Michael Parenti: Making the World Safe for Hypocrisy

Why has the United States government supported counterinsurgency in Columbia, Guatemala, El Salvador and many other places around the world, at such a loss of human life to the populations of those nations? Why did it invade tiny Grenada and then Panama? Why did it support mercenary wars against progressive governments in Nicaragua, Mozambique, Angola, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Indonesia, East Timor, Western Sahara, South Yemen, and elsewhere? Is it because our leaders want to save "democracy?" Are they concerned about the well-being of these defenseless people? Is our "national security" threatened? I shall try to show that the arguments given to justify US policies are false ones. But this does not mean that the policies themselves are senseless. American intervention may seem "wrongheaded" but, in fact, it is fairly consistent and horribly successful. The history of the United States has been one of territorial and economic expansionism, with benefits going mostly to the US business class in the form of growing investments and markets, access to rich natural resources and cheap labor, and the accumulation of enormous profits. The American people have had to pay the costs of empire, supporting a huge military establishment with their taxes, while suffering the loss of jobs, the neglect of domestic services, and the loss of tens of thousands of American lives in overseas military ventures. The greatest costs, of course, have been borne by the peoples of the Third World, who have endured poverty, pillage, disease, dispossession, exploitation, illiteracy, and the widespread destruction of their lands, cultures, and lives. As a relative latecomer to colonialism, the United States could not match the older European powers in the acquisition of overseas territories, but the United States was the earliest and most consummate practitioner of neo-imperialism or neo-colonialism, the process of dominating the politico-economic life of a nation without benefit of direct possession. (Please read the rest of this important story by Michael Parenti, titled- Making the World Safe for Hypocrisy)