Americans are suddenly flabbergasted that a foreign government may have inserted itself into the recent presidential election. This reaction is both absurd and ironic considering the U.S. has made election meddling and regime change a permanent fixture of foreign policy.
It was August 15, 1953, the start of Iranian coup d’état, also known in Iran as the 28 Mordad coup. The governments of the United States and the United Kingdom sought to overthrow Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. This was part of the West’s attempt to enhance Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s stranglehold to the nation’s monarchy and prevent the government from examining the British-owned oil companies.
This event was historical because it was the first time that the U.S., a country that had mostly embraced a non-interventionist foreign policy, had interfered into the affairs of another nation unprovoked.
Why does this historical account matter? For weeks now, the mainstream media, known for its full support of toppling foreign governments and cheering on war, has peddled the idea that the Russian government interfered into the 2016 presidential election, though the CNNs and the MSNBCs of the world have been short on the exact details of how President Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin and his henchmen performed such a feat.
Pundits, news outlets and politicians across the country have embraced neo-McCarthyism, a throwback to the time when everyone had to be afraid of the communists, of the reds. Today, the U.S. government has adopted a witch hunt against Putin, despite President Obama declaring to former presidential candidate Mitt Romney in 2012 that the Cold War had already come to an end.
The ultimate conclusion now from the Central Intelligence Agency, despite the fact that the CIA is entrenched in both deception and scandal, is that Russia, without a shadow of a doubt, tipped the election scales in Donald Trump’s favor. On the surface, a lot of people are buying the idea – mostly because of partisanship, though – but when you start navigating through the sea of deceit, you start to ask a few questions.
Did Russia cause Hillary Clinton to have a “public position and a private position? Did Russia manipulate the Democratic primaries to be against Bernie Sanders? Did Russia cause the former Secretary of State to utter lie after lie? Did Russia cause Clinton to vote for the Iraq War? Did Russia cause Clinton to collapse on the 15th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks? Did Russia pay Clinton to deliver speeches to Wall Street, a group she pledged to rein in as president?
For months, the mainstream media and Clinton supporters have been more obsessed about the source of the WikiLeaks emails than the content of the emails themselves. The WikiLeaks emails have revealed an ocean of corruption, graft, deceit and arrogance between politicians, journalists, think-tank organizations and other in-the-know individuals who influence policy and bids for public office.
Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that Russia really did influence the U.S. election. How is this any different than what the U.S. government has done for the past 60 years? Is it somehow more nefarious than American policy of regime installation and change?
Clinton herself has headed regime change in the past.
At the beginning of her tenure at the State Department, according to vast chunks of reports and emails, Clinton and her team worked diligently in the successful ousting of President Manuel Zelaya, who was democratically elected. Because she refused to have Zelaya return to power, the U.S. prevented efforts from neighboring countries to return him to power. Honduras has since metastasized into a hot bed of decay, destruction and danger.
Ditto for Libya.
Again, this isn’t anything new. You can look back to 1964 in the nation of Brazil. The U.S. government supported a coup of President Joao Goulart because they feared it would morph into a communist state in the same vain as China. The U.S. lent its support to military leader Humberto Castello Branco by encouraging street rallies and providing fuel and arms to those who were manning the military. This was certainly U.S. President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s pet project.
The same type of cases occurred in Indonesia, South Vietnam, the Congo, the Dominican Republic and Guatemala and the list goes on (heck, even in Canada; John Kennedy wanted John Diefenbaker gone as prime minister). Although these are rather well-known to non-partisan news junkies and historians of U.S. foreign policy, there is another regime change that many are unfamiliar with: Iraq and the implementation of Saddam Hussein.
You remember Hussein, correct? He was the guy that supposedly had weapons of mass destruction and orchestrated the 9/11 attacks. Of course, this was a complete fabrication and regurgitated by the mainstream media (doesn’t that sound like fake news?).
In 1959, the U.S. government attempted to assassinate Abd al-Karim Qasim, head of Iraq. The CIA hired Saddam Hussein, but it was a failure. Four years later, the U.S. tried again and was successful. The CIA-organized coup led to the rise of Hussein and his Ba’ath Party. He returned from Egypt and served as the nation’s head of secret service. Supported by the CIA, the newly planted Iraqi regime executed thousands of communist and liberal activists and organizers. Years later, Saddam rose to power, only to be taken out by the very government that aided and abetted his ascension to the throne.
The U.S. has regularly intervened into the democratic elections in Afghanistan on several occasions, particularly in 2009 and 2014. This is interesting because thousands of men and women from partnering militaries have lost their lives just so Afghanistan can have democracy.
Do Americans have the right to be upset if it is true that Putin and the Russian somehow hacked the U.S. election? There’s an old saying: those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.
The American people have elected presidents time and again who have instructed the CIA and the U.S. military to engage in regime change, initiate foreign interventions and, yes, meddle in the elections of other countries, even if it doesn’t have anything to do with the U.S.
Clinton had a record of agreeing with this asinine foreign policy, and there is no reason to suggest that she would have suddenly tergiversated and institute a more humble foreign policy.
Although the president-elect, someone who likes to fiddle around with the truth, hasn’t explicitly said that he would maintain the American tradition of regime change, you can make a bet that nothing will really change over the next four years. Akin to his predecessors, particularly George W. Bush and Barack Obama, leaders who have started and expanded wars, Trump will not be someone who establishes a tame, quiet and non-interventionist foreign policy. He may not like past wars, but he will likely approve of future conflicts.
Whether or not Russia has delegitimized the U.S. election, the American people should first vent their anger and frustration to those in Langley, the Pentagon and Washington. These are venues containing the brains behind overseas election rigging and disposing of foreign leaders and governments they disapprove of.
And Putin is definitely one of the leaders on their list right now.
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