I got two items of feedback on my last article, the one that probed into the complex mire of our Iraq involvement. Both questioned the middle part in which I tried to explore why simplistic notions of victory and defeat cant fit the situation.
Much of the reason lies in a body of fact that reads differently in the rest of the worlds school books than in ours here at home. We have our version of history, they have theirs. The true history of American foreign policy though, is disheartening to study, difficult to write about and uncomfortable for patriots to swallow.
Critics who cant believe the USA might err will throw this article aside and scream, What a bunch of Commie anti-American lies! Not so. It is a sampling of what can be found in government documents including the Church Commission Report, the Hinchey Report and National Security Archive Briefing Reports. But none of it was revealed without a struggle. It was made public so that we might not make the same mistakes again. Knock on wood.
Our childrens textbooks leave gaps in the history of our nations international affairs. Call the omissions little white lies, errors of convenience or whitewash. If you could ask history-cleansing writers, theyd be sure to come up with dandy euphemisms that salute the flag while assuring us that everything is hunky-dory. We like to think our hands are clean.
Consider Iran, next-door to our situation in Iraq. Iranian history books teach Iranian kids how their fathers once elected a popular reformer named Mossadeq. When Mossadeq announced that he wanted to nationalize Iranian oil fields, the Brits and our CIA mounted a plot to depose him and replace him with Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. Not a nice person, it turned out, but he supported our hold on Iranian oil. Those events are sanitized if mentioned at all in U.S. textbooks.
African students read how a popular nationalist rose up from the Congolese people to become president when the Belgians gave up control. His name was Patrice Lumumba and he lasted only fifty-three days in office before the CIA engineered a coup putting Sese Seko Mobutu in power, starting decades of poverty and bloodshed in the mineral-rich Congo. Try to find mention of our involvement in your childs world history curriculum.
Lets inject some perspective here. While our interventions in small nations affairs or economies scarcely rate a footnote in American history texts, our elephantine tromping about in foreign lands has created bloody crises that you can bet their leaders studied during their school days.
Chilean children read how the CIA once worked to depose Marxist President Allende. Our first crack at Allende was a donation of $20 million to finance previous president Eduardo Frei Montalvas bid for another term. Allende (not a nice person) won the election, so the CIA supported a coup that put General Pinoche (even worse) in power. Pinoche proved to be a brutal dictator whose reign was characterized by repression and widespread assassination of opponents, many of whom simply disappeared. Again, check the coverage of this in American public school textbooks.
Cuban students read about the unsuccessful American plot to assassinate Fidel Castro and the abortive Bay of Pigs invasion. On the other hand, one wonders whether Cuban schools give equal time to the Soviet plan for deploying long-range missiles in Cuba that could have hit major gulf and eastern seaboard cities.
In little Jamaica, we attempted a 1976 military coup to overthrow the popular Socialist government of Michael Manley who had dared to increase Jamaicas cut from Jamaican bauxite sales. When that didnt work, we tried unsuccessfully to assassinate him. Frustrated, we settled for cutting him off from the International Monetary Fund. Jamaican students learn about this stuff.
On an even smaller scale, President Reagan decided to invade Grenada after newly elected left-leaning President Maurice Bishop instituted socialist programs. Not wanting a friend of Castro ruling the tiny island, we mounted an invasion no matter that Bishop had already been murdered. The toll; 135 Americans and 400 Grenadians killed. Previous President Herbert Blaize regained power, disbanded parliament and soon gained condemnation for widespread human rights violations. As one islander put it, America gives out food with one hand and knocks people over the head with the other.
Our government has adventured in Viet Nam, Morocco, Nicaragua, Panama, Bolivia, Libya, Cuba, Guatemala, Honduras, Laos, the Philippines, Egypt, Cambodia and elsewhere. Our manipulation of the Argentine economy by pegging the Argentine peso to the dollar, stagnating their economy for decades until they broke free. Weve become so reckless and insensitive that on the August 22 broadcast of the 700 Club, Pat Robertson suggested to the world that the United States ought to assassinate President Cesar Chavez of Venezuela!
If anyone wishes to keep a complete score on our interventions, they should start a hundred years or more back to when we deposed Queen Liliuokalani, snapped up part of Mexico and deprived Spain of some of its prize territories. Weve been at it ever since. In fact, no other nation has had its uninvited nose in the business of other sovereign nations as much as the U. S. of A.
As a traveler, I marvel at how so many of the peoples of nations my government has wronged appear to bear me no ill will. It seems they have a capacity for separating the good of America from the international errors of its government. It also seems that the one population that is most ignorant of the excesses of the United States foreign policy might be our own.
When President Bush sent us into Iraq, he either didnt take into account that our reputation for mischief preceded our troops or didnt believe it mattered. And that is the core of the matter.
Meanwhile, students in Kinshasa, Kabul, Santiago, Buenos Aires, Cairo, Manila, Caracas, Bogota Phnom Penh, Ujung Pandang and Ho Chi Min City continue to study a different world history than our children are exposed to.

Comments may be addressed to: rgraef@verizon.net.