Since When Has America Respected The Universal Right To Self-Determination?
By Sean Fenley
28 September, 2012
Countercurrents.org
Mr. President, I must say, that I think you are somewhat confused about the history of US foreign policy. In your speech on September 25th at the UN; in fact, you even suggest that self-determination is not only a Western one, but a universal human value. [1] Mr. President, I’m sorry to say that I have to correct you sir. In my humble opinion, Mr. President, the United States has certainly not diligently respected a nation’s right to self-determination, and not only that your excellency, but the United States continues to disrespect that right to many “subaltern” nations continually, at the present sir — indeed right up until this very day. In fact, Mr. President, the United States persists in exercising many of its diktats, mandates, and domination over many of these same “inferior” nations unremittingly today.
When Iran elected a moderate Prime Minister in 1951, who wanted to nationalize British Petroleum, he was overthrown. [2] When the Congo elected the anti-colonialist Patrice Lumumba, he was killed. [3] When Guatemala elected the very moderate Jacobo Arbenz, his government was overturned. [4] He had to flee his country, and after short stays in a profusion of countries he ultimately resettled in Mexico. When Haiti elected a “socialist” who requested “dignified poverty” for the Haitian people, he was, rather unceremoniously, met with an IRI (International Republican Institute) backed terrorist campaign to depose him. [5],[6] When Chileans elected the Socialist Salvador Allende in 1970 he was met, of course — with the standard malicious crimes against humanity — and the concomitant coup d’etat. [7] Further back in history, in the Philippines, America was once again on the wrong side of it (history). As the Filipinos had originally been promised self-determination in 1898, but they; of course, did not receive it until 1946 though. [8]
These cases of the United States' disrespect and outright hostility towards self-determination, are exceedingly voluminous, manifold, and furthermore abounding and incredibly exhausting, indeed. In no way could anyone effectively, judiciously, and assiduously cover, each and every sordid instance of these multifold crimes against humanity here. But the final case that sums up the hypocrisy, and downright cruelty that can become the United States in its fervor against self-determination; unequivocally, is the case of the Sandinista Nicaraguan regime. Where the Sandinista government was met with a campaign of destabilization, inhumanity and terror by the United States-backed pernicious, malignant, merciless and barbarian Contra proxy death squads/thugs.
The Sandinistas were not initially elected — coming to power via an armed revolution against the vicious, the iron-handed, and the entirely loathsome US-backed Anastasio Somoza familial regime. However, they were elected in 1984, when the United States continued to insistently pursue terrorist, retrograde, barbarian, and inhuman tactics, against their rightly and duly-elected authority to govern/rule. They included such abominable, abject and perfidious acts as: mining the harbors, and even prompting the proxy Contras to target schools, hospitals, bridges, and other important development projects. [9] These types of institutions and initiatives are, of course, ordinarily imperative towards the sorts of goals and objectives that a socialist government typically tries to: foster, facilitate, negotiate, achieve and engender.
Today the legitimate aspirations of the citizens of the kingdom of Bahrain are being cast asunder, for the American “national interest” of housing the US Naval Fifth Fleet. It is, of course, being hosted, within the backdrop of an absolutist, authoritarian and autocratic monarchy — that exercises a kind of apartheid state against the majority Shia of that land. As the words fall from Obama’s lips, the Gods of hypocrisy are undoubtedly, regaling themselves with an abundance, and moreover a profusion of outrageous, ebullient, effervescent and indeed raucous laughter!
Mr. President your rhetoric would certainly stand up better — and hold more weight, veritably — I think; if in past or even recent history, that the United States had respected the universal human right of self-determination! Rather, more often than not, the United States' imperial role has been that of, if the “correct” party loses a particular election, than the attendant efforts to undermine and even destabilize, and ultimately overthrow that government; can often, in earnest, begin to well-up, initiate, mature, expeditiously ripen, blossom, and subsequently flower. Moreover, dictators who are amenable to Washington’s diktats, have often been met with Washington’s most sincerest, irreproachable and finest of graces! Whilst dictators who have stood soundly against many of Washington’s “irrefutable” commandments, are often met with the sternest, most callous, and most insidious of rebuff, contempt, defiance, opprobrium and acute/effusive disregard.
One truth that probably should be noted, in summation, is that whilst some of these “anti-American” dictators have overseen governments that pursued social policies/features that were generally positive. Verily, others have often been just as bad quite frankly, as many of the autocratic tinpot despots that Washington has either opportunistically, or seemingly reflexively — for control and “stability” — rather unscrupulously supported.
Notes:
[1]http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/sep/25/obama-un-general-assembly-transcript
[2]http://www.fff.org/comment/com0501i.asp
[3]http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/17/opinion/17hochschild.html
[4]http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/3279-justice-and-jacobo-arbenz-in-guatemala-1954-revisited
[5]http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2004/11/coup-connection
[6]http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-blumenthal/uncovering-a-usplanned-co_1_b_14750.html
[7]http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/sep/11/chile-coup-anniversary-pinochet
[8]http://opinion.inquirer.net/30507/philippine-independence-promise-foiled-by-us-duplicity
[9]http://www.nicanet.org/?p=1115
Sean Fenley is an independent progressive, who would like to see some sanity brought to the creation and implementation of current and future, US military, economic, foreign and domestic policies. He has been published by a number of websites, and publications throughout the alternative media.
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