Wait, didn't America wage a war to install a pro-American government in Iraq? Are they somehow pro-American and pro-Iran at the same time, or did they switch alliances while nobody in the west was paying attention?
When you want a country to be free and democratic, you can't also tell them who to elect. You have to choose one or the other. The United States has often chosen the latter while pretending to want the former, but at least with Iraq they seem to be mostly hands off (in recent years).
https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/insidestory/2019/10/ira...
The Sunni minority once ruled but now the Shia majority rule and the government is said to be aligned with Shia-majority Iran.
Seems like it's usually a government that's popular with its people that gets overthrown and replaced by a "democratic" government.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_United_States_s...
> The regime was characterized by the systematic suppression of political parties and the persecution of dissidents to an extent unprecedented in the history of Chile. Overall, the regime left over 3,000 dead or missing, tortured tens of thousands of prisoners, and drove an estimated 200,000 Chileans into exile.
From the Wikipedia article on Carlos Castillo Armas [2]:
> Upon taking power Castillo Armas, worried that he lacked popular support, attempted to eliminate all opposition. He quickly arrested many thousands of opposition leaders, branding them communists. Detention camps were built to hold the prisoners when the jails exceeded their capacity. Historians have estimated that more than 3,000 people were arrested following the coup, and that approximately 1,000 agricultural workers were killed by Castillo Armas's troops in the province of Tiquisate. Acting on the advice of Dulles, Castillo Armas also detained a number of citizens trying to flee the country. He also created a National Committee of Defense Against Communism (CDNCC), with sweeping powers of arrest, detention, and deportation. Over the next few years, the committee investigated nearly 70,000 people. Many were imprisoned, executed, or "disappeared", frequently without trial.
Those don't sound totalitarian to you?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_dictatorship_of_Chile...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totalitarianism
"Totalitarian regimes are different from other authoritarian ones. The latter denotes a state in which the single power holder – an individual "dictator", a committee or a junta or an otherwise small group of political elite – monopolizes political power. "[The] authoritarian state [...] is only concerned with political power and as long as that is not contested it gives society a certain degree of liberty".[8] Authoritarianism "does not attempt to change the world and human nature".[8] In contrast, a totalitarian regime attempts to control virtually all aspects of the social life, including the economy, education, art, science, private life and morals of citizens."
So Chile and Guatemala were Authoritarian, but not Totalitarian. The practical difference is that an Authoritarian Chilean government kills 3,000 people while the Totalitarian Khmer Rouge kills 1.5 to 2 million of its own people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge
"According to a 2001 academic source, the most widely-accepted estimates of excess deaths under the Khmer Rouge range from 1.5 million to 2 million,"
In North Korea, it's hard to estimate because it's a closed society with tight control over information:
https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP10.HTM
"Perhaps from 710,000 to slightly over 3,500,000 people have been murdered, with a mid-estimate of almost 1,600,000. But these figures are little more than educated guesses"
Saying they are the same thing is ridiculous and really soft pedals how insane some communist regimes were.
I feel this is such important context for what followed. It raised such a fervor of hatred toward the communist political body. I still believe this was theft of property from people's families and estates built over many generations of effort.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vuskovic_plan#Application https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidency_of_Salvador_Allende...
The bounds of civility had been trampled and vanished. The violent retaliations which followed were outright disgusting.
the ones that come readily to my mind like Iran and Chile don't quite fit that mold.
I don't the right prior here is "elections = real democracy", for cases like Iraq. The US has long history of installing "democratic" governments that are not actually democratic, but rather military states who violently suppress the people, but support US interests. The list of countries where this has borne out is long, but if you are interested, an easy place to start would be Cold War era South America (Guatemala and El Salvador being two straightforward examples).
The British drew the map specifically so that they could use the local tensions to divide and conquer.
We're still suffering because of that.
Interesting fact: Kermit Roosevelt Jr. a grandson of U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt, played the lead role in the CIA-sponsored overthrow of Mohammad Mossadegh, the democratically elected leader of Iran, in August 1953. [2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...
Wasn't that what happened in Egypt?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmed_Chalabi
IRGC had also announced the Syria as its 35th province.
https://carnegieendowment.org/2013/08/27/iran-s-unwavering-s...
IRGC and Russian bombing had driven out most of the Sunni's from Southern Syria towards north Syria, close to Turkish borders. and Iran is repopulating the land with Shias from allover from Afghanistan to Lebanon.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/13/irans-syria-pr...
IRGC has sort of created a contiguous Shia controlled land mass from Iran, Iraq, Syria to Lebanon. Some geopolitical observers I follow, expect the next will be in Afghanistan, with Afghani Shias against Pakistan controlled Sunni Talibans, as soon as US withdraws from Afghanistan.
- to the people, it means a government that is less corrupt and more accountable to do the people's work; a semi-meritocracy.
- in diplomatic circles, it means whatever Americans and their rich owner-class want. There aren't very many democratic countries allowed; they're usually small and don't have a resource curse.
-- It's a government that got majority of the vote.
This has little to do with corruption/accountability, iraqis tend to vote along sectarian lines. There are more shia, they are better organized, they win.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/10/iraqi-police-open-fir...
The same mistake is repeated again and again, even today.