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THE recent allegations about Russian interference in the US elections have been met in Washington with much shock and horror.
Michael McCaul, a Texan Republican and chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, thundered: “We cannot allow foreign governments to interfere in our democracy.” Democrat Senator Charles Schumer, trumpeted: “That any country could be meddling in our elections should shake both political parties to their core.”
President Obama has ordered a cross-agency inquiry into these allegations, and there is talk of a bipartisan congressional commission to investigate. Although the Russians have denied these charges, the reality is that they had a clear motive to want a Trump victory, given Clinton’s animosity towards Vladimir Putin.
Whatever the truth of this latest episode in US-Russian rivalry, there is a large dollop of irony here. The US has been meddling in politics across the world for decades, propping up dictators and kings, toppling elected governments, and buying politicians.
Suddenly, when somebody else plays the CIA’s game on its home turf, there is vociferous condemnation. Lack of space prevents me from listing a full catalogue of American interference in other countries, but the CIA’s murky role abroad is well documented.
The CIA’s murky role abroad is well known.
More often than not, these covert operations have led to unwanted results. The outcomes of US meddling in Iran, the Congo and Chile are still felt decades later. Whole regions have been destabilised, and countries have seen their political development derailed by US interference in their affairs.
Perhaps the most notorious of these interventions took place in Iran in 1953 when a popular prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, was overthrown through a CIA-led coup that strengthened the long rule of Reza Shah Pahlavi. His repressive reign was ended by the Islamic revolution in 1979. Had the Americans — supported by the Brits — not removed a popular leader, the entire course of Iran’s recent history would have followed a more democratic path.
Similarly, the CIA-inspired coup that toppled Allende in 1973 ushered in the nightmare years of Gen Augusto Pinochet that saw thousands of Chileans killed and imprisoned. In 1961, Patrice Lumumba of Congo was removed and killed in a coup that had the CIA’s fingerprints all over it.
For decades, the Cold War was used to justify these interventions. Military dictators like Ayub, Zia and Yahya were propped up in Pakistan to further America’s anti-communist agenda. After the Soviet Union collapsed, the ‘fight against terrorism’ was used to justify further US meddling.
Beside toppling governments and setting up their own puppets, the Americans interfered in elections around the world. They were not alone: according to Dov Levin, from 1946-2000 the Soviet Union (later Russia) and the US intervened in 117 elections around the world, an average of one in every nine competitive elections.
It wasn’t just Third World elections the Americans were fixing: in 1948, the newly created CIA threw all its resources behind the Christian Democrats to keep a left-wing alliance from winning the elections. To this end, the CIA gave millions of dollars to its allies.
Writes Ishaan Tharoor in the Washington Post: “CIA operative Edward G. Lansdale, notorious for his efforts to bring down the North Vietnamese government, is said to have run the successful campaign of Philippines President Ramon Magsaysay. Japan’s centre-right Liberal Democratic Party was backed with secret American funds through the 1950s and 1960s. The US government and American oil corporations helped Christian parties in Lebanon win crucial elections in 1957 with briefcases full of cash.”
Henry Kissinger once remarked: “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people.” This was in the context of the Chilean election that, despite the CIA’s outlay of $4 million in trying to block Allende, was won by the populist leader.
When China was accused of interfering in US elections in the late 1990s, Peter Kornbluh observed: “If the Chinese indeed tried to influence the election here … the United States is only getting a taste of its own medicine. China has done little more than emulate a long pattern of US manipulation, bribery and covert operations to influence the political trajectory of countless countries.”
Even within the US, elections have often been tainted by charges of irregularities and rigging. Lyndon B. Johnson’s Texas constituency was only one seat where electoral chicanery was rife. In 2000, Al Gore lost because of a few hundred ‘hanging chads’ in Florida, a state where Jeb Bush, the brother of George W Bush, was governor. And 83 vote counting machines in Detroit mysteriously broke down on election day last month.
So to those whingeing about Russian hacking, I can only say: “What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.”
Published in Dawn December 24th, 2016
