Overthrow: A Synopsis

Summary:
Stephen Kinzer lays out all of the situations when the American government has overthrown a foreign government. It is indeed a long list: Hawaii, Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Nicaragua, Honduras, Iran, Chile, South Vietnam, Guatemala, Grenada, Panama, Iraq, and Afghanistan. In most of the situations, our reasons seem incredibly unjust. Unfortunately, the book is far too superficial to feel completely confident in all of its conclusions. Either way though, in the end our actions rarely resulted with us achieving our aims in the long run and in many of the situations we should feel ashamed for what we did.

The idea of the book is brilliant. It means to show how badly America has been at regime change and how many times our reasons for intervening were both bunk and unjust. Unfortunately, the book lacks solid detail and analysis, and gives the feeling that the author wanted to rush through the book so he could fit everything in. Overall it makes a good point, but for the individual cases, I feel that I would need to do more research to draw any real conclusions. (This is of course the exact opposite feeling you get from Samantha Power's book - you don't feel like she left anything out.)

The author notes that he has left Indonesia, Brazil, the Congo, Mexico, Haiti and the Dominican Republic off the list because for the first three the US didn't play the decisive role in the overthrow and in the last three the US invaded but did not overthrow the governments. Kinzer also does a good job of giving us a list of villains, including John Foster Dulles, Henry Kissinger, and everyone in the George W. Bush administration.

Kinzer breaks the book into three sections based on the types of intervention. The first section describes overthrows that were based largely on imperialistic grounds. This isn't how it was justified to the public, but based on the evidence Kinzer gives us, there is little doubt the reasons were to expand our power and protect American business. The following countries fall into this list: Hawaii (now a state), Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Nicaragua, and Honduras. Of these countries, Cuba, the Philippines, Nicaragua and Honduras have had a tumultuous history since our intervention and were much more peaceful beforehand.

The second part shows covert action against supposed leaders leaning towards communism. Countries included in this section are Iran, Chile, South Vietnam and Guatemala. In each of these countries though, threat of communism was either misinterpreted or a veil to disguise imperialist reasons.

Presidents and others had no doubt the Soviets were manipulating Mossadegh [Iran], Arbenz [Guatemala], and Allende [Chile]. That turned out to have been wrong. The three leaders had differing views of Marxism - Mossadegh detested it, Arbenz sympathized with it, Allende embraced it - but they were nationalists above all.

In Guatemala and Chile, various American business interests (United Fruit, telephone, railroad, and others) would have been hurt by the popular socialist / nationalist governments. And in Iran, Mossadegh, their popular leader, wanted to take back control of the country's oil wealth from foreign companies. Our current poor relations with Iran can be traced back to the moment we overthrew Mossadegh. And our history in Chile, where we overthrew a popularly elected president and supported a violent far-right government, is something we should forever be ashamed of. Vietnam was of course unlike the other three in that we were overthrowing a leader while we were aiding that country in war - we hoped to get a leader who would be better in the war against North Vietnam.

The third section focuses on actual invasions. Grenada, Panama, Afghanistan, and Iraq all fall into this section. We know much about the later two; I think most would say that our invasion of Afghanistan was just, but we turned our attention to Iraq far too soon, and Iraq was neither just nor has it been managed well. The first two also might be argued as somewhat legit (Noriega and the New Jewel leaders were ruining their countries), but again, poorly managed and unstable following our intervention (the looting in Panama is all too similar to Iraq).

What we see throughout the book, and still present today, is American aggression towards countries that attempt to exercise independence and empowerment. On the flip side, America exhibits tolerance for oppression and violence by leaders of countries that support us and give free reign to our businesses. Our role in Iran has had disastrous effects on our foreign policy, we are still paying for preventing elections in Cuba, and we should be seriously ashamed by what we tolerated in Chile and elsewhere in the name of propping up governments that would be anti-communist and pro-American (but not democratic). We should have learned our lesson before Iraq, and we should mind it when we deal with someone like Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan.

Red Scared

Summary:
Communism v. Capitalism is really equality (fairness) v. efficiency. In gov't, want more fairness. In business you want more efficiency so you can have a higher overall standard of living. But market failures lead to necessity of gov't intervention to fix some inequities.

A coworker and good friend of mine likes to make a show of her support for communism around me. I think in part she plays it up because it gets me all agitated - apparently people get a kick out of seeing me in an excited state. Each time she brings it up I make it clear that I think communism is unrealistic - that the theory obviously doesn't understand human nature. The point being that communism can never work without being propped up by authoritarian government.

What I really should point out though is that even if communism was implemented democratically, it would still be bad policy. In my mind, free market and communism represent opposite extremes of efficiency versus equity / fairness. I believe that government should be much closer to the extreme of equity and fairness, which is why I firmly believe in a government of collective decision-making (democracy).

In the business world though, I lean more towards efficiency because with more efficiency, you can have a higher overall standard of living. Communism has never been able to achieve the level of comfort and average wealth that free markets have. This is the case in part because in a free market you have a select group of people managing the assets and making decisions. The basic idea of communism is the opposite - collective ownership of the means of production. In this scenario, all workers make all decisions collectively and share the risk and reward. While collectives and co-ops can be successful, on the whole I think they are far less efficient. On a bigger scale where profit motives disappear, efficiency decreases.

I will acknowledge that I am oversimplifying economic theory significantly in places, but I think the overall point still stands. And I know I am not breaking any new ground necessarily, but if I were I would likely be in a Econ PhD program.

Now, one more point before I conclude. While I clearly celebrate the virtues of free market capitalism, we must also acknowledge what a lot of the strict free marketeers won't: Markets aren't perfect. There exist glaring market failures that government has a role in correcting. One obvious example of this is the environment. While our economy puts a price on land, it doesn't put a price on air. Without government intervention, businesses would not have worked to decrease their environmental impact in the 80s and 90s (we still have a long way to go). And without further intervention, businesses will not decrease their green house gas emissions.

Another example of a market failure is unemployment. While a certain amount of employment is necessary for a stable and efficient economy (theory holds that "Natural Unemployment" protects against wage inflation), any decent sense of fairness requires that government intervene to take of those that are left out. This is why social welfare programs are necessary.

There will always be a trade-off between fairness and efficiency. And like a good moderate, I believe that the only way to be successful is to keep both in mind. An efficient system allows us all to have the best life we can - to enjoy both comforts and necessities. And a fair system helps us take care of people and problems that the market doesn't value.

Punch Someone in the Face

So I finally finished A Problem From Hell. I don't think I need to say too much about it, since I posted about it when I first started reading, and ever since it has obviously had a huge impact on my beliefs and writings. In fact, I think I will let a good friend of mine sum it up:

Everytime I look at that book on my shelf it makes me angry to think about. I think about how much of a parallel situation Sudan is with Rwanda or the Balkans and how we're absolutely doomed to repeat ourselves. Its amazing that this country has fallen into exactly the same pattern. A few vocal individuals supporting action, lip service by the higher ups, and not nearly enough outrage by the general public. I mean, how can this not be a topic of debate for the upcoming election? It makes me want to punch someone in the face!

Seriously, that sums up everything I have been thinking about that book. It is the most enraging book I have ever read. It makes me disgusted at almost everyone - from politicians I thought I respected (Colin Powell, Bill Clinton, Bob Dole, etc.) to family and friends who aren't as outraged as I am.

And yet I feel quixotic when I try to convince people how important this issue is. People tell me that the world doesn't care about genocide and this fact will never change. Samantha Power in her book shows how the few people who did speak out were thought naive, that they didn't understand the world. With her final paragraph, she inspires me to continue talking about this.

George Bernard Shaw once wrote, "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." After a century of doing so little to prevent, suppress, and punish genocide, Americans must join and thereby legitimate the ranks of the unreasonable.

If you want to know the two books that have most changed my political life, it is of course this one and From Beirut to Jerusalem. The later was my introduction to international events and gave me nightmares when I was in the middle of it.

Dobbs and the All-American Team

So I have been trying to get caught up with my NY Times Sunday Magazine articles, and I just finished this one about immigration debates in local governments. I have to say, I have a hard time seeing the urgency in this whole debate. Why is illegal immigration all of a sudden a big issue? Granted, part of the answer is that Karl Rove has pushed it hoping to help the Republican party attract Hispanic voters and create a permanent Republican majority. But this doesn't explain why the rest of the country is invested.

As best as I can tell, this hasn't been playing out as a security issue. None (or very little) of the debate seems to be about preventing terrorists from crossing the border from Mexico. If we think that the town in the Times Magazine article is representative, it seems that a big part of the debate revolves around culture. One of the pieces of legislation the town council tries to pass is one recognizing English as the main language of the town. What becomes clear pretty quick is that people supporting this kind of legislation seem to be using "illegal immigrant" and "Hispanic" interchangeably.

I am often amazed at how arguments don't really evolve over time, but merely repeat themselves. Arguments by people like Lou Dobbs sound very similar to Nativist arguments at the end of the 19th Century and beginning of the 20th Century. Each time a new group becomes conspicuous in our country, people make allegations that the group isn't trying to become American. If that is a concern, one should know that second and third generation Hispanic immigrants do speak English at home, in the same way that previous immigrant groups did.

But even that fear I don't understand. I can't wrap my mind around the fact that some people don't want this melting pot to include certain ingredients. As if all of a sudden, there now is an American culture that shouldn't be changed - that everyone else should have to change into instead of allowing new people to influence it.

I have only ever heard one good argument form people who vocally oppose illegal immigration for why the status quo needs to be changed. The husband of a former co-worker of mine worked in landscaping and he was having trouble competing with other landscapers because they were hiring illegal workers and he was not. But my response then is that we need easier immigration rules so that business owners who want to hire new immigrants can do so without a major bureaucratic headache.

Look, I don't mind debating immigration, so long as it isn't about issues like making English the only language and other efforts that make it clear that Hispanics in general are the targets. And I get the feeling from people like Lou Dobbs and the All-American Team of council members in the Times article, that their goal is to make Hispanics feel unwelcome.

Boy Soldier

In a similar vein, but different in mood, from my previous post, the news from Sierra Leone is particularly interesting after having read A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah. The book is amazing, but very haunting. The violence that the author saw regularly and then had to deal with is incredible. The article in the NY Times today says that elections there seem to be going well. Good news.

The Hyena's Belly

It is amazing how a personal narrative can change how you see things. I think the last time I posted about Somalia, I was mostly concerned with whether or not an extremist Islamist government would remain in power. But after reading Notes from the Hyena's Belly: An Ethiopian Boyhood by Nega Mezlekia, I find myself more despondent than anything else. His memoir, beautifully written, describes what it was like to be one of the otherwise faceless people suffering during Ethiopia's famine and civil wars.

Having a picture of this person in my mind, I see the war so much differently. Based on Somali culture and history, the country isn't likely to rally behind a central government (or any government). Instead, the Islamist extremists are likely to continue the fight indefinitely, backed by foreign Muslim groups. And the Ethiopian army will continue the fight backed by Western money. And both sides will act with complete disregard towards the civilians caught in the middle.

The truth is, we have a long history in this region, backing Ethiopia, then Somalia, then Ethiopia again, again and again. Unfortunately, this region continuously finds itself in the middle of battles it doesn't seem to start. First it was the West against totalitarian Communism - now it is the West against Islamic terrorism and extremism. Our response is always the same - we send in arms to whoever seems to be on our side at the time, but immediately turn our back when our interests are no longer in danger.

But the fact is, we should care about this. We should be invested and concerned about the lives of the people who are continuously caught in the middle of the violence that stems, at least in part, from the weapons we have supplied to the region. It is because of us and the USSR that these armies and para-armies have the ability to kill so many people so quickly.

For the Kurds

Summary:
This article in the NY Review of Books really has me thinking about Iraq. Basically it says that the benchmarks are bunk, there won't be much more violence than there is now, and there is a better option than Biden's three-way partition.

I haven't read a more convincing article about Iraq than this one in the New York Review of Books. It basically slaps down most of my arguments and concerns. First, it says that Iraq will not really fall apart after we leave.

But there will be no Saigon moment in Iraq. Iraq's Shiite-led government is in no danger of losing the civil war to al-Qaeda, or a more inclusive Sunni front. Iraq's Shiites are three times as numerous as Iraq's Sunni Arabs; they dominate Iraq's military and police and have a powerful ally in neighboring Iran. The Arab states that might support the Sunnis are small, far away (vast deserts separate the inhabited parts of Jordan and Saudi Arabia from the main Iraqi population centers), and can only provide money, something the insurgency has in great amounts already.

Iraq after an American defeat will look very much like Iraq today—a land divided along ethnic lines into Arab and Kurdish states with a civil war being fought within its Arab part. Defeat is defined by America's failure to accomplish its objective of a self-sustaining, democratic, and unified Iraq. And that failure has already taken place, along with the increase of Iranian power in the region.

It also says there is really no chance for success through American troops and the benchmarks that Congress is so fond of.

But even if Iraq's politicians could agree to the benchmarks, this wouldn't end the insurgency or the civil war. Sunni insurgents object to Iraq being run by Shiite religious parties, which they see as installed by the Americans, loyal to Iran, and wanting to define Iraq in a way that excludes the Sunnis. Sunni fundamentalists consider the Shiites apostates who deserve death, not power. The Shiites believe that their democratic majority and their historical suffering under the Baathist dictatorship entitle them to rule. They are not inclined to compromise with Sunnis, whom they see as their longstanding oppressors, especially when they believe most Iraqi Sunnis are sympathetic to the suicide bombers that have killed thousands of ordinary Shiites. The differences are fundamental and cannot be papered over by sharing oil revenues, reemploying ex-Baathists, or revising the constitution. The war is not about those things.

The author also makes really good points about how Iraqi politicians aren't able to achieve any of the benchmarks anyway; the political coalitions are weak and divided, and the leaders have learned how to move slow and avoid action. So what is to be done about this?

Iraq's Kurdish leaders and Iraq's dwindling band of secular Arab democrats fear that a complete US withdrawal will leave all of Iraq under Iranian influence. Senator Hillary Clinton, Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joe Biden, and former UN Ambassador Richard Holbrooke are among the prominent Democrats who have called for the US to protect Kurdistan militarily should there be a withdrawal from Iraq. The argument for so doing is straightforward: it secures the one part of Iraq that has emerged as stable, democratic, and pro-Western; it discharges a moral debt to our Kurdish allies; it deters both Turkish intervention and a potentially destabilizing Turkish– Kurdish war; it provides US forces a secure base that can be used to strike at al-Qaeda in adjacent Sunni territories; and it limits Iran's gains.

For the longest time I have been convinced that a regional war would erupt if we left. This article did a good job of making me reconsider that. But as convincing as this all is, I still think violence internally would increase. Without American troops, Sadr's militia would have no one holding them back at all and Sunni attacks could conceivably increase even more.

What I really like though is the idea that we would stay to protect the Kurds (and prevent Turkey from invading). This plan is far more reasonable than Biden's proposal to partition the country into three (although as well as things are going, I suppose that should be left on the table). And I like that while it talks about American withdrawal, it is mindful of the country we are leaving behind. I never got the impression that people like Richardson (or Vilsack) were too concerned with Iraqis at this point.

Pork - It's What's For Dinner

Summary:
Guess what? Remember how Democrats said they were going to bring transparency and responsibility to pork spending? Well, they are doing the opposite. Surprised? Seriously though, check out the NY Times graphic - it sums it all up.

I am going to let you all in on a major lesson I just learned. Maybe you are all smarter than me and already knew this. But in case you didn't know it, here it goes: Whichever party is in control in Congress will abuse pork spending. This holds despite campaign promises of reform (by Democrats) or fiscal responsibility (by Republicans). In fact, not only will they abuse pork spending, but they will refuse options for transparency.

The NY Times has a truly absurd example from the bill to increase health coverage for children.

Despite promises by Congress to end the secrecy of earmarks and other pet projects, the House of Representatives has quietly funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to specific hospitals and health care providers under a bill passed this month to help low-income children.

Instead of naming the hospitals, the bill describes them in cryptic terms, so that identifying a beneficiary is like solving a riddle. Most of the provisions were added to the bill at the request of Democratic lawmakers.

One hospital, Bay Area Medical Center, sits on Green Bay, straddling the border between Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, more than 200 miles north of Chicago. The bill would increase Medicare payments to the hospital by instructing federal officials to assume that it was in Chicago, where Medicare rates are set to cover substantially higher wages for hospital workers.

Lawmakers did not identify the hospital by name. For the purpose of Medicare, the bill said, “any hospital that is co-located in Marinette, Wis., and Menominee, Mich., is deemed to be located in Chicago.” Bay Area Medical Center is the only hospital fitting that description.

For more charming examples like this one, check out this graphic. I feel the need to point this out for two reasons. One, it really pisses me off that the Democrats campaigned loudly that they would come into office and end these practices and instead they just use their power to get the pork for themselves. The sad thing is that the Democrats did the same thing when it came to ethics reform - they made a lot of big speeches to humiliate Republicans, then didn't do anything significant.

But more importantly, I think it illustrates a valuable point. Neither party is actually more moral or responsible than the other party. People tend to forget this - purposefully or not. They yell loudly when the opposite party does it, but explain it away when their party is caught. Instead, it should be the opposite. You should yell the loudest when it is your party giving away money. But I suppose that expecting people to actually look at these issues objectively is naive.