State Terrorism and the United States

State Terrorism and the United States: From
Counterinsurgency to the War on Terrorism by Frederick
H. Gareau;
Clarity Press; 2004; 254 pp.

In the United States, practically by birthright, we are
supplied with all the consumables our digestion will
handle, and then some. By birthright also, we inherit
a public sphere every last trace of which is or soon
will be branded, goading us to satisfy every hunger,
and creating many which we would never consider. We
have a president who can open his mouth only to lie and
dissemble and a Congress in which this talent is
prerequisite and institutionalized. Ignorance is bliss
as Orwell had it.

Imagine what our world might look like instead if all
the energy and resources that go now to encourage our
insatiable lust for more of every tangible material
manifestation were rather concentrated on bringing a
modicum of a decent standard of living to the three
billion people, half the world’s population, who now
survive on the equivalent of US $2 a day. On a smaller
scale certainly such a political arrangement has been
attempted, and invariably in conspiracy with US power,
murdered in its infancy.

Before launching into an objectively scathing critique
of US foreign policy, Gareau cites as his own the
Archbishop of Sao Paolo: "This entire book is written
in blood and with much love for our country." Would
that I were so noble.

Whenever US Masters have got a sniff of such socialism
anywhere, they have outright or clandestinely set the
military dogs loose to subvert it in every way
imaginable. Such an economic arrangement has never
been allowed to succeed or fail on its own merits.
Even the Soviet Union, with all its faults, suffered
clandestine warfare and sabotage as early in its
history as the early 1920s by the US and allied forces,
terrified that an example other than capitalism might
serve as an alternative economic model. Such sabotage
is practically as old as the republic itself.

To date, and as far as one can see in the future, any
attempt at a socialist government is bound to meet the
same fate as governments described herein by Gareau.

Better late than never I guess, but it is almost
embarrassing for me to admit how perfect this book was
to me as someone who only became more than peripherally
engaged and interested in politics and especially US
foreign policy in the late 1990s. Rebels, contras,
sandanistas, leftists, guerrillas, insurgents,
counterinsurgents, terrorists, communists, all these
terms were confusing and difficult to hold and fully
understand in context.

State Terrorism and the United States is an
enlighteningly complex yet simple exposition of the
state-terror in which the US has been engaged and
complicit. Sadly, what it amounts to is where the
repressed have organized to better their living
conditions they are branded "communist," "terrorist,"
"rebel." Ipso facto their activities - union
organizing, education, strikes, agitating for better
wages and working conditions - are branded
"insurgency," a word sinister enough to warrant any
reprisal:

US military doctrine...defined insurgency as ’illegal
opposition to any existing government’ - the scope of
subversive activities ranging from passive resistance,
illegal strikes, demonstrations, to large-scale
guerrilla operations. The communist enemy was pictured
as being pernicious, powerful, and perverted, something
that must be annihilated. By extension, opposition to
the status quo was put in the same bag to be crushed as
well. But in reality, much of the opposition was by no
means either communist or armed and violent. The world
of counterinsurgency thus is a stark and bipolar one...
with no neutral middle ground. This paradigm has been
resurrected by the Bush administration in its war on
terrorism. One side in both counterinsurgency and the
war on terrorism is the free world; on the other dark
side is the world of communist treachery and slavery -
or in contemporary terms, of terrorism, depicted as
baseless irrational hatred. There is no place for any
mediating conceptualization designed to meet the needs
of the poor.

In each of six case studies - the School of the
Americas and El Salvador, Guatemala, Chile, Argentina,
South Africa, and Indonesia - Gareau examines and
answers with a bracing honesty three basic questions:
did the government commit state terrorism? how much of
the terror was committed by the state, and how much by
private guerrillas? And, was the country that
perpetrated terror upon its own citizens supported by
the United States? Anyone with a basic understanding
of US foreign policy can intuit the answers. Still,
Gareau’s analysis is revealing and educational.

In addition to the six main case studies, Gareau also
takes brief inventories of US policy in Cambodia, Iraq,
Colombia, Nicaragua, the Congo, Iran and elsewhere.
Inevitably we discover that no country was too vicious
or brutal to receive US aid so long as it opposed the
Soviet Union in the Cold War. Such countries were
innocuously labeled "democratic," with all that
intimates. Similar errors are being made in the name
of fighting the war on terror, says Gareau. The same
methods used historically to combat what the propaganda
model holds as terrorism, are not used upon the far
greater state terrorism perpetrated by our friends and
allies, invariably in collusion with the United
States. Under the rubric of this paradigm, terrorism
is by definition something "they" do, and thusly only
then resisted, vilified, prevented and attacked. When
we and our friends engage in the very same activity,
often to an aggravated degree, it is called something
else entirely.

Several of the twenty-one truth commissions that Gareau
notes have been established worldwide to investigate
terrorism provide focus to much of the material here.
Understanding, he says is the first step toward
contrition, and thusly, prevention.

Truth commissions usually operate under the "two-devils
principle." This examines atrocities and violations of
both liberation and counterinsurgency movements. Under
this authority says Gareau, liberation movements are
often judged more leniently. As this study shows, they
are often guilty of far less barbarity. Liberation
movements’ cause, often that of throwing off the yoke
of economic and violent repression, also earns
leniency. However, liberation movements that use
unjust means to achieve their ends are not exonerated
of perpetrating atrocities and violations. Conversely,
state-sponsored terrorism is usually far more culpable
for several reasons. It is usually guilty of vastly
more terrorism; the terrorism is more brutal and
monstrous; and worse, is employed for unjust ends.

Much of US foreign policy, including its wide support
for rightwing dictators during the Cold War, was and is
predicated on the Root Doctrine, says Gareau. This
doctrine, promulgated in 1922 by Elihu Root, Nobel
prize winner and former US secretary of state, said a
sovereign state had a right to "prevent a condition of
affairs in which it will be too late to protect
itself." According to Root this justified support of
dictators because the populations in those countries
were incapable of democracy. This doctrine proved
bloody in practice when the goal, achieved with the
success at least of avoiding nuclear holocaust, was
deterrence, containment and non-proliferation. Under
terms of the Bush administration’s National Security
Strategy of 2002, pre-emption and counterproliferation
threaten aggression, and represent a severe setback for
the development of international law, according to
Gareau.

Finally, Gareau makes recommendations for preventing
terrorism. The US, he says, should oppose terrorism in
all its guises, and not just where it threatens its
narrowly defined interests. It should change the name
of the war against to the defense against terrorism.
It should quit its aid of state terrorism, which
engenders much hatred of and inspires more terrorism
against, the United States. Terrorism should be
treated as criminal, and reacted to as such, rather
than by acts of war. Prisoners like those at
Guantanamo should be afforded the rights of criminals.
Particularly salient in light of Europe’s recent
refusal to even consider it, a negotiating posture
ought be adopted to ameliorate the grievances of
terrorists and potential terrorists. This should be
especially true in the case of those with grievances
against Israel says Gareau, whose close relationship
with the United States fuels much terrorist hatred.
The living standards of the world’s poor should be
raised.

In perhaps the only approval of Bush administration
policies, or past Democratic administrations for that
matter, Gareau affirms expanding and reforming
intelligence agencies, improving security of air and
seaports, and increased regulation on the transfer of
money from country to country. Contrary to the adamant
protestations of the Bush administration, however,
Gareau says the US should eagerly join the
International Criminal Court. It should more readily
participate with international institutions such as the
International Atomic Energy Commission and the United
Nations. It should not undermine human rights. It
should remedy as far as possible the victims of state
terrorism it has supported in the past. And, a truth
commission for the United States should be created so
that the American public knows what has been done in
its name.

There ought to be books like this, over and over again
and again, perhaps only books like this, until the US
especially, and the whole world, rather than just that
part of it that apparently already knows and is so weak
it lashes out in terror, begins to understand of the
terrorism, repression, and illegal imperialism that
issues from the very heart of the government of the
country that likes to fashion itself the furthest
representative and standard bearer of democracy. This
book is a heady communication with conscience. And
these suggested remedies of Gareau, a doctor of
international relations and organizations are
reasonable, if not brilliant. Thusly, their chance of
US adoption is nil.