Why they h**e us:The Real American History That Ted Cruz nor the New York Times will tell you
Nov 22, 2015 19:10:45 #
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/why-they-h**e-us-real-american-history-neither-ted-cruz-nor-new-york-times-will
We talk democracy, then o*******w elected governments and prop up awful regimes. Let's discuss the actual history.
By Ben Norton / Salon November 20,2015
The Land of the Free and Home of the Brave has a long and iniquitous history of o*******wing democratically elected l*****t governments and propping up right-wing dictators in their place. U.S. politicians rarely acknowledge this odious past, let alone acknowledge that such policies continue well into the present day.
Shop ▾ In the second Democratic p**********l debate, however, candidate Bernie Sanders condemned a long-standing government policy his peers rarely admit exists.
I think we have a disagreement, Sanders said of fellow p**********l candidate Hillary Clinton. And the disagreement is that not only did I v**e against the war in Iraq. If you look at history, you will find that regime change whether it was in the early 50s in Iran, whether it was toppling Salvador Allende in Chile, or whether it was o*******wing the government of Guatemala way back when these invasions, these toppling of governments, regime changes have unintended consequences. I would say that on this issue Im a little bit more conservative than the secretary.
I am not a great fan of regime changes, Sanders added.
Regime change is not a phrase you hear discussed honestly much in Washington, yet it is a common practice in and defining feature of U.S. foreign policy for well over a century. For many decades, leaders from both sides of the aisle, Republicans and Democrats, have pursued a bipartisan strategy of violently o*******wing democratically elected foreign governments that do not kowtow to U.S. orders.
In the debate, Sanders addressed three examples of U.S. regime change. There are scores of examples of American regime change, yet these are perhaps the most infamous instances.
Iran, 1953
Iran was once a secular democracy. You would not know this from contemporary discussions of the much demonized country in U.S. politics and media.
What happen to Irans democracy? The U.S. o*******w it in 1953, with the help of the U.K. Why? For oil.
Mohammad Mosaddegh may be the most popular leader in Irans long history. He was also Irans only democratically elected head of state.
In 1951, Mosaddegh was elected prime minister of Iran. He was not a socialist, and certainly not a c*******t on the contrary, he repressed Iranian c*******ts but he pursued many progressive, social democratic policies. Mosaddegh pushed for land reform, established rent control, and created a social security system, while working to separate powers in the democratic government.
In the Cold War, however, a leader who deviated in any way from free-market orthodoxy and the Washington Consensus was deemed a threat. When Mossaddegh nationalized Irans large oil reserves, he crossed a line that Western capitalist nations would not tolerate.
The New York Times ran an article in 1951 titled British Warn Iran of Serious Result if She Seizes Oil. The piece, which is full of orientalist language, refers to Iranian oil as British oil properties, failing to acknowledge that Britain, which had previously occupied Iran, had seized that oil and claimed it as its own, administering it under the auspices of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, which later became the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, and eventually British Petroleum and modern BP.
The Times article noted that the U.S. shares with Britain the gravest concern about the possibility that Iranian oil, the biggest supply now available in the Near East, might be lost to the Western powers. The British government is quoted making a thinly veiled threat.
This threat came into fruition in August 1953. In Operation Ajax, the CIA, working with its British equivalent MI6, carried out a c**p, o*******wing the elected government of Iran and reinstalling the monarchy. The shah would remain a faithful Western ally until 1979, when the monarchy was abolished in the Iranian Revolution.
Guatemala, 1954
Less than a year after o*******wing Irans first democratically elected prime minister, the U.S. pursued a similar regime change policy in Guatemala, toppling the elected leader Jacobo Árbenz.
In 1944, Guatemalans waged a revolution, toppling the U.S.-backed right-wing dictator Jorge Ubico, who had ruled the country with an iron fist since 1931. Ubico, who fancied himself the 20th-century Napoleon, gave rich landowners and the U.S. corporation the United Fruit Company (which would later become Chiquita) free reign over Guatemalas natural resources, and used the military to violently crush labor organizers.
Juan José Arévalo was elected into office in 1944. A liberal, he pursued very moderate policies, but the U.S. wanted a right-wing puppet regime that would allow U.S. corporations the same privileges granted to them by Ubico. In 1949, the U.S. backed an attempted c**p, yet it failed.
In 1951, Árbenz was elected into office. Slightly to the left of Arévalo, Árbenz was still decidedly moderate. The U.S. claimed Árbenz was close to Guatemalas c*******ts, and warned he could ally with the Soviet Union. In reality, the opposite was true; Árbenz actually persecuted Guatemalan c*******ts. At most, Árbenz was a social democrat, not even a socialist.
Yet Árbenz, like Mosaddegh, firmly believed that Guatemalans themselves, and not multinational corporations, should benefit from their countrys resources. He pursued land reform policies that would break up the control rich families and the United Fruit Company exercised over the country and, for that reason, he was o*******wn.
President Truman originally authorized a first c**p attempt, Operation PBFORTUNE, in 1952. Yet details about the operation were leaked to the public, and the plan was abandoned. In 1954, in Operation PBSUCCESS, the CIA and U.S. State Department, under the Dulles Brothers, bombed Guatemala City and carried out a c**p that violently toppled Guatemalas democratic government.
The U.S. put into power right-wing tyrant Carlos Castillo Armas. For more than 50 years, until the end of the Guatemalan Civil War in 1996, Guatemala was ruled by a series of authoritarian right-wing leaders who brutally repressed left-wing dissidents and carried out a campaign of genocide against the indigenous people of the country.
Chile, 1973
September 11 has permanently seared itself into the memory of Americans. The date has also been indelibly imprinted in the public consciousness of Chileans, because it was on this same day in 1973 that the U.S. backed a c**p that violently o*******w Chiles democracy.
In 1970, Marxist leader Salvador Allende was democratically elected president of Chile. Immediately after he was elected, the U.S. government poured resources into right-wing opposition groups and gave millions of dollars to Chiles conservative media outlets.
The CIA deputy director of plans wrote in a 1970 memo, It is firm and continuing policy that Allende be o*******wn by a c**p It is imperative that these actions be implemented clandestinely and securely so that the USG [U.S. government] and American hand be well hidden. President Nixon subsequently ordered the CIA to make the economy scream in Chile, to prevent Allende from coming to power or to unseat him.
Allendes democratic government was violently o*******wn on September 11, 1973. He died in the c**p, just after making an emotional speech, in which he declared he would give his life to defend Chilean democracy and sovereignty.
Far-right dictator Augusto Pinochet, who combined f*****tic police state repression with hyper-capitalist free-market economic policies, was put into power. Under Pinochets far-right dictatorship, tens of thousands of Chilean l*****ts, labor organizers, and journalists were k**led, disappeared, and tortured. Hundreds of thousands more people were forced into exile.
One of the most prevailing myths of the Cold War is that socialism was an unpopular system imposed on populations with brute force. Chile serves as a prime historical example of how the exact opposite was true. The masses of impoverished and oppressed people elected many socialist governments, yet these governments were often violently o*******wn by the U.S. and other Western allies.
The o*******w of Allende was a turning point for many socialists in the Global South. Before he was o*******wn, some l*****ts thought popular Marxist movements could gain state power through democratic e******ns, as was the case in Chile. Yet when they saw how the U.S. violently toppled Allendes elected government, they became suspicious of the prospects of e*******l politics and turned to guerrilla warfare and other tactics.
Modern example: Egypt, 2013
These are just a small sample of the great many regime changes the U.S. government has been involved in. More recent examples, which were supported by Hillary Clinton, as Sanders implied, include the U.S. governments o*******w of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Muammar Qadhafi in Libya. In these cases, the U.S. was o*******wing dictators, not democratically elected leaders but, as Sanders pointed out, the results of these regime changes have been nothing short of catastrophic.
The U.S. is also still engaging in regime change when it comes to democratically elected governments.
In the January 2011 revolution, Egyptians toppled dictator Hosni Mubarak, a close U.S. ally who ruled Egypt with an iron fist for almost 30 years.
In July 2013, Egypts first democratically elected president, Mohammed Morsi, was o*******wn in a military c**p. We now know that the U.S. supported and bankrolledthe opposition forces that o*******w the democratically elected president.
Today, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, a brutal despot who is widely recognized as even worse than Mubarak, reigns over Egypt. In August 2013, Sisi oversaw a slaughter of more than 800 peaceful Egyptian activists at Rabaa Square. His regime continues to shoot peaceful protesters in the street. An estimated 40,000 political prisoners languish in Sisis jails, including journalists.
In spite of his obscene human rights abuses, Sisi remains a close ally of the U.S. and Israel much, much closer than was the democratically elected President Morsi.
In the second Democratic p**********l debate, when Sanders called Clinton out on her hawkish, pro-regime change policies, she tried to blame the disasters in the aftermath in countries like Iraq and Libya on the complexity of the Middle East. As an example of this putative complexity, Clinton cited Egypt. We saw a dictator o*******wn, we saw Muslim Brotherhood president installed, and then we saw him ousted and the army back, she said.
Clinton failed to mention two crucial factors: One, that the U.S. backed Mubarak until the last moment; and two, that the U.S. also supported the c**p that o*******w Egypts first and only democratically elected head of state.
Other examples
There are scores of other examples of U.S.-led regime change.
In 1964 the U.S. backed a c**p in Brazil, toppling left-wing President João Goulart.
In 1976, the U.S. supported a military c**p in Argentina that replaced President Isabel Perón with General Jorge Rafael Videla.
In 2002, the U.S. backed a c**p that o*******w democratically elected Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. Chávez was so popular, however, that Venezuelans filled the street and demanded him back.
In 2004, the U.S. o*******w Haitis first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
In 2009, U.S.-trained far-right forces o*******w the democratically elected government of Honduras, with tacit support from Washington.
The list goes on.
Latin America, given its proximity to the U.S. and the strength of left-wing movements in the region, tends to endure the largest number of U.S. regime changes, yet the Middle East and many parts of Africa have seen their democratic governments o*******wn as well.
From 1898 to 1994, Harvard University historian John Coatsworth documented at least 41 U.S. interventions in Latin America an an average of one every 28 months for an entire century.
Numerous Latin American military dictators were trained at the School of the Americas, a U.S. Department of Defense Institute in Fort Benning, Georgia. The School of the Americas Watch, an activist organization that pushes for the closing of the SOA, has documented many of these regime changes, which have been carried out by both Republicans and Democrats.
Diplomatic cables released by whistleblowing journalism outlet WikiLeaks show the U.S. still maintains a systematic campaign of trying to o*******w Latin Americas left-wing governments.
By not just acknowledging the bloody and ignominious history of U.S. regime change, but also condemning it, Sen. Sanders was intrepidly trekking into controversial political territory into which few of his peers would dare to tread. Others would do well to learn from Bernies example.
We talk democracy, then o*******w elected governments and prop up awful regimes. Let's discuss the actual history.
By Ben Norton / Salon November 20,2015
The Land of the Free and Home of the Brave has a long and iniquitous history of o*******wing democratically elected l*****t governments and propping up right-wing dictators in their place. U.S. politicians rarely acknowledge this odious past, let alone acknowledge that such policies continue well into the present day.
Shop ▾ In the second Democratic p**********l debate, however, candidate Bernie Sanders condemned a long-standing government policy his peers rarely admit exists.
I think we have a disagreement, Sanders said of fellow p**********l candidate Hillary Clinton. And the disagreement is that not only did I v**e against the war in Iraq. If you look at history, you will find that regime change whether it was in the early 50s in Iran, whether it was toppling Salvador Allende in Chile, or whether it was o*******wing the government of Guatemala way back when these invasions, these toppling of governments, regime changes have unintended consequences. I would say that on this issue Im a little bit more conservative than the secretary.
I am not a great fan of regime changes, Sanders added.
Regime change is not a phrase you hear discussed honestly much in Washington, yet it is a common practice in and defining feature of U.S. foreign policy for well over a century. For many decades, leaders from both sides of the aisle, Republicans and Democrats, have pursued a bipartisan strategy of violently o*******wing democratically elected foreign governments that do not kowtow to U.S. orders.
In the debate, Sanders addressed three examples of U.S. regime change. There are scores of examples of American regime change, yet these are perhaps the most infamous instances.
Iran, 1953
Iran was once a secular democracy. You would not know this from contemporary discussions of the much demonized country in U.S. politics and media.
What happen to Irans democracy? The U.S. o*******w it in 1953, with the help of the U.K. Why? For oil.
Mohammad Mosaddegh may be the most popular leader in Irans long history. He was also Irans only democratically elected head of state.
In 1951, Mosaddegh was elected prime minister of Iran. He was not a socialist, and certainly not a c*******t on the contrary, he repressed Iranian c*******ts but he pursued many progressive, social democratic policies. Mosaddegh pushed for land reform, established rent control, and created a social security system, while working to separate powers in the democratic government.
In the Cold War, however, a leader who deviated in any way from free-market orthodoxy and the Washington Consensus was deemed a threat. When Mossaddegh nationalized Irans large oil reserves, he crossed a line that Western capitalist nations would not tolerate.
The New York Times ran an article in 1951 titled British Warn Iran of Serious Result if She Seizes Oil. The piece, which is full of orientalist language, refers to Iranian oil as British oil properties, failing to acknowledge that Britain, which had previously occupied Iran, had seized that oil and claimed it as its own, administering it under the auspices of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, which later became the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, and eventually British Petroleum and modern BP.
The Times article noted that the U.S. shares with Britain the gravest concern about the possibility that Iranian oil, the biggest supply now available in the Near East, might be lost to the Western powers. The British government is quoted making a thinly veiled threat.
This threat came into fruition in August 1953. In Operation Ajax, the CIA, working with its British equivalent MI6, carried out a c**p, o*******wing the elected government of Iran and reinstalling the monarchy. The shah would remain a faithful Western ally until 1979, when the monarchy was abolished in the Iranian Revolution.
Guatemala, 1954
Less than a year after o*******wing Irans first democratically elected prime minister, the U.S. pursued a similar regime change policy in Guatemala, toppling the elected leader Jacobo Árbenz.
In 1944, Guatemalans waged a revolution, toppling the U.S.-backed right-wing dictator Jorge Ubico, who had ruled the country with an iron fist since 1931. Ubico, who fancied himself the 20th-century Napoleon, gave rich landowners and the U.S. corporation the United Fruit Company (which would later become Chiquita) free reign over Guatemalas natural resources, and used the military to violently crush labor organizers.
Juan José Arévalo was elected into office in 1944. A liberal, he pursued very moderate policies, but the U.S. wanted a right-wing puppet regime that would allow U.S. corporations the same privileges granted to them by Ubico. In 1949, the U.S. backed an attempted c**p, yet it failed.
In 1951, Árbenz was elected into office. Slightly to the left of Arévalo, Árbenz was still decidedly moderate. The U.S. claimed Árbenz was close to Guatemalas c*******ts, and warned he could ally with the Soviet Union. In reality, the opposite was true; Árbenz actually persecuted Guatemalan c*******ts. At most, Árbenz was a social democrat, not even a socialist.
Yet Árbenz, like Mosaddegh, firmly believed that Guatemalans themselves, and not multinational corporations, should benefit from their countrys resources. He pursued land reform policies that would break up the control rich families and the United Fruit Company exercised over the country and, for that reason, he was o*******wn.
President Truman originally authorized a first c**p attempt, Operation PBFORTUNE, in 1952. Yet details about the operation were leaked to the public, and the plan was abandoned. In 1954, in Operation PBSUCCESS, the CIA and U.S. State Department, under the Dulles Brothers, bombed Guatemala City and carried out a c**p that violently toppled Guatemalas democratic government.
The U.S. put into power right-wing tyrant Carlos Castillo Armas. For more than 50 years, until the end of the Guatemalan Civil War in 1996, Guatemala was ruled by a series of authoritarian right-wing leaders who brutally repressed left-wing dissidents and carried out a campaign of genocide against the indigenous people of the country.
Chile, 1973
September 11 has permanently seared itself into the memory of Americans. The date has also been indelibly imprinted in the public consciousness of Chileans, because it was on this same day in 1973 that the U.S. backed a c**p that violently o*******w Chiles democracy.
In 1970, Marxist leader Salvador Allende was democratically elected president of Chile. Immediately after he was elected, the U.S. government poured resources into right-wing opposition groups and gave millions of dollars to Chiles conservative media outlets.
The CIA deputy director of plans wrote in a 1970 memo, It is firm and continuing policy that Allende be o*******wn by a c**p It is imperative that these actions be implemented clandestinely and securely so that the USG [U.S. government] and American hand be well hidden. President Nixon subsequently ordered the CIA to make the economy scream in Chile, to prevent Allende from coming to power or to unseat him.
Allendes democratic government was violently o*******wn on September 11, 1973. He died in the c**p, just after making an emotional speech, in which he declared he would give his life to defend Chilean democracy and sovereignty.
Far-right dictator Augusto Pinochet, who combined f*****tic police state repression with hyper-capitalist free-market economic policies, was put into power. Under Pinochets far-right dictatorship, tens of thousands of Chilean l*****ts, labor organizers, and journalists were k**led, disappeared, and tortured. Hundreds of thousands more people were forced into exile.
One of the most prevailing myths of the Cold War is that socialism was an unpopular system imposed on populations with brute force. Chile serves as a prime historical example of how the exact opposite was true. The masses of impoverished and oppressed people elected many socialist governments, yet these governments were often violently o*******wn by the U.S. and other Western allies.
The o*******w of Allende was a turning point for many socialists in the Global South. Before he was o*******wn, some l*****ts thought popular Marxist movements could gain state power through democratic e******ns, as was the case in Chile. Yet when they saw how the U.S. violently toppled Allendes elected government, they became suspicious of the prospects of e*******l politics and turned to guerrilla warfare and other tactics.
Modern example: Egypt, 2013
These are just a small sample of the great many regime changes the U.S. government has been involved in. More recent examples, which were supported by Hillary Clinton, as Sanders implied, include the U.S. governments o*******w of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Muammar Qadhafi in Libya. In these cases, the U.S. was o*******wing dictators, not democratically elected leaders but, as Sanders pointed out, the results of these regime changes have been nothing short of catastrophic.
The U.S. is also still engaging in regime change when it comes to democratically elected governments.
In the January 2011 revolution, Egyptians toppled dictator Hosni Mubarak, a close U.S. ally who ruled Egypt with an iron fist for almost 30 years.
In July 2013, Egypts first democratically elected president, Mohammed Morsi, was o*******wn in a military c**p. We now know that the U.S. supported and bankrolledthe opposition forces that o*******w the democratically elected president.
Today, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, a brutal despot who is widely recognized as even worse than Mubarak, reigns over Egypt. In August 2013, Sisi oversaw a slaughter of more than 800 peaceful Egyptian activists at Rabaa Square. His regime continues to shoot peaceful protesters in the street. An estimated 40,000 political prisoners languish in Sisis jails, including journalists.
In spite of his obscene human rights abuses, Sisi remains a close ally of the U.S. and Israel much, much closer than was the democratically elected President Morsi.
In the second Democratic p**********l debate, when Sanders called Clinton out on her hawkish, pro-regime change policies, she tried to blame the disasters in the aftermath in countries like Iraq and Libya on the complexity of the Middle East. As an example of this putative complexity, Clinton cited Egypt. We saw a dictator o*******wn, we saw Muslim Brotherhood president installed, and then we saw him ousted and the army back, she said.
Clinton failed to mention two crucial factors: One, that the U.S. backed Mubarak until the last moment; and two, that the U.S. also supported the c**p that o*******w Egypts first and only democratically elected head of state.
Other examples
There are scores of other examples of U.S.-led regime change.
In 1964 the U.S. backed a c**p in Brazil, toppling left-wing President João Goulart.
In 1976, the U.S. supported a military c**p in Argentina that replaced President Isabel Perón with General Jorge Rafael Videla.
In 2002, the U.S. backed a c**p that o*******w democratically elected Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. Chávez was so popular, however, that Venezuelans filled the street and demanded him back.
In 2004, the U.S. o*******w Haitis first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
In 2009, U.S.-trained far-right forces o*******w the democratically elected government of Honduras, with tacit support from Washington.
The list goes on.
Latin America, given its proximity to the U.S. and the strength of left-wing movements in the region, tends to endure the largest number of U.S. regime changes, yet the Middle East and many parts of Africa have seen their democratic governments o*******wn as well.
From 1898 to 1994, Harvard University historian John Coatsworth documented at least 41 U.S. interventions in Latin America an an average of one every 28 months for an entire century.
Numerous Latin American military dictators were trained at the School of the Americas, a U.S. Department of Defense Institute in Fort Benning, Georgia. The School of the Americas Watch, an activist organization that pushes for the closing of the SOA, has documented many of these regime changes, which have been carried out by both Republicans and Democrats.
Diplomatic cables released by whistleblowing journalism outlet WikiLeaks show the U.S. still maintains a systematic campaign of trying to o*******w Latin Americas left-wing governments.
By not just acknowledging the bloody and ignominious history of U.S. regime change, but also condemning it, Sen. Sanders was intrepidly trekking into controversial political territory into which few of his peers would dare to tread. Others would do well to learn from Bernies example.
Nov 24, 2015 01:20:00 #
Nov 24, 2015 02:04:00 #
Alternet
Alter: to change, make different, revise.
Net: a device for snaring suckers. A fish trap.
Alter: to change, make different, revise.
Net: a device for snaring suckers. A fish trap.
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