History shows us that there are no isolated incidents. As a nation acting in its own best interest, the United States has proven this—over the past hundred and twenty years we’ve averaged almost one major military action on foreign ground per decade. And with the continuing advances in machines and methods to conduct war, the pace promises to accelerate. The fact that we seem to learn little from this endless escalation of war, where more and more people are killed and put into poverty, causing desperation and, in turn, terrorism, is truly amazing. In the wake of such imperialism, we lack critical awareness due, in part, to the failure of our history education. To serve our interests, we tell the story that characterizes us as mighty heroes. But as a voting public, this history serves us poorly when it comes to dissecting the complicated actions perpetrated by our government on our behalf. Thankfully, there are resources for those desiring a re-education. One of the best resources I’ve read lately is Stephen Kinzer’s Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq (Henry Holt, 2006). Although “Overthrow” is historical non-fiction, Kinzer narrates as stories eleven instances in which the United States has used its military power to overthrow the government of a foreign country. These are just the blatant ones in which U.S. presidents and a small cadre of like-minded thinkers have rationalized the use of unilateral military action.

Overthrow reveals how the U.S. deposed foreign leaders deemed to be against our business and geo-political interests, whether they were democratically elected or not. These actions, portrayed to the American people as good and positive fights against evil tyrants in order to protect the rights of poor, unenlightened people, caused more problems than they solved. By meddling in other nation’s affairs, establishing military bases, and taking their resources for our profit, we have increased anti-American sentiment, creating more and more desperate and dependent people. It’s true that dictators fronted many of the regimes overthrown by the U.S; however, this justification for overthrow holds little merit because at the same time, we have also supported dictators, as long as they are serving a purpose for us in the constant geo-political power struggle. We look the other way regarding their human rights abuses, and these once friendly dictators only become “evil” when we decide they are. Some of the leaders we’ve deposed were even great admirers of the American ideals of democracy and freedom and were trying to develop those concepts in their own countries. But when it came down to our interests versus theirs, we used our force to make things go our way, even when it ran contrary to those same ideals we profess to hold so dearly. It’s no wonder we find ourselves fighting a force of anti-American feeling around the world. Reading Kinzer’s book offers an education about this process. Kinzer explains that the citizens of the countries in which we’ve meddled do not  hate our freedom, they just hate the way we impose what we call freedom on the rest of the world.

           Kinzer separates Overthrow into three sections, beginning with the Imperial Era—the period during which the U.S. began its quest for influence outside its borders. Kinzer begins by explaining the motivation for moving past our border. “The first wave of American ‘regime change’ operations, which lasted from 1893 to 1911, was propelled largely by the search for resources, markets, and commercial opportunities. Not all of the early imperialists, however, were the tools of big business,” he continues. “Expanding, they believed, was simply what great nations did.”

           Kinzer goes on to explain that at the end of the nineteenth century there was a big push to expand American trade markets. For the first time in its history, the United States had run out of real estate. Production on farms and in factories seemed to be too much for domestic consumption. Following the capitalistic model, powerful business interests began looking abroad in order to expand their markets. Land was bought up cheaply in places like Honduras and Guatemala, strategic ports were established in Cuba and the Philippines, and the Panama Canal was taking shape. The native people were often poor and powerless—unable to resist the American takeover of their assets, which happened quickly and quietly. Conveniently, there were always corrupt generals and businessmen willing to give away their country for a piece of the pie. When the everyday citizens attempted to take back some of their own resources, daring to fight back, American business leaders screamed bloody murder. They used their intimate ties with powerful U.S. presidents and senators to send in the forces to “bring order” and protect the sweet deals that were made.

           American journalists fed the fire, painting the foreign populace as backwards and helpless in order to gain popular American support for a benevolent overthrow. To incite cooperation from the American public, the U.S. government relied on the press to offer attractive excuses. “… [E]very time the United States has set out to overthrow a foreign government,” writes Kinzer, “its leaders have insisted that they are acting not to expand American power but to help people who are suffering.” He explains that “This paternalism was often mixed with racism. Many Americans considered Latin America and Pacific Islanders to be “colored” natives in need of guidance from whites.”

           The second section of Overthrow covers the Cold War era—the period when nationalist movements like those in Iran, Guatemala, and Chile were misinterpreted as communist expansion and crushed. The decision to carry out these coups, in countries we knew little about, was made by a small group of U.S. politicians and leaders whose sole obsession was communism. “American leaders might be forgiven for intervening in countries about which they were so ignorant,” explains Kinzer. “What is harder to justify is their refusal to listen to their own intelligence agents…They rejected or ignored all intelligence reports that contradicted what they instinctively believed.”

Sounds eerily familiar, doesn’t it?

           Despite a lack of evidence, leaders like Mossadegh in Iran, Arbenz in Guatemala, and Allende in Chile were painted as communists with ties to Moscow. In reality, they were independent nationalists who were elected to office. But communist-obsessed officials, like Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, were convinced that any leader who wanted to take back their country’s land for their own people must be part of the great communist plot. Overthrowing these leaders only led to later troubles and more violence. “Each of these…coups,” explains Kinzer, “was launched against a government that was reasonably democratic and each ultimately led to the installation of a repressive dictatorship.” And, as Kinzer explains of the blowback, “They led to the fall of leaders who embraced American ideals, and the imposition of others who detested everything Americans hold dear.”

           The third part of Kinzer’s book deals with the invasions of Grenada,Panama, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The Afghan story is crucial to understanding the current situation and our war on terror. After the Soviets invadedAfghanistan in 1979, the American leaders, again focused obsessively on stemming the communist threat, wanted to fund rebel militia groups who were fighting the Soviets. In order to do this, we had to funnel the money through Pakistan, which is where the rebel groups had their training camps. Pakistan was lead by a pro-nuclear, pro-Islamist military dictator named General Zia Al-Haq. Because the money had to go through the Pakistani leadership it was their decision on which of the many groups of “freedom fighters” to support. Most of these turned out to be fundamentalist and anti-Western.  “ ‘For God’s sake,’” one secular Afghan warned Americans during this period, “‘you’re financing your own assassins!’” (Kinzer 269)