This story demonstrates the American lack of willingness to think about the long-term consequences of our actions. We give huge amounts of money to dictators and generals—men who have no interest in democracy or long-term peace—just because they agree to be on our side in whatever conflict is deemed to be the most important at that time. Eventually, the U.S. attacked Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban regime, trying to get rid of some of the same factions we had supported in the past. By the time Kinzer gets to Iraq, we come back to the story of a small group of leaders acting on their impulses and obsessions, speaking in grandiose terms of freedom and liberty, and trying to force their will on the people of a faraway place. It’s nothing new, as Kinzer asserts. “The parallels between McKinley’s invasions of the Philippines and Bush’s invasion of Iraq were startling. Both presidents,” he explains, “ sought economic as well as political advantage for the United States. Both were also motivated by a deep belief that the United States has a sacred mission to spread its form of government to faraway countries. Neither doubted,” he continues, “that the people who lived in those countries would welcome Americans as liberators. Neither anticipated that he would have to fight a long counterinsurgency war to subdue nationalist rebels.”

           Kinzer’s book highlights the lack of historical perspective that keeps us from asking the fundamental questions about why we continue down a path that isn’t working. We first have to shed the notion that we are somehow different than any other empire and get rid of the idea that we are only trying to help those less fortunate by imposing our idea of democracy on them—what we are doing is robbing them of their resources and a chance to self-govern. Kinzer explains this notion as nationalism when he writes, “The idea behind all (the regime changes) – that Americans have a right and even an obligation to depose regimes they consider evil – is not new but one of the oldest and most resilient of all the beliefs that define the United States.”

 

The individual stories in Kinzer’s book are fascinating. He does a great job of telling the story of American imperialism from Hawaii to Honduras to Iran andChile, developing the plots and the characters so that the patterns become evident and the present day political situation makes more sense. If most Americans knew the history of our involvement in Cuba orIran, for example, we wouldn’t be surprised at the eventual backlash or the often violent forms it takes. Even our presidents seem to be in the dark about history: Kinzer offers as evidence a quote by President Dwight Eisenhower who remarked after Castro’s revolution in 1959, “Here is a country that, you would believe on the basis of our history, would be one of our real friends. The whole history…would seem to make it a puzzling matter to figure out just exactly why the Cubans and the Cuban government would be so unhappy…I don’t know exactly what the difficulty is.” (Kinzer 90) Yet, anyone who knows about how the United States reneged on its promise to give the Cuban’s their autonomy after the Spanish-American War, imposing American will on that small island for some fifty years, suppressing sporadic uprisings by force and promoting the Batista dictatorship, would understand the Cuban revolution.

           In Overthrow, Kinzer illustrates how the U.S., in forcing its way of life on other countries, actually subverts real democracy and drives the passionate leaders of those countries to more radical action. If people don’t feel they have a real say in their government, they turn to other means. By tightening the screws on the populace, we only succeed in driving people to more desperate measures. Today, it is labeled terrorism. Unfortunately, we never seem to learn these lessons; instead, we are surprised by any anti-American sentiment and react with blunt force to get rid of what we label as the menace at hand. We continue to make long-term enemies by waging our short-term battles in places far removed and then react with bewilderment and rage when the same things are done to us. With all the talk today about regime change in Iran, Syria, and Venezuala, it may not be long before Kinzer starts work on a follow-up edition to Overthrow.