The US linguist, philosopher and political scientist Noam Chomsky condemned the “farce” that the sending of troops along the border with Mexico to contain thousands of migrants that flee poverty and repression represents. Photo: Marco Peláez and Afp.
From the Editorial Staff
Members of the Migrant Caravan are fleeing from the misery and the horrors the United States created, the linguist, philosopher and political scientist Noam Chomsky pointed out in an interview with Democracy Now, in which he emphasized that after the State coup in Honduras, in 2009, that nation became: “the world’s murder capital.”
Amy Goodman, interviewing the academic emeritus from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on the program, emphasized that as President Donald Trump intensifies his attacks and threats against the caravans of Central American migrants that advance towards the United States border with Mexico, his government imposed new sanctions on Cuba and Venezuela, and National Security Advisor, John Bolton, catalogued both nations, together with Nicaragua, as a “troika of tyranny.”
The US intellectual pointed out that such language “immediately reminds us of George Bush’s ‘axis of evil’ speech in 2002, which set the basis for the invasion of Iraq, the worst crime of this century, with horrendous consequences for that nation,” and emphasized that “Bolton was behind that.”
For Chomsky it’s interesting “to see this furious hysteria together with another campaign of amazing propaganda” that Bolton and his colleagues promote about “the caravan of poor and frightened people that flee from the severe oppression, violence, terror and extreme poverty in three countries: principally Honduras, in second place Guatemala and in third place El Salvador, not Nicaragua, incidentally.”
He said that it’s about three countries the United States subjected since the regime of Ronald Reagan (1981-1989). When “Reagan’s terror wars devastated particularly El Salvador and Guatemala, and in second place Honduras, Reagan attacked Nicaragua, but it was the only country that had an army to defend the population. In the others, the armies were State terrorists, backed by the United States.”
The principal sender of migrants is Honduras, which had with Manuel Zelaya a “moderately reformist” president (2006-2009), and overthrown by means of a State coup, condemned by the entire hemisphere, with the exception of the United States. Moreover, Barack Obama (2009-2017) “refused to call it a military coup,” since doing so would oblige him to withdraw financing to the military junta.
Members of the coup called some fraudulent elections, although Obama “praised Honduras for carrying out an election, advancing towards democracy and so forth. Now the people flee from the misery and horrors for which we are responsible,” he added.
In this “farce,” said Chomsky, “the world is looking with absolute amazement: the poor, the miserable, families, mothers and children flee from terror and repression, for which we are responsible, and in response we send thousands of troops to the border. The soldiers outnumber the fleeing children… they are scaring a large part of the country into believing that we are right on the verge of an invasion, as you know, of Middle East terrorists financed by George Soros, and so on.”
It’s a sort of “reminiscence of something that happened 30 years ago,” he said, upon remembering that: “in 1985 Ronald Reagan adjusted his cowboy boots” to call “a national emergency, because the Nicaraguan Army was two days away from Harlingen, Texas, about to overwhelm and destroy us. And it worked.”
In the so-called “troika of tyranny,” just like with the “axis of evil,” they insert nations that “simply don’t obey US orders,” he said, and he warned: “Colombia, for example, has the hemisphere’s worst human rights record in years, but is not part of the troika of tyranny.”
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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada
Tuesday, November 6, 2018
https://www.jornada.com.mx/2018/11/06/politica/002n1pol
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
Chiapas Support Committee 
Right on! Chomsky won my praise back in 2003 with his warnings about GWB’s preemptive invasion of Iraq, a humanitarian travesty I witnessed first-hand while teaching in that country. American foreign policy all too often simply rewards the military-industrial complex without regard for human suffering or future consequences.