This is why they hate us: The real American history neither Ted Cruz nor the New York Times will tell you
We talk democracy, then overthrow elected governments and prop up awful regimes. Let's discuss the actual history
The soi-disant Land of the Free and Home of the Brave has a long and iniquitous history of overthrowing democratically elected leftist 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.
Iran, 1953
Mohammad Mosaddegh may be the most popular leader in Iran’s long history. He was also Iran’s only democratically elected head of state.
In 1951, Mosaddegh was elected prime minister of Iran. He was not a socialist, and certainly not a communist — on the contrary, he repressed Iranian communists — but he pursued many progressive, social democratic policies.
What happen to Iran’s democracy? The U.S. overthrew it in 1953, with the help of the U.K. Why? For oil.
This threat came into fruition in August 1953. In Operation Ajax, the CIA, working with its British equivalent MI6, carried out a coup, overthrowing 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
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 Guatemala’s natural resources, and used the military to violently crush labor organizers.
In 1949, the U.S. backed an attempted coup, yet it failed.
In 1954, in Operation PBSUCCESS, the CIA and U.S. State Department, under the Dulles Brothers, bombed Guatemala City and carried out a coup that violently toppled Guatemala’s democratic government.
The U.S. put into power right-wing tyrant Carlos Castillo Armas. For the next more than 50 years, until the end of the Guatemalan Civil War in 1996, Guatemala was ruled by a serious 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
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 Chile’s conservative media outlets.
Allende’s democratic government was violently overthrown on September 11, 1973. He died in the coup, 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 fascistic police state repression with hyper-capitalist free-market economic policies, was put into power. Under Pinochet’s far-right dictatorship, tens of thousands of Chilean leftists, labor organizers, and journalists were killed, disappeared, and tortured. Hundreds of thousands more people were forced into exile.
Yet when they saw how the U.S. violently toppled Allende’s elected government, they became suspicious of the prospects of electoral politics and turned to guerrilla warfare and other tactics.
Modern example: Egypt, 2013
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, Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Mohammed Morsi, was overthrown in a military coup. We now know that the U.S. supported and bankrolled the opposition forces that overthrew 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 Raba’a Square. His regime continues to shoot peaceful protesters in the street. An estimated 40,000 political prisoners languish in Sisi’s jails, including journalists.
There are scores of other examples of U.S.-led regime change.
In 1964 the U.S. backed a coup in Brazil, toppling left-wing President João Goulart.
In 1976, the U.S. supported a military coup in Argentina that replaced President Isabel Perón with General Jorge Rafael Videla.
In 2002, the U.S. backed a coup that overthrew 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. overthrew Haiti’s first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
In 2009, U.S.-trained far-right forces overthrew the democratically elected government of Honduras, with tacit support from Washington.
The list goes on.
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.
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