The Legacy of 1989, in Two Hemispheres
Dan Clore
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
http://tinyurl.com/ydmwtje
December 3, 2009 � Web Only
The Legacy of 1989, in Two Hemispheres
By Noam Chomsky
November marked the anniversary of major events in 1989: �the biggest
year in world history since 1945,� as British historian Timothy Garton
Ash describes it.
That year �changed everything,� Garton Ash writes. Mikhail Gorbachev�s
reforms within Russia and his �breathtaking renunciation of the use of
force� led to the fall of the Berlin Wall on Nov. 9 -- and to the
liberation of Eastern Europe from Russian tyranny.
The accolades are deserved; the events, memorable. But alternative
perspectives may be revealing.
German chancellor Angela Merkel provided such a perspective --
unintentionally -- when she called on all of us to �use this invaluable
gift of freedom to overcome the walls of our time.�
One way to follow her good advice would be to dismantle the massive
wall, dwarfing the Berlin wall in scale and length, now snaking through
Palestinian territory in violation of international law.
The �annexation wall,� as it should be called, is justified in terms of
�security� -- the default rationalization for so many state actions. If
security were the concern, the wall would be built along the border and
made impregnable.
The purpose of this monstrosity, constructed with U.S. support and
European complicity, is to allow Israel to take over valuable
Palestinian land and the main water resources of the region, thus
denying any viable national existence for the indigenous population of
the former Palestine.
Another perspective on 1989 comes from Thomas Carothers, a scholar who
served in �democracy enhancement� programs in the administration of
former President Ronald Reagan.
After reviewing the record, Carothers concludes that all U.S. leaders
have been �schizophrenic� -- supporting democracy if it conforms to U.S.
strategic and economic objectives, as in Soviet satellites but not in
U.S. client states.
This perspective is dramatically confirmed by the recent commemoration
of the events of November 1989. The fall of the Berlin wall was rightly
celebrated, but there was little notice of what happened one week later:
on Nov. 16, in El Salvador, the assassination of six leading Latin
American intellectuals, Jesuit priests, along with their cook and her
daughter, by the elite, U.S.-armed Atlacatl battalion, fresh from
renewed training at the JFK Special Warfare School at Fort Bragg, N.C.
The battalion and its cohorts had already compiled a bloody record
through the grisly decade in El Salvador that began in 1980 with the
assassination, by much the same hands, of Archbishop Oscar Romero, known
as �the voice of the voiceless.�
During the decade of the �war on terror� declared by the Reagan
administration, the horror was similar throughout Central America. The
reign of torture, murder and destruction in the region left hundreds of
thousands dead.
The contrast between the liberation of Soviet satellites and the
crushing of hope in U.S. client states is striking and instructive --
even more so when we broaden the perspective.
The assassination of the Jesuit intellectuals brought a virtual end to
�liberation theology,� the revival of Christianity that had its modern
roots in the initiatives of Pope John XXIII and Vatican II, which he
opened in 1962.
Vatican II �ushered in a new era in the history of the Catholic Church,�
theologian Hans Kung wrote. Latin American bishops adopted �the
preferential option for the poor.�
Thus the bishops renewed the radical pacifism of the Gospels that had
been put to rest when the Emperor Constantine established Christianity
as the religion of the Roman Empire -- �a revolution� that in less than
a century converted �the persecuted church� to a �persecuting church,�
according to Kung.
In the post-Vatican II revival, Latin American priests, nuns and
laypersons took the message of the Gospels to the poor and the
persecuted, brought them together in communities, and encouraged them to
take their fate into their own hands.
Reaction to this heresy was violent repression. In the course of the
terror and slaughter, the practitioners of liberation theology were a
prime target.
Among them are the six martyrs of the church whose execution 20 years
ago is now commemorated with a resounding silence, barely broken.
Last month in Berlin, the three presidents most involved in the fall of
the Wall -- George H. W. Bush, Mikhail Gorbachev and Helmut Kohl --
discussed who deserves credit.
�I know now how heaven helped us,� Kohl said. George H.W. Bush praised
the East German people, who �for too long had been deprived of their
God-given rights.� Gorbachev suggested that the United States needs its
own perestroika.
No doubts exist about responsibility for demolishing the attempt to
revive the church of the Gospels in Latin America during the 1980s.
The School of the Americas (since renamed the Western Hemisphere
Institute for Security Cooperation) in Fort Benning, Ga., which trains
Latin American officers, proudly announces that the U.S. Army helped to
�defeat liberation theology� -- assisted, to be sure, by the Vatican,
using the gentler hand of expulsion and suppression.
The grim campaign to reverse the heresy set in motion by Vatican II
received an incomparable literary expression in Dostoyevsky�s parable of
the Grand Inquisitor in �The Brothers Karamazov.�
In this tale, set in Seville at �the most terrible time of the
Inquisition,� Jesus Christ suddenly appears on the streets, �softly,
unobserved, and yet, strange to say, everyone recognized him� and was
�irresistibly drawn to him.�
The Grand Inquisitor �bids the guards take Him and lead Him away� to
prison. There he accuses Christ of coming to �hinder us� in the great
work of destroying the subversive ideas of freedom and community. We
follow not Thee, the Inquisitor admonishes Jesus, but rather Rome and
�the sword of Caesar.� We seek to be sole rulers of the earth so that we
can teach the �weak and vile� multitude that �they will only become free
when they renounce their freedom to us and submit to us.� Then they will
be timid and frightened and happy. So tomorrow, the Inquisitor says, �I
must burn Thee.�
Finally, however, the Inquisitor relents and releases �Him into the dark
alleys of the town.�
The pupils of the U.S.-run School of the Americas practiced no such mercy.
--
Dan Clore
New book: _Weird Words: A Lovecraftian Lexicon_:
http://tinyurl.com/yd3bxkw
My collected fiction: _The Unspeakable and Others_
(Wait for the new edition: http://hplmythos.com/ )
Lord We�rdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
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News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
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Skipper: Professor, will you tell these people who is
in charge on this island?
Professor: Why, no one.
Skipper: No one?
Thurston Howell III: No one? Good heavens, this is anarchy!
-- _Gilligan's Island_, episode #6, "President Gilligan"
James A. Donald
> One way to follow her good advice would be to
> dismantle the massive wall, dwarfing the Berlin wall
> in scale and length, now snaking through Palestinian
> territory in violation of international law.
The difference is that every single person on one side
of this wall claims to be totally dedicated to murdering
most people on the other side of this wall, and some of
them really are dedicated.
Asymmetric warfare means, in this case, that the west
bank is at war with Israel, but Israel is not at war
with the west bank.
--
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We have the right to defend ourselves and our property, because
of the kind of animals that we are. True law derives from this
right, not from the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state.