A tangentially related thing I saw an hour or so ago: “Two-Decade Review Yields History of Covert Action in Congo.”
Short bit:
“In August 1960, the U.S. Government launched a covert political program in the Congo lasting almost 7 years, initially aimed at eliminating [Prime Minister Patrice] Lumumba from power and replacing him with a more moderate, pro-Western leader…”
My immediate reaction to which was, * Surprise! Yet another region that is fucked up and suffering because of, it turns out, deliberate U.S. intervention*.
It kind of boggles my mind when folks can’t (or won’t) put these things together. Like: CIA overthrows Iranian Prime Minister Mossadeg → installs Shah → sets stage for Revolution & rise of Khomeini → aaand here we are still dealing with the consequences 60 years later.
That - and every other damn thing we’ve done in the Middle East and its surrounds since the end of WWII - rests firmly on the same But We’re The Good Guys exceptionalism that motivates the CIA. And that, in turn, is rooted in Western exceptionalism. It wasn’t the Americans who nipped off Iraq’s access to the Gulf in 1922, it was the British (Churchill and Lawrence, specifically), and there’s a direct line from that post-colonial map sketching to two wars with Iraq and a crater in downtown Manhattan.
Crap, I’ve wandered a bit. Anyway: with our drones and our blowing up of High Value Targets along with the occasional wedding party, we’re setting the stage for the same bullshit another 60 years from now. In fact, the bullshit will probably be much worse, and will probably happen much sooner than that. Information flows faster, and thus so does outrage and resentment.
I wonder if, as the British wound down their Empire, there were those who snickered in private as America puffed out its chest and took the reins. Idiots. They have no idea what they’re in for.
