I focus on the United States first because I am an American citizen and have the most chance of making differences in the world by trying to affect my own society first. Chomsky talks about this in detail. I can talk about the Chinese governments abuse of the Uighur people but I am less likely to make an impact on that because I am not a citizen of China and have no real way of influencing their government. Moreover, China is a totalitarian society that doesn't give a damn about its own people. How much impact is someone from another country going to have on their policies? The same goes for oppressive governments like Saudi Arabia, Russia, Pakistan, and Iran.
The United States needs to be held to a higher standard for the reasons I have already stated. Moreover, the US funds and protects brutal regimes all over the world for military and economic reasons. The Saudis only control Arabia because they are fully funded by the United States. They would not exist otherwise. Ergo, the United States is culpable for the Saudi regime.
This is why history is so important as I have said several times before. If you don't bother to really look up what your own country has done in the past, and still currently does, then you can't make any serious statements for change. With this in mind, you might want to look up all of the regimes and wars that the United States has sponsored and caused over the last 200 years.
Can you guess how many countries in the Western Hemisphere where the United States has overthrown democratically-elected governments, sponsored military juntas, supported brutal right-wing dictatorships, funded proxy wars, and invaded and occupied sovereign soil? I won't leave you in suspense. The answer is pretty much all of them. Literally.
Remember folks, this is just the Western Hemisphere. Furthermore, this is just the situations that the US admits to, have been leaked, or proven. There are probably many more instances that are not known. Also, this is not including all of the atrocities in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and the rest of the Eastern Hemisphere. And, it does not include the for-profit prison slave labor here in the US. Look up the book The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander for this abomination.
So, when you say the US promotes human rights and is trying to correct the sins of the past, history and reality disagree. This is why people throughout the rest of the world laugh their asses off when the US claims to be the land of freedom.
Lastly, I apologize for the length of this post, but I feel this needs to be completely demonstrated.
View attachment 17393
1846 The U.S., fulfilling the doctrine of Manifest Destiny, goes to war with
Mexico and ends up with a third of Mexico's territory.
1850, 1853, 1854, 1857 U.S. interventions in
Nicaragua.
1855 Tennessee adventurer William Walker and his mercenaries take over
Nicaragua, institute forced labor, and legalize slavery.
He's ousted two years later by a Central American coalition largely inspired by Cornelius Vanderbilt, whose trade Walker was infringing.
1856 First of five U.S. interventions in
Panama to protect the Atlantic-Pacific railroad from Panamanian nationalists.
1898 U.S. declares war on
Spain, blaming it for destruction of the
Maine. (In 1976, a U.S. Navy commission will conclude that the explosion was probably an accident.) The war enables the U.S. to occupy Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines.
1903 The Platt Amendment inserted into the
Cuban constitution grants the U.S. the right to intervene when it sees fit.
1903 When negotiations with Colombia break down, the U.S. sends ten warships to back a rebellion in
Panama in order to acquire the land for the Panama Canal. The Frenchman Philippe Bunau-Varilla negotiates the Canal Treaty and writes Panama's constitution.
1904 U.S. sends customs agents to take over finances of the
Dominican Republic to assure payment of its external debt.
1905 U.S. Marines help
Mexican dictator Porfirio Díaz crush a strike in Sonora.
1905 U.S. troops land in
Honduras for the first of 5 times in next 20 years.
1906 Marines occupy
Cuba for two years in order to prevent a civil war.
1907 Marines intervene in
Honduras to settle a war with Nicaragua.
1908 U.S. troops intervene in
Panama for first of 4 times in next decade.
1909 Liberal President José Santos Zelaya of
Nicaragua proposes that American mining and banana companies pay taxes; he has also appropriated church lands and legalized divorce, done business with European firms, and executed two Americans for participating in a rebellion. Forced to resign through U.S. pressure. The new president, Adolfo Díaz, is the former treasurer of an American mining company.
1910 U.S. Marines occupy
Nicaragua to help support the Díaz regime.
1911 The Liberal regime of Miguel Dávila in
Honduras has irked the State Department by being too friendly with Zelaya and by getting into debt with Britain. He is overthrown by former president Manuel Bonilla, aided by American banana tycoon Sam Zemurray and American mercenary Lee Christmas, who becomes commander-in-chief of the Honduran army.
1912 U.S. Marines intervene in
Cuba to put down a rebellion of sugar workers.
1912 Nicaragua occupied again by the U.S., to shore up the inept Díaz government. An election is called to resolve the crisis: there are 4000 eligible voters, and one candidate, Díaz. The U.S. maintains troops and advisors in the country until 1925.
1914 U.S. bombs and then occupies Vera Cruz, in a conflict arising out of a dispute with
Mexico's new government. President Victoriano Huerta resigns.
1915 U.S. Marines occupy
Haiti to restore order, and establish a protectorate which lasts till 1934. The president of Haiti is barred from the U.S. Officers' Club in Port-au-Prince, because he is black.
1916 Marines occupy the
Dominican Republic, staying till 1924. !
1916 Pancho Villa, in the sole act of Latin American aggression against the U.S, raids the city of Columbus, New Mexico, killing 17 Americans.
1917 U.S. troops enter
Mexico to pursue Pancho Villa. They can't catch him.
1917 Marines intervene again in
Cuba, to guarantee sugar exports during WWI.
1918 U.S. Marines occupy
Panamanian province of Chiriqui for two years to maintain public order.
1921 President Coolidge strongly suggests the overthrow of
Guatemalan President Carlos Herrera, in the interests of United Fruit. The Guatemalans comply.
1925 U.S. Army troops occupy
Panama City to break a rent strike and keep order.
1926 Marines, out of
Nicaragua for less than a year, occupy the country again, to settle a volatile political situation. Secretary of State Kellogg describes a "Nicaraguan-Mexican-Soviet" conspiracy to inspire a "Mexican-Bolshevist hegemony" within striking distance of the Canal.
1929 U.S. establishes a military academy in
Nicaragua to train a National Guard as the country's army. Similar forces are trained in Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
1930 Rafael Leonidas Trujillo emerges from the U.S.-trained National Guard to become dictator of the
Dominican Republic.
1932 The U.S. rushes warships to
El Salvador in response to a communist-led uprising. President Martínez, however, prefers to put down the rebellion with his own forces, killing over 8000 people (the rebels had killed about 100). !
1933 President Roosevelt announces the Good Neighbor policy.
1933 Marines finally leave
Nicaragua, unable to suppress the guerrilla warfare of General Augusto César Sandino. Anastasio Somoza García becomes the first Nicaraguan commander of the National Guard.
1933 Roosevelt sends warships to Cuba to intimidate Gerardo Machado y Morales, who is massacring the people to put down nationwide strikes and riots. Machado resigns. The first provisional government lasts only 17 days; the second Roosevelt finds too left-wing and refuses to recognize. A pro-Machado counter-coup is put down by Fulgencio Batista, who with Roosevelt's blessing becomes Cuba's new strongman.
1934 Platt Amendment repealed.
1934 Sandino assassinated by agents of Somoza, with U.S. approval. Somoza assumes the presidency of
Nicaragua two years later. To block his ascent, Secretary of State Cordell Hull explains, would be to intervene in the internal affairs of Nicaragua. !
1936 U.S. relinquishes rights to unilateral intervention in
Panama.
1941 Ricardo Adolfo de la Guardia deposes
Panamanian president Arias in a military coup-- first clearing it with the U.S. Ambassador.
1943 The editor of the
Honduran opposition paper El Cronista is summoned to the U.S. embassy and told that criticism of the dictator Tiburcio Carías Andino is damaging to the war effort. Shortly afterward, the paper is shut down by the government.
1944 The dictator Maximiliano Hernández Martínez of
El Salvador is ousted by a revolution; the interim government is overthrown five months later by the dictator's former chief of police. The U.S.'s immediate recognition of the new dictator does much to tarnish Roosevelt's Good Neighbor policy in the eyes of Latin Americans.
1946 U.S. Army
School of the Americas opens in Panama as a hemisphere-wide military academy. Its linchpin is the doctrine of National Security, by which the chief threat to a nation is internal subversion; this will be the guiding principle behind dictatorships in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Central America, and elsewhere.
1948 José Figueres Ferrer wins a short civil war to become President of
Costa Rica. Figueres is supported by the U.S., which has informed San José that its forces in the Panama Canal are ready to come to the capital to end "communist control" of Costa Rica.
1954 Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, elected president of
Guatemala, introduces land reform and seizes some idle lands of United Fruit-- proposing to pay for them the value United Fruit claimed on its tax returns. The CIA organizes a small force to overthrow him and begins training it in Honduras. When Arbenz naively asks for U.S. military help to meet this threat, he is refused; when he buys arms from Czechoslovakia it only proves he's a Red.
The CIA broadcasts reports detailing the imaginary advance of the "rebel army," and provides planes to strafe the capital. The army refuses to defend Arbenz, who resigns. The U.S.'s hand-picked dictator, Carlos Castillo Armas, outlaws political parties, reduces the franchise, and establishes the death penalty for strikers, as well as undoing Arbenz's land reform. Over 100,000 citizens are killed in the next 30 years of military rule.
1957 Eisenhower establishes Office of Public Safety to train Latin American police forces. !
1959 Fidel Castro takes power in
Cuba. Several months earlier he had undertaken a triumphal tour through the U.S., which included a CIA briefing on the Red menace.
1960 Eisenhower authorizes covert actions to get rid of Castro. Among other things, the CIA tries assassinating him with exploding cigars and poisoned milkshakes. Other covert actions against
Cuba include burning sugar fields, blowing up boats in Cuban harbors, and sabotaging industrial equipment.
1960 The Canal Zone becomes the focus of U.S. counterinsurgency training.
1960 A new junta in
El Salvador promises free elections; Eisenhower, fearing leftist tendencies, withholds recognition. A more attractive right-wing counter-coup comes along in three months.
1960 Guatemalan officers attempt to overthrow the regime of Presidente Fuentes; Eisenhower stations warships and 2000 Marines offshore while Fuentes puts down the revolt. [Another source says that the U.S. provided air support for Fuentes.]
1960s U.S. Green Berets train
Guatemalan army in counterinsurgency techniques. Guatemalan efforts against its insurgents include aerial bombing, scorched-earth assaults on towns suspected of aiding the rebels, and death squads, which killed 20,000 people between 1966 and 1976. U.S. Army Col. John Webber claims that it was at his instigation that "the technique of counter-terror had been implemented by the army."
1961 U.S. organizes force of 1400 anti-Castro
Cubans, ships it to the Bahía de los Cochinos. Castro's army routs it.
1961 CIA-backed coup overthrows elected Pres. J. M. Velasco Ibarra of
Ecuador, who has been too friendly with Cuba.
1962 CIA engages in campaign in
Brazil to keep João Goulart from achieving control of Congress.
1963 CIA-backed coup overthrows elected social democrat Juan Bosch in the
Dominican Republic.
1963 A far-right-wing coup in
Guatemala, apparently U.S.-supported, forestalls elections in which "extreme leftist" Juan José Arévalo was favored to win.
1964 João Goulart of
Brazil proposes agrarian reform, nationalization of oil. Ousted by U.S.-supported military coup. !
1964 The free market in
Nicaragua:
1965 A coup in the
Dominican Republic attempts to restore Bosch's government. The U.S. invades and occupies the country to stop this "Communist rebellion," with the help of the dictators of Brazil, Paraguay, Honduras, and Nicaragua.
1966 U.S. sends arms, advisors, and Green Berets to
Guatemala to implement a counterinsurgency campaign.
1967 A team of Green Berets is sent to
Bolivia to help find and assassinate Che Guevara.
1968 Gen. José Alberto Medrano, who is on the payroll of the CIA, organizes the ORDEN paramilitary force, considered the precursor of
El Salvador's death squads. !
1970 In this year (just as an example), U.S. investments in Latin America earn $1.3 billion; while new investments total $302 million.
1970 Salvador Allende Gossens elected in
Chile. Suspends foreign loans, nationalizes foreign companies. For the phone system, pays ITT the company's minimized valuation for tax purposes. The CIA provides covert financial support for Allende's opponents, both during and after his election.
1972 U.S. stands by as military suspends an election in
El Salvador in which centrist José Napoleón Duarte was favored to win. (Compare with the emphasis placed on the 1982 elections.)
1973 U.S.-supported military coup kills Allende and brings Augusto Pinochet Ugarte to power. Pinochet imprisons well over a hundred thousand
Chileans (torture and rape are the usual methods of interrogation), terminates civil liberties, abolishes unions, extends the work week to 48 hours, and reverses Allende's land reforms.
1973 Military takes power in
Uruguay, supported by U.S. The subsequent repression reportedly features the world's highest percentage of the population imprisoned for political reasons.
1974 Office of Public Safety is abolished when it is revealed that police are being taught torture techniques. !
1976 Election of Jimmy Carter leads to a new emphasis on human rights in Central America. Carter cuts off aid to the
Guatemalan military (or tries to; some slips through) and reduces aid to
El Salvador. !
1979 Ratification of the Panama Canal treaty which is to return the Canal to
Panama by 1999.
1980 A right-wing junta takes over in
El Salvador. U.S. begins massively supporting El Salvador, assisting the military in its fight against FMLN guerrillas. Death squads proliferate; Archbishop Romero is assassinated by right-wing terrorists; 35,000 civilians are killed in 1978-81. The rape and murder of four U.S. churchwomen results in the suspension of U.S. military aid for one month.
The U.S. demands that the junta undertake land reform. Within 3 years, however, the reform program is halted by the oligarchy.
1980 U.S., seeking a stable base for its actions in El Salvador and Nicaragua, tells the
Honduran military to clean up its act and hold elections. The U.S. starts pouring in $100 million of aid a year and basing the
contras on Honduran territory.
Death squads are also active in Honduras, and the
contras tend to act as a state within a state.
1981 The CIA steps in to organize the
contras in
Nicaragua, who started the previous year as a group of 60 ex-National Guardsmen; by 1985 there are about 12,000 of them. 46 of the 48 top military leaders are ex-Guardsmen. The U.S. also sets up an economic embargo of Nicaragua and pressures the IMF and the World Bank to limit or halt loans to Nicaragua.
1981 Gen. Torrijos of
Panama is killed in a plane crash. There is a suspicion of CIA involvement, due to Torrijos' nationalism and friendly relations with Cuba.
1982 A coup brings Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt to power in
Guatemala, and gives the Reagan administration the opportunity to increase military aid. Ríos Montt's evangelical beliefs do not prevent him from accelerating the counterinsurgency campaign.
1983 Another coup in
Guatemala replaces Ríos Montt. The new President, Oscar Mejía Víctores, was trained by the U.S. and seems to have cleared his coup beforehand with U.S. authorities.
1983 U.S. troops take over tiny
Granada. Rather oddly, it intervenes shortly after a coup has overthrown the previous, socialist leader. One of the justifications for the action is the building of a new airport with Cuban help, which Granada claimed was for tourism and Reagan argued was for Soviet use. Later the U.S. announces plans to finish the airport... to develop tourism.
1983 Boland Amendment prohibits CIA and Defense Dept. from spending money to overthrow the government of
Nicaragua-- a law the Reagan administration cheerfully violates.
1984 CIA mines three
Nicaraguan harbors. Nicaragua takes this action to the World Court, which brings an $18 billion judgment against the U.S. The U.S. refuses to recognize the Court's jurisdiction in the case.
1984 U.S. spends $10 million to orchestrate elections in
El Salvador-- something of a farce, since left-wing parties are under heavy repression, and the military has already declared that it will not answer to the elected president.
1989 U.S. invades
Panama to dislodge CIA boy gone wrong Manuel Noriega, an event which marks the evolution of the U.S.'s favorite excuse from Communism to drugs.
1996 The U.S. battles global Communism by extending most-favored-nation trading status for China, and tightening the trade embargo on Castro's
Cuba.
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