In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel, The Great Gatsby, the irresponsible willfulness of a privileged couple named Tom and Daisy Buchanan brings violent death to three other people.  Fitzgerald concludes, “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy -- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”  How often has Uncle Sam done the same?

Violent Interventions:  In an instance prominent perhaps because it has blown back to hurt us, the CIA helped local Afghan fighters in the 1970s and 1980s to throw the Soviet occupiers out of Afghanistan; then the U.S. walked away from the mess, thus allowing the Taliban to burgeon.  Far less noticed by our media (surprise!) have been the messes that U.S. violent interventions in Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, and other Latin American nations have helped to create but that the U.S. walked away from with indifference and apparent impunity.  Dare I suggest that the United States owes these nations a Marshall Plan or something like it?  The original Marshall Plan proved profitable for U.S. business.  Such a plan for nations that the U.S. has helped to devastate would be honorable and perhaps profitable.  The alternative may be new cycles of repression, revolt, and U.S. intervention.

Torture:  We occasionally hear about therapeutic treatment for U.S. troops in whom the violence in Iraq and Afghanistan has produced posttraumatic stress disorder.  But our officials and media seem oblivious that our government owes similar treatment to the thousands of people whom U.S. personnel have tortured in Iraq, Afghanistan, Gitmo, and our partner nations in the renditions program and also to the many thousands of survivors throughout Latin America whom U.S. personnel have been complicit in torturing.  PTSD is often a lifelong affliction for both battle survivors and torture survivors.  Dr. Mary Fabri, a therapist who treats survivors of torture at the Kovler Center in Chicago, deplores the term PTSD because there is nothing “post” about it -- the trauma rages on inside the survivor -- and because it’s not a “disorder” but a normal response to horrific events.  By conservative estimates, some 500,000 survivors of torture reside in the United States; and the U.S. was surely complicit in torturing many thousands of them.  If our nation is to restore its honor, it will offer treatment to these people.  Shall we mention this obligation to our elected representatives? 

(The author is a member of the board of directors of the International Mayan League/USA and of VAMOS (Vermont Associates for Mexican Opportunity and Support. He also is a contributing editor of INTERCONNECT.)