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Impeach George Bush
Why Do They Hate US II
Decades of Ideologically Directed Foreign Policy Has Created a Deep Well of Resentment in Many Countries Around the World Now, the Ideologues turn their attention from Foreign Policy to National Policy.
Source: Miami Herald, 2003-12-04
Candidate: Big Government
U.S. OK'd 'dirty war' in Argentina
New evidence suggests that Henry Kissinger gave the Argentine military 'a green light' in its 1970s-80s campaign against leftists.
BY DANIEL A. GRECH
BUENOS AIRES - At the height of the Argentine military junta's bloody "dirty war" against leftists in the 1970s, then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger told the Argentine foreign minister that "we would like you to succeed," a newly declassified U.S. document reveals.
The transcript of the meeting between Kissinger and Navy Adm. César Augusto Guzzetti in New York on Oct. 7, 1976, is the first documentary evidence that the Gerald Ford administration approved of the junta's harsh tactics, which led to the deaths or "disappearance" of some 30,000 people from 1975 to 1983.
The document is also certain to further complicate Kissinger's legacy, which has been questioned in recent years as new evidence has emerged on his connection to human-rights violations around the world -- including in Chile, Indonesia and Bangladesh.
Kissinger and several top deputies have repeatedly denied condoning human-rights abuses in Argentina.
DIPLOMATIC CABLES
Among the 4,667 U.S. documents declassified by the State Department last year were diplomatic cables showing that the Argentine military believed it had Kissinger's approval. The information was requested by the families of the junta's victims and human-rights groups.
A transcript of the 1976 Kissinger-Guzzetti meeting was declassified recently under a Freedom of Information Request by the National Security Archive, a nonprofit research organization based in Washington. The document was made available to The Herald on Wednesday and will be presented at a conference on U.S.-Argentine relations during the dirty war today in Buenos Aires.
"Look, our basic attitude is that we would like you to succeed," Kissinger reassured Guzzetti in the seven-page transcript, marked SECRET. "I have an old-fashioned view that friends ought to be supported. What is not understood in the United States is that you have a civil war. We read about human rights problems but not the context. The quicker you succeed, the better."
'DEFINITIVE EVIDENCE'
"This is final, definitive evidence that Kissinger gave a green light to Argentine generals," said Carlos Osorio, director of the Argentina Documentation Project at the National Security Archive.
The Argentine military began its war against leftist guerrillas and suspected sympathizers in 1975, before taking power in a coup the following year. By the time of the conversation between Kissinger and Guzzetti, the machinery of murder and disappearances had received worldwide condemnation and the U.S. Congress was considering economic sanctions.
Guzzetti assured Kissinger that the "struggle" against "terrorist organizations" would be finished by the end of 1976. But a 1983 report by an Argentine truth commission showed that the killings accelerated in late 1976 and continued for two more years.
"This document is a devastating indictment of Kissinger's policy toward Latin America," said John Dinges, an assistant professor at Columbia Journalism School and author of The Condor Years, a book on military dictatorships in the Southern Cone due out in February. ''Kissinger actually encourages human-rights violations in full consciousness of what was going on."
A VINDICATION
The transcript also vindicates the then-U.S. ambassador to Argentina, Robert Hill, who in late 1976 began pressing the Argentine military on human-rights issues but was told by Argentine officials that Washington was supporting them.
"Guzzetti went to the U.S. fully expecting to hear some strong, firm, direct warnings on his government's human rights practices," Hill wrote in a cable. ''Rather than that, he has returned in a state of jubilation."
"All along they denied this," Dinges said. "Now, finally, we have Kissinger's actual words giving the green light."
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User Originated Comments:
From:
2004-01-09 00:00:00
why they hate america-in britain
by jonathan david farley, d.phil.
as i write this, i sit only one mile from a
people who are at war with america. they are not
poor, illiterate, or muslim. in fact, they are
mostly white, christian, and middle-cl-ss. they
are students at oxford university, in england.
wadham college (which is part of
oxford university) declared war with the united
states when america started carpet-bombing
vietnam. the stately, ancient oxford hall boasts a
well-kept, manicured lawn, which the students
still call ho chi minh quad.
of
course, the state of hostilities is mostly
facetious (oxford's trinity college and balliol
college have also declared war-against each
other), but not entirely. the english philosopher
and mathematician bertrand russell, one of the
most renowned thinkers of the twentieth century,
convened a war crimes tribunal in the 1960's, in
which he accused the united states of crimes
against humanity. they may not be shouting, 'death
to america,' but brits have long scoffed at
american imperiousness.
since
september 11, americans have asked, 'how could
anybody hate us so much?' and we've mostly been
coming to the wrong conclusions. (novelist salman
rushdie recently wrote that muslim extremists hate
america because we eat bacon sandwiches! )
i'm not an eloquent writer like mr.
rushdie; nor am i a vegetarian extremist. but as a
mathematician, i can put two and two together;
and, at the risk of inflaming american opinion,
i'd like to opine why the british feel 'they' hate
'us.' that reason is state-sponsored terrorism.
america has long accused nations like
iraq, sudan, and cuba of sponsoring terrorism.
but, according to abc news, it was the joint
chiefs of staff of the u.s. military who, in the
1960's, drafted plans to commit terrorist attacks.
'we could blow up a u.s. ship in [cuba's]
guantanamo bay and blame cuba,' read one report,
code named operation northwoods. the american
people would then demand that castro be deposed.
cold 'worriers' still believe castro wants to
bring americans to our knees. (i say, bill clinton
did enough of that already.)
during
the 1980's, the u.s. fought a secret war in
central america, supporting murderous regimes in
el salvador and honduras that used death squads to
terrorize civilians, murder priests and rape nuns.
many of the generalissimos who conducted this
reign of terror were trained in the school of the
americas-in georgia. their training manuals
included instructions on how to torture.
chile's dictator, pinochet, who
specialized in dropping his political opponents
out of airplanes, came to power after a
cia-orchestrated coup, during which the
democratically elected president, salvador
allende, was murdered. the congo was plunged into
forty years of chaos after the u.s.-backed
dictator, mobutu, seized power, following the
murder of the democratically elected prime
minister patrice lumumba.
the u.s.
government occupied haiti for decades and, later,
supported that country's brutal dictators, the
duvaliers. it sustained the dictator of the
philippines, ferdinand marcos, even after his
people overthrew him. the shah of iran persecuted
his own people with our tax dollars; yet we
pretend that iranian anti-americanism is
unprovoked.
(i do recognize that,
despite america's faults, at least we have the
freedom to criticize the government. in iran,
peace activists-like my hero martin luther
king-would be shot.)
when the u.s.
stops sponsoring terrorism, and starts cracking
down on terrorism at home (the kkk and the lapd),
the english may start respecting our moral
leadership. as things stand, british newspapers
are as likely to call george bush 'the mad bomber'
as they are osama bin laden. despite british
involvement in the war, 54% of britons think the
bombing should be suspended.
it's easy
to dismiss anti-american mobs in brown countries.
but we'd be fools to dismiss the english, our
closest allies; and a significant number of them
are saying, america's not at war with terrorism:
it's in bed with it.
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