In Terrorism Offensive, Public Becoming Aware of War's Hidden Consequences
By LaRoy Smith
Contributing Writer

It is indeed a testament to our progress as a nation that the current Administration is making such a tremendous effort to obtain public consent for a war with Iraq. The grass roots activists in our country are making headway with documented evidence regarding our previous "just causes." The public is rightfully questioning the motives behind United States foreign policy in the Middle East with a fervor that is generating an unprecedented amount of campaigning on the part of government officials to generate faith, among the people, in the need to bomb Iraq as a preemptive measure.

Knowledge of our country's history is of utmost importance in the face of such misleading debates and official stories as are proliferating currently in the mainstream media. The United States has been responsible for the overthrow of more than two dozen governments in the past 50 years alone, mostly under the guise of "stemming the tide of communism." Now, with terrorism taking center stage as the new global threat, our leaders in Washington are carrying out operations-in South America, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa-identical to, if not more severe than, those carried out during the Cold War. Regardless of personal opinion concerning communism, what's undeniable is the fact that our country's interventions in the third world to fight the "communist threat" had virtually nothing to do with hostilities on the part of those nations. Of course, much of the information that is now available was inaccessible when it mattered.

In 1953, the CIA mobilized a popular overthrow of Iran's Prime Minister Mossadeg, only after he took control of Iranian oil fields from U.S. and British companies. In 1954, Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala was ousted for his land redistribution policies that required United Fruit (Chiquita) to relinquish much of its land holdings to the country's peasants. The list of these operations and their explanations could alone fill an encyclopedia. But the interests of U.S. businesses have consistently accompanied the goals of U.S. foreign policy, and the people are beginning to understand that as well.

What hasn't been consistent in United States policy is the defense of innocent people against tyranny. In Iran (under the Shah), Cuba, Nicaragua, Portugal, Pakistan, Turkey, Cambodia, Indonesia, and over a dozen other countries, the U.S. maintained happy relations with some of the most repressive and brutal regimes in history. In many of those countries, in fact, the United States was directly responsible for those regimes coming to power.

Who could forget the U.S. government's support for Pinochet in Chile? His reign led to the murder of over 30,000 innocent people. But what makes this example so remarkable isn't the number of deaths; far more were killed in Guatemala, East Timor, and Southeast Asia with U.S. support. The remarkable fact is that the overthrow of the Chilean government took place on September 11, 1973. That single fact has been instrumental in making people think differently about the "Why do they hate us?" question.

Contrary to Fox News and CNN opinion polls, the majority of the American people are no longer content to accept uncritically the official account of world events. They realize that their interests are not necessarily in line with those of the Administration. As a result, half of the American population has become cynical enough about politics not to vote. But as the agenda of those in power begins to have real and dire consequences for the disenfranchised, the seemingly powerless find ways to make their power felt, even at the highest level of the decision-making process. This is what I believe is happening now.

The American people seem to believe now more than ever that the immediate threat to their well-being is U.S. aggression in other countries. Even with all of the speeches and messages in support of war, the American people remain convinced that their lives and the lives of their children depend on finding new approaches to foreign policy-approaches that don't cause the deaths of innocent people; approaches that won't cause the deaths of our own people. Whether or not the Bush Administration gets its way, the movement has gained a stronger foothold in the country, and the people will continue the struggle for a safer, more humane world by challenging the assumptions of those who claim to have our interests at heart. After long and tireless effort by the activist community in America, a revolution has truly and finally begun; it is a revolution of consciousness.