Overthrow!

"The invasion of Iraq in 2003 was not an isolated episode. It was the culmination of a 110-year period during which Americans overthrew fourteen governments that displeased them for various ideological, political, and economic reasons."

So writes author Stephen Kinzer in his new book "Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq."

Stephen Kinzer was Monday's guest on Amy Goodman's Democracy Now. Kinzer begins with the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarch in 1893 and continues right into the present with the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. What would the Middle East look like today had we not brutally crushed Iran's democracy in 1953? Would we even have an immigration problem today if we had not brutally intervened throughout Latin America?

If you want to understand world events you have to understand them within their historical context. Kinzer provides that context in this new book. Go to the Democracy Now website and listen, watch, or read his interview with Amy Goodman.

Also, if you appreciate historical context, don't forget to support Democracy Now with Amy Goodman. Monday's show is a good example of what Amy Goodman does so well. On the one hand we have a guest who is able to put U.S. intervention around the world in a historical context. The problems in Iran become more intelligible. We more clearly see the hand of U.S. intervention and better understand its motives. George Bush isn't an anomaly. He is simply carrying on a long-held tradition of imperialism.

Another of Goodman's guests, a professor from Boston, was able to put today's May 1 Boycott into its proper context, a continuation in many ways of the labor struggles that began in this country 120 years ago, largely through immigrant populations.

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