Why the US secretly hates democracies
Comments (5) Published November 11th, 2006 under PoliticsUSA Today broke a story yesterday with a headline, “U.S. seeks better ties by aiding militaries”. In the first paragraph, the newspaper writes,
Concern about leftist victories in Latin America has prompted President Bush to quietly grant a waiver that allows the United States to resume training militaries from 11 Latin American and Caribbean countries.
The rest of the story elaborates on how a waiver has been lifted (quietly by the administration) on 21 countries, half of which are in Latin America. The story of the US (especially since World War II, but there is evidence of tamporing as far back as Theodore Roosevelt) in Latin America is full of meddling. We have propped up governments and taken down governments that are not favorable to our policies and way of life.
For many conservatives, whenever these arguments are used, they tend to say, “that was the old CIA” or “that was then”. Well, apparently, this is now. The spread of democracy is not the aim of the US as most (especially conservatives) claim. It’s the spread of democracies that are pro-American. In fact, it is probably fair to go as far as to say that our leaders in Washington prefer a pro-US government (Iraq in the 1980s for example versus Allende’s chile in the 1970s) rather than a democratically elected government.
Would I prefer Chavez-like (Venezuela’s elected president) leaders? No, however, that’s not my choice nor my government’s choice. If the spread of democracy is part of our foreign policy arsenal (which it is), then we take the risk of allowing anti-US politicians to come to power.
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