Unfortunately, the massive death and destruction that the U.S. national-security establishment has produced in Ukraine with its political gamesmanship involving NATO and Russia is not the first time that its interventionism has produced such a horrific result. In fact, the entire legacy of the U.S. national-security state form of government, which was brought into existence after World War II, is one of death, suffering, and destruction.
Mohammad Mosaddegh
Go back to Iran in 1953. The CIA ousted the democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh, in a coup. Hundreds of innocent people died in the process. Moreover, for the next 26 years, the Iranian people had to suffer under a brutal U.S.-installed and U.S.-supported dictatorship. When Iranians succeeded in overthrowing their U.S.-appointed dictator, they ended up with another brutal dictatorship. That was followed by a brutal regime of economic sanctions imposed by the U.S. government, which has brought more death, suffering, and impoverishment to the people of Iran.
The following year, 1954, the CIA ousted the democratically elected president of Guatemala, Jacobo Arbenz, from power. That led to a brutal military dictatorship, followed by a three-decade civil war that killed over a million people.
Since 1960, the U.S. embargo against Cuba has brought untold economic suffering to the Cuban people, not to mention the fact that it has destroyed the rights of freedom of travel, freedom of association, and economic liberty of the American people.
In the 1960s, U.S. interventionism in Indonesia led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people.
In the 1960s, the Pentagon and the CIA invaded Vietnam and unleashed massive death, suffering, and destruction in that country, not to mention wasting the lives of 58,000 American soldiers for nothing.
In the 1970s, the Pentagon and the CIA engineered a coup in Chile that left the democratically elected president of the country, Salvador Allende, dead. He was replaced by a brutal military regime that stayed in power for 17 years. Sixty thousand innocent people, including American citizens, were rounded up and tortured, raped, disappeared, and executed.
In the 1970s, the CIA became a partner in Operation Condor, an international rightwing kidnapping, torture, and assassination ring in South American that killed or disappeared countless innocent people.
In the 1970s, the Pentagon and the CIA allied with brutal military dictatorships in Latin America whose goons were murdering and raping thousands of innocent people.
In the 1990s, the Persian Gulf intervention, followed by the brutal regime of economic sanctions on Iraq, led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people, especially Iraqi children, which in turn led to deadly terrorist retaliation against Americans.
In the 2000s, the Pentagon invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, wreaking massive death and destruction in both nations.
And that’s just some of it. Other acts of deadly and destructive interventionism involve Korea, Libya, Syria, Nicaragua, Grenada, and many others.
Don’t forget the many people who have been — and continue to be — subjected to the U.S. national-security establishment’s dark-side practices of state-sponsored assassination, torture, kidnapping, and indefinite detention.
By their fruits you will know them. Death, suffering, and destruction on a massive scale are the legacy of the national-security state form of governmental structure, along with its foreign policy of interventionism.
How can anyone of sound conscience continue to support this evil form of governmental structure and this evil foreign policy? The exercise of conscience dictates a restoration of our nation’s founding governmental system of a limited-government republic as well as our nation’s founding foreign policy of non-interventionism. That’s the key to restoring a society based on liberty, peace, prosperity, morality, goodness, and harmony with the people of the world.
The post The U.S. National Security State’s Legacy of Death and Destruction appeared first on The Future of Freedom Foundation.
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