Clueless Americans on Democracy

October 2nd, 2005

“The U.S. public is deeply skeptical about the priority President George W. Bush has put on promoting democracy abroad, and its experience in Iraq has made it more so, according to a detailed new survey released Thursday by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations (CCFR) and the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) of the University of Maryland,” writes Jim Lobe. “Only 35 percent of the 808 randomly selected respondents said they favored the use of military force to overthrow dictators, and 74 percent, including 60 percent of self-identified Republicans, said the goal of overthrowing the Ba’athist regime in Iraq and installing democracy there was not a good enough reason for going to war.”

In the upside down realm of Bushzarro world, the CFR runs “polls” on democracy, assuming the invasion of Iraq was about “installing democracy,” when in fact this was nothing less than a second choice excuse following the preferred excuse about Saddam’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction. Bush and crew have no intention of “installing democracy” in Iraq and it is amazing large numbers of Americans believe this, especially after scads of evidence to the contrary.

As a cursory examination of history reveals, the United States government and military have never been in the business of “installing democracy” and in fact have consistently strived for the exact opposite.

Since the end of World War 2, the United States has used military intervention in over 70 nations-and not for the sake of freedom and democracy (see William Blum’s A Brief History of U.S. Interventions:1945 to the Present).

So freedom-loving was the United States at the close of the Second World War, it used Japanese soldiers-sworn enemies mere months before-to fight against the Communists in China, who were in fact allied with the United States during the war.

In 1947, the U.S. interfered in the elections in Italy to prevent the Communist Party from coming to power through democratic elections. “For the next few decades, the CIA, along with American corporations, continued to intervene in Italian elections, pouring in hundreds of millions of dollars and much psychological warfare to block the specter that was haunting Europe,” writes Blum.

In this same period, the U.S. conspired with fascists in Greece to install a brutal regime and the CIA worked with the Greeks to set up the KYP, a secret police.

In the Philippines, the U.S. fought against the Huks and field tested many covert and psychological counter-insurgency tactics subsequently used in Vietnam and still used today in Iraq and elsewhere.

In Iran in 1953, the U.S. conspired against the democratically elected government of Mossadegh. “Mossadegh had been elected to his position by a large majority of parliament, but he had made the fateful mistake of spearheading the movement to nationalize a British-owned oil company, the sole oil company operating in Iran,” writes Blum. “The coup restored the Shah to absolute power and began a period of 25 years of repression and torture, with the oil industry being restored to foreign ownership, as follows: Britain and the U.S., each 40 percent, other nations 20 percent.” Iran’s current reactionary Islamic government is a direct result of this Anglo-American interference, although you never hear about this as the corporate media complains about Iranian terrorism and supposed desire to build nuclear weapons.

In the 1950s, the CIA conspired to overthrow the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala, “initiating 40 years of death-squads, torture, disappearances, mass executions, and unimaginable cruelty, totaling well over 100,000 victims,” as Blum notes. Arbenz had made the mistake of nationalizing the United Fruit Company.

Also in the 1950s, the United States used the Eisenhower Doctrine to intervene in the Middle East, attempting to overthrow the Syrian government, landed 14,000 troops in Lebanon, and connived to overthrow the nationalist Nasser of Egypt.

In Indonesia, the U.S. took out Sukarno, who gained independence from the Netherlands, and installed Suharto, a sadistic general who was responsible (with the help of the CIA) for slaughtering between 100,000 to 1.5 million Indonesians.

Vietnam is well-known: 3 million or so people killed, including 58,000 U.S. soldiers.

Nixon carpet-bombed Cambodia and his successful plot to overthrow Prince Sihanouk led to the ascension of Pol Pot and the genocidal Khmer Rouge. One-third or more of the Cambodian population was systematically liquidated through mass murder and starvation.

In June, 1960, the CIA had Patrice Lumumba assassinated in the Congo (reportedly on the direct orders of Dwight Eisenhower) and Mobutu Sese Seko was installed. “Mobutu went on to rule the country for more than 30 years, with a level of corruption and cruelty that shocked even his CIA handlers. The Zairian people lived in abject poverty despite the plentiful natural wealth, while Mobutu became a multibillionaire,” explains Blum.

In Brazil, Dominican Republic, Chile, Nicaragua, Grenada, Panama, and El Salvador-all across the Caribbean and Latin and South America, the U.S. enthusiastically supported dictators and made sure peasants, labor and community organizers, and even Catholic priests suffered torture and horrible deaths. Since the 1950s, the U.S. has waged a covert war against the people of Cuba. 75,000 civilians died in El Salvador alone and Henry Kissinger intervened on behalf of multinational corporations against the democratically elected leader of Chile.

And then of course there was Afghanistan and Iraq. If the CIA and military intelligence learned a lot deceiving and killing Huks in the Philippines, they really cut their teeth in the art of creating terrorist organizations in Afghanistan. In Iraq, after invading the country and ruthlessly and systematically destroying the civilian infrastructure, the U.S. imposed barbaric sanctions on the country, killing more than a million Iraqis over the period of a decade, half of them defenseless children.

Does this sound like a government “installing democracy” to you?

Of course, most Americans are completely clueless about all of this because it is not mentioned on Fox News or the History Channel. So when the CFR calls to ask questions for one of their surveys, instead of laughing in their face-when asked if invading Iraq (a second time) to install “democracy” was a worthwhile endeavor-Americans reveal their immense ignorance and demonstrate for the world not only how clueless they are but dangerous as well.

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