Coos Bay Tom wrote:
Build nations that don't have their people fleeing for their lives for the benefit of keeping them in their own country where the belong.
The US has wasted TRILLIONS of taxpayer dollars on "nation building and attempting to spread democracy" in South and Central America for years and has failed miserably.
Rember Chile and its democratically elected president Salvador Allende in 1970? Using $10 million of taxoayer money, the US financed the CIA to help oust Allende and install its puppet Augusto Pinochet as president, ushering in 17 years of brutal repression, state-sanctioned torture, and government-run death camps grinding people to dust in the empty wastes of the Atacama Desert. Over 3,000 Chileans lost their lives, some 35,000 were tortured, and the country was set on a long and bloody course, the effects of which can still be felt today.
Remember the hurricane that devastated Nicaragua in 1988. Reagan refused to pledge a single penny in relief because he was to busy trying to crush the communist Sandistas in power then by illegal arms deals to do anything to help ordinary, non-communist citizens facing starvation.
Imagine being a poor farmer in Columbia in the 80s. Besides living in a country torn apart by civil war and terrorism, you’re constantly crushed by corporations like Walmart selling the same stuff as you at a fraction of the price—unless, that is, you grow coca. Since the US (and Nancy Reagan's just say no campaign) took the eradication of crappy party drugs very seriously, that meant coca had to go, too. But wait—since most coca is grown by these dirt-poor farmers on tiny patches of land, how do our governments avoid collateral damage? The short answer is: They don’t.
The anti-coca spraying wiped out entire communities, forcing people already on the breadline into severe poverty—even those who weren’t growing the plant themselves.
In 2009, Honduras went from being a Latin American backwater country troubled by cartels to one of the most unstable states on Earth. Following a violent coup, the country descended into a chaos marred by extreme human rights violations. The homicide rate leaped. Journalists and activists were murdered. LGBT people were targeted while lawmakers looked on. Police units began operating unofficial kill squads, executing suspected gang members in the dead of night.How did the Obama administration respond? By pumping in millions in aid and openly supporting the emerging Honduran dictatorship. When the Organization of American States wanted to impose sanctions in an attempt to restore democracy, the Obama administration stepped in and said “no.” When reports of the kill squads started coming in, the White House brushed them aside and kept offering assistance—leading to ridiculous situations like US DEA agents being implicated in the murder of a 14-year-old boy. The list goes on, but one thing’s for sure: If Washington keeps playing favorites in Honduras, chaos will follow.
Then there is Haiti. We been screwing them over since the late 502 when the US (CIA) supported the brutal dictator Papa Doc supposedly as a bulwark against communism. When the US tired of him they supported his son Baby Doc and funneled millions in taxpayer dollars in supposed aid which he promptly pocketed. Fast-forward to 2004, when a messy web of GOP stalwarts and elements of the Bush White House kicked off a coup that ousted the elected President Aristide and replaced him with a band of violent guerrillas.
In 1976, the military junta in Argentina was taking a beating on the international stage for its lackadaisical approach to human rights. The US's official line was that these murders were a “bad thing,” so when Argentine foreign minister Cesar Guzzetti was forced to meet with Kissinger, he expected a thorough chewing out. Instead, Kissinger offered his approval of Guzzetti’s tactics, along with recommendations for staying on the right side of Congress. Since Argentina was then dependent on American aid, this amounted to a blank check for Videla’s thugs to do whatever they liked. Had Kissinger threatened to withdraw aid instead of offering his support, 30,000 people might still be alive right now.
In 1979, El Salvador embarked on a long and bitter civil war between a right-wing government and communist guerrillas. Perhaps secretly hoping that this would be the Latin American campaign that went right, Reagan’s White House threw their backing behind the right-wing government, sending over $4 billion in “aid.” Know what the Salvadoran government did with that money? Yep: It financed death squads.These death squads didn’t just target communists, not by a long shot. In 1981, for example, an entire village was massacred, with around 1,000 people—including children—tortured, raped, and arbitrarily murdered. Another squad was responsible for nearly 1,200 human rights violations, including torture, the massacre of civilians, and the mysterious disappearance of children.How did Washington react? That’s right: They claimed the abuses were no such thing, praised the human rights record of the Salvadoran government, and continued to pump money into the murder squads until the war ended in 1992. But hey, at least the commies didn’t get in, right?
After nearly 40 years, Mexico’s tiny neighbor, Guatemala, suffering coups, military juntas, a bloody civil war, and genocides, aided and abetted at every step by a US that was simply trying to do the right thing.
Then Ríos Montt came to power in 1982, and things got even worse. Agasin Ronnie decided to win over Montt with military backing, even as his army began a spree of genocide. Over the next few years, the CIA aided Montt in a war that killed 200,000 people—a policy that forced Bill Clinton to personally apologize to Guatemala in 1999. All in all, hundreds of thousands lost their lives, millions were tortured, and America made to look idiotic, all because the CIA once wanted to save Guatemalans from a relatively nonthreatening communist dictator.
Finally, remember Operation Condor? It condemned thousands of innocents to death, and helped seven rogue states create one of the most complex terror networks ever devised as the CIA ignored it publicly and probably participated in it privately.
Yep, the US has really been successful at nation building and interfering in the internal affairs of sovereign Central and South American countries in the name of spreading democracy and making life bearable for the masses.
The US would be better of and the taxpayers a little less in debt if it would mind its own fv(k!n9 business and just stop the invasion of the US by illegals, criminals, terrorists and gang members at the border with the military. Period!