Never a Dulles Day
I couldn’t help but chuckle today when I read about Honduran President Manuel Zelaya boarding a plane at Washington D.C.’s Dulles Airport to return to his country after a coup had removed him from power. I found this amusing because that airport is named after Jon Foster Dulles who served as Secretary of State in the Eisenhower administration. Dulles was a classic example of American anti-communist over-reaction and played a large part in Operation Ajax and Operation PBSUCCESS, which led in large part led to the coups against democratically elected leaders in Iran and Guatemala respectively.* Dulles is probably smirking in his grave when he seems current world events in places like Iran and Central America.
It is worth noting that the US government and/or business interests had a role in the overthrow of at least two democratically elected leaders (Francisco Bertrand and Ramon Villeda Morales) in Honduras in the 20th century. It really gets annoying to see how the United States has routinely made things worse, for all involved, in their foreign adventurism and how the same names keep popping up time and time again (e.g., Dulles, Cheney). Perhaps the most perplexing component is how in almost all of these instances, numerous officials in the CIA and State Dept. have spoken out against the necessity of these operations, which counters the common argument that we can only see the folly in hindsight. Another problematic pattern is how the media tends to fuel the frenzy for these kinds of operations, only to atone later for being duped (gasp!) after the fact. Of course if you choose to fly out of Washington D.C.’s other airport, Reagan International, there are numerous instances of military and covert operations including Grenada and Afghanistan connected to that name as well.
* For clarity’s sake I am no fan of communism, I just feel that the US government often over-reacted in ways that turned out to be ultimately counter-productive throughout the Cold War.
