From: Janet
Dear All:
Here are some excerpts I’ve transcribed from the animated cartoon by Bill Blum: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ee6SdmmCN5Y
“Be nice to America or we´ll bring democracy to your country”
The setting for this educational cartoon about US foreign policy is a classroom with a Professor offering the facts about US foreign policy while students question him.
Excerpts:
“The good news class is that the Secret to understanding our foreign policy is that there is no secret – You simply have to understand that America strives to dominate the world for both economic and ideological reasons.
Once you understand that – much of the confusion, the contradiction and the ambiguity surrounding policies fades away. To express this striving for dominance numerically we must consider the following:
“Since the end of WWII the United States has endeavored to
- overthrow more than 50 governments most of which were democratically elected
- grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least thirty countries
- waged war in some thirty countries
- attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders
- dropped bombs on the people of some thirty countries
- suppressed dozens of populist and nationalist movements in every corner of the world.” …
“Professor What do all the terrible things you mentioned have to do with freedom and democracy “?
“They have to do with making sure that foreign countries are ruled by people friendly to Washington That these leaders are receptive to American corporations coming into their countries and having at least as many rights as the native enterprises. So for our corporations it means an abundance of freedom and democracy….”
“Is there any wonder there are so many people all over the world who hate our foreign policy? We are creating new anti-American terrorists every day. ”
“But is there anything we can do about this?”
“All I can suggest is this- educate yourself about these things and as many other people as you can – – if you can´t convince them right away – at least give them new food for thought- think of it like planting seeds – the number of Americans who are disgusted with what our government is doing all over the world is growing and I can only hope that at some point it will reach a critical mass and explode- I can´t offer more than that..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ee6SdmmCN5Y
p.s
Documentation for the claims made in this animated cartoon about US foreign policy can be found in the books Rogue State: A Guide to the World´s Only Superpower and Killing Hope by Bill Blum.
See also Gore Vidal´s “Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How we got to be so hated” which provides a dozen pages listing in chart form the nearly 200 US military interventions [operations] since WWII.