The year is 1954. Government agencies resurrect secret plans previously discarded until a more forceful administration comes to power. Behind the scenes, the CIA and State Department are fervently working in over time trying to engineer a government overthrow against a populist nationalist in their own backyard who has the dare audacity to threaten both US economic and geopolitical interest. Accusations of communism and Soviet penetration permeate the discourse and heat up the rhetoric; swift action must be taken to stabilize the hemisphere. Intervention by any means necessary. Exiled opposition leaders are paid off, trained, equipped, and installed. Propaganda transmits through jammed radio towers and warns the peasant population of invasion and liberation. Psychological warfare in conjunction with paramilitary covert operation is launched. The target—Guatemala, a third world poverty stricken country in which the fruits of revolution and conflict are as ripe as the bananas that dot the landscape. Such a riveting story could easily fill the pages of Tom Clancy’s next best-selling and fictional political thriller but instead, it is the true story unearthed through extensive investigation by Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer, who with Bitter Fruit, meticulously detail a thought provoking and well-documented historical account of the Guatemalan coup d’état. The sowing of the seeds, subsequent cultivation, and ultimately the dangerous harvest of these bitter fruits is the basis for this compelling chronicle of one of the most controversial and…
The Iran Contra Affair was an action not actually approved by the U.S. Congress. Ronald Reagan put in his best efforts to keep communism to a minimum. So, he’s done everything in his power to keep helping Nicaragua, even though it’s going against American laws. He decides to support the Contras who are rebelling against the Cuban backed Sandinistas, which resulted in one of the most talked about scandals in the late 1900’s. In a report from the Public Broadcast Service, they mention that Reagan says the Contras were, “the moral equivalent to our Founding Fathers”. Unfortunately for a very engaged Reagan, a Boland Amendment was made to make funding for Nicaragua difficult. Then, a few years later a second Boland Amendment was made even stronger…
Members of the National Security Council enlisted the Iranians, who had been our mortal enemies, to use their influence with Lebanon for the release of seven American hostages. Israel was to send weapons to Iran and in turn, the United States would replace the weapons that Israel had sent to the Iranians. The United States would receive the money for these weapons. The anti-Communist rebels in Nicaragua would receive some of the money to help their cause. They were also called Contras and there was an embargo against selling or giving arms to Nicaragua and Congress had voted not to fund the Contras any more. (West 's Encyclopedia of Americanlaw,…
Intro – I think the biggest part of the scandal was that Reagan directly lied about the conflict, but there is significant evidence that he knew we were giving Iran weapons & the funds were supporting the Contras.…
During the American Civil War, there were such things called guerrillas. No, I am not talking about the muscular black creatures that hide in the jungle. Though that is exactly how the Confederate independent companies got there name. Where and when did guerrilla warfare begin? Who did it involve? Who were these so called guerrillas and what was there strategy? Did certain Military commanders in Arkansas make an impact on the use of guerrillas? What were the strategies that Federals and Unionists used to stop guerrilla warfare? Daniel Sutherland’s Guerrillas: The Real War In Arkansas explains how partisan fighters helped shape the strategic and tactical patterns of the war. Shows us the reasons men became guerrillas, their roles in the Confederate service, and the guerrilla operations effectiveness.…
In the second segment of the documentary "What we have learn about U.S. foreign policies", John Stockwell, former CIA Station Chief Angola Task Force, and highest-ranking CIA official ever to leave the agency and go public, speaks out about the actions taken by the CIA towards 3rd world countries. In this speech, he declares that that U.S. has extensively manipulated and organized the overthrows of functioning governments around the world. Stockwell talks about organized secret armies that fight in just about every continent around the world. An Example of this organized crimes committed by the CIA would be, The Panama war "Operation Just Cause" that took place on December 20th 1984. The use spent millions of dollars in a three-day attack that caused the lives of over 4,000 people in Panama. The reasons behind this war, where not the stop drug traffic, but rather more complex. Former CIA agent, Manuel Noriega, had been working with the U.S. when he was sent to Panama to control that area. He then rebelled and became the leader of the country. The U.S. then undertook a systematic effort to overthrow Noriega. Economic sanctions were stepped up and additional troops were dispatched to Panama. His image was now shown that of a criminal, compared to terrorist. The war also served as good testing grown for weapons and…
A major turning point in the country’s recent history was the unfortunate events that occurred in New York and Washington on September 11th, 2001. The terrorist attacks have sparked many changes in the lives and morale of citizens in the United States of America. This paper has examined how the attacks contributed to different factors, such as the new airport security, the naivety of Americans, and the hate crimes on immigrants.…
The administration had a number of plans to deliver money to the Contras in a way that the American public could not trace back. One of these plans dealt with selling weapons to Iran for money while Iran had American citizens as hostage, all illegally. So in order to trade illegal arms for American hostages being held in Iran, the Iran-Contra plan was made. On the other hand, Oliver North, who was Reagan’s Lieutenant…
Anti-Communist forces grew a lot stronger during the end of the Cold War. Reagan increased Military spending from 36 million to 197 million in the year 1984. America helped Anti communist forces in South and Central America. The Contras, As the anti Communist rebel group was called, fought to overthrow the Sandinistas, the communist regime that ruled over South America, and their numbers grew into the thousands with U.S. support. Ronald Reagan referred to the South American Contras as “freedom fighters” this caused a gain in public and congressional…
The Iran-Contra Affair shows how the Reagan Administration engaged in two major foreign affairs policy blunders due to a fear of Communism.…
Reading this book taught me a lot more than what I was expecting. I was expecting it to be a boring hard to read book, but it honesty grasped my attention. I like the fact that Farber talked about all the events that lead to the Iranian Hostage Crisis. Yes we had already learned quite a bit about it in the research we had to do for the Thursday Topics, but they were not all clear and detailed as the book. For a fact I learned that President Nixon and his key advisor Henry Kissinger tried to replace the simple anti-communism. They tried to do so by using a more pragmatic realpolitik. His realpolitik approach was being attacked by Dixon's Democratic opponent in the 1972 election, senator George McGovern. McGovern attacked Nixon's approach by saying, "Our children look at us for moral guidance-for Americans true ideals. But we protect the prestige of warmonger. And we pay with the soul of our nation" (17). The CIA at Nixon's bidding was engaged in many illegalities in the United States and they helped overthrow the legally elected Chilean government. Operations like these (realpolitik and CIA revelations) left many Americans to question the role of the United States in the world. Although Americas uncertain role in the world, Americans were more worried about the economic issues during that time. The larger crisis in America was that many people expected the economy to do better annually, a dream that seemed to be crushed for many Americans. In the 1970s, the…
His main goal in his foreign policy was challenge the power of the “Evil Empire” or the Soviet Union. Reagan negotiated with Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbechev, to reduce nuclear weapons and loosen the reins of power in Eastern Europe. Afterwards, the two leaders signed an anti-nuke deal known as the Strategic Defense Initiative. In 1982, Reagan disagreed with Law of the Sea’s international authority and announced that he was not ready to agree with the treaty.(Rumsfield, p. 262, 2011). One of the most damaging incidents in Reagan’s foreign policy was the selling of firearms to Iran for financing the war in Nicaragua. He trained 10,000 Nicaraguan soldiers to dethrone the Sandinistas. Reagan claimed that he had no knowledge of the selling of firearms and many of his officials were…
Apparently, Reagan was aware and approved of the original arms for hostages deal. However, as his National Security Advisor John Poindexter testified, Reagan was not told about the illegal diversion of funds to the Contra rebels. The public was stunned by the news of the scandal Ronald was suppossively involved in and started to question the president’s “good” intentions. For a long time, the public was angry with the president even though there was more evidence supporting the innocence of him rather than the guilty. Reagan was so disappointed, even his wife Nancy said that “…he went into a state of depression because he felt that his reputation had been ruined.”…
In this portion of the case, we are focused on the reasons for the United States District Court's decision to deny the emergency motion for a stay brought by the United States government. The motion in question was in response to the enforcement of a temporary restraining order (TRO) filed together by Washington and Minnesota; or collectively, "the States".…
Bitter Fruit is a passionate, fast paced book about how the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) held covert operations in Guatemala that helped overthrow the democratically elected president Jacobo Arbenz in 1954. This was a time when the US was under a lot of pressure due to the Cold War, and because the US feared the spread of communism and the impact it would have on our economy, we started to spy on Latin American countries like Guatemala. At this time, Americans had invested over 60 million dollars into the United Fruit Company, (UFC) and if communism were to become the political majority it would end in chaos for the United States’ economy and foreign investors. The espionage and covert operations that the CIA did were ultimately for the worst and these actions…