illusions Part 9

94. Jeane Kirkpatrick, "The Myth of Moral Equivalence," address before the Royal Inst.i.tute for International Affairs, London, April 9, 1984, in her Legitimacy and Force (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1987), 66.

95. National Security Archives, "U.S. Policy in Guatemala," Doc.u.ment 12. Of course, this was the conventional understanding in various military debates then and ever since. "The brutal reality of insurgent and counterinsurgent warfare is that there is no such thing as a 'clean' war, either on the ground or in the air ... the government is bound to bomb rebel areas and inflict civilian casualities even if no decisive effect is likely to occur. The government forces cannot allow the rebels to hold sanctuaries within the country where they can rest, rearm, recruit, and stage operations unmolested." James S. Corum, Airpower Journal 12, no. 2 (Summer 1998).

96. David Kennedy, On War and Law (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006), 167.

97. Ibid., 45.

98. Americas Watch and American Civil Liberties Union, Report on Human Rights in El Salvador (New York: Vintage Books, 1982), x.

99. Cynthia Brown, With Friends Like These (New York: Pantheon, 1985), 136.

100. Americas Watch Report, A Year of Reckoning: El Salvador a Decade After the a.s.sa.s.sination of Archbishop Romero (New York: Americas Watch Committee, 1990).

101. Marvin E. Gettleman, Patrick Lacefield, Louis Menashe, David Mermelstein, and Ronald Radosh, El Salvador: Central America in the New Cold War (New York: Grove, 1981), 196.

102. Americas Watch and American Civil Liberties Union, Report on Human Rights in El Salvador, x.

103. Michael McClintock, Instruments of Statecraft: U.S. Guerilla Warfare, Counterinsurgency, and Counterterrorism, 19401990, chapter 13, "The Carter Years," http://www.statecraft.org/chapter13.html#16.

104. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Legislation on Foreign Relations Through 1986, Current Legislation and Related Executive Orders, vol. 1 (Washington: GPO, 1987), Section 502B(b), 137.

105. The Lawyers Committee for International Human Rights, Americas Watch, El Salvador's Other Victims: The War on the Displaced, April 1984; Americas Watch and American Civil Liberties Union, Report on Human Rights in El Salvador.

106. Michael McClintock, The American Connection, vol. 1, State Terror and Popular Resistance in El Salvador (London: Zed Books, 1985), 307.

107. Ibid., 305, 307.

108. Quoting Aryeh Neier in Noam Chomsky, Turning the Tide (Boston: South End Press, 1985), 26.

109. Interview with Amba.s.sador John Negroponte, [n.d.], http://www.ww4report.com/negropontedeathsquad.

110. Thomas Powers, "A Lethal Big Brother Fighting a Remnant of the Cold War, the CIA Kept Killers on the Payroll," Los Angeles Times, April 9, 1995, 1. Also Kate Doyle, "Death Squad Diary," Harper's Magazine, June 1999, 50, and Judy Mann, "A Tale of Unspeakable Evil in Honduras," Washington Post, June 8, 1988, B3. Susanne Jonas, "Indecent Liaisons: The U.S. and Guatemala's Army," Christian Science Monitor, April 17, 1995, 19. Jefferson Morley, "Death from a Distance: Washington's Role in El Salvador's Death Squads," Washington Post, March 28, 1993, C1.

111. Benjamin Schwartz, "Dirty Hands," The Atlantic, December 1988, http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/98dec/salv2.htm.

112. Michael McClintock's Instruments of Statecraft provides an excellent a.n.a.lysis of U.S. counterinsurgency manuals, http://www.statecraft.org/chapter13.html#16.

113. Congressman Stephen Solarz, quoted in Benjamin Schwartz, "Dirty Hands," 110.

114. Cynthia Brown, With Friends Like These, 139, 140.

115. Benjamin Schwartz, "Dirty Hands," 109.

116. Ronald Reagan, quoted in House Committee on Foreign Affairs, The Situation in El Salvador: Hearings Before the Subcommittees on Human Rights and International Organizations and on Western Hemisphere Affairs, 98th Cong., 2nd sess., January 26, 1984.

117. Judy Mann, "A Tale of Unspeakable Evil in Honduras," B3.

118. "The Truth About Guatemala," Boston Globe, April 7, 1995, 21. Also see Democracy Now, "Is the US Organizing Salvador-Style Death Squads in Iraq?" January 10, 2005. Also "Reagan Was Behind One of the Most Intensive Campaigns of Ma.s.s Murder in Recent History," June 8, 2004, http:www.democracynow.org/2004/6/8/journalist_allan_nairn_Reagan_was_behind.

119. Noam Chomsky, Deterring Democracy (New York: Hill and w.a.n.g, 1992), 389.

120. Michael McClintock, "Watching the Neighbors: Low-Intensity Conflict in Central America," chapter 17, http://www.statecraft.org/chapter17.html.

121. Michael McClintock, An Un-American War of War, chapter 18, http://www.statecraft.org/chapter18.html.

122. See Alfred McCoy's superb study, A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation From the Cold War to the War on Terror (New York: Henry Holt, 2006).

123. Aryeh Neier, "Salvador Rights: Some Gains," New York Times, July 20, 1983, A19.

124. Elliott Abrams, letter, New York Times, February 22, 1986, 22.

125. Ibid.

126. Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare: The CIA's Nicaragua Manual, with essays by Joanne Omang and Aryeh Neier (New York: Vintage Books, 1985), 57.

127. Ibid., 112.

128. Michael McClintock quoting Congressional Report, chapter 18, "An Un-American Way of War," http://www.statecraft.org/chapter18 (accessed February 16, 2007).

129. Americas Watch, Human Rights in Nicaragua: Reagan Rhetoric and Reality (New York: Americas Watch, 1985), 16.

130. Ibid., 2.

131. Americas Watch, Violations of the War by Both Sides, in Nicaragua, 19811985 (New York: Americas Watch Committee, March 1985), 1.

132. Amnesty International at House Committee on Foreign Affairs, The Central American Counterterrorism Act of 1985 Hearings, 99th Cong., 1st sess., October 24, 1985 and November 19, 1985.

133. Aryeh Neier, "The US and the Contras," New York Review of Books 3, no. 6 (April 10, 1986).

134. Cynthia Brown, With Friends Like These, 159.

135. Aryeh Neier, Taking Liberties, 217.

136. Aryeh Neier, "The US and the Contras."

137. Ibid.

138. International Court of Justice, Military and Paramilitary Activities In and Against Nicaragua (Nicaragua v. United States of America), http://www.icj-cij.org/docket/index.php?sum=367&code=nus&p1=3&p2=3&case=70&k=66&p3=5.

139. Ibid.

140. Ibid.

141. Ibid., para. 134.

142. Ibid., para. 266.

143. CIA, "Chile: Prospects for a Democratic Transition," August 1, 1987, FOIA.

144. Washington's worries that Pinochet was polarizing Chile to the benefit of the left is evident in numerous NSC/CIA reports. See NSC, "Background Paper on Chile." Topics include: U.S.Chilean relations; human rights issues; Communist influence in Chile; terrorism; democratic transition issues; economic conditions, DDRS.

145. Barbara Gamarekian, "How the U.S. Political Pros Get Out the Vote in Chile," New York Times, November 18, 1988, B6. Also Shirley Christian, "Group Is Channeling U.S. Funds to Parties Opposing Pinochet," New York Times, January 15, 1988, A1.

146. Aryeh Neier, "Human Rights in the Reagan Era," The Annals 506 (November 1989): 3334.

147. The issue of credibility and funding was occasionally raised about the Human Rights Commission of Nicaragua (Comision de Derechos Humanos de Nicaragua-CPDH) accepting money from the U.S. government. The Lawyers Committee for Human Rights critique, "Review of the U.S. Department of State's Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 1989," noted that CPDH's "acceptance of funds from the U.S. government at a time when the U.S. is intent on overthrowing the Nicaraguan government seriously jeopardizes CPDH's claim to independence," 127.

148. The CIA acknowledged responsibility for some 726 articles and broadcasts in Latin America slanted against Allende in just the six-week period before the election in 1970. Staff report, "Covert Action in Chile 19631973," in Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Covert Action: Book 7, 94th Cong., 2nd sess., 1976, 25.

149. Amnesty International, Annual Report 19751976 (London: Amnesty International), 54.

150. Aryeh Neier, "The US and the Contras."

151. "The Sandinista Road to Stalinism," New York Times, July 10, 1986, A22.

152. "Nicaragua Bares the Nightstick," New York Times, October 18, 1985, A30.

153. Envio team, "The Politics of Human Rights Reporting in Nicaragua," Revista Envoi, no. 60 (June 1986), http://www.envio.org.ni/articulo/3506.

154. Americas Watch, Fitful Peace: Human Rights and Reconciliation in Nicaragua Under the Chamorro Government (New York: Americas Watch, 1991), 2.

155. Some human rights scholars were uneasy about such views. In Nicaragua most of the business- and land-owning cla.s.ses had once reached accommodations with Somoza and there was little reason to believe they would not seek and obtain U.S. support for destroying the Sandinistas and "block egalitarian reform." Tom J. Farer, "Looking at Nicaragua: The Problematique of Impartiality in Human Rights Inquiries," Human Rights Quarterly 10 (1988): 141156.

156. William J. Casey, quoted by Bob Woodward, Veil (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987), 281.

157. Casey quoted in Digital National Security Archive, "Nicaragua: The Making of U.S. Policy, 19781990."

158. The campaign of public diplomacy was ma.s.sive, yet quite typical in its operations and underlying ideological a.s.sertions. Public Diplomacy Office Review, "The Human Costs of Communism: The Nicaraguan Experience in Historical Perspective" is a representative example, a lengthy argument pointing to a plethora of like-minded work supported by the government.

159. Aryeh Neier, "The Contra Contradiction," New York Review of Books 34, no. 6 (April 9, 1987).

160. Aryeh Neier, "Human Rights in the Reagan Era," 38.

161. Aryeh Neier, "A Matter of Principle, The Nation, April 21, 1991, 520522.

CHAPTER 4: HUMAN RIGHTS AND CHINA.

1. Robert Dole, Congressional Record, June 6, 1989, p. 10873.

2. George Mitch.e.l.l, Congressional Record, June 6, 1989, p. 10872.

3. Roberta Cohen, "People's Republic of China: The Human Rights Exception," Human Rights Quarterly 9, no. 4 (November 1967).

4. Ronald Reagan, quoted in James Mann, About Face: A History of America's Curious Relationship with China from Nixon to Clinton (New York: Knopf, 1999), 146147.

5. Roberta Cohen, "People's Republic of China," 451.

6. Ibid., 467.

7. Ibid., 466.

8. Roberta Cohen quoting Congressman Edward J. Derwinski, 468.

9. Aryeh Neier, Taking Liberties (New York: PublicAffairs, 2003), p. 160.

10. For a detailed account of Washington's global strategizing about China from 1945 to 1968 see James Peck, Washington's China (Amherst: University of Ma.s.sachusetts Press, 2006).

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid., chapter 8.

14. Richard Nixon, "Asia After Vietnam," Foreign Affairs (October 1967).

15. Carl Kaysen, "Report of the President's Task Force on Foreign Economic Policy," November 25, 1964, A-27, DDRS.

16. "Summary Minutes of Meeting of the Interdepartmental Committee of Under Secretaries on Foreign Economic Policy," January 10, 1962, FRUS, 19611963, 9: 664.

17. Carl Kaysen, "Report of the President's Task Force on Foreign Economic Policy," November 25, 1964, T-22, DDRS.

18. William Bundy and Anthony Solomon to Rusk, "A New Approach to Our Trade and Transaction Controls Against Communist China-ACTION MEMORANDUM," forwarded to Rostow by James C. Thomson Jr., August 4, 1966, p. 2 [LBJ ASIA 4-0983].

19. CIA, "Economic Benefits to Communist China of a Removal of U.S. Trade Controls," June 1966, 84a, FOIA.

20. "Communist China: Long-Range Study on Economic Trends and Prospects in Communist China" by the Special State-Defense Study Group, June 1966, vol. 1, 218, DDRS.

21. Patrick E. Tyler, "U.S. Strategy for Insuring No Rivals Develop," New York Times, March 8, 1992, A1.

22. George Bush and Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed (New York: Knopf, 1998), 42.

23. Ibid., 63.

24. Paul Wolfowitz, "Statesmanship in the New Century," in Present Dangers: Crisis and Opportunity in American Foreign and Defense Policy, ed. Robert Kagan and William Kristol (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2000), 316317. Also Patrick E. Tyler, "U.S. Strategy for Insuring No Rivals Develop."

25. Douglas Paal, NSC official, quoted in James Mann, "Fear of China's Collapse Is Greatly Exaggerated," Los Angeles Times, March 24, 1999, http://articles.latimes.com/1999/mar/24/news/mn-20477.

26. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the 21st Century (New York: Scribner's, 1993), 196199.

27. Samuel Berger, "Building a New Consensus on China," Speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, June 6, 1997, http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/bergchin.htm.

28. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Out of Control, 199.