Democracy, Dictatorships and Empire. December 28, 2003. An essay from the new collection, Writing On The Wall.
There is a profound contradiction at the heart of American political life, the claim to be a democracy and the bitter struggle to deny that status to almost anyone else in the world; all in the name of bringing democracy to the world. If there is one constant in American past and present history, it is the determination of the powerful elites in this country to impose their will upon that of other nations, against the wishes of the majority of people in foreign nations. The American empire utilizes force, brutal and terrifying, to intimidate the populations of other nations, and this, when alloyed with the mesmerizing power of the corporate press, serves to whitewash what is actually taking place.
When one looks at the present situation in Iraq, where the United States, on behalf of the whole world, we are assured, invades a sovereign nation which has not attacked the U.S., topples its government, bombs cities and installs a puppet regime – we are assured, once again, that this is done for the Iraqis and not for U.S. corporations. We have been here before scores of times. In 1915 the United States invaded nearby Haiti, ostensibly to deal with violence on the island. It dealt with it by bringing more. The U.S. Marines forced the Haitian legislature to select the candidate that US invaders wanted as president. When Haiti refused to declare war against Germany, the Americans dissolved the Haitian legislature. The Americans then pushed through a sham referendum for a new Haitian constitution, one far less democratic than the instrument it replaced.
As for the so called referendum, under U.S. bayonets, it passed by a ridiculous 98,225 to 768. When Haitian nationalists rose up to oppose the Northern invader some years later, the United States let loose a bloodbath, killing some 3,000 Haitians in the infamous Cakos Rebellion. George Burnett, a U.S. Marine General, would complain, “Practically indiscriminate killing of natives has gone on for some time.” Barnett found this violent episode startling. American troops put these proud people, who had forced two European powers, France and England, to surrender, in shackles on road crews and dismantled Haitian homesteads to make room for large plantations.
As Piero Gleijeses observed, it is not that President Wilson failed in his earnest efforts to bring democracy to these little countries – he never tried. He intervened to impose hegemony, not democracy. Indeed, this is not a Haitian tale alone, for the U.S. invaded Cuba four times, Nicaragua five times, Honduras seven times, the Dominican Republic four times, Haiti twice, Guatemala once, Panama twice, Mexico three times, and Colombia four times, in the 36 years from 1898 to 1934 alone. It went not to plant democracies like they’re some kind of tobacco plant, but to remove democracies to prop up dictators and to support repression.
Iraq is an inheritor to a grim and dark history that began in the Americas, spanned the Caribbean and touched the region before. It brought the ignominious reign of the Shah to the peacock throne of Iran, tossing out a democratically elected president, Mohammed Mosaddegh. Mosaddegh.’s great offense? He dared to nationalize the vast oil resources of Iran. With this affront to the American oil merchants, the United States imposed the brutal and repressive dictatorship of the Shah, Reza Pahlevi, who turned the nation into a private fiefdom and a torture chamber. Indeed, it was hatred of the Shah that launched the Iranian Revolution and put the Ayatollah Khomeini in power there.
Similar forces are mobilizing in the Persian Gulf today to wipe out the Western backed dictatorships that sit above unhappy, unstable, quasi states. Americans, if they have any inkling of history, can no longer claim ignorance when it happens again. You’ve been listening to an essay from the new book, Writing on the Wall. This is its author, Mumia Abu-Jamal.
These commentaries are recorded by Noel Hanrahan of Prison Radio.
