America's 100 Years of Overthrow

By Robert Sherrill, Texas Observer. Posted July 25, 2006.

George Bush and Dick Cheney may get your vote as the worst, the dumbest, the most venal, and the most dangerous bunglers in foreign affairs in U.S. history. But this book will show you that their equals have appeared before. Author Stephen Kinzer's Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change From Hawaii to Iraq (Times Books, 2006) is an infuriating recitation of our government's military bullying over the past 110 years -- a century of interventions around the world that resulted in the overthrow of 14 governments -- in Hawaii, Cuba, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Vietnam, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, Panama, Chile, Iran, Grenada, Afghanistan, and ... Iraq.

Stephen Kinzer, who spent years on various front lines for The New York Times, calls these regime changes "catastrophic victories," but of course some were more catastrophic than others.

Most of these coups were triggered by foreign combatants and then taken over and finished by us. But four of them, in many ways the worst of the lot, were all our own, from conspiracy to conclusion. "American agents engaged in complex, well-financed campaigns to bring down the governments of Iran, Guatemala, South Vietnam, and Chile. None would have fallen -- certainly not in the same way or at the same time -- if Washington had not acted as it did.

"Each of these four coups was launched against a government that was reasonably democratic (with the arguable exception of South Vietnam). ... They led to the fall of leaders who embraced American ideals, and the imposition of others who detested everything Americans hold dear. They were not rogue operations. Presidents, cabinet secretaries, national security advisers, and CIA directors approved them. ... The first thing all four of these coups have in common is that American leaders promoted them consciously, willfully, deliberately, and in strict accordance with the laws."

For all 14 regime changes, Kinzer assigns blame to the smug American belief that we are the most righteous people in the world and that we are obliged to force our version of righteousness on nations we judge to be backward -- especially if they have a bountiful supply of minerals that our corporations want (i.e., oil in Iran, copper in Chile). In short, our military conquests have been launched under the glorious banner of Bible-thumping Christian capitalists.

Yes, of course, you immediately think of George Bush, but he is just the last of a long line.

Though World War I is beyond the scope of this book, it must be mentioned simply to bring in the pronouncement of President Woodrow Wilson as he prepared to lead us into that war: "There is a mighty task before us. .... It is to make the United States a mighty Christian nation, and to Christianize the world." (Some of the more radical senators of that era doubted his piety and were convinced he wanted to help England and France win so that they could pay their huge debts to our arms merchants.)

Of the four regime changes launched independently by the United States, two were concocted in the sedate office of John Foster Dulles. (That office, as Kinzer reminds us, has been moved and reconstructed, down to Dulles' silver tea set, at the University of Texas, at the Harry Ransom Center.) Of this book's several candidates for the title Most Dangerous Nutcase, my odds-on favorite is Dulles, President Eisenhower's secretary of state. His influence over Ike in foreign affairs seems to have been as strong as Cheney's influence over Bush.

Dulles was the grandson and son of preachers, and, being exceedingly devout himself, he would have gone into the clergy if he had not decided to enter an even more suspect profession: law. For years he worked for some of the world's richest corporations, and as secretary of state he continued to serve them.

In 1953 the brutal, venal shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was pushed into exile by Mohammad Mossadegh, the democratically elected prime minister.

"Modern Iran has produced few figures of Mossadegh's stature," Kinzer says.

Iranians loved Mossadegh. He made clear that his two ambitions were to set up a lasting democracy and to strengthen nationalism -- by which he meant get rid of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co., which had been robbing Iran for half a century. Indeed, the British company had been earning each year as much as all the royalties it paid Iran over 50 years. Mossadegh intended to recapture those riches to rebuild Iran.

In a scheme to get rid of Mossadegh, the British enlisted Secretary of State Dulles; he in turn enlisted his brother, CIA Director Allen Dulles, and what ensued was a truly masterful piece of skullduggery. First came a propaganda campaign to convince the West that Mossadegh was a communist, which in the U.S. of the 1950s put him on the level of a child molester. Actually, Mossadegh hated communists, but most of our press swallowed the lie. Time Magazine had previously called Mossadegh "the Iranian George Washington" and "the most world-renowned man his ancient race had produced for centuries." Now it called him "one of the worst calamities to the anti-communist world since the Red conquest of China."

Texas Observer contributor Robert Sherrill's most recent book is First Amendment Felon: The Story of Frank Wilkinson, His 132,000 Page FBI File and His Epic Fight for Civil Rights and Liberties (Nationbooks, 2005).