Thursday, December 07, 2006
They Hate Us For Our Freedoms: Democracy Promotion Edition
Erik Loomis has compiled a brief sketch of one chapter in the shameful history of US government policy in Central America - and the interaction of private business interests therewith - over the past century.
This vignette comes complete with a CIA-led coup to topple a democratically elected President (Jacobo Arbenz ), who was replaced by a repressive dictator more to our liking. This is the type of stuff that you don't really learn about in school, despite our infamously liberal academia.
I have always maintained that a portion of anti-Americanism is cheap, convenient, propagandistic, unfair, baseless and inevitable given our hegemonic position. But there are also myriad valid reasons for people from South America to Southeast Asia to harbor animosity. And it ain't for our freedoms.
We ignore history at our peril.
(h/t Robert Farley)
