[Marxism] Liberia: Another Reagan Legacy

[sam pawlett <gusm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Chronicle of Higher Education, June 11, 2004
>
> Rubber, Rebels, and Resentments
> Scholars explore the difficult past and uncertain future of the
> relationship between the United States and Liberia
>
> By JENNIFER JACOBSON
>
> But when civil war broke out in 1989 between Mr. Doe's government and
> rebel forces led by the future Liberian president Charles Taylor (and
> continued off and on between various parties until Mr. Taylor's defeat
> in August 2003), successive American administrations reacted to
> Liberia's instability with indifference. Ultimately, President Bush sent
> the marines to monitor the end of the conflict and ordered a handful to
> enter the country to help with humanitarian efforts.
   This article is another whitewash of american imperialism. Ms.
Jacobson doesn't mention that CIA headquarters for West Africa were in
Liberia for the entire post-WWII period. HQ included a sophisticated
satellite surveillance system and Roberts air field. When Charles Taylor
invaded, the US did not act with indifference it passed the buck to
ECOMOG, the west Afican economic community "peacekeepers" (mostly
Nigerian at the time) who inturn merely acted as another warlord force;
pillaging, looting, killing and raping. Meanwhile, a significant force
of US marines were not too far offshore. If ever there was a need for
them, the lIberian situation may have been it.

Far from indifferernt, the USA, and most promenently Chester Crocker,
Reagan's assistant secretary of state, were the prime backers of the
Samuel Doe government.

"...following the 1980 coup [led by Doe] the desire to prop up its new
partner in West Afria led the US to grant $60 million in military
assistance...Soon after the Reagan administration took power, Secretary
of State George Schultz met Doe in Monrovia...that year America granted
Liberia 52.4 million in economic support, development assistance and
subsidies on rice imports... In 1982 it was $62.3 million, making
Liberia Africa's biggest recipient of American aid... Phillip Banks, a
lawyer who worked in the ministry of finance in 1990-4, estimates that
they [Doe and cronies] ripped off $300 million during their 10 years in
power.['bout half the Gdp for 1989]"  Mark Huband "The Liberian Civil
War". Frank Cass. 1998.

"Throughout the 1980's the US government actually gave the Doe
government more financial help than it accorded to any other government
in sub-Saharan Africa, relative to population in spite of its appalling
record on human rights and corruption." Stephen Ellis "The mask of
Anarchy" p63.

Reagan and his team also tried to cover for the Doe regime. In what has
got to be one of the most (in)famous quotations to come out of the
Reagan white house was Chester Crocker on the 1985 Liberian election:

"There is now the beginning, however imperfect, of a democratic
experience that Liberia and its friends can use as a benchmark for
future elections -- one on which they want to build." quoted in Huband p37.

"If you mind us politicians, we will leave you all. All we want are your
votes, and finish with you; that's all we do. We play with the people's
brains , convince them and confuse them. After we're finished talking
politics, you know what we look for? We wan to eat." Thus, Dr. Samuel
Doe. Quoted in Ellis p290.

"The floor of Saint Peter's church rippled with maggots. Bodies had
shrivelled, leaving only piles of rotting clothes on the floor.
Contorted skeletons huddled beneath the pews. Others were piled up in a
ark corner beside the alter. Up some narrow stairs, entangled bodies on
the choir balcony testified to vain attempts to escape. Limbs dangled
from the broken windows, killed while trying to fleee in terror. In the
classrooms next door, whih had been used as doritories, bodies were
rotting into their mattresses and clothes clung to the skeletons of
young children.
     This was the monument to Samuel Doe, the leader and statesman who
had drunk orange juice with the American ambassador, walked in the White
House garden with Ronald Reagan, chatted with the Pope and nursed
thoughts about going to Oxford for intellectual stimulation." Huband p203.

I almost forgot that the legal currency in Liberia had been the US
dollar, almost for the inception of the state of Liberia in the 19th
century.

 Ronald Reagan and his circle intensified the class struggle against
the domestic working class and poor, ushering in what would come to be
called "globalization" and "neo-liberalism", "the end of Fordism", "the
end of the social contract"etc. He brought libertarian ideology into the
mainstream implementing their ideas. The results everyone knows.
Overseas he pursued a near-genocidal policy in Africa aroung the time of
 the rollback of the Clark amendment. He supported and gave assistance
to the Khmer Rouge. Much the same throughout the world. Between 1981 and
83 he signed away 28.3 million dollars in military aid to South Africa.
In 1983 he facilitaed 3.8 billion dollars in loans and investment to
South Africa. He vetoed the sanctions bill against South Africa. Ans so
on. Yes, really. That ends my memoriam to Reagan.

Sam Pawlett

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