While Americans feel justifiably angry at alleged foreign interference in their political process, they have also been handed a HUGE mirror: and the reflection should disturb them.

Here is a short list of foreign governments overthrown directly or indirectly by the USA, since the end of World War II: Iran (1953); Guatemala (1954); Thailand (1957); Laos (1958-60); the Congo (1960); Turkey (1960, 1971 & 1980); Ecuador (1961 & 1963); South Vietnam (1963); Brazil (1964); the Dominican Republic (1963); Argentina (1963); Honduras (1963 & 2009); Iraq (1963 & 2003); Bolivia (1964, 1971 & 1980); Indonesia (1965); Ghana (1966); Greece (1967); Panama (1968 & 1989); Cambodia (1970); Chile (1973); Bangladesh (1975); Pakistan (1977); Grenada (1983); Mauritania (1984); Guinea (1984); Burkina Faso (1987); Paraguay (1989); Haiti (1991 & 2004); Russia (1993); Uganda (1996);and Libya (2011).

Make no mistake: America is the WORLD LEADER when it comes to intervening in the internal affairs of other countries. In addition, the alleged meddling by US Intel is far more extensive than simply hacking into the emails of political opponents or meddling in elections. The US and the USSR/Russia have intervened no less than 117 times in foreign elections between 1946 and 2000.

For the past half-century, the United States has been involved in more anti-democratic coups than any other nation on earth. Hands down!

US intelligence agencies played a major role in deciding the 1948 Italian elections. Operation GLADIO was initiated following WWII as the cold war unfolded, in an effort to combat the growing commie factions in Europe. The US feared a coalition of labor parties would triumph in the Italian elections, producing a “domino effect” of communism in the region. The US barred Italians from entering the country who did not “believe in the ideology of the United States,” while setting free all the mobsters, drug-dealers and racketeers Mussolini had jailed before the war.

The CIA created and funded opposition parties and orchestrated a massive terror and propaganda campaign. They made it quite clear that there was no question of further assistance from the United States if the wrong party won the election.

The operation was a success. It was the first of many Italian elections featuring US interference. In 1978, former PM Aldo Morro was kidnapped and killed by the far-left terrorist group Red Brigades. His supposed crime? Moro implemented a series of social and economic reforms.

In 1952, the CIA sponsored a coup in Cuba which overthrew the elected government and installed the military dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. This in turn led to the rise of Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution in 1959.

In 1953 the CIA, along with Britain’s MI6, orchestrated a military coup against democratically elected secular Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh when he tried to nationalize his oil reserves. He was overthrown ostensibly by Islamists and royalists loyal to deposed monarch Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, but the operation was carried out under CIA direction as an act of US foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government, as the Agency later confessed.

In August 2013, the CIA finally admitted that it was in charge of both the planning and the execution of the coup – including the bribing of high-ranking officials in the Iranian military.

And what are we to make of CIA backing for Augusto Pinochet’s murderous overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973? Chileans have their own 9/11. In 1970, socialist Allende was democratically elected president of Chile. Allende had been in office for three years when far-right forces in the military staged an armed insurrection with logistical support from the CIA. A US-backed military dictatorship under General Augusto Pinochet came to power, and thousands of Allende supporters were killed and tortured during Pinochet’s reign of terror.

It wasn’t until 1990 – after 17 years of fascist dictatorship – that democracy was restored to Chile.

A more recent example: the overthrow of Honduras’ democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya in 2009. Hillary Clinton – then Secretary of State – refused to condemn the removal of Zelaya as a ‘coup’ – which would have required the suspension of US military aid to the country. Rather than demand Zelaya’s reinstatement as President, Clinton instead called for new elections. US military aid continued unabated, even as dissidents were imprisoned and reports of ‘death squads’ emerged. Violence against political and environmental activists surged. Meanwhile, widely boycotted elections took place.

Another recent example: STUXNET. This was a malicious malware attack by MOSSAD/CIA on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Somehow it was able to infect Iran’s most highly secured computer systems and shut down critical centrifuges.

Allegations of Israeli or Chinese or Russian interference in the US elections are undoubtedly alarming, but there’s clearly a double standard at play here. The irony is that meddling in foreign democracies only becomes a problem when America is on the receiving end. The US has interfered with impunity in the internal affairs of many other countries (see above).

Indeed, one cannot fully appreciate the US-Russian relationship today without acknowledging America’s role in the internal affairs of its defeated Cold War foe. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the approach of US trade advisers to drunken imbecile Boris Yeltsin was nothing less than missionary: a virtual crusade to transform post-communist Russia into a facsimile of the American capitalist system.

As soon as Bill Clinton assumed the White House in 1993 his experts discussed “formulating a policy of American tutelage” for Yeltsin, including unabashed partisan support for his presidency while US political ‘advisors’ spread across Russia. Zbigniew Brzezinski (former national security adviser to two Presidents) talked of Russia increasingly passing into de facto WESTERN RECEIVERSHIP[!]

The vulture Capitalists had big plans.

For the average Russian, the results of Yeltsin’s domestic policies were disastrous. Between 1990 and 1994, life expectancy for Russians dropped as the economy fell into a death spiral. While it was a boon for the new Russian oligarchs, poverty and unemployment surged for most citizens. Food prices spiked dramatically; communities were devastated by de-industrialization. Social protections were stripped away.

To the horror of his sponsors in the USA, Yeltsin’s popularity took a nosedive to the point where a communist victory in the 1996 elections seemed entirely possible. Yeltsin once again turned to the oligarchs, using their vast resources to run a dishonest, totally unscrupulous campaign.

In the run-up to the election, Russia was granted a huge US-backed IMF loan that, as the New York Times duly noted, was “expected to be helpful to President Boris N. Yeltsin in the presidential election…”

Yeltsin relied on US political strategists for guidance – including a former aide to Bill Clinton with a direct line back to the White House. When Yeltsin eventually won the controversial election, the news was celebrated on the cover of Time magazine: Yanks to the rescue: The secret story of how American advisers helped Yeltsin win.

Of course, in the long run, the West eventually lost out. Vladimir Putin elected himself President. Without the economic chaos and deprivations of the US-backed Yeltsin era, ‘Putinism’ would surely not have established a foothold in Russia. As Bloomberg columnist Leonid Bershidsky wrote, Yeltsin’s victory was “a momentous event that undermined a fragile democracy and led to the emergence of Vladimir Putin’s dictatorial regime…”

In 2014, the US helped overthrow the Ukrainian president, who was quietly replaced with an administration selected by US government officials. This was an entirely unconstitutional takeover led by the neo-Nazi Svoboda party, backed by the CIA. Barely an eye was batted in the US press.

One final example: US aid to the Islamic Mujahadeen militias during the 1980s war in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union. This included millions of dollars in aid and advanced weaponry to future terrorist scapegoat Osama Bin Laden. President Reagan even hosted a group of Mujahadeen fighters at the White House!

The USSR was a secular state; it championed the rights of minorities, women and the poor abroad, regardless of its totalitarian domestic policies. In Afghanistan, the Soviets built infrastructure, roads, hospitals, and they promoted the rights of women. They educated their youth in Russian universities, helping them to become doctors and engineers. This was a system that allowed progressive liberal views on women, minorities and sexuality to evolve and take hold.

While on the other side of the coin, the CIA was busy sponsoring Islamic fundamentalists and militant nationalists who thought western culture was evil. The Muslim militias destroyed historical treasures and critical infrastructure and treated women as slaves. It was a bitter irony that President Bush II was so proud that Afghan girls could finally go to school following the US invasion – because they could already do that 25 years ago under the Soviets!

Since the 1950s American foreign policy has consisted of overturning legitimate elections and deposing moderate foreign rulers who do not bow down before American Corporate Business Interests. Thanks to our meddling in the elections of other nations, the blood of millions of civilians in the Middle East, Africa and Central and South America is on our hands.

[Edited repost from 2017]