by robertdreed » Sun Nov 20, 2005 8:44 pm
"But think about ALL that was done..."<br><br>I do. That's one of the reasons that I can't get too excited about Cold War-era programs like the Congress for Cultural Freedom. Considered in context, it's like adding a double parking charge to an indictment for kidnapping and murder. If covertly funding "non-politically hostile" art was the worst thing to be said against the CIA, I'd be hard-pressed to condemn them. Similarly, if US psyops were to flood the Muslim world with CDs of secular and Sufi peace songs to compete with recordings of vicious radical mullah preaching, I'd have to say "right on." As a tactic, it could conceivably save lives. <br><br>"COINTELPRO was not done to stop political organizing (goes the official explanation) but to defeat the communist threat in this country."<br><br>Please keep your agencies straight. COINTELPRO was not a CIA project, they (once upon a time) were prohibited from doing things like that within this country. COINTELPRO was primarily FBI. In theory, as a counterintelligence sting project, COINTELPRO is the sort of thing to be expected from a government seeking to undermine internally threatening movements. This includes provocateur tactics. Of course, the historical record reveals a lot of times when the line was crossed into unconscionable activity, even felonies. But any political revolutionary movement- especially ones who arm themselves and prepare for or engage in violent resistance- needs to accept infiltration, provocateur tactics, and divisive psywar tactics as part of the ground rules. They're responsible for not falling for it, and for taking counter-measures. <br><br>I'm trying to be as fair as possible, here. <br><br>"Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chile, Guatemala...why did we ALWAYS back the bad guys."<br><br>Actually, "we" (taken administration by administration) didn't always "back the bad guys." Under the Carter administration, "we" withdrew assistance from the Somoza regime, for instance. The expectation was that the non-Marxist Eden Pastora ("Commander Zero" ) of the anti-Somoza coalition would be the leader to assume power. But the Marxist Sandinistas turned out to be the ones who won the post-Somoza power struggle. This proved to be a considerable embarrassment to Carter. <br><br>In the case of El Salvador, according to on-the-scene observers, the US intervened in an election to hand the presidency to Jose Napoleon Duarte, a moderate in comparison to Roberto Du'Aubuisson of the right-wing ARENA Party. It was apparently electoral fraud, but it kept the country out of the hands of the far-right wing. The US did this because there in fact was a moderate alternative. <br><br>It gets even more confusing in places like Angola, where the CIA was known to have shipped arms even to the Marxist Left. The explanation given to CIA agent John Stockwell was "this isn't about ideology, this is about money." Hmm...<br><br>For the most part, the US did back the right-wing over more moderate alternatives, in places like Latin America. But the justification used was the Cold War- right-wing bad guys who would allow the US to have influence in the country vs. left-wing guys who would invite the Soviet Union (also bad guys) into the hemisphere. <br><br>"Again, the official explanation was freedom from communism." <br><br>As I've noted previously, I understand the rationales of the Cold War. I also understand that in the post-Cold War "unipolar" world, it's a moot point. I don't think there's any excuse whatsoever for doing something like attempting to overthrow the Hugo Chavez regime in <br>Venezuela, which is at least as legitimate as any other government on that continent. <br><br> <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=robertdreed>robertdreed</A> at: 11/20/05 9:16 pm<br></i>