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byAndy Piascik
Three months ago, hundreds of
thousands of Chileans somberly marked the 40th anniversary of their
nation’s September 11th terrorist event. It was on that date in 1973 that the
Chilean military, armed with a generous supply of funds and weapons from the
United States, and assisted by the CIA and other operatives, overthrew the democratically-elected
government of the moderate socialist Salvador Allende. Sixteen years of
repression, torture and death followed under the fascist Augusto Pinochet,
while the flow of hefty profits to US multinationals – IT&T, Anaconda
Copper and the like - resumed. Profits, along with concern that people in other
nations might get ideas about independence, were the very reason for the coup
and even the partial moves toward nationalization instituted by Allende could
not be tolerated by the US business class.
Henry Kissinger was national
security advisor and one of the principal architects – perhaps the principal architect – of the coup in
Chile. US-instigated coups were nothing new in 1973, certainly not in Latin
America, and Kissinger and his boss Richard Nixon were carrying on a violent
tradition that spanned the breadth of the 20th century and continues
in the 21st – see, for example, Venezuela in 2002 (failed) and
Honduras in 2009 (successful). Where possible, such as in Guatemala in 1954 and
Brazil in 1964, coups were the preferred method for dealing with popular
insurgencies. In other instances, direct invasion by US forces such as happened
on numerous occasions in Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic and many other
places, was the fallback option.
The coup in Santiago occurred as US
aggression in Indochina was finally winding down after more than a decade. From
1969 through 1973, it was Kissinger again, along with Nixon, who oversaw the
slaughter in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. It is impossible to know with
precision how many were killed during those four years; all the victims were
considered enemies, including the vast majority who were non-combatants, and
the US has never been much interested in calculating the deaths of enemies.
Estimates of Indochinese killed by the US for the war as a whole start at four
million and are likely more, perhaps far more. It can thus be reasonably extrapolated that probably more
than a million, and certainly hundreds of thousands, were killed while
Kissinger and Nixon were in power.
In addition, countless thousands of
Indochinese have died in the years since from the affects of the massive doses
of Agent Orange and other Chemical Weapons of Mass Destruction unleashed by the
US. Many of us here know (or, sadly, knew) soldiers who suffered from exposure
to such chemicals; multiply their numbers by 1,000 or 10,000 or 50,000 – again,
it’s impossible to know with accuracy – and we can begin to understand the
impact on those who live in and on the land that was so thoroughly poisoned as
a matter of US policy.
Studies by a variety of
organizations including the United Nations also indicate that at least 25,000
people have died in Indochina since war’s end from unexploded US bombs that
pocket the countryside, with an equivalent number maimed. As with Agent Orange,
deaths and ruined lives from such explosions continue to this day. So 40 years
on, the war quite literally goes on for the people of Indochina, and it is
likely it will go on for decades more.
Near the end of his time in office,
Kissinger and his new boss Gerald Ford pre-approved the Indonesian dictator
Suharto’s invasion of East Timor in 1975, an illegal act of aggression again
carried out with weapons made in and furnished by the US. Suharto had a long
history as a bagman for US business interests; he ascended to power in a 1965
coup, also with decisive support and weapons from Washington, and undertook a
year-long reign of terror in which security forces and the army killed more
than a million people (Amnesty International, which rarely has much to say
about the crimes of US imperialism, put the number at 1.5 million).
In addition to providing the
essential on-the-ground support, Kissinger and Ford blocked efforts by the
global community to stop the bloodshed when the terrible scale of Indonesian
violence became known, something UN ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan openly
bragged about. Again, the guiding principle of empire, one that Kissinger and
his kind accept as naturally as breathing, is that independence cannot be
allowed. That’s true even in a country as small as East Timor where investment
opportunities are slight, for independence is contagious and can spread to
places where far more is at stake, like resource-rich Indonesia. By the time
the Indonesian occupation finally ended in 1999, 200,000 Timorese – 30 percent
of the population – had been wiped out. Such is Kissinger’s legacy and it is a
legacy well understood by residents of the global South no matter the denial,
ignorance or obfuscation of the intelligentsia here.
If the United States is ever to
become a democratic society, and if we are ever to enter the international
community as a responsible party willing to wage peace instead of war, to
foster cooperation and mutual aid rather than domination, we will have to
account for the crimes of those who claim to act in our names like Kissinger.
Our outrage at the crimes of murderous thugs who are official enemies like Pol
Pot is not enough. A cabal of American mis-leaders from Kennedy on caused for
far more Indochinese deaths than the Khmer Rouge, after all, and those
responsible should be judged and treated accordingly.
The urgency of the task is
underscored as US aggression proliferates at an alarming rate. Millions of
people around the world, most notably in an invigorated Latin America, are
working to end the “might makes right” ethos the US has lived by since its
inception. The 99 percent of us here who have no vested interest in empire
would do well to join them.
There are recent encouraging signs
along those lines, with the successful prevention of a US attack on Syria
particularly noteworthy. In addition, individuals from various levels of empire
have had their lives disrupted to varying degrees. David Petraeus, for example,
has been hounded by demonstrators since being hired by CUNY earlier this year
to teach an honors course; in 2010, Dick Cheney had to cancel a planned trip to
Canada because the clamor for his arrest had grown quite loud; long after his
reign ended, Pinochet was arrested by order of a Spanish magistrate for human
right violations and held in England for 18 months before being released
because of health problems; and earlier this year, Efrain Rios Montt, one of
Washington’s past henchmen in Guatemala, was convicted of genocide, though
accomplices of his still in power have since intervened on his behalf to
obstruct justice.
More pressure is needed, and
allies of the US engaged in war crimes like Paul Kagame should be dealt with as
Pinochet was. More important perhaps for those of in the US is that we hound
Rumsfeld, both Clintons, Rice, Albright and Powell, to name a few, for their
crimes against humanity every time they show themselves in public just as
Petraeus has been. That holds especially for our two most recent
War-Criminals-in-Chief, Barack Bush and George W. Obama.
Andy Piascik is a long-time activist and award-winning author who writes for Z, Counterpunch and many other publications and websites. He can be reached at andypiascik@yahoo.com.
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