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October 10, 2004

U.S. Interventions 1945 - 2004

Since 1945, under the guise of anti-communism and now anti-terrorism the United States has intervened militarily and clandestinely in the affairs of scores of countries. In these countries, under the auspices of the School of the Americas, the U.S. military, the State Department, and several CIA front organizations, the U.S. has helped set up paramilitary organizations, secret police and death squads as well as trained in the use and application of torture and murder. The U.S. has claimed that it is furthering democracy and self-determination. A quick look at the following list shows the lie of this doctrine. The real reason for these interventions is the expansion of global markets, the exploitation of the indigenous peoples, the support of corporatisation and the repression of democratic aspirations that might hinder their furtherance. U.S. policies have led to increased poverty, environmental degradation, habitat destruction, the rise of elites, militarism, and fundamentalism, the squelching of free media, corruption of free political expression, child labor abuses, near slavery in sweat shops and theft of the resources of third-world nations. Iraq is NOT an exception, but an extension of the ongoing foreign policy of the United States for the last sixty years. Preemptive war is the norm, not the exception. Attacking other countries who have not threatened our national security is the rule. The rule that might makes right supersedes the rule of law. The will of the corporation supersedes the will of the people.

U.S. foreign interventions since 1945*

• US support to Portuguese dictator Salazar, 1930s to 1974.
  
• US provides military aid to right-wing forces battling communist insurgents in Greece in 1947.
  
• Central Intelligence Agency involvement in Italian elections, involving propaganda and the alleged buying of votes, in order to prevent the Communist Party of Italy coming to power, in 1948.
  
• Largest contributor in UN-led Korean War from 1950 until 1953.
  
• US (CIA) and UK (MI-6) overthrow Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh of Iran (Operation Ajax) - 1953.
  
• CIA-orchestrated overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán in Guatemala (Operation PBSUCCESS) - 1954.
  
• US support for Ngo Dinh Diem of Vietnam from 1955 - 1963.
  
• US support for Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista until his overthrow in 1959.
  
• US support to the Apartheid in South Africa.
  
• US-backed establishment of François Duvalier as dictator of Haiti.
  
• US-backed abortive Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba in 1961.
  
• CIA involvement in the assassination of Congo's democratically elected leader, Patrice Lumumba. Belgium has since officially apologized.
  
• CIA involvement in the 1963 Canadian election.
  
• US support of Ba'ath Party coup in Iraq in 1963; good relations with Saddam Hussein until 1990.
  
• CIA-backed overthrow of Juan Bosch, the democratically elected leader of the Dominican Republic.
  
• CIA-backed overthrow of Jose Maria Velasco Ibarra of Ecuador in 1963.
  
• U.S. backs coup of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963.
  
• CIA-backed overthrow of Joao Goulart in Brazil in 1964.
  
• CIA-backed overthrow of Sukarno in Indonesia in 1965.
  
• Vietnam War - (1964-1975)
  
• Bombing campaigns against Laos
  
• Bombing campaigns against Cambodia
  
• CIA-backed military coup brings dictator Mobutu Sese Seko to power in the Congo in 1965.
  
• CIA support to military coup against Ghanese leader Kwame Nkrumah in 1966.
  
• CIA-backed military coup ushers in Regime of the Colonels in Greece in 1967.
  
• American support for Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War.
  
• CIA-organized military operation ends in execution of Ché Guevara in Bolivia in 1967.
  
• CIA-supported coup against Prince Sihanouk in Cambodia in 1970.
  
• CIA-supported military coup against President Juan Torres of Bolivia in 1971.
  
• American support for Pakistan in the 1971 Indo-Pakistani War.
  
• CIA corruption of the 1972 Australian election.
  
• U.S. support for the Chilean coup of 1973.
  
• CIA support for UNITA rebels in Angola, from 1976 - 1984.
  
• Corruption of 1976 Portuguese Election.
  
• Corruption of 1976 Jamaican Election.
  
• U.S. backs military rulers of El Salvador (1977).
  
• Support to ousted Khmer Rouge, from 1979 - 1993
  
• Following overthrow of the dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle in Nicaragua by the Sandinistas, the CIA supports the Contras from 1979 - 1989. Nicaragua still has not received the U.S. restitutions for military and paramilitary activities as ruled by the International Court of Justice and as supported by a United Nations General Assembly resolution.
  
• American intervention in civil war in Yemen, from 1979 - 1984.
  
• NAWAPA water project.
  
• CIA support for death-squads in El Salvador throughout the 1980s.
  
• Provision of military assistance to Hissène Habré of Chad leading to the overthrow of Libya-supported neutralist Goukouni Oueddei.
  
• Training of Nicaraguan Contras and support to repressive regimes in Honduras during the 1980s.
  
• CIA support to Gwangju Massacre in 1980.
  
• CIA and South African backing to a coup attempt in the Seychelles in 1981.
  
• American support for Israel in the 1982 Lebanon War.
  
• US invasion of Grenada, overthrow of Marxist government (Operation Urgent Fury) - 1983.
  
• Assassinations and bombings against anti-nuclear politicians in the American colony of Palau.
  
• US support to coup against Timoci Bavadra, democratically elected Prime Minister of Fiji in 1987.
  
• US invasion of Panama, overthrow of Manuel Noriega (Operation Just Cause) - 1989.
  
• Funding to the opposition presidential candidate, Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, in Sandinista-ruled Nicaragua. Chamorro won the election.
  
• UN-led Gulf War following Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. 1991
  
• US-led UN sanctions against Iraq, from 1990 to 2003. 500,000 children ide due to lack of medicines, sanitation, clean water
  
• The Helms-Burton Law against Cuba.
  
• US intervention in Somalia. 1993
  
• NATO bombing of Bosnian Serbs. 1995
  
• US-led bombing campaign, called Operation Desert Fox, against Iraq in enforcement of the UN designated No-Fly zones created to protect Kurds and Marsh Arabs. 1998
  
• US bombing of Afghanistan in 1998.
  
• US bombing of the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Sudan - in 1998.
  
• NATO's bombing of Serbia in the Kosovo Conflict. Officially aimed at preventing ethnic cleansing of Albanians. 1999
  
• US invasion of Afghanistan, overthrow of Taliban in 2001. Osama bin Laden is still at large.
  
• The Hague Invasion Act, 2002.
  
• CIA-backed abortive coup against democratically-elected President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela in 2002.
  
• US Invasion of Iraq, overthrow of Saddam Hussein – 2003. No weapons of mass destruction were ever found.
  
• American support in the overthrow of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide of Haiti in 2004.
  
• Support to the Venezuelan opposition in the run-up to the referendum on Hugo Chávez' rule. Many elements were linked to the above-mentioned coup in 2002.
  
• As well as these military interventions the United States also pursued and gained economic controls over many developing states. Some claim that the International Monetary Fund and World Bank assisted American foreign policy in this area. (If correct, this would also require implicit co-operation of other countries, as the US has only 18% of the IMF's voting rights.

* World IQ List of US Interventions