Noam Chomsky - The Crimes of U.S. Presidents

You said that if the Nuremberg principles were applied, all post-World War II

presidents

would be impeachable. It's probably true. -Can we finish them off very quickly? What did Eisenhower do to accuse him? -Eisenhower overthrew Iran's conservative nationalist government in a military coup. He overthrew the first and last democratic government in Guatemala through a military coup and invasion, leading to years of... In Iran, it led to 25 years of brutal dictatorship, finally overthrown in 79. In Guatemala, it led to mass atrocities that they still continue. That's after almost 50 years. In Indonesia, this was not known until recently, but it carried out a major clandestine terrorist operation of the post-war period, all the way to Cuba and Nicaragua, in an effort to divide Indonesia and strip the outer islands where most of the resources are located. . and undermine what was then considered a threat to Indonesian democracy.

Indonesia was too free and open. It was about allowing the participation of a political party of the poor. They were gaining a lot of ground, so Eisenhower supported and helped instigate a military rebellion in the outer islands. This is just for starters. These are all indictable

crimes

. -What about Kennedy? Kennedy was one of the worst. Kennedy, first, invaded South Vietnam. During the Eisenhower administration they blocked a political agreement in 1954 and instituted a kind of Latin American-style terrorist state that had killed about 60 or 70 thousand people by the end of the Eisenhower period, and had instigated a response, a reaction. that Kennedy recognized that he couldn't control himself internally, so he simply invaded.

In 1962, about one-third of the bombing missions were carried out by the United States Air Force in the South using American aircraft with South Vietnamese insignia but with American pilots. He authorized napalm. He began using chemical weapons to destroy food crops. They began programs that placed millions of people in what amounted to concentration camps. That's aggression. In the case of Cuba, it was simply a massive campaign of international terrorism that almost led to the destruction of the world, led to the missile crisis, and we can go on. Again, these are all indictable

crimes

. Johnson? -Well, Johnson expanded the war in Indochina to the point that it ended up leaving probably three or four million dead.

He invaded the Dominican Republic to block what looked like a possible democratic revolution there. He supported the Israeli occupation in its early stages. Again, we can go around the world. Take, say, Carter. -I will arrive but the next one is Nixon. Nixon we don't even have to talk. We can skip that one, okay? Ford then. -Well, Ford was only there for a short time, but long enough to support the Indonesian invasion of East Timor, which came as close to genocide as anything else in the modern period. They pretended to oppose her, but secretly supported her; actually, not so secretly.

Immediately after the invasion, the United States joined the rest of the world in formally condemning it in the Security Council, but Ambassador Moynihan was kind enough to explain to us in his words that his instructions were to make the United Nations completely ineffective in any action. that they would take. he could take to counter the Indonesian invasion and he proudly says that he did it with considerable success, and the next sentence of his says that in the next few months it seems that about sixty thousand people died and then he moves on to the next topic.

Those are the first months. It probably reached hundreds of thousands. The United States formally announced an arms boycott but secretly increased the supply of weapons, including counterinsurgency equipment, so that the Indonesians could carry out the invasion. It's only a short stint in office, but it's actually actionable, seriously. That is a big war crime. -Carter? Carter increased, as Indonesian atrocities increased (peaking in 1978) and Carter's arms flow to Indonesia increased. When Congress imposed restrictions on human rights (by then there was a human rights movement in Congress to block the flow of advanced weaponry to Indonesia), Carter arranged, through Mondale, the vice president, for Israel to send American Skyhawks to Indonesia to allow Indonesia to complete what turned out to be a near-genocide, killing perhaps a quarter of the population or so.

In the Middle East, Carter had just won the Nobel Prize. His great achievement was the Camp David accords. The Camp David agreements are presented as a diplomatic triumph for the United States. In fact, they were a diplomatic catastrophe. At Camp David, the United States and Israel finally accepted Egypt's 1971 offer, which the United States had rejected at the time, except now it was worse from the American-Israeli point of view because it included the Palestinians. To get Israel to accept Egypt's 1971 offer, after a major war and atrocities, etc., Carter increased military and other aid to Israel to more than fifty percent of total world aid.

Israel immediately took advantage of it exactly the way it said it was going to do, as every sane person knew, as an opportunity to attack its northern neighbor, first in 1978 and then in 1982, and to increase the integration of the occupied territories. And that's for starters. We can continue. -Reagan? -I don't think we have to talk about that either. I mean that Reagan is the first president convicted by the International Court of Justice for what they called illegal use of force, that is, international terrorism, in the war against Nicaragua. Again, this is just for starters. The Security Council supported it in two resolutions, which were vetoed by the United States.

Bush? -Well, we can start with the invasion of Panama. The invasion of Panama, which according to Panamanians killed about 3,000 people. Since it is never investigated, who knows if that is true or not. This was done to kidnap a disobedient thug who had been supported by the United States during its worst atrocities. -Noriega. -Noriega, who was taken to Florida and tried for crimes that he had committed mostly on behalf of the CIA. Well, that's aggression. You could go into the details of the war in Iraq, but clearly there were opportunities for... they may not have worked out, but there were opportunities for a diplomatic agreement that the Bush administration refused to consider and, by the way, the press declined to report, with one exception: Long Island Newsday, which reported the entire story accurately, and is the only newspaper in the country to do so.

Then the Bush administration attacked and the attack was carried out in a manner that is criminal under the laws of war. They attacked the infrastructure. If you attack New York City and destroy the electrical system, the sewage systems, etc., that amounts to biological warfare, and that is the nature of the attack. Then came a sanctions regime, which was mostly Clinton, but started under Bush, which by conservative estimates killed hundreds of thousands of people while strengthening Saddam Hussein. That brings us to Clinton. That's the beginning. That is by no means the end. We could go through it.

That case is enough, but there are many others. - Bush? Let's continue with Clinton. One of Clinton's minor escapades was to send a pair of cruise missiles into Sudan to destroy what they knew was a pharmaceutical plant. There was no intelligence failure. According to the only estimates we have from the German ambassador and the regional director of the Middle East Foundation, which does field work in Sudan, both estimated several tens of thousands of deaths from a cruise missile. Very serious. If someone did that to us, we would consider it bad news and again we can continue.

In the Middle East, for example, Clinton began by declaring past UN resolutions, in the words of his administration, “obsolete and anachronistic,” because we are done with that. No more international law. Then comes a period called the peace process, except that during the peace process Israeli settlements, meaning settlements paid for by American taxpayers and supported by American military aid and diplomacy, continually increased. The most extreme year was Clinton's last year: the highest level of settlement, the highest since 1992. Meanwhile, the territories were cantonized and divided into small regions with infrastructure projects and new settlements. I don't know what that's called, but it's under military occupation, and if someone else was doing it, we'd call it a crime, and again we can move on.