Overthrow
by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman


Hawaii
Cuba
Philippines
Puerto Rico
Nicaragua
Honduras
Iran
Guatemala
South Vietnam
Chile
Grenada
Panama
Afghanistan
Iraq

What do these 14 governments have in common?

You got it.

The United States overthrew them.

And in almost in every case, the overthrow can be traced to corporate interests.

In Hawaii, the sugar companies didn't want to pay export duties -- so they overthrew the queen of Hawaii and made it part of the United States.

In Guatemala, United Fruit wanted Arbenz out.

Out he went.

In Chile, Allende offended the copper interests.

Allende -- dead.

In Iran, Mossadegh offended major oil interests.

Mossadegh out.

In Nicaragua, Jose Santos Zelaya was bothering American lumber and mining companies.

Zelaya -- out.

In Honduras, an American banana magnate organized the coup of the Honduran government.

And on down the list.

Democratic Party critics charge that the Bush administration is ripping the United States from a long history of diplomacy by violently overthrowing governments.

Not true, says former New York Times foreign correspondent Stephen Kinzer.

Kinzer says that in fact the opposite is true.

"Actually, the United States has been overthrowing governments for more than a century," Kinzer said in an interview.

He documents this in a new book: Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq (Times Books, 2006).

Overthrow is the third in a series of regime change books by Kinzer.

His previous two: All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror (2003), and Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala (1982).

Together, they would make a remarkable "regime change" boxed set for the holidays.

Kinzer left the Times last year. He says that the parting was "perfectly amicable" -- although he doesn't sound convincing when he says this.

What is clear is that Kinzer is not comfortable with establishment rationales for the American imperial project.

This became clear during an interview Kinzer gave on NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross earlier this month.

Gross tried to get Kinzer to concede that if we hadn't overthrown these governments, the Soviets would have taken over, or today, radical Islam will take over.

Kinzer didn't give an inch.

For example, Gross said that had we not overthrown these 14 governments, "the Soviets might have won the Cold War."

"I don't think that's true at all," Kinzer responded. "In the first place, the countries whose governments we overthrew, all countries that we claimed were pawns of the Kremlin, actually were nothing of the sort. We now know, for example, that the Kremlin had not the slightest interest in Guatemala at all in the early 1950s. They didn't even know Guatemala existed. They didn't even have diplomatic or economic relations."

"The leader of Iran who we overthrew was fiercely anti-communist. He came from an aristocratic family. He despised Marxist ideology."

"In Chile, we always portrayed President Allende as a cat's paw of the Kremlin. We now know from documents that have come out that the Soviets and the Chinese were constantly fighting with him and urging him to calm down and not be so provocative towards the Americans. So, in the first place, the Soviets were not behind those regimes. We completely overestimated the influence of the Soviet Union on those regimes."

When Gross asked Kinzer what he thought of the "spread of radical Islam," Kinzer didn't hesitate.

"We sometimes like to think that our interventions in these countries don't have effects, but when we break down the doors of foreign countries and impose our own leaders, as we did in Iran and as we've recently done in Iraq, we outrage a lot of people," Kinzer said. "We like to think that everybody will soon calmly come to realize that by rational standards, this was a good thing to do. But that doesn't happen. We are not able to change cultures as easily as we are able to change regimes."

The United States had a hand in many other overthrows, but Kinzer limited his cases to those where the United States was the primary mover and shaker.

So, for example, while the United States played a role in the overthrow of Lumumba in the Congo, Kinzer says that it was primarily an operation by Belgium on behalf of large Belgian mining interests.

This might be the most important book to read as the United States approaches a showdown with Iran.

President Bush says he's trying to bring democracy to Iran.

In fact, Iranians had democracy once.

And we crushed it.

Kinzer is on tour promoting his book.

And he's got a gig at Northwestern University in Chicago, where he lives.

He's teaching a course in regime change.

Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor. Mokhiber and Weissman are co-authors of On the Rampage: Corporate Predators and the Destruction of Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press).

© Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

See 'Killing Hope' by William Blum. He documents US interventions abroad since 1945. His list is much longer.

__________________
1977 300d 70k--sold 08
1985 300TD 185k+
1984 307d 126k--sold 8/03
1985 409d 65k--sold 06
1984 300SD 315k--daughter's car
1979 300SD 122k--sold 2/11
1999 Fuso FG Expedition Camper
1993 GMC Sierra 6.5 TD 4x4
1982 Bluebird Wanderlodge CAT 3208--Sold 2/13

Hey, I see this afore!

Attached Thumbnails

 

why not complete the list....

Germany, Japan, etc........

and to be fair...you should report what the lefties have been responsible for............line 20 million deaths in the Soviet Union alone...plus millions in China...etc.

__________________
Proud owner of ....
1971 280SE W108
1979 300SD W116
1983 300D W123
1975 Ironhead Sportster chopper
1987 GMC 3/4 ton 4X4 Diesel
1989 Honda Civic (Heavily modified)
---------------------
Section 609 MVAC Certified
---------------------
"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche

Good thread Z.

Even though Zaire/Congo is not officially included, we've had dirty fingers there as well.

Former Wall St. reporter Jonathan Kwitny wrote a nifty book some time back:
"Endless Enemies: the Making of an Unfriendly World." He had some good stuff on Zaire, and some of the nonsensical projects foisted on that nation with the help of large bribes to Mobutu and the self-interesed "help" of large American and multi-national corps. only too happy to sell $billion ice-makers to eskimos, or projects roughly that inane.

Not surprising that your thread and Kinzer would not attract a lot of attention -- after all, Kinzer is a hate-America first kind of guy.

__________________
Te futueo et caballum tuum

1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

Guatemala declared war on us as did Chile, Iran, and all those other tin-pot dictators. We sure kicked some foreign butt and showed them.

I now know (thanks BHD) that because the lefties are more deadly, conservatives are better. Pondering: maybe we should hire mercenary lefties to fight Iraqi insurgents?

I'm sacrificing by burying my head in the sand. Anyone who does otherwise is engaged in pre-9/11 thinking. We all know what that led to: post 9/11 thinking.

__________________
Rev. Dr. G. Church of the SubGenius
It doesn't take a genius

You forgot Great Britain's Colonial goverment...

1775-1783, American Revolutionary War.