This Is Why They Hate Us: The Real American History Neither Ted Cruz Nor The New York Times Will Tell You

The soi-dis­ant Land of the Free and Home of the Brave has a long and iniq­ui­tous his­to­ry of over­throw­ing demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed left­ist gov­ern­ments and prop­ping up right-wing dic­ta­tors in their place.

In the sec­ond Democratic pres­i­den­tial debate, how­ev­er, can­di­date Bernie Sanders con­demned a long-stand­ing gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy his peers rarely admit exists.

“I think we have a dis­agree­ment,” Sanders said of fel­low pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Hillary Clinton. “And the dis­agree­ment is that not only did I vote against the war in Iraq. If you look at his­to­ry, you will find that régime change — whether it was in the ear­ly ’50s in Iran, whether it was top­pling Salvador Allende in Chile, or whether it was over­throw­ing the gov­ern­ment of Guatemala way back when — these inva­sions, these top­pling of gov­ern­ments, régime changes have unin­tend­ed con­se­quences. I would say that on this issue I’m a lit­tle bit more con­ser­v­a­tive than the secretary.”

“I am not a great fan of régime changes,” Sanders added.

“Régime change” is not a phrase you hear dis­cussed hon­est­ly much in Washington, yet it is a com­mon prac­tice in and defin­ing fea­ture of U.S. for­eign pol­i­cy for well over a cen­tu­ry. For many decades, lead­ers from both sides of the aisle, Republicans and Democrats, have pur­sued a bipar­ti­san strat­e­gy of vio­lent­ly over­throw­ing demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed for­eign gov­ern­ments that do not kow­tow to U.S. orders.

In the debate, Sanders addressed three exam­ples of U.S. régime change. There are scores of exam­ples of American régime change, yet these are per­haps the most infa­mous instances.

Iran, 1953

Iran was once a sec­u­lar democ­ra­cy. You would not know this from con­tem­po­rary dis­cus­sions of the much demo­nized coun­try in U.S. pol­i­tics and media.

What hap­pen to Iran’s democ­ra­cy? The U.S. over­threw it in 1953, with the help of the U.K. Why? For oil.

Mohammad Mosaddegh may be the most pop­u­lar leader in Iran’s long his­to­ry. He was also Iran’s only demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed head of state.

In 1951, Mosaddegh was elect­ed prime min­is­ter of Iran. He was not a social­ist, and cer­tain­ly not a com­mu­nist — on the con­trary, he repressed Iranian com­mu­nists — but he pur­sued many pro­gres­sive, social demo­c­ra­t­ic poli­cies. Mosaddegh pushed for land reform, estab­lished rent con­trol, and cre­at­ed a social secu­ri­ty sys­tem, while work­ing to sep­a­rate pow­ers in the demo­c­ra­t­ic government.

In the Cold War, how­ev­er, a leader who devi­at­ed in any way from free-mar­ket ortho­doxy and the Washington Consensus was deemed a threat. When Mossaddegh nation­al­ized Iran’s large oil reserves, he crossed a line that Western cap­i­tal­ist nations would not tolerate.

The New York Times ran an arti­cle in 1951 titled “British Warn Iran of Serious Result if She Seizes Oil.” The piece, which is full of ori­en­tal­ist lan­guage, refers to Iranian oil as “British oil prop­er­ties,” fail­ing to acknowl­edge that Britain, which had pre­vi­ous­ly occu­pied Iran, had seized that oil and claimed it as its own, admin­is­ter­ing it under the aus­pices of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, which lat­er became the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, and even­tu­al­ly British Petroleum and mod­ern BP.

The Times arti­cle not­ed that the U.S. “shares with Britain the gravest con­cern about the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Iranian oil, the biggest sup­ply now avail­able in the Near East, might be lost to the Western pow­ers.” The British gov­ern­ment is quot­ed mak­ing a thin­ly veiled threat.

This threat came into fruition in August 1953. In Operation Ajax, the CIA, work­ing with its British equiv­a­lent MI6, car­ried out a coup, over­throw­ing the elect­ed gov­ern­ment of Iran and rein­stalling the monar­chy. The shah would remain a faith­ful Western ally until 1979, when the monar­chy was abol­ished in the Iranian Revolution.

Guatemala, 1954

Less than a year after over­throw­ing Iran’s first demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed prime min­is­ter, the U.S. pur­sued a sim­i­lar régime change pol­i­cy in Guatemala, top­pling the elect­ed leader Jacobo Árbenz.

In 1944, Guatemalans waged a rev­o­lu­tion, top­pling the U.S.-backed right-wing dic­ta­tor Jorge Ubico, who had ruled the coun­try with an iron fist since 1931. Ubico, who fan­cied him­self the 20^th-cen­tu­ry Napoleon, gave rich landown­ers and the U.S. cor­po­ra­tion the United Fruit Company (which would lat­er become Chiquita) free reign over Guatemala’s nat­ur­al resources, and used the mil­i­tary to vio­lent­ly crush labor organizers.

Juan José Arévalo was elect­ed into office in 1944. A lib­er­al, he pur­sued very mod­er­ate poli­cies, but the U.S. want­ed a right-wing pup­pet régime that would allow U.S. cor­po­ra­tions the same priv­i­leges grant­ed to them by Ubico. In 1949, the U.S. backed an attempt­ed coup, yet it failed.

In 1951, Árbenz was elect­ed into office. Slightly to the left of Arévalo, Árbenz was still decid­ed­ly mod­er­ate. The U.S. claimed Árbenz was close to Guatemala’s com­mu­nists, and warned he could ally with the Soviet Union. In real­i­ty, the oppo­site was true; Árbenz actu­al­ly per­se­cut­ed Guatemalan com­mu­nists. At most, Árbenz was a social demo­c­rat, not even a socialist.

Yet Árbenz, like Mosaddegh, firm­ly believed that Guatemalans them­selves, and not multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions, should ben­e­fit from their country’s resources. He pur­sued land reform poli­cies that would break up the con­trol rich fam­i­lies and the United Fruit Company exer­cised over the coun­try — and, for that rea­son, he was overthrown.

President Truman orig­i­nal­ly autho­rized a first coup attempt, Operation PBFORTUNE, in 1952. Yet details about the oper­a­tion were leaked to the pub­lic, and the plan was aban­doned. In 1954, in Operation PBSUCCESS, the CIA and U.S. State Department, under the Dulles Brothers, bombed Guatemala City and car­ried out a coup that vio­lent­ly top­pled Guatemala’s demo­c­ra­t­ic government.

The U.S. put into pow­er right-wing tyrant Carlos Castillo Armas. For the next more than 50 years, until the end of the Guatemalan Civil War in 1996, Guatemala was ruled by a seri­ous of author­i­tar­i­an right-wing lead­ers who bru­tal­ly repressed left-wing dis­si­dents and car­ried out a cam­paign of geno­cide against the indige­nous peo­ple of the country.

Chile, 1973

September 11 has permanently seared itself into the memory of Americans. The date has also been indelibly imprinted in the public consciousness of Chileans, because it was on this same day in 1973 that the U.S. backed a coup that violently overthrew Chile’s democracy.

In 1970, Marxist leader Salvador Allende was demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed pres­i­dent of Chile. Immediately after he was elect­ed, the U.S. gov­ern­ment poured resources into right-wing oppo­si­tion groups and gave mil­lions of dol­lars to Chile’s con­ser­v­a­tive media outlets.

The CIA deputy direc­tor of plans wrote in a 1970 memo, “It is firm and con­tin­u­ing pol­i­cy that Allende be over­thrown by a coup… It is imper­a­tive that these actions be imple­ment­ed clan­des­tine­ly and secure­ly so that the USG [U.S. gov­ern­ment] and American hand be well hid­den.” President Nixon sub­se­quent­ly ordered the CIA to “make the econ­o­my scream” in Chile, to “pre­vent Allende from com­ing to pow­er or to unseat him.”

Allende’s demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­ern­ment was vio­lent­ly over­thrown on September 11, 1973. He died in the coup, just after mak­ing an emo­tion­al speech, in which he declared he would give his life to defend Chilean democ­ra­cy and sovereignty.

Far-right dic­ta­tor Augusto Pinochet, who com­bined fascis­tic police state repres­sion with hyper-cap­i­tal­ist free-mar­ket eco­nom­ic poli­cies, was put into pow­er. Under Pinochet’s far-right dic­ta­tor­ship, tens of thou­sands of Chilean left­ists, labor orga­niz­ers, and jour­nal­ists were killed, dis­ap­peared, and tor­tured. Hundreds of thou­sands more peo­ple were forced into exile.

One of the most pre­vail­ing myths of the Cold War is that social­ism was an unpop­u­lar sys­tem imposed on pop­u­la­tions with brute force. Chile serves as a prime his­tor­i­cal exam­ple of how the exact oppo­site was true. The mass­es of impov­er­ished and oppressed peo­ple elect­ed many social­ist gov­ern­ments, yet these gov­ern­ments were often vio­lent­ly over­thrown by the U.S. and oth­er Western allies.

The over­throw of Allende was a turn­ing point for many social­ists in the Global South. Before he was over­thrown, some left­ists thought pop­u­lar Marxist move­ments could gain state pow­er through demo­c­ra­t­ic elec­tions, as was the case in Chile. Yet when they saw how the U.S. vio­lent­ly top­pled Allende’s elect­ed gov­ern­ment, they became sus­pi­cious of the prospects of elec­toral pol­i­tics and turned to guer­ril­la war­fare and oth­er tactics.

Modern example: Egypt, 2013

These are just a small sam­ple of the great many régime changes the U.S. gov­ern­ment has been involved in. More recent exam­ples, which were sup­port­ed by Hillary Clinton, as Sanders implied, include the U.S. government’s over­throw of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Muammar Qadhafi in Libya. In these cas­es, the U.S. was over­throw­ing dic­ta­tors, not demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed lead­ers — but, as Sanders point­ed out, the results of these régime changes have been noth­ing short of catastrophic.

The U.S. is also still engag­ing in régime change when it comes to demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed governments.

In the January 2011 rev­o­lu­tion, Egyptians top­pled dic­ta­tor Hosni Mubarak, a close U.S. ally who ruled Egypt with an iron fist for almost 30 years.

In July 2013, Egypt’s first demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed pres­i­dent, Mohammed Morsi, was over­thrown in a mil­i­tary coup. We now know that the U.S. sup­port­ed and bankrolledthe oppo­si­tion forces that over­threw the demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed president.

Today, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, a bru­tal despot who is wide­ly rec­og­nized as even worse than Mubarak, reigns over Egypt. In August 2013, Sisi over­saw a slaugh­ter of more than 800 peace­ful Egyptian activists at Raba’a Square. His régime con­tin­ues to shoot peace­ful pro­test­ers in the street. An esti­mat­ed 40,000 polit­i­cal pris­on­ers lan­guish in Sisi’s jails, includ­ing journalists.