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I do consider the totality of the record. My point, which I will repeat, is that irrespective of our liberation of Europe, our righteous defense of South Korea, or our generosity towards a defeated Japan, in our hemisphere the US installed, financed and supported tyrannical governments or governments to our liking (cf. our support for Panama's independence, which Colombians grumble about to this day) due to our relative strength, imperialism, and our fear of communism as a form of eternal damnation in a hell that no country could escape once infected. It was like the Inquisition's use of torture to get heretics to confess and be saved, for what is a few hours of pain compared to eternal damnation.@Nickyjo, so now that you’ve given your thumbnail history lesson on Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, and Chile, tell us all about the atrocities the US committed in West Germany, South Korea, and Japan—or alternatively, tell us about the countries where the USSR was the benevolent supporter (of a government that wasn’t as evil as it was—Cuba doesn’t count). After all, if you are going to argue that the US is no better than the USSR (“country by country,” you said), then you have to consider the totality of the record.
But FDR put it well when he said of the first Anastasio Somoza, "he's a son of a bitch, but he's OUR son of a bitch." That does not discount or ignore the generosity of our people and government or other extraordinary efforts in the region to support democracy. The Soviets used to hypocritically claim that - aside from whatever Marxist visions they also preached - their dominance of Eastern Europe was due to their great losses in WWII at Germany's hands and the need of buffers. The US in a way "countered" that, using the Iron Curtain as our excuse for interference in our "backyard." When we overthrew the Government of Guatemala, the Readers Digest article was "How the Kremlin Failed in Guatemala." No mention of the Dulles Brothers' (one Secy of State, one CIA chief) connection to the United Fruit Company, whose troubles with the Arbenz government precipitated the US coup. Communism was the only lense we used to see the world. But our support of the first Somoza and our actions in Panama occurred before the Soviets capture of Eastern Europe. Then communism sealed the deal. We pushed Central American nations to be part of a treaty that insured that we and they would not interfere with each other's govenments. Then Reagan, because some how destitute and shattered Nicaragua's 3 million people dared to install a leftist government and posed a vital threat to us, suspended the US commitment to that treaty. After all, we were supporting Contras and mining their harbor, acts of war. Again, this is not unnatural. Our quarrels with Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua in the 1980s were no different than Julius Caesar's with Vercingetorix in Gaul in the first century B.C. It's what big/powerful countries have done to small/weaker ones for thousands of years. What makes the US exceptional and admirable (as well as normal and vulnerable to criticism) has been the better angels of our nature that surface in stuff like Carter's even handed human rights policies and our recent leadership against Putin.
I believe that it was Robert Burns who wrote --cue the Scottish accent -- "God grant the giftie gee us, to see ourselves as others see us." The US has needed a bit more of that with respect to Latin Americe. I close this screed with thanks if you read this far, and with a quote from a Cuban exile I worked with at a restaurant in 1961, ironically named Fidel. "I hate Castro," he said bitterly. "But the US got what it deserved in Cuba." A bit of an overstatement, but he knew the history of his country as practically our 51st state. (See the Platt Amendment.)
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