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to head the puppet government that the US would install after it topples the current one--if it ever succeeds--but you REALLY gotta wonder when the US claims to be "supporting democracy" anywhere. It hasn't done so anywhere--and, in fact, has done the opposite, sabotaging and destroying democracy and installing heinous dictators--since, oh, FDR and the post-WW II recovery plans in Europe and Japan. In fact, Iran is a good case in point. The US overthrew their democracy in the mid-1950s--because their very popular first president wanted Iran to control its own oil and use it for the benefit of the people (deja vu all over again), and installed the horrible 'shah' of Iran who inflicted the Iranian people with 25 years of torture and repression. The rise of the mullahs was a direct result of that horrid US policy.
Vietnam is another example. Their independence war hero Ho Chi Minh would have won Vietnam's UN-sponsored elections in the mid-1950s, and wanted to be an ally of the US, but the CIA nixed those elections and started prepping the war in which two million Southeast Asians would be slaughtered and over 55,000 US soldiers would die.
This miserable history of the US destroying democracy is never so apparent as in its brutal meddling in Latin America, especially during the Reagan horrors, during which thousands of teachers, mayors, religious advocates of the poor and other community leaders were slaughtered by US death squads operating from Honduras, in Nicaragua and El Salvador, and two hundred thousand Mayan villagers were slaughtered in Guatemala, after its mildly socialist democracy was overthrown by the CIA. The US furthermore destroyed democracy and installed vicious dictators in numerous South American countries.
Is the US interested in democracy today, anywhere? Or is it just pretending to, while our government serves the interests of US-based global corporate predators and war profiteers? Have we thrown off those global corporate predator and war profiteers overlords of our government? They are still dictating insurance mogul-run health care, fronted by rancid politicians whose hypocrisy on issues like abortion could, all by itself, pollute the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans; they are still dictating humongous 'defense' budgets that are, in truth, war budgets for US genocidal aggression in the Middle East and for pushing the US military presence into Latin America, through a country like Colombia with one of the worst human rights records on earth; they are still dictating our laws, and now even control our vote counting with 'TRADE SECRET' code in all the voting machines, owned and controlled by a handful of far rightwing corporations, with virtually no audit-recount controls. If the US government were interested in democracy, it would start with banning corporate-controlled voting machines, here, and restoring transparent elections, here.
But, very tragically, the US government is no longer the servant of the people; it is the servant of our corporate/war profiteer dictators, who are extremely hostile to democracy, here and everywhere else. So, when the US government and the corpo-fascist press gets all in a twitter over elections in Iran, it would be laughable if it weren't so bloody awful. Our government and its corporate/war profiteer overseers are no more interested in democracy in Iran than they are in Honduras--or Venezuela, or Ecuador, or Bolivia, or El Salvador, or Nicaragua, or Argentina, or Paraguay, or Mexico, or anywhere else. And whether or not the Iranian protestors are sincere becomes secondary to whether or not what they are doing serves US corporate/war profiteer interests. If they are sincere and manage to achieve a better democracy, and truly represent most Iranians, they will find themselves ousted, if not dead. That is one of the main REASONS that Iran now has a mullah-run system, because they cannot trust western-style democracy to protect them from corporate rule and worse. WE have taught them that. The true rulers of our country have made that very clear.
The success of the leftist democracy movement in Latin America is all the more remarkable because of this US history of virulent anti-democratic policy. Latin Americans are passionate about democracy, and have worked very hard to establish it and to defend it, one of the means being strong alliances such as the alliance between Chavez/Venezuela and Lulu/Brazil. The leaders elected by this remarkable movement have each other's backs, and have shown this time and again, in quite visible ways: Lulu's defense of Chavez; Chavez's defense of Correa in Ecuador; Batchelet (Chile), Lulu (Brazil) and Fernandez (Argentina)'s defense of Morales in Bolivia; Lulu's and Chavez's defense of Zelaya in Honduras, and Lulu's help to Lugo in Paraguay. United, they can achieve sovereignty and independence--and prosperity. "Divided and conquered," they cannot.
This new independence of Latin America also involves INDEPENDENT judgment--not dictated by the U.S.--of who these leaders of SOVEREIGN countries in Latin America choose to meet with, and make alliances with, in the interests of their countries and their region. The US can make alliances with the dirtbags running Saudi Arabia and Colombia. And Venezuela and Brazil can damn well make alliances with Iran. It is a very pointed message, on both Chavez's and Lulu's part. They and their compadres in most of the capitols in Latin America are fully aware of the US war machine, of the BAD intentions of US corporate rulers and war profiteers, and the utter hypocrisy of the US government's babble about democracy. They are in accord on asserting their sovereignty, and I believe they are acting in concert--with common assumptions and strategies--to assert it. It is the best thing that has ever happened--politically and economically--in Latin America. And I fervently hope that our overlords fail to defeat it, because its ultimate goal is PEACE.
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