Spreading Democracy, the American Way
By Larry Romanoff, April 07, 2023
This is a list of all the "democracies" the US has installed in
other countries over the years:
1.
____________________
2.
____________________
3.
____________________
That’s the entire list. You can see that it’s blank. But how can that be?
We all know that the US has freed dozens of nations from their evil and
repressive governments, and installed loving democracies where people lived
happily ever after, swamped with freedoms and overwhelmed with human rights. We
know this because we’ve read and heard it hundreds, or maybe thousands, of
times. It’s in all the US history books. We’ve seen it in so many movies and
even read it in comic books when we were kids. It must be true. So why is the
list empty? How can that be? Sadly, the list is empty because everything we
were told was a lie. It is often said that if you tell a lie five times, most
people will believe it; the US as a “defender
of democracy” is one of those lies.
In the West, we have for many decades been subject to an incessant barrage
of high-sounding pronouncements about the US 'saving
the world from communism' and promoting democracy and freedom throughout the world. But that has
been little more than an effective propaganda campaign levied at the uninformed
and simple-minded, since even a casual glance at the facts on the ground reveal
something quite different. In fact, rather than promoting democracy and
freedom, the opposite is true. The US has instead been promoting
dictatorships and serfdom, and with great success over 60 or 70 years. We have a list below of 42 countries where the US not only installed and
financed a brutal dictator, but often and repeatedly sent in arms and troops to
put down local rebellions and revolutions against those installed friendly
dictators.
For all the talk about promoting democracy and freedom, there is no
instance – NO instance –
where the US has ever removed a dictatorship and replaced it with any kind of
benevolent government, electoral democracy or otherwise. You may be aware of
the statements by Major-General Smedley Butler who claimed that during
his 33 years as a US Marine, he functioned simply as “a gangster for capitalism” and
that all wars were bankers’ wars. On the topic of the US government installing
democracies in the world, Butler himself denied such a thing had ever occurred,
and said further, “The U.S. has routinely
destroyed democracy throughout the globe while its leaders claimed to be
spreading democracy.”
But if the US didn’t install “democracy” in all those places, what did they do? Well, while preaching democracy,
freedom and human rights at home, the US government was actually running around
the world installing dictatorships – about 50, at last count. Not only that,
while boasting at home about defending democracy, the
CIA and military were actually undermining and destroying functioning
democracies and replacing them with dictatorships.
There are many countries where the US military and/or CIA financed and led
revolutions to depose electoral democracies and install a dictator, often by
assassinating the incumbent president: Bolivia, Brazil, Haiti, Spain,
Philippines, Zaire, Guatemala, Iran, Greece, Chile, Fiji, Nicaragua, Indonesia,
The Congo.
Iran is one of the most obvious of these, where
the CIA arranged the overthrow of the beloved leader of a perfectly-functioning
electoral democracy and installed Shah
Reza Pahlavi as one of the most brutal dictators in
modern history. In 2000, U.S. Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright stated: “In 1953 the United States played a significant role in orchestrating the
overthrow of Iran’s popular Prime Minister, Mohammed Mossadegh. The coup
was clearly a setback for Iran’s political development. And it is easy to see
now why many Iranians continue to resent this intervention by America in their
internal affairs”. Yeah. No kidding.
There is Nicaragua, where the US initiated a revolution and
installed Somoza - a truly brutal man. When the population finally rose up in
arms (shovels and pitchforks, actually), and overthrew Somoza and formed their
own democratic government with proper elections, the US waged one of the most
unconscionable secret wars in history against that poor country. The stated
purpose was to "make the economy scream", and Reagan
accomplished that in spades. The standard of living in Nicaragua fell by 90%;
hundreds of thousands died of poverty and starvation, or were simply massacred
by US-funded military rebels. That was their punishment for evicting their US
master, and that story has often been repeated. There
is no shortage of documentation of CIA-trained and funded "death
squads" in Central and South America.
Another typical example of American reverence for the sanctity of democracy
is Greece, where in 1967 the US government arranged a
CIA-backed military coup two days before the country’s elections. Papandreou’s government had been elected in
1964 with the first (and I believe the only) only majority government in the
Greek history, but one that wasn’t sufficiently accommodating to American
business and European bankers, and had to go. To the US, Greece was just
another undeveloped property to be plundered. When the Greek Ambassador
complained to President Johnson that the American CIA and military action was
contrary to the Greek parliament and violated the Greek constitution, Johnson’s
response was to say “F... your parliament and f... your constitution.” He added
that US corporations had investment plans for Greece, and that “If your Prime
Minister gives me any talk about democracy, parliament and constitutions, he,
his democracy, his parliament and his constitution won’t last very long”. And
in fact, the US not only destroyed the Greek electoral government system but
forced the new military dictatorship to pass legislation outlawing every other
form of government. That’s democracy,
American-style.
Top Iranian military officials Hasan
Toofanian and Bahram Ariana with some Israeli officers in headquarters of
Israel Defense Forces in 1975 (State of Israel via Wikimedia Commons). Source
In the Philippines, US President Lyndon
Johnson had the CIA arrange for Ferdinand Marcos to assume power as
puppet-dictator, a man whose political career began at age 21 for killing the
man who had beaten his father in a local election. In
Iran, with the support of US President
Eisenhower, the CIA toppled the elected government of
Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh and installed Shah Reza Pahlavi as dictator. With CIA encouragement, he forced all
people to join his party or go to jail. Thousands were imprisoned or murdered.
His agents raided a religious school and hurled hundreds of students to their
deaths from the roof. The Shah’s secret police agency, SAVAK, was created in 1957 and managed by the CIA and Israel’s Mossad at all
levels of daily operation, including the choice
and organization of personnel, selection and operation of equipment, and the
running of agents. Torture methods included electric shock, whipping, beating,
inserting broken glass and pouring boiling water into the rectum, tying weights
to the testicles, and the extraction of teeth and nails. Iran under the Shah became a devoted US ally and a base for spy operations
on the border of the Soviet Union.
An aerial shot of the Parwan Detention
Facility in 2009 (a.k.a. the Bagram military prison). Source
This is where you go if you object to US-style 'democracy', the secret
"black-ops" torture facility at Bagram in Afghanistan. No one ever
leaves here without a proper appreciation of democracy and freedom. In fact, no one ever leaves here at all.
In Indonesia, Suharto was one of the most
brutal dictators in history. US President Johnson authorised a CIA-organized coup that brought Suharto to power in 1965,
supporting his rule for 32 years. Suharto continued his
savage atrocities under the support of seven US presidents: Johnson, Nixon,
Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton. Entire populations of towns and
villages were herded to central locations and massacred. Under the guidance
of the CIA, more than three million people were hacked to death with machetes,
in the largest and most savage slaughter in modern political history. But
Indonesia was now safe to be plundered by US multinationals.
In Pakistan, US and CIA-backed Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq executed his elected
predecessor, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1979, and by 1984 Pakistan was furnishing
70% of the world’s high-grade heroin. That same year, George Bush addressed a
group of Pakistani officials and praised the government of President Zia for its anti-narcotics program. Henry Kissinger called Pakistan a
“frontline state defending free people everywhere”, in spite of its record of
narcotics and torturing dissidents. Pakistan under Zia was the largest
recipient of US aid, over half of which was for weapons. But since US puppets
are only “President for Life”, Zia died in a mysterious
(CIA induced) plane crash in 1988. Still in Pakistan,
another US-backed political ‘asset’ and dictator, Khan initiated a massive
campaign of genocide, targeting Muslims, Hindus, Bengali intellectuals,
students and political activists. While President Nixon
looked the other way, three million people were killed in a few months along
with another 400,000 women who were raped.
Central and South America were not better in any respect, with the Somozas in Nicaragua and a long list of similar pathological
killers.
The US has constantly interfered in Haiti's internal affairs for well over
100 years, overthrowing elected governments and
replacing them with dictators, invading Haiti six or seven times to seize
government revenue on behalf what is now Citibank. More than once, US Marines
invaded the country, broke into the nation's central bank, and stole all its
money, including all Haiti's gold deposits. When Haiti refused to turn over its
banks to Citibank and its railroads to an American company, the US launched a massive invasion during which it re-wrote Haiti's
constitution, turned over almost all industry to American firms, disbanded the
country's army and replaced it with a US military police force, slaughtered
tens of thousands of civilians and enslaved hundreds of thousands of others to
build a railroad that would carry Haiti's resources to American ships. The US ran the country as a military dictatorship for decades and
viciously suppressed all local resistance. In American history books and US
government propaganda, the military was there only "to maintain order
during threatened insurrection" and, of course, "to protect American interests".
Guatemalan President Efrain Rios Montt speaks during a press
conference, Guatemala City, Guatemala, January 1983. (Photo by Robert
Nickelsberg/Getty Images)
The CIA organized the overthrow of Guatemala's elected government to
install Ríos Montt, another US-financed
pathological killer, and supported him during 40 years of CIA-trained and
sponsored death squads. Montt specialised in
torture, disappearances, mass executions, and unimaginable cruelty, resulting
in more than 200,000 victims. This was one of the most
inhumane events of the entire 20th century, much of it sponsored by US
President Reagan. And not only sponsored, but praised; Montt attended Reagan's Presidential Inauguration and was one of his good
friends. But the US-supported dictator had given
virtually all of his nation to the Jewish bankers and US corporations. At that time, the Rockefellers alone owned more than 40% of the arable
land in Guatemala as well as the entire railroad network and telegraph system,
and also the country's only port. Earlier, when the US was preparing for its
invasion of Guatemala, many of the planning documents were passed on to the
Guatemalan government who published them in the media and demanded an
explanation from the US. Of course, the State Department claimed the
accusations were "ridiculous", and added further, "It is the
policy of the United States not to interfere in the internal affairs of other
nations. This policy has repeatedly been reaffirmed." And Time
Magazine, always helpful, claimed that those documents were just a Russian
plot to embarrass the US. And then the CIA continued with its plans for
assassination and overthrow as if nothing had ever happened. Americans are not easily embarrassed.
In Peru, the people elected a socialist government
who threatened the almost total control of commercial interests they received
from the US-installed dictator. The US immediately sent in the CIA with a huge
cache of weapons and funding, arranged an overthrow of the government and the
appointment of a new dictator who immediately abolished all civil rights and
re-embraced American style free markets, permitting US multinationals to continue
freely plundering the nation's resources.
Transfer of Getúlio Vargas' body from Rio de
Janeiro for burial in his hometown, São Borja, Rio Grande do Sul, 26 August
1954. National Archives.Source
In Brazil, the people replaced a US puppet dictator protecting US
commercial interests with a man who began a program of reform and development,
including the nationalisation of Brazil's massive oil
industry, thereby removing American firms like the
Rockefeller-owned Standard Oil from their monopoly. He
was very quickly assassinated by the CIA,
and a new US puppet dictator appointed who again opened Brazil to unrestricted
exploitation by US corporations. In Columbia, a new
president planned land and corporate reform that threatened the criminal
monopolies of the American corporate and banking elite, leading to immediate
CIA-inspired violence, death squads and hundreds of thousands of civilian
deaths. The CIA still refuses to release its
thousands of documents on these issues, claiming US national security
interests.
By 1984 the SOA had been relocated to Fort
Benning near Columbus in Georgia, already the site of a huge military base. Source
Men line up in the Fourth Division at Fort
BenningCredit: AP:Associated Press
In El Salvador, the US government organised and encouraged the wholesale
slaughter of civilians in attempts to maintain its brutal dictator in power,
and repeatedly held fake elections with massive electoral fraud. Citizens
holding protests or strikes were openly murdered. US President Reagan provided
unlimited funds, weapons and other military aid and training that included the
dreaded 'School of the Americas' where all US puppet dictators and their
personnel were taught the latest techniques from CIA manual of civilian
repression and torture. In one brief campaign, more
than 75,000 civilians were massacred by the CIA-trained death squads which
would become ubiquitous in the Americas. All
social change was stalled while US corporations maintained their unhindered
freedom to plunder the nation's resources. In one event, when the citizens
succeeded in a revolution and rid themselves of their US-appointed dictator, the
US launched a military invasion to put down the rebellion and re-install its
dictator. Again, democracy, American-style. And of course, American history
books list the event as sending in the US military "to
protect American interests during political instability".
In 1970, Salvador Allende had been elected the President of Chile in a universally-acknowledged
clean election, though the US mounted an immense effort to have the election
declared void or "unconstitutional". Edward Korry, the US Ambassador to Chile, reported to Henry Kissinger that, "Once Allende comes to power, we shall do all within our
power to condemn Chile and the Chileans to utmost deprivation and poverty".
When that failed, Nixon demanded the CIA immediately organise a coup to replace Chile's new President. The CIA assassinated Allende and installed Augusto Pinochet as puppet
dictator to rule, terrorise, torture and slaughter his countrymen in great
numbers, in order to make Chile comfortable for the US multinationals that
were plundering its copper and other resources.
In so many countries, the US government fostered revolutions against
legitimate functioning democracies for the purpose of installing a dictator who
would be more compliant with US commercial interests - and it is commerce and subjugation, not freedom, that has been the driving
ideology behind US foreign policy, an
ideology that has been consistent for many decades. A country that is obedient
and compliant with US foreign policy interests will generally be permitted to
survive. But those countries acting outside that framework, in fact acting in
their best interest rather than that of the US, will very quickly become a
candidate for "regime change" - preceded by voluminous media attacks
to sway the American public against that nation. In the old days, they used to
be condemned as communists; today they are 'terrorists', but all else is the
same. The US has been promoting dictatorships,
poverty, misery and serfdom with great success for well over a century, and has not only overthrown governments but
often and repeatedly sent in arms and troops to put down local rebellions and
revolutions against those installed dictators.
The US has repeatedly proven it does not much care what kind of government
is in power, so long as it is amenable to control and will grant free rein to
US corporations. That has been true since the day more than 100 years ago that the US sent its navy to hijack Hawaii so that Bob Dole's relatives could
obtain control of the sugarcane and pineapple plantations. It was true with the
Dulles brothers and the United Fruit Company in Central America, and it has continued to this day in
Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. By US thinking, the two
best kinds of government are: 1) dictators that you install and control
(Suharto, Somoza, Shah Reza Pahlavi) and (2) democracies you can influence,
bully, subvert, and control (The UK, Canada, Australia, Austria, Belgium,
Ukraine, Romania, The Czech Republic). The worst kind is China’s one-party system that doesn’t easily lend
itself to outside meddling and subversion.
All the US blathering about democracy is just jingoistic hypocrisy for the
masses. Rather than spreading democracy and freedom, the US has always
propagated fear, repression and death, sowing dissent and overthrowing
legitimate governments, a reality twisted by the media to label the victims
with blame for their oppression. The US preaches democracy, but overthrows
democracies and installs, finances, and supports dictatorships by the dozen.
This has been true since the day more than 100 years ago that the US sent its navy to hijack Hawaii so that Bob Dole’s relatives could
obtain control of the sugarcane and pineapple plantations. It was true with the Dulles brothers and
the United Fruit Company in Central America, and it has continued to this day
in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. As
usual, American hypocrisy at its finest.
In its long determination to obtain global control for its masters, the US
consistently removed by stealth or by military force many acceptable
functioning governments, only to replace them with savage but compliant
dictators. Any country that wanted to develop its economy by protecting local
industries, by developing its own natural resources, by redistributing land to
the poor, by initiating health care, education and social security programs,
was labelled as "communist" or "socialist" and almost
always overthrown. And in all of this
worldwide "promotion of democracy and freedom", countless millions
have died at the hands of US troops, with the assistance of CIA and US military
planning, or at least with the tacit permission of the US government. The most commonly accepted death estimate
at the hands of the Americans is 30 million, with literally hundreds of
millions reduced to poverty, misery and migration.
And it isn't only the deaths but the brutality and torture, much of it done
with specific training received from the CIA - which has been active in torture
methods for at least the past 60 years. Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay are not
news; it's just that the US can no longer control the dissemination of
information as it once could. Even details of the ghastly and inhuman CIA
torture manuals have become publicly available, as has the news of the infamous
"School of the Americas" - the only university in the world dedicated to teaching the fine points of
torture and civilian population suppression. In all of this worldwide promotion of democracy and freedom, countless millions have died at the hands of US troops. American actions in Iraq, Iran,
Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Congo, Vietnam, Chile, Angola, and a panoply of
countries around the world have directly or indirectly led to the deaths of
tens of millions of people. “As an example, the CIA
conspired with Belgian colonial forces in the assassination of Patrice
Lumumba, the democratically elected but broadly pro-soviet leader of Congo,
which led to the rise of a brutal dictator and eventually to a series of civil
wars and famines which killed approximately 5 million people.”
In most cases, the US overthrew governments for the purpose of installing a
dictator who would be more compliant with US commercial interests – and it is
commerce, not freedom, that has been the driving ideology behind US foreign
policy, an ideology that has been consistent for many decades. A country that
is obedient and compliant with US foreign policy interests will generally be
permitted to survive, but countries acting outside that framework, in fact
acting in their best interest rather than that of the US, will very quickly become a candidate for “regime change” – preceded by voluminous media attacks to sway the American public against
that nation. In the old days, they used to be condemned
as communists; today they are ‘terrorists’, but all else is the same. Any country that wanted to develop its economy
by protecting local industries, by redistributing land to the poor, by
initiating health care, education and social security programs, was almost
always overthrown because it threatened American corporate
and banking profits.
It is not a secret that US imperialism has produced enormous profits and
economic growth for the US while keeping those countries impoverished for more
than a century. In fact, a major cause of US economic supremacy today is
precisely its active military and political colonisation of so much of the
world – the actual plundering of so many countries,
guaranteed by the installation of so many brutal military dictatorships – and all under the propaganda guise of
protecting democracy and freedom in the world.
This is all why the US has for so long been listed as the most hated nation
in the world. Former US President Jimmy Carter said, “We
sent Marines into Lebanon, and you only have to go to Lebanon, to Syria or to
Jordan to witness first-hand the intense hatred among many people for the
United States because we bombed and shelled and unmercifully killed totally
innocent villagers – women and children and farmers and housewives – in those
villages around Beirut. As a result of that, we
became kind of a Satan in the minds of those who are deeply resentful”. And it isn’t only in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan; the US is bitterly hated throughout the Middle East, Africa, Asia and South
and Central America. There are few parts of
the world today where Americans are welcome as a people, and for very good
reason.
US-Supported
Dictatorships
The US has always had a fond affection for repressive dictators, tyrants
and corrupt puppet-presidents, who have been aided, supported, and rewarded
handsomely for their loyalty to US interests. These
men usually rise to power through bloody ClA-backed coups, and rule by terror
and torture. Their troops receive
arms, training and advice from the CIA and other US agencies. It is US military
support that guarantees their hold on power – and the fact that they provide
free access to US corporations to exploit their countries’ resources. There are
no occasions where the US government has ever been held responsible in any way
for installing, supporting and protecting some of the worst human rights
violators in the world.
The US has, over the years, installed, financed, supported with cash and
arms, about 50 bloody dictators. In many of those cases, the US hypocritically
overthrew a democracy to install one of its own dictators who would be more
pliable to US foreign policy. There are also many cases where the population of
a country revolted and overthrew the US-installed dictator, upon which the US
sent in its warships to put down the revolution and re-install its dictator to
power. The Dominican Republic comes to mind as one of the more shameful
episodes in US history. Even worse, the US has
often sent in CIA hit squads to assassinate a democratically-elected leader who
wanted to eliminate colonialism and free his country from US control.
Below is an incomplete listing of nations where the US has overthrown a
government to install a dictatorship that was controllable and would permit US
multinationals to freely plunder the resources, unrestrained by conscience or
morality, and with an astonishing and hypocritical lack of concern for either
‘freedom’ or ‘human rights’. These are the nations
that became subjugated military colonies of the US; financed,
trained and controlled by the US government, the CIA and the State Department. This is only one act of a continuous play that has been on stage for well
over a century, and these are all facts of history, not in dispute by anyone,
not even the US State Department. The US not only installed, but in each case
protected, both politically and militarily, and supported with arms, cash and
military training, the corrupt dictatorships of:
Abacha, General Sani ----------------------------Nigeria
Amin, Idi---------------------------------------------Uganda
Banzer, Colonel Hugo ----------------------------Bolivia
Batista , Fulgencio---------------------------------Cuba
Bolkiah, Sir Hassanal ----------------------------Brunei
Botha, P.W. ---------------------------------------South
Africa
Branco, General Humberto ---------------------Brazil
Cedras, Raoul -------------------------------------Haiti
Cerezo, Vinicio -----------------------------------Guatemala
Chiang Kai-Shek ---------------------------------Taiwan
Cordova, Roberto Suazo ------------------------Honduras
Cristiani, Alfredo -------------------------------El
Salvador
Diem, Ngo Dihn ---------------------------------Vietnam
Doe, General Samuel ----------------------------Liberia
Duvalier, Francois --------------------------------Haiti
Duvalier, Jean Claude-----------------------------Haiti
Fahd bin'Abdul-'Aziz, King ---------------------Saudi
Arabia
Franco, General Francisco -----------------------Spain
Hitler, Adolf ---------------------------------------Germany
Hussan II-------------------------------------------Morocco
Marcos, Ferdinand -------------------------------Philippines
Martinez, General Maximiliano Hernandez ---El
Salvador
Mobutu Sese Seko -------------------------------Zaire
Noriega, General Manuel ------------------------Panama
Ozal, Turgut --------------------------------------Turkey
Pahlevi, Shah Mohammed Reza ---------------Iran
Papadopoulos, George --------------------------Greece
Park Chung Hee ---------------------------------South
Korea
Pinochet, General Augusto ---------------------Chile
Pol Pot---------------------------------------------Cambodia
Rabuka, General Sitiveni ------------------------Fiji
Montt, General Efrain Rios ---------------------Guatemala
Selassie, Halie ------------------------------------Ethiopia
Salazar, Antonio de Oliveira --------------------Portugal
Somoza, Anastasio Jr. --------------------------Nicaragua
Somoza, Anastasio, Sr. -------------------------Nicaragua
Smith, Ian ----------------------------------------Rhodesia
Stroessner, Alfredo -----------------------------Paraguay
Suharto, General ---------------------------------Indonesia
Trujillo, Rafael Leonidas -----------------------Dominican
Republic
Videla, General Jorge Rafael ------------------Argentina
Zia Ul-Haq, Mohammed ----------------------Pakistan
Here are some countries where the US military and/or CIA financed and led
revolutions to depose electoral democracies and install a dictator, in several
cases by assassinating the incumbent president: Bolivia,
Brazil, Haiti, Spain, Philippines, Zaire, Guatemala, Iran, Greece, Chile, Fiji,
Nicaragua, Indonesia, The Congo.
*
Mr.
Romanoff’s writing has been translated into
32 languages and his articles posted on more than 150 foreign-language news and
politics websites in more than 30 countries, as well as more than 100 English
language platforms. Larry Romanoff is a retired management consultant and
businessman. He has held senior executive positions in international consulting
firms, and owned an international import-export business. He has been a
visiting professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University, presenting case studies in
international affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr. Romanoff lives in Shanghai
and is currently writing a series of ten books generally related to China and
the West. He is one of the contributing authors to Cynthia McKinney’s new
anthology ‘When China Sneezes’. (Chapt. 2 — Dealing with
Demons):
https://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/politics/2187/.
His full archive can be seen at
https://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/ +
https://www.moonofshanghai.com/
He can be contacted at:
Copyright © Larry
Romanoff, Blue Moon of Shanghai, Moon of
Shanghai, 2023
