America's Reputation -Democracy or Business

On Saturday evening, Kathy put up a post titled "The Armenian Genocide." In this post she has the following

When Democrats and liberals argue that the United States needs to rebuild its image abroad, they are using "image" to refer to America's reputation as a beacon of democracy and freedom, and as a defender of global human rights. They are not using the word "image" to refer to America's more recent image as a country that gives hypocritical lip service to human rights while arming and supporting savage dictatorships as long as said dictatorships support U.S. policies.

My disagreement is not necessarily what the Democrats and liberals may be saying, it is that what the Dems and liberals may be saying is a huge lie for public consumption and is totally out of sync with reality.

My memory of recent American history begins after WW2. American foreign policy has been geared to favoring governments that allow U.S. businesses free reign. This raises its ugly head when the U.S. installs the Shah as the head of government in Iran, followed a year later right in our back yard in Guatemala followed by further adventures in other parts of Central America and the Caribbean. These were the first of many, with this as the first two paragraphs

Unfortunately, the CIA “success” in Iran, which produced the CIA’s ouster of Iran’s democratically elected prime minister, bred a CIA “success” in another part of the world, Latin America. One year after the 1953 coup in Iran, the CIA did it again, this time in Guatemala, where U.S. officials feared the communist threat even more than they did in Iran.

This time, the target was the democratically elected president of Guatemala, Jacobo Arbenz, a self-avowed socialist whose domestic policies were in fact modeled after the socialist New Deal policies of U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt.

Later in the story, we read about the 'Democracy' part

Unaware that the CIA was orchestrating the military coup against him, throughout the crisis Arbenz turned to the U.S. government for help, innocently placing his faith in a government that was purportedly committed to advancing democracy. On Sunday, June 27, 1954, democratically elected President Jacobo Arbenz was ousted from office and fled Guatemala. The CIA replaced him with an unelected Guatemalan military dictator, Col. Carlos Castillo Armas, whom the CIA designated the “Liberator” of the Guatemalan people.

The Bay of Pigs was the failed U.S. attempt to make Cuba knuckle under and be a U.S. satelite. Chile followed 12 years later

Then, in 1973, faced with the democratic election of another self-avowed socialist in Latin America, Salvador Allende, the CIA supported his violent military ouster and the installation of a military strongman into power, Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

Added to the above countries whose government either the U.S. changed or was U.S. friendly and un-democratic are Viet Nam, Saudi Arabia, Nicaragua, Panama, El Salvador, South Korea, Portugal, Greece, Egypt, Liberia and the list goes on.

In the 1950s and 60s, the chant was we are fighting communism. Today, we are fighting terror. As Machiavelli said, this is our external devil, be it the selling the fear of communism or terrorism, it diverts the publics view from looking at the truth behind the curtain.

My thesis is that we are not defending human rights but the best interests of U.S. businesses.