Reizen zonder Geert. Op zoek naar de werkelijkheid. 2

Volgens Geert Mak in zijn bestseller Reizen zonder John 'fungeerde' de VS na 1945 ‘decennialang als ordebewaker en politieagent' in de wereld,  –'om maar te zwijgen van alle hulp die het uitdeelde.’ 

Nu de werkelijkheid:

Rights organizations (the same ones that were giving a bad rap to genocidaire Rios Montt) had condemned the war in Nicaragua all along but vehemently protested Southcom's 'soft-target' tactics.
The American commentator Michael Kinsley reprimanded the rights organizations for departing from good form. He explained that a 'sensible policy' must 'meet the test of cost-benefit analysis,' evaluating
'the amount of blood and misery that will be poured in, and the likelihood that democracy will emerge at the other end.'

Naturally, we Americans have the right to conduct the analysis, thanks, presumably, to our inherent nobility and stellar record ever since the days when the continent was cleared of the native scourge.

The nature of the 'democracy that will emerge' was hardly obscure. It is accurately described by the leading scholar of  'democracy promotion,' Thomas Carothers, who worked on such projects in the Reagan State Department.

Carothers concludes, regretfully, that U.S. influence was inversely proportional to democratic progress in Latin America, because Washington would only tolerate 'limited, top-down forms of democratic change that did not risk upsetting the traditional structures of power with which the United States has long been allied (in) quite undemocratic societies.'

There has been no change since.

In 1999, President Clinton apologized for American crimes in Guatemala but no action was taken...

perhaps unprecedented is an article in The New York Times by Elisabeth Malkin, headlined 'Trial on Guatemalan Civil War Carnage Leaves Out U.S. Role.' Even acknowledgment of one's own crimes is very rare.

Rare to nonexistent are actions that could alleviate some of the crimes' horrendous consequences - for example, for the United States to pay the reparations to Nicaragua ordered by the World Court.

The absence of such actions provides one measure of the chasm that separates us from where a civilized society ought to be.

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/16801-the-us-remains-guilty-in-guatemala