Last week in reaction to Hillary Clinton’s claims that Tulsi Gabbard was a pawn of the Russians, Rep. Gabbard declaimed:
Hillary Clinton throughout her career has espoused, advocated, and championed a very interventionist foreign policy, pushing for regime-change wars, toppling dictators in other countries, being the world’s police, using draconian sanctions to accomplish these things, and they have proven to be incredibly destructive…
thereby establishing that Hillary Clinton was, indeed, of presidential caliber. Nearly every president’s foreign policy has proven to be incredibly destructive. The last president whose foreign policy wasn’t was Dwight Eisenhower. Of course, some presidents should be singled out for extraordinary destructivity, e.g. Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush.
If Americans paid more attention to candidates’ foreign policies, maybe our present foreign policy wouldn’t be such a mess.
might want to reflect on what the CIA etc was up to during Eisenhower’s years before deciding destructiveness though his handling of Suez might even things up.
I presume you’re referring to the putsch that removed Mossadegh in Iran and the CIA’s pursuit of UFC’s interests in Guatemala leading to the coup against Arbenz?
The U. S. had zero intelligence assets in Iran at the time of the coup. That is well-documented. The extent of U. S. involvement seems to have been giving a little “walking around” money to some thugs to stir up discontent about Mossadegh. He was actually removed by a putsch of Iranian military officers. That’s why the Islamic Republic executed so many military officers after their revolution. I realize that contradicts their creation myth but at least it comports with the facts. Eisenhower’s memoirs have almost nothing to say about the putsch. Our involvement has been greatly exaggerated.
The CIA’s actions on behalf of UFC in Guatemala are extremely small potatoes by comparison with practically every president before or since. As you note Suez makes up for it.
‘We came, we saw, he died’ is not an attitude I would want to have in charge of US foreign policy, especially one whose photograph should appear beside the dictionary words ‘corruption’ and ‘graft’. Qaddafi was an evil megalomaniacal scumbag who deserved to die for past crimes, and people conveniently forget the run-up to the intervention (a revolt followed by promises of massacre which prompted calls to ‘do something’ which was done), but the chaos and bloodshed that resulted was to no one’s benefit except maybe those who used it to run guns or enrich themselves. Gabbard nailed HRC in her tweets, and I hope that two-time loser never recovers.
Whether you consider Mossadegh a Soviet asset or not (IMO he certainly was and the US had a strong interest in keeping the USSR away from ME oil), he was most certainly overthrown with the aid of US covert action. Kermit Roosevelt Jr. (Theodore’s grandson) boasted about it.
http://www.mohammadmossadegh.com/biography/kermit-roosevelt/iran-how-the-mess-came-about
He was not. The Tudeh was supported by the Soviet Union and were preparing to remove him which is why the Iranian military officers removed him first.
He was just padding his resume. Repeat: the U. S. had no assets in Iran at the time of the putsch and the officers involved in it wrote about it afterwards.
I’m not saying we had no involvement only that we didn’t overthrow Mossadegh. He would have been overthrown with or without our assistance.