Forgetting the Past

I thought I could try this out on you first, just in case what I come up with is either unworthy of cheap blog space or otherwise irrelevant at least compared to other more pressing stories. I’m not sure how much of this will hold up to the discourtesies of investigative journalism but I have to get it off my chest somehow.

Thanks in large part to my subsidizing a college education at a California institution, my son became knowledgeable on the subject of Latin American history. In most circles this would draw a yawn or at least the close-out of all discussions and arguments, a “so what?” To avoid embarrassment of paying for but not receiving a proper education on any subject, I began to do my own research so I could say “so what” whenever the boy brought up one of his tidbits of historical fact on Latin America.

The more I read and listen, the more I realize how badly we Americans have behaved in the region during the past century. Iran-Contra will go down as a misguided footnote compared to the evil deeds our leaders sanctioned to rescue the poor underclass south of the border from other evil deeds perpetrated from other proxies.

Don’t misunderstand, I believe there were willing evil doers waiting to take advantage of us leaving our backdoor unlocked and unguarded, but keeping the argument based in simplistic “us versus them” terms misses the point by a wide margin. We did many of our nasty things for the sake of protecting corporate interests and regional hegemony. I’m not sure history will treat those acts as noble.

For example, there is ample evidence that CIA-sponsored assassins whacked the president of Chile and, on a roll, the leaders of Panama and Ecuador within two months of each other. When we didn’t feel killing was useful, we helped organize coup d’états in Guatemala, Peru, Argentina, Chile and Ecuador (again).

Panama’s Omar Torrijos’ crime was to sign a treaty with Jimmy Carter to take control of the Panama Canal, and Jaime Roldós of Ecuador wanted a few environmental impact studies done before Shell Oil destroyed the rain forests and displaced thousands of indigenous people without regard to their welfare. Reasonable people can agree that signing anything with Jimmy Carter can be grounds for a mini-mental exam, but murder hardly justifies the crime. And, while we’re pumping oil out of Ecuador and have a fancy military base in there, history may prove that Roldós’ desire for prudence was justified.

The last half of the 20th Century was a confusing and confounding time and I’m not so naïve as to believe there weren’t important stakes confronting U.S. policy makers as they took strong measures to keep Marxist influence out of our backyard (if only we had been half as successful at keeping Marxists our of Congress and our major media). And, even though Jesus said to love our enemies, he never said we shouldn’t have any.

There were plenty of activists working against our interests for the past 50 years. But here’s the deal, we have to look at what we gained from taking out unfriendly governments and installing, in some cases, brutal regimes. In the understated way that roosting chickens come home, I’m afraid we’re now worse off than if we had left the whole place alone decades ago.

By year’s end, there will be only two governments in all of Latin America that will be universally considered friendly to the U.S.: Colombia and El Salvador. All other countries will have tilted left with many led my devout Marxists. We will likely even see the return of Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and a Mexico that may become a less-friendly neighbor than Canada, if that’s possible. The new leaders of Latin America will accomplish their leftist takeover by using ballots where they couldn’t succeed years ago with bullets. Sure, they will be helped along by money and assistance from Fidel Castro and his ugly stepchild, Hugo Chavez, along with money from narco-terrorists and other evil gangs, but they can’t force the people to vote against their will and that, for the moment, is against America.

Why this out-of-character, mild anti-American rant slipped by my censors and is important is best summed up by a minor philosopher who had one great line. George Santayana wrote in his Reason in Common Sense the immortal words, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." I look at our tactics around the world and can’t help wonder if we’ve learned anything and if there isn’t, somehow, a better way.