THE NATIONAL SECURITY STATE’S EMBRACE OF DICTATORSHIPS

http://fff.org/2012/12/27/the-national-security-states-embrace-of-dictatorships/

What brutal dictatorships has the U.S. national-security state supported since its establishment in 1947? The list is a long one.

The list goes on and on, in Latin America, the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. And it’s not just an aberration. Support of brutal dictatorships has long been an integral part of the U.S. national-security state. In fact, the national-security state actually trained many of the Latin American torturers in the art of torture at its infamous School of the Americas, which even had its own written torture manuals.

Meanwhile, when the question is asked, “Why do people hate us?” many mainstream Americans continue to automatically mold their minds to the official line of the U.S. national-security state: “They hate us for our freedom and values.” They simply block out of their minds the possibility that people who have suffered horribly under brutal dictatorships, including arbitrary arrest, torture, indefinite detention, murder, disappearances, censorship, and other such things, might hate the United States for having supported and even enabled their tyranny. Such Americans just keep repeating to themselves that the military and the CIA are over there defending “our rights and our freedoms” and “spreading democracy.”