General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Do you agree or disagree with this general statement about where U.S. foreign policy should go? [View all]Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)But at least stop doing things we never ever needed to do-like arming the House of Saud and making it impossible for anything to ever change in that country.
By not opposing movements for social or economic change, I meant breaking our leaders traditional habit, in places like Latin America, Africa, and Asia, of using whatever means we could to prevent the impoverished majority from overthrowing the tyrants who held them down, or in the worst situations, imposing and preserving tyrants on various countries, as we did in Chile(where we destabilized and orchestrated the overthrow of Allende), the Congo(when we brought down Lumumba and put that fascist Mobutu in in his place)Nicaragua(where we kept Somoza in power for decades against the will of his own people and then organized a bandit army to put a right-wing government into power as soon as the people liberated themselves in 1979)in Guatemala(where in 1954 we turned a democratic country into what is still effectively a white supremacist military dictatorship), South Africa(where we armed the apartheid regime for decades and where our diplomats tipped off the regime to Nelson Mandela's whereabouts and thus caused his decades-long prison sentence), to name but a few examples.
We need to renounce all of that, admit that none of it should have happened, and agree never to let it happen again.