On socialism’s alleged “failure”
A recent letter writer asked “socialism proponents” to address “a more basic issue” than those supposedly detailed in a recent “My Turn” by Dan Innis (Aug. 13): “If life is supposed to be better under socialism, why is it that people who live in countries with government-directed economies are risking their lives to get out….”
The short answer is because the United States invests an inordinate amount of money, time and effort to make sure they fail. The sordid history of U.S. behavior toward most of the nations of Central and South America, from the early 20th century up to the present, is replete with examples of vote-rigging, subversion, assassination, death squads, coups, covert and overt wars. Nicaragua, Guatemala and Chile come to mind immediately. Since World War II, the U.S. has extended its malevolent ministrations outside the Western Hemisphere. A partial list of notable examples would include the Republic of Congo, Indonesia, Vietnam and Libya.
Indeed, according to The Military Intervention Project at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, the U.S. has conducted almost 400 military interventions since 1776. Half of those have come since 1950, and more than a quarter since the end of the Cold War in 1991. Thirty-four percent have been in Latin America, 23% in East Asia, 14% in West Asia and Africa and 13% in Europe and Central Asia. If you believe that many, or even some of these, were “to preserve freedom and democracy,” there is a bridge in Brooklyn…