U.S. Aggression in Central America

In response to “Liability Claim: Council Resolution” (editorial, Oct. 30):

The United States is busy getting the collective finger to be pointed at Iraq through a liability resolution in the United Nations.

Yet the damage or profit that Iraq has done or will reap from all this cannot begin to compare with the damage and profit that the United States has caused (by proxy, mostly) by its foreign policy in Central America. This country is responsible for much aggression committed in civil wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua, among others, during the past decades. U.S. money has financed wars that otherwise would have been resolved much earlier, with less blood and probably with other outcomes.

Has the United States profited from this aggression by proxy? The “friendly” government in El Salvador keeps a cozy relationship with multinational agribusiness. People there are kept landless so that we first-worlders can have cheap coffee every morning.

Let’s redefine aggression, and let’s not be hypocrites. U.S. economic aggression and imperialism are more insidious and dishonest than anything Saddam Hussein has done in Kuwait.

Is there a mechanism by which the United States could be held “liable” for all the damage that it has caused through its proxy aggression? Funny how the playing rules always favor the game-masters.

KARL F. LISOVSKY

Van Nuys