America as Overlord by Hal Draper

Author:Hal Draper
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Haymarket Books

… the Arbenz government has steadily succumbed to Communist pressure;

… real Communists were doing real business in Guatemala;

… it was the Communist movement which was gaining the ascendancy;

… Arbenz chose to make a deal with the Communists;

… the underlying sham is the Russian claim that the Communist drive in Guatemala is independent of Moscow;

… Arbenz was letting the Communists assume dominance in his regime;

… this Soviet base of operations;

… the central fact was Russian intervention on this continent.

And the liberal conclusion is that “in the real world it was inconceivable that the U.S. would — or should — remain indifferent to this Soviet base of operations.

“We are committed to the rebels,” proclaims the Post. This is its understanding of how liberals must live “in the real world.”

Thus our liberals endorse the Dulles principle that a “Communist government” cannot be tolerated anywhere even if established legally, democratically, and with the will of the people. This is also the principle which the British established in the case of British Guiana. It is an open repudiation of their claim that Stalinism’s crime is to impose its will over people’s necks.

The Post must endorse this principle because its basic argument, so “courageously” faced, points to it inescapably. If Guatemala must be crushed, because a CP is too influential in its government circles — a government, moreover, which has been one of the more democratic in Latin America, relatively speaking, and not among the dictatorships that are Washington’s pets — certainly any country must be crushed as soon as the CP becomes dominant legally.

But if the U.S. can crush a country in which its imperialist rival is too influential — by what right do our liberals condemn the Russians for doing the same thing?

Do not the Russians have the right to feel endangered when the U.S. builds up armies, and establishes bases, on its very flanks? Do not the Russians have the right to crush any neighboring country (if they can get away with it) which is being used by the U.S. as a war jumpoff point?

There is Iran on the Russian flank. There is Turkey. No one in the world is uncertain as to whether these regimes do not represent a dagger pointed at Russia. And there was Korea …

This is exactly the pro-Stalinist, apologetic, or merely “neutralist” thinking, of so many elements in Europe and Asia: we cannot condemn the Russians, for their crimes, they say, because the poor Russians are afraid and encircled …

We Independent Socialists will have no truck with this apologetic or “neutralist” whitewash of the Kremlin. But our liberals, who are even more bitter about such talk? Do they not agree completely with these apologists of oppression, except that they are willing to whitewash only the U.S. camp and vilify the rival war camp?

Our liberals of Post caliber want to live “in the real world” and they are willing to go along with an international crime (swallowed hard and painfully) because it is simply inconceivable for them that Guatemala should be allowed to go its own way.

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