World to U.S.: Butt Out!

Drop everything and read Stephen Kinzer's op-ed in the L.A. Times from yesterday, "U.S. History Lesson: Stop Meddling." Kinzer is author of the new book Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq. Here are some choice excepts from the op-ed:

Overthrowing a government is like releasing a wheel at the top of a hill — you have no idea exactly what will happen next. Iranians are not the only ones who know this. In slightly more than a century, the United States has overthrown the governments of at least 14 countries, beginning with the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893, and forcibly intervened in dozens more. Long before Afghanistan and Iraq, there were the Philippines, Panama, South Vietnam and Chile, among others.

Most of these interventions not only have brought great pain to the target countries but also, in the long run, weakened American security. . . .

Today, Latin America and the Middle East are the regions of the world in the most open political rebellion against U.S. policies. It is no coincidence that these are the regions where the U.S. has intervened most often. Resentment over intervention festers. It passes from generation to generation. Ultimately it produces a backlash.

Iran is a powerful example of the blowback from intervention. Kinzer goes into some detail about the 1953 CIA overthrow of an elected nationalist prime minister and re-installation of the brutal but pro-U.S.-government Shah Reza Pahlavi. (Kinzer wrote a book on this: All The Shah's Men.) In the op-ed he neglects to mention that when Iraq invaded Iran in 1980, setting off an eight-year bloody war, the Reagan administration sided with Saddam Hussein, providing him satellite intelligence and other help. The U.S. even shot down an Iranian civilian airliner over the Persian Gulf, claiming, incredibly, that it was thought to be a hostile military aircraft.

Do you think the Iranians might have a good reason to want the ability to deter the U.S. government?

When will the American people come out of their self-induced blissful ignorance and realize that "their" government is their biggest security threat? World to the U.S. rogue state: Butt out!

Hat tip: Jacob Hornberger of The Future of Freedom Foundation.