A Quote by Noam Chomsky

At the beginning of his administration, Reagan tried set the basis for American military intervention in El Salvador - which is about what Kennedy did when he came into office in regard to Vietnam. Well, when Kennedy tried it in Vietnam, it just worked like a dream. Virtually nobody opposed American bombing of South Vietnam in 1962. It was not an issue. But when Reagan began to talk of involving American forces in El Salvador there was a huge popular uproar. And he had to choose a much more indirect way of supporting the collection of gangsters in power there. He had to back off.

Noam Chomsky

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About Administration American American Military Back Basis Began Beginning Bombing Came Choose Collection Did Dream El Salvador Forces Gangsters Had His Huge Indirect Intervention Involving Issue Just Kennedy Like Military Military Intervention More Much Nobody Off Office Opposed Popular Power Reagan Regard Set South South Vietnam Supporting Talk Tried Vietnam Virtually Way Well Which Worked

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Noam Chomsky
American - Activist
Born: December 7, 1928

Watergate enabled the Democrats to cut off all aid to South Vietnam and ensure American defeat in a war their party entered and had effectively lost, before Nixon salvaged a non-Communist South Vietnam while effecting a complete American withdrawal.

Conrad Black

What was the invasion of South Vietnam, for example, in 1962, when Kennedy sent the Air Force to bomb South Vietnam and start chemical warfare? That's aggression.

Noam Chomsky

The real invasion of South Vietnam which was directed largely against the rural society began directly in 1962 after many years of working through mercenaries and client groups. And that fact simply does not exist in official American history. There is no such event in American history as the attack on South Vietnam. That's gone. Of course, It is a part of real history. But it's not a part of official history.

Noam Chomsky

I think the difference between El Salvador and Nicaragua is that in Nicaragua you had a popular insurrection, and in El Salvador you had a revolution.

Bianca Jagger

Most of us who were opposed to the war, especially in the early '60's - the war we were opposed to was the war on South Vietnam which destroyed South Vietnam's rural society. The South was devastated. But now anyone who opposed this atrocity is regarded as having defended North Vietnam. And that's part of the effort to present the war as if it were a war between South Vietnam and North Vietnam with the United States helping the South. Of course it's fabrication. But it's "official truth" now.

Noam Chomsky

During the Reagan Administration, so much attention was devoted to fighting Marxism in Nicaragua and El Salvador that Washington lost sight of longer-term challenges in other countries.

Stephen Kinzer

Vietnam was the first time that Americans of different races had to depend on each other. In the Second World War, they were segregated; it was in Vietnam that American integration happened in the military - and it wasn't easy.

Karl Marlantes

I have my three brothers, and then I have my adopted sister from El Salvador, who is actually the oldest. My brother and I were already born, and then my parents adopted my sister from El Salvador during the war and had two more kids.

Carrie Coon

Trump's vision for America parallels greatly with the vision that Ronald Reagan used and he implemented to revive the country during a very similar time where we had a president who told us that we were in a time of malaise in the American economy and that things are just gonna be that way for a while. Reagan steps up in that great first inaugural address and says, "And why shouldn't we dream great dreams? After all, we're Americans." And the American people came roaring back, the American economy came back.

Mike Pence

Ronald Reagan, who led the larger New Right project of re-sanctifying U.S. foreign policy after its Vietnam disaccreditation, felt compelled to drape his support for Central American death squads in the rhetoric of American exceptionalism.

Greg Grandin

More than half the combat deaths in Vietnam occurred after Richard Nixon was elected on a promise to bring the war to an end, and after the American people had already decided that they did not want one more soldier to die in Vietnam.

Raul Grijalva

It is a key fact about American policy in Vietnam that the withdrawel of American troops was built into it from the start. None of the presidents who waged war in Vietnam contemplated an open-ended campaign; all promised the public that American troops would be able to leave in the not-too-remote future. The promise of withdrawel precluded a policy of occupation of the traditional colonial sort, in which a great power simply imposes its will on a small one indefinitely.

Jonathan Schell

Every book that comes out, every article that comes out, talks about how - while it may have been a "mistake" or an "unwise effort" - the United States was defending South Vietnam from North Vietnamese aggression. And they portray those who opposed the war as apologists for North Vietnam. That's standard to say. The purpose is obvious: to obscure the fact that the United States did attack South Vietnam and the major war was fought against South Vietnam.

Noam Chomsky

I don't claim to know Israel. I don't speak Hebrew; my contacts are pretty limited. But I didn't know Vietnam; I didn't know Nicaragua, El Salvador or Honduras. It doesn't mean you can't reach your conclusions.

Norman Finkelstein

Futurism is another American myth: whether Kennedy, Johnson, Reagan or Obama, American presidents all come into office with a new program, and the conviction that the country is going to be better than ever.

James Hillman

El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras have all agreed to send additional consular officers from Guatemala, from Honduras, from El Salvador, send them to the U.S. border so that we can more quickly and humanely identify unaccompanied children and process their individual removal.

Joe Biden

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