|
|
THE WISDOM FUND
http://www.twf.org
June 27, 2007
The Future of Freedom Foundation
Why They Hate Us
by Sheldon Richman
What's more obnoxious than a person who constantly whines about the injustices
committed against him while ignoring his own injustices against others?
A country that does the same thing.
We often hear American politicians and commentators reciting a list of
"terrorist" acts committed against the "United States." It typically includes
the 1982 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, the 1993 bombing of the World
Trade Center, the 1996 bombing of U.S. Air Force housing in Khobar Towers in
Saudi Arabia, the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Nigeria,
and the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in the port of Aden in Yemen. Reciting this
string of attacks supposedly demonstrates, without further argument, that the
United States has been the major victim of violence on the world stage -
unprovoked violence perpetrated by "Islamofascists" because we are free. Indeed,
it is widely believed that the attacks on September 11, 2001, were in part the
result of "our" failure to retaliate for the earlier attacks.
But this is sheer balderdash. The attacks, while often criminally misdirected,
were hardly unprovoked.
The last century-plus of U.S. foreign policy has largely been a story of
aggression and empire-building. American presidents have intervened and
interfered in every region of the world, not in self-defense, but in the name of
U.S. "national interest," which in reality means the interest of well-connected
corporations and their ambitious political agents who felt appointed to bring
order to the world. As a whole, the American people haven't gained by this - in
fact, they have paid dearly in money and lives. But not as dearly as those on
the receiving end of that policy. For all the pious moralizing about democracy
and human rights, American foreign policy has treated foreign populations like
garbage, beginning with the brutal repression of the Filipino uprising against
American colonial rule from 1899 to 1902. That war and its related hardships
killed 250,000 to a million Filipino civilians and 20,000 Filipino rebels.
How many Americans know that?
Since that time American presidents have intervened, directly or by proxy, in
countless places, including Cuba, Haiti, Colombia (Panama), Chile, Mexico,
Nicaragua, the Soviet Union, Iran, Iraq, Guatemala, Lebanon, the Dominican
Republic, Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan. On many occasions American
administrations have engineered regime changes (sometimes with assassinations)
to install leaders friendly to "American interests." Rarely has intervention
occurred without the murder of innocent civilians, degrading hardship for
survivors, and arms and (taxpayer) money for repressive "leaders." The paradigm
is the 1953 intervention in Iran, when the CIA helped drive an elected, secular
prime minister from office so the autocratic shah could be restored to power.
His brutal U.S.-sponsored repression of the Iranian people finally provoked a
religious revolution in 1979, creating an anti-American theocracy that has been
a thorn in the side of U.S. presidents ever since. . . .
FULL TEXT AND CIA'S 'FAMILY JEWELS' at
http://www.twf.org/News/Y2007/0627-Hate.html |
