Issue 257 of SOCIALIST REVIEW Published November 2001 Copyright © Socialist Review

The US army was eventually forced to flee Saigon

'We shall bomb them back into the stone age,' declared General Curtis Le May, US Chief of Staff, as he launched the B52s over Vietnam. Lyndon Johnson, the US president who ordered the invasion of South Vietnam in 1965, jokingly remarked, 'Curtis Le May wants to bomb Hanoi and Haiphong [the main cities of North Vietnam]. You know how he likes to go around bombing.' Some joke--the Vietnam War killed more than 1 million people. More than 2 million died in the years after 1969, as the US extended its war to Cambodia and Laos.

So when the warplanes began their sorties from the USS Enterprise to bomb Afghanistan it was merely the latest in the long, long history of brutal US interventions round the world. The record shows that many of the worst--and certainly the most prolonged--interventions were in America's 'backyard' in Central and South America. The US trained generations of Latin American torturers and death squads at Fort Bragg and its bases in Panama, and sometimes lent a hand directly to help the secret police in Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay.

Sometimes it has had to intervene to turf out its former friends who became too independent--as in the case of General Manuel Noriega in Panama, once a CIA operative who became too involved in the drugs trade when he took over the country. Bush Sr, himself a former CIA chief, ordered the invasion, known as 'Operation Just Cause'--perhaps because the US just caused the problem in the first place--during which somewhere between 2,500 and 4,000 Panamanians may have been killed.

Installing dictators who become too big for their boots is also the hallmark of US intervention in Africa and the Gulf. Both Mobutu in Congo and Saddam Hussein in Iraq came to power with US support during the Cold War, promoted as strong men who would support American interests and resist Communism. In both countries the CIA orchestrated the murder of political opponents--Patrice Lumumba and Abdul Karim Kassem--to clear the way for these dictators.

Since the 1950s the CIA has admitted the existence of murder plots against political leaders ranging from Jawharlal Nehru (the first prime minister of India) in 1955 to Salvador Allende (president of Chile) in 1970 and Miguel d'Escoto, foreign minister of Nicaragua, in 1983, as well, of course, as several actual attempts to kill Castro and Gaddafi. American policy forbidding assassination in foreign countries has just been reversed in the wake of the 11 September attacks.

Over these years the US has continued to train and arm the forces of every regime that will do its bidding, starting with the Israelis and the Saudis. Some of those involved in attacks on the US were once its pupils and proteges including, of course, Osama Bin Laden. As a former US navy pilot stated in Newsweek on 15 September about his time at the Pensacola base, 'We always, always, always trained other countries' pilots. When I was there two decades ago, it was Iranians. The Shah was in power. Whoever the country du jour is, that's whose pilots we train.'

• 1953: CIA engineers the removal of elected government in Iran--installs dictatorship under the Shah.
• 1954: CIA organises overthrow of the elected government of Guatemala--30 years of military dictatorship, repression and civil war follow.
• 1954: US intervenes to prevent elections in Vietnam that would unify the country.
• 1958: Troops deployed in Panama. Confrontations continue until 1964.
• 1960: Beginning of US war in Vietnam. Continues until 1975
• 1961: US organises attempts to overthrow the Cuban government at the Bay of Pigs.
• 1965: 22,000 troops sent to Dominican Republic to combat the constitutional forces trying to regain power.
• 1965: US-backed coup in Indonesia. Estimated death toll 500,000
• 1967: CIA helps to engineer military coup in Greece.
• 1969: Secret bombing of Cambodia begins. Resulting coup and civil war lead to the deaths of about 2 million people.
• 1971: Carpet bombing of Laos and US-backed South Vietnamese invasion.
• 1973: CIA helps overthrow the democratic government of Allende in Chile in favour of the Pinochet regime.
• 1976: CIA assistance for South African backed rebels in Angola--continues until 1992.
• 1979: Coup in El Salvador. US provides arms and 'advisers' to military regime in civil war that kills 75,000 people.
• 1981: Reagan administration begins the Contra war in Nicaragua--30,000 killed.
• 1982: US intervention to expel PLO and back right wing Phalangists in Lebanon.
• 1986: Raids on Libya in attempt to topple Gaddafi.
• 1987: US moves to direct support for Iraq in war with Iran. USS Vincennes shoots down Iranian airliner, killing 290.
• 1990: Gulf War. Continuing US raids on Iraq, followed by sanctions which kill over 1 million people.
• 1992: US-led occupation of Somalia.