August 2, 2013
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On July 9, the Organization of American States held a special
session to discuss the shocking behavior of the European states that
had
refused to allow the government plane carrying Bolivian President Evo Morales to enter their airspace.
Morales
was flying home from a Moscow summit on July 3. In an interview there
he had said he was open to offering political asylum to Edward J.
Snowden, the former U.S. spy-agency contractor wanted by Washington on
espionage charges, who was in the Moscow airport.
The OAS expressed its solidarity with Morales,
condemned“actions
that violate the basic rules and principles of international law such
as the inviolability of Heads of State,” and “firmly” called on the
European governments - France, Italy, Portugal and Spain - to explain
their actions and issue apologies.
An emergency meeting of
UNASUR—the Union of South American Nations—denounced “the flagrant
violation of international treaties” by European powers.
Latin
American heads of state weighed in, too. President Dilma Rousseff of
Brazil expressed the country's “indignation and condemnation of the
situation imposed on President Evo Morales by some European countries”
and warned that this “serious lack of respect for the law…compromises
dialogue between the two continents and possible negotiations between
them.”
Commentators were less reserved. Argentine political
scientist Atilio Boron dismissed Europe as “the whore of Babylon,”
cringing before power.
With virtually identical reservations, two states
refused to sign the OAS resolution:
the United States and Canada. Their growing isolation in the hemisphere
as Latin America frees itself from the imperial yoke after 500 years is
of historic significance.
Morales' plane, reporting technical
problems, was permitted to land in Austria. Bolivia charges that the
plane was searched to discover whether Snowden was on board. Austria
responds that “there was no formal inspection.” Whatever happened
followed warnings delivered from Washington. Beyond that the story is
murky.
Washington has made clear that any country that refuses to
extradite Snowden will face harsh punishment. The United States will
“chase him to the ends of the earth,” Sen. Lindsey Graham
warned.
But
U.S. government spokespersons assured the world that Snowden will be
granted the full protection of American law - referring to those same
laws that have kept U.S. Army soldier Bradley Manning (who released a
vast archive of U.S. military and diplomatic documents to WikiLeaks) in
prison for three years, much of it in solitary confinement under
humiliating conditions. Long gone is the archaic notion of a speedy
trial before a jury of peers. On July 30 a military judge
found Manning guilty of charges that could lead to a maximum sentence of 136 years.
Like
Snowden, Manning committed the crime of revealing to Americans—and
others—what their government is doing. That is a severe breach of
“security” in the operative meaning of the term, familiar to anyone who
has pored over declassified documents. Typically “security” means
security of government officials from the prying eyes of the public to
whom they are answerable—in theory.
Governments always plead
security as an excuse—in the Snowden case, security from terrorist
attack. This pretext comes from an administration carrying out a grand
international terrorist campaign with drones and special operations
forces that is generating potential terrorists at every step.
Their
indignation knows no bounds at the thought that someone wanted by the
United States should receive asylum in Bolivia, which has an extradition
treaty with the U.S. Oddly missing from the tumult is the fact that
extradition works both ways—again, in theory.
Last September, the
United States rejected Bolivia's 2008 petition to extradite former
president Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada—“Goni”—to face charges of genocide
and crimes against humanity. It would, however, be an error to compare
Bolivia's request for extradition with Washington's, even if we were to
suppose that the cases have comparable merit.
The reason was
provided by St. Augustine in his tale about the pirate asked by
Alexander the Great, “How dare you molest the sea?” The pirate replied,
“How dare you molest the whole world? Because I do it with a little ship
only, I am called a thief; you, doing it with a great navy, are called
an Emperor.”
St. Augustine calls the pirate's answer “elegant and
excellent.” But the ancient philosopher, a bishop in Roman Africa, is
only a voice from the global South, easily dismissed. Modern
sophisticates comprehend that the Emperor has rights that little folk
like Bolivians cannot aspire to.
Goni is only one of many that the
Emperor chooses not to extradite. Another case is that of Luis Posada
Carriles, described by Peter Kornbluh, an analyst of Latin American
terror, as “one of the most dangerous terrorists in recent history.”
Posada
is wanted by Venezuela and Cuba for his role in the 1976 bombing of a
Cubana commercial airliner, killing 73 people. The CIA and FBI
identified him as a suspect. But Cubans and Venezuelans also lack the
prerogatives of the Emperor, who organized and backed the reign of
terror to which Cubans have been subjected since liberation.
The
late Orlando Bosch, Posada's partner in terrorism, also benefited from
the Emperor's benevolence. The Justice Department and FBI requested that
he be deported as a threat to U.S. security, charging him with dozens
of terrorist acts. In 1990, after President George H.W. Bush
overturned the deportation order,
Bosch lived the rest of his life happily in Miami, undisturbed by calls
for extradition by Cuba and Costa Rica, two mere pirates.
Another insignificant pirate is Italy, now seeking the extradition of 23 CIA operatives
indicted for kidnapping Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, an Egyptian cleric in Milan, whom they rendered to Egypt for torture (he was later found to be innocent). Good luck, Italy.
There
are other cases, but the crime of rendition returns us to the matter of
Latin American independence. The Open Society Institute recently
released a study called “Globalizing
Torture: CIA Secret Detention and Extraordinary Rendition.” It reviewed
global participation in the crime, which was very broad, including
among European countries.
Latin American scholar Greg Grandin
pointed out that one region was absent from the list of shame: Latin
America. That is doubly remarkable. Latin America had long been the
reliable “backyard” for the United States. If any of the locals sought
to raise their heads, they would be decapitated by terror or military
coup. And as it was under U.S. control throughout the latter half of the
last century, Latin America was one of the torture capitals of the
world.
That's no longer the case, as the United States and Canada are being virtually expelled from the hemisphere.
Noam
Chomsky is Institute Professor & Professor of Linguistics
(Emeritus) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the author
of dozens of books on U.S. foreign policy. He writes a monthly column
for The New York Times News Service/Syndicate.
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