"The Interview" falsely portrays CIA assassinations and coups as benevolent, and done in the interest of the people of the countries affected.
My partner and I watched “The Interview” last night on-line, and I hate say this, but we both liked it. It was funny and fairly intelligent -- if you overlook the gross-out humor: poop, throw-up, etc. It wasn’t really racist or sexist or homophobic. There were two strong women characters in it, but of course they were also hot babes. But we knew it wasn’t going to be “Nine to Five.”
My only objection to “The Interview” was it was about a CIA plot to overthrow the dictator of North Korea. The reason they gave for doing this was that he was terrible to his people – starving and imprisoning them. And, of course, because he had nuclear weapons, and was crazy enough to launch them at California. Now honestly, even though I believe in the independent sovereignty of nations, if the CIA really went around “taking out” evil dictators, I wouldn’t, in my heart, object.
However, the truth is that the CIA has a long history of “taking out” good men, elected by their people, and with plans to help their country. But because a few American businesses felt their profits were endangered by these plans, the CIA overthrew those good men, and set up brutal dictators, who served the interests of American corporations, at the expense of their people.
Let’s look at just a few:
Iran, 1953. Mohammed Mosaddeq was appointed premier of Iran in 1951, by democratically elected representatives. He immediately called for the nationalization of the Iranian oil fields, which at that time were controlled primarily by British oil companies. The CIA and British intelligence overthrew him and his government in 1953, and installed the Shah of Iran. The Shah ruled until 1978, with a reign of terror, torturing and murdering all opposition.
Guatemala, 1954. Jacobo Arbenz was elected President of Guatemala in 1951. His country was very poor, and he established very successful land reforms. He bought the uncultivated land that was owned by the United Fruit Company, and sold it to peasants. This land reform was no Stalinist force collectivization. Individual peasants bought land on credit, and paid off their debt by selling crops they had grown. It was a very successful program, and of great benefit to the peasants. But it upset the United Fruit Company, in part, because the price they were paid for the land was exactly the value they had been declaring it for tax purposes – which was much, much lower than its actual value. The result: the CIA organized an invasion, overthrew and exiled Arbenz, and put a military dictatorship in place which murdered and tortured hundreds of thousands of people.
Chile, 1973. Salvador Allende was elected President of Chile in 1970, and started nationalizing industries, once again upsetting American business interests. The CIA organized a military coup that seized power on September 11, 1973, murdered Allende, and put Augosto Pinochet in power. Pinochet immediately tortured and murdered tens of thousands of Allende supporters, and continued to rule with this terror until he was finally removed from office in 1988 under a plebiscite. [If you like learning history from movies, watch “Missing,” Costa-Gavras' 1982 film about the coup, starring Jack Lemmon and Cissy Spacek (banned in Chile during Pinochet’s rule); and “No,” the 2012 film starring Gael Garcia Bernal, a true story about the advertising campaign that finally threw out Pinochet.]
Even the overthrow of Saddam Hussein is problematic. He was a brutal dictator but we had sent him money and arms for years, to keep him in power. We only overthrew him when he became inconvenient.
And of course, there's the the failed coup in Venezuela against democratically elected President Hugo Chavez. The United States disliked his leftist politics, and went so far as to kidnap him and to remove him from his country. Only national and international outcry over this action forced the U. S. to return him safely to his country and to power.
There are countless other examples, from South America to Africa, of coups that the CIA organized to throw out popular leaders who were working to help their people, and were replace by brutal dictators. And those examples are just the ones we know about. We can’t know all the elections that were rigged by the CIA, and leaders who died under mysterious circumstances.
This history is the foundation for my objection to the film, “The Interview,” because the film makes CIA assassinations and coups look benevolent, and in the interests of the people of the country affected. I wish they had been, but history tells us otherwise.